The internet works on a regular basis now. No further comment or details, but maybe I’ll be able to post on a more regular basis. Anyway, as noted in previous posts, Paul Beatty recently released his summer read titled Slumberland. NPR provides an excerpt. Read on:

Chapter 1: The Beard Scratchers

You would think they’d be used to me by now. I mean, don’t they know that after fourteen hundred years the charade of blackness is over? That we blacks, the once eternally hip, the people who were as right now as Greenwich Mean Time, are, as of today, as yesterday as stone tools, the velocipede, and the paper straw all rolled into one? The Negro is now officially human. Everyone, even the British, says so. It doesn’t matter whether anyone truly believes it; we are as mediocre and mundane as the rest of the species. The restless souls of our dead are now free to be who they really are underneath that modern primitive patina. Josephine Baker can take the bone out of her nose, her knock-kneed skeleton back to its original allotment of 206. The lovelorn ghost of Langston Hughes can set down his Montblanc fountain pen (a gift) and open his mouth wide. Not to recite his rhyming populist verse, but to lick and suck some Harlem rapscallion’s prodigious member and practice what is, after all, the real oral tradition. The revolutionaries among us can lay down the guns. The war is over. It doesn’t matter who won, take your roscoe, the Saturday night special, the nine, the guns you once waved fuck-a-white-man drunkenly in front of the kids, take those guns and encase them in glass so that they lie passively on the red felt next to the blunderbuss and Portuguese arquebus and Minuteman musket. The battle cry of even the bravest among us is no longer “I’ll see you in hell!” but “I’ll see you in court.” So if you’re still upset with history, get a lawyer on the phone and try to collect workmen’s comp for slavery. Blackness is passé and I for one couldn’t be happier, because now I’m free to go to the tanning salon if I want to, and I want to.

I hand the receptionist the coupon. On the front is a glossy aerial photo of a Caribbean coastline. She flips it over and her eyes drop suspiciously from my face to the back of the card, which reads, electric beach tanning salon. buy 10 light baths, get 1 free. Underneath the promotion, in two rows of five, are ten pfennig-sized circles; and rubber-stamped in each circle is a blazing red-ink sun wearing a toothy smile and sunglasses. Today is the glorious day I redeem my free suntan. But somehow this woman, who has personally stamped at least seven of the ten smiling suns, is reluctant to assign me a tanning room. Usually she stamps my card and under her breath whispers, Malibu, Waikiki, or Ibiza, and I go about my business.

A look of bemused familiarity creeps across her face. A look that says, Maybe I’ve seen you somewhere before. Didn’t you rape me last Tuesday? Aren’t you my son’s tap dance teacher?

“Acapulco.”

Finally. She pencils my name into the appointment book. I point to the sunscreen in the display case behind her.

“Coppertone,” I say.

A tube of Tropical Blend skims over the countertop like a miniature torpedo. The sun protection factor is two. Not strong enough. If the receptionist’s white vanilla frosting lip gloss has an SPF of three, my natural complexion is at least a six. I return fire and send the lotion back. “Zu Schwach. Ich brauche etwas Stärkeres,” I say, asking for something stronger.

Maybe mammals should be classified by their sun protection factors. Married SPF3 female, 35, seeks nonsmoking, spontaneous SPF4 or lighter for discreet affair. SPF7 Rhino Faces Extinction. I’m the Head SPF50 in Charge. It was the SPF2ness of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be for naught. (Read more . . .)

If you enjoy Dystopian literature as much as I do, I spotted another title on NPR’s book page that sounds like it might be interesting. It’s not black literature, but why limit yourself? Check it out here. Feliz leyendo ya’ll!

I guess I’m kind of taking a break from reading and blogging this summer. Please forgive me. As per Playahata.com, Omar Tyree recently announced his retirement from urban literature–a genre which he claims he originated. Sigh. I guess we can forget about Chester Himes, Donald Goines, and Iceberg Slim, right? I’m over this, but for those of you who are still interested, Tyree had the following to say:

For the record, I never called my work “street literature” and I never will. When I began to publish ground breaking contemporary novels with Flyy Girl in 1993, and Capital City in 1994, I called them “urban classics.” They were “urban” because they dealt with people of color in the inner-city or “urban” population areas. They were “classics” because I considered myself one of the first to start the work of a new era. But now, after sixteen years and sixteen novels in the African-American adult urban fiction game, I feel like the man who created the monster Frankenstein. Things have gotten way out of hand. So it’s now time to put up my pen and move on to something new, until the readership is ready to develop a liking for fresh material on other subjects.

To a degree, it now seems hypocritical for the man who self-published the first gold digger book with Flyy Girl, and the first drug-dealer book with Capital City, to turn around and cry wolf about a readership who-fifteen years later-seem stuck on the subjects. However, I never intended to remain on those same topics. And I didn’t. I moved on to cover a dozen other community issues through my work.

Nevertheless, the new young writers, who became inspired by my earlier work; Teri Woods, Vickie Stringer, Nikki Turner, Shannon Holmes, K’wan, and several others, related to my “urban classics” alone, and they began to match it, writing from their own sources of hardcore street knowledge. And I can’t knock them for writing their honest stories. I can’t knock them for wanting to be published. I can’t knock them for earning an honest living. But after awhile, as dozens of other new writers began to follow in their footsteps, creating more gold-digging, ghetto girl, gangster love, drug-dealer stories, I had to seriously ask myself, “Don’t we have some other things to write about it?”

This new form of “street lit” began to remind me of a similar destruction of hip-hop, where the same ghettocentric stories began to take precedence over the creative perspectives and multi-faceted voices and subjects of our urban music. All of a sudden, you could not succeed as a rapper unless you had sold drugs, committed violent crimes, and claimed to be an unruly gangster, who had done hard time in prison. You couldn’t rap about the normal joys of life anymore. These new kids on the block rejected how Ice Cube had had a good day, while preferring to hear how dark in hell it was for DMX.

That hardcore fact — of an urban audience’s preference for denigration — remains to be our most pressing issue here. The fact is, when I began to write about good black men with A Do Right Man in 1997, the importance of black family with Single Mom in 1998, the reality of black-on-black love with Sweet St. Louis in 1999, the indulgences of superstars with Just Say No! in 2001, the ugly face of New Orleans poverty with Leslie in 2002, or the challenge of positive feminine power with Boss Lady in 2005, few readers bothered to listen to me. (Read more . . . )

Feliz leyendo!

Yeah. I’m in Mexico with only four books. J. California Cooper’s Some Love, Some Pain. Two short story anthologies: The Best American Short Stories of the Century & Gumbo. And one other novel: Middlesex. Finished Cooper’s book and passed it on to one of the few black girls at school with me here in Mexico. We agreed that the short stories are interesting, but that they seem like the same story over and over with a slight twist.

So really, I only have one novel left. One would assume that it would consume me. After all, it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner and an Oprah’s BookClub selection (if those things mean anything any more).

Middlesex. I’ve wanted to read it for sometime, but for the life of me, I can’t explain to people what it’s about. My cousin said he loved the book, but I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve also discovered that the description on the back of the book doesn’t seem to interest anybody (including me). I mean, guess it’s about a hermaphrodite and his/her family history. I’m only on page 68 so this hasn’t exactly been confirmed. I wanted to officially stop reading at page 30, but since I don’t have any other choices—thanks to my boyfriend who suggested that I remove my novels to lighten my suitcase load—I pushed on. It’s not bad. I’m getting into it. Here’s an Amazon summary:

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the “roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time.” The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.

Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides’s command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie’s shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:

Emotions, in my experience aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” … I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” … I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.

When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you’ll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it–putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight–just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end.

“Splendorous book?” I’ll be the judge of that! Sadly, the following negative Amazon reader review did not encourage further reading on my behalf. Especially since I feel like I can relate to where he/she’s coming from:

On a friends recommendation (one of the best books she has ever read), I selected this as my ONLY book on a trip to a non-english speaking country. Big mistake. I struggled through 75 pages (vowed to make it to 100 - but could not)and set it aside for an Italian version of People Magazine. This book just never hooked me, it was all over the place with very strange characters with whom I could not identify (and I like strange characters normally.) Not my deal. Glad others like it.

Another unfortunate thing is the fact that I have been unable to find a bookstore with English novels in Mexico. My Spanish expertise is not advanced enough to struggle through a Spanish novel, nor do I wish to do so. If you’ve read Middlesex, please leave a comment for inspiration sake! Although I don’t have any other reading choices at this time. My family doesn’t love me enough to send a care package. (GRUMBLE) In the meantime, me being a multi-sensory kinda learner, take a look at the various book covers for the novel. I also ask that you question what some of this cover art has to do with anything. I always do. Do publisher’s consult the author before they produce these versions?

Get more Middlesex on Oprah.com. Happy reading, ya’ll!

I arrived in Mexico City, Mexico yesterday afternoon for a summer’s worth of Spanish learning. Cuernavaca, where I reside now, is about 60 minutes south. On my first day learned how to make tamales and that Pepto Bismol doesn’t save you from illness if you’re already throwing up. I have not had a single sip of the tap water. I am sweating as I type this post because air conditioning appears to be non-existent in these parts. There are plenty of trees which provide a nice breeze—but hot is still hot! Classes began today and I already learned at least a hundred new words (I barely remember half, but I’m about to study and do my homework). Unfortunately, when my host family speaks to me, I can only partially understand what they’re saying . . . and while I know Spanish verbs, I have not managed to put them together in sentences well. We’ll see what happens in a few weeks.

Of course there is more, but I will spare you the details. Adios!

This news is too exciting to resist posting right now. Felicia Pride of More Than Words announced that Sister Souljah’s Coldest Winter Ever sequel is slated for an October release. In a Publisher’s Weekly article, Pride writes:

The sequel centers on Midnight, a secondary but intriguing character from The Coldest Winter Ever. For this book, Souljah conducted extensive research and traveled to three continents, a fact that Bestler said accounts for the long break between the two books.

Ernesto Martinez, buyer of African-American titles for Borders, said that customers have been asking about the sequel. “The Coldest Winter Ever is a perennial bestseller of the category for Borders,” he said. “We certainly have high hopes for Midnight, and have all the confidence that this book will be everything and more that fans of Sister Souljah have come to love.”

Although there isn’t an official embargo on Midnight, Atria is concerned about piracy and is being careful about how it rolls out the national marketing campaign. Judith Curr, S&S executive v-p and publisher, said “We’re going to make sure that everyone who bought and loved The Coldest Winter Ever will know that the sequel is arriving.” The company plans to use Internet marketing, strategic advertising in major urban areas and summer reading promotions with bookstores to spread the word. (Read full article . . .)

I will be sure to pre-order my first edition copy! Thanks for the news Felicia! Love the blog.

Karrine Steffans, Carmen Bryan, and even Alana Wyatt did it. Even some white chick by the name of Savannah Jahvall. When you sleep with a celebrity (or two or three or four), these women have proven that you can profit from the experience in more ways than one. But how does one take it a step further? How about by combining two popular themes? Sexual exploits with celebrities—and living on the down low. Steffans set the mold: tell the juicy details and omit the names (well, she did omit a few anyway). Now it’s Terrance Dean’s turn to dish the dirt on encounters with down-low celebrities in his recently released book Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry — from Music to Hollywood. Check out the Time magazine Q&A excerpt:

Where do you keep your list of names and corresponding fake names?

[Laughs] Writing the book of course I had to keep my notes. I am a journalist, first and foremost. I used to write for the New York Sun and the Tennessean. I keep notes and I have those in a very safe place. [Laughs] To make sure I don’t forget who’s who because I knew I had to change everyone’s name. Yes.

Do you think at any point you would reveal any of those names? Why or why not?

No. I didn’t write this book as a way to demean or out anyone or to do damage to anyone’s careers. I think or I hope first and foremost that [people] can understand and recognize that this is my memoir. It is a memoir of my life as a down-low man in the entertainment industry. I wrote it with the intention of hoping to provide a voice for not only myself but a lot of people who are in the industry or are struggling with their sexuality but also those people who are down-low men or gay men who are looking to get into the business and they can’t. It’s been really empowering — the experience of writing this book and knowing that I didn’t have to out anyone to do that or to tell that type of story.

You’ve written books about empowering men of color, so how do you think this book empowers men?

The great thing is because in writing my book, I was able to find my voice, a true voice that I had hidden for so long. Because as I talk about in the book I was sexually assaulted at the age of 13 by a male next-door neighbor and that incident traumatized me. I came from a dysfunctional family where my mother was a prostitute, she was a heroin addict and then my mother became infected with the HIV virus and she passed it to my baby brother and they both died from the AIDS virus. I had another brother who was also sexually assaulted when he was in a group home and he was infected with the AIDS virus and he later died. All of these different types of things that occurred throughout my life, all these challenges and all these obstacles I felt was a universal story within the black community — the community of color. So hopefully this story will empower them.

How do you respond to people who question how true or accurate your accounts in this book are in light of recent news that several high-profile memoirs have been found to be mostly or partly untrue?

Two things. One, is that I have over 10-plus years working in the industry, which anyone can verify — both my name, and call any of the companies I’ve worked for. I’ve worked for major companies and corporations in the production field such as MTV, BET, Warner Brothers. I name all of the films and the projects in the book. Anyone who is resourceful can verify that information. There are some things you definitely can’t [fake] in the entertainment industry because there are production records. The great thing, as you said, in light of the memoirs that have been proven to be false or fabricated, Simon and Schuster, the legal team got involved and verified a lot of the information in my book, to protect themselves but also to protect myself.

Was it difficult for them to verify the information because of the down-low status of many of those mentioned in the book?

Well, again, a lot of the people I mention in the book, I don’t disclose their status. I don’t name any names, so people can come to a conclusion of who they think the person is that I may be describing in the book. The legal team at Simon and Schuster, I was forthright in letting them know certain names of people who I knew, so they were able to verify the information on their end.

So Simon and Schuster editors do know some of the names?

Yes. [Laughs] But we’re not naming names. (Read more . . . )

So, I’ve searched around for a few excerpts. Honestly, I believe Wendy Williams said it best, “I’m almost bored with the topic . . .” For those of you who need to see for yourself, here’s what I found on various websites.

Excerpt 1 (source Sister 2 Sister):

Once I visited the video set of “Mario,” one of the biggest rappers to hit the scene. His rough persona and lengthy criminal past caused many women and some men to lust after him. My boy worked for the label and they were in Los Angeles shooting Mario’s next single. While we waited for them to set up the scene for the next shot, Mario and his entourage were in his trailer drinking and smoking weed.

By the time the well-built rapper and his entourage emerged, he strolled past me with a smirk on his ashy face, letting me know he was running things. As I looked at the young women surrounding him, I observed that they were not real women, they were transvestites. They definitely could pass for real women, though.

I asked my friend, “Does Mario know those women are not women?” “Please. Yes, he knows. They’ve been with him since he got in town.”

Mario was the same man who was named by MTV as one of the greatest rappers of all time and lambasted gay men in his lyrics. He had one number one album after another. He often called out other rappers for being soft, feminine and gay and yet he found comfort in the arms of a transvestite.

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Excerpt 2 (source SOHH.com):

According to Terrance Dean, his friend Sandy was working on a new movie that had major stars in it. The lead was “Lucas,” who is a black megastar. No matter what film project he was attached to it was bound to be a box office smash. In Hollywood, he is considered a golden boy and very bankable. However, there were already many rumors swirling about his sexuality and even though he is married, it was hard for him to shake those pesky gay rumors.”You’re not going to believe this,” Sandy said when I called her. “What’s going on?” “Well, the crew is taking bets on Lucas. “What type of bets?” “Since we’ve been filming, his boy ‘Kareem’ comes by every day and they go into the trailer.” “So what?” I said. “No, Kareem comes by and they are up in the trailer doing their thing.”

Kareem is a leading sitcom actor, married to an actress. They both have appeared in movies but Lucas in the breakout sensation. His boy Kareem, however, found success in television as a leading actor.

The crew’s bet was based on how often Lucas “boyfriend” would show up and how long he would stay. It was like clockwork; Kareem arrived each day at the same time and went straight to the trailer for hours on end. The bets grew larger and larger.

When I moved to Los Angeles and got into the DL world, our clique was talking about the downlow circle Lucas and Kareem were in-which I wanted to be a part of. But it was a hard nut to crack; they were superstars.

Still looking for more? Excerpt 3 and Excerpt 4. Sigh.

Happy reading, ya’ll.

While watching The Jane Austen Book Club today, I questioned how one might go about adding a “multicultural touch” to the film. Of course, this remix would have to begin with a change in the author. While I’m positive that black women read Jane Austen (although the book/film/Hollywood might force you to believe otherwise), I doubt many of us are gathering to discuss it at book group meetings. What would we discuss for six months straight? Zane? Terry McMillan (like Austen many of her books have been made into film)? J. California Cooper? What author would draw a literary and popular culture audience?

So, Tyler Perry this straight to DVD synopsis is free.

Six diverse male ex-cons gather once a month to discuss six books by Donald Goines. Thus, we have The Donald Goines Book Club. During the discussions, the men reflect on their own lives and what earned them their prison stints, prison life experiences, and difficult post-release adjustments. Unfortunately, I’ve only read two Goines books so I can’t say what titles would be on the member’s list or how it might relate to their lives. Interesting twist though, right? You know I’m casting Derek Luke and Nate Parker. Yup.

But seriously though . . . speaking of prison/ex-cons, there are several black fiction books that tackle the topic. I’m sure there are more authors than just Cheryl Robinson, Donald Goines, and Chester Himes, but my research skills are currently on vacation.

When I Get Free by Cheryl Robinson

Theodore “Tower” Evans is smart, clever, and always one step ahead of the game. Under a different set of circumstances, he could have become a top executive at a Fortune 500 company or a successful entrepreneur. Instead, he became a statistic: one in three black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine under correctional supervision or control. He’s sentenced to forty years in an Oklahoma state prison for drug trafficking. Ten years later, Tower’s paroled and living in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, trying to adjust to the changes that have occurred in the world. The only problem: His mind is still on lockdown. As the pressure of the outside mounts against Tower and the voices in his head begin to collide, his paranoia takes over. He trusts no one. Not Tonya, the evangelist who believes in spreading more than the good news to Tower. Not Gail, an aspiring writer who begins penning a novel based on Tower’s life. Not Mary, his married parole officer whose possessiveness turns dangerous when she threatens to send him back to prison. The years Tower spent on the inside have taken away the hope that he needs to regain before his temper destroys his second chance. When I Get Free is a novel inspired by the true events of an anonymous ex-con.

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Yesterday Will Make You Cry by Chester Himes

In 1937 Chester Himes, newly released from a seven-year stretch in the Ohio State Penitentiary for grand larceny, began his first novel, Yesterday Will Make You Cry. By turns brutal and lyrical and never less than totally honest, it tells the autobiographical story of young Jimmy Monroe’s passage through the prison system, which tests the limits of his sanity, his capacity for suffering, and his definition of love. Stunningly candid about racism, homosexuality, and prison corruption, the book would take sixteen years and four subsequent revisions before being published in a much-altered form as Cast the First Stone in 1953. Even bowdlerized, it was recognized as a sardonic masterpiece of debasement and transfiguration. This edition, the first hardcover publication in Norton’s Old School Books series, presents for the first time the book precisely as Himes intended it to be read, with its raw honesty and startling compassion entirely intact.

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White Man’s Justice, Black Man’s Grief by Donald Goines

Goines’ classic novel of prison life, it has been called “one of the most revealing books ever written about prison life and bigotry built into our system.” This is the story of Chester Hines, who thought he was the baddest man to come down the street. Behind prison walls he was nothing more than fresh meat.

Happy reading ya’ll.

Black book news. Does such a thing exist? Why isn’t there a website dedicated to black author interviews, excerpts, and book releases? I get tired of searching high and low for some sort of news and constantly finding nothing. It’s quite disappointing. Anyway, according to AALBC.com, several notable authors will offer new book releases this summer. Who are they? See for yourself.

Blood Colony by Tananarive Due

. . .Tananarive Due now imagines the story of an ancient group of immortals — a hidden African clan that has survived for more than a thousand years — facing one of the most challenging issues of our time: the AIDS/HIV pandemic. There’s a new drug on the street: Glow. Said to heal almost any illness, it is distributed by an Underground Railroad of drug peddlers. But what gives Glow its power? Its main ingredient is blood — the blood of immortals. A small but powerful colony of immortals is distributing the blood, slowly wiping out the AIDS epidemic and other diseases around the world. Meet Fana Wolde, seventeen years old, the only immortal born with the Living Blood. She can read minds, and her injuries heal immediately. When her best friend, a mortal, is imprisoned by Fana’s family, Fana helps her escape — and together they run away from Fana’s protected home in Washington State to join the Underground Railroad. But Fana has more than her parents to worry about: Glow peddlers are being murdered by a violent, hundred-year-old sect with ties to the Vatican. Now, when Fana is most vulnerable, she is being hunted to fulfill an ancient blood prophecy that could lead to countless deaths. While her people search for Fana and race to unravel the unknown sect’s mysterious origins, Fana must learn to confront the deadly forces — or she and everyone she loves will die. (Read an excerpt . . . )

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Slumberland by Paul Beatty

The narrator of Beatty’s late ’80s picaresque, Ferguson W. Sowell-aka DJ Darky-is so attuned to sound that he claims to have a “phonographic memory.” Ferguson, who does porno film scores for the money in L.A., has a cognoscenti’s delight in jazz, and he’s close to obsessed with Charles Stone, aka “the Schwa,” a musician who apparently disappeared into East Germany in the ’60s. Ferguson receives an already-scored tape whose soundtrack is so rich and strange and “transformative” that it must be by Schwa. Ferguson is soon on his way to Slumberland, a bar in West Berlin to which he sources the tape. He arrives just in time to experience the sexual allure black men exercise on Cold War Berliners, and stays long enough to watch the city’s culture fall apart after the fall of the Wall. With its acerbic running commentary on race, sex and Cold War culture, the latest from Beatty, author of Tuffand editor of The Anthology of African American Humor, contains flashes of absurdist brilliance in the tradition of William Burroughs and Ishmael Reed.

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Just Too Good to Be True by E. Lynn Harris

Brady Bledsoe and his mother, Carmyn, have a strong relationship. A single mother, faithful churchgoer, and the owner of several successful Atlanta beauty salons, Carmyn has devoted herself to her son and his dream of becoming a professional football player. Brady has always followed her lead, including becoming a member of the church’s “Celibacy Circle.” Now in his senior year at college, the smart, and very handsome, Brady is a lead contender for the Heisman Trophy and a spot in the NFL. As sports agents hover around Brady, Barrett, a beautiful and charming cheerleader, sets her mind on tempting the celibate Brady and getting a piece of his multimillion-dollar future—but is that all she wants from him, and is she acting alone? Carmyn is determined to protect her son. She’s also determined to protect the secret she’s kept from Brady his whole life. As things heat up on campus and Carmyn and Brady’s idyllic relationship starts to crumble, mother and son begin to wonder about the other—are you just too good to be true?

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Trading Dreams at Midnight by Diane McKinney Whetstone

Fifteen-year-old Neena and her younger sister, Tish, are certain their mother will return, flush with the promise of a new man. But Freeda’s disappearance on the cold February morning in 1984 soon stretches from days to months and from months to years. Raised by their stern grandmother Nan, the two sisters quickly learn to look after themselves, fiercely reinventing their lives in the wake of Freeda’s absence. Two decades later, at age thirty-six, Neena has moved away from Philadelphia and supports herself by blackmailing married men. When one of her stings goes terribly wrong, she decides to return to her childhood home. Unable to face her grandmother, Neena attempts to pull one last hustle on a prominent local lawyer. But when she learns that her younger sister has been hospitalized with pregnancy complications, she must decide how to come to terms with the woman who raised her. Reunited, Neena, Tish, and Nan each confronts her own memories of the past, and together reveal their dreams for the future.

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Don’t Ever Tell by Brandon Massey

DARK SECRETS. With a new identity, a new city to live in, and a wonderful new husband, Rachel Moore believes she’s finally free of the demons in her past. But nothing could be farther from the truth. For the deadly secrets she thought were long-buried are now on the brink of being exposed. HAVE A WAY. Someone has a vendetta against Rachel. Someone whom she betrayed a long time ago. Someone who is determined to make her pay-no matter the cost. OF COMING BACK WITH A VENGEANCE. Now Rachel knows it’s just a matter of time before her dangerous past meets up with her present-and destroys everything she’s worked so hard for. Because if there’s one thing that can be counted on-her enemy never forgets or forgives and will do whatever it takes to see Rachel suffer…

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Yellow Moon by Jewell Parker Rhodes

A jazzman, a wharf worker, a prostitute, all murdered. Wrists punctured, their bodies impossibly drained of blood. What connects them? Why are they rising as ghosts? Marie Levant, the great-great granddaughter of the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau knows better than anyone New Orleans’ brutal past—the legacy of slavery, poverty, racism and sexism—and as a Doctor at Charity Hospital’s ER, she treats its current victims. When she sleeps, she dreams of blood. Rain, never-ending. The river is rising and the yellow moon warns of an ancient evil—an African vampire—wazimamoto —a spirit created by colonial oppression. The struggle becomes personal, as the wazimamoto is intent on destroying her and all the Laveau descendents. Marie fights to protect her daughter, lover, and herself from the wazimamoto’s seductive assault on both body and spirit. Echoing with the heartache and triumph of the African American experience, the soulful rhythms of jazz, and the horrors of racial oppression, Yellow Moon gives us an unforgettable heroine—sexy, vulnerable, and mysterious—in Marie Levant, while it powerfully evokes a city on the brink of catastrophe.

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Happy reading ya’ll!

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.

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.