Words change us, save us: give books to our young people!

   

  "A book of black poetry slides under a cell door in solitary confinement. And it changes everything." Sasha Bronner, Huffington Post, September 2, 2015

Bronner's article is an inspiring account of the power of words to change lives, whether encountered in a traditional classroom or in a jail cell.  

Imprisoned at sixteen after perpetrating a carjacking in Virginia, sixteen year old Reginald Dwayne Betts sought to rise above his circumstances by drawing on the most powerful tool he could get his hands on--books.  Betts read novelists such as James Baldwin and Ernest Gaines, John Steinbeck and Charles Dickens; he read philosophers Frantz Fanon and Max Weber, and poets including Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka and Lucille Clifton.

It was Betts' introduction to Dudley Randall's anthology, The Black Poets, that first convinced Betts that he wanted to be a poet. “...I had never thought about poetry as a way to communicate. I never thought about it as a way to talk about things other than love,” Betts said. He published two poems while he was in prison, followed by his first book, Rashid Reads His Own Palm, an eponymous reference to the Islamic name he adopted while in prison. .

A new book of his poems, Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way) will be released later this month. In these poems, Betts reflects on Black men who were displaced in the community during the 1980's by the devastating invasion of crack cocaine, increased imprisonment and death:  “the sound that comes from all / the hurt & want that leads a man to turn his back to the world.” The title, Betts says, “captures all that was lost and all that disintegrated in the chaos of drug laws and violence in the 1980s.”

After leaving prison, Betts earned his undergraduate degree and an MFA degree  He is currently completing his law degree at Yale University. 

Through his writing and his legal training, Betts is concerned with making an intervention for Black boys and men whose futures are still at risk as a result of failed social policies of the past.

Read Sasah Bronner's full story, "Yes, One Book Can Change Your Life, Even In Prison," at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yes-one-book-can-change-your-life-even-in-prison_55e630dbe4b0aec9f3551027

End of summer reads and beyond in 2013

Currently reading Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby (has stimulated my interest in the helping tradition practiced by Black Baptist women in North Carolina); On Ethnography by Shirley Brice Heath (absorbing methods of ethnographic study); First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School  by Alison Stewart (of imminent appeal to my interest in Black educators, schools and curriculum). End of summer reading list includes a first read of African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and these re-reads: Beloved by Toni Morrison; The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, and later in the year, a recurring read of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Langhorne Clemens. And you?

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

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.

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.

Harlem Book Fair 2011

I’m looking forward to the Harlem Book Fair tomorrow! I know the heat will be there, but will you?
I’m looking forward to a number of presentations, especially the panel on Dr. Manning Marable’s recently released biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.

This afternoon I spoke briefly with Yohuru Williams, (author of Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven) who is moderating the panel, entitled “Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: Living Black history in the 21^st Century."  Among the panelists will be Zaheer Ali, the lead researcher for Dr. Marable’s biography.  

Of course, the most controversial portrayal of Malcolm X to emerge from the biography is the revelation (or speculation depending on your viewpoint) that Malcolm X engaged in homosexual relationships. Yohuru said that he’s been disappointed that reaction to the book potentially means that “an entire life’s work is wiped out” by some who feel betrayed by Dr. Manning. Yohuru said that he’s actually heard people refer to Dr. Manning as a “Judas” and a “traitor.”  That’s a shame when you look at the incredible scholarly contribution Dr. Manning made, he feels.

Yohuru said that he hopes that the audience takes away from the discussion a realization that it doesn’t “tarnish” a person to be a human being; afterall, we are all human. He said that we put so much pressure on others to be what we are not, and he hopes that people can take a person’s imperfections with a degree of strength so that, in Dr. Marable's case for instance, a writer's larger achievements are not diminished or discarded.

There are three other panelists who promise to bring to the discussion both sharp critical analysis and personal reflection on Malcolm X; they are: Herb Boyd (Civil Rights: Yesterday and Today); Peniel Joseph, (Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama), and poet and social activist, Sonia Sanchez.

See you there!

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  

Melissa Harris Perry, Sister Citizen

Melissa Harris Perry  Photo Copyright: 2011/ L Monroe/Now Rise Books

Melissa Harris Perry is at Yale University Press, today, making preparations for her forthcoming book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (Yale University Press.) More expressively, "For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough" is the sub-title at the bottom edge of the dust jacket that will speak to a lot of Black women, as we come to grips with the fact that we need each other to survive and thrive in this 21st century. If Black women have lost this truth, then Perry's book may serve as a catalyst for redemption and revival among Black women, and thus Black families, at this time when our community needs it most of all.

[See also "Sister Citizen, August 13, 2011]

An excerpt from the YUP catalog explains that while Harris-Perry’s work is "[n]ot a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting or ideology, Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America, from the anonymous survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the current First Lady of the United States”  (http://bit.ly/l5CqHk).

                                                                                      

Sister Citizen (Yale University Press, Fall 2011)

I am eager to read Sister Citizen because, as a member of a mainstream Black women’s political group for some years, I've recognized a chasm between women who embrace our organized political group and the women we try to recruit who actually shun organized activism. Many of these women do not see their identities or their own personal interests as being relevant to a discussion of politics--whether the discussion is about the politics of our hair, bodies, color, education, money or relationships. 

This chasm is especially and heart-breakingly evident between generations. My political group seeks younger women to balance our venerable members who are veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. However,  so many Black girls today are too far removed from the revolutionary winds of social change of the Sixties and Seventies that uprooted racial stigmas and liberated my generation, and a few after mine, to absorb the mantra that we were "young gifted and Black."  That is a very different message for young girls (and boys for that matter) to absorb versus the historical mammy, or Sapphire myth, or the contemporary and offensive "ho," "b----" or other stereotypes  that are directed toward Black girls.

Whether Black women choose to join one of America's two mainstream political parties, or an alternative political group, what is most important is that we understand that organizing together and raising our voices is the way we will affirm our identity. Can we control our image with as much self-interest and tenacity as a corporation protects its brand? Bottom line, to effect positive change in the quality of our lives on any issue, personal or broadly social, is not only possible, it is our responsibility. 

It is the way that we take hold of the birthright to American citizenship and make it our own.     

If anyone gets an advanced copy of Melissa Harris Perry's book, please share your views with readers here.  Thanks!

Updated: May 15, 2011

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Six Black publishers you should know and support

I know several publishers on this list who have been publishing for more than twenty-years; kudos to the Atlanta Post for highlighting these important pioneers. They are committed to providing Black people, particularly, with literature that informs us about our historical experience and inspires us about our potential and future. Check out their titles and support them. 

Wade Hudson (Just Us Books) and Paul Coates (Black Classic Press) (C 2008)

6 Black-Owned Book Publishers
MARCH 24, 2011 08:15 AM

You don’t have to look hard for predictions of the end of the publishing industry.   Frightening stuff if you’re a book lover, especially one for whom a book still means paper and a spine.   For now, however, presses continue to bring books to market.  Here are six African-American publishers who remain in the trade, committed to sharing high-quality literature and non-fiction to challenge and inform.

Haki Madhubuti entered the world of book peddling on a Chicago street corner.   At one dollar a pop he sold 600 copies of his poetry collection in a single day.   When a $400 literary award came through, he formalized the enterprise, purchasing a mimeograph machine, and with the aid of two friends, set up shop in his basement apartment.  The year was 1967 and it wasn’t long before Madhubuti, a lead figure in the Black Arts Movement, was distributing the work of his contemporaries — Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka among them.  Scholarly works joined literary texts, the result of which is one of the most extensive rosters of progressive black thought in the world.

See the full lists at: http://atlantapost.com/2011/03/24/6-black-owned-book-publishers/4

This post was updated on April 22, 2011with a photograph of two publishers featured in the article, Wade Hudson (Just Us Books) and Paul Coates (Black Classic Press).

Octavia Butler revered for her science fiction vision

Actor Michael Boatman waxes warmly and wonderfully on one of his favorite authors, science-fiction writer Octavia Butler:


Octavia Butler: Celebrating the Writer Who Changed My World
By Michael Boatman on Mar 30th 2011 2:17PM

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

"Why are you reading all them books? White man ain't gonna let you do anything in them books."
I heard these words from an older cousin who expressed his opinion that I wasn't normal.

I read constantly, anything I could get my hands on: comics, spy stories, boys' adventures. I even "borrowed" from my mother's bookshelf in the dead of night. And I read lots of science-fiction and fantasy. But at some point I noticed that none of the fantastic events in the stories I loved ever seemed to happen to black people. Nothing cool ever seemed to happen to us.

No, we got threatened with eviction, or punched out at the local "Whites Only" dinner theater. I read 'The Lord of the Rings' at 9 years old. I was swept away by the wonder of J.R.R. Tolkien's vision.

But, almost shamefully, I would imagine that some of the characters were black; anything just to go along on a grand adventure from which I felt excluded: At that time, the only books by African Americans I'd read were about "the struggle" -- heavy, important books that illuminated for a young black mind how dire life must be.

But I wanted to explore haunted houses, visit distant worlds. I wanted to battle evil like millions of other American boys. Soon I was forced to accept the sad reality: Black characters belonged in stories about racism and oppression. My cousin was right. I was suitably depressed.

Then one day I was strolling through my local library and stumbled across the 'Xenogenesis' trilogy, by an author named Octavia Butler. 'Dawn,' 'Adulthood Rites' and 'Imago' were later compiled into a single volume titled 'Lilith's Brood,' but at that time, which was the late '80s, I eagerly awaited each installment, craving the adventures of Butler's protagonist, Lilith Iyapo.

Read the full article at:  http://www.bvonbooks.com/2011/03/30/octavia-butler-celebrating-the-writer-who-changed-my-world/#comments

Claude McKay on "If We Must Die"

Claude McKay

Poetry, like its sister, music, has the power to transcend barriers of race, culture and gender and communicate with the universal humanity in us all. That's the narrative Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay told about his acclaimed poem, “If We Must Die,” which is commonly embraced as an anthem of Black nationalism. Here's an account of McKay’s story, published in Devotion Journal in 2006: http://tinyurl.com/3worzjy

Audio: Claude Mckay reads "If We Must Die" (1:00)

Promoting literacy through World Read Aloud Day

A great event to participate in tomorrow -- and every day!

 World Read Aloud Day: March 9, 2011

Nearly 1 billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their name. What would you miss most if you could not read or write? Imagine your world without words.

World Read Aloud Day is about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words, especially those words that are shared from one person to another, and creates a community of readers advocating for every child’s right to a safe education and access to books and technology. By raising our voices together on this day we show the world’s children that we support their future: that they have the right to read, to write, and to share their words to change the world.

Read the full story at: http://www.litworld.org/worldreadaloudday

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

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!

Fables and folklore -- timeless tales

Fables and folklore are fondly remembered from childhood because of their humor, larger than life characters--often including the personification of animals--their dramatic action and the delicious fear they inspired in us when we were children. In short, they almost never failed to entertain.

Regardless of time or place, these imaginative stories illustrate what motivations operate at the core of nearly all people: our deepest concerns, human weaknesses, moral failings and, sometimes, our noble instincts as well. Ultimately, these stories are sources of wisdom about human nature and life. For these reasons, revisiting some of the fables and folk tales of our youth is a good idea no matter what our age. There is always something worthy to be reminded of--or even something new that we may neeed to learn, in a fairly safe encounter and with a smile.


I am exploring fables and folk tales this year and thought sharing a fable from Aesop, one of our greatest story tellers, would be a wonderful way to start the New Year with a moral still so relevant for us today.


The Four Oxen and the Lion
By Aesop

A Lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to
dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came
near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way
he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At
last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each
went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then
the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all
four.


Moral: United we stand, divided we fall.

To preserve and perpetuate

"From the age of thirteen, after my mother introduced me to Black Boy by Richard Wright, seldom has there been a day that I've been without a book. For a poor boy coming from the lower east side of Detroit by way of Little Rock, Arkansas, books at such a late age represented revelation and intellectual liberation." Haki Madhubuti, "Never Without A Book"


Hello readers,

I have so appreciated Now Rise Books blog, this new writing venture I began in 2010 to talk about aspects of my book life, including bookselling and collecting, as well as reading, writers and publishing, generally.

Many thanks to everyone who connected with the blog to share your responses and information.

There is so much to share, so much to read. I am overwhelmed, yet more dedicated to reading the books steadily growing in my home library--and those new releases that keep on coming. I am reading to understand, to defend, to lay a foundation, to preserve and perpetuate the people and culture of African descent, and to support a just and humane social order in America and throughout our world.

In the new year, I look forward to talking more about reading, my acquisitions to Now Rise Books inventory (hopefully you will find some specail work to add to your home library), to authors, booksellers and publishers--and to you.

Here's to mutual "revelation" and "intellectual liberation" through reading and sharing together in 2011.

Peace and blessing in the New Year!

My Library: Just acquired I Never Had It Made, Jackie Robinson's Autobiography

After doing a bit of research for a piece I wrote on Black achievers recently, I reflected on Jackie Robinson's entrance into major league baseball and the magnitude it had on sports and our American culture.

I was reminded, and also newly informed, about how courageous Jackie Robinson was off the field, advocating fairness and integration within major league sports and speaking out on behalf of social justice in various arenas.

I Never Had it Made 

While researching Robinson, I read a note about his autobiography, I Never Had It Made (1972). I knew of Arnold Rampersad's biography, which I have, in fact. However, I was not aware of Robinson's autobiography, and immediately I had to have it.

So, I am fortunate to have just acquired a clean and beautiful hardback copy of I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography as told to Alfred Duckett.

Can't wait to read it and report my impression.

There was another intriguing aspect to the Jackie Robinson autobiography that I've only had a few minutes to research, and that is "as told to Alfred Duckett." Is this Alfred Duckett also the poet, Alfred Duckett? The Alfred Duckett who wrote one of my favorite poems celebrating the Black master of music, Duke Ellington:


The Duke

Duke Ellington's music
almost came too soon.
A gaunt coyote
Keening the moon.
Mighty organ waters
rushing to the sky
and a great broad,
passing by.

Duke Ellington's music.
A noonday dream.
A secret joke.
Pure cream.

A train gone crazy
on a wide open track.
Bitter-strong coffee,
hot and black.

Is that a baaaad poem or what!!?! "Bitter-strong coffee/ hot and black"!
Oh, yes, I've got to find out about Alfred Duckett now.

Post edited on 4/15/2011.

Author Brook Stephenson talks about books and writing

NEW AMERICAN CLASSIC from Marc Gunn on Vimeo.
Brook Stephenson is an experienced journalist (XXL, The Source, and others), a world traveler and self-described "searcher" of the universal human experience in every culture he encounters. Recently, he has taken up his pen to write fiction. Check out this Brook Stephenson interview by Marc Gunn on Vimeo.

Remica L. Bingham "What we should be teaching our children"

I like this post from poet Remica L. Bingham, "What we should be teaching our children...". She begins with an example of a young'un who has memorized a poem by Billy Collins. Then, she gets to a topic close to my heart -- teaching our children poetry, which is an abbreviated way of saying teaching our children to taste, feel, and love language; to find their own voice; to recognize the power of words to bind us to meaning and liberate our imaginations; to use language to define their own lives and, with hope, to redefine our shared world in life-affirming, positive direction.

Check it at remicalbingham.blogspot.com

Here's an excerpt from "What we should be teaching our children...":

I routinely hear folks who have come one or two generations before me talk about how they were made to memorize poems and speeches during their formative years. At one time, this was a routine part of the educational system. What happened to this tool? Surely, we can make the argument that memorization and repetition help bolster critical thinking skills, so how and why has 'progressive education' all but abandoned this technique? Being an educator, I have a strange suspicion that, because there is no room for oral presentations when administering standardized exams, this learning tool has been deemed unnecessary and a waste of properly used classroom time. But what a shame that is. Imagine what children might learn, retain and grown to love (or at least remember fondly...) if we taught them to pour over words until they stuck. The toddler in the video above gives us a small glimpse of the opportunities we're missing.
--from remicalbingham.blogspot.com