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.

A Father’s Law by Richard Wright

Did you know that Richard Wright has a new book out? Well, thanks to the New York Times, I just found out today, but the book was actually released in January. It is noted that the book was unfinished at the time of Wright’s death. I don’t know how I feel about that. Now, I’m no Richard Wright, but I can only imagine somebody taking an unfinished work of mine and publishing it. That means that no personal changes were made, no editing was done, and most importantly–it ain’t finished!

The Harper Collins website mentions:

A Father’s Law is the novel Richard Wright, acclaimed author of Black Boy and Native Son, never completed. Written during a six-week period near the end of his life, it appears in print for the first time, an important addition to this American master’s body of work, submitted by his daughter and literary executor, Julia, who writes:

It comes from his guts and ends at the hero’s “breaking point.” It explores many themes favored by my father like guilt and innocence, the difficult relationship between the generations, the difficulty of being a black policeman and father, the difficulty of being both those things and suspecting that your own son is the murderer. It intertwines astonishingly modern themes for a novel written in 1960.

Yeah, yeah, but what is the book really about? What about a full summary? Library Journal says:

Ruddy Turner is a black policeman who has just become the chief of police in an upscale Chicago suburb where there has been a string of murders. Turner is a conservative Catholic, with a devoted wife and a college-age son, Tommy, who seems disturbed and obsessed with the idea of crime. This is a psychological crime novel in which the police chief begins, with horror, to look upon his son as a possible murderer, but we never do find out if Tommy is really guilty or what happens next. While this unfinished novel adds to Wright’s body of work, it will be more useful to school and college libraries for its literary merits than to the general mystery collections at most public libraries.

Now this is the bulljang I’m talking about. Why would you want to read an unfinished mystery novel? You don’t even get to find out if Tommy is guilty! What is this? Choose Your Own Adventure? Couldn’t Julia Wright have found a ghost writer to finish off the book? Why wouldn’t she? I mean, I understand it would be difficult to find a ghost writer for the Richard Wright, but seriously . . . (Read the NYT’s review)

Okay, I’m over that.

I was looking at the Today Show website and saw a link about “Famous chefs shar[ing] their last meals.” So, for some reason I thought about G. Garvin and clicked the link wondering what he would cook up. But of course they didn’t include any black chefs. Of course not. Instead I read some bull about Eric Ripert (pardon my ignorance–but whoever that is!):

The French chef would choose “A simple dish, a slice of toasted country bread, some olive oil, shaved black truffle, rock salt and black pepper.” He would prepare the meal himself, dine under a “very big oak tree or banyan tree” and sip red bordeaux.

Come on dude! Is that really your last meal? He can make it sound all fancy if he wants to, but who wants thier last meal to be oiled bread with a slice of mushroom? Come on man! Isn’t that what he’s really saying though? Then to want to eat that bread under a tree is just taking it a bit far.

Sometime ago, my little sister and I discussed the website Dead Man Eating . . . Last Meals on Death Row. I’m telling you, the details on this website are so interesting that they’ve inspired at least two short stories of mine–and I’m not that morbid. For example, did you know that Stan “Tookie” Williams ate oatmeal and milk all day before his execution?

Personally, I would eat a little bit of everything for my last meal. I would be so sick by the time it was my time that it just wouldn’t even matter any more. I’m asking for fried chicken, buffalo wings (hot w/ blue cheese), a medium well ribeye, a fully loaded baked potato, shrimp (butter and garlic), Hibachi chicken fried rice, California rolls, sweet tea, Coke, chocolate cake and ice cream, McDonald’s french fries, a Skor candy bar, Lindt chocolate, a fully loaded bacon cheeseburger . . . I could go on, but you get the point.

And just because I’m curious, I’m going to send G. Garvin an email to ask him what his last meal would be for real. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Happy reading, ya’ll.

VONA & Cuernavaca, Mexico

Last summer I had the opportunity to attend two fiction writing workshops, including Hurston/Wright in D.C. and VONA in San Diego. I met some amazing up and coming writers (some of which I still communicate with) and had a chance to receive feedback on my work from Z.Z. Packer and Mat Johnson.

This year, if you’re considering attending a writing workshop, I highly recommend VONA–and they’ve even extended their application deadline. If you’re a fiction writer like myself, this years workshop leaders include Chris Abani and Junot Diaz. Can you really beat that? Check this link for more information on VONA.

So what am I doing this summer besides reading and working on my fiction? I am heading to Cuernavaca, Mexico to attend a language institute. I have a language requirement that I must pass when I return and I haven’t taken a Spanish course in over 10 years. I’m assuming that three months alone in Mexico should do the trick. I doubt I’m wrong. Be sure to view the videoclip if you’re curious about any of this.

Happy reading, ya’ll.

Push (The Movie): Gabourey Sidibe

I just finished reading Push for my AfAm literature class. I heard the audiobook a few years ago and must admit that it was nothing like actually seeing the pain on the page. At one point I actually put the book down, but never doubted that I would make it to the end. From the start you just want to see Claireece “Precious” Jones triumph.

As I attempt to figure out what the focus of my research paper will be, I’ve started to search for interviews with Sapphire (unfortunately scholarly articles are limited). During my search, I found an update on the book’s film which is currently in production. I know I mentioned all this in a previous post, but I now have a photo and more information on the film’s most important character.

She almost didn’t go to the audition in September for the movie version of “Push,” a novel by the African-American poet Sapphire. She arrived late, as the casting people were getting ready to wrap up, to read for the starring role, that of an illiterate, abused teenager named Precious Jones in a story about incest, H.I.V. and the hope of redemption. And even though the casting search had gone on for months in audition rooms all across the country, she blew everyone away.

Ms. Sidibe cannot explain the wave of emotion she tapped into that day, in a performance that got her a meeting with the director, Lee Daniels, and the starring role in his movie less than a week later.

“I’m sad for her, so I was sad,” she said with a shrug the other day in her dressing room in the Brooklyn Municipal Building, where the movie was being filmed. She is not a Method actor, she said; she doesn’t “become” the character when she isn’t acting.

But there are ways that she can relate. Ms. Sidibe is larger than the typical starlet at the casting agency, and her skin is darker. When she was younger, she was teased about her appearance. More recently, when she hung out with her theater friends, some other girl, taller or skinnier, always got all the attention.

“I was comic relief,” she said. “The best friend.”

Now she is the star. She tells herself that fame isn’t guaranteed by doing one movie. She is, she said, level-headed that way.

(Read more . . .)

I even found a clip of Gabbie’s audition!

Happy reading, ya’ll.

Boondocks: The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show & The Hunger Strike

Enjoy it while it lasts because from what I hear, these episodes have been banned and are consistently deleted from YouTube. Maybe you can tell me the reasons why.