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When Bootstraps Aren't Enough
When I was in college, I put my father out. A recovering drug addict, he was living with me and my sister while he ”got back on his feet.” My father’s time there was supposed to be brief. Three months morphed into too damn many. After coming home from another day busting my butt working…
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Schizophrenia as Political Weapon
“There is a schizophrenia, as the psychologists or the psychiatrists would call it, going on within all of us. And there are times that all of us know somehow that there is a Mr. Hyde and a Dr. Jekyll in us….There’s a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to…
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Conversation for the Dinner Table
Whether you want to sound smart, divert a family beef, or stimulate interesting conversation, here’s some lit-related news to share at the dinner table. Did You Hear That We Spent Billions on a Reading Program That Didn’t Work? President Bush spent $1 billion annually for several years on “Reading First,” a literacy program for low-income…
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Reading List: The Poetry Edition
Serious poetry collections continue to be birthed. The evidence: Arc & Hue By Tara Betts Willow Books, September 2009 Excerpt from “Why I Collect The Hair”: Years ago, a college boyfriend left my bed to go home. His mother honed in on the brassy streaks and pulled them off with what white girl are you…
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Publishing with the Stars
Books by celebrities are nothing new. It’s an easy choice for book editors. Who doesn’t want to read about the inner-workings of their favorite celebrity’s life? Okay, some of us may be more concerned with an unemployment status or securing healthcare. But for those looking for a much-needed distraction, what’s a better way to escape…
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Happy 35th Birthday, Black Book!
Thirty-five years ago, Toni Morrison, then an editor at Random House, joined with a team of black memorabilia collectors, helmed by Middleton A. Harris, to assemble what Henry Louis Gates Jr. considers the “ultimate treasure chest of the black experience.” The result is a collection of more than 500 documents, photographs and articles that fashion…
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Producing Precious
Lisa Cortés has been navigating the entertainment industry for more than twenty years. She worked at Def Jam during the hip-hop label’s early days in the 80s. She cofounded a company with Russell Simmons that represented music producers. She even started her own record label. Eventually the Yale graduate turned her talents towards film, officially…
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Blacks Are Still Achieving Firsts?
Blacks Are Still Achieving Firsts? Apparently so, with more to come. Congrats goes to Marie Ndiaye, a French-Senegalese writer who is the first black woman to win the coveted French literary award, the Prix Goncourt. Her novel, Trois femmes puissantes (Three Powerful Women), explores the lives of three women who live in Africa and France.…
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Amazon and Wal-Mart Price War: Good or Bad For Book Consumers?
For the last couple of weeks, Amazon and Wal-Mart have been at war online. The megastores are heavily discounting highly anticipated book releases and causing a windstorm among publishers and other opponents who see the business tactics as disastrous on an already fragile industry. Currently, Wal-Mart has priced its “Top 50 Preorders” of titles like…
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Too Much Sarah Palin?
A roundup of lit-related questions. Too Much Sarah Palin? The former Alaska Governor is slated to discuss her forthcoming memoir Going Rogue: An American Life on Oprah’s show, November 16, the day before the book releases. Big surprise to me, Palin’s book, which only took four months to write, is already a bestseller on the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
