books on the root

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…

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.…

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…

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…

When trendy goes wrong: In August, author Teri Woods, best known for her True to the Game street fiction trilogy, threw a party at the hard-to-get-into New York club Greenhouse to celebrate her new book Alibi. Unfortunately, the majority of her 175 invitees couldn’t get in. The reason? They’re claiming racism. But this isn’t just…

Is it me or do many people look at single women, who are in their thirties or beyond, as flawed pariahs? As in, there must be something wrong with them if they aren’t married. As if the primary goal of all women is to be married and if said goal isn’t achieved, they’re not just…

Here are a few titles for those looking to water their intellectual growth. Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton By Duchess Harris Palgrave Macmillan, July 2009 A scholarly review of the involvement of black women in American politics from 1961 to 2001 that includes a range of areas including government roles, feminist organizations, literature,…

You probably know him best from his days doing whatever it took to get a laugh on In Living Color. Or maybe from his own sketch comedy show Chocolate News which to the dismay of some, was short-lived on Comedy Central. But there’s probably a lot you don’t know about author and comedian David Alan…

A round up of lit-related questions. South Africans Vs. Nigerians? Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses what she considers a strained relationship between Nigerians and South Africans in an essay for The Guardian. The piece comes on the heels of the news that Nigerian officials are fighting to ban the movie District 9 from playing…

Charisse Carney-Nunes writes children’s books. Her books, which are published through her company Brand Nu Words, include titles like “Nappy” and “I Dream for You a World: A Covenant for our Children,” and are designed to empower kids. Committed to justice and equality, Nunes, whose books I’ve covered before, is one of the last people…