Favorite Books: Friday Nights at Honeybee’s

The spring semester is finally over, but I still feel like there are more books to read and even more papers to write. Sigh.

Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out what books I’m going to tuck away in my summer luggage, but decided I’ll wait to post on that subject. I’m considering only taking my short story books with me–but I might need more variety than that. I just purchased The Best American Short Stories of the 20th Century, so that’s definitely coming along. In the meantime, I’m thinking about finishing Junot Diaz’s Drown and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son before I leave the states. We’ll see. Again, that’s another potential topic for a slow black book news day.

I started and ran a successful book group several years ago in Atlanta. Back then publishers and authors were nice enough to send promo copies of their books. My members would even give me books as gifts from time to time. Among the list of notable texts I received was Andrea Smith’s Friday Night at Honeybees. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the book until years later, but once I turned the final page I was truly sorry that I’d kept the book shelved for so long. Be sure to check it out for yourself. Until then, here’s an excerpt:

Willie and Hattie Bent only had two children. Lilian, “that pretty child with the bright eyes,” and Forestine, “the big, thickset one with the nappy hair.” In 1958, this was how neighbors in the Kings County projects referred to the Bent girls. Lilian, at nineteen, was petite with eyes a shade lighter than her deep-brown face. Church members commented on her grace and beauty. They admired her glossy, paper-bag curls and the way her poofy poodle skirt cinched a waist the size of a large man’s fist. Forestine, on the other hand, was a year younger, three shades darker, and already over six feet tall.

“Sometimes I think a grizzly took me in the night and nine months later Forestine was born,” Hattie would say to friends of her younger daughter.

No matter how much he loved her, Willie couldn’t quite find the courage to come to Forestine’s defense. She was the spitting image of him, and for a woman, that wasn’t a very good thing. But he liked the way she laughed, especially about herself. He enjoyed how she would make up little songs and sing them just for him. Willie had recognized Forestine’s gift for singing at an early age and always encouraged it.

The two were inseparable. At the end of working a full day as a doorman at the St. George Hotel, Willie would hang out with Forestine at old man Nick’s apartment or Lester’s Pub, where she’d stand in the back near the door watching the singers onstage, while Willie sat at the bar and got toasted. At dinnertime they’d climb into his car and she’d drive them both home.

One night, Phyllis Chubbs, a first-floor neighbor, had seen Forestine get out of the driver’s seat and literally carry her father to the front door. Of course she called Hattie. Hattie decided not to raise hell right away. She’d wait until Willie’s head was clear.

The next afternoon Hattie was straightening Lilian’s hair in front of the stove. Forestine, trying to avoid her mother’s glare, sat in the adjoining living room next to the window. Hattie had been unusually quiet most of the morning, and now her face was as hard and blank as a slab of concrete. She slammed the hot comb onto the jet and tiny flames rose up.

“You okay, Mama?” Lilian asked, pulling a fraying blue towel onto her shoulders to protect the collar of her cotton blouse.

“I’m fine,” Hattie snipped.

Forestine could see by the way Hattie waved the smoking comb in the air that she wasn’t fine. She could tell by the way her mother kept glancing at the closed bedroom door that she was waiting for Willie to come out. She yanked a patch of Lilian’s hair and set the comb in it. Forestine could hear the sizzling of pomade.

“You sure you okay?” Lilian repeated as her head jerked back again.

“If folks do what the hell they supposed to be doin’ ’round here,” Hattie argued, “then maybe things be alright.”

“What you do, Forestine?” Lilian asked.

Forestine continued to watch the late afternoon traffic pass through the fourth walk. Their apartment was on the third floor, so she could see straight down the walk in front of her building. Over the years she had witnessed muggings, teenagers feeling each other on the benches, fights, and drug exchanges of all sorts.

Just then, the bedroom door opened and Willie walked out. He was dressed for work in his navy uniform pants, his jacket slung over one shoulder.

“Mornin’,” he mumbled.

“It’s damn near evenin’,” Hattie spat.

He went to the stove and filled a coffee cup. Usually Hattie would start in on him about what errands he had needed to do for her today or what he forgot to do yesterday, but instead, she just went about straightening Lilian’s hair. Willie eyed her suspiciously.

(Read more . . . )

Happy reading, ya’ll.

Time Interview with Toni Morrison

I wish books received as much promotion as some of these dry R&B/rap albums coming out. Anyway, while over at Time.com reading about “The Five Mistakes Clinton Made” during her election run, I happened to notice a link at the bottom of the page for Toni Morrison. Well, thanks to Time, I discovered that Morrison has released a book. Read more about it:

What Moves at the Margin collects three decades of Toni Morrison’s writings about her work, her life, literature, and American society. The works included in this volume range from 1971, when Morrison (b. 1931) was a new editor at Random House and a beginning novelist, to 2002 when she was a professor at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate. Even in the early days of her career, in between editing other writers, writing her own novels, and raising two children, she found time to speak out on subjects that mattered to her. From the reviews and essays written for major publications to her moving tributes to other writers to the commanding acceptance speeches for major literary awards, Morrison has consistently engaged as a writer outside the margins of her fiction. These works provide a unique glimpse into Morrison’s viewpoint as an observer of the world, the arts, and the changing landscape of American culture. (Read more . . . )

Time also features an interview where readers/fans ask the questions. Needless to say, it’s Toni Morrison, so you know it’s a worthy read.

How did you discover your passion for writing?

My deepest passion was reading. At some point—not early, I was 35 or 36—I realized there was a book that I wanted very much to read that really hadn’t been written, and so I sort of played around with it in trying to construct the kind of book I wanted to read.

Out of all the novels you’ve written, do you have a favorite?
No, I always am most deeply impressed with the one that’s going on at the moment.

What is your prewriting process like?
Different books arrive in different ways and require different strategies. Most of the books that I have written have been questions that I can’t answer. In order to actually put down the first word—I don’t really have a plan—I sometimes have a character, but I can’t do anything with it until the language arrives.

My 15-year-old daughter lives to write. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
The work is in the work itself. If she writes a lot, that’s good. If she revises a lot, that’s even better. She should not only write about what she knows but about what she doesn’t know. It extends the imagination.

If you had not chosen to share your gift of writing, what else would you have done?
When I started teaching, I was absolutely thrilled. There’s nothing more exciting to me than to read books, to talk about books with students—generation after generation—who bring different things to them. I loved that. I would stay there.

Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?
I have two. Well, three, really. Two involve novels that I’m going to write and haven’t written. The third is immortality. [Laughs.] I don’t mean my work. I mean me.

(Read the full article . . .)

Happy reading, yall.

This Used to Be My Childhood

A recent Washington Post article titled “What Do Children Read? Hint: Harry Potter’s Not No. 1” forced me to consider a few childhood titles of my own. Unfortunately, I didn’t read classic literature (i.e. Lord of the Rings, The Outsiders, etc.) when I was younger, and if I did it obviously didn’t make a big enough impact on me since I don’t remember.

Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States revealed today that none of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton and Harper Lee as the most read.

Books by the five well-known U.S. authors, plus lesser-known Laura Numeroff, Katherine Paterson and Gary Paulsen, drew the most readers at every grade level in a study of 78.5 million books read by more than 3 million children who logged on to the Renaissance Learning Web site to take quizzes on books they read last year. Many works from Rowling’s Potter series turned up in the top 20, but other authors also ranked high and are likely to get more attention as a result . . .

The survey, at http://www.renlearn.com/whatkidsarereading, breaks down results by gender and section of the country. Overall, Dr. Seuss’s madly rhyming “Green Eggs and Ham” was the most popular first-grade book. Second-graders preferred Numeroff’s “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” which Donovan praised for its humorous take on cause and effect. White’s timeless tale of a girl, a pig and a spider, “Charlotte’s Web,” was the third-grade favorite. Blume, not surprisingly, won over fourth-graders with her “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,” the first of several books about Peter Warren Hatcher and his younger brother, Farley, who prefers to be called “Fudge.”

Fifth-graders read most often Paterson’s story of two children and a magical forest kingdom, “Bridge to Terabithia.” Sixth-graders preferred “Hatchet,” about a boy stranded in the wilderness, by Paulsen, whom Donovan called “Jack London for kids.” The most-read book among seventh- and eighth-graders was “The Outsiders,” a story of rival gangs in Tulsa published in 1967 when its author, Hinton, was 18 years old. (Read the full article . . .)

As the article points out, as a child I was one of the many fans of Judy Blume, but Beverly Cleary and Virginia Hamilton also top my lists. Here are a few of the most memorable titles:

Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume

No one ever told Margaret Simon that eleven-going-on- twelve would be such a hard age. When her family moves to New Jersey, she has to adjust to life in the suburbs, a different school, and a whole new group of friends. Margaret knows she needs someone to talk to about growing up-and it’s not long before she’s found a solution.

Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. I can’t wait until two o’clock God. That’s when our dance starts. Do you think I’ll get Philip Leroy for a partner? It’s not so much that I like him as a person God, but as a boy he’s very handsome. And I’d love to dance with him… just once or twice. Thank you God.

Blubber by Judy Blume

Blubber is a good name for her, the note from Wendy says about Linda. Jill crumples it up and leaves it on the corner of her desk. She doesn’t want to think about Linda or her dumb report on the whale just now. Jill wants to think about Halloween. But Robby grabs the note, and before Linda stops talking it has gone halfway around the room. That’s where it all starts. There’s something about Linda that makes a lot of kids in her fifth-grade class want to see how far they can go — but nobody, least of all Jill, expects the fun to end where it does.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

Why is the land so important to Cassie’s family? It takes the events of one turbulent year–the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she is black–to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family’s lifeblood. It is the land that gives the Logans their courage and pride, for no matter how others may degrade them, the Logans possess something no one can take away.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary

Ramona Quimby, one of the most loved characters in children’s fiction, has now reached third grade. At school, she acquires a new teacher, Mrs. Whaley, who addresses the class as “you guys.” At home, she helps the family “squeak by” as her father returns to college to become an art teacher. All the Quimbys have their ups and downs, but none feels them more intensely than Ramona. Her low point is undoubtedly reached the day she throws up in class and Mrs. Whaley instructs the children to hold their noses and file into the hall. But three days later Ramona recovers her verve sufficiently to give a book report in the style of a T.V. commercial, bringing down the house with her final ad-lib line of “I can’t believe I read the whole thing!”

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton

Many of the stories in this collection were told among slaves as they dreamt of freedom or remembered their lives in Africa. Hamilton focuses on several themes—animal tales, magical and supernatural tales, and tales of freedom—and following each story is a note explaining its history and meaning. Black-and-white illustrations by Caldecott Medalists Leo and Diane Dillon round out this important book.

Where’s Waldo by Martin Handford

An oversized picture book with hoards of people milling around on each page amidst this humanity readers must try to spot Waldo, identifiable by his clothing and hiking paraphernalia, in a game of concentration. It’s difficult to find him in the middle of a crowd because he does not stick out head and shoulders above the teeming masses of pedestrians, beach-goers or vacationers.

Happy reading ya’ll!

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

As you know, my boyfriend is the non-fiction fan/reader/book collector and I handle the fiction side of things. Although he’s hasn’t read the book, James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces sits atop one of his shelves. I’ve opened, flipped through it, and even looked at the back cover a few times . . . but I’ve never read a single page. Well, during a recent bookstore browse I saw the audio book on clearance and convinced myself to cough up an astounding $4!

So somewhere in between assisting my mother with various things (as I prepare for her arrival), completing 20-page papers for my semester finale, and driving to handle a few business matters (seriously) with my boyfriend in Houston, I’ve had time to listen to Frey’s “memoir” in my car. First of all, let me say that Oliver Wyman is a damn good reader. My mother listens to audio books more than I do and we’ve joked about people having dry reading voices. Wyman is not one of those people. He does a variety of character voices, gets crazy, yells, mumbles–he’s good. Now, maybe it’s the fact that the story that he’s reading requires such attention to vocal details in order to really capture the energy. I don’t know. But this semester my creative writing professor was on our tails about recalling the imagery/visuals that words/sounds present us with. A Million Little Pieces does a helluva job capturing your attention with that exact thing.

I was originally intrigued by this book because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations with other book lovers and just so happened to get into a discussion of Frey’s Oprah fiasco. After listening to 2 out of 8 discs, I decided to do a little research of my own to find out the details of what Frey claims to have fabricated:

I altered events and details all the way through the book. Some of those include my role in a train accident that killed a girl from my school. While I was not, in real-life, directly involved in the accident, I was profoundly affected by it. Others involved jail time I served, which in the book is three months, but which in reality was only several hours, and certain criminal events, including an arrest in Ohio, which was embellished. There has been much discussion, and dispute, about a scene in the book involving a root-canal procedure that takes place without anesthesia. I wrote that passage from memory, and have medical records that seem to support it. My account has been questioned by the treatment facility, and they believe my memory may be flawed. In addition, names and identifying characteristics of all the treatment patients in the book and all of the facility’s employees, characteristics including occupations, ages, places of residence, and places and means of death, were changed to protect the anonymity of those involved in this period in my life. This was done in the spirit of respecting every individual’s anonymity, which is something we were urged to do while in treatment, and to continue to do after we left.

I made other alterations in my portrayal of myself, most of which portrayed me in ways that made me tougher and more daring and more aggressive than in reality I was, or I am [NaySue: see I thought those parts sounded especially fake --- lol]. People cope with adversity in many different ways, ways that are deeply personal. I think one way people cope is by developing a skewed perception of themselves that allows them to overcome and do things they thought they couldn’t do before. My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience. (Read the complete author’s note . . .)

Oprah’s televised response to being “duped”:

And of course the book excerpt:

I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut. I open them and I look around and I’m in the back of a plane and there’s no one near me. I look at my clothes and my clothes are covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood. I reach for the call button and I find it and I push it and I wait and thirty seconds later an Attendant arrives.

How can I help you?

Where am I going?

You don’t know?

No.

You’re going to Chicago, Sir.

How did I get here?

A Doctor and two men brought you on.

They say anything?

They talked to the Captain, Sir. We were told to let you sleep.

How long till we land?

About twenty minutes.

Thank you.

Although I never look up, I know she smiles and feels sorry for me. She shouldn’t.

(Read more . . .)

What I didn’t know about this story is that The Smoking Gun folks were the ones who exposed Frey. During their search for mugshots, they found out they needed to dig a little deeper for more information on a few cracks in Frey’s story.

Frey says he never expected the book to be this successful—had it not been, maybe nobody would have ever found out or cared about whether he told the truth. Maybe . . .

Happy reading ya’ll.

The Roots: Rising Down

“Everything’s for sale. Even souls.”

Did you know that The Roots released a new album? I won’t reveal how I know, but I will say that the album came out today. Interested in hearing a few of the tracks? Check out the MySpace page.

So what’s up with the cover art? I wanted to know why it looks so familiar. My original guess is that it’s an old movie cover, but you know me. I research everything, so I had to find something online that could provide me with a clue. ?uestlove said (the boyfriend will love this):

The Reconstruction period in American History.

this drawing is entitled NEGRO RULE. and it pretty much sums up the feeling of the Confederate Union towards the newly freed slaves and the idea that if given power they would reek havoc and chaos on the country.

somehow in watching this election one can’t help but wonder if those unspoken feelings—- (btw…”if obama was a white man” is also the new nig—ok…im sorry….black)—reflect the looming figure of the old figureheads of washington now? (Source)

Never rely on one source for your information. The original title is actually: “The Vampire that Hovers Over North Carolina”, taken from the News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 27 September 1898. Learn more about it and check out the original photo:

For those of you who can’t get enough, check out The Roots new video:

Still not enough information? Feel free to read an album review from Entertainment Weekly.

And finally, did you know that the title, “Rising Down” is inspired by the book Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means by William T. Vollman? Bet you didn’t. What’s not inspired by books? Honestly. Folks talk about they don’t like to read, but real inspiration comes from books. Dispute me if you like.

A labor of seventeen years, Vollmann’s first book of non-fiction since 1992’s An Afghanistan Picture Show is a gravely urgent invitation to look back at the world’s long, bloody path and find some threads of meaning, wisdom, and guidance to plot a moral course. From the street violence of prostitutes and junkies to the centuries-long battles between the Native Americans and European colonists,Vollmann’s mesmerizing imagery and compelling logic is presented with authority born of astounding research and personal experience.

Who’s really touching my research skills? Right. Happy reading, ya’ll.

John Edgar Wideman’s New Book

I begin this post by stating that I don’t own any John Edgar Wideman books. Nope. Not a one. I’m ashamed, but at least I know who he is and I can name a few of his books off the top of my head. What about Frantz Fanon? How are these two people even related? Well, I don’t own any of Fanon’s books either, but I’ve checked them out from the university library a few times to aid my literary analysis. For those of you who aren’t familiar, because honestly I wasn’t until last year, here is a little Fanon book info for you:

The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. Fanon’s analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization forleaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world . . .

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

John Edgar Wideman, winner of two PEN/Faulkner awards, and author of Brothers and Keepers, Sent for You Yesterday, and Philadelphia Fire (to name a few–the man has a literary society dedicated to his work!) has released a new book for his loyal fans. The New York Times offers the details for this release, but I’m only providing an excerpt:

Wideman, who presents himself as the novel’s narrator, explains that he’s chosen to write about Fanon because there’s “no way out of this goddamn mess.” In this novel’s world, Fanon is the subject because of the senseless slaughterhouse in Iraq, because of America’s overflowing prisons — because, as Wideman’s real but fictionalized brother says in a soliloquy that touches Shakespearean depths: “We’s all one person, all the same body. … I mean, the way it is today the hands don’t speak no more. Squabbling. Fighting. Grabbing. Hands hate each other in a way, you could say. Trying to strangle the one neck they own. People so stuck up in they own little worlds they forget they live in the same body and got to depend on the same two hands.”

People trapped inside themselves are dangerous to other people. This is one theme running through Wideman’s book, caustically symbolized by a frankly imaginary character who gets a decapitated head in the mail and wonders whether he should approach it artistically, practically or philosophically. Indeed, this is not so much a novel about Fanon as it is a tale animated, thwarted, twisted, fractured by the conflicts in culture, politics and the human psyche with which Fanon was obsessed. Wideman’s tale is shattered the way Fanon’s patients, victims of French torture in Algeria, were shattered. (In fact, Fanon treated their French torturers as well.)

Fanon is a novel about a writer — Wideman himself — trying to write a novel about Fanon. Wideman invents a fictional character named Thomas (he of the decapitated head), who sometimes stands in for Wideman himself. He then carries on an imaginary dialogue with the French film director Jean-Luc Godard, cuts back and forth between scenes from Fanon’s life and episodes from Wideman’s own, and at one point even has his wheelchair-bound mother encountering Fanon in the hospital. Such legerdemain might make the book sound involuted in a postmodern kind of way — and it does have occasional claustrophobic moments. But what Wideman has rivetingly achieved, among other things, is to find a path out of the cul-de-sac of self-consciousness that plagues the contemporary novel. (Read full article . . . )

BOOK EXCERPT:

I’m sitting with the last of a glass of red wine in the small garden of a small house in Brittany. I spent the morning of this day as I’ve spent most mornings this summer, trying to save a life, adding a few words, a few sentences to the long letter I’m addressing to you, Frantz Fanon, dead almost half a century before I begin writing to you, writing just about everyday, outdoors when weather permits, sitting each morning in the garden of a house in France, the country you claimed, Fanon, as your nation, fought and bled for, wounded near Lyon in 1944, and then fought against during the war for Algerian independence until you died of leukemia, they say, in 1961, in a
hospital in America, the country I claim as mine. France your country, French your language, though you were born in Martinique, a Caribbean island thousands of miles away from where I sit this evening thinking about you, Fanon, about your short, more than full life, about the fact that sixty-five years of my very full life have passed no less swiftly than the thought of them that just now passed through my mind. Though your story’s extraordinary,it’s also like mine, like anybody’s, just another story, but since I’ve chosen to tell it or it’s chosen me, for reasons I’m still attempting to figure out as I proceed, reasons that may be why I proceed, I know a life’s at stake. Whose life and why are other things I’m trying to figure out.

I intend to say more about this particular evening, Fanon, but first I need to speak to you about the project that’s been on my mind for many years, forty years at least, ever since I read your final book, The Wretched of the Earth, for the first time. Although the worrisomeness I’m calling a Fanon project has assumed various forms, it began clearly enough as a determination to be like you, that is, to become a writer committed to telling the truth about color and oppression, a writer who exposes the lies of race and reveals how the concept of race is used as a weapon to destroy people. I wanted to be somebody, an unflinchingly honest, scary somebody like Frantz Fanon whose words and deeds just might ignite a revolution, just might help cleanse the world of the plague of racism. Over the years I gradually resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t measure up to your example, and my Fanon project shifted to writing about disappointment with myself and my country, about shame and guilt and lost opportunities, about the price of not measuring up to announced ideals. Of course my perceptions of you changed as I changed and the world changed around me.
(Read more . . .)

Wideman and Fanon actually look alike, huh? Happy reading, ya’ll!

Sexy Black Men & Books

The cool thing about wordpress is that they allow you to see all the stats for your blog. I can see referers, search engine terms, and clicks. Based on this, I discovered Queen Esther’s blog and found a cool post that I just have to bite. I hope she doesn’t mind. She titled the post, “If this celebrity knocked on my door, I’d run away with them.” Well, I’m going to do mine with a literary twist. Below are my top choices for sexy black men, but since this is a book blog, I’ve decided to connect them with a book in some sort of way. Maybe they mentioned their favorite book in an interview or maybe they played in a book turned movie. Whatever the case may be . . . I’m sticking to the theme.

Derek Luke

Q: Had you read [Finding Fish] and did that have any impact on how you approached your role or was it more you and Denzel looking at the script?

DL: I thought I was set once I read the book because the script came first and then the book came in 2000. I remember running out of my house at night — I was living on Lake Avenue in Pasadena. I was reading the book and it was a powerful story, but it seemed different. I thought, “Man, I’m going to be so prepared for whenever they audition.” I get to the audition and they say, “Even though it’s the same, we want you to bring something different to the table.” And you know, I’m in there talking with Antwone and Denzel, and I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” But in the back of my head I’m like, “How can I do that?” (Laughs) (Source)

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Michael Ealy

Q: Had you read “Their Eyes Were Watching God” prior to auditioning for the movie?

Michael Ealy: . . . I did read the novel prior to auditioning but the first time I read the novel was 10 years ago and I liked it so much that I bought copies for the women in my family. So please go out and encourage people to read this book. By all means.

Q: Do you think that making books into movies deters or encourages young people to read the novel?

Michael Ealy: Good question. I would say both. I remember being young and watching A Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee as a movie and that made me want to read the play. I think it can work. It’s up to the individual. I think ultimately books and plays are often better than the movies but it doesn’t hurt to have both. (Source)

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Ving Rhames

In 1966, when King was the biggest numbers banker in Cleveland, he beat to death a man who owed him money. After serving fewer than four years of a second-degree murder conviction, he was paroled and immediately got into the boxing promoting business, helped by, among others, rock and roll songwriter/ performer Lloyd Price and Muhammad Ali. Soon, King was arranging the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974, which was followed by the “Thriller in Manilla,” the Ali-Frazier fight in 1975. Newfield, in meticulous detail, shows how King promoted white racism and black racism with equal enthusiasm; his ties to the Cleveland mob; how he “stole” Larry Holmes; his betrayal of both Price and Ali; his relationship with Mike Tyson; and his very creative bookkeeping, which led to a 1994 indictment for wire fraud. Newfield, a syndicated columnist with the New York Post, has written a scathing portrait of America’s #1 boxing promoter.

Famed actor Ving Rhames, who has starred in Rosewood and Pulp Fiction, deliver[ed] a remarkable portrayal of boxing promoter Don King in HBO’s biographical drama, Don King: Only In America.

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Nate Parker

Filmmaker Jeb Stuart and actor Nate Parker are getting into some blood. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stuart has signed on to write and direct and Parker will star in Blood Done Sign My Name. The project is based off the book of the same name by Tim Tyson.

The film revolves around the true murder of a black Vietnam veteran who was alledgedly killed by a white businessman who was found innocent. Parker will play a young teacher who, in the aftermath, emerged as a leader in the black community after the businessman was exonerated. Parker was most recently seen in The Great Debaters alongside Denzel Washington.

The film is currently scheduled to start filming in North Carolina in May and June.

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Happy reading ya’ll.

Cookbook Recommendations

Last Thursday I entered my department’s chili cookoff and won! My fiesta chili made with corn, ground turkey, red kidney beans (amongst other things) and sprinkled with a little cheese can’t be beat. Of course my mother had to add a touch of hate by mentioning that just a few years ago I couldn’t get past burning rice. Look at me now though–winning small-time cooking competitions and everything! With that said, I dedicate this post to the cookbooks that inspire me to culinary greatness. Click the covers for more information.

Below you’ll find a few photographs based on the recipes discovered in these books. These are old pictures, since I don’t cook much in grad school, but you’ll get the point.

Fully loaded nachos (via America’s Test Kitchen)

Coconut Curry Chicken (via Chicken)

Enchiladas (via Betty Crocker)

Smothered Chicken (via Healthy Cooking)

Roasted Short Ribs, Goat Cheese
Mashed Potatoes, & Sauteed Green Beans (via G. Garvin)

Rajin Cajun Pasta (via Healthy Cooking)
One of the boyfriend’s favorites . . .

Turkey chops, collard greens,
and sweet potato casserole (via G. Garvin)

Chicken bowtie pasta (via G. Garvin)

Shrimp Egg Foo Yung (via Healthy Cooking)

Buffalo Wings (via America’s Test Kitchen)

Jerk Chicken Salad (via Healthy Cooking)

Now that I’ve made myself hungry, please feel free to offer any suggestions concerning your favorite cookbooks. I’m always looking to add something new to the collection.

Happy cooking ya’ll.

Want Closure? Start with Your Legs

I figured I needed to blog about something, so I did my usual black book searches on various websites. While I’ve heard about Big Boom before, I guess I never realized just how “big” his books are. Is it important to note that he’s an Essence Bestseller? I guess. Read their interview if you’re so intrigued.

It’s obviously a slow day in black book news.

Oddest book title: Want closure? Start with your legs

Self-help book, written by a man ‘for the benefit of women’ wins contest

Good advice? Maybe. Oddest book title of 2007—that’s official.”If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs” has won the Diagram Prize for the oddest title of the year, The Bookseller magazine announced Friday.Big Boom, the apparently pseudonymous author, calls it a “self-help book, written by a man for the It’s a book, he writes, that is “raw, honest and about you,” distilling “the sweat off my back, the wrinkles in my forehead from anger and thinking all the time.” The title triumphed in a public vote over runner-up “I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen” and the third-place finisher, “Cheese Problems Solved.” The winner, ‘If You Want Closure,’ makes redundant an entire genre of self-help tomes,” said Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller. “So effective is the title that you don’t even need to read the book itself.” (Source)

I’m not a grammar guru myself, but is it okay that MSNBC’s Today (or Associated Press rather) puts book titles in quotations? I started to edit it here for them, but again, what do I know?

If I didn’t provide an excerpt of Big Boom’s book, well, this just wouldn’t be Black Girl Lost, now would it? I’m not recommending it or anything . . . but maybe somebody out there has read his works and will consider commenting on this topic.

One

BOOM’S PERSONAL MESSAGE

When a man moves too fast and has multiple, meaningless partners, he’s only bursting blood cells and allowing bad energy to enter the woman.

I’ve had good women, bad women, and sometimes I’ve had both at the same time. In my past, I searched for women who were whores.

I looked for women who sold their bodies and gave men their money, their food stamps, and their welfare checks. I even dated women who strip-danced. Throughout all of this I’ve found that opposites attract, but a whore who acts right and also has your back, she’s hard to find.

I’ve gone as far as to make women have sex with other women and do what I want them to do, just to make me happy. I’ve had women who would do stupid stuff just because I asked them to do it and they wanted me around.

For about forty-seven years of my life, I was attracted to these kinds of women…whorish women…women I could have fun with. I would put women together and watch them go at it. To me it was fun having them do wild and crazy things. Now, I’m attracted to women with qualities that are totally opposite to those kinds of women.

I dated a young lady in the cocaine world for a few years, so I’ve seen and done it all. During this time all I did was spend money. Women would make the money and I would spend it. I was a very uncontrollable guy during that time of my life.

Through the years, when I was about forty-seven years old…No!…I’ll say at the age of forty-five, I started wanting to change, but I didn’t know how to change, and when I began making changes my friends would say, “We’re losing you…we’re losing another soldier, we’re losing another man, we’re losing another good one.” This would cause me to jump back on their side and that caused me to get back into the game. I was in the game a long time and many things that it brought to my life I’ll discuss in this book.

(Read more if you dare . . . )

Big Boom, self-proclaimed “Bodyguard for Women’s Hearts,” (if they purchase his book I guess) is also the author of How to Duck a Suckah: A Guide to Living Drama-Free which is surprisingly published by Simon & Schuster.

Happy reading ya’ll (even if it’s not Big Boom)!

Callaloo Writing Workshop

For those of you who are familiar with the VONA and Hurston/Wright writing workshops, you should also be aware of Callaloo. What’s so great about Callaloo is that it’s FREE! All you have to pay for is room and board. I would love to attend this year, but will be in Mexico for the summer. If I was in town, you could stay with me for a small fee, but that ain’t happening. Here is a bit of information found on the Callaloo website:

The Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops, a project of the literary journal Callaloo, are designed to assist new and developing writers by providing intensive and individual instruction in the writing of fiction and poetry. Students and faculty will work and live together for the duration of the two-week workshops, as well as meet in groups for three hours each day and in individual conferences when necessary.

The poetry workshops will admit nine applicants, and the fiction workshops will admit only six. The faculty will give readings for the general public, and the workshop members will celebrate the last two evenings with small audiences comprised of workshop participants and invited guests.

The workshops, along with required books and supplies, are free to all participants, but participants will be responsible for their travel and board.

TO APPLY: Applicants must send a brief cover letter and a writing sample (up to eight pages of poetry or twenty pages of prose) to

Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops
Dept. of English, Texas A&M University
TAMU 4227
College Station, Texas 77843-4227

The application postmark deadline is Friday, May 30, 2008. Applications will be evaluated on an on-going basis until the workshops are filled, but a waiting list will be maintained in the event of cancellations.

Although this year’s faculty hasn’t been announced, last year included Tayari Jones, Mat Johnson, Tracy K. Smith, and Terrance Hayes. I’m willing to answer any questions about my previous workshop experiences. I’d also love to provide any tips on visiting the College Station area. Just ask!

Happy reading ya’ll!

Picture Me Rollin’ by Black Artemis Review

The book must have been pretty good if I’ve returned to blog about it. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to reading it, but when you have a paper to write, what are your choices? Initially, my mind wasn’t able to expand wide enough to consider what Black Artemis could possibly do with one character’s infatuation with Tupac for an entire novel. Second, while I’m not one of those people who believes that ghetto/urban/hip-hop/street fiction is below me—or not real literature, I will admit that I don’t read it. I’ve read Goines and Sister Souljah. Enjoyed their works. Then there are the other authors/titles which I won’t mention because they don’t necessarily represent my “literary taste.” Anyway, I know I haven’t done one of my formated book reviews (meaning you aren’t going to get a long detailed analysis here) in sometime and I figured Picture Me Rollin’ is worthy enough . . . so here we go.

Writing Picture Me Rollin’‘ has changed me in profound ways. It was such a challenge to write on so many levels. I found myself raising questions on issues on which I had yet to formulate my own opinion. It was in the process of writing this book that I grappled with my own views and feelings about some things. There was a point where I had lost compassion for people engaged in street life, because I felt that in hip-hop circles our social and political understanding of what crime is and why people participate in it gradually turned into excuses for self-destructive behavior. Then it went as far as saying that selling drugs or pimping women was some kind of political act of resistance! I became so outraged by this that I eventually adopted a “we vs. them” stance, sounding just like other pundits who slam hip hop unilaterally when their “understanding” of it is one of selective ignorance. Through the process of writing Picture Me Rollin’, I rediscovered my compassion especially when I had to write male characters like Jesus, Xavier and even Officer Puente. In fact, I learned that I can maintain compassion for others who make choices I would not even as I stay true to my own values and beliefs. Picture Me Rollini is about–among other things–transcending one’s contradictions. — “Readers Guide: A Conversation with Black Artemis”

Black Artemis/Sofia Quintero’s Bio: Sofia Quintero is the author several novels and short stories that cross genres. Born into a working-class Puerto Rican/Dominican family in the Bronx, the self-proclaimed Ivy League homegirl earned a BA in history-sociology from Columbia University in 1990 and her MPA from the university’s School of International and Public Affairs in 1992. After years of working on a range of policy issues from multicultural education to HIV/AIDS, she decided to pursue a career that married arts and activism. Under the pen name Black Artemis, she wrote the hip hop novels Explicit Content, Picture Me Rollin’ ,and Burn. Sofi­a is also the author of the novel Divas Don’t Yield and contributed novellas to the chic lit anthologies Friday Night Chicas and Names I Call My Sister. As an activist, she co-founded Chica Luna Productions, a nonprofit organization that seeks to identify, develop and support women of color who wish to create socially conscious entertainment. She is also a founding creative partner of Sister Outsider Entertainment, a multimedia production company that produces quality entertainment for multicultural audiences. Sofi­a is presently working on her first young adult novel Efrain’s Secret which will be published by Knopf in 2009.

Book: Picture Me Rollin’
Publisher: New American Library
Publication Year: 2005
Pages: 302

Opening Lines (Chapter One): Tupac growled through the speakers, and the accompanying bass shook the portable stereo and threatened to hurl the jagged pile of books that sat on top of it. Esperanza finished darkening her eyebrows into a sinister arch, then dropped her pencil to join Tupac in his defiant acceptance of judgment. Or send me to hell ’cause I ain’t beggin’ for my life/Ain’t nothing worse than this cursed-ass hopeless life/’Cause I’m troublesome. From her memories of countless videos, Esperanza channeled Pac, lowering her voice into a masculine rumble and jabbing her fingers in the air in West Side formation. Just as she prepared to spew the next verse, the disk halted.

Purpose for Reading: Um . . . while this isn’t a book that I would have selected for myself, it was a Black Postmodernism course requirement. This book was very different from the other texts we’ve read this semester and I’m debating on what exactly makes the novel postmodern. I mean, I can identify a few things, but I’m willing to argue that this book doesn’t belong in that category—not on this blog though.

Cover art: I don’t have any issues with this cover, although I didn’t imagine the main character to look like the chick featured—but again, I have no issues with the cover. It works for me. I wish I could evaluate a few other versions (hardcover, international, etc.), but I’m not complaining. The cover relates to the text, unlike previous books reviewed here.

Book Overview: Esperanza (Espe) Cepeda just completed a year-long sentence for her involvement in a check-cashing store robbery. While the police were only able to charge her with gun possession, her claim to glory is the fact that she didn’t turn in the rest of her all-male “crew.” Upon returning home to the Bronx, all Espe wants is her monetary dues and a chance to move on with her life. With three transformed women in her corner, including her older sister Dulce, former cellmate Debra/Isoke, and GED language arts teacher Maite Rodriguez, there is hope for change. These three female characters offer Espe the knowledge that she needs through their own life experience and feminist literature by Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and even a fictional text written by Maite herself.

Espe’s parole requires her to do the obvious things. One, stay away from her ex-boyfriend Jesus and his crew of street urchin (Xavier, Fedi, and Chuck). Two, get a job. Three, avoid ex-convicts. With the guidance of Dulce she pursues her GED and even finds a job at McDonald’s. But of course, she deals with conflict at every turn. It seems impossible for Espe to avoid the call of Jesus—his sex appeal and offerings of illegal tender. Then she has to figure out the best approach to dealing with Jesus’ new lover, Priscella. And what 25 year old can happily work at McDonald’s and deal with all the mess that comes with that? Somehow Espe must triumph by learning to love herself and moving beyond the elements of self-destruction. Oh, and there’s a bunch of Tupac lyrics in there too.

Positives: Certainly Espe’s infatuation with Tupac is at the core of the novel, but it doesn’t make the novel, in my opinion. So maybe this is where I missed the point, right? The Tupac elements are not overdone. There’s an opportunity to explore the rapper’s contradictions, but there is also a chance to understand ideas of how, as Black Artemis notes, “one can be revolutionary but gangsta.” As is the custom for me in grad school (yeah, yeah, pardon the grammatical errors and all that), I read this book in about a day. As a reader, my driving force was whether Espe would escape Jesus. Would she be weak enough to allow him to verbally/physically abuse her again (whether minimal or not)? Would she earn her GED? Would she leave her former New York life behind for something better? I also loved the female characters in this novel. Even Jesus’s new lover (read flunky) Priscella reaches her breaking point and is able to transform. I also enjoyed how everything was revealed . . . eventually. No information was offered up front, but just when you needed it or forgot about it even, the flashbacks began. I loved the ending. This book was well plotted and just overall well developed. Bravo.

Negatives: Just when I thought the author forgot about Tupac, he would crop up again. A few times I wondered how the same novel could be achieved without Tupac, but I do believe that he was necessary to the text and definitely not overdone or glorified to any extent. I don’t have any negatives really. Every page was important to the story’s development, so there was no need to ever skip sentences, paragraphs, or pages.

Notable Excerpt: Unfortunately, the most memorable part of the novel (the climax) came at the end. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, so I’ve selected a portion from the beginning. In this scene Esperanza meets her parole officer Conrado Puente for the first time.

“Even if I couldn’t find a job—”

“I don’t want to hear if. You can always find a job. I don’t care what it is. I don’t even care if you get paid. You find something to do with your time during the week besides hanging out with Jesus Lara or anyone in his crew.”

“Like I was saying, I’m not trying to hang out with Jesus and them regardless.”

“Then why did you go to that party at his apartment last weekend?”

Esperanza swallowed hard. For someone who resented the increase in his workload, he had gotten in her grille pretty deep, real fast. “No disrespect, Officer Puente, but can I ask you something?” He remained quiet, and she took that as permission to proceed. “Where’d you grow up?”

“In the Bronx, just like you.” His voice assumed a number of excuses. Puente thought Esperanza expected him to say that he grew up in a nice neighborhood so she could complain how easy for him to say that she, too, could be a law-abiding civil servant like himself. “In Soundview,” he continued, thumping his chest. “I grew up on Watson Avenue between Boynton and Elder.”

“Mad rough over there,” Esperanza conceded.

“Damn right, it is. And you know what?” Officer Puente tapped his desk with a pudgy index finger. “When I was growing up, it was a whole lot worse. During the eighties right in the middle of the crack epidemic. You wouldn’t believe the shit I walked through every day on those two blocks to and from Monroe High School.” He added that tidbits to tell Esperanza, I went to a public high school, too, and now I got a good job with the city, so don’t give me any shit about the school system failing you, either.

“Then you know exactly what I’m going through,” said Esperanza. “You know from experience that the worst thing you can do besides run with the wrong crow is act like you’re too good to run with them, ’cause that’s when they really fu—I mean, mess with you. You don’t want to hang with them, but if you’re not cool with them, they start feeling like they need to take you down a notch or two. So you say, ‘What’s up?’ when you see ‘em on the street. You parley with them on the stoop every once in a while. Offer them a cigarette or maybe even ask to cop one just so they won’t think you’re turning up your nose at them and decide to vic you.”

She wanted to add that it was harder when you were girl. You had to thank muthafuckas who made nasty comments about your body when you walked by, like that was the deference you owed for walking on their streets. You had to regard dudes you played Spin the Bottle with when you were twelve like you actually fucked them last week, ‘less they dirty your name for not giving them play. And sometimes it got so bad, you had to get with the baddest one of all, thinking he might keep the others at bay. That it’d be easier to deal with a single muthafucka behind closed doors than to manage a bunch of them on the street. That his initial sense of ownership might eventually grow into some kind of genuine love for you and yorus for him, which might actually compel him to protect you against that shit, if not take you away from it altogether. Esperanza wanted to say all this to Officer Puente, but something told her that she would lose him if he could not—or more likely would not—sympathize with her circumstances.

Officer Puente gazed at Esperanza for a moment, then said, “I know it’s hard to avoid your old crew because you live in the same neighborhood. So in addition to getting your diploma and finding a job, you seriously need to consider saving some money and moving the hell out of there. I can’t hold it against you if you run into someone from time to time and have to make nice. But beyond that don’t let me find out that you’re fraternizing with Jesus Lara. Or with Xavier Bennett or Charles Whitley, for that matter, either.”

Other Publishings by Black Artemis/Sophia Quintero (click the covers):

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5. This book was well worth the read and I definitely recommend it.

Happy reading ya’ll.

Picture Me Rollin’ by Black Artemis

It’s now coming down to the final two books of the semester. I can finally see the light. It won’t be long before I can read what I want to read—although I can actually do that anyway (if I really really wanted). Every time I look over at my bookshelves I think about my summer reading list. I even spend a few minutes at a time daydreaming about what I should squeeze into my summer suitcase. It’s going to be a tough decision, but I’m sure I’ll blog about it . . . so stay tuned.

This weekend’s reading assignment includes Black Artemis’ Picture Me Rollin’. I’ll also explore the novel’s postmodern elements in a 8-10 page paper. So what is this book about? Who is Black Artemis? Since I haven’t started reading the book yet, it might be best to let the research provide us with some answers:

Black Artemis is the pen name of Sofía Quintero, a writer, activist, educator, speaker and comedienne born into a working-class Puerto Rican-Dominican family in the Bronx. Determined to write edgy yet intelligent novels for women who love hip hop even when hip hop fails to love them in return, Black Artemis wrote her debut novel Explicit Content. Explicit Content - the first work of fiction about female MCs in the hip hop industry - was published by the New American Library/Penguin in August 2004. Booklist said of the novel, ‘Fans of Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever (1999) will find this debut novel just as tantalizing.’ Her second Black Artemis novel Picture Me Rollin’ hit bookstores in June 2005 and brought a fresh twist to the home-from-prison tale, Picture Me Rollin’ tells of the story of a young woman whose obsession with Tupac Shakur leads her on quest to find self-love. Amidst the controversy over the popularity of street lit, Black Artemis’s novels have been hailed by critics of all stripes - reviewers, educators and readers - for being as intelligent and substantive as they are entertaining and accessible. Her third Black Artemis novel Burn will be published in August 2006. For more information about Black Artemis and her work, visit www.blackartemis.com.

You are proud to proclaim yourself as a writer of bonafide Hip-hop fiction. Your novels Explicit Content and Picture Me Rollin’ clearly show the difference between Hip-hop fiction and urban or street fiction, which is often mislabeled as Hip-hop literature. When you were first seeking a publisher, did the book industry understand this difference?

No, they did not, and largely they still do not although I often I feel like I’m waging a one-woman campaign to reeducate people both in the industry and the community. First, let me clarify the way I see it. There’s this large category called urban fiction. Now the industry uses the word ‘urban’ as a code to mean mostly ‘Black’ and sometimes also ‘Latino,’ but we all know that (1) not all Blacks and Latinos live in urban environments, and (2) not all people or phenomena that is urban is Black or Latino. So when I think of ‘urban fiction,’ I think of anything from what I write to the street lit of authors like Vicki Stringer or Teri Woods to even some titles in the chick lit genre like ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’

Then within urban fiction you have subgenres. The reason why I distinguish between hip hop lit and street lit - although overlaps may exist - is because street lit is frequently about street life, particularly about the underground economy. Hip hop can be - and has been - about much more than that. Not all hip hop is about gangsterism, and if we want to be consistent, not all gangsterism is hip hop. Were Meyer Lansky and John Gotti hip hop heads? No! J Furthermore, there are many people in the hip hop generation and community who do not participate in the underground economy or even aspire to that lifestyle. So as a hip hop activist, it unnerves me when the term ‘hip hop’ is unilaterally equated with ‘gangster.’ The occasional overlap is undeniable, but the terms are NOT synonymous. Many socially conscious people - especially young people and their mentors - utilize hip hop as a tool to fight injustice whether it’s the expansion of prison industrial complex or the spread of HIV/AIDS. To insinuate that they’re not hip hop because they’re not gangster is not only dead wrong, it’s insulting.

When I dropped my debut ‘Explicit Content,’ I sent a polite but impassioned email to almost every journalist that wrote an article about the rise of ‘hip hop lit’ as not a single one discussed hip hop as a culture that predates gangster rap with its roots in the Black Arts Movement of the 60s. Any street lit author will tell you readily and proudly that his or her predecessors are Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. But as an author of hip hop fiction, my predecessors are Richard Wright and Piri Thomas. With the exception of The Black Issues Book Review which published my letter to the editor, no one responded to me. Yet over time I started to notice a difference. I still saw articles about ’street lit’ that referred to it as such, and I’d like to think that my tiny gestures had an impact. (Read more . . . )

So, this is the part where I stop blogging and start reading.

Happy reading ya’ll.