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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 7: But Some of Us Are Brave, Edited by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith
Publisher Synopsis: Originally published in 1982, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies is the first comprehensive collection of black feminist scholarship. Featuring essays by Alice Walker, the Combahee River Collective, and Barbara Smith, and original resources, this book is vital to today’s…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 6: Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur
Publisher Synopsis: Written in solitary confinement, Kody Scott’s memoir of 16 years as a gang banger in Los Angeles was a searing best-seller and became a classic, published in 10 languages, with more than 300,000 copies in print in the United States alone. After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 5: Every Little Step: My Story by Bobby Brown With Nick Chiles
Publisher Synopsis: In Every Little Step, Brown will for the first time tell the full story of his life and set the record straight, particularly about his relationship with Whitney Houston. Bobby Brown has been one of the most compelling American artists of the past 30 years, a magnetic and talented figure who successfully crossed…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 4: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher synopsis: Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 3: Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham
Publisher Synopsis: Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha’s Vineyard. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 2: Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
Publisher Synopsis: Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried. When she doesn’t show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday wouldn’t…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 1: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Today is the first day of Black History Month, the annual celebration in these here United States of America where schools make kids learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Sprinkle in a few facts about a black person being the first person to do this or that, and before you know it,…
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Hampton University Put a Statue of Former President George H.W. Bush on Campus Because …?
For some odd reason (more on this later), the folks in positions of authority at Hampton University saw fit to erect a state of George H.W. Bush on the storied campus in Hampton, Va. Two things of note here: 1) George H.W. Bush did not go to Hampton; and 2) Hampton is an HBCU, or…
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26 Is Too Young to Die
My life changed on Sunday, July 16, 2000. Even though the official reports, the newspaper, and the family story all say July 17, my big cousin never saw Monday. After going to see the recently released film, Scary Movie, my younger cousin (his little sister) and I pulled into the driveway of my grandmother’s house…
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Dear Writers, What Do You Have Saved in Your Drafts?
If you’re somebody who writes for a living or as a hobby or because it’s not that you won’t stop, it’s that you can’t stop, then there’s a really good chance you use some sort of publishing platform to share your thoughts with the world. Many of us started out on Blogspot or whatever came…
