Welcome!
This section is open to anyone who'd like to submit a short written review of any books, films, articles, web sites they've seen. Ideally in relation to - but not limited to - African or African American topics...

Or 'shout out' a new book or an old one.

Hope to see you drop by soon.

Just hit Reply to this thread.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FireFly,

Greetings to you, Firefly

I want to give a 'shout out' to the following:

1. Brothers In Arms - Written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton. Interesting read.

2. Unforgivable Blackness {The rise and fall of Jack Johnson} - by Geoffrey C. Ward. This is an excellent historical account of the life & career of the first black heavy weight champion (boxing). Personally, I had never heard of Jack Johnson until last year--so his story had me glued to the pages. He was a VERY INTERESTING, charismatic & bold brother...especially during a difficult time in America for black folks...a time when overt racism was the norm.

3. hallelujah! the welcome table (a lifetime of memories with recipes) - by Maya Angelou. OMG!!!! Excellent read!!!!! Great but fattening recipes. I absolutely ADORE Maya Angelou and the stories are heartwarming & inspiring...I can't say enough about it. Short stories ending with a tasty recipe--cute!

4. Ebony Rising {short fiction of the greater Harlem Renasissance Era) - Edited by Craig Gable. Great book. This book was not 'easy reading' for me ... due to the writing style of some of the writers.

5. hokum - edited by paul beatty. Another book that wasn't 'easy reading' for me. However, I think every African American should have a copy of this book in their library.

And lastly--6. Dream Boogie (The Triumph of Sam Cooke) - Peter Guralnick. This is the last book I read prior to starting "The Covenant of Black America." It's a great book with nice photos that include group shots of...Lou Rawls...Jackie Wilson...and a few others.

These are just to name a few. . .I did a lot of reading while recovering from an auto accident. And OK, I will admit to reading a few Romance novels in between the serious stuff. LOL

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Fabulous,

Oops, I forgot to give a 'shout out' to my main man--Michael Eric Dyson. {who, btw, I have a serious crush on. If he ever leaves his wife, I'll be waiting just around the bend. And yep, I'm willing to have his baby. . .or he can simply donate his sperm} LOL

Anyway. . .

The Michael Eric Dyson Reader--by Michael E. Dyson. Excellent read (although it took me forever to finish)

Why I love Black Woman - Michael E. Dyson. Another excellent read. Go Michael!

The Color Complex - Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, Ronald Hall. Very interesting read.

Ok, I'm done. I LOVE this section, Firefly. You go gurl.

hey gurl! Exciting news (for me anyhoo lol) is that Maya Angelou is a guest speaker at next month's Sydney Writer's Festival - via satellite from New York, not in person unfortunately... I can't wait!! I'll report back!

Yes, Hallelujah - the Welcome Table is wonderful... I couldn't afford the book so I bought the ebook with her reading it - she has the most amazing gravelly, warm, rich voice. I'm still making my way through the first cd worth - 2 to go!!
Her book really helps paint a vision of a time and place and to 'glimpse' African American culture of the past, which lays the foundation for today. It's really special.

I am dipping into Michael Dyson's reader... I've only read 2 essays so far... I noticed a few people don't like him... however I find him a very erudite voice. Has anyone read his book about Hurricane Katrina? I noticed it the other night online.

Very interested in writers and artists from the Harmlem Renaissance era so I'll add Ebony Rising to my list, thanks.

I've just started reading this history title... it's interesting to read about the colours being used from pigments found naturally, and also the change in use of colour when europeans arrived and indigenous artists started using blues and other synthetic colours.

Where the Ancestors Walked
Australia as an Aboriginal Landscape
by Philip Clarke
ISBN: 1741140706

Since their arrival many thousands of years ago, Australia's Aboriginal people have developed a unique, rich and elaborate way of life. With a deep spiritual attachment to land and a strong sense of community, they have drawn on traditions to respond to new situations. In this way they have thrived (survived?) in Australia's changing and often harsh landscape.

Early European settlers in Australia judged Aboriginal culture as primitive. Yet the Aboriginal people they encountered had a highly sophisticated understanding of their environment and complex strategies for finding food and medicines, and for making tools and art objects.

Philip Clarke paints a remarkable picture of the culture and traditions of Aboriginal Australia, and the way in which Aboriginal people relate to the land across the continent.

~ ~ ~

Originally posted by FireFly/art_gurl:

hey gurl! Exciting news (for me anyhoo lol) is that Maya Angelou is a guest speaker at next month's Sydney Writer's Festival - via satellite from New York, not in person unfortunately... I can't wait!! I'll report back!

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Please DO! I LOVE Maya Angelou!! and I'd love to hear (sorta speak) what she had to say.

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Yes, Hallelujah - the Welcome Table is wonderful... I couldn't afford the book so I bought the ebook with her reading it - she has the most amazing gravelly, warm, rich voice. I'm still making my way through the first cd worth - 2 to go!!

Her book really helps paint a vision of a time and place and to 'glimpse' African American culture of the past, which lays the foundation for today. It's really special.

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Wow, that sounds really cool, FireFly. Maybe I'll pick up the ebook myself. I love Maya's voice. She reminds me of my grandmother.

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I am dipping into Michael Dyson's reader... I've only read 2 essays so far... I noticed a few people don't like him... however I find him a very erudite voice. Has anyone read his book about Hurricane Katrina? I noticed it the other night online.

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I have his book about Hurricane Katrina but I haven't started reading it yet. And you're correct, there ARE a few folks who don't like him. BUT~ Oh well.

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Very interested in writers and artists from the Harmlem Renaissance era so I'll add Ebony Rising to my list, thanks.

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You're welcome.

The Cruellest Journey
600 miles by canoe to the legendary city of Timbuktu
KIRA SALAK
ISBN: 0553816292

I noticed this book after sharing a whole lot of photo's and video footage of a friends trip to Mali. Flicking through the pages was like a background story in where my friend had travelled, but from a younger woman's perspective, and with more detail.

Kira travels on assignment for National Geographic, and although a photographer was always travelling 3 days behind her, she made the choice to go solo, by canoe, down the Niger River to retrace the journey of Mungo Park.

I warmed to her writing style straight away, she is a 'straight shooter', fiercely determined, brave, and writes with insight and warmth.

It really is a page-turner, an adventure story that paints a vivid picture of the country and people.

Here are two great books I have recently read: Perfumed Paradise and Poetic dream and soul possession. Those books blew my mind, really I did not know we had so many great black writers out there. I give whoever this guy is an A+ check it out http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~35842.aspx

you may have to copy and paste the link, good job to our strong black males authors

hey lasandra35... thanks for the eye-out... I'm quite interested in Haiti so always glad to hear of new authors

You've convinced me:

quote:

...sensually evocative poems characterized by assonant phrasing, richly descriptive adjectives, and witty metaphors.

I'll check out the author's websites too. thanks

I saw this online... haven't read it.

INDIGO ROSE
Susan Miller

Indigo Rosemartin is lured to America by the prospect of earning money to send home to Jamaica and provide advantages to her daughter, Louisa. So Indigo leaves behind her young daughter in the care of her disapproving mother. When the little girl is killed by a hit-and-run driver, Indigo is lost to grief and guilt, losing her bearings with her family and the family for whom she works.

She is a domestic in the household of a university professor, tending to his three daughters after his emotionally unstable wife abandons the family. Indigo is angry and resentful of the girls' neediness. Restless and troubled by her dreams, she wanders the streets at night until a friend introduces her to a private gambling den owned by a fellow Jamaican, Brother Man, which promises to distract her from her woes. Instead, she is pulled into a new nightmare that eventually pushes her back into life.

Miller's mesmerizing first novel, reminiscent of the work of Jamaica Kincaid, slowly uncoils as Indigo journeys from a crippling grief to peace. Vanessa Bush

THE LONGEST JOURNEY
Resettling Refugees from Africa
Peter Browne
ISBN 0868408263

Over the fast five years more than 25,000 Africans have arrived in Australia under the federal government's humanitarian resettlement program. Some have spend a decade or more in refugee camps in remote regions of East Africa: years of inadequate food, enforced inactivity and the threat of violence. Hundreds of thousands are still stranded in the camps.

Australia is one of only a dozen western countries that resettle refugees recommended the the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. But how fair is the resettlement process?

Does it always - as Amanda Vanstone and her predecessor, Philip Ruddock, insist - help the neediest of all refugees?

Drawing on interviews with refugees, policymakers, officials and aid workers in Nairobi, Kakuma, Geneva, Canberra and Melbourne, Peter Browne looks at the opportunities and obstacles facing refugees whose homeland is in turmoil and whose country of first regue is ill-equipped to offer a long-term home. He traces the development of the reguee policy over the past century, and describes how the focus of international efforts gradually shifted away from Europe.

Focusing on experiences of refugees who have fled to Kenya from Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, this book looks at how the international resettlement system works, how it has helped many displaced people, and how some refugees can find the barriers to resettlement too great to overcome.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FireFly,

Not a new title, but new to me...

EVERYTHING BUT THE BURDEN
What White People are Taking From Black Culture
Edited by Greg Tate

In a dazzling collection of essays editor Greg Tate takes on what his mother used to call "everything but the burden", dissecting the ways in which white culture has misappropriated much of black culture, from music to dance, fashion, sports and more.

The writers tackle the all-American enchantment with Blackness.
Some approach the task through iconic figures whose lives and work embodied the network of the history of shame, blame, idolatry, bravery, tomfooishness, and misapprehension that marks the subject.
Through its kaleidoscopic, insighful approach, the book takes an exhilarating, controversial, look at how white culture has rendered the progenators of the nation's creative profile as the most alluring, co-optable, and erasable of human beings.

www.harlemmoon.com

"Posed to become must-read material for the cross-generaltional and cross-racial masses." - Africa.com

If you are really trying to understand the dynamics of race in america I dare you to read two books by Ishmael Reed "Mumbo Jumbo" and Last days if "Louisiana(sic) Red".

quote:

Originally posted by Fagunwa:
If you are really trying to understand the dynamics of race in america I dare you to read two books by Ishmael Reed "Mumbo Jumbo" and Last days if "Louisiana(sic) Red".

I don't really do 'dare' but the 'truth' is that I asked a friend to send me Mumbo Jumbo around 8 months ago and made a start on it... I found the language a bit of a hurdle - that is not to diss the language - but I realized that without a bit more 'background' it would go over my head and reading it may be a wasted exercise insofaras I might not get it. So, I've put that book aside for later, but I have read a few other essays by Ishmael Reed. I haven't heard of Lousisiana... Fagunwa... I have so many books to read and so much to learn... which is why I started to formalize it into a winter of home-study. What I wouldn't give - if I had an undergrad degree - to fly over to the US and study African American Studies at Uni. I'm hoping the universe might conspire to somehow get me to a summer school somehow... but besides that... I have a lot to read before I could even contemplate that.
Straight up, Fangunwa, I am on a mission of which I don't know what or where the heck it's going to lead or how it would be of any use, but it feels right and I'm 'on it.' All help and inisght is valued... likewise all personalized ranting and venom is valueless. And while baseless vicous words of others do sting me, it is the words of more wise people that have a lasting impact - usually in a positive way. There's one thing to know about me, and that for all my faults or short comings, I am quite a determined woman.

...and I don't need my ego stroked every 5mins, like some.

.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FireFly,

Below is book review by Paula Henderson on "Darkest Child." I read the book a month ago and the book still lingers in my mind. Maybe because I knew a family like the one described in the book and I am a foster parent of a child from such a family.

REVIEW:
"Haven't you ever heard of the Quinn's?" asked Tangy Mae, the central character in Delores Phillips' debut novel, The Darkest Child. Tangy Mae is the darkest child of Rozelle Quinn. Rozelle is the matriarch of the infamous Quinn clan of Pakersfield, Georgia, which consists of ten children who possess differing shades of melanin, shows evidence of the varying paternity of each child.

Rozelle, not a religious person, uses the biblical phrase "Honor thy mother" to keep her children loyal and obedient, all while extracting unspeakable and horrific acts of abuse on them. Her compulsion to hold on to her children and her twisted mental state is the catalyst that keeps the story moving.

Set in the late 1950s, the story is told through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae. Tangy's desire is to graduate from high school and attend college. Rozelle tries all that she can to thwart Tangy's efforts and kill her dreams labeling her the "ugliest" of her children. Tangy endures the abuse from her mother in order to protect her siblings and continue with her dream.

The drama the family experiences is loaded with murder, betrayal and sexual abuse. Rozelle never fails to shock the reader with each selfish act. When you think that she can get no worse, she does something more to knock you off your feet.

The author poignantly details the pain the children experience at the hands of the one who should show them unconditional love. Although it is a dark story there are moments of happiness, hope and love.

Delores Phillips has done an excellent job with her first work of fiction, portraying each character vibrantly through the book. The plot twists are enough to keep readers talking for a long time. The Darkest Child is a remarkable novel.

The abuse in that novel was difficult to read through.

Rarely do I ever venture into the military zone of a bookshop, however I happened to pick this up and have a quick read of the first few pages... it's gripping. Written in a very honest, relaxed style, it tells the store of a young unemployed graduate who decides to enlist and is sent to Iraq. It looks like a quick, easy and very interesting read.

My War: Killing Time in Iraq (New ed) - AUD$24.95
by Colby Buzzell

'Once we passed the checkpoint at the border, it hit me. I was like, Holy Shit, this is it, I'm entering a combat zone. Cool!' At twenty-six Colby Buzzell, unemployed and living at home, decided to join the US Army. Within months he was in Iraq, a machine gunner in the controversial Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an army unit on the cutting edge of combat technology and the first of its kind. Trapped amid 'guerrilla warfare, urban-style' in Mosul, Iraq, Buzzell was struck by the bizarre and often frightening world surrounding him. He began writing a blog describing the war - not as being reported by CNN or official briefings - but as experienced by the soldier on the ground. His story is a brutally honest and hard-hitting account of the absurdities of modern war. These are the real stories of the war: a firefight where the resistance came from 'men in black'; a night spent chain-smoking in the guard tower counting the tracer bullets being fired over the city; and the hesitation of a young soldier who had been passed around from platoon to platoon because he was too afraid to fight. "My War" is a powerful story of a young man and a war, unlike any you have read before.

ISBN 0552154377
Format PaperBack
Category NonFiction - Military
Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
Publication Date 30-Apr-2006

quote:

Originally posted by ma'am:
The abuse in that novel was difficult to read through.

I know what you mean ma'am. I wanted the reading to get better but after the death of the baby, I had "had-it" with Rozelle. But remember she was CRAZY and untreated. Unfortunately, there are women in the REAL world who have untreated mental health problems and its their CHILDREN who have to live with it until someone on the outside takes action.

I thought this book sounded interesting... great cover photo too. It starts in the 1930s at the 'dawn' of advertising and moves up to mobile phones...

MADE TO BREAK: Technology and Obsolescence in America Giles Slade

"...this book is a collection of stories that emerged during my search for obsolescence in uniquely American events... While the ancient Egyptians built great monuments to endure for countless generations, just about everything we produce in North America is made to break. If human history reserves a priviledged placed for the Egyptians because of their rich conception of the afterlife, what place will it reserve for a people who, in their seeming worship of convenience and greed, left behind mountains of electronic debris?

Will America's pyramids be pyramids of waste? The point of this book is to raise this troubling question."

"If you've replaced a computer lately - or a cell phone, a camera, a televison - chances are, the old one still worked. And chances are even greater that the latest model won't last as long as the one it replaced. Welcome to the world of planned obsolescence - a business model, a way of life, and a uniquely American invention that this eye-opening book explores from its beginning to its perilous implications for the very near future.

Made to Break is a history of 20th century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. America invented disposability, Giles Slade tells us, and he explains how this concept was in fact a necessary condition for the nation's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence.

His book shows us the ideas behind obsolescence at work in such American milsetones as the invention of branding, packaging, and advertising; the contest for market dominance between GM and Ford; the struggle for a national communications network; and the development of electronic technologies - and with it, the avalanche of electronic consumer waste that will overwhelm America's landfills and poison its water within the coming decade.

What place will history hold for a society addicted to consumption - a whole culture made to break? This book gives as a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well".

Giles Slade is an independent scholar and freelance writer.