New Books, National Black Writers Conference, Dallas Literary Festival, and More - 3/23/2021

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2021 National Black Writers Conference Biennial Symposium

Saturday, March 27, 2021 Medgar Evers College, CUNY 11: 00 AM – 7:00 PM Presented on Zoom “They Cried I Am: The Life and Work of Paule Marshall and John A. Williams, Unsung Black Literary Voices” Featured program highlights will include a keynote address, roundtable discussions, and dramatic readings. Confirmed speakers include Carole Boyce Davies, Edwidge Danticat, Keith Gilyard, Maryemma Graham, Michael Anthony Green, Lawrence P. Jackson, Evan Marshall, Liza Jessie Peterson, Ishmael Reed, Linda Villarosa, Mary Helen Washington and Jamia Wilson, and a musical tribute by Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch and Seasoned Elegance. Register and Learn More ▶ AALBC Family: Receive $5 off, the already low fee, by using promo code is NBWCFRIEND at checkout.

SMU Presents the Dallas Literary Festival: March 26–28 2021

This year’s festival will be held entirely online, free and open to the public. To attend an event, simply go to the Schedule, click on the event page, and follow the link to its Zoom session. AALBC’s Founder, Troy Johnson, will be participating on the Ghostwriting & Self-Publishing Panel, Saturday, March 27, 2021 from 10:00 AM 11:00 AM. The panel will also include, Lutishia Lovely, author of Blind Ambition, Sandy Lawrence, author of Do It Yourself PR Guide, and Marissa Monteilh, author of The Practice Wife. The panel will be moderated by Angie Ransome-Jones, author of Path to Peace .

New and Noteworthy Books

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue From the celebrated author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers comes a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company. Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom. More ▶

Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria’s Missing Schoolgirls by Joe Parkinson & Drew Hinshaw In the spring of 2014, American celebrities and their Twitter followers unwittingly turned a group of teenagers into a central prize in America’s War on Terror by retweeting #BringBackOurGirls, a call for the release of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls who’d been kidnapped by the little-known Islamist sect Boko Haram. With just a few words, their tweets launched an army of would-be liberators, spies, and glory hunters into an obscure conflict that few understood, in a part of Nigeria that had just barely begun to use the internet. Bring Back Our Girls is a cautionary tale that plumbs the promise and peril of an era whose politics are fueled by the power of hashtag advocacy, More ▶

My Day with the Panye by Tami Charles, Illustrated by Sara Palacios In the hills above Port-au-Prince, a young girl named Fallon wants more than anything to carry a large woven basket to the market, just like her Manman. As she watches her mother wrap her hair in a mouchwa, Fallon tries to twist her own braids into a scarf and balance the empty panye atop her head, but realizes it’s much harder than she thought. BOOM! Is she ready after all? Lyrical and inspiring, with vibrant illustrations highlighting the beauty of Haiti, My Day with the Panye is a story of family legacy, cultural tradition, and hope for the future. More ▶

I Am New Orleans: 36 Poets Revisit Marcus Christian’s Definitive Poem Edited by Kalamu ya Salaam “Who dat? We dat!” This collection is a gathering of the saints. Contemporary writers with an ear to the ground, digging on the sense and sound of what all is going down. Plus, a couple of ancestor scribes whose amazing words and clear-eyed vision remain both accurate and relevant long, long after their physical demise. Hence, here is a compendium of views and visions, which collectively map the outlines of what it means to both be and to miss New Orleans. More ▶

Dear Reader, As always, you are why we’ve been able to make AALBC the premier platform for books by, or about, Black people. Your paid subscription, book purchases, suggestions, engagement on the site, commenting, social sharing, and advertisements helps support our mission to celebrate Black books and authors. Peace and Love, Troy Johnson Founder & Webmaster, AALBC.com

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