Poet Nikky Finney's acceptance speech at the NBA for Head Off & Split

Poet Nikky Finney won the 2011 National Book Award last year for Head Off & Split, a collection of impresseive poems which layer reams of meaning into meaty metaphors served up you might say in bite-sized lines of controlled meter.

Impressive as Finney's achievement is in this volume, her acceptance speech for the NBA was a power-packed appetizer for the book. In her remarks, Finney put her audience on notice that she was serving up truths not always pleasing to the palate nor easily digested. However, everyone who values truth could take a seat at her table and would eat well.
Here's a link to Nikky Finney's acceptance speech well worth savoring (about 9 minutes): http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2011_p_finney.html

New York "Big City Book Club" will read James Baldwin's Another Country

Another Country

This note recently appeared in the New York Times:

In honor of the long-awaited return of “Mad Men” on March 25, the Big City Book Club  [a discussion group moderated by New York Times columnist, Ginia Bellafante].is getting in the spirit of 1960s Manhattan. Our next selection is James Baldwin’s 1962 novel, “Another Country,” which chronicles the descent of the jazz drummer Rufus Scott.
Baldwin recreates the world of Greenwich Village bohemians for an examination of race, emotional denial, professional rivalry, tortured marriages and other subjects that the AMC series has mined so well. Join us for an online conversation April 4 at a new time, from 7 to 10 p.m.

9th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium

Join Black Classic Press Director W. Paul Coates and members of the Walter Rodney Foundation next Friday, March 23 for the 9th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Walter Rodney Foundation is a non-profit organization working to advance education, health, and development by promoting human rights, social justice and sustainable development.

Since 2004, an annual symposium has been held in Atlanta, Georgia to honor the work of Dr. Walter Rodney (1942-1980), Pan-Africanist historian, educator and political activist widely known for his seminal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, first published in 1972.  The goal of the symposium is to bring together scholars, researchers, activists, students and the community to discuss contemporary issues from a Rodney perspective.

The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man: Centennial

Source: The Daily Beast,
Penguin Classics, $6.10

This year marks the centennial anniversary of the publication of James Weldon Johnson's novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. "Daily Beast" columnist Nathaniel Rich featured Johnson's novel recently in his series, American Dreams, which looks back at works of fiction that helped to define the last American century. Rich makes the point that The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was a pivotal work that took the bold artistic leap in 1912 to portray an African American man wrestling intellectually with his decision to cross the color line to pass as a white man. Through his character's reasoning about the impact of racial identification, Johnson depicts the ex-colored man, and by implication African Americans generally, as socially and psychologically complex. The novel, Rich says, influenced Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay among others to write autobiographical fiction depicting realistic portraits of Black people. This move contrasted the simplistic caricatures of Blacks (such as the "happy darky") that were exported from 19th century sterotypes and that--without the assertion of realism in American fiction--threatened to dominate the lens through which African Americans would be seen for another hundred years.

Successful songwriter, poet, novelist and author of the personal narrative  (check out his autobiography, Along this Way), James Weldon Johnson was a renaissance man who not only penned lyrics that came to be embraced as the Negro national anthem but with The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man, signaled a trend to render the national character of African American people authentically, in all of our diversity and as our richly-layered selves.

Jim Haskins featured by The Brown Bookshelf

The Brown Bookshelf (BB) is conducting its annual feature, "28 Days Later," which highlights a Black writer or illustrator every day during February, Black history month.

On day 4, BB featured award-winning author, Jim Haskins. Even if you don't know him by name, you probably know of at least one of Jim Haskins's more than 200 books--most of which are non-fiction books of Black history written for children and young adults.

The last book I read by Haskins was The Geography of Hope (1999), a detailed and vivid narrative of the rugged migration that Black families made from the South into the mid-west and west, motivated by intimidation and violence of hostile White southerners. Haskins books are treasures; I'd like to see every child have one or two of his works on their home library shelves.

In case you don't know Jim Haskins, here's an opportunity to be introduced to him through the Brown Bookshelf's profile.  Then, find a Haskins books on a topic of your interest and read it. You will want to begin collecting his work for your home library, as well as to start sharing it with young people in your life.  I am working on collecting one of every book he wrote.  Would be interested to know your thoughts on Haskins work.

Liberation Bookstore owner, Una Mulzac, 88

A few days ago when my August 2010 post about Liberation Bookstore and Una Mulzac blew up with hits, I knew it was a signal that this matriarch and soldier in the army of black political struggle had, as one headline read, "joined the ancestors."

Like many who lived outside of the Harlem community, and outside of NY state for that matter, I "knew" Una Mulzac and Liberation Bookstore more by reputation than by personal experience. In a wonderful culturally-conscious period between the early '80s through the mid-'90s, I heard the name of Liberation Bookstore invoked by brothers and sisters at black cultural fairs, literary conferences and black arts festivals in my hometown of Baltimore. From what these sisters and brothers said, I learned that Liberation Bookstore was a mecca where the conscious, the righteous brotherhood and sisterhood traveled to fortify themselves with black literature but also to meet up with other disciples of black culture who patronized Liberation and admired Una Mulzac.

I don't remember when I learned that the owner of Liberation Bookstore was a woman, but that news was indeed liberating for me. Una Mulzac was likely the first contemporary Black woman that I heard of who, as an entrepreneur, was dedicated to providing her community with black literature. Liberation became a destination that I kept faith to visit one day. Fortunately, I did visit several times, and listened first-hand to Una Mulzac talk about her father's dedication to the cause, and her own life devoted to freedom and human rights.

My post on Liberation Bookstore after the Harlem Bookfair in 2010 has been one of the consistently popular posts on this blog; I offer it here again in tribute to Una Mulzac, with gratitude for the example that she set for me to pursue a life devoted to books, according to my own interests, in the promotion of education and the progress of Black people.

In addition, two obituaries (you will need to sign up for accounts):
Liberation Bookstore owner, Una G. Mulzac, passes at 88, by Herb Boyd, Special to the Amsterdam News

Una Mulzac, Bookseller With Passion for Black Politics, Dies at 88, by Douglas Martin, NYT, Feb. 4, 2012

Book Sale - Newly arrived titles

Prices are reduced 10-15% on most titles - browse below and
See more Now Rise Books on Amazon.com
Order more than 1 book from Now Rise Books and receive

$1.50 REFUND on SHIPPING for EACH additional book purchased in the same order.

Autobiography
Open Wide The Freedom Gates: A Memoir by Dorothy Height. PublicAffairs 2005. Pb. Pages: 344. Condition: Like new copy. Price penciled in on half title page. Dr. Height's autobiography chronicling her unparalled influence and contributions to African American civil rights progress from the early decades of the 20th century through the early days of President Barack Obama's administration. $8.50

Essays
David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World by David Walker. Publisher: Penn State UP. Publication Date: 2000. Pages: 137. Condition: Very good, clean pages. Intro., annotations by Peter P. Hinks. Like new - this edition includes Blacks' responses to Walker's Appeal and text of letters revealing how Whites were alarmed by the dissemination of Walker's Appeal in Georgia and other Southern states. $11.00

Affirmative Acts by June Jordan. Anchor; 1st ed. 1998, pages: 288. Condition: Very good copy, tight binding, clean pages, tanning. Bookstore sticker on back cover; price in pencil on half title page. Jordan's essays in this volume, as in her broad body of influential work, "boldly confronts issues intersecting race, gender and class in America."

Some of Us Did NOT Die: New and Selected Essays by June Jordan. Basic Civitas Books, 2003.. Pages: 320. Condition: Clean pages, bump to top spine, minimal wear; good copy; price in pencil on half title page. Jordan's powerful work as an writer-activist, poet and scholar blaze with light and truth, in this final collection of her work before her death, June 14, 2002. $8.50

History
Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America by Lerone Bennett Jr. Penguin. Publication date: 1982-FIFTH revised edition. Pages: 681, heavily illustrated. Condition: tight binding; clean pages, slight tanning. Minimal wear to cover; very good copy. This edition contains the 100-page "Landmarks and Milestones" section noting Black achievement in professions, civic and social arenas; Black Firsts; selected bibliography. From "The African Past" through late '70s (mention of Ronald Reagan election, 1980.) $12.00 SOLD

Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion by Peter H. Wood. Norton. Publication Date: 1996 (orig. published 1974). Pages: 346. Condition: Binding is tight and pages clean. Very good copy; price in pencil on half title page. Peter H Wood's social history of the construct of slavery in its unique development in South Carolina. Biblio. note; Appendix D reprints a newspaper commentary urging enforcement of a law regulating the "comings and goings of slaves." $8.00 

Black Odyssey: The African-American Ordeal in Slavery by Nathan Irvin Hare. Vintage, 1990. Pb. [Orig. published, 1977.] Pages: 336. Condition: Very good copy, binding is tight and pages clean. Price in pencil on half title page. Huggins' book is a classic work on the Atlantic slave trade and how Black and Whites were impacted by the system of slavery--"an enduring contribution to the study of American history." $8.00

Literature
God's Trombones; Seven Negro Sermons in Verse  by James Weldon Johnson. The Viking press 1942 Hardback, 1941. Pages: 56. illustrations by Aaron Douglass. Condition: Excellent condition of the 1941 EDITION, ninth printing. Dust jacket near fine in mylar cover, very soft smudges in some areas of cream cover. Binding tight, endpapers intact; light wear to board edges; small tear to letter "G" in title on front cover. Pages are clean, deckle edges. Johnson's classic "seven Negro sermons in verse" captures the linguistic stylings and cultural ethos of Black American society." $32.00

Sports
A Hard Road to Glory, Arthur Ashe Jr.  ed.. Warner Books; 2nd Printing, 1st ed.1988. Hardback. w/ photos, charts and tables. Pages: 571. Condition: Dust jacket and book,very good, clean, DJ minor edgewear, crease on back inside cover. Publisher mark on bottom text block; price on half title page. The third volume of tennis great Arthur Ashe's groundbreaking history of Blacks in sports. $11.00

Willie Stargell: An Autobiography by Willie Stargell. HarperCollins; 1st ed. 1984 Hardback Harper & Row, 1984, pgs. 247. Condition: Dust jacket and book very clean--minor edgewear to DJ. Price penciled in on half title page. An "open hearted" memoir by Willie Stargell, whose 20-year baseball career (retired 1982) is remembered for his accomplishments as a slugger and World Champion and a beloved figure of the Pittsburgh Pirates. $9.50  

Joe Morgan: A Life in Baseball by Joe Morgan. W W Norton, 1st edition,  1993. Hardback
First Edition; w/ photos. Pages: 303.  Condition: Dust jacket very good, book binding tight, pages very clean--minor edgewear to DJ. Sticker states baseball card included, but it is not in this book. Price on half title page. Hall-of-famer Joe Morgan tells inside baseball story of his days from little league to Cincinnati Reds championships. $8.50