Tip visited the women in the slave quarters even before his wife was dead. After the mistress was gone, his visits increased. He barely waited for the young girls to stain their pallets red before he took them. Mawu held him off longer than most. The first time he came for her, she bit him and kicked him in the leg. The second time, she dropped an iron on his foot that broke a toe. After that, he brought her down to the barn for her first beating. When he told her to strip her clothes, she refused. Even though he was smaller than the average man, she was even smaller. He took her afterwards while she was still sick in bed healing from the lashes. The more Mawu fought, the more determined he became to have her over and over again. He had her strapped to the bed on more than one occasion.

So, ignore these preliminary thoughts. I’m still reading, y’all.

“I believe that history is everywhere.  You don’t have to move your story to find the history. Wherever the story is set, there is history already there.  As the writer you just choose to highlight it or not.” – Tayari Jones

Silver Sparrow Quick Summary: Two girls come to grips with the realities and impact of their parents choices—including bigamy.

Book Thoughts: After reading a few Amazon reviews, I decided that I needed to finish this book in 2 days like everybody else. Mission accomplished and I appreciate the motivation. Silver Sparrow is told by the daughters of a man who marries one woman out of obligation (publicly) and another out of lust (secretly). I enjoyed Dana’s narration—the prettier, secret offspring. However, when the other daughter, Chaurisse, begins her chronicle, I questioned why Dana couldn’t somehow tell the whole story. While I enjoyed the story plot and it’s southern settings, I did have some issues with the back-story transitions, but since the back-stories were so intriguing, that’s a minor issue. Overall, Jones presents a strong family of characters with the type of quirks, strengths, and secrets that drive you quickly to the final pages. As reflected in the quick excerpt below, I especially loved how Jones tied in the story of Mary Woodson and Al Green. Grade: B+

Quick Excerpt: On October 18, 1974, when a really pissed-off black woman flung a pot of hot grits on Al Green, her hair was freshly pressed and curled by none other than my mama. As a result of our little brush with Negro history, nobody made Al Green jokes in our house, or even in the Pink Fox, where you can imagine a lot of women fantasized about taking revenge on a lying man. I think the women like the story not just because of the drama of it, but because grits were the weapon of choice.

Thoughts on a Reference: Jones notes in the Harvard Gazette, “I was thinking about the woman who threw grits on Al Green throughout ‘Silver Sparrow’ because, particularly in the black community in the South, that story is referenced so much.” Well, I thought about this familiar story so much that after I finished the book, I started my research. We begin with the 1974 Jet magazine article.

Jet Magazine 1974 - Al Green/Mary Woodson Inside Story

In 2000, Al Green published the details of his encounters with Mary Woodson in his biography Take Me to the River:

I went to my room to change my clothes. When I went to the kitchen, Mary was standing at the stove, stirring a big pot of water with a wooden spoon. She turned around and asked me had I ever thought about getting married, I replied, “Maybe we should talk about that in the morning.” When I asked her what she was cooking, she didn’t answer me. Then suddenly, she whispered in my ear, “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

While the grit throw is the most memorable part of Green’s detail, the facts concerning his infatuation with this woman—her beauty and just her presence as a whole are just as interesting. He had to have this woman and didn’t care about the real life that existed outside of their being together. Because this woman couldn’t break herself free from the life choices made before Green, she throws grits on him and proceeds to officially conclude any other possibility of a future life for herself with him or anybody else in this world.

I wouldn’t have considered giving Green’s grits episode another thought without Jones mention (outside of the typical ‘woman gone mad’ jokes) . Maybe she’ll reference Teddy Pendagrass riding around with Tanika Watson (the drag queen) in her next book. I’d love that! Just kidding (or not).

Happy reading, y’all!

May 2012 present you with even better books.

Happy reading, y’all!

Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label by Bill Adler, Dan Charnas and Lyor Cohen

“Work is the prayer,” writes Russell Simmons in a preface to the book documenting 25 years of his record label, Def Jam. Lyor Cohen, who began with Def Jam by managing Run DMC and is now the CEO of Warner Music Group, says he never thought he’d see the day — a coffee table book was never the goal. The first purpose of Def Jam Recordings was to put early 1980s New York City street culture on wax; the purpose of Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label is to put the community of and around Def Jam (the execs, the publicists, managers, musicians, fans, promoters, photographers) in print. As hip-hop approaches middle age, the urge to tell the culture’s story in its own words, on paper, has been irresistible. Everybody knows Jay-Z wrote an autobiography, but this year so did Prodigy of Mobb Deep, Ice-T and Common. Def Jam went the oral history route, supplemented by photos, design, memorabilia, poster art and album covers that make the lore come alive. You will lose all track of time. The company has bet that the work that’s gone into making its portion of hip-hop culture — most of which is what Simmons calls “disruptive” music — was fun enough, excellent enough, paradigm-shifting enough, that we’d take 6 1/2 pounds of office gossip and party snapshots with us every time we move.

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Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny by Nile Rodgers

Today’s pop music—genre-crossing, gender-bending, racially mixed, visually stylish, and dominated by dance music with global appeal—is the world that Nile Rodgers created. In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote and produced the songs that defined that era and everything that came after: “Le Freak,” “Good Times,” “We Are Family,” “Like a Virgin,” “Modern Love,” “I’m Coming Out,” “The Reflex,” “Rapper’s Delight.” During pop’s most glamorous and decadent age, Nile Rodgers wrote the biggest records and lived behind the velvet rope—whether he was holding court in the bathroom stalls at Studio 54, club hopping with Madonna, or scarfing down White Castle burgers with Diana Ross. Le Freak is the fascinating inside story of pop and its tangled roots, narrated by the man who absorbed everything in his topsy-turvy life—the pain and euphoria and fear and love—and turned it into some of the most sparklingly ebullient pop music ever recorded. Nile Rodgers is a brilliant storyteller who gives readers the surprising behind-the-scenes tales of the songs we all know, and lovingly re-creates the lost outsider subcultures—from the backstreets of 1950s Greenwich Village to the hills of 1960s Southern California to the demimonde of New York’s 1970s and 1980s discos and clubs—that live on in his music and in the throbbing, thriving world of pop he helped to set in motion.

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The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock n’ Roll by Preston Lauterbach

A definitive account of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in black America, this book establishes the Chitlin’ Circuit as a major force in American musical history. Combining terrific firsthand reporting with deep historical research, Preston Lauterbach uncovers characters like Chicago Defender columnist Walter Barnes, who pioneered the circuit in the 1930s, and larger-than-life promoters such as Denver Ferguson, the Indianapolis gambling chieftain who consolidated it in the 1940s. Charging from Memphis to Houston and now-obscure points in between, The Chitlin’ Circuit brings us into the sweaty back rooms where such stars as James Brown, B. B. King, and Little Richard got their start. With his unforgettable portraits of unsung heroes including King Kolax, Sax Kari, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Lauterbach writes of a world of clubs and con men that has managed to avoid much examination despite its wealth of brash characters, intriguing plotlines, and vulgar glory, and gives us an excavation of an underground musical America.

So, keep an eye out for other 2011 book lists that feature African Americans (and other minorities, too). Happy reading y’all!

Once I reached a certain point in the book, I moved beyond the ifs, hows, or whens of whether the family might receive reparations for their mother’s “stolen” cells. There were two many questions to be answered on how something like that might be achieved. But then I started to wonder whether the success of Immortal Life might mean that one more person–excluding the family–profited in a major way. After further exposing the HeLa story, I questioned how Skloot’s gains would help this family.

In February 2011, The New York Times ran an article titled “Returning the Blessings of an Immortal Life.” The first line put my concern to rest somewhat: “If there was one thing Rebecca Skloot was certain of when writing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it was that she did not want to profit from the Lacks family without giving something in return.”After researching so many people who had profited, Skloot was already off on a positive track. Highlights from the article continue:

Mrs. Lacks had three sons and two daughters, both of whom have died.

The foundation — which is still in the process of applying for tax-exempt status from the I.R.S.— is paying for a high-tech hearing aid for Mrs. Lacks’s youngest son, Zakariyya; truck repairs for her middle son, Sonny; new teeth for her granddaughter Kimberly; braces for her great-granddaughter Aiyana Rodgers; and, yes, tuition, books and fees for five of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

To aid Henrietta Lacks’s three surviving sons, Ms. Skloot said that she made sure that they were hired as consultants for the HBO film, which is being produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and the screenwriter Alan Ball (“American Beauty,” “True Blood”). She is also working to raise money to cover more than $125,000 in medical bills that Sonny Lacks incurred after having quadruple-bypass surgery.

Ms. Skloot contributes some of her royalties and speaking fees to the foundation, though she does not follow any particular formula. Much of the $50,000 that the foundation has received from readers has come from cancer survivors and scientists who have written to say, “I owe my career to,” or “I wrote my dissertation on,” HeLa cells, she said.

Ms. Skloot said that she expected a hefty donation from Harpo Films, but that none of the large biotech companies that continue to profit from HeLa have yet to contribute.

Johns Hopkins, where Mrs. Lacks was given state-of-the-art care in its colored ward as her cells were being harvested, has not donated to the foundation, but it has established a lecture series in her name; a $10,000-a-year scholarship for students from an East Baltimore high school; and a $15,000 annual award for community health groups. As Ms. Skloot makes clear in her book, both the law and the ethics regarding medical research were different back then, and Hopkins did nothing illegal by taking a cell sample from Mrs. Lacks.

“I don’t want to be an activist and I’m not a philanthropist,” said Ms. Skloot, who has been consumed by the details of setting up the foundation over the last year. She is one of three board members; her aim is to enlarge the board and reduce her own involvement so that she can get back to what she really wants to do: write. (Read complete NY Times article . . .)

By the book’s end, this reader felt like the family had gotten over getting what was owed to them for their mother’s cells. Instead, they’d settled on the fact that their mother’s contribution to science had helped millions of people. If you feel like they deserve more financially, then maybe you should consider donating to The Henrietta Lacks Foundation.

On to search for my next book! Happy reading, y’all.

Thank God I’m Natural: The Ultimate Guide to Caring for and Maintaining Natural Hair has been hailed by Essence magazine as “The Natural Hair Bible” and for good cause. Inside the 200 plus natural hair-care guide are product tips for natural hair, homemade hair care recipes and myths about going natural that author and Harvard law graduate Chris-Tia Donaldson debunks. The book, which features the advice from celebrity stylists who have worked with  Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and others, helps women of all ages properly transition from relaxed to natural hair. Along with the book, readers can also visit www.tginblog.com for current information on natural hair care including trimming natural hair, how to develop a healthy hair routine after you’ve done your Big Chop and other useful tips. Both the book and website are for women who are tired of spending their entire Saturday in the hair salon only to find their hair is dry, damaged and breaking. Going natural is a life changing choice, that is filled with ups and downs, let Thank God I’m Natural be your guide to reaching your natural hair potential.

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The good news is: the most stylish clothes you can have are probably already in your closet. But savvy women are on a perpetual quest to find the perfect addition to their wardrobe: the perfect bathing suit, a traffic-stopping pair of jeans, that classic little black dress. While the editorial pages of high fashion magazines can offer inspiration, they can’t help you find what works for your looks and lifestyle. But Lloyd Boston’s The Style Checklist offers basic guidance to help make your everyday commute your runway. With solutions to common fashion problems and a lot of how-to advice, this book simplifies and demystifies how to achieve style.

Unfortunately, none of these books were published this year. I guess that’s not the point. Two books that will help you be a new and better you for the New Year maybe?  Happy reading, y’all!

Whitehead mentioned the following in a past interview:

I’ve always had zombie anxiety dreams, ever since, you know, seeing Dawn of the Dead when I was in junior high. So, once a month I have some zombie dream. They’re fast, they’re slow. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes I’m alone. And I was definitely hoping that I would end this particular manifestation of anxiety dream by writing the book. And I was 95 percent successful. I had one a couple of days ago — perhaps that’s tied to publication. Not sure.

(Read an excerpt and more)

Happy reading, y’all.

I’m a visual person. Images and photographs inspire me. I even prefer pictures in my cookbooks. After all, what’s the point of making a dish if you don’t know how the end product is supposed to look? Anyway, here are a few books from my collection that I enjoy flipping through on occasion—and even a few that I need to borrow/purchase. A few photographs from these books have even been known to inspire short stories and paintings. See for yourself.

Happy reading, y’all.

I finally climbed aboard the Henrietta Lacks bandwagon—only after seeing the book on the bestsellers list for sometime and noticing that over 800 people on both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s websites gave it an excellent review. And now, after reading a sample chapter, I decided to see what all the hype is about. I honestly didn’t expect to be this interested, but after only a day I’m already on page 100. That says a great deal. For those of you who haven’t fallen victim to the hype yet, please accept this snippet into your mental for Teaser Tuesday:

Henrietta knew nothing about her cells growing in a laboratory. After leaving the hospital, she went back to life as usual. She’d never loved the city, so almost every weekend she took the children back to Clover, where she worked the tobacco fields and spent hours churning butter on the steps of the home-house. Though radium often causes relentless nausea, vomiting, weakness, and anemia, there’s no record of Henrietta having any side effects, and no one remembers her complaining of feeling sick.

Back to reading, y’all.

Whenever I speak to audiences about my fiction, inevitably I’m asked about rejection. How many times did you face rejection, they ask. And I tell them: many times. My first novel was dead in the water for 3 years, three years of submission and rejection, and I had exactly one story published during that time. I was working at the University of New Orleans during the years following Hurricane Katrina. Driving through New Orleans East for work, through that wasted landscape, the houses rotting and spray-painted, the empty streets, the waste from the flood still sitting where the water deposited it when it receded subdued me so thoroughly I didn’t write a new sentence for 3 years. Fine, I thought, I’ll shut up now. I told despair: You win. I began looking up the pre-requisite courses I’d need to enter a nursing program, began plotting my return to school, my leave from writing.

And then Doug Siebold of Agate Publishing said yes to Where the Line Bleeds. Two years later, my editor at Bloomsbury Publishing said yes to my second novel Salvage the Bones. And now, the folks at the National Book Foundation have said yes.

So many can tell you no, I tell my audience, but you only need one person to say yes.

If you haven’t heard recently, Jesmyn Ward’s book Salvage the Bones is the new National Book Award winner (can you say $10,000 award winner?). And for those of you who don’t know, well, here’s more on that book:

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn’t show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn’t much to save. Lately, Esch can’t keep down what food she gets; she’s fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull’s new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child’s play and short on parenting.

As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family-motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce-pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

If you’re interested in other novels that involve Hurricane Katrina, be sure to take notice of Rosalyn Story’s Wading Home. It has excellent online reviews, if that counts.

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, chef and widower Simon Fortier knows how he plans to face the storm–riding it out inside his long-time home in the city’s Treme neighborhood, just as he has through so many storms before. But when the levees break and the city is torn apart, Simon disappears. His son, Julian, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, rushes home to a New Orleans he left years before to search for his father. As Julian crisscrosses the city, fearing the worst, he reconnects with Sylvia, Simon’s companion of many years; Parmenter, his father’s erstwhile business partner and one of the most successful restaurateurs in New Orleans; and Velmyra, the woman Julian left behind when he moved to New York. Julian’s search for Simon deepens as he finds himself drawn into the troubled history of Silver Creek, the extravagantly beautiful piece of land where his father grew up, and closer once again to Velmyra. As he tries to come to grips with his father’s likely fate, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of his father and the city he loved so much, while unraveling the mysteries of Silver Creek.

Pick up a book by an African American author on Katrina and its aftermath soon. Happy reading, y’all.