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books tagged “african-american” (African American / african american)
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Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twiceby April SinclairISBN 0614223555 (0-614-22355-5)
Hardcover, Hyperion Books
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Anything We Love Can Be Saved : A Writer's Activismby Alice WalkerISBN 0679455841 (0-679-45584-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anything We Love Can Be Saved : A Writer's Activism'Book summary:Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, is an international activist and self-professed womanist. This pleasing collection of short essays amounts to a very personal stroll through her psyche. Sharing touchstones and demons, she serves up a spirited defense of Winnie Mandela, accused of taking part in kidnapping and torture; a quest to mark the grave of Zora Neale Hurston, an "African AmerIndian" folklorist who chronicled the lives of Southern American blacks in the 1920s and '30s; poignant, angry witnesses at a conference in Ghana devoted to stopping female genital mutilation; and life lessons her daughter taught her. Walker's opinions are enriched by her poetry and highlighted by the whimsical phrases and titles with which she frames serious subjects. [via]
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Bearing Witness: African-American Autobiographyby Henry Louis GatesISBN 0679735208 (0-679-73520-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Being Black : Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Graceby Angel Kyodo WilliamsISBN 0670892688 (0-670-89268-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Black Bettyby Walter MosleyISBN 0671884271 (0-671-88427-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Black Iceby Lorene CaryISBN 0679737456 (0-679-73745-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Black Odyssey: The Case of the Slave Ship Amistadby Mary CableISBN 0670172820 (0-670-17282-0)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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Blanche Passes Goby Barbara NeelyISBN 0670891657 (0-670-89165-7)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Blues Legacies and Black Feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holidayby Angela Y. DavisISBN 067945005X (0-679-45005-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blues Legacies and Black Feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday'Book summary:The female blues singers of the 1920s, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and Bessie Smith, not only invented a musical genre, but they also became models of how African American women could become economically independent in a culture that had not previously allowed it. Both Smith and Rainey composed, arranged, and managed their own road bands. Angela Y. Davis's study emphasizes the impact that these singers, and later Billie Holiday, had on the poor and working-class communities from which they came. The artists addressed radical subjects such as physical and economic abuse, race relations, and female sexual power, including lesbianism. Ma Rainey was well known as a lover of women as well as men, and her song "Prove It on Me" describes a butch woman who dresses like a man and dates women. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism places the fluid sexuality of these women within a larger context of African American artists' attempts to subvert and recreate America. [via]
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Breaking Iceby Terry McMillanISBN 067082562X (0-670-82562-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Breath, Eyes, Memoryby Edwidge DanticatISBN 0679756612 (0-679-75661-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelouby Maya AngelouISBN 067942895X (0-679-42895-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou'Book summary:Brought together for the first time here are all of Maya Angelou's published poems -- including "On the Pulse of Morning," her inaugural poem -- in a handsome hardcover edition. [via]
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Corduroyby Don FreemanISBN 0670241334 (0-670-24133-4)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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A Day Late and a Dollar Shortby Terry McMillanISBN 0670896764 (0-670-89676-4)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Day Late and a Dollar Short'Book summary:Terry McMillan's novels feature chatty, catty narrators who have a story they're just busting to tell you. The dominant voice in A Day Late and a Dollar Short is Viola Price, whose asthma just sent her to the ICU. And who came to visit? The Jheri Curl-wearing Cecil, "a bad habit I've had for thirty-eight years, which would make him my husband." Viola doesn't think Cecil's such a catch: "His midlife crisis done lasted about 20 years now," and "to set the record straight, Cecil look like he about four months pregnant." But somebody did catch Cecil--he recently left Viola for "some welfare huzzy" with three kids. And, as we soon find out in Cecil's first-person chapter, Viola has abundant flaws of her own. McMillan deftly sketches the exasperated intimacy of the long and unsuccessfully married.
She also has great dish about family dynamics. Have Cecil and Viola's kids got problems! When lovable, luck-free Lewis turns up to visit his mom, he's drunk, broke, and still whining about his ex, Donnetta, who "didn't have as much sense as a Christmas turkey" (though she did have the sense to dump Lewis). Now Lewis consoles himself with his Bobbing Betty doll. "How could somebody with an IQ of 146 be so stupid?" marvels Viola. And that Charlotte! Viola's daughter is "a bossy wench from the word go." (Gee, where could she have gotten that trait?) Charlotte feels like she never got her fair share of attention, having been born 10 months after the eldest daughter, Paris (now the driven mom of a brilliant athlete whose white girlfriend claims she's pregnant). Charlotte took it out on younger Lewis and Janelle, who's been in college 15 years with no degree in sight.
At first, you'll make ample use of the family charts in the endpapers to figure out who's who, but pretty soon you'll feel right at home with the squabbling, multiply dysfunctional, ultimately loving Price clan. You may agree with Viola: "Some folks got some stuff that can top ours. Hell, look at the Kennedys." --Tim Appelo [via]
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Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965by Juan WilliamsISBN 0670814121 (0-670-81412-1)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Feast of All Saintsby Anne RiceISBN 0671247557 (0-671-24755-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Forged by Fireby Sharon DraperISBN 0613050002 (0-613-05000-2)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Forged by Fire'Book summary:Sharon Draper has indeed forged a fiery name for herself in the field of young adult literature--that of a courageous writer, willing to tackle tough, real-life problems while developing honorable, streetwise role models for troubled teens. Her previous novel, Tears of the Tiger, garnered much acclaim and became the first recipient of the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award. In this second novel, Draper weaves in characters from Tears--most significantly Gerald Nickleby, a young basketball player who discovers his innate strength and determination while protecting his stepsister's safety and his mother's honor.
Unfortunately, Draper's strengths (her desire to delve into tough social issues, such as child abuse, drug addiction, incest, bulimia, and domestic violence) become this book's weakness as the story line teeters on implausible. For example, in less than 20 pages Gerald faces the following: the death of a close friend (a passenger in a car that was driven by a drunk teammate); the discovery of his drunk, evil stepfather trying to sexually assault his younger stepsister; a brutal attack by his stepfather; and a raging apartment fire that threatens to kill them all. Nonetheless, Draper creates believable and important heroes for teenage boys--those who are forged from adversity, only to burn more brightly and courageous. (Ages 12 and older) --Gail Hudson [via]
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Frederick Douglassby William S. McFeelyISBN 067175971X (0-671-75971-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Future of the Raceby Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., Cornel WestISBN 067944405X (0-679-44405-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Future of the Race'Book summary:In a ground-breaking collaboration, and taking the great W.E.B. Du Bois as their model, two of our foremost African-American intellectual address the dreams, fears, aspirations, and responsibilities of the black community--especially the black elite--on the eve of the twenty-first century. [via]
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The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930by Steven WatsonISBN 0679758895 (0-679-75889-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing 1900-1950by Lorraine Elena Roses, Ruth Elizabeth RandolphISBN 0674372697 (0-674-37269-7)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing 1900-1950'Book summary:In poems, stories, memoirs, and essays about color and culture, prejudice and love, and feminine trials, dozens of African-American women writers--some famous, many just discovered--give us a sense of a distinct inner voice and an engagement with their larger double culture. Harlem's Glory unfolds a rich tradition of writing by African-American women, hitherto mostly hidden, in the first half of the twentieth century. In historical context, with special emphasis on matters of race and gender, are the words of luminaries like Zora Neale Hurston and Georgia Douglas Johnson as well as rare, previously unpublished writings by figures like Angelina Weld Grimké, Elise Johnson McDougald, and Regina Andrews, all culled from archives and arcane magazines.
Editors Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph arrange their selections to reveal not just the little-suspected extent of black women's writing, but its prodigious existence beyond the cultural confines of New York City. Harlem's Glory also shows how literary creativity often coexisted with social activism in the works of African-American women.
This volume is full of surprises about the power and diversity of the writers and genres. The depth, the wit, and the reach of the selections are astonishing. With its wealth of discoveries and rediscoveries, and its new slant on the familiar, all elegantly presented and deftly edited, the book will compel a reassessment of writing by African-American women and its place in twentieth-century American literary and historical culture.
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Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926by Adele Logan AlexanderISBN 0679758712 (0-679-75871-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Jackie Robinson : A Biographyby Arnold RampersadISBN 0679444955 (0-679-44495-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slangby Clarence MajorISBN 0670852643 (0-670-85264-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang'Book summary:African-American slang cuts through logic and arrives at a quick, efficient interpretive solution to situations and things otherwise difficult to articulate. This reference book looks at the dazzling spectrum of this vibrant, humorous language, selecting and presenting over 2000 slang words and phrases, giving definitions and dates of origin. [via]
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Killing the Black Body : Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Libertyby Dorothy RobertsISBN 0679758690 (0-679-75869-0)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty'Book summary:Dorothy Roberts' passionate and well-documented book looks at a less-talked about side of the battle for reproductive rights: the history of the social and governmental control of African American women's bodies.
Roberts, a law professor at Rutgers University, asserts that African American women have been engaged from the start in an ongoing fight to gain control of their reproductive choice. First, in the early days of American slavery, from control by white "masters" who forced slaves to produce children to work for them, and now, from government "solutions" to African American child-bearing like the distribution of the long-term contraceptive Norplant in African American communities.
Roberts also takes the mainstream feminist movement to task for working mostly for the "negative right" of liberty, that is, the right of women to not have the government involved in their reproductive decision-making. To Roberts this debate, focused mainly on government non-interference, ignores issues especially important to African American women such as access to contraception or reproduction technologies. "Reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice," she says, stating further that it is social inequality, more than any legal interference, that severely limits African American women's ability to choose how and whether to have children. "We need a way of rethinking the meaning of liberty so that it protects all citizens equally," Roberts writes. "I propose that focusing on the connection between reproductive rights and racial equality is the place to start." --Maria Dolan [via]
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Lilith's Broodby Octavia E. ButlerISBN 0613279417 (0-613-27941-7)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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A Little Yellow Dog: An Easy Rawlins Mysteryby Walter MosleyISBN 0671019864 (0-671-01986-4)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Little Yellow Dog: An Easy Rawlins Mystery'Book summary:The saga of Easy Rawlins that began in 1990 with Devil in a Blue Dress, continues in A Little Yellow Dog. Working as a janitor at Sojourner Truth Junior High School, Easy is asked to care for a small dog owned by the attractive Idabell Holland, a teacher at the school. When Idabell's husband is murdered, Easy finds himself mixed up with a gang of criminals engaged in looting Los Angeles schools and smuggling heroin from France. Idabell and Easy fall into a sexual liaison, but in the wake of it, Idabell is found stabbed to death in the passenger seat of Easy's car. While at first Easy thinks the murders are a "simple falling out of thieves," a surprising twist on the level of "The Maltese Falcon" reveals the truth. [via]
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Loving Herby Ann Allen ShockleyISBN 067251835X (0-672-51835-X)
Hardcover, Bobbs-Merrill
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Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North Americaby Ira BerlinISBN 0674002113 (0-674-00211-3)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America'Book summary:When Americans look at slavery, they conjure up images of tired black bodies picking cotton from sunup to sundown under Southern skies. That image is partly true, but, as the noted history professor Ira Berlin details, the lives of slaves in America's racist system were complex and diverse. "Viewing slavery through the perspective of what slaves did most of the time," Berlin writes, "provides a means to draw some fundamental distinctions and find some essential commonalities among the various experiences of North America."
Berlin reveals the color-caste codes of the Afro-Creoles of the Chesapeake, the survival of African culture in the South Carolina-Georgia-Florida coastal area, and the intermingling of Africans with French and Spanish in the Mississippi Delta area. He weaves a woeful and wondrous tale of the mores, occupations, conflicts, wars, and rebellions that made up the ongoing relationships between masters and slaves. Many Thousands Gone is an excellent companion to Philip D. Morgan's Slave Counterpoint, revealing the influence the "peculiar institution" of slavery had on those of African and European descent alike. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]
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Matar UN Ruisenor/to Kill a Mockingbirdby Harper LeeISBN 0613054490 (0-613-05449-0)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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Miles: The Autobiographyby Miles DavisISBN 0671725823 (0-671-72582-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Miles: The Autobiography'Book summary:Here is the outspoken autobiography of a musical legend, one of the most compelling and important cultural figures of our time, describing Davis's mysterious five-year layoff and his triumphant return to music. 32 pages of black-and-white photos. [via]
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My American Journey: An Autobiographyby Joseph E. Persico, Colin L. PowellISBN 0679432965 (0-679-43296-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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My House Nikki Giovanniby Giovanni NikkiISBN 0613072049 (0-613-07204-9)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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The Panther and the Lashby Langston HughesISBN 067973659X (0-679-73659-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63by Taylor BranchISBN 0671687425 (0-671-68742-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63'Book summary:An award-winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., a history of the civil rights movement, and a portrait of an era, Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters begins slowly but soon catches the listener in a tumult of unforgettable events. Branch's thorough research has been synthesized into an impressive account of the violence, courage, and confusion at the beginning of the civil rights movement, building to a powerful conclusion with a blow-by-blow retelling of the events in Birmingham, Alabama. Ably narrated by Joe Morton and C.C.H. Pounder, the audio abridgment is occasionally choppy, but well-done considering the print edition runs about 900 pages. The broad cast of characters includes Baptist preachers and student movement leaders as well as President John F. Kennedy and his cabinet. If you are daunted by the sheer mass of the print edition of Parting the Waters, this abridged production is for you. However don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting more and digging into the print version after all or perhaps the audio version of Pillar of Fire, Taylor's second book in his projected three-part series. (Running time: 6 Hours; 4 cassettes) [via]
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The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum Southby Kenneth Milton StamppISBN 0679723072 (0-679-72307-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Womenby Maya AngelouISBN 0679439242 (0-679-43924-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Philadelphia Fireby John Edgar WidemanISBN 061850964X (0-618-50964-X)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
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The Prisoner's Wife: A Memoirby Asha BandeleISBN 0671021486 (0-671-02148-6)
Softcover, Scribner
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The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed Americaby Nicholas LemannISBN 0679733477 (0-679-73347-7)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Realityby Toni MorrisonISBN 0679741453 (0-679-74145-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Raisin in the Sunby Lorraine HansberryISBN 0679755330 (0-679-75533-0)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Raisin in the Sun'Book summary:This groundbreaking play starred Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeill, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands in the Broadway production which opened in 1959. Set on Chicago's South Side, the plot revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family: son Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister Beneatha, his son Travis and matriarch Lena, called Mama. When her deceased husband's insurance money comes through, Mama dreams of moving to a new home and a better neighborhood in Chicago. Walter Lee, a chauffeur, has other plans, however: buying a liquor store and being his own man. Beneatha dreams of medical school. The tensions and prejudice they face form this seminal American drama. Sacrifice, trust and love among the Younger family and their heroic struggle to retain dignity in a harsh and changing world is a searing and timeless document of hope and inspiration. Winner of the NY Drama Critic's Award as Best Play of the Year, it has been hailed as a "pivotal play in the history of the American Black theatre." by Newsweek and "a milestone in the American Theatre." by Ebony. [via]
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The Real Cool Killersby Chester B. HimesISBN 0679720391 (0-679-72039-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Remember Me to Harlem : The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964by Emily Bernard, Langston Hughes, Carl Van VechtenISBN 0679451137 (0-679-45113-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Remember Me to Harlem : The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964'Book summary:When their correspondence began in 1925, Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was the nation's leading Caucasian enthusiast for African American culture, and Langston Hughes (1902-67) was a struggling poet who lived with his mother in Washington, D.C., and plaintively closed one letter, "Remember me to Harlem." Over the four-decade-long friendship that's captured engagingly in these warm, funny letters, Hughes would become more famous, and Van Vechten less so, but their mutual affection and respect only would deepen. Editor Emily Bernard, a professor at Smith College, sensibly decided to include only a fraction of the letters that the pair exchanged, but to print those in their entirety, so that readers might get a vivid sense of each man's personality. Van Vechten is lighthearted, flirtatious, gossipy, effusive in his appreciation for Hughes' writing, and frank when he finds it not to his taste. Despite his unflinching commitment to civil rights, he's considerably less political than Hughes, whose equally witty correspondence has an underlying seriousness that's commensurate with a personal history that's far more turbulent and painful than that of his affluent friend. They share a dislike for "uplift-the-race" sanctimoniousness and a zest for African American folk culture; their letters are rife with references to the music of Bessie Smith and other great blues singers, as well as to the many Harlem Renaissance artists who were their personal acquaintances. The correspondence also provides a sustained chronicle of the working writer's life: they swap news of assignments and story ideas; Van Vechten generously makes his book-publishing and magazine contacts available to Hughes; and the poet loyally defends his friend's controversial novel, Nigger Heaven, against its numerous detractors. Helpfully, everyone is identified in Bernard's copious footnotes, which make this a handy reference work, as well as a delightful record of an extraordinary relationship between two uniquely gifted figures in American letters. --Wendy Smith [via]
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Rl's Dreamby Walter MosleyISBN 067188428X (0-671-88428-X)
Softcover, Washington Square Pr
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Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter And the Mother Who Gave Her Awayby June CrossISBN 067088555X (0-670-88555-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Secret Life of Beesby Sue Monk KiddISBN 0670032379 (0-670-03237-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Secret Life of Bees'Book summary:In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler [via]
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Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Marketby Walter JohnsonISBN 0674005392 (0-674-00539-2)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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The Sweeter the Juiceby Shirlee Taylor HaizlipISBN 0671792350 (0-671-79235-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sweeter the Juice'Book summary:Haizlip's timely and provocative memoir tells the story of her seach for her mother's family, which passed for white, setting it against her father's successful black family. Tracking the origins of both families, she finally reunites two sisters--one "white", the other "black"--after 76 years. [via]
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The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and Whiteby Shirlee Taylor HaizlipISBN 0671899333 (0-671-89933-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytellingby Linda Goss, Marian E. BarnesISBN 0671671685 (0-671-67168-5)
Softcover, Touchstone Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytelling'Book summary:Compilation of tales from Afro-American folklore. Among the storytellers included are Zora Neale Hurston, Nikki Giovanni, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Leadbelly. [via]
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Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Unionby June JordanISBN 0679747621 (0-679-74762-1)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Things Fall Apartby Chinua AchebeISBN 0679446230 (0-679-44623-0)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'Book summary:One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:
Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.
And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Manby Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.ISBN 0679457135 (0-679-45713-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man'Book summary:All but one originally published in the New Yorker, these profiles work together to create a striking collective biography of the 20th-century African-American male in all his diversity. Figures as different as Harry Belafonte and Colin Powell get equally perceptive treatment, though the essays on writer Albert Murray and literary critic Anatole Broyard (who passed for white) are particularly fine. Henry Louis Gates's pungent introduction bolsters his stature as our preeminent black intellectual, unapologetically immersed in race as a crucial element in American social discourse. [via]
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Those Bones Are Not My Childby Toni Cade BambaraISBN 0679442618 (0-679-44261-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks; An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films.: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Filmsby Donald BogleISBN 0670719358 (0-670-71935-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Unafraid of the Dark : A Memoirby Rosemary L. BrayISBN 0679425551 (0-679-42555-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Raceby David Levering LewisISBN 0613630866 (0-613-63086-6)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Centuryby Randall KenanISBN 067973788X (0-679-73788-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movementby John LewisISBN 0613225805 (0-613-22580-5)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement'Book summary:John Lewis is an authentic American hero, a modest man from the most humble of beginnings who left a rural Alabama cotton farm 40 years ago and strode into the forefront of the civil rights movement. One of the young people who brought the teachings of Ghandi and King to the lunch counters of Nashville in 1960, Lewis suffered taunts and threats, beatings and arrests. He spoke at the historic 1963 March on Washington and became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The nation, tuned to the nightly news, watched in horror as state troopers clubbed him viciously, fracturing his skull as he led a march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Today, he's the only member of Congress who can be proud of having been carried off to jail more than 40 times. With the help of a collaborator, journalist Michael D'Orso, this remarkable man has written a truly remarkable book. Walking with the Wind is a deeply moving personal memoir that skillfully balances the intimate and touching recollections of the deeply thoughtful Lewis with the intense national drama that was the civil rights movement. [via]
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Warriors Don't Cryby Melba Pattillo BealsISBN 0671866397 (0-671-86639-7)
Softcover, Washington Square Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Warriors Don't Cry'Book summary:You've gotta learn to defend yourself. Never let your enemy know what you are feeling.
-- The soldier assigned to protect Melba
Please, God, let me learn how to stop being a warrior. Sometimes I just need to be a girl.
-- Melba's diary, on her sixteenth birthday
In 1957 Melba Pattillo turned sixteen. That was also the year she became a warrior on the front lines of a civil rights firestorm. Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board Education, she was one of nine teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. This is her remarkable story.
You will listen to the cruel taunts of her schoolmates and their parents. You will run with her from the threat of a lynch mob's rope. You will share her terror as she dodges lighted sticks of dynamite, and her pain as she washes away the acid sprayed into her eyes. But most of all you will share Melba's dignity and courage as she refuses to back down. [via]
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The Watsons Go To Birmingham--1963by Christopher Paul CurtisISBN 0613034945 (0-613-03494-5)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Watsons Go To Birmingham--1963'Book summary:The year is 1963, and self-important Byron Watson is the bane of his younger brother Kenny's existence. Constantly in trouble for one thing or another, from straightening his hair into a "conk" to lighting fires to freezing his lips to the mirror of the new family car, Byron finally pushes his family too far. Before this "official juvenile delinquent" can cut school or steal change one more time, Momma and Dad finally make good on their threat to send him to the deep south to spend the summer with his tiny, strict grandmother. Soon the whole family is packed up, ready to make the drive from Flint, Michigan, straight into one of the most chilling moments in America's history: the burning of the Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church with four little girls inside.
Christopher Paul Curtis's alternately hilarious and deeply moving novel, winner of the Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King Honor, blends the fictional account of an African American family with the factual events of the violent summer of 1963. Fourth grader Kenny is an innocent and sincere narrator; his ingenuousness lends authenticity to the story and invites readers of all ages into his world, even as it changes before his eyes. Curtis is also the acclaimed author of Bud, Not Buddy, winner of the Newbery Medal. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heartby Alice WalkerISBN 0679455876 (0-679-45587-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Ways of White Folksby Langston HughesISBN 0679728171 (0-679-72817-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cookingby Jessica B. HarrisISBN 0671793608 (0-671-79360-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking'Book summary:Featuring African-American food at its best, with recipes gathered from church suppers, family reunions, and Sunday school picnics, a culinary collection includes red-eye gravy, sweet potato pie, and generous servings of African-American culture and history. 25,000 first printing. Tour. [via]
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White Butterflyby Walter MosleyISBN 0671019856 (0-671-01985-6)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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The Wind Done Goneby Alice RandallISBN 0618219064 (0-618-21906-4)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
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