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.

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

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.

James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name: Fifty Years

Fifty years ago James Baldwin issued Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961), a new selection of essays following his brilliant and raw analysis of America and race in his first collection, Notes of a Native Son (1955).

In Nobody Knows My Name, Baldwin continued his searing review of race relationships in America and in Europe, where he lived in exile for some years. He also continued, characteristically, to focus a penetrating light into own feelings and experience, making his work both an analysis of American society and one man's honest attempt to bear witness of the experience of being an American, of being himself.

James Baldwin
(Longman)

In "The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American, "the first essay of Nobody Knows My Name, Baldwin makes an incisive distinction between the value of intellectual activity, as regarded by Europeans versus Americans. He pinpoints the tension in America between intellectualism and idealistic myths, such as American exceptionalism which is still touted to this day:

"A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.
"On the contrary, [Americans] have a very deep-seated distrust of real intellecutal effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately)."

Maya Angelou awarded the Medal of Freedom

Charles Dharapak/AP

Fitting tribute to Maya Angelou for her contributions to letters, uplift of Black culture and the human spirit. For millions of her readers, including me, Ms. Angelou's biographies and poetry represent the power that words have to change our lives.
2011 is also the 40th anniversary of the publication of Ms. Angelou's first book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie.

Charlotte news video clip of the Medal of Freedom award presentation to Maya Angelou from President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday, February 15, 2011.

http://charlotte.news14.com/content/local_news/triangle/636774/n-c--s-maya-angelou-receives-medal-of-freedom

Eso Won Books still going strong

One of our leading booksellers, Eso Won Books, received well deserved recognition in the Los Angeles Times "Jacket Copy" book column on January 13, 2011--congrats brothers James Fulgate (pictured below) and Thomas Hamilton!

Bookstore of the week: Eso Won Books

Owner James Fulgate and his partner, Thomas Hamilton, opened Eso Won Books in 1990. The original location was at Crenshaw and Slauson, upstairs from the shop Africana Imports. "The UPS people hated us," Fulgate laughs.
Since the fall of 2006, the store has been located at 4331 Degnan Blvd. in Leimert Park. Although Eso Won Books' current store has more than 3,200 square feet, it's a shade smaller than its previous location on La Brea.

In 1995, a young activist who'd just written a memoir came to Eso Won for a signing. There wasn't a huge crowd for Barack Obama and his book, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," but the bookstore made him feel welcome. When he returned to Los Angeles with "The Audacity of Hope," Obama told his publishers that's where he wanted to go. The store sold more than 900 books.

Selling books at that volume is a rare bounty for Eso Won. In late 2007, news spread that rough economic times and discounts from Amazon and retail chains had brought such difficulties to the store that it might close by the end of the year. But friends rallied, including Pastor John J. Hunter of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, who called the bookstore "a treasure in the African American community." Eso Won pulled through.

- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos: Eso Won Books. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg / Los Angeles Times

Read the full article here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/01/bookstore-of-the-week-eso-won-books.html

Have you discovered these children's book authors?

Beginning February 1^st, Black History Month, 28 Black authors or illustrators of picture books, middle grade and young adult literature will be featured on The Brown Bookshelf blog, a wonderful resource created by veteran African American authors of children’s books. Each day of the month you can meet a different author or artist and learn about literature that will feed the imaginations of young people. Discover these superb artists who create fantastic stories for the young readers you love at thebrownbookshelf.com, and please recommend this post to parents, teachers and guardians of young folks you know!

2010 National Book Award for Poetry

2010 National Book Award for Poetry, Lighthead, by Terrance Hayes...view Hayes' page on Poets.org