Maya Angelou: giving birth to all of our brightnesses

When looking for two frustratingly lost books this morning, I came across this random assembly of titles on a shelf:  I read in their titles a tribute to the largess of Sistah Maya, who eloquently in her speech and posture, testimony and poems, was our dark symphony; a courageous chronicler of the brackish and briny currents of her own life, yet a messenger giving birth to all of our brightnesses; a fierce friend, we pray who is resting now adorned in the neatly fitted wings she desired and golden slippers.

Ella Baker biography by Ransby is insightful

Enjoying Barbara Ransby's biography of civil rights activist, Ella Baker--Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (The University of North Carolina Press, 2003)

Barbara Ransby's analysis of the conditions that shaped Ella Baker's formative years during the early decades of the 20th century in rural North Carolina is compelling reading--Baker's family members were landowners which afforded them economic stability (her maternal grandfather Mitchell Ross owned land); they practiced charitable activities that a measure of financial security allowed them to act upon and that reflected their Christian values (Mitchell Ross was also an influential preacher); the overall adherence to mutual aid practiced by the community of Christian men and women who were Baker's neighbors, underscored their dedication to uplift the disadvantaged tenant farmer class of Black people, and especially impressive to me is Ransby's explanation of the tradition of mutual aid  that the Black Baptist women auxiliaries performed in Baker's northeastern region of North Carolina (and presumably throughout the South), providing food and childcare, assisting the sick, sharing farming equipment and labor, when necessary.

These conditions were a foundation upon which Baker's later organizing and advocacy for social justice were built; Ransby says:

"[Baker] eventually adopted the notion that the more privileged, educated, and articulate members of the African American community were not only duty-bound to come to the aid of their less fortunate brothers and sisters, but also had to humble themselves in order to create the social space necessary for the more oppressed people in the community to speak and act on their own behalf. Ella Baker built on, but moved beyond, the religious teachings of her youth.  The values of charitable giving, sacrifice, and communalism that she internalized as a child became a part of her more secular world view as an adult. She ultimately identified with the plight of the poor and the working class, not as a gesture of Christian charity, but as an act of political solidarity. The choices she made over the course of her life distanced her from her relatively advantaged class background and merged her own consciousness and material self-interest with the concerns of the have-nots. In economic terms, she 'eked out an existence' most of her adult life" (44-45).

McDaniel and McQueen, in their own voices

An item in The Hollywood Reporter, July 31, 2012, noted that "a 1938 copy of Gone With the Wind signed by nearly the entire cast of the film sold for $135,300 ($110,000 plus $25,300 buyer's premium) ...."

Signatures of Hattie McDaniel who played "Mammy" in the movie, and Thelma "Butterfly McQueen," who played, "Prissy," are pictured below.

Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar in 1940 for best supporting actress in Gone With the Wind, which was released in theaters in 1939.  Ms. McDaniel was the first African American actor to win an Oscar. Her acceptance speech was the epitome of dignity and self-possession. Hattie McDaniel's acceptance speech

In 1989, Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen was interviewed about "Prissy," the controversial maidservant she portrayed in Gone With the Wind. In the video, McQueen talks with dignity and frankness about her battle to overcome the toll that Hollywood stereotyping of Black women took on her career and personal life.

50 books to read in the struggle

This morning I read an article in the Huffington Post, a suggestion of books that every African American should read.

The list of books, fiction and non-fiction, were chosen in the context of books that would make good summer reading on vacation, at the beach or traveling. Well enough.  

I I suppose that for me the word, "should," overwhelmed the otherwise casual context of the list. I began to think about what books I would choose for a list of "the 50 books that every African American should read."

 Preparing lists of recommended books for the community to read is rarely far from my thoughts. Since I was a child I've been creating these lists of Black classics, first in response to my grammar school readers that almost always marginalized Black characters or my young adult books that almost never listed a Black book in their "best of" lists on the back endpaper or back cover.  

Through my college and grad school experience,  literary works by Black writers were sparsely explored in most of my classes. Some professors gave balanced treatment of Black writers, but most professors (and most of my professors were white) made only superficial exploration of Black texts. I once had a professor who never met eye contact with me during the entire semester until the one day that the class was assigned to read Langston Hughes. On that day, he only looked at me as he talked about Hughes. What was the message to my all white classmates? "Black literature is for Black people; you don't have to worry about it" is the conclusion that I drew.

This longstanding dearth of Black texts in my academic experience was certainly an influence on me when I began teaching developmental writing, freshman composition and Black literature at a community college in the 1990s. 

Where the composition textbooks failed to provide models of strong writing by Black writers, I filled in the gaps. I used material by Dr. King, James Baldwin, Haki Madhubuti, poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden and Paul Laurence Dunbar. My students were apprehensive and perplexed about the Declaration of Independence as assigned reading, but they understood the effectiveness of the rhetorical strategies that I pointed out, and later when we read Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech and material from the Black Panther's ten-point plan, they not only absorbed the continuity of certain rhetorical strategies in key American texts, but most importantly the content of some of those texts reflected their own cultural values and voice.  In this way, my students' (the majority of them were black) cultural identity was validated because those black texts held equal weight with the texts by white writers published in their textbooks.
[Apologizes for the errant content that appeared here in an earlier draft of this post.]
That validation was palpable. Students really got into the texts, reading closely at home, looking up words, and coming into class saying that they couldn't wait to talk about what they read. The students practiced using these writers' strategies to give voice to their own ideas. This was all very exciting for them and for me, convincing me of the importance of balancing the selection of cultural voices used to teach college writing, just as our democracy is validated and our nation is served best when diverse voices are respected in our national conversations. 
This list of books reflects the mission of Now Rise Books, to arm our community with cultural information and affirmation needed to participate in our national conversations that consider race, citizenship, cultural pride and contributions of many voices that represent contemporary America. Would appreciate hearing your comments and additional recommendations.. 

1. Aesop's Fables http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/AesFabl.html

2. The Book of Negro Folklore (Eds. Langston Hughes & Arna Bontemps, 1958)

3. A Frances E(llen) W(atkins) Harper Reader (Frances Smith Foster, 1990)

4. Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching (Fannie Jackson Coppin, 1913)

full text here: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jacksonc/menu.html

5. On Lynchings (Ida B. Wells-Barnett, ed. by Norm R. Allen, 2001, includes Southern Horrors, her first pamphlet on the subject. Later, after moving to Chicago and marrying lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, she brought out the pamphlets. A Red Record and Mob Rule in New Orleans)

6. Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829 (David Walker, 1829)

7. Black Women in the Ivory Tower: 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (Stephanie Y. Evans, 2008)

8. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)

9. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937)

10. The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown (1990)

11.  The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (James Weldon Johnson, 1927 [1912])

12.  The Book of Negro American Poetry, Revised Edition (ed., James Weldon Johnson, including the "Preface" to the 1st edition, 1931)

13.  Notes on the State of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson, 1832)

start with this excerpt: http://www.historytools.org/sources/Jefferson-Race.pdf

o   Notes on the State of Virginia -- http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html

o   Notes on the State of Virginia "Laws"The administration of justice and description of the laws?

Laws - http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=image

s/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=14&division=div1

14.  The Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson, et al, 1776)

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

15.  "I Have A Dream" speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (I Have A Dream, ed. James Melvin Washington, 1992)

16.  Seize The Time, (Bobby Seale, 1970) see Black Panther Party Ten Point plan announced by Bobby Seale: YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPP0hiLuxdQ

17.  Black Studies in the University (eds. Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C.Foster, Donald H. Ogilvie, 1969)

18.  How Europe Underdeveloped America (Walter Rodney, 1972)

19.  The Mis-Education of the Negro (Carter G. Woodson, 1933)

20.  Brainwashed (Tom Burrell,  2011)

21.  Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (Colin Grant, 2010)

22.  The Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon, 1963 translation)

23.  Africa's Gift to America (J[oel] A[ugustus] Rogers, 1961)

24.  Jesus and the Disinherited (Howard Thurman, 1949)

25.  They Came Before Columbus (Ivan van Sertima, 1976)

26.  The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, (Cheikh Anta Diop, 1967)

27.  The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, 1963)

28.  Brown sugar : eighty years of America's Black female superstars (Donald Bogle, 1980)

29.  Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?: Afrikan American families in transition : essays in discovery, solution, and hope /  (Haki Madhubuti, 1990)

30.  The U.S. Constitution http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

and The Bill of Rights http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

31.  Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 (Lerone Bennett Jr., 1962)

32.  The Black Poets (Dudley Randall, 1971)

33.  Unbought and Unbossed (Shirley Chisholm, 1970)

34.  The Emancipation Proclamation (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcript.html

35.  Stride Toward Freedom (Martin Luther King, Jr., 1955) and Where Do We Go From Here, (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  1967)

36.  The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon, 1956)

37.  Hamlet (1603) and Romeo & Juliet (1597) (William Shakespeare)

38.  The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (Katherine Anne Porter, 1984)

39.  Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization: Exploding the Myths (Anthony T. Browder, 1992)

40.  Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1885)

41.  The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros, 1984)

42.  Common Sense (Tom Paine, 1784)

43.  The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, 1926)

44.  Sojourner Truth: Speech to the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851

45.  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (Frederick Douglass, 1845)

46.  The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan, 1989)

47.  A Different Drummer (William Melvin Kelley, 1962)

48.  A’int I a Woman: black woman and feminism (bell hooks, 1981)

49.  A Small Place (Jamaica Kincaid, 2000)

50.Brothers and Sisters (Bebe Moore Campbell, 1995)

Last updated on July 10, 2012

Toni Morrison, Home

Home, Toni Morrison's new novel, will be released on Tuesday, May 8. Just in time to get on my summer reading list. Here's the first few paragraphs (below). You can follow the link to the excerpt to the audio clip read by Morrison and the print excerpt, disappointingly brief, that her publisher Random House posted on its website.

"They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood.

Home by Toni Morrison

We shouldn’t have been anywhere near that place. Like most farmland outside Lotus, Georgia, this here one had plenty scary warning signs. The threats hung from wire mesh fences with wooden stakes every fifty or so feet. But when we saw a crawl space that some animal had dug—a coyote maybe, or a coon dog—we couldn’t resist. Just kids we were. The grass was shoulder high for her and waist high for me so, looking out for snakes, we crawled through it on our bellies. The reward was worth the harm grass juice and clouds of gnats did to our eyes, because there right in front of us, about fifty yards off, they stood like men. Their raised hooves crashing and striking, their manes tossing back from wild white eyes. They bit each other like dogs but when they stood, reared up on their hind legs, their forelegs around the withers of the other, we held our breath in wonder. One was rust-colored, the other deep black, both sunny with sweat. The neighs were not as frightening as the silence following a kick of hind legs into the lifted lips of the opponent. Nearby, colts and mares, indifferent, nibbled grass or looked away. Then it stopped. The rust-colored one dropped his head and pawed the ground while the winner loped off in an arc, nudging the mares before him."

(Read or listen to the entire excerpt)

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

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

Open Wide the Freedom Gates

Taking in new inventory, yesterday, I came across the memoir recounting the extraordinary life of Dr. Dorothy Height...blessed with longevity, her life was an indefatigable and unwavering force directed at advocating for equality and opportunity for African Americans during most of the 20th century. I read her book a few years ago, while convalescing at home, and for a while it sat face out on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, so that every morning when I awoke, one of my first sights was Dr. Height's stately countenance and the uncompromising title of her book, which I felt was an imperative for my own life, going forward: Dr. Height's memoir is entitled, "open wide the freedom gates." I have acted on the imperative since then, but not as diligently as I might have had I kept the words at the forefront of my thoughts. So now reminded of that imperative, I have another guiding principle to help me to redeem my days, by looking for ways to expand opportunities for someone who needs access or information or something material to improve their lives, and that's just the inspiration I received from reading the title of Dr. Height's book. Thank you, Dr. Heights.

Books On Sale: Newly Arrived non-fiction, biography and fiction at Now Rise

Greetings dear friends -- and those of you who have just discovered Now Rise Books!

I am writing to say, "Thank you," to everyone who visited our storefront and purchased books from Now Rise in 2011.  Your confidence and loyalty means so much.  You have made this venture rewarding for me by sustaining Now Rise as a resource for readers and writers who value great books by and about the experience of people of African descent.  I look forward to finding wonderful titles to offer this year and blogging about good books and interesting issues.

After completing inventory at the end of 2011, I am starting 2012 by announcing a sale on many of my regular stock.  I hope the sale prices will encourage you to buy more books and to buy multiple books at one time--so that more of you will take advantage of our reduced shipping on multiple books in one order.  I also hope the sale prices will motivate you to buy sooner than you might otherwise.  I have an unsuspecting selfish motive: a successful sale will free up space in my very tiny storage unit so that I can bring into inventory more books that are recently purchased or that will be purchased in buying trips planned in the near future.

Over the next six weeks--beginning with this list at the Dr. King holiday through Black History Month--I will update this blog with books recently acquired--many at sale prices 15% less than what they would regularly be priced.  So buy soon and keep checking Now Rise for newly added selections.  Sign in on the mailing list of this blog to get notices of new titles added.  Please tell your friends and colleagues about us and, you know, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Warm regards to you all,

Lisa Monroe
Bookseller
Now Rise Books

View Now Rise Books on sale:

• Click on each title below to see more details about the book OR 

• Browse all books posted so far at Now Rise Books on Amazon.com. [Update: our books are still on sale at Amazon, but we stopped paying for a dedicated page--the cost of doing business! Aug. 2012]   Our regular inventory is on sale - most books are now reduced up to 15%.

• SAVE MONEY: Take advantage of our discounted shipping when you purchase multiples titles in the same order!

Just arrived NON-FICTION from $3.75
The Mis-Education of the Negro 
  Carter G. Woodson (African American Images 2000 PB $3.75)

I Have a Dream: Writing and Speeches That Changed the World

  Martin Luther King Jr. (HarperSan Francisco 1992 PB $5)

The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr: From "Solo" to Memphis 
  David J. Garrow (Norton 1981 PB $4)

Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment 
  Jethro Koller Lieberman (Oxford UP 1976 PB $7.45)

The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 
  Herbert George Gutman (Putnam 1976 HB $13.99)

Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South 
  Ira Berlin (Oxford UP 1981 PB $7.95)


Just arrived BIOGRAPHY / AUTOBIOGRAPHY from $4

Keep the Faith: A Memoir 
  Faith EvansGrand Central Publishing 2008 HB $7.95)
John Adams 
  David McCullough (Simon & Schuster 2001 HB $11.25)

Nigger 
  Dick Gregory Pocket Books 1990 Mass Market $4)

Magic Johnson: My Life 
  Earvin Johnson (Random House 1992 HB $7)

Angels Along the Way 
  Della Reese (Putnam 1997 HB $7.95)

Secrets of a Sparrow 
  Diana Ross (Villard 1993 HB $8.25)

For Us, the Living 
  Myrlie Evers-Williams (U of Mississippi 1996 HB $7) SOLD

Epic Lives: One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference 
  Jessie Carney Smith (Visible Ink 1992 PB $9)


Just arrived FICTION & LITERATURE from $7.95

The Norton Anthology of African American Literature 
  Nellie Y. McKay (Norton 2004 CD-Rom attached PB $16) SOLD

The Good Negress: A Novel 
  A. J. Verdelle (Algonquin 1995 HB $7.95)

Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America 
  James A Emanuel (The Free Press 1968 HB $8.75)

God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse 
  James Weldon Johnson (Viking 1941 ninth printing HB $32) SOLD

This page was updated on August 18, 2012.

Canadian Esi Edugyan's novel is off the charts

Last year, the literary world just north of the U.S. border took notice of Edugyan Esi's novel, Half-Blood Blues. Esi, a 34 year-old Canadian-born author, won the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's highest literary honor. The honor is sweetened by its accompanying $50,000 cash award. If that were not enough, Esi also found herself on the very select short list for the Man Booker award last year, Britain's most distinguished literary honor.
Half-Blood Blues has been called a "bold and original exploration of black jazz musicians in Hitler's Germany."
A recent article in The Vancouver Sun noted that "Half-Blood Blues quickly blossomed into one of Canadian literature's great success stories. Publisher Patrick Crean of Thomas Allen Publishers says his company printed 3,000 copies in August."
Esi's novel was off the charts of Canadian fiction sales: the article also says that "there are now 115,000 copies of Half-Blood Blues in print in Canada. In one week alone, 9,000 copies sold here. Such numbers are remarkable in a country where, if a book sells 5,000 copies, it is deemed a bestseller."
Picador will publish a U.S. edition of Half-Blood Blues in February.

Video: Martha Southgate reads her novel, from The Taste of Salt

Martha Southgate reads from her latest novel, The Taste of Salt (Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Sept 29, 2011.)

Afro Europe writing emerging - Kadija Sesay and Araba Johnston Arthur

The recent reports on social uprising and rioting in Britain raised awareness about the social tension in the Black British community, or in many cases, made people aware that there is a Black British community,  at all.

Kadija Sesay, Publisher, Sable Lit Magazine

At the Harlem Book Fair in July, I had a brief conversation about the growing emergence of new Black British writing with Kadija Sesay, publisher of the literary magazine, SableLit, and a writer and activist. Kadija had just participated in a panel on Black British writing standing on its own merits. The panel included poet Dorothea Smartt (ShipShape). The writers discussed Black literary activity in England and elaborated on complexities of ethnic and mainly Caribbean national identities that inform the writing categorized under the umbrella of Black British writing in the "post-colonial" era.

Here is a link to a radio interview today that Kadija Sesay participated in on the program Africa Now with another guest, activist Araba Johnston Arthur; topics include the new brand of Black British writers who have emerged in the last four or five decades, following what is known as the post-colonial era (writers such as Kwinton Lesi Johnson and Caryl Philips).

Araba Johnston Arthur, a Black Austrian writer, talked about Black Austrian writers tending to write in the English language rather than in the German, and intentionally using the term, "Black," because the term carries with it the force of Black power and Black consciousness (associated with the Black power/ consciousness movement in the United States.) Araba implied that there is essentially no equivalent term in German that carries the context of "Black power." Literature has played a significant role in resistance and, she said, "[it] still does play a very important role in making our experience more visible in talking back in the form of art." Admittedly, I have read no Black Austrian writers (that I know of)--this interview has raised my consciousness of the existence of a Black Austrian community at all.

On Africa Now, Kadija spoke of the social unrest that exploded a few weeks ago in Britain. Acknowledging that social media played a role in instigating riots--and suggests that the authorship of some text messages she saw were questionable--perhaps fabricated to perpetuate the unrest. She is right about the critical importance of literacy among Black youth and the significance of the arts in developing young people's potential. Agree with her also that critical reviews of art is essential. SableLit is working with youth, sixteen and older, to help them to advance their literary talents and to get published. In this its tenth year, SableLit has been awarded government funds to expand its work.

Sister Citizen

Just received in the mail my copy of Melissa Harris-Perry's Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America.  Can't wait to get to it. (I caught up with Harris-Perry at her publisher [Yale UP] in May.)

Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry

Skimming the table of contents, it's obvious that Harris-Perry takes a non-traditional approach to the topic of Black women's understanding of ourselves in relationship to American citizenship and politics. Preceding her chapters on myths, shame, disaster, strength, God and Michelle (FLOTUS, of course), are excerpts from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Alice Walker's The Color Purple, as well as poems--"Praise Song for the Day" by Elizabeth Alexander and "The Bridge" by Kate Rushin--and a lyric, "No Mirrors in My Nana's House," by Ysaye Maria Barnwell (Sweet Honey in the Rock.)

Harris-Perry uses literary passages as an overarching frame to discuss negative stereotypes that undermine Black women as we navigate the all too real American social and political terrain. The myths she isolates are the "Mammy" (the Black woman devoted to white people's needs); the "Sapphire" image (the angry Black woman) and the "Jezebel" (the myth of the hyper-sexed Black woman.) That we are negotiating the impact of these myths while trying to be all we can be to our families, acting as if we don't need any help, is problematic. In fact, Harris-Perry calls out Black women on our self-sacrifice, letting us know the high price of trying to fulfill the myth of the "Strong Black Woman."

A blurb on the dust-jacket by Lester Spence (Johns Hopkins University/political science) says that Harris-Perry "does an excellent job of weaving literature, social science, and personal accounts to produce a powerful work on black women's politics. Brilliant."

I've been yearning for the voices of regular, ordinary Black women to reach the national stage on critical topics of American discourse--whether education, employment, our children and youth. Hope this book helps to break down walls to liberate more Black women to participate in the political struggle in America. Our voices are desperately needed at every level of political engagement. Organizing along common interests is the key.

The Help: Truth, Fiction, and Authenticity

Welcome guest blogger, Susan Monroe. Susan is coordinator of School 29 Literacy Project, based in New Haven, CT.

Guest Blogger: Susan Monroe

Last week we learned that among the personal affects left by civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks is a six-page essay detailing an attempted rape by a white neighbor. Reportedly, Parks’ family refuted the essay as a “story,” but most, including me, have accepted the tale as plausible, factual.

Handwritten page of Rosa Parks' essay

After reading an excerpt, I was struck by the timeliness of a first person account of a black domestic. However horrific the content, I welcomed this authentic voice speaking from the past, and I accept it as an important artifact in the chronicle of oppression and sexual exploitation that is tied to race and class.

At the time the essay was written, Parks worked as a maid for a white family and like other women in that position was not only vulnerable to social and economic oppression but also to sexual aggression for the sake of survival. The previously unknown account illustrates how the shame of sexual exploitation can suppress self-expression in the form of outrage, dignity and agency, in sum, how shame can suppress retaliation. It seems fair to assume that Parks recorded the incident, held onto the essay, but felt too vulnerable to share it.  Writing out her experience may represent the only form of agency Parks felt was available to her without entrusting herself and the experience to public record. In response to learning about the essay, a friend announced to me,  “I believe Rosa Parks was a writer.”  She was.

Why am I posting this on Now Rise’s book blog? What does all of this have to do with books? Rosa Parks did not write an autobiography but took part in several “as told to” memoirs, most notably Rosa Parks: My Story, 1999, with Jim Haskins, but in just a few days a film based on Kathryn Stockett’s best selling novel, The Help (2009), will open in theaters. The book has been wildly popular but not without controversy.  I imagine the film will be, too. I have read The Help prompted by a desire to take part in the discussion surrounding it, and I eviscerated, er, uh, discussed it for it’s scandalously bad editing that robs Black southern dialect of any hint of poetry, music or suggestion of literacy of its speakers—dialect so badly written and imagined that a reader might not know whether to laugh or cry upon reading it (that is, if she can read it), dialect so badly written that it brings into questions the literacy of the writer, not that of the maids whose  speech patterns she attempts to imitate. Had Stockett or her editors ever read an artistic or poetic attempt at Black dialect?  And to whom is Aibileen speaking? We never know.

The Help

That aside (and that is a major pass), The Help has been chided for its lack of authenticity. In short, socially and politically conscious readers have noted that The Help is yet another book, film, etc., that places a white protagonist, power and privilege, at the center of and as the impetus for black political awakening and change. In this case, Stockett places Skeeter, a young white woman, as civil rights catalyst among a group of black maids in a fictional Mississippi town. In the world of The Help, the civil rights movement lurks murkily in the background although characters live in the midst of Medgar Evers’ bloody murder and the ever-emerging political power of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Somehow the maids that Skeeter engages are not impassioned by these happenings. While others are participating in sit-ins, being arrested and beaten, the maids in this community place their bets on an anonymously published book to bring about change.

With this scenario, Stockett unwittingly captures a complexity and paradox of race relations. The Help robs black women (black people) of their own social and political agency (a common device now practically a trope) while simultaneously servings as a testament to people who allow themselves to be exploited this way. The maids’ complicity in helping Skeeter is, in fact, the most authentic aspect of book. However, from a critical standpoint, I am most concerned with the notion of agency, especially in light of Rosa Parks’ found essay and from the standpoint of African American literary expression. I’ll leave the novel’s treatment of nascent modern feminism on the heels of the civil rights movement for another writer. 

What pains me is this. Aibileen, the maid whose voice begins the novel is a woman known for the power of her prayers, which she composes in a notebook. Aibileen (also the unacknowledged source for a housekeeping column Skeeter is hired to write for a local newspaper) takes the initiative to write out her narrative for her portion of Skeeter’s book. Oddly enough, given her propensity for writing, Aibileen has the most severely written dialogue in the novel. “Law,” she remarks again and again in Stockett’s crude rendering of black speech—that’s  “Lawd” or “Lord” for the rest of us. This treatment of Aibileen’s language is important since it potentially signals how the reader of The Help may perceive her writing. Skeeter says that she cleans up Aibileen’s writing, but does Aibileen write as badly as her speech has been rendered? If so, what are we to make of its value? Her intellect?

But what, you might ask, from the perspective of the novelist could be better than placing a pen in the hands of one of the maids? I would answer not giving that maid something authentic to say. Like Aibileen, Rosa Parks was a writer and recorder of authentic experiences, for instance, in her capacity as secretary to civil rights organizations. Her surviving essay about a near rape has entered and forever redirected the discourse surrounding black servitude by validating what many of have already known to be true. Given this reality, what would a maid in The Help's fictional Jacksonville, Mississippi write about? What would a personal narrative be?

By her own account, Kathryn Stockett had difficulty finding a publisher for The Help; she has said that at least 60 publishers rejected the novel and that those who eventually did publish the book knew nothing about Jim Crow law.

I just wish that if in the time it took to have her novel published Kathryn Stockett had made room for Aibileen to truly speak.

The Help hurts Black women say critics

In this year of 2011 that observes the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War—in which Black people were freed from physical bondage—there is another conflict of widening influence brewing in the land. The conflict can be understood in the mission of a grassroot movement started by colleague of mine that focuses on Black people’s “emotional emancipation” from what she calls “the lie of Black inferiority.” 

A similar movement to expose an inferred premise of Black inferiority surrounds the novel, The Help (2009), as well as its first time author Kathryn Stockett. The movie version of The Help features Black actresses Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer and opens nationwide in early August. Some critics of the book also view the forthcoming movie with skepticism.

The Help 

If you have strong views about The Hel--the book or movie--or issues related to it, you can voice your opinions in an all-day online forum, tomorrow, Saturday, July 16 at the hashtag, #100voicesrespondtothehelp.   

How did the novel come to be the center of this public examination when it was published to high praise?

For example, author Kathryn Stockett’s official website cites a starred review from Library Journal: 

A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family…  . In Stockett's narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. ... Tension pervades the novel as its event are told by [Skeeter, and the two Black women Aibileene and Minnie.”]

and The Help received warm praise from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

 "Powerful...[Stockett's] attention to historical detail, dialect and characterization create a beautiful portrait of a fragmenting world...This heartbreaking story is a stunning debut from a gifted talent."

Despite high praise and its bestselling status, The Help is obviously not without dissenters. They  challenge the novel’s authenticity, the credibility of the author’s research, and more broadly, the marginalization of the Black women by Hollywood.  

Two of the leading critics of The Help appearing in my Twitter timeline recently are Kwanda Scott, (whose Twitter user name is @AmethystNite); on Twitter, she identifies herself as “Black feminist intellectual aspiring to become a wife, mother, and PhD student… .”

The other consistent dissenting voice appearing on my Twitter page identifies herself, appropriately, by the user name @CriticofTheHelp. Her profile reads that she is an “avid reader & one who believes fight for equality is not over.”

@CriticofTheHelp began her intrepid critique of The Help in an open dialogue on Amazon.com about a year ago. She also voices her views at Facebook.com/Boycott the Help and on her blog, acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com. On her blog, she declined an inquiry about revealing her name and asked to be called, “Onyx.”

Besides an apparent affinity for the names of gemstones, Kwanda Scott (@AmethystNite) and Onyx also share a penchant for using social media to voice their dissent about The Help. They connect with others, promote a critical analysis of issues in the novel and those related issues about how minorities are still marginalized in popular media. Tomorrow, Saturday, July 16, they will lead the all-day forum on Twitter inviting comments about The Help at the hashtag, #100voicesrespondtothehelp.   .

In an email to me, “Onyx” said the hope of Saturday’s forum is “to be the critical discussion on The Help that was never held.” The discussion, she said, will include “diverse voices” and people across various professions who have been invited to comment. The conversation will be larger in scope than just about the novel and address issues including “the perception of women and minorities in publishing and film.”

The evidence of how seriously they take the forum is the date they agreed on for the event; July 16 is the birthday of Ida B. Wells, the influential journalist and fiery anti-lynching advocate who campaigned for social justice in public forums and writings such as her investigation of lynching in the South, Red Record. “She’s our inspiration,” Kwanda said.

Using Ida B. Wells as an inspiration, Kwanda and Onyx are 21^st century crusaders for justice waging a campaign decrying the distorted images of Black women and minorities that they feel are revived in The Help.

Relying on an old-school technology—the land line telephone—I asked Kwanda Scott this week what is the danger of a book like The Help?

Lack of Authenticity

After reading the first few pages of The Help, Kwanda said she felt that “it was so jarring.” The dialect lacked authenticity. As an example, she read from the first page of the book: "I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime."  My grandmother did not speak like that, Kwanda said. 

“And I am a migration girl,” Kwanda said, noting the deep roots she has maintained with her family in Alabama and Tennessee, even though her grandmother moved her family from the South to Chicago years ago.  

“This [dialect] is not my auntie or my grandma,” Kwanda said. As I read I thought, “I am the only one who feels this way?”

The Author’s Credibility

Kwanda and others have concerns about the author’s credibility because of factual errors such as a reference in the novel that Mississippi Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was bludgeoned to death; a character who refers to her color as blacker than a roach or distorted dialect.

“Stockett didn’t even care to do a good job at this,” Kwanda said, noting that Stockett admitted that she based some portrayals of the Black women on her family’s maid who has since passes away. However, Kwanda said that Stockett did not seek out the maid’s family in order to make her portrayal true to the departed women’s views of herself. Its been reported that the family of a Black woman whom Stockett used as a model for one of the novel’s characters is suing Stockett. Kwanda voiced concern that Stockett did not do due diligence in researching the novel. She feels the prevailing attitude is that “its “okay” when White people get it wrong when they talk about Black people.

These characters are not inspirational. If we want inspiration, Kwanda said, we can find other books about life in Mississippi. "Read Anne Moody’s memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi; let’s look at Fannie Lou Hamer and get some inspiration if we need inspiration," she said. 

Characters lack complexity

Another issue is complex characters. Kwanda said that Stockett could have grounded the story “in the nuances” of Black culture to capture the complexity of the women she portrayed. Instead, Kwanda balks at the depiction of one of the Black women, Aibileene, who is asked if she knew as a little girl growing up that she would be a maid. Aibileene, played by Viola Davis, answers, “Yes ma’am, I did.” 

Part of the risk with this kind of portrayal suggests “this is how it really was,” and the danger is that Black women can end up taking on these values as a guide to how to live their lives, Kwanda said. She identified this portrayal as a “mammification” of Black women, pointing to sources (The Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory by Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, for example) that explain how this phenomenon has operated in American society.

Indeed, I have to ask why we would accept this subservient domicile attitude celebrated in the fiction and movies by a class and race that benefits from our subservience? It’s a double price to pay. As a friend said to me today, “it’s bad enough when White folks do things at my expense, but then they get the profit from it, as well.”

These distorted perceptions could “enter the public consciousness and counteract [strong positive Black women such as First Lady] Michele Obama, Kwanda said.  

The portrayals smack of patronizing

“There is “an unconscious color-blind ideal” that is at play as well, Kwanda said. The ideal says that if [President] Barack Obama or Oprah made it, then every [Black person] can. “On the surface it sounds inspirational, like people are rooting for us, but only so far as we distance ourselves from other Blacks,” she said.

The persistent online dissent from Kwanda and Onyx hit a nerve. During the last few months, The Help’s producer Michael Barnathan has participated in an exchange with both women on Facebook and Twitter, admitting there were problems in the novel. “We addressed more then (sic) 1 of your concerns in the movie,” Barnathan wrote, “The screenwriter and the actors brought life and context to the movie that is unique and came from within.” Kwanda wondered if the contributions that Viola Davis and Octavia Spenser made to “correct” characterizations would earn them credit alongside screenwriter Kathryn Stockett.

Ultimately, Kwanda said the book is not critical, complex, and she feels that Stockett was given a pass by readers.

She wrote in an email to me, “Central to my issue with The Help is how some white authors retell and therefore reshape words, actions, and motivations of Black women.  Many still believe the symbol of Sojourner Truth told by racist. It is an eery connection and pattern repeating itself [with the reception to The Help."]

Novelist Tananarive Due on caring for her mother

Novelist Tananarive Due, (My Soul to Keep; The Between), offered a personal narrative on CNN.com about this challenging season in her life which she faces with her sisters and father, taking care of her ailing mother, Patricia Stephens Due.  A pioneering civil rights activists, Patricia Due led what became the first "jail-in" of the student protest movement at FAMU.  Her battle against the institutionalized racism on campus prefigures her current battle with another formidable opponent, cancer. 
My sister and I are experiencing a similar season, caring for our mother who suffered a massive stroke in January of this year. In fact, many friends and colleagues these days tell us stories about the onset of their parents' sudden sickness. We talk about the terrible ailments that sadly have debilitated the strong men and women they were once. We only hint at how the sicknesses wreak havoc on us, though. How these ailments upset the memory of our parents' physical prowess, which is one way I have known my mother, as an imposing kinetic force from my childhood that looms large in my adult imagination. We only tiptoe to the edge of a discussion that would admit the upheaval of our  emotional geography, the instinctive mapping of the parent-child relationship that inverts when the child must care for the parents' at the most basic level of human need. The inversion of the parent-child relationship for me is an emotional shock. I don't know if that is because the inverted child-as-parent is a reversal of habitual order or a progression of the universal and natural order of our human experience. 
Wonder if anyone is currently writing about or reading about these experiences?

Behind Mom's dark glasses: A civil rights leader's biggest fight
By Tananarive Due, Special to CNN
June 25, 2011 2:51 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Days ago, I sat at my mother's bedside and helped her hold a copy of our 2003 memoir, "Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights."

The cover pictures her leading a protest march when she was 20 years old.

"That's you," I said, pointing out her face, determined and stoic behind dark sunglasses.

Tananarive Due, left, her father, mother and sisters-[Due Family]

 

 

 

"I remember this," Mom said, and smiled.

These days, I do not take my mother's memory for granted.

My mother, Patricia Stephens Due, now 71, has thyroid cancer. Although thyroid cancer is considered highly treatable, by the time Mom's disease was diagnosed in the fall of 2009, the cancer had spread throughout her body, including her spine, which was fractured by the tumors. She was in bed for months.

In sickness, Mom possesses the same fighting spirit she's had since she defied Jim Crow to spend 49 days in a Florida jail in 1960 for a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter.

"I've been to jail; I can do this," she told me from her hospital bed last year.

She did rise like a phoenix to reclaim her life a piece at a time. A year later, this past February, she was able to drive from Tallahassee to Gainesville, about 150 miles, to be a featured speaker at the University of Florida with my father, civil rights attorney John Due, where she spoke passionately about civil rights for two hours.

. . .

Her voice -- a rich, textured contralto often compared to Maya Angelou's -- has inspired people far beyond her family.

At 15, she convinced high school classmates in Belle Glade, Florida, to sign a petition to try to fire their principal. When she was 19, she and her sister, Priscilla Stephens Kruize, organized a chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. Mom, Aunt Priscilla and three other students spent 49 days in jail rather than pay a fine -- the nation's first jail-in in the student sit-in movement.

She and the other jailed FAMU students received a telegram from the Rev. Martin Luther King applauding their stand. Baseball great Jackie Robinson published her letter from jail in his column in the New York Post and sent the students diaries to record their experiences.

The one thing Mom always wanted to do was tell the story, forever her generation's griot, so young people would understand that ordinary people could do extraordinary things.

This year, Florida Gov. Rick Scott sent Mom a letter on June 9 saying that her jail-in "was a significant moment in our country's history and your actions serve as an incredible inspiration still today."

Tallahassee Mayor John R. Marks III declared May 11 "Patricia Stephens Due Day" and visited her hospital bedside to personally read the proclamation, holding her hand. She listened silently with tears in her eyes.

"If we were treated like second-class citizens, it was like we were already dead," Mom often said, explaining her activism despite the dangers.

Read Tananarive Due's full article, "Behind Mom's dark glasses: A civil rights leader's biggest fight," @ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/25/behind.mom.dark.glasses.due/index.html