Datasets:

claran

/

m2d2-wiki-decon

like 0

3ca97b0f-a16c-4323-8042-a15ad116cf82

m2d2_wiki

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (PTSS) is a 2005 theoretical work by Dr. Joy DeGruy (née Leary). The book describes the multi-generational trauma experienced by African Americans that leads to undiagnosed and untreated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in enslaved Africans and their descendants. The book was first published by Uptone Press in 2005, with later re-release by the author in 2017. DeGruy states that Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is not a disorder that can simply be treated and remedied clinically but rather requires profound social change in individuals, as well as in institutions, that continue to reify inequality and injustice toward the descendants of enslaved Africans. DeGruy spent 12 years developing the quantitative and qualitative research for this book. The theory has been generative of subsequent academic work in clinical psychology and black studies. In addition to forming the basis of public lectures and workshops offered by DeGruy and her contemporaries, the research described in "Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome" inspired an eponymous play, which was staged at the Henry Street Settlement Experimental Theater, New York, in 2001.

7c3fd59f-0876-415e-8fa2-97b873f41dec

m2d2_wiki

From Black Power to Hip Hop From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism is a 2006 book by Patricia Hill Collins. Published by Temple University Press, the book is centered around Patricia Hill and her experiences with racism in America. The book also includes experiences from other Black men and women and their responses to it. In the end she offers her take on Black youth and how its changing along with how Black nationalism works today. Reception. In a review written by Publisher's Weekly, they write "sociologist Collins (Black Feminist Thought; Black Sexual Politics) turns her eye toward young African American women who have chosen to explore feminism through pop culture instead of academia in this sometimes rousing, sometimes plodding anthology of six essays". Afrikanlibrary.net says "Using the experiences of African American women and men as a touchstone for analysis, Patricia Hill Collins examines new forms of racism as well as political responses to it.In this incisive and stimulating book, renowned social theorist Patricia Hill Collins investigates how nationalism has operated and re-emerged in the wake of contemporary globalization and offers an interpretation of how black nationalism works today in the wake of changing black youth identity."

44b980b1-14dc-4536-adeb-f50314e624d7

m2d2_wiki

The Nigger Bible The Nigger Bible is a book by Robert H. deCoy, originally self-published by deCoy and then reissued by Holloway House in 1967, and again in 1972 (). Described as a "key statement" in the Black Power movement, it is a social and linguistic analysis of the word "nigger" and of the origins and contemporary circumstances of the black peoples of America. Content. The form is varied and might be described as a series of reflections. In the preface, Dick Gregory (whose autobiography was entitled "Nigger") writes: "In abolishing and rejecting the Caucasian-Christian philosophical and literary forms while recording his 'Black Experiences,' this writer has removed himself from their double-standard, hypocritical frames of reference". It attempts to tease apart the cultural, philosophical, and scriptural origins of what the author calls an "Alabaster Man", one that experienced the conclusions and prejudices at the root of their oppression. It examines, among other texts, the Christian bible and its terminology. the book explores the power of words, and re-interprets and critiques core western religious and philosophical constructs, including those that are central to much of the modern African-American religious experience. In one of the chapters he discusses "the genealogy of Jody Grind"; Eugene B. Redmond remarks deCoy is one of many African-American writers who "continues a tradition by seeking out folk epics and ballads as sources of poetry". DeCoy re-examines the word "nigger", demystifies it, and attempts to embed critical thinking skills about black personality types and categories. The author deconstructs the Christianity of "Niggers" (including, in his view, Black Muslims) as well as the values of the New Left. The book contains an analysis of the cultural and racial significance of Mardi Gras. DeCoy also published "Cold Black Preach" (1971, ). "The Black Scholar" summarized: "Noted author of the explosive best seller "The Nigger Bible" takes on the black preaching establishment".

fbeea5bd-0df4-4c4a-8c8e-74c2933d5f07

m2d2_wiki

The Minds of Marginalized Black Men The Minds of Marginalized Black Men is a non-fiction book written by Alford A. Young Jr. Young explores the lives of impoverished young black men living in the near New West Side of Chicago, Illinois, in order to get a better understanding of how they view their lives and what they want for their futures. The book was first published in 2004 by Princeton University Press. Reception. The book received a generally positive reception, garnering reviews from academic journals including "Contemporary Sociology", "Gender & Society", "Journal of Urban Affairs", and the "American Journal of Sociology". Characters. Larry - A 24-year-old male who has never held a full-time job for longer than a month or two. Because he cannot find and hold a job he still lives at home with his parents and siblings. Devin - A 21-year-old active gang member who is on parole for possession of narcotics. He has been a part of many illicit activities such as selling drugs and theft. Devin has never held any form of a job in his life. Casey - A 25-year-old ex-convict who just got out of drug rehabilitation for an addiction that started when he was a teenager. He had a job as a bag boy at a local supermarket but besides that the majority of his income came from hustling and drug dealing. Lester - Grew up with both parents, and had a plan to excel in his future. Unfortunately his parents were criminals, and once his father was incarcerated he had to stop focusing on school and start focusing on survival. It was then that he resorted to becoming a drug dealer. Earl - Comes from a family that was unfamiliar with college because nobody was fortunate enough to have experienced it. He moved to Near West from Mississippi, and was often teased and picked on as an adolescent. Eventually Earl found a sense of security from being an outsider by joining a gang. Jake - Was one of few to receive his high school diploma. Unfortunately, college was out of the question as his family did not have the finances to help him out. Eventually Jake fell into the easy money-making system of drug dealing. Barry - He stayed away from gangs growing up, and was able to receive his high school diploma, but he got caught up in drug dealing to make quick and easy cash during the summer shortly following his graduation. He eventually stopped when the police were catching on to him, and drug dealing gangs wanted him dead. Donald - Worked many different jobs during his adolescent years, but was unable to keep any of them for very long. Eventually being desperate for money led him down the path of drug dealing. Gus - A high school football star who had plans to participate in the army. Unfortunately his addiction to cocaine hurt his athleticism, and got him kicked out of the military. He eventually came back to Near West, where he began dealing drugs. Tito - A survivor of Near West Side who was able to work with a moving company for a short period of time. Eventually he began gangbanging, and was incarcerated. Synopsis. Introduction - Making New Sense of Poor Black Men in Crisis The introduction gives insight on what is to come later in the book. It also describes the setting and how Young did his research. Young conducted his research in several public housing developments in the Near West Side of Chicago. Young describes the area as "geographically and socially isolated from downtown Chicago and the opulent western suburbs, and resembles a holding pen for the economically immobile." The first development that Young went to was the Governor Henry Horner Homes. The development had "19 buildings with 1,774 units, almost all of which are occupied by African Americans." In these households over 85% received public assistance, and only 8% were able to be supported by the employment of a member of the household. The second development was the ABLA homes located one and a half miles away from the Henry Horner Homes. This development contains 160 buildings with 3,505 units and, like the Henry Horner homes, is almost all African-American. ABLA occupants do a little better financially, with 75% needing public assistance and just over 8% able to support themselves. The second half of the introduction talks about what made Young want to research and write this book and what the main themes of the book are. Young says that the main goal of this book is to "uncover these men's worldviews on issues such as mobility, opportunity, and future life chances." The book is not about what was going through these men's heads when they were dealing drugs or carrying a firearm but instead about how they view their place in American society and what they think about their futures. Chapter 1 - The Past and Future of the Cultural Analysis of Black Men Chapter 1 starts off by going into the idea of "the crisis of the black male", which is the idea that the rate of crime and incarceration among blacks is directly connected to their high rate of unemployment. Young attributes the crisis to two key factors: structural factors such as race-based residential segregations and mobility prospect, and cultural factors such as attitudes and behaviors that prevent acceptance into the work world. Young then talks about how most research on poor black males only focuses on behavioral traits and their value systems. He says that good research would also include a deep analysis of how these men create their worldviews and beliefs regarding the present and future. Cultural analysis is the topic of a huge debate right now. On one side "the debate asks whether black men adopt or promote distinct cultural patters that contribute to, if not cause altogether, their demise." The other side questions "whether these men, who are taken to be cultural actors in the ways that other groups of Americans are, might simply experience unique life circumstances and conditions that overdetermine the social outcomes comprising their everyday lives." Young then finishes off the chapter talking about "social isolation" which is the idea that these poor young black men are unable to get jobs because their class standing keeps them away from mainstream society. They are isolated from the areas where the jobs and opportunities are. Chapter 2 - Time, Space, and Everyday Living Chapter 2 looks at the everyday lives of these men. Uncertainty is a common feeling for them because each day they must worry about whether they will have a job or even make it through the day. One thing in this chapter that really surprised Young was the men's inability to manage time. They would show up late, extremely early, or even on the wrong days to interviews. These men do not have to deal with appointments on an everyday basis because on the majority of their days they have nothing to do, so they do not know how to handle appointments. Young brings up the concept of "Habitus", which is a "system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them." Essentially, the way people think and act is related to the social constraints and structures around them. Young gives the example of how the use of violence in order to defend oneself is a justifiable in certain situations. Young was surprised by how much these people have to deal with violence. He talks about how in most communities violence is rare but in the Near West Side it has become part of the daily lives of the people. Most people only feel unsafe when they go out late at night but people in the Near West Side fear violence all day, even in their own homes. Chapter 3 - Coming Up Poor Coming Up Poor addresses the issue of young African-American men developing their futures through the obstacles of growing up in Near West Side. The most common obstacles that most of the men experienced were the lack of decent finances, a father figure, a sense of security, and the proper information to lead them to college. Young men are interviewed and asked to describe what it was like trying to grow up in the community and what kind of support they received from their family to pursue an education beyond high school. When discussing their upbringing the men speak of how the community was extremely violent, and quite often the children in elementary school had other things on their mind other than getting a quality education. Survival of the gang-infested area, the home that was full of stress and anxiety due to the lack of money, and earning the respect of peers no matter what it took were the main focuses of these adolescents. When asked about their parental figures' attitude towards achieving a higher level of education, they all had the same answer. All of the parents stressed how important it was to receive a quality education and stay off the streets and out of gangs. Although their parents wanted nothing more for their children but to grow up and do something with their life, they were unable to provide concrete information or help to guide the children in the correct direction. Some parents overprotected their children to the point where the children would sneak out to the streets and be exposed to gang violence. One often found a sense of safety and security only in joining a gang to avoid being the recipient of a soft reputation. To find security in the streets one had to gain the respect of one's peers. When kids are bullying, stealing, and dealing drugs when in elementary school, the future for that generation is limited to those who can stay away and deal with the conflicts another way. The local high school had an enrollment of 97 percent African Americans, and during the 1980s the percent who received a high school diploma only ranged from 15 percent to no more than 30 percent. The high school could not provide what one would call a safe and educational learning environment for many different reasons. During daily instruction students would have to halt their studies and duck beneath their desks because of gunfire in the streets. With instability such as this one can only imagine the quality of an education that a student could receive, which is why the percent of students who went on to attend college ranged from 10 percent to no more than 40 percent. This does not mean that those eligible to go to college were able to afford it, considering that 95 percent of the students came from low-income families that needed financial assistance to survive. Once these boys became men and were still stuck in the city, they believed that they had survived the most challenging part of growing up. Now they were off to the workforce, where many were unable to keep steady jobs. With the morals and mindsets that the men had acquired growing up, they faced difficulty keeping their jobs as they valued the respect of their employees more than the importance of getting the job done. The men are extremely affected by their adolescent years and are now struggling to provide for children of their own. This cycle seems to continue as the elders always stress the importance of a quality education; the only challenge is learning how to get it. Chapter 4 - Framing Social Reality: Stratification and Inequality Chapter 4 focuses on determining what the men's interpretive thoughts are on characteristics of society such as power, hierarchy, and social relations across race and class lines. The author mainly focuses on each of the men's personal experiences. By analyzing their differences in opinions, the author strives to figure out how differences in personal experiences connect to the kinds of interpretations that the men have. Barry received his high school diploma but fell into the unfortunate act of drug dealing soon after graduating. He talks about how much he regrets doing it, but he needed the money then, and that was the easiest way to get it. When asked if he believed that discrimination existed, he was the only one that did not believe that it was present. He believed that you are discriminated against only if you allow yourself to be. In other words, he was saying that you determine your own fate. Barry believed that he could have done something far better with his life had he only refused to take no for an answer and been more determined. Despite Barry's position, he had so little to say about the existence of discrimination obstacles and barriers towards upward mobility. Donald, another man who was interviewed, had a completely different outlook on these questions. Donald grew up working small jobs at a variety of businesses and although he was not a part of the wealthier society, he viewed it from his position. He stated that he witnessed racism and discrimination all the time, and he believes that was why he was fired from some of his jobs. He believes that as long as there are different wealth classes these unfortunate aspects of society are always going to remain. Chapter 5 - Framing Individual Mobility and Attainment Chapter 5 addresses the recurring thoughts about how low-income African-American men make sense of mobility and attainment in American society. Its main focus is to help determining what we can do to enhance these men's thoughts on advancement in society. Through the information acquired during the interviews, it seems as though the men's ability to imagine aspects of life that are present further out in society such as mobility barriers and discrimination are often limited by what they have experienced in Near West Side. The men were asked about their thoughts of mobility and attainment in the country, and they were mostly split into two categories. Those who knew little about it and did not have much to say, and those who had passionate responses towards why they believed there were barriers and discrimination in society. Half of the men had not been fortunate enough to have a job because of their lack of motivation or qualifications. These men who had always been unemployed were least likely to speak of the role that outside forces play in shaping a person's chances in life. On the other hand, the men that were a part of some sort of employment had completely different thoughts on mobility and attainment. Often, the men with more work experience had experienced social conflicts themselves and were able to talk thoroughly about their beliefs on how the role of external factors affect an individual's chances in life. Chapter 6 - Looking Up from Below: Framing Personal Reality Chapter 6 focuses on self-identification: discovering and stating who you are as a person; understanding what you want your mission in life and goals to be; and how to mobilize oneself in society in order to achieve these goals. Different aspects of the stereotypical ideal future or "good life" are mentioned. This ideal future mentioned touches on the three spheres of life: work, home, and individual well-being. In this stage of self-identification, a specific profession is not addressed; instead the goal is to attain whatever fits the individual's definition of a well-paying job. There is a strong emphasis on personal mobility and opportunity as the basis for aspirations or the 'ideal" future. The author touches on the essential points of using any resources that are possible in order to mobilize yourself on a small scale, and to in time give yourself and opportunity on a larger scale. An example given is of Arthur working at a liquor store to get an idea of how to set up his own business. The author analyzes the men's lack of social capital in the world of work, and says the men are disadvantaged in the human capital of strategic skills and talents. The world of work is shown as a world of education, brainpower, skill, and credentials, which are resources for success in the working world. The attributes of strength and physical stamina have very little importance in the white-collar environment. The author notes that the men's perceptions of their own skills would limit them to minimally skilled positions. Chapter 7 - Getting There: Navigating Personal Mobility Chapter 7 focuses on aspects of personal mobility, personal impediments to getting ahead, and the special place of race in class. Chapter seven briefly touches on and concludes the men's discussion on the modern-day America and the American Dream. They touch on the emphasizing factors of discipline, hard work, education, and motivation. The men believe that a high school diploma is a bare essential towards minimal success in the working world, but that the only useful education was direct training to one's career interests. The men then move on to confronting and acknowledging their own self-induced barriers. Men like Gus and Casey talk about their struggles with substance abuse, and the problems that it caused for them regarding motivation and finding work. The men who had been previously incarcerated such as Devin, Earl, Lester, and Casey, talk about the difficulty of finding work with a criminal record. The men then discuss the difficulty of personal mobility. They discuss how being African-American puts them in a lower class, with fewer resources and opportunities, thus making it harder for them to mobilize and to make something of themselves. Chapter 8 - Recasting the Crisis of Poor Black Men Chapter 8 starts off with some funny yet interesting words from a man by the name of Vance Smith. Smith said: "That's retarded to think that [black men do not know how to take control of their lives]. People actually think like that? I mean, people with Ph.D's and shit." People who think that black men cannot be responsible for their lives are extremely wrong. This book has shown us that these poor black men have plans to improve themselves and have hopes and dreams they just lack the skills and capital to better themselves. They are many things that need to be done before these people can live better lives. A key one would be a stable labor market with good job training. But the likelihood of that happening is small because the majority of people view this community with the idea of "three strikes and you're out." That these people had their chance and chose to cheat and therefore put themselves in the situation that they are in and we should not have to help them. The last main point in the book is that as times change and their situation changes the way researchers and people view that area needs to change with it otherwise they will never be able to get out of the hole that they are in.

f968b8df-9c36-4c88-8bbe-d6025bc47dd3

m2d2_wiki

The Rich and the Rest of Us The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto is a 2012 political, non-fiction book written by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. The book examines poverty in America and how to eliminate it.

1766e04c-8a16-48cb-b40c-db7a40dcc2bd

m2d2_wiki

Tears We Cannot Stop Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America is a 2017 non-fiction book by Michael Eric Dyson. Overview. A look into the state of race relations in the United States, delivered as "a hard-hitting sermon on the racial divide, directed specifically to a white congregation." The book grapples with the social construct of "whiteness" and challenges the readers to "reject the willful denial of history and to live fully in the complicated present with all of the discomfort it brings." Dyson's 'sermon' addresses "five dysfunctional ways that those regarded as white respond when confronted with the reality that whiteness is simultaneously artificial and powerful," as well as "dysfunctional ways that black people sometimes respond to white racism." Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed or discounted.

98510ce6-81d7-4f02-8e0e-399d94633aee

m2d2_wiki

Luster (novel) Luster is a 2020 debut novel by Raven Leilani. The book follows a Black woman in her twenties who gets involved with a fortysomething white man in an open marriage. "Luster was" released on August 4, 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It received mainly positive critical reception and won the 2020 Kirkus Prize for fiction. In December 2020, the book was found in Literary Hub to have made 16 lists of the year's best books. Plot. "Luster" follows Edie, a Black woman in her twenties who lives in New York City and works as an editorial assistant. She meets Eric, a white man in his forties who is in an open marriage. Eric and his wife have a 12-year-old adoptive daughter, Akila, who is also Black. Edie begins a sexual relationship with Eric and moves to New Jersey to live with his family after she gets fired. Major themes. Critics noted that the character of Edie is a "flâneur", which is notable as it is typically a literary position occupied by white male characters. Critical reception. The book was recommended by various outlets prior to its publication. "Luster" received mostly positive reviews. "Kirkus Reviews" described the book in a starred review as "Sharp, strange, propellant—and a whole lot of fun." Mark Athitakis rated the book 3.5/4 stars and stated in "USA Today", ""Luster" isn’t just a sardonic book, but a powerful one about emotional transformation." "Publishers Weekly" reviewed the book and stated, "Edie’s ability to navigate the complicated relationships with the Walkers exhibits Leilani’s mastery of nuance, and the narration is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged." Bookpage.com gave "Luster" a starred review and wrote: "Leilani’s writing is cerebral and raw, and this debut novel will establish her as a powerful new voice." Noting that the novel is a debut, Leah Greenblatt of "EW" wrote, "that newness sometimes shows; after a wildly beguiling start, the novel telescopes inward, often forsaking narrative momentum for mood and color. Sentence by sentence, though, she’s also a phenomenal writer, her dense, dazzling paragraphs shot through with self-effacing wit and psychological insight." Writing for "Virginia Quarterly Review", Kaitlyn Greenidge praised Leilani's "linguistic skill."

f83a1992-8db4-4118-bb5a-b9b9f936d764

m2d2_wiki

Rough Crossings Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution is a history book by Simon Schama. It was the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award winner for general nonfiction. A 2007 drama-documentary television programme was based on it. Synopsis. "Rough Crossings" gives an account of the history of thousands of African-American slaves who escaped slavery in the American colonies to fight for the British cause during the American Revolutionary War. It tells of the legal battles which established that slavery was not valid in England itself, and how the British government offered freedom to enslaved African Americans if they would fight for Britain and King George III. The book discusses the many ambiguities involved—some white Loyalists were slaveowners, some blacks were recruited for the War of Independence. "Rough Crossings" then follows the fate of the Black Loyalists after the war's end, who, following the British defeat, were sent to Nova Scotia (then still a colony within British North America), where they received a cold welcome, including suffering the first race riots on the continent. Some remained in Nova Scotia, but others returned to Africa to settle in what was to become Sierra Leone. The descendants of those who settled in Freetown are part of the Sierra Leone Creole people, with strong ancestral ties with the United States, the Caribbean, and Canada. Reception. The reviews were very favourable. Alex Butterworth wrote in "The Guardian": The early chapters of Rough Crossings still bear traces of the television habit - the scene-setting rhetoric, a tendency to over-emphasis [sic] vivid 'moments', precise character thumbnail ... As the book weaves through London, America, Nova Scotia and Africa, though, Schama's technique relaxes, to be laid, most strikingly, at the service of the book's black characters. ... At the end of this immaculately controlled, brave and important work, only the most callous of readers could fail to shed a tear. James Walvin, in his "Guardian" review, stated: Parts of the story have been well rehearsed by earlier historians, but never like this. One of Schama's great talents is the ability to fit together distinct episodes into a much broader and more telling narrative. He also brings to the story his characteristic flair and historical imagination. "The New York Times" Brent Staples praised the book as well, describing it as "a stirringly ambitious reconsideration of the Revolution with the question of slavery set at the very heart of the matter". Adaptations. In 2007, BBC Two aired the drama-documentary "Rough Crossings", based on Schama's book. A reviewer stated that the "success of this endeavour is unfortunately limited as the programme fails to inform its audience which this history should be remembered apart from its perceived strangeness and neglect". "The programme's weakness in delivering an effective message is also let down in its use of Schama's pieces to camera and the dramatic reconstructions of the story." The two halves of the production, with "different styles", "do not sit well together". It was released to DVD by BBC Home Entertainment. In 2007, Headlong Theatre produced a stage adaptation, adapted by Caryl Phillips, which toured the UK. "The British Theatre Guide" review stated, "This play attempts to take a big book with many strands and meld them into a satisfying three hour play", but "is too diffuse to make for a coherent drama".

17dc247f-f681-412f-af1b-867b25892ff6

m2d2_wiki

Note on Commercial Theatre "Note on Commercial Theatre" is a poem by Langston Hughes written in 1940 and republished in 2008. Background and analysis. Langston Hughes was a prominent writer during the Harlem Renaissance, which is obvious in most of his poetry. Hughes writes about the issues of the day, and "Note on Commercial Theatre" is no different. Roots vs. novelty. During the Harlem Renaissance, one of the main controversies was that African American culture became the "vogue" of the day. This included interest not only in black writing and art, but in the rising jazz and theatre scenes as well. Harlem became the hot spot for this new black culture; both black and whites explored and became immersed in it. Because it was so popular, many white people attempted to infuse their own art with the new African American styles, resulting in hybrid music and theatre (for example, a swing version of "The Mikado", a comic opera). Hughes was a huge proponent of creating a separate black identity and art, hence the extreme antipathy within "Note on Commercial Theatre" to black culture being absorbed by whites. This is reflected in his use of an experimental form for his poem; there is a lack of rhyme scheme and no discernible rhythm to the lines. Other black writers of the time, such as Countee Cullen, experimented within specific forms, but Hughes rejects form in this poem; he rejects the absorption into any other style but his own. Dependence vs. independence. This vogue of African American culture became a controversy because not only was it becoming meshed with white culture in a time when the Pan-African movement was strong and blacks were trying to create a separate identity, but "Note on Commercial Theatre" also shows an anxiety over the dependence of black culture on white patronage. It was hard for African Americans to become published or find an audience outside of Harlem without going through white publishing houses. The final lines of the poem reflect the idea that for a truly African American culture to persist, it would have to be founded from within its own community: <poem> But someday somebody'll Stand up and talk about me, And write about me- Black and beautiful- And sing about me, And put on plays about me! I reckon it'll be Me myself! Yes, it'll be me. </poem>

1efec2f1-fcc2-4c04-bd4a-d2a8f58d07dd

m2d2_wiki

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore is a three-volume set of books published in December 2005 by Greenwood Press. It contains roughly 700 alphabetically arranged entries by more than 100 contributors. It serves as a comprehensive overview of all aspects of African-American folklore, including folktales, music, foodways, spiritual beliefs, and art. Background. "The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore" is unique in being the definitive encyclopedia relating to African-American traditions, background, and mores; a comprehensive overview of African-American culture and folklore. It contains alphabetically arranged entries and expert contributors on topics such as folktales, music, art, foodways, spiritual beliefs, proverbs, and many other subjects. Entries cite works for further reading and the encyclopedia concludes with a bibliography of major works. The set of books also gives attention to the Caribbean and African roots of traditional African-American culture. The three volumes are intended to help scholars and students understand the heart of African-American culture and provides a comprehensive context for African-American history, literature, music, and art. Reviews. "The fact that more than 100 entries are devoted to scholars and collectors, among them Imamu Amiri Baraka, Zora Neale Hurston, and Melville J. Herskovits, supports a statement Prahlad makes in the introduction. The encyclopedia seeks 'to provide a significant overview of the current study of African American folklore... [This] first comprehensive general reference work' on African American folklore is highly recommended for academic and public libraries." "The multidisciplinary nature of folklore studies is reflected in the list of 140 or so primarily academic contributors, whose areas of expertise include art, literature, anthropology, religion, and more...(the entries) make fascinating reading on topics as diverse as samba, the Sea Islands, sermons, Tupac Shakur, Stagolee, and the steel pan drum..." "Booklist", Starred Review

a12d33b5-6457-49e0-bd63-f32b52f501b9

m2d2_wiki

Life Is Not a Fairy Tale Life Is Not a Fairy Tale is a book describing the life of "American Idol" (season 3) winner Fantasia Barrino, and her rise to national prominence. The book later became a television movie shown on Lifetime. Book. "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale" by Fantasia. In her autobiography "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale", a "New York Times" bestseller, Fantasia tells of her rise from high-school dropout to music star. As an "American Idol" contestant, she captured the hearts of millions with her extraordinary voice and sassy style, with those qualities she won the talent contest and became a nationally prominent singer. But her life began much more humbly. At the age of seventeen, despite her remarkable talent, Fantasia was an uneducated, unmarried teenage mother living in poverty. She was faced with many tough battles growing up in the city of High Point, North Carolina, which is mainly famous for its furniture Market. She shows respect and admiration to the strong women who raised her, her mother and grandmother, both preachers who instilled in her a strong faith in God. Both women struggled with the same issues as Fantasia at a young age which made Fantasia realize that she would only be headed down the same dead end path if she didn't make a change for the better. Film. Life Is Not A Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story is a 2006 American biographical film directed by Debbie Allen, loosely based on the life of American singer Fantasia Barrino. The film was adapted from the book "Life Is Not A Fairy Tale" written by Fantasia. Overview. In this Lifetime original movie, director Debbie Allen gives viewers a first hand look at the struggles Fantasia faced before/during her rise to fame. The movie begins with Fantasia's humble beginnings, growing up in a close knit God-fearing family that faced its own personal demons of struggling with their dreams. Fantasia faces problems with her self-esteem, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy and her faith as she fights to overcome her mistakes at a young age. This movie depicted from her best selling biopic of the same name, provides an emotional example of what you can achieve when believing in yourself. The movie premiered on Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 9:00 PM EST. It was Lifetime's second most watched movie in its 22-year history, with more than nineteen million viewers tuning in during the August 19–20 weekend. The movie was ranked the number one basic cable movie premiere in 2006 among women ages 18–49. Weekend online traffic to Lifetimetv.com rose by more than seventy percent during that weekend. In 2007, the movie and its actors including Fantasia, Loretta Devine and Kadeem Hardison were nominated for 4 NAACP Image Awards. Kadeem Hardison won his award. It was also nominated for a 2007 Teen Choice Award for Choice TV: Movie. Soundtrack. Although a soundtrack was never released for the film, many songs were performed throughout the film. The following track listing are the songs that are performed in order throughout the film.

47fe6574-bc98-407b-846e-2fa22b474af4

m2d2_wiki

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. In the course of "Caged Bird", Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice. Angelou was challenged by her friend, author James Baldwin, and her editor, Robert Loomis, to write an autobiography that was also a piece of literature. Reviewers often categorize "Caged Bird" as autobiographical fiction because Angelou uses thematic development and other techniques common to fiction, but the prevailing critical view characterizes it as an autobiography, a genre she attempts to critique, change, and expand. The book covers topics common to autobiographies written by black American women in the years following the Civil Rights Movement: a celebration of black motherhood; a critique of racism; the importance of family; and the quest for independence, personal dignity, and self-definition. Angelou uses her autobiography to explore subjects such as identity, rape, racism, and literacy. She also writes in new ways about women's lives in a male-dominated society. Maya, the younger version of Angelou and the book's central character, has been called "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America". Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the book, although it is presented briefly in the text. Another metaphor, that of a bird struggling to escape its cage, is a central image throughout the work, which consists of "a sequence of lessons about resisting racist oppression". Angelou's treatment of racism provides a thematic unity to the book. Literacy and the power of words help young Maya cope with her bewildering world; books become her refuge as she works through her trauma. "Caged Bird" was nominated for a National Book Award in 1970 and remained on "The New York Times" paperback bestseller list for two years. It has been used in educational settings from high schools to universities, and the book has been celebrated for creating new literary avenues for the American memoir. However, the book's graphic depiction of childhood rape, racism, and sexuality has caused it to be challenged or banned in some schools and libraries. Background. Before writing "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" at the age of forty, Angelou had a long and varied career, holding jobs such as composer, singer, actor, civil rights worker, journalist, and educator. In the late 1950s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met a number of important African-American authors, including her friend and mentor James Baldwin. After hearing civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. speak for the first time in 1960, she was inspired to join the Civil Rights Movement. She organized several benefits for him, and he named her Northern Coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She worked for several years in Ghana, West Africa, as a journalist, actress, and educator. She was invited back to the US by Malcolm X to work for him shortly before his assassination in 1965. In 1968, King asked her to organize a march, but he too was assassinated on April 4, which also happened to be her birthday. For many years, Angelou responded to King's murder by not celebrating her birthday, instead choosing to meet with, call, or send flowers to his widow, Coretta Scott King. Angelou was deeply depressed in the months following King's assassination, so to help lift her spirits, Baldwin brought her to a dinner party at the home of cartoonist Jules Feiffer and his wife Judy in late 1968. The guests began telling stories of their childhoods and Angelou's stories impressed Judy Feiffer. The next day she called Robert Loomis at Random House, who became Angelou's editor throughout her long writing career until he retired in 2011, and "told him that he ought to get this woman to write a book". At first, Angelou refused, since she thought of herself as a poet and playwright. According to Angelou, Baldwin had a "covert hand" in getting her to write the book, and advised Loomis to use "a little reverse psychology", and reported that Loomis tricked her into it by daring her: "It's just as well", he said, "because to write an autobiography as literature is just about impossible". Angelou was unable to resist a challenge, and she began writing "Caged Bird." After "closeting herself" in London, it took her two years to write it. She shared the manuscript with her friend writer Jessica Mitford before submitting it for publication. Angelou subsequently wrote six additional autobiographies, covering a variety of her young adult experiences. They are distinct in style and narration, but unified in their themes, and stretch from Arkansas to Africa, and back to the US, from the beginnings of World War II to King's assassination. Like "Caged Bird", the events in these books are episodic and crafted as a series of short stories, yet do not follow a strict chronology. Later books in the series include "Gather Together in My Name" (1974), "Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas" (1976), "The Heart of a Woman" (1981), "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986), "A Song Flung Up to Heaven" (2002), and "Mom & Me & Mom" (2013, at the age of 85). Critics have often judged Angelou's later autobiographies "in light of the first", and "Caged Bird" generally receives the highest praise. Beginning with "Caged Bird", Angelou used the same "writing ritual" for many years. She would get up at five in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff were instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She wrote on yellow legal pads while lying on the bed, with a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, "Roget's Thesaurus", and the Bible, and left by the early afternoon. She averaged 10–12 pages of material a day, which she edited down to three or four pages in the evening. Lupton stated that this ritual indicated "a firmness of purpose and an inflexible use of time". Angelou went through this process to give herself time to turn the events of her life into art, and to "enchant" herself; as she said in a 1989 interview with the BBC, to "relive the agony, the anguish, the "Sturm und Drang"". She placed herself back in the time she wrote about, even during traumatic experiences like her rape in "Caged Bird", to "tell the human truth" about her life. Critic Opal Moore says about "Caged Bird": "...Though easily read, [it] is no 'easy read'". Angelou stated that she played cards to reach that place of enchantment, to access her memories more effectively. She has stated, "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!" She did not find the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling the truth". Title. When selecting a title, Angelou turned to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet whose works she had admired for years. Jazz vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln suggested the title. According to Lyman B. Hagen, the title pulls Angelou's readers into the book while reminding them that it is possible to both lose control of one's life and to have one's freedom taken from them. Angelou has credited Dunbar, along with Shakespeare, with forming her "writing ambition". The title of the book comes from the third stanza of Dunbar's poem "Sympathy": I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,When he beats his bars and would be free;It is not a carol of joy or glee,But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings – I know why the caged bird sings. Plot summary. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and disabled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage. Many of the problems Maya encounters in her childhood stem from the overt racism of her white neighbors. Although Momma is relatively wealthy because she owns the general store at the heart of Stamps' Black community, the white children of their town hassle Maya's family relentlessly. One of these "powhitetrash" girls, for example, reveals her pubic hair to Momma in a humiliating incident. Early in the book, Momma hides Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin to protect him from Ku Klux Klan raiders. Maya has to endure the insult of her name being changed to Mary by a racist employer. A white speaker at her eighth grade graduation ceremony disparages the Black audience by suggesting that they have limited job opportunities. A white dentist refuses to treat Maya's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him that she had loaned him money during the Depression. The Black community of Stamps enjoys a moment of racial victory when they listen to the radio broadcast of Joe Louis's championship fight, but generally, they feel the heavy weight of racist oppression. A turning point in the book occurs when Maya and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears in Stamps. He takes the two children with him when he departs, but leaves them with their mother in St. Louis, Missouri. Eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. He is found guilty during the trial, but escapes jail time and is murdered, presumably by Maya's uncles. Maya feels guilty and withdraws from everyone but her brother. Even after returning to Stamps, Maya remains reclusive and nearly mute until she meets Mrs. Bertha Flowers, "the aristocrat of Black Stamps," who encourages her through books and communication to regain her voice and soul. This coaxes Maya out of her shell. Later, Momma decides to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California, to protect them from the dangers of racism in Stamps. Maya attends George Washington High School and studies dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. Before graduating, she becomes the first Black female cable car conductor in San Francisco. While still in high school, Maya visits her father in southern California one summer and has some experiences pivotal to her development. She drives a car for the first time when she must transport her intoxicated father home from an excursion to Mexico. She experiences homelessness for a short time after a fight with her father's girlfriend. During Maya's final year of high school, she worries that she might be a lesbian (which she confuses due to her sexual inexperience with the belief that lesbians are also hermaphrodites). She ultimately initiates sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. She becomes pregnant, which on the advice of her brother, she hides from her family until her eighth month of pregnancy in order to graduate from high school. Maya gives birth at the end of the book. Style and genre. Angelou's prose works, while presenting a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form, can be placed in the long tradition of African-American autobiography. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development, however, often lead reviewers to categorize her books, including "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", as autobiographical fiction. Other critics, like Lupton, insist that Angelou's books should be categorized as autobiographies because they conform to the genre's standard structure: they are written by a single author, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with African-American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou calls her books autobiographies. At first, Angelou intended to return to poetry and play-writing after completing "Caged Bird" and write no more autobiographies, but she chose the genre as her primary mode of expression because of its challenge and so that she could "change it, to make it bigger, richer, finer, and more inclusive in the twentieth century". In a 1989 interview, she stated, "I think I am the only serious writer who has chosen the autobiographical form to carry my work, my expression". As she told journalist George Plimpton during a 1990 interview, "Autobiography is awfully seductive; it’s wonderful". She also told Plimpton that like the tradition begun by Frederick Douglass in slave narratives, she used the literary technique of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'". As critic Susan Gilbert states, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but the collective's. Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe agrees, and sees Angelou as representative of the convention in African-American autobiography as a public gesture that speaks for an entire group of people. Scholar Joanne M. Braxton sees "Caged Bird" as "the fully developed black female autobiographical form that began to emerge in the 1940s and 1950s". The book presents themes that are common in autobiography by Black American women: a celebration of Black motherhood; a criticism of racism; the importance of family; and the quest for independence, personal dignity, and self-definition. Angelou introduces a unique point of view in American autobiography by revealing her life story through a narrator who is a Black female from the South, at some points a child, and other points a mother. Writer Hilton Als calls Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. For example, Angelou was worried about her readers' reactions to her disclosure in her second autobiography, "Gather Together in My Name", that she was a prostitute. She went through with it, anyway, after her husband Paul Du Feu advised her to be honest about it. Angelou has recognized that there are fictional aspects to her books, and that she tends to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". Angelou discussed her writing process with Plimpton, and when asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she admitted that she had. She stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about." Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen states, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work". Hagen also states that Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". For example, Angelou uses the first-person narrative voice customary with autobiographies, told from the perspective of a child that is "artfully recreated by an adult narrator". Angelou uses two distinct voices, the adult writer and the child who is the focus of the book, whom Angelou calls "the Maya character". Angelou reports that maintaining the distinction between herself and the Maya character is "damned difficult", but "very necessary". Scholar Liliane Arensberg suggests that Angelou "retaliates for the tongue-tied child's helpless pain" by using her adult self's irony and wit. As such, "Caged Bird" has been called a "Bildungsroman" or coming-of-age story; critic Mary Jane Lupton compares it to other "Bildungsromans" like George Eliot's novel "The Mill on the Floss". According to Lupton, the two books share the following similarities: a focus on young strong-willed heroines who have solid relationships with their brothers, an examination of the role of literature in life, and an emphasis on the importance of family and community life. Form. When Angelou wrote "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" at the end of the 1960s, one of the necessary and accepted features of literature, according to critic Pierre A. Walker, was thematic unity. One of Angelou's goals was to create a book that satisfied this criterion, in order to achieve her political purposes, which were to demonstrate how to resist racism in America. The structure of the text, which resembles a series of short stories, is not chronological but rather thematic. Walker, in his 1993 article about "Caged Bird", "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Form", focuses on the book's structure, and describes how it supports her presentation of racism. According to Walker, critics had neglected analyzing its structure, choosing to focus instead on its themes, which he feels neglects the political nature of the book. He states, "One serves Angelou and "Caged Bird" better by emphasizing how form and political content work together". Angelou structures her book so that it presents a series of lessons about how to resist racism and oppression. The progression Maya goes through thematically unifies the book, something that "stands in contrast to the otherwise episodic quality of the narrative". The way in which Angelou constructs, arranges, and organizes her vignettes often undermined the chronology of her childhood by "juxtaposing the events of one chapter with the events of preceding and following ones so that they too comment on each other". For example, the incident with the "powhitetrash" girls takes place in chapter 5, when Maya was ten years old, well before Angelou's recounting of her rape in chapter 12, which occurred when Maya was 8. Walker explains that Angelou's purpose in placing the vignettes in this way is that it followed her thematic structure. Angelou's editor, Robert Loomis, agrees, stating that Angelou could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader. Hagen sees Angelou's structure somewhat differently, focusing on Maya's journey "to establish a worthwhile self-concept", and states that she structures the book into three parts: arrival, sojourn, and departure, which occur both geographically and psychologically. However, Hagen notes that instead of beginning "Caged Bird" chronologically, with Maya and Bailey's arrival in Stamps, Angelou begins the book much later chronologically by recounting an embarrassing experience at church, an incident that demonstrates Maya's diminished sense of self, insecurity, and lack of status. Hagen explains that Angelou's purpose is to demonstrate Maya's journey from insecurity to her feelings of worth gained by becoming a mother at the end of the book. Themes. Identity. In the course of "Caged Bird", Maya, who has been described as "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America", goes from being a victim of racism with an inferiority complex to a self-aware individual who responds to racism with dignity and a strong sense of her own identity. Feminist scholar Maria Lauret states that the "formation of female cultural identity" is woven into the book's narrative, setting Maya up as "a role model for Black women". Scholar Liliane Arensberg calls this presentation Angelou's "identity theme" and a major motif in Angelou's narrative. Maya's unsettled life in "Caged Bird" suggests her sense of self "as perpetually in the process of becoming, of dying and being reborn, in all its ramifications". African-American literature scholar Dolly McPherson agrees, stating that Angelou creatively uses Christian mythology and theology to present the Biblical themes of death, regeneration, and rebirth. As Lauret indicates, Angelou and other female writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s used autobiography to reimagine ways of writing about women's lives and identities in a male-dominated society. Up until this time, Black women were not depicted realistically in African-American fiction and autobiography, meaning that Angelou was one of the first Black autobiographers to present, as Cudjoe put it, "a powerful and authentic signification of [African-American] womanhood in her quest for understanding and love rather than for bitterness and despair". Lauret sees a connection between Angelou's autobiographies, which Lauret calls "fictions of subjectivity" and "feminist first-person narratives", and fictional first-person narratives (such as "The Women's Room" by Marilyn French and "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing) written during the same period. As French and Lessing do in their novels, Angelou employs the narrator as protagonist and depends upon "the illusion of presence in their mode of signification". As a displaced girl, Maya's pain is worsened by an awareness of her displacement. She is "the forgotten child", and must come to terms with "the unimaginable reality" of being unloved and unwanted; she lives in a hostile world that defines beauty in terms of whiteness and that rejects her simply because she is a Black girl. Maya internalizes the rejection she has experienced – her belief in her own ugliness was "absolute". McPherson believes that the concept of family, or what she calls "kinship concerns", in Angelou's books must be understood in the light of the children's displacement at the beginning of "Caged Bird". Being sent away from their parents was a psychological rejection, and resulted in a quest for love, acceptance, and self-worth for both Maya and Bailey. Angelou uses her many roles, incarnations, and identities throughout her books to illustrate how oppression and personal history are interrelated. For example, in "Caged Bird", Angelou demonstrates the "racist habit" of renaming African Americans, as shown when her white employer insists on calling her "Mary". Angelou describes the employer's renaming as the "hellish horror of being 'called out of [one's] name'". Scholar Debra Walker King calls it a racist insult and an assault against Maya's race and self-image. The renaming emphasizes Maya's feelings of inadequacy and denigrates her identity, individuality, and uniqueness. Maya understands that she is being insulted and rebels by breaking Mrs. Cullinan's favorite dish, but feels vindicated when, as she leaves her employer's home, Mrs. Cullinan finally gets her name right. Another incident in the book that solidifies Maya's identity is her trip to Mexico with her father, when she has to drive a car for the first time. Contrasted with her experience in Stamps, Maya is finally "in control of her fate". This experience is central to Maya's growth, as is the incident that immediately follows it, her short period of homelessness after arguing with her father's girlfriend. These two incidents give Maya a knowledge of self-determination and confirm her self-worth. Scholar Mary Burgher believes that female Black autobiographers like Angelou have debunked the stereotypes of African-American mothers as "breeder[s] and matriarch[s]", and have presented them as having "a creative and personally fulfilling role". Lupton believes that Angelou's plot construction and character development were influenced by the same mother/child motif as is found in the work of Harlem Renaissance poet Jessie Fauset. For the first five years of her life, Maya thinks of herself as an orphan and finds comfort in the thought that her mother is dead. Maya's feelings for and relationship with her own mother, whom she blames for her abandonment, express themselves in ambivalence and "repressed violent aggression". For example, Maya and her brother destroy the first Christmas gifts sent by their mother. These strong feelings are not resolved until the end of the book, when Maya becomes a mother herself, and her mother finally becomes the nurturing presence for which Maya has longed. The two main maternal influences on Maya's life change as well; Vivian becomes a more active participant, while Momma becomes less effective as Maya, by becoming a mother herself, moves from childhood to adulthood. Racism. Stamps, Arkansas, as depicted in "Caged Bird", has very little "social ambiguity": it is a racist world divided between Black and white, male and female. Als characterizes the division as "good and evil", and notes how Angelou's witness of the evil in her society, which was directed at Black women, shaped Angelou's young life and informed her views into adulthood. Angelou uses the metaphor of a bird struggling to escape its cage, described in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, as a prominent symbol throughout her series of autobiographies. Like elements within a prison narrative, the caged bird represents Angelou's confinement resulting from racism and oppression. The caged bird metaphor also invokes the "supposed contradiction of the bird singing in the midst of its struggle". Scholar Ernece B. Kelley calls "Caged Bird" a "gentle indictment of white American womanhood"; Hagen expands it further, stating that the book is "a dismaying story of white dominance". "Caged Bird" has been called "perhaps the most aesthetically satisfying autobiography written in the years immediately following the Civil Rights era". Critic Pierre A. Walker expresses a similar sentiment, and places it in the African-American literature tradition of political protest. Angelou demonstrates, through her involvement with the Black community of Stamps, as well as her presentation of vivid and realistic racist characters and "the vulgarity of white Southern attitudes toward African Americans", her developing understanding of the rules for surviving in a racist society. Angelou's autobiographies, beginning with "Caged Bird", contain a sequence of lessons about resisting oppression. The sequence she describes leads Angelou, as the protagonist, from "helpless rage and indignation to forms of subtle resistance, and finally to outright and active protest". Walker insists that Angelou's treatment of racism is what gives her autobiographies their thematic unity and underscores one of their central themes: the injustice of racism and how to fight it. For example, in Angelou's depiction of the "powhitetrash" incident, Maya reacts with rage, indignation, humiliation, and helplessness, but Momma teaches her how they can maintain their personal dignity and pride while dealing with racism, and that it is an effective basis for actively protesting and combating racism. Walker calls Momma's way a "strategy of subtle resistance" and McPherson calls it "the dignified course of silent endurance". Angelou portrays Momma as a realist whose patience, courage, and silence ensured the survival and success of those who came after her. For example, Maya responds assertively when subjected to demeaning treatment by Mrs. Cullinan, her white employer, and, later on in the book, breaks the race barrier to become the first black streetcar operator in San Francisco. In addition, Angelou's description of the strong and cohesive black community of Stamps demonstrates how African Americans subvert repressive institutions to withstand racism. Arensberg insists that Angelou demonstrates how she, as a Black child, evolves out of her "racial hatred", common in the works of many contemporary Black novelists and autobiographers. At first Maya wishes that she could become white, since growing up Black in white America is dangerous; later she sheds her self-loathing and embraces a strong racial identity. Rape. Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the autobiography, although it is presented briefly in the text. Scholar Mary Vermillion compares Angelou's treatment of rape to that of Harriet Jacobs in her autobiography "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl". Jacobs and Angelou both use rape as a metaphor for the suffering of African Americans; Jacobs uses the metaphor to critique slaveholding culture, while Angelou uses it to first internalize, then challenge, twentieth-century racist conceptions of the Black female body (namely, that the Black female is physically unattractive). Rape, according to Vermillion, "represents the black girl's difficulties in controlling, understanding, and respecting both her body and her words". Arensberg notes that Maya's rape is connected to the theme of death in "Caged Bird", as Mr. Freeman threatens to kill Maya's brother Bailey if she tells anyone about the rape. After Maya lies during Freeman's trial, stating that the rape was the first time he touched her inappropriately, Freeman is murdered (presumably by one of Maya's uncles) and Maya sees her words as a bringer of death. As a result, she resolves never to speak to anyone other than Bailey. Angelou connects the violation of her body and the devaluation of her words through the depiction of her self-imposed, five-year-long silence. As Angelou later stated, "I thought if I spoke, my mouth would just issue out something that would kill people, randomly, so it was better not to talk". African-American literature scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe calls Angelou's depiction of the rape "a burden" of "Caged Bird": a demonstration of "the manner in which the Black female is violated in her tender years and ... the 'unnecessary insult' of Southern girlhood in her movement to adolescence". Vermillion goes further, maintaining that a Black woman who writes about her rape risks reinforcing negative stereotypes about her race and gender. When asked decades later how she was able to survive such trauma, Angelou explained it by stating, "I can't remember a time when I wasn't loved by somebody." When asked by the same interviewer why she wrote about the experience, she indicated that she wanted to demonstrate the complexities of rape. She also wanted to prevent it from happening to someone else, so that anyone who had been raped might gain understanding and not blame herself for it. Literacy. As Lupton points out, all of Angelou's autobiographies, especially "Caged Bird" and its immediate sequel "Gather Together in My Name", are "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how she learned it". Lupton compares Angelou's informal education with the education of other Black writers of the twentieth century, who did not earn official degrees and depended upon the "direct instruction of African American cultural forms". Angelou's quest for learning and literacy parallels "the central myth of black culture in America": that freedom and literacy are connected. Angelou is influenced by writers introduced to her by Mrs. Flowers during her self-imposed muteness, including Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare. Angelou states, early in "Caged Bird", that she, as the Maya character, "met and fell in love with William Shakespeare". Critic Mary Vermillion sees a connection between Maya's rape and Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece", which Maya memorizes and recites when she regains her speech. Vermillion maintains that Maya finds comfort in the poem's identification with suffering. Maya finds novels and their characters complete and meaningful, so she uses them to make sense of her bewildering world. She is so involved in her fantasy world of books that she even uses them as a way to cope with her rape, writing in "Caged Bird", "...I was sure that any minute my mother or Bailey or the Green Hornet would bust in the door and save me". According to Walker, the power of words is another theme that appears repeatedly in "Caged Bird". For example, Maya chooses to not speak after her rape because she is afraid of the destructive power of words. Mrs. Flowers, by introducing her to classic literature and poetry, teaches her about the positive power of language and empowers Maya to speak again. The importance of both the spoken and written word also appears repeatedly in "Caged Bird" and in all of Angelou's autobiographies. Referring to the importance of literacy and methods of effective writing, Angelou once advised Oprah Winfrey in a 1993 interview to "do as West Africans do ... listen to the deep talk", or the "utterances existing beneath the obvious". McPherson says, "If there is one stable element in Angelou's youth it is [a] dependence upon books". The public library is a "quiet refuge" to which Maya retreats when she experiences crisis. Hagen describes Angelou as a "natural story-teller", which "reflect[s] a good listener with a rich oral heritage". Hagen also insists that Angelou's years of muteness provided her with this skill. Angelou was also powerfully affected by slave narratives, spirituals, poetry, and other autobiographies. Angelou read through the Bible twice as a young child, and memorized many passages from it. African-American spirituality, as represented by Angelou's grandmother, has influenced all of Angelou's writings, in the activities of the church community she first experiences in Stamps, in the sermonizing, and in scripture. Hagen goes on to say that in addition to being influenced by rich literary form, Angelou has also been influenced by oral traditions. In "Caged Bird", Mrs. Flowers encourages her to listen carefully to "Mother Wit", which Hagen defines as the collective wisdom of the African-American community as expressed in folklore and humor. Angelou's humor in "Caged Bird" and in all her autobiographies is drawn from Black folklore and is used to demonstrate that in spite of severe racism and oppression, Black people thrive and are, as Hagen states, "a community of song and laughter and courage". Hagen states that Angelou is able to make an indictment of institutionalized racism as she laughs at her flaws and the flaws of her community and "balances stories of black endurance of oppression against white myths and misperceptions". Hagen also characterize "Caged Bird" as a "blues genre autobiography" because it uses elements of blues music. These elements include the act of testimony when speaking of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations. Hagen also sees elements of African American sermonizing in "Caged Bird". Angelou's use of African-American oral traditions creates a sense of community in her readers, and identifies those who belong to it. Reception and legacy. Critical reception and sales. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is the most highly acclaimed of Angelou's autobiographies. The other volumes in her series of seven autobiographies are judged and compared to "Caged Bird." It became a bestseller immediately after it was published. Angelou's friend and mentor, James Baldwin, maintained that her book "liberates the reader into life" and called it "a Biblical study of life in the midst of death". According to Angelou's biographers, "Readers, especially women, and in particular Black women, took the book to heart". By the end of 1969, critics had placed Angelou in the tradition of other Black autobiographers. Poet James Bertolino asserts that "Caged Bird" "is one of the essential books produced by our culture". He insists that "[w]e should all read it, especially our children". It was nominated for a National Book Award in 1970, has never been out of print, and has been published in many languages. It has been a Book of the Month Club selection and an Ebony Book Club selection. In 2011, "Time Magazine" placed the book in its list of 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. Critic Robert A. Gross called "Caged Bird" "a "tour de force" of language". Edmund Fuller insisted that Angelou's intellectual range and artistry were apparent in how she told her story. "Caged Bird" catapulted Angelou to international fame and critical acclaim, was a significant development in Black women's literature in that it "heralded the success of other now prominent writers". Other reviewers have praised Angelou's use of language in the book, including critic E. M. Guiney, who reported that "Caged Bird" was "one of the best autobiographies of its kind that I have read". Critic R. A. Gross praised Angelou for her use of rich and dazzling images. By the mid-1980s, "Caged Bird" had gone through 20 hardback printings and 32 paperback printings. The week after Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration, sales of the paperback version of "Caged Bird" and her other works rose by 300–600 percent. "Caged Bird" had sold steadily since its publication, but it increased by 500 percent. The 16-page publication of "On the Pulse of Morning" became a best-seller, and the recording of the poem was awarded a Grammy Award. The Bantam Books edition of "Caged Bird" was a bestseller for 36 weeks, and they had to reprint 400,000 copies of her books to meet demand. Random House, which published Angelou's hardcover books and the poem later that year, reported that they sold more of her books in January 1993 than they did in all of 1992, marking a 1,200 percent increase. The book's reception has not been universally positive; for example, author Francine Prose considers its inclusion in the high school curriculum as partly responsible for the "dumbing down" of American society. Prose calls the book "manipulative melodrama", and considers Angelou's writing style an inferior example of poetic prose in memoir. She accuses Angelou of combining a dozen metaphors in one paragraph and for "obscuring ideas that could be expressed so much more simply and felicitously". Many parents throughout the U.S. have sought to ban the book from schools and libraries for being inappropriate for younger high school students, for promoting premarital sex, homosexuality, cohabitation, and pornography, and for not supporting traditional values. Parents have also objected to the book's use of profanity and to its graphic and violent depiction of rape and racism. Influence. When "Caged Bird" was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African-American women who was able to publicly discuss her personal life. Up to that point, Black women writers were marginalized to the point that they were unable to present themselves as central characters. Writer Julian Mayfield, who called "Caged Bird" "a work of art that eludes description", has insisted that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for African-American autobiography as a whole. Als insisted that "Caged Bird" marked one of the first times that a Black autobiographer could, as Als put it, "write about blackness from the inside, without apology or defense". Through the writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized as a respected spokesperson for blacks and women. "Caged Bird" made her "without a doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". Although Als considers "Caged Bird" an important contribution to the increase of Black feminist writings in the 1970s, he attributes its success less to its originality than to "its resonance in the prevailing Zeitgeist" of its time, at the end of the American Civil Rights Movement. Angelou's writings, more interested in self-revelation than in politics or feminism, freed many other women writers to "open themselves up without shame to the eyes of the world". Angelou's autobiographies, especially the first volume, have been used in narrative and multicultural approaches to teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor at George Washington University, has used "Caged Bird" and "Gather Together in My Name" when training teachers to appropriately explore racism in their classrooms. Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony causes readers of Angelou's autobiographies to wonder what she "left out" and to be unsure how to respond to the events Angelou describes. These techniques force white readers to explore their feelings about race and their privileged status in society. Glazier found that although critics have focused on where Angelou fits within the genre of African-American autobiography and her literary techniques, readers react to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with certain expectations about the genre of autobiography". Educator Daniel Challener, in his 1997 book "Stories of Resilience in Childhood", analyzed the events in "Caged Bird" to illustrate resiliency in children. Challener states that Angelou's book provides a useful framework for exploring the obstacles many children like Maya face and how a community helps these children succeed as Angelou did. Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has used "Caged Bird" to supplement scientific theory and research in the instruction of child development topics such as the development of self-concept and self-esteem, ego resilience, industry versus inferiority, effects of abuse, parenting styles, sibling and friendship relations, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and identity formation in adolescence. He has called the book a highly effective tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts. Censorship. "Caged Bird" has been criticized by many parents, causing it to be removed from school curricula and library shelves. The book was approved to be taught in public schools and was placed in public school libraries through the U.S. in the early-1980s, and was included in advanced placement and gifted student curricula, but attempts by parents to censor it began in 1983. It has been challenged in fifteen U.S. states. Educators have responded to these challenges by removing it from reading lists and libraries, by providing students with alternatives, and by requiring parental permission from students. Some have been critical of its sexually explicit scenes, use of language, and irreverent religious depictions. "Caged Bird" appeared third on the American Library Association (ALA) list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000, sixth on the ALA's 2000–2009 list, and one of the ten books most frequently banned from high school and junior high school libraries and classrooms. Film version. A made-for-TV movie version of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was filmed in Mississippi and aired on April 28, 1979, on CBS. Angelou and Leonora Thuna wrote the screenplay; the movie was directed by Fielder Cook. Constance Good played young Maya. Also appearing were actors Esther Rolle, Roger E. Mosley, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, and Madge Sinclair. Two scenes in the movie differed from events described in the book. Angelou added a scene between Maya and Uncle Willie after the Joe Louis fight; in it, he expresses his feelings of redemption and hope after Louis defeats a white opponent. Angelou also presents her eighth grade graduation differently in the film. In the book, Henry Reed delivers the valedictory speech and leads the Black audience in the Negro national anthem. In the movie, Maya conducts these activities.

0a9c2377-e892-4416-8ff9-8313d1f03552

m2d2_wiki

The Motion of Light in Water The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, is an autobiography by science fiction author Samuel R. Delany in which he recounts his experiences as growing up as a gay African American man, as well as some of his time in an interracial and open marriage with Marilyn Hacker. It describes encounters with Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael and Stormé DeLarverie, a dinner with W. H. Auden, and a phone call to James Baldwin. Among many cultural events of the decade that he witnessed, Delany recounts his attendance at the first New York City performance of artist Allan Kaprow's "18 Happenings in 6 Parts", the 1959 performance piece that, for many, marks the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernism. In section 17.4 of the University of Minnesota Press edition, he describes the event and its venue, and speculates on its artistic significance. The introduction puts an emphasis on the idea of the unreliable narrator; Delany's accounts often contrast his life as it "felt" to ways in which it actually occurred. Legacy. Hazel Carby called it one of two contemporary autobiographies that are "absolutely central to any consideration of black manhood" (the other being that of Miles Davis). In the chapter, "The Future Is in the Present" of the book "Cruising Utopia" by José Esteban Munoz, Delany's "The Motion of Light in the Water" serves to explain how the future, as a formed of utopia, can be "glimpsed" in the present through what Delany employed as "the massed bodies" of sexual dissidence. Masha Gessen in O, The Oprah Magazine selected this title as a pick for the "Best LGBTQ Books of All Time," describing it as "a textbook in observing the self, thinking about sex and love, and the best writing manual I know." Publication history. The first edition is subtitled "1957–1965", the revised 1993 edition is subtitled "1960–1965".

f4251490-3279-415e-9fd5-7c47ca9e3d14

m2d2_wiki

Live from Death Row Live from Death Row, published in May 1995, is a memoir by Mumia Abu-Jamal, an American journalist and activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is known for having been convicted of the murder of a city police officer and sentenced to death in 1982, in a trial that Amnesty International suspected of lacking impartiality. Abu-Jamal wrote this book while on death row. He has always maintained his innocence. Publishers Addison-Wesley paid Abu-Jamal a $30,000 advance for the book. Reports that Abu-Jamal would be paid for the book resulted in protests. In a case decided in Federal appeals court, it ruled that he had the right to be paid for commentary and writings. This is the first of several books that he has published which were completed in prison. His sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole in 2011, after he had been held for 29 years on death row. Context. Abu-Jamal explores many important historical events of relevance to the standing of black people in America. Using numerous references to law and court cases, he demonstrates that the Dred Scott ruling is still relevant to racial relations. He asserts that black people are still far from free, denoting Nelson Mandela's plight. He expresses a dislike for William Rehnquist's conservative slant and Sandra Day O'Connor's "Rehnquistian" dissent in "Penry v. Lynaugh", allowing the execution of the intellectually disabled. He mocks Lewis Powell's dismissal of statistical evidence of racial discrimination in capital sentencing in "McCleskey v. Kemp" and his dissent in which he states "McCleskey's claim, taken to its logical conclusion, throws into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system". He also mentions Harry Blackmun's vote in "Gregg v. Georgia," which ruled the death penalty to be constitutional. Abu-Jamal notes that Blackmun changed his mind; in "Callins v. Collins" the justice stated, "from this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death ... I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed". A former Black Panther, Abu-Jamal recalls some of his past experiences with the organization; his one-time role as bodyguard for Huey P. Newton, whom he regards as a hero; the feuding between the Newton-led West Coast members and the Eldridge Cleaver-led East Coast and, ultimately, its decline. He recounts his protest of a George Wallace rally with three other black teens, their subsequent beatings at the hands of white attendees, and his appeal for help to a police officer. The man kicked him in the face while he was on the ground. Abu-Jamiah frequently refers to the MOVE organization, its founder John Africa, and the massacre of 11 people (5 of them children) in a bombing attack on May 13, 1985 and fire caused by the Philadelphia Police Department. He compares this to the Waco siege, which resulted in 82 deaths. He also explores the 1992 trial of Los Angeles officers for the beating of Rodney King, and riots in the city after the officers were acquitted. He said that he believed each of the indicted officers had their constitutional right of double jeopardy violated by being twice put on trial for the same offense. Synopsis. Abu-Jamal structures the book as anecdotes, most exploring the prison system. In an end section titled "Musings, memories, and prophecies", he discusses past events in his life, and he commemorates some prominent black people in America. He delves into the purported purpose of prison, suggesting that "corrections" and deterrence are no longer its true goals: he notes that there are barriers to educating inmates and that psychological problems are caused by the practices of putting prisoners in isolation and prohibiting contact during visits. He suggests that prisons are operated in order to "erode one's humanity". He describes the procedures of death row blocs, where twenty-plus-hour solitary confinement is offset by a few hours of recreation and exercise "outside" on penned-in plots of land and limited conversations with other inmates. These often relate to their attempts at appeal and their battles with the law. He details two suicides of fellow inmates, one by hanging and one by self-inflicted burns. He notes that inmates were given drugs to make them more sedate, although this endangered one man with epilepsy. He reports the interactions between "urban" prisoners and "rural" guards, and says that prisoners are subject to brutal beatings, cavity searches, racial harassment, and human rights violations after insurgencies. In addition to prison conditions, he discusses social issues and their relevance to prison. He expresses dismay toward laws requiring mandatory sentencing, for instance those related to "three strikes"; and criticizes politicians using "tough on crime" slogans to gain support for election. He notes that the United States has the highest number of incarcerated individuals in the world. He hints at racial discrimination, as proposed in the "McCleskey v. Kemp" case. He cites statistics showing that the population on death row in the United States is disproportionately black and Hispanic. He explores elements of the judicial system that reveal it is affected by racism: he notes jury selection by prosecutors that is biased toward persons, often white, who approve the death penalty. In addition, he suggests that expert witnesses for the prosecution suppress or distort evidence to suit the criminal justice system. He also explores the topic of uneven justice, giving examples of police officers acquitted of murder of suspects despite compelling evidence against them. Similarly, he notes that guards frequently receive little if any punishment for inappropriate actions against prisoners. Publication. Abu-Jamal had started providing commentaries to Prison Radio and other outlets. Addison-Wesley paid Abu-Jamal a $30,000 advance for the book. Reception. The notoriety of Abu-Jamal for his case and protests related to his book deal resulted in considerable coverage of this book at publication.

38b46c57-1d17-4d5b-882e-0140e4dc29db

m2d2_wiki

Confessions of a Video Vixen Confessions of a Video Vixen is a memoir written by Karrine Steffans which details the first 25 years of her life. Part tell-all covering her sexual liaisons with music industry personalities and professional athletes, and part cautionary tale about the dangers of the otherwise romanticized hip-hop music industry, it caused considerable controversy in some circles. Summary. "Confessions of a Video Vixen" recounts Steffans' life from her troubled girlhood living in poverty in St. Thomas, through abuse, drugs, rape and living as a teenage runaway who turns to stripping and hip hop modeling to support herself and, later, her young son. Originally published in 2005 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, the book was immediately a "New York Times" bestseller. (The 2006 paperback edition includes bonus material, and also made the NYT bestseller list.) The book created a stir when it went on sale because of Steffans' allegations of abuse at the hands of her then-husband rapper, Kool G Rap and her claims that she had sexual relationships with numerous famous music stars and athletes, including Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Bobby Brown, Dr. Dre, DMX, Xzibit, Diddy, Usher, Shaquille O'Neal and Irv Gotti.

aba96c3a-b07a-4120-99ba-1a6cbe03d17f

m2d2_wiki

Coming of Age in Mississippi Coming of Age in Mississippi is a 1968 memoir by Anne Moody about growing up in rural Mississippi in the mid-20th century as an African-American woman. The book covers Moody's life from childhood through her mid twenties, including her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement beginning when she was a student at the historically black Tougaloo College. Moody's autobiography details her struggles both against racism among white people and sexism among her fellow civil rights activists. It received many positive reviews and won awards from the National Library Association and the National Council of Christians and Jews. About the author. Anne Moody, born Essie Mae Moody, was born September 15, 1940, just outside Centreville, Mississippi. The daughter of two poor sharecroppers and the eldest of many, Moody took on a great responsibility at a young age and matured quickly. After graduating high school in 1959, Moody received a basketball scholarship to Natchez Junior College and later transferred to Tougaloo College. Moody became involved early in the Civil Rights Movement, helping organize the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and participating in a Woolworth's sit-in on May 28, 1963. After graduation from Tougaloo College, Moody moved to Ithaca, New York, where she was a project coordinator for Cornell University until 1965. She moved to New York City once she left Cornell, where she began writing "Coming of Age in Mississippi", which was published in 1968. She married Austin Straus, with whom she had one son, Sascha Straus. After struggling with dementia for years, she died at her home in Gloster, Mississippi, on February 5, 2015, aged 74. Structure and content. "Coming of Age in Mississippi" is divided into four sections: "Childhood", "High School", "College", and "The Movement". Part One: Childhood. Moody begins her story on the plantation where she lives with her mother, Toosweet, and her father, Diddly, both sharecroppers, and her younger sister, Adline. Later, Moody's mother gives birth to her third child, Jr. While Toosweet is pregnant with Jr., her father begins an affair with another woman from the plantation. Shortly after Jr.’s birth, her parents separate. Moody moves with her mother and younger siblings to town to live with her great aunt and begins grade school. Moody's curiosity about race is sparked when her questions about her two uncles, who appear white, go unanswered. Moody's mother begins a relationship with a man named Raymond, whom she eventually marries and has five more children with by the time Moody is in college. At nine years old, Moody begins her first job sweeping a porch, earning seventy-five cents a week and two gallons of milk. She experiences her first real competition with Raymond’s sister Darlene; they're the same age and in the same class, constantly competing against one another whenever possible. Though Moody enjoys attending Centreville church, which Raymond's family belongs to, she is tricked into joining her mother's church: Mt. Pleasant. She resents her mother for some time after that. Once the family farm falls through, Moody takes on more responsibility to help support the family. When asked to obtain a copy of her birth certificate for graduation, her birth certificate shows up as Annie Mae. When Toosweet requests to have it changed, she is told there would be a fee; Moody asks if she can keep Annie, and so she becomes Annie Mae Moody. Part Two: High School. Moody's political awakenings begin during her teenage years, chronicled in the book's second section, "High School." During her first year in high school, Emmett Till, an innocent 14-year-old black boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago, is tortured and murdered for allegedly whistling in a flirtatious and offensive manner at a white woman. His murder is a defining moment in Moody's life. When Moody asks her mother questions about why the boy was killed and by whom, she is told, "an Evil Spirit killed him;" and that "it would take eight years to learn what that spirit was." For the first time, she realizes the extent to which many whites in Mississippi will go to protect their way of life – white supremacy – and the appalling powerlessness of the blacks – what most whites considered savages. When she asks her mother for the meaning of "NAACP" (referring to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), after hearing it from Mrs. Burke, the white woman she works for, her mother tells her never to mention that word in front of any white person, and, if possible, not at all. Shortly thereafter, Moody discovers that there is one adult in her life who could offer her the answers she seeks: Mrs. Rice, her homeroom teacher. Mrs. Rice plays a pivotal role in Moody's maturation. She not only answers Moody's questions about Emmett Till and the NAACP, but she volunteers a great deal more information about the state of race relations in Mississippi. Moody's early curiosity about the NAACP resurfaces later when she attends Tougaloo College. It is during this time, at fifteen years old, that Moody makes the claim that she began to hate white people. She also moves to Baton Rouge that same summer. While in Baton Rouge, Moody learns some tough lessons when she is ripped off by a white family for two weeks' pay, and when she is betrayed by a co-worker, which resulted in her losing her job. Working for Mrs. Burke was something Moody viewed as a challenge; one that she overcame when she quit after Mrs. Burke wrongfully accused her younger brother, Jr. When Moody returned to New Orleans the following summer she worked as a waitress and was able to save money for college. Moody graduated high school in the summer of 1959 and made the decision to return to New Orleans for good. Part Three: College. The third section of the autobiography reveals Moody's increasing commitment to political activism. Towards the end of the summer after graduation, Moody received a letter from the head coach at Natchez Junior College; she had received a basketball scholarship. Attending Natchez felt very restrictive to Moody, and at the end of the year she was unsure if she would return, but because of the cost of the schools in New Orleans, she returned to Natchez in the fall. During her second year at Natchez College, she helps organize a successful boycott of the campus cafeteria when a student finds a maggot in her plate of grits. This is Moody's first experience in organizing a group of individuals to launch a structured revolt against the practices of an established institution. While waiting for their demands to be met, Moody offers up what little money she has to help buy food for her fellow students. Just before the end of her sophomore year at Natchez, Moody successfully for an academic scholarship to Tougaloo College. When Moody's roommate Trotter encourages her to join the NAACP, of which she is the secretary, Moody promises she will attend the next meeting, despite the animosity and violence that had surrounded everything she knew about the group. Some Tougaloo students were jailed after a demonstration, and when they were brought back to campus, Medgar Evers accompanied them to "get some of Tougaloo’s spirit and try and spread it around all over Jackson." Though Moody's grades suffered, she could not pull herself away from the movement. A white student, Joan Trumpauer, a secretary for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, moved across the hall from Moody and invited her to help canvas in the voter registration they were organizing in the Delta. While a junior at Tougaloo College, Moody joins the NAACP. The third section ends with Moody's recounting of a terrifying ordeal in Jackson, Mississippi. On a shopping trip there with Rose, a fellow student from Tougaloo College, Moody – without any planning or support mechanism in place – decides to go into the "Whites Only" section of the Trailways bus depot. Initially the whites in the waiting area react with shock, but soon a menacing white mob gathers around the two young women and threatens violence. Part Four: The Movement. The fourth and final section documents Moody's full-scale involvement in the struggle for civil rights. In the opening chapter of the final section, Moody narrates her participation in a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson. She and three other civil rights workers – two of them white – take their seats at the lunch counter. They are denied service, but the four continue to sit and wait. Soon a large number of white students from a local high school pour into Woolworth’s. When the students realize that a sit-in is in progress, they crowd around Moody and her companions and begin to taunt them. The verbal abuse quickly turns physical. Moody, along with the other three, is beaten, kicked, and "dragged about thirty feet toward the door by [her] hair" (266). Then all four of them are "smeared with ketchup, mustard, sugar, pies and everything on the counter" (266). The abuse continues for almost three hours until Dr. Beittel, the president of Tougaloo College who arrived after being informed of the violence, rescues them. When Moody is escorted out of Woolworth's by Dr. Beittel, she realizes that "about ninety white police officers had been standing outside the store; they had been watching the whole thing through the windows, but had not come in to stop the mob or do anything" (267). This experience helps Moody understand "how sick Mississippi whites were" and how "their disease, an incurable disease," could prompt them even to kill to preserve "the segregated Southern way of life" (267). While Moody is working for CORE, she slowly becomes angry; angry that she is not seeing the change she had hoped for, in the time she had hoped for, and angry that so many black people refused to work as diligently as herself and her activist peers did. Moody experiences the most fear throughout the entire story during this time when she learns she has made the Klan list. In the chapters that follow she comments on the impact of the assassinations of Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy on the Civil Rights Movement, and the escalating turmoil across the South. Just before the final chapter, along with her fellow "Woolworth orphans," Moody graduates from Tougaloo College. The short final chapter ends with her joining a busload of civil rights workers on their way to Washington, D.C. As the bus moves through the Mississippi landscape, her fellow travelers sing the anthem of the Movement.

77a13528-21c8-42e9-98d8-1c2388e4274c

m2d2_wiki

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" encompasses eleven chapters that recount Douglass's life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. It contains two introductions by well-known white abolitionists: a preface by William Lloyd Garrison, and a letter by Wendell Phillips, both arguing for the veracity of the account and the literacy of its author. Chapters 1–4. Douglass begins by explaining that he does not know the date of his birth (he later chose February 14, 1818), and that his mother died when he was 7 years old. He has very few memories of her (children were commonly separated from their mothers), only of the rare nighttime visit. He thinks his father is a white man, possibly his owner. At a very early age he sees his Aunt Hester being whipped. Douglass details the cruel interaction that occurs between slaves and slaveholders, as well as how slaves are supposed to behave in the presence of their masters, and even when Douglass says that fear is what kept many slaves what they were, for when they told the truth they were punished by their owners. Chapters 5–7. At this point in the "Narrative", Douglass is moved to Baltimore, Maryland. This move is rather important for him because he believes that if he had not been moved, he would have remained a slave his entire life. He even starts to have hope for a better life in the future. He also discusses his new mistress, Mrs. Sophia Auld, who begins as a very kind woman but eventually turns cruel. Douglass learns the alphabet and how to spell small words from this woman, but her husband, Mr. Auld, disapproves, and states that if slaves could read, they would not be fit to be slaves, being unmanageable and sad. Upon hearing why Mr. Auld disapproves of slaves being taught how to read, Douglass realizes the importance of reading and the possibilities that this skill could help him. He takes it upon himself to learn how to read and learn all he can, but at times, this new found skill torments him. Douglass then gains an understanding of the word "abolition" and develops the idea to run away to the North. He also learns how to write and how to read well. Chapters 8–9. At the age of ten or eleven, Douglass's master dies and his property is left to be divided between the master's son and daughter. The slaves are valued along with the livestock, causing Douglass to develop a new hatred of slavery. He feels lucky when he is sent back to Baltimore to live with the family of Master Hugh. He is then moved through a few situations before he is sent to St. Michael's. His regret at not having attempted to run away is evident, but on his voyage he makes a mental note that he traveled in the North-Easterly direction and considers this information to be of extreme importance. For some time, he lives with Master Thomas Auld who is particularly cruel, even after attending a Methodist camp. Douglass is pleased when he eventually is lent to Mr. Covey for a year, simply because he would be fed. Mr. Covey is known as a "negro-breaker", who breaks the will of slaves. Chapters 10–11. While under the control of Mr. Covey, Douglass is a field hand and has an especially hard time at the tasks required of him. He is harshly whipped almost on a weekly basis, apparently due to his awkwardness. He is worked and beaten to exhaustion, which finally causes him to collapse one day while working in the fields. Because of this, he is brutally beaten once more by Covey. Douglass eventually complains to Thomas Auld, who subsequently sends him back to Covey. A few days later, Covey attempts to tie up Douglass, but he fights back. After a two-hour long physical battle, Douglass ultimately conquers Covey. After this fight, he is never beaten again. Douglass is not punished by the law, which is believed to be due to the fact that Covey cherishes his reputation as a "negro-breaker", which would be jeopardized if others knew what happened. When his one-year contract ends under Covey, Douglass is sent to live on William Freeland's plantation. Douglass comments on the abuse suffered under Covey, a religious man, and the relative peace under the more favorable, but more secular, Freeland. On Freeland's plantation, Douglass befriends other slaves and teaches them how to read. Douglass and a small group of slaves make a plan to escape, but before doing so, they are caught and Douglass is put in jail. Following his release about a week later, he is sent to Baltimore once more, but this time to learn a trade. He becomes an apprentice in a shipyard under Mr. Gardner where he is disliked by several white apprentices due to his slave status and race; at one point he gets into a fight with them and they nearly gouge out his left eye. Woefully beaten, Douglass goes to Master Hugh, who is kind regarding this situation and refuses to let Douglass return to the shipyard. Master Hugh tries to find a lawyer but all refuse, saying they can only do something for a white person. Sophia Auld, who had turned cruel under the influence of slavery, feels pity for Douglass and tends to the wound at his left eye until he is healed. At this point, Douglass is employed as a caulker and receives wages, but is forced to give every cent to Master Auld in due time. Douglass eventually finds his own job and plans the date in which he will escape to the North. He succeeds in reaching New Bedford, but does not give details of how he does so in order to protect those who help him to allow the possibility for other slaves escape by similar means. Douglass unites with his fiancée and begins working as his own master. He attends an anti-slavery convention and eventually becomes a well-known orator and abolitionist. Appendix. Douglass' appendix clarifies that he is not against religion as a whole; instead he referred to "the "slaveholding religion" of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper". He condemns the hypocrisy in southern Christianity between what is taught and the actions of the slaveowners who practice it. He compares their Christianity to the practices of "the ancient scribes and Pharisees" and quotes passages from Matthew 23 calling them hypocrites. At the end, he includes a satire of a hymn "said to have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners, and piety, with his own eyes", titled simply "A Parody". It criticizes religious slaveowners, each stanza ending with the phrase "heavenly union", mimicking the original's form. Publication history. The "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" was published on May 1, 1845, and within four months of this publication, five thousand copies were sold. By 1860, almost 30,000 copies were sold. After publication, he left Lynn, Massachusetts and sailed to England and Ireland for two years in fear of being recaptured by his owner in the United States. While in Britain and Ireland, he gained supporters who paid $710.96 to purchase his emancipation from his legal owner. One of the more significant reasons Douglass published his "Narrative" was to offset the demeaning manner in which white people viewed him. When he spoke in public, his white abolitionist associates established limits to what he could say on the platform. More specifically, they did not want him to analyze the current slavery issues or to shape the future for black people. However, once "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" was published, he was given the liberty to begin more ambitious work on the issue rather than giving the same speeches repetitively. Because of the work in his "Narrative", Douglass gained significant credibility from those who previously did not believe the story of his past. While in Ireland the Dublin edition of the book was published by the abolitionist printer Richard D. Webb to great acclaim and Douglass would write extensively in later editions very positively about his experience in Ireland. His newfound liberty on the platform eventually led him to start a black newspaper against the advice of his "fellow" abolitionists. The publication of "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" opened several doors, not only for Douglass's ambitious work, but also for the anti-slavery movement of that time. Reactions to the text. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" received many positive reviews, but there was a group of people who opposed Douglass's work. One of his biggest critics, A. C. C. Thompson, was a neighbor of Thomas Auld, who was the master of Douglass for some time. As seen in "Letter from a Slave Holder" by A. C. C. Thompson, found in the Norton Critical Edition of "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave", he claimed that the slave he knew was "an unlearned, and rather an ordinary negro". Thompson was confident that Douglass "was not capable of writing the Narrative". He also disputed the "Narrative" when Douglass described the various cruel white slave holders that he either knew or knew of. Prior to the publication of "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass", the public could not fathom how it was possible for a former slave to appear to be so educated. Upon listening to his oratory, many were skeptical of the stories he told. After Douglass's publication, however, the public was swayed. Many viewed his text as an affirmation of what he spoke of publicly. Also found in "The Norton Critical Edition", Margaret Fuller, a prominent book reviewer and literary critic of that era, had a high regard of Douglass's work. She claimed, "we have never read [a narrative] more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling". She also suggested that "every one may read his book and see what a mind might have been stifled in bondage — what a man may be subjected to the insults of spendthrift dandies, or the blows of mercenary brutes, in whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity in the outward form". Douglass's work in this "Narrative" was an influential piece of literature in the anti-slavery movement. Influence on contemporary black studies. The first chapter of this text has been mobilized in several major texts that have become foundational texts in contemporary Black studies: Hortense Spillers in her article "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (1987); Saidiya Hartman in her book "Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America" (1997), and Fred Moten in his book "In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition" (2003). Each author uniquely contends with and navigates through Douglass’ writing. Specifically, each author has a divergent approach to revisiting or reproducing narratives of the suffering enslaved body. These divergences on Douglass are further reflected in their differing explorations of the conditions where subject and object positions of the enslaved body are produced and/or troubled. Spillers mobilizes Douglass’ description of his and his siblings’ early separation from their mother and subsequent estrangement from each other to articulate how the syntax of subjectivity, in particular “kinship”, has a historically specific relationship to the objectifying formations of chattel slavery which denied genetic links and familial bonds between the enslaved. This denial was part of the processes that worked to reinforce the enslaved position as property and object. Spillers frames Douglass’ narrative as writing that, although frequently returned to, still has the ability to “astonish” contemporary readers with each return to this scene of enslaved grief and loss (Spillers, “Mama’s Baby”, 76). By tracing the historical conditions of captivity through which slave humanity is defined as “absence from a subject position” narratives like Douglass’, chronicles of the Middle Passage, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, are framed as impression points that have not lost their affective potential or become problematically familiar through repetitions or revisions (Spillers, “Mama’s Baby”, 66). Spillers own (re)visitation of Douglass’ narrative suggests that these efforts are a critical component to her assertion that “[i]n order for me to speak a truer word concerning myself, I must strip down through layers of attenuated meanings, made an excess in time, over time, assigned by a particular historical order, and there await whatever marvels of my own inventiveness” (Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, 65). In contrast to Spiller’s articulation that repetition does not rob Douglass’ narrative of its power, Saidiya Hartman explores how an over familiarity with narratives of the suffering enslaved body is problematic. In Hartman’s work, repeated “exposure of the violated body” is positioned as a process that can lead to a benumbing “indifference to suffering” (Hartman, Scenes of Objection, 4). This turn away from Douglass’ description of the violence carried out against his Aunt Hester is contextualized by Hartman’s critical examination of 19th century abolitionist writings in the Antebellum South. These abolitionist narratives included extreme representations of violence carried out against the enslaved body which were included to establish the slave’s humanity and evoke empathy while exposing the terrors of the institution. However, Hartman posits that these abolitionist efforts, which may have intended to convey enslaved subjectivities, actually aligned more closely to replications of objectivity since they “reinforce[d] the ‘thingly’ quality of the captive by reducing the body to evidence” (Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 19). Instead of concentrating on these narratives that dramatized violence and the suffering black body, Hartman is more focused on revealing the quotidian ways that enslaved personhood and objectivity were selectively constructed or brought into tension in scenes like the coffle, coerced performances of slave leisure on the plantation, and the popular theater of the Antebellum South. Fred Moten’s engagement with "Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass" echoes Spillers assertion that “every writing as a revision makes the ‘discovery’ all over again” (Spillers, 69). In his book chapter “Resistance of the Object: Aunt Hester’s Scream” he speaks to Hartman’s move away from Aunt Hester’s experience of violence. Moten questions whether Hartman’s opposition to reproducing this narrative is not actually a direct move through a relationship between violence and the captive body positioned as object, that she had intended to avoid. Moten suggests that as Hartman outlines the reasons for her opposition, her written reference to the narrative and the violence of its content may indeed be an inevitable reproduction. This is reflected in his question “of whether performance in general is ever outside the economy of reproduction” (Moten, In the Break, 4). A key parameter in Moten’s analytical method and the way he engages with Hartman’s work is an exploration of blackness as a positional framework through which objectivity and humanity are performed. This suggests that an attempt to move beyond the violence and object position of Aunt Hester would always be first a move through these things. Through this framework of the performativity of blackness Moten’s revisitation of Douglass’ narrative explores how the sounds of black performance might trouble conventional understandings of subjectivity and subjective speech. External links. Sources Commentary

c69ba382-f6bd-460f-8d55-70bd51e4561b

m2d2_wiki

The Yellow House (book) The Yellow House is a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It is Broom's first book and it was published on August 13, 2019 by Grove Press. "The Yellow House" chronicles Broom's family (mapping back approximately 100 years), her life growing up in New Orleans East, and the eventual demise of her beloved childhood home after Hurricane Katrina. Broom also focuses on the aftermath of Katrina and how the disaster altered her family and her neighborhood. At its core, the book examines race, class, politics, family, trauma, and inequality in New Orleans and America. "The Yellow House" won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Publication. "The Yellow House" was published by Grove Press on August 13, 2019, following the publication of an early excerpt in the "New Yorker" in 2015. The book debuted at number 11 on the Hardcover Nonfiction best sellers list for the September 1, 2019, edition of "The New York Times". Reception. In a pre-publication review, Dwight Garner of the "New York Times" wrote, "This is a major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade." In the "New York Times Book Review", Angela Flournoy called it “an instantly essential text.” The "Star Tribune" opined that Broom's book had “essentially told the story of black America in one fell swoop.” Other publications to declare the book's importance included "Publishers Weekly". and "Kirkus Reviews" Quoting the book itself, "Kirkus Reviews" opined that "The Yellow House" reflected the author's attempt "to reckon with 'the psychic cost of defining oneself by the place where you are from,'" adding that "Broom's lyrical style celebrates her family bonds, but a righteous fury runs throughout the narrative at New Orleans' injustices, from the foundation on up." In November 2019, "The Yellow House" won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by both the "New York Times Book Review" and the "Washington Post". "The Yellow House" won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book from the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Awards.

5cb6e300-2bb5-4642-874f-4d1df0b8a5fc

m2d2_wiki

Giant Steps (book) Giant Steps: The Autobiography of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Bantam Books, 1983) is a best-selling book by basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Written with former "Crawdaddy" magazine editor Peter Knobler, it covers Abdul-Jabbar's career, his conversion to Islam, his social growth, and his feelings about American racial politics. The title "Giant Steps" pays tribute to the 1960 album of the same name by jazz musician John Coltrane.

a61f75f3-5e3a-47f3-a1d4-86f48916c4f2

m2d2_wiki

Gather Together in My Name Gather Together in My Name (1974) is a memoir by American writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The book begins immediately following the events described in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", and follows Angelou, called Rita, from the ages of 17 to 19. Written three years after "Caged Bird", the book "depicts a single mother's slide down the social ladder into poverty and crime." The title of the book is taken from the Bible, but it also conveys how one black female lived in the white-dominated society of the U.S. following the Second World War. Angelou expands upon many themes that she started discussing in her first autobiography, including motherhood and family, racism, identity, education and literacy. Rita becomes closer to her mother in this book, and goes through a variety of jobs and relationships as she tries to provide for her young son and find her place in the world. Angelou continues to discuss racism in "Gather Together", but moves from speaking for all Black women to describing how one young woman dealt with it. The book exhibits the narcissism of young people, but describes how Rita discovers her identity. Like many of Angelou's autobiographies, "Gather Together" is concerned with Angelou's on-going self-education. "Gather Together" was not as critically acclaimed as Angelou's first autobiography, but received mostly positive reviews and was recognized as being better written than its predecessor. The book's structure, consisting of a series of episodes tied together by theme and content, parallels the chaos of adolescence, which some critics feel makes it an unsatisfactory sequel to "Caged Bird". Rita's many physical movements throughout the book, which affects the book's organization and quality, has caused at least one critic to call it a travel narrative. Background. "Gather Together in My Name", published in 1974, is Maya Angelou's second book in her series of seven autobiographies. Written three years after her first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", the book "depicts a single mother's slide down the social ladder into poverty and crime". In 1971, Angelou published her first volume of poetry, "Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie" (1971), which became a bestseller and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It was Angelou's early practice to alternate a prose volume with a poetry volume. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. Through the writing of this autobiography and her life stories in all of her books, Angelou became recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. According to scholar Joanne Braxton, it made her "without a doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". Title. The title of "Gather Together" is inspired by Matthew 18:19-20: "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (King James Version). While Angelou acknowledged the title's biblical origin, she also stated that the title counteracted the tendency of many adults to lie to their children about their pasts. Scholar Sondra O'Neale states that the title is "a New Testament injunction for the traveling soul to pray and commune while waiting patiently for deliverance". Critic Hilton Als believes that the title of this book may have an additional significance. A prevailing theme in "Gather Together" is how one Black female was able to survive in the wider context of post-war America, but it also speaks for all Black women, and how they came to survive in a white-dominated society. Critic Selwyn R. Cudjoe agrees: "The incidents in the book appear merely gathered together in the name of Maya Angelou". Plot summary. The book opens in the years following World War II. Angelou, still known as "Marguerite," or "Rita," has just given birth to her son Clyde, and is living with her mother and stepfather in San Francisco. The book follows Marguerite from the ages of 17 to 19, through a series of relationships, occupations, and cities as she attempts to raise her son and to find her place in the world. It continues exploring the themes of Angelou's isolation and loneliness begun in her first volume, and the ways she overcomes racism, sexism, and her continued victimization. Rita goes from job to job and from relationship to relationship, hoping that "my charming prince was going to appear out of the blue". "My fantasies were little different than any other girl of my age", Angelou wrote. "He would come. He would. Just walk into my life, see me and fall everlastingly in love ... I looked forward to a husband who would love me ethereally, spiritually, and on rare (but beautiful) occasions, physically". Some important events occur throughout the book while Rita tries to care for herself and her son. In San Diego, Rita becomes an absentee manager for two lesbian prostitutes. When threatened with incarceration and with losing her son for her illegal activities, she and Clyde escape to her grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas. Her grandmother sends them to San Francisco for their safety and protection after physically punishing Rita for confronting two white women in a department store. This event demonstrates their different and irreconcilable attitudes about race, paralleling events in Angelou's first book. Back with her mother in San Francisco, Rita attempts to enlist in the Army, only to be rejected during the height of the Red Scare because she had attended the California Labor School as a young teenager. Another event of note described in the book was, in spite of "the strangest audition", her short stint dancing and studying dance with her partner, R. L. Poole, who became her lover until he reunited with his previous partner, ending Rita's show business career for the time being. A turning point in the book occurs when Rita falls in love with a gambler named L. D. Tolbrook, who seduces Rita and introduces her to prostitution. Her mother's hospitalization and death of her brother Bailey's wife drives Rita to her mother's home. She leaves her young son with a caretaker, Big Mary, but when she returns for him, she finds that Big Mary had disappeared with Clyde. She tries to elicit help from Tolbrook, who puts her in her place when she finds him at his home and requests that he help her find her son. She finally realizes that he had been taking advantage of her, but is able to trace Big Mary and Clyde to Bakersfield, California, and has an emotional reunion with her son. She writes, "In the plowed farmyard near Bakersfield, I began to understand that uniqueness of the person. He was three and I was nineteen, and never again would I think of him as a beautiful appendage of myself". The end of the book finds Rita defeated by life: "For the first time I sat down defenseless to await life's next assault". The book ends with an encounter with a drug addict who cared enough for her to show her the effects of his drug habit, which galvanizes her to reject drug addiction and to make something of her life for her and her son. Themes. Motherhood and family. Beginning in "Gather Together", motherhood and family issues are important themes throughout Angelou's autobiographies. The book describes the change and the importance of Rita's relationship with her own mother, the woman who had abandoned her and her brother as children, demonstrated by Rita's return to her mother at the end of the book, "after she realizes how close to the edge she has come, as a woman and as a mother". Vivian Baxter cares for Rita's young son as Rita attempts to make a living. Critic Mary Jane Lupton states that "one gets a strong sense throughout "Gather Together" of [Rita's] dependence on her mother". Critic Lyman B. Hagen remarks that Angelou's relationship with her mother becomes more important in "Gather Together", and that Vivian is now more influential in the development of Angelou's attitudes. Lupton calls Clyde's kidnapping a "powerful sequence of mother-loss" and connects it to the kidnapping of Clyde's son in the 1980s. Angelou has compared the production of this book to giving birth, an apt metaphor given the birth of her son at the end of "Caged Bird". Like many authors, Angelou views the creative writing process and its results as her children. Race and racism. Angelou's goal, beginning with her first autobiography, was to "tell the truth about the lives of black women", but her goal evolved, in her later volumes, to document the ups and downs of her own life. Angelou's autobiographies have the same structure: they give a historical overview of the places she was living in at the time, how she coped within the context of a larger white society, and the ways that her story played out within that context. Critic Selwyn Cudjoe stated that in "Gather Together", Angelou is still concerned with the questions of what it means to be a Black female in the US, but focuses upon herself at a certain point in history, in the years immediately following World War II. The book begins with a prologue describing the confusion and disillusionment of the African-American community during that time, which matched the alienated and fragmented nature of the main character's life. According to McPherson, African Americans were promised a new racial order that did not materialize. Halfway through "Gather Together", an incident occurs that demonstrates the different ways in which Rita and her grandmother handle racism. Rita, when she is insulted by white clerk during a visit to Stamps, reacts with defiance, but when Momma hears about the confrontation, she slaps Rita and sends her back to California. Rita feels that her personhood was being violated, but the practical Momma knows that her granddaughter's behavior was dangerous. Rita's grandmother is no longer an important influence on her life, and Angelou demonstrates that she had to move on in the fight against racism. Angelou's autobiographies, including this volume, have been used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Dr. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor at George Washington University, has used "Caged Bird" and "Gather Together" to train teachers how to discuss race in their classrooms. According to Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony, readers of "Gather Together" and the rest of Angelou's autobiographies cause readers to wonder what she left out and unsure about how to respond to the events Angelou describes. Angelou's depictions of her experiences of racism force white readers to explore their feelings about race and their privileged status. Glazier found that although critics have focused on where Angelou fits within the genre of African American autobiography and on her literary techniques, readers react to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with certain expectations about the genre of autobiography". Identity. "Gather Together" retains the freshness of "Caged Bird," but has a self-consciousness absent from the first volume. Author Hilton Als states that Angelou "replaces the language of social history with the language of therapy". The book exhibits the narcissism and self-involvement of young adults. It is Rita who is the focus, and all other characters are secondary, and they are often presented "with the deft superficiality of a stage description" who pay the price for Rita's self-involvement. Much of Angelou's writing in this volume, as Als states, is "reactive, not reflective". Angelou chooses to demonstrate Rita's narcissism in "Gather Together" by dropping the conventional forms of autobiography, which has a beginning, middle, and end. For example, there is no central experience in her second volume, as there is in "Caged Bird" with Angelou's account of her rape at the age of eight. Lupton believes that this central experience is relocated "to some luminous place in a volume yet to be". "Gather Together", like much of African-American literature, depicts Rita's search for self-discovery, identity, and dignity in the difficult environment of racism, and how she, like other African Americans, were able to rise above it. Rita's search is expressed both outwardly, through her material needs, and inwardly, through love and family relationships. In "Caged Bird", despite trauma and parental rejection, Rita's world is relatively secure, but the adolescent young woman in "Gather Together" experiences the dissolution of her relationships many times. The loneliness that ensues for her is "a loneliness that becomes, at times, suicidal and contributes to her unanchored self". Rita is unsure of who she is or what she would become, so she tries several roles in a restless and frustrated way, as adolescents often do during this period of their lives. Her experimentation was part of her self-education that would successfully bring her into maturity and adulthood. Lupton agrees, stating that Rita survived through trial and error while defining herself as a Black woman. Angelou recognizes that the mistakes she depicts are part of "the fumblings of youth and to be forgiven as such", but young Rita insists that she take responsibility for herself and her child. Feminist scholar Maria Lauret states that the formation of female cultural identity is woven into Angelou's narrative, setting her up as "a role model for Black women". Lauret agrees with other scholars that Angelou reconstructs the Black woman's image throughout her autobiographies, and that Angelou uses her many roles, incarnations, and identities in her books to "signify multiple layers of oppression and personal history". Angelou begins this technique in her first book, and continues it in "Gather Together", especially her demonstration of the "racist habit" of renaming African Americans. Lauret sees Angelou's themes of the individual's strength and ability to overcome throughout Angelou's autobiographies as well. Cudjoe states that Angelou is still concerned with what it means to be Black and female in America, but she now describes "a particular type of Black woman at a specific moment in history and subjected to certain social forces which assault the Black woman with unusual intensity". When Angelou was concerned about what her readers would think when she disclosed that she had been a prostitute, her husband Paul Du Feu encouraged her to be honest and "tell the truth as a writer". Cudjoe recognizes Angelou's reluctance to disclose these events in the text, stating that although they are important in her social development, Angelou does not seem "particularly proud of her activity during those 'few tense years'". Angelou has stated that she wrote the book, in spite of potentially harming the reputation she gained after writing "Caged Bird", because she wanted to show how she was able to survive in a world where "every door is not only locked, but there are no doorknobs ... The children need to know you can stumble and fumble and fall, see where you are and get up, forgive yourself, and go on about the business of living your life". Education and literacy. All of Angelou's autobiographies, especially this volume and its predecessor, is "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how she learned it". Lupton compares Angelou's informal education described in this book with the education of other Black writers of the 20th century. Like writers such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin, Angelou did not earn a college degree and depended upon the "direct instruction of African American cultural forms". She did not feel that her education ended at high school, however. As Hagen points out, since Angelou was encouraged to appreciate literature as a young child, she continues to read, exposing herself to a wide variety of authors, ranging from Countee Cullen's poetry to Leo Tolstoy and other Russian authors. She states, during her stint as a madame, "when my life hinged melodramatically on intrigue and deceit, I discovered the Russian writers". Critical reception. "Gather Together in My Name" was not as critically acclaimed as Angelou's first autobiography, but received mostly positive reviews and was recognized as better written. "Atlantic Monthly's" reviewer said that the book was "excellently written". and "Choice Magazine" called Angelou a "fine story teller". Cudjoe calls the book "neither politically nor linguistically innocent". Although Cudjoe finds "Gather Together" a weaker autobiography compared to "Caged Bird", he states that Angelou's use of language is "the work's saving grace", and that it contains "a much more consistent and sustained flow of eloquent and honey-dipped writing". Lupton feels that the tight structure of "Caged Bird" seems to crumble in "Gather Together". Angelou's "childhood experiences were replaced by episodes that a number of critics consider disjointed or bizarre"; Lupton's explanation was that Angelou's later works consist of episodes, or fragments, that are "reflections of the kind of chaos found in actual living". Cudjoe thought this convention is what weakened the book's structure, stating that the events described prevented it from achieving a "complex level of significance". Lupton states, "In altering the narrative structure, Angelou shifts the emphasis from herself as an isolated consciousness to herself as a Black woman participating in diverse experiences among a diverse class of peoples". There are similarities in the structure of both books, however. Like "Caged Bird", "Gather Together" consists of a series of interrelated episodes, and both books also start with a poetic preface. Cudjoe has noted that "Gather Together" lacks the "intense solidity and moral center" found in "Caged Bird", and that the strong ethics of the Black community in the rural South is replaced by the alienation and fragmentation of urban life in the first half of the twentieth century. The world that Angelou introduces her readers to in "Gather Together" leaves her protagonist without a sense of purpose, and as Cudjoe states, "to the brink of destruction in order to realize herself". Critic Lyman B. Hagen disagrees with Cudjoe's judgment that Angelou's second autobiography lacked a moral center, saying that even though there are many unsavory characters in the book and that their lifestyles are not condemned, the innocent Rita emerges triumphant and "evil does not prevail". Rita moves through a sleazy world with good intentions and grows stronger as a result of her exposure to it. Hagen states that if were not for "Gather Together's" complex literary style, its content would prevent it from being accepted as "an exemplary literary effort". Although "Caged Bird" was refreshing in its honesty, something its readers and reviewers value, Angelou's honesty in "Gather Together" had become, as reviewer John McWhorter perceives it, "more and more formulaic". McWhorter asserts that the events that Angelou describes in "Gather Together" and in her subsequent autobiographies require more explanation, which she does not provide, although she expects her readers to accept them on face value. In "Gather Together", for example, Angelou insists that she is not religious, but she refuses welfare, and even though she was afraid of becoming a lesbian in "Caged Bird" and presents herself as shy, awkward, and bookish, she pimps for a lesbian couple and becomes a prostitute herself. McWhorter criticizes Angelou for her decisions in "Gather Together", and for not explaining them fully, and states, "The people in these flamboyant tales—the narrator included—have a pulp-novel incoherence". Rita's many physical movements throughout the book causes Hagen to call it a travel narrative. According to Lupton, this movement also affects the book's organization and quality, making it a less satisfactory sequel to "Caged Bird". Angelou has responded to this criticism by stating that she attempted to capture "the episodic, erratic nature of adolescence" as she experienced this period in her life. McPherson agreed, states that "Gather Together's" structure is more complex than "Caged Bird". Angelou's style in "Gather Together" is more mature and simplified, which allows her to better convey emotion and insight through, as McPherson described it, "sharp and vivid word images".

12f40ee7-c74f-47d8-aef3-b4882b6ba1f9

m2d2_wiki

Ordinary Light Ordinary Light: A Memoir is a 2015 book by poet Tracy K. Smith. It was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Development and publication history. Smith described the process of writing the memoir as becoming "an investigator of [her] own life," comparing recollections with her siblings and finding memory to be a "flawed lens." She began writing "Ordinary Light" in 2009, though had long wanted to write the memoir, born of a desire to write about her mother who passed away in 1994 as Smith was graduating from college; Smith made initial efforts beginning in 1999 but found the pieces difficult to finish. Later, working with German writer Hans Manus Enzensberger in the context of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, Smith found the structure of exchanging work as well as Enzensberger's feedback helped move the project forward. Smith has also said becoming a parent herself—her daughter was an infant when Smith was writing the book--gave her insight necessary to writing about her mother: "Not only did I have access to my own feelings and recollections but suddenly I had a way of imagining what my mother, as a parent, might have been thinking and worrying about, and weighing in her mind." The 368-page book was published by Alfred A. Knopf on April 2, 2015. Content and style. Writing in "Slate", Stacia L. Brown says "most of the time", "Ordinary Light" is "a coming-of-age story about a middle-class black girl with a relatively idyllic life...the story of the healthy, nurturing bond between a black mother and daughter." However, Brown found the book "most powerful when it returns to the subject" with which Smith opens the narrative: "her mother’s illness and Smith’s slow-dawning realization that she will not recover"—Smith's mother died shortly after Smith graduated from college. Smith, whose first books were poetry, has said that in retrospect, the move to writing in prose was a necessity for her to engage the story of her relationship with her mother. "I had found a way of exploring my own private material in poems. I knew the kinds of answers—that’s not the right noun because I don't think a poem "solves" things—but I knew the kind of encounter I was capable of creating in a poem. I realized that if I wanted to get something new out of that material I needed to shift languages." Reception. "Ordinary Light" received widely favorable reviews and was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

90fffa76-c0e0-423d-b8df-be972a0d2784

m2d2_wiki

Freeway Rick Ross (book) Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography is a 2014 memoir by former drug kingpin Rick Ross, co-authored by American crime writer Cathy Scott, about the rise and fall of Ross, in the 1980s and '90s, to his 2009 release from prison. The book was released by Freeway Studios in June 2014. Storyline. According to the publisher, the book embarks on the day-to-day dealings of a drug kingpin in the heart of the ghetto. It is also the story of a boy born into poverty in Texas who grew up in a single-parent household in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, next to the 110, thus the nickname "Freeway," and was pushed through the school system, emerging illiterate. He saw his options as few and turned to drug dealing. Authors Ross and Scott chronicle the times by highlighting the social climate that made crack cocaine so desirable. Ross points out that at the time the "cops in the area didn't know what crack was; they didn't associate the small white rocks they saw on homies as illegal drugs." All Ross knew was people wanted it, so he sold it. During his reign as the head of a nationwide drug enterprise, it is estimated that Ross profited nearly $300 million, selling nearly $3 million worth of drugs in one day. Ross' role in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair that took place during the Ronald Reagan administration was outlined in "San Jose Mercury News" reporter Gary Webb's original series of articles alleging that the CIA was complicit in smuggling drugs into the U.S., which effectively ignited the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. The autobiography includes the outcome of Ross' crack cocaine dealing, his conviction of conspiracy to illegally traffic cocaine, and the knowledge that the money Ross paid drug supplier Danilo Blandón funded the Nicaraguan rebels in the Contra scandal, which Ross learned of while in prison when he was informed by "San Jose Mercury-News" reporter Webb. It also details Ross' successful appeal of his life sentence without the possibility of parole and his re-sentencing to 20 years. Ross was released from custody in September 2009. In July 2014, Ross talked about what is included in the book, telling the NPR affiliate in Los Angeles that it took about five years of dealing before he saw the negative impact crack was having on his community, but customers asked for more. When he realized he did not want to see his brother or sister smoke crack cocaine, he decided to get out and start a legitimate business. "This story," wrote "Crimespree Magazine"'s Marie Nicoll, "will be retold and shared to American classrooms to children on what can happen when you go down the wrong path. His story shows the true meaning of having everything you could imagine, but at what price." In the book's foreword, Los Angeles Bishop Noel Jones writes that "this work portrays the heart of a man who is seeking the opportunity, in whatever form, to right the wrongs he has done to his community." Reception. "Freeway Rick Ross" debuted at the Eso Won Bookstore in Los Angeles at a book launch on June 17, 2014 to a standing-room only crowd. KCET TV wrote in its review, "(The book) is fascinating for its unsentimental, inside look at his career on the streets of South Central, which started for Ross with car theft and quickly shifted to drugs and the big time." The "Los Angeles Sentinel" wrote, "While some have yet to move past the stigma of Ross' former image, it has worked to his advantage in dissuading students interested in following in his foot steps. Upon its release, "The Huffington Post UK"'s Ruth Jacobs described the book as "the eagerly awaited autobiography." During a national book tour, Fox 59 in Indianapolis interviewed Ross about his autobiography in September 2014 for its morning show. Awards. The book was named a finalist in "ForeWord Reviews"' Best Book of the Year 2014.

da0a20b3-1988-46dc-8c12-5b01e5fffa4f

m2d2_wiki

The Bond (book) The Bond is an American autobiography published on October 4, 2007 and aimed at young adults. It was written by The Three Doctors. It was their third published novel and is a "New York Times" bestseller, making it the third time that The Three Doctors had a bestselling book. The novel is narrated by each doctor. Each doctor shares their experiences, separately, in each chapter. The novel is about each of the doctors, who grow up without fathers and share their feelings with the reader. They give the reader advice about how to deal with the situation and how to handle their pain.

0d48c642-e3cb-4691-8f88-e8d5b76d73bb

m2d2_wiki

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass' third autobiography, published in 1881, revised in 1892. Because of the emancipation of American slaves during and following the American Civil War, Douglass gave more details about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery in this volume than he could in his two previous autobiographies (which would have put him and his family in danger). It is the only one of Douglass' autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln and Garfield, his account of the ill-fated "Freedman's Bank", and his service as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia. Fredrick Douglass shed light on what life was like as a colored slave. Sub-title: "Complete History to the Present Time. Including His Connection with the Anti-Slavery Movement; His Labor in Great Britain as well as in His Own Country; His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper; His Connection with the Underground Railroad; His Relations with John Brown and the Harper's Ferry Raid; His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass. Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment by Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission; Also to a Seat on the Council of the District of Columbia; His Appointment as a United States Marshall by President R.B. Hayes; Also His Appointment by President J.A. Garfield to be Recorder of Deeds in Washington; with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life", with an Introduction by Mr. George L. Ruffin of Boston, Hartford, Conn., Park Publishing Co., 1881.

ebdb8561-ccbc-4d0f-b6b8-7445481ab0d9

m2d2_wiki

An American Dream (memoir) An American Dream: The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China is a memoir by Corporal Clarence Adams posthumously published by the University of Massachusetts Press and edited by Della Adams and Louis H. Carlson. Summary. Adams was one of 21 Americans who refused repatriation to the United States in favor of going to China after being a POW during the Korean War. The book follows Adams's youth in Memphis, Tennessee through his time in the Korean War as a POW and his return to Memphis with his Chinese wife and children. It deals heavily with race relations in the South in both the 1930s and 1940s of Adams's youth and following his return to the US in 1966 during the Civil Rights Movement as well as the red scare of the Cold War. Throughout the book, Adams cites racism, lack of opportunity, and curiosity as his main reasons for defecting and maintained his right to do so despite investigations into and questioning of his activities in China by the FBI. Related books. Adams's autobiography is one of three books dedicated to the 21 Americans who chose to go to China rather than repatriate to the United States. The first book, "21 Stayed: The Story of the American GIs Who Chose Communist China", by Virginia Pasley is a largely unsympathetic account of the twenty published not long after they first went over to China. The book is divided into chapters by the soldier discussed and based on interviews with the family of the soldiers and those who knew them and prefaced by information provided by the US military on the soldiers and accounts of their activities in POW camps. The second book written was Morris Wills's memoir, "". Written during the Vietnam War, Wills's biography is more sympathetic to the twenty one than Pasley's account but somewhat apologetic and still provides a rather negative in regards to the Chinese Communists. Adams's book is far less apologetic than Wills's and provides a less negative portrait of the Chinese. See also. Five other American servicemen are known to have defected to North Korea after the war. They are:

5a415846-acdf-4c18-a4e9-24c2d6f50437

m2d2_wiki

Playing Hurt Playing Hurt: My Journey from Despair to Hope is a memoir written by John Saunders with bestselling author John U. Bacon, published posthumously on August 8, 2017. Overview. Saunders, a journalist and broadcaster of over thirty years for ESPN and ABC, published "Playing Hurt" in 2017. The memoir is divided into four parts and spans Saunders' life from his time growing up in Canada to the final years of his life and deals with topics like Saunders' ongoing battle with depression, his numerous suicide attempts, his recovery in the wake of his on-set brain injury in 2011, and his heart attack in 2012. Saunders and Bacon had begun work on the book prior to Saunders passing away in August 2016 at age 61. After Saunders' death, Bacon continued to work on the manuscript with the help of Saunders’ family, friends and physicians. Bacon said of the book, “...in the end this is John’s story, told from his point of view, based primarily on his recollections.” The foreword was written by Mitch Albom. Reception. "Playing Hurt" debuted on the "New York Times" bestseller list. The book has received positive reviews and Saunders has received praise for his openness and authenticity, with "Awful Announcing" calling it an "important, enlightening read." The "Washington Post" described the book as, "dark, edgy, revelatory and quite sad."

ebc5998b-1e59-400c-ab3c-5238b7f8e8e7

m2d2_wiki

Redefining Realness Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More is a memoir and the debut book by Janet Mock, an American writer and transgender activist. It was published on 1 February 2014 by Atria Books. The book has been praised by Melissa Harris-Perry, bell hooks, Laverne Cox, and Barbara Smith. It debuted in 19th position on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for Hardcover Nonfiction. The book's original title was "Fish Food". The memoir follows Mock's journey as a transgender girl and young woman in Hawaii. Summary. In "Redefining Realness," Janet Mock describes her life as a transgender woman from childhood to adulthood. Mock opens the book with a scene from 2009, where she starts to tell her boyfriend Aaron that she is transgender and then starts telling her story from childhood. Part One. In 1989, as children, Mock's friend and neighbor Marylin dares Mock to take her grandmother's dress down from the clothesline and put it on. After being caught, Mock is scolded by her grandmother and mother for wearing a dress. At four years old, Mock discovers that her father is cheating on her mother. Her parents eventually split up and at age seven Mock is sent to live with her father and brother, Chad, in Oakland, California. While there, her father tries to instill masculinity into young Mock, pushing her to participate in sports and other activities that her brother enjoys. Mock's father gets a new girlfriend, and that girlfriend's son, a boy much older than Mock, molests her. In 1992, Mock discovers her father smoking crack cocaine in her bedroom. At this moment she loses respect for her father. In 1994, Mock's father moves the three of them to Dallas, where the father's family lives. While in Dallas, Mock begins participating in more feminine activities with her aunts. When her father moves them into an apartment with his new girlfriend, Denise, Mock connects with her daughter, Makayla. Mock adopts a pseudonym, Keisha, and chats with boyfriends Makayla is no longer interested with over the phone as Keisha. Once, while at her aunt's apartment, one of the boys she had been meeting up with as Keisha comes looking for her. After the boy addresses Mock as Keisha in front of her father, Mock's father cuts her hair short to make her more masculine. Mock's mother eventually decides to bring Mock and her brother Chad back to Hawaii to live with her. Part Two. Mock, Chad, and their younger brother Jeff lived with their older sister Cori and her children. While in school in Hawaii, Mock meets Wendi, another transgender girl. Through her friendship with Wendi, Mock becomes more confident, dresses more feminine, and has access to estrogen pills. At age thirteen, Mock comes out as gay to her mother, and Wendi helps her become even more feminine. Together, they meet other transgender women and drag queens. Mock's mother gets back together with Cori's father, her boyfriend from high school, named Rick. Mock attends Moanalua High School, a rigorous school. She joins the volleyball team, and becomes more confident in her femininity. She continues to meet up with Wendi, who develops a passion for makeup.   Part Three. Mock becomes class treasurer at Moanalua. After taking estrogen in secret, she talks to her family to come out as a woman and ask to be called Janet. She repeatedly gets sent home from school for breaking the dress code by wearing skirts. She graduates from estrogen pills to shots, which she pays for in cash. She meets a boy named Adrian, who shows interest in her but rejects her when he discovers she is transgender. After Rick gets arrested, Mock and her brothers, mother, and Rick move into a hotel room. After hanging around with Wendi and other transgender women, Mock enters the sex industry. She makes enough money that she can pay for her own hormone therapy. Later, Rick gets arrested again, and Mock's mother moves back in with Cori. Because of the transphobia she faces at Moanalua, Mock transfers to Farrington, the school where her brother and Wendi attend. At Farrington, there is a Teen Center and a transgender support group called Chrysalis that provides resources to transgender girls. Mock comes out to her father via a letter. Mock decides she wants to undergo genital reconstructive surgery and gets an after-school job at a clothing store to save money. Mock receives a scholarship to the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She schedules a date for a GRS procedure in Thailand for December 20, 2001. Mock continues to work in the sex trade on Merchant Street with strict rules on what acts she will perform and for whom. She starts college at the University of Hawai'i. When she pays her mother $120 dollars for their electric bill, her mother and Chad realize how she is getting the money but say nothing. As adults, Chad tells Mock how worried he was for her. Mock is picked up on Merchant Street by a man in a van, someone she would never agree to be with under normal circumstances, but he offers her so much money, and it is so close to her GRS date, that she gets into his van. The man steals her purse and, when the other women on the street help her call the police, the officers are unhelpful. She calls a regular, Sam, to come pick her up and let her sleep in his apartment for the night. Sam offers to pay for her GRS, Mock declines, but asks him about the nude modeling her photographs for. Mock poses for a photographer, Felix, in lingerie. This is, she says, the decision she regrets most. She gets $1500 for two modeling sessions. Mock goes to Bangkok, Thailand, for GRS. Dr. R. and Dr. C. perform the surgery. In recovery, Mock meets an older transgender Australian woman, Genie. Mock returns to Hawaii on December 28 and her mother embraces her tearfully. While Mock recovers, her mother takes care of her. Mock accepts her mother's faults and the family is loving. 2009. Returning to 2009, having told her story to Aaron, Mock waits for a reaction. Their relationship is inconsistent for a while, and Mock makes a new friend in Mia, the woman who hired her for a "People" magazine job. Mock comes out to Mia as transgender. After eight months of no contact from Aaron, he comes to her apartment in the middle of the night. They reconcile, and move in together soon after. The book ends with a discussion of LGBT representation in the media and the perception that transgender women need to be out and visible at all times. Storygiving campaign. On Christmas Eve 2013, Mock launched the "Redefining Realness Storygiving Campaign". The campaign fulfilled 127 book requests from people who wished to read "Redefining Realness" but had financial constraints. "Redefining Realness" video series. On 30 January 2014, Mock posted a series of six videos on her YouTube channel discussing topics covered in her memoir. She talks about growing up while transgender, having to take care of herself because her parents did not, hoping that her book will reach other young transgender girls. She discusses coming out, as both transgender and a sex worker, which she says is a big theme of her book. She shares about her experience in the sex industry, how she worked in other jobs but sex work gave quick earnings and a tight-knit community, and how sex work is complex. In talking about popular culture, Mock says that Beyoncé, Aaliyah, and Janet Jackson influenced her growing up. Pop culture references appear throughout "Redefining Realness", references many different types of media. Passing, Mock says, implies that transgender people are not actually the gender their identify as; she is not passing as a woman, she is a woman. In the last video, Mock discusses reading at the library as a child, how stories about women who inspired her impacted her growing up, and how her book might be the same for young girls now. Reception. Mock has said that she wrote "Redefining Realness" for transgender girls of color, particularly, her own childhood self. However, many cisgender women of color have connected to themes and moments in the memoir. "Redefining Realness" is praised for being one of a small number of literary texts written by transgender people of color, especially ones that feature themes of reading. "Redefining Realness" has also been praised for its complexity in representation of transgender people of color and for combining Western and African structures of autobiography. A 2014 review of the book claims that while Mock's memoir is personal, it reaches across the queer, transgender, and female communities to relate to many people. In the paper "Redefining Realness?: On Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, TS Madison, and the Representation of Transgender Women of Color in Media", scholar Julian Kevon Glover complicates the popular reception of "Redefining Realness". Glover states that Mock's memoir has gained such high esteem because Mock's transition journey reflects traditional heteronormative norms, beauty standards, and respectability politics. Glover states that many transgender women who do not uphold heteronormative ideals rarely get as much media prestige. While the popularity of "Redefining Realness" is significant for representation of transgender women, Glover states, many transgender activists are denied media presence because their bodies or actions are not in line with respectability politics. Mock published a second memoir, "Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me," which covers her twenties, a period not much discussed in "Redefining Realness." Influences. Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was a significant influence in Mock's writing of "Redefining Realness." "Their Eyes" was an important book in Mock's girlhood because it was a book about Black women, identity, and love. Other Black female authors that were formative for Mock and her development of "Redefining Realness" were Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Audre Lorde. References to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" appear throughout the book. She also includes quotes from Ralph Ellsion, Gloria Anzaldua, and James Baldwin. In a review by David B. Green Jr., "Redefining Realness" was stated to do more than just tell a personal story as it builds from the tradition of earlier women of color writers, such as those Mock references in the memoir. Green states that Mock's memoir relates to women of all kinds, not just transgender women of color.

c7aad15f-1a79-4e5d-872d-25da0705d5ea

m2d2_wiki

Blood Done Sign My Name Blood Done Sign My Name (2004) is a historical memoir written by Timothy B. Tyson. He explores the 1970 murder of Henry D. Marrow, a black man in Tyson's then home town of Oxford, North Carolina. The murder is described as the result of the complicated collision of the Black Power movement and the white backlash against public school integration and other changes brought by the civil rights movement. Since 2004, the book has sold 160,000 copies. It has earned several awards: the Grawemeyer Award in Religion from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which had a $200,000 prize, the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction from the Southern Book Critics Circle, the Christopher Award, and the North Caroliniana Book Award from the North Caroliniana Society. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill selected the book for its 2005 summer reading program. The book was adapted as a movie by the same name, released in 2010. "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it on a "must see" list. Story. Tyson has said that the title comes from a slave spiritual later sung as a "blues lament", particularly this phrase: "Ain't you glad, ain't you glad, that the blood done sign my name?" The book explores the effects of the 1970 killing of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black Vietnam War veteran in Oxford, North Carolina. This is the county seat of Granville County, a center of tobacco culture. Then a town of 10,000, it is located 35 miles north of Durham. Three white men were indicted on charges of murder, but they were acquitted at trial by an all-white jury. Black protests of the killing and acquittal included acts of arson and violence. Black people organized a protest march to the state capital of Raleigh. In addition, they conducted an 18-month boycott of white businesses in Oxford, a mostly segregated town, to force integration in public facilities. The Marrow case helped galvanize continued African-American civil rights activities in Oxford and across the eastern North Carolina black belt. Local civil rights activist Ben Chavis took a lead role in these activities; he led the march to the capital and the boycott of local businesses. The Marrow killing and related events radicalized the African-American freedom struggle in North Carolina, which was trying to gain progress after the successful passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Racial conflict in Wilmington, North Carolina resulted in the burning of a grocery store. The Wilmington Ten cases resulted from charges against Ben Chavis and nine other black men in this incident. Several of the men were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. They were eventually freed on an appeal. In the 1990s Chavis was selected as the youngest executive director of the NAACP in its history. He later was an organizer of the Million Man March. Tyson lived as a child in Oxford, where his father was the minister of the prominent Oxford United Methodist Church. He explores not only the white supremacy of the South's racial caste system but his personal and family stories. (His father was driven out of the church because of his support for civil rights.) Tyson interweaves a narrative of the story and its effects on him, with a discussion of the racial history of North Carolina and the United States, and the violent realities of that history on both sides of the color line. He explores the persistence of discrimination years after passage of federal laws to enforce civil rights, and the more complex aspects of the later civil rights movement. Reception. "Entertainment Weekly" praised its "deadpan, merciless self-examination" and said it "pulses with vital paradox... It's a detached dissertation, a damning dark-night-of-the-white-soul, and a ripping yarn, all united by Tyson's powerful voice, a brainy, booming Bubba profundo." Historian Jane Dailey, writing in the "Chicago Tribune", called it "Admirable and unexpected... a riveting story that will have its readers weeping with both laughter and sorrow." Adaptations. The book was adapted as a film written and directed by writer Jeb Stuart. It was released in 2010, starring Ricky Schroder, Omar Benson Miller, and Michael Rooker. It was filmed in the cities of Shelby, Statesville, Monroe and Gastonia, North Carolina. The African-American historian John Hope Franklin has a cameo in the film. It was also adapted as a play by Mike Wiley, playwright and actor. "Blood Done Sign My Name" (2008) premiered at Duke University's Shaefer Theater. It was also produced at the city hall in Oxford, North Carolina on February 13, 2009.

846a1b41-ba2c-47cd-968c-c65117d55e75

m2d2_wiki

The Audacity of Hope The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream is the second book written by then-Senator Barack Obama. It became number one on both the "New York Times" and Amazon.com bestsellers lists in the fall of 2006, after Obama had been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. In the book, Obama expounds on many of the subjects that became part of his 2008 campaign for the presidency. The book advance from the publisher totalled $1.9 million contracted for three books. Obama announced his ultimately successful presidential campaign on February 10, 2007, a little more than three months after the book's release. Origin. The title of "The Audacity of Hope" was derived from a sermon delivered by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright had attended a lecture by Frederick G. Sampson in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1980s, on the G. F. Watts painting "Hope", which inspired him to give a sermon in 1990 based on the subject of the painting – "with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God ... To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope ... that's the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from Watt's painting." Having attended Wright's sermon, Obama later adapted Wright's phrase "audacity "to" hope" to "audacity "of" hope" which became the title for his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, and the title of his second book. While a Senate candidate, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, entitled "The Audacity of Hope" that propelled him to national prominence. In the less than twenty minutes it took to deliver the speech, Obama was catapulted to sudden fame, with many analysts predicting that he might be well positioned to enter a future presidential race. In 2006, Obama released "The Audacity of Hope", a book-length account that expanded upon many of the same themes he originally addressed in the convention speech. In his speech addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama said: Contents. The book, divided into nine chapters, outlines Obama's political and spiritual beliefs, as well as his opinions on different aspects of American culture. Reception. "The New York Times" noted that "Mr. Obama's new book, The Audacity of Hope' ... is much more of a political document. Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech, and the bulk of it is devoted to laying out Mr. Obama's policy positions on a host of issues, from education to health care to the war in Iraq." The "Chicago Tribune" describes the book as a "political biography that concentrates on the senator's core values", and credits the large crowds that gathered at book signings with influencing Obama's decision to run for president. Former presidential candidate Gary Hart describes the book as Obama's "thesis submission" for the U.S. presidency: "It presents a man of relative youth yet maturity, a wise observer of the human condition, a figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur." Reviewer Michael Tomasky writes that it does not contain "boldly innovative policy prescriptions that will lead the Democrats out of their wilderness", but does show Obama's potential to "construct a new politics that is progressive but grounded in civic traditions that speak to a wider range of Americans." An Italian edition was published in April 2007 with a preface by Walter Veltroni, former Mayor of Rome, then leader of Italy's Democratic Party and one of Obama's earliest supporters overseas, who met with Obama in Washington in 2005 and has been referred to as "Obama's European counterpart". Spanish and German translations were published in June 2007; the French edition, subtitled "une nouvelle conception de la politique américaine", was published in October 2007. The Croatian edition was published in October 2008. The book remained on the "New York Times" Best Seller list for the 30 weeks since publication. The audiobook version won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. A number of blogs and newspapers repeated inaccurate rumors that the book contains the passage, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." The actual quote does not mention Muslims at all, referring instead to Arab and Pakistani Americans in the context of immigrant communities generally.

6969149c-83ff-42df-85f9-0ceb0b518014

m2d2_wiki

Men We Reaped Men We Reaped is a memoir by African-American writer Jesmyn Ward and published by Bloomsbury in 2013. Ward describes her own personal history and the deaths of five Black men in her life over a four-year span. "Men We Reaped" won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. Source of the title. The book’s title comes from a Harriet Tubman quotation, on the occasion of the unsuccessful assault of the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry upon the Confederate forces at Fort Wagner during the American Civil War: "We saw the lightning and that was the guns; We heard the thunder and that was the big guns; We heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped." Synopsis. Five men in Ward's life die in the space of four years. Black men between the ages of 19-32, including her brother, Joshua, killed by a white drunk driver. Though seemingly unconnected, Ward takes her readers on a journey—personal, familial and communal—showing how they were in reality bonded by identity and place, and how race, poverty and gender predetermined the outcome of their lives. Ward was born in California when her mother was 18 and her father 20, premature and sickly child, not expected to survive. That she does, marks her as a "fighter" in her family's eyes. The family later moves to Mississippi, where her parents are from. She describes growing up in the poor, small towns of DeLisle and Pass Christian, where her family, like the community around them, experience a lack of opportunities, and an abundance of violence, including from the police, leading many to sink into abuse of drugs and alcohol. She also recounts how in her family, like so many others, the mother ends up raising her children on her own, due to infidelity and abandonment by her husband. She contrasts their lives, choices and experiences, and her own life zig-zagging between them: "What it meant to be a woman: working, dour, full of worry. What it meant to be a man: resentful, angry, wanting life to be everything but what it was." Ward learns at an early age how girls are treated differently than boys, when she gets into trouble for doing things her cousins do freely (smoking), and also seeing how her father gets to spend the family money on a motorcycle, and then ride away on it, while her mother works extra hard to put food on the table. She also learns that for her male relatives, being Black is dangerous in itself, as her mother and grandmother worry about them being arrested or experiencing violence. As her mother works long hours as a maid, Ward is expected to care for her younger siblings and the household. She suffers from depression. At school, she experiences bullying. Her mother's rich, white employer offers to pay Ward's tuition for private school. There, however, she must deal with being the only Black girl in a white environment. She experiences racism and rejection. Ward's father is now living in New Orleans. When Ward and her siblings visit, their mother sends them with groceries, because she doesn't trust him to feed the children. Her brother Joshua moves in with him, and Ward later learns that he is dealing crack to help his father pay his bills. Ward heads out of state for university, to Stanford, becoming the first member of her family to attend college. Her grief for the loss of her brother never leaves her, but she knows it will change over time. Ward closes with her memory of riding in a car with Joshua, declaring, "I don't ride like that anymore", and imagining that when her life is over, Joshua will ride up and ask her to go for one more ride. The men "reaped" in the book, narrated in reverse of the order in which they died: Reception. "Men We Reaped" was enthusiastically received by critics, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by "The New York Times Book Review", "Publishers Weekly", "Time", and "Vogue". "The Guardian" review states that the book is "not for the light-hearted", including as it does "a suicide, two car accidents, a drug overdose and a shooting: tragic tales of young people's lives cut short are interwoven with the disintegration of Ward's parents' marriage and her own sense of drift and isolation." Quoting Ward's assessment of this, "That's a brutal list, in its immediacy and its relentlessness, and it's a list that silences people. It silenced me for a long time", reviewer Gary Younge is thankful she found her voice: "by virtue of a restrained but rich style and gift for storytelling, her book does not read like the litany of woe that one might expect. Melancholic and introspective rather than morbid and self-indulgent, it is really a story of what it is like to grow up smart, poor, black and female in America's deep south." Younge lauds how Ward creates out of the Mississippi Gulf Coast a sort of character in the book, with a vulnerability of its own, as revealed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, shortly after the last death recounted in the book. The review concludes: "Anyone who emerges from America's black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward's deserves a hearing. As such "The Men We Reaped" is an eloquent account of a psychological, sociological and political condition all too often dismissed as an enduring pathology." The "New York Times" review acknowledges that "Men We Reaped" could have been a straightforward memoir of Ward's life, approving of how she narrates her life history; however, lauds how Ward "loops around, again and again" to talk about race and gender in the South, about masculinity, and how it cost her the lives of the five men she lost, about her mother's work as a maid, and heading of the household while her father was absent; about infidelity; and about how she felt as the only Black girl in an all-while school; about the economics of poverty, treatment by the police, and how drugs come to play such a central part in the deaths at the heart of the book. The review notes that on occasion, Ward seems to press upon issues "too hard", but concludes that Men We Reap reaffirms her considerable talent, and calls it "an elegiac book that's rangy at the same time." "NPR"'s Richard Torres calls "Men We Reaped" a "superb memoir", that takes the reader behind the statistics of Black deaths, on an ambitious journey into the history of the small deep-south town, Ward's own community and family, and the individual stories, intertwining them capably and sensitively. He writes, "Ward's deceptively conversational prose masks her uncommon skill at imagery. She makes you feel the anguish of each lost life, as well as her survivor's guilt, with its ever-present haunt of memory," and lauds how Ward is "candid enough to paint the flaws in the deceased as well as their good qualities. (In other words, Ward humanizes instead of canonizes.) She's also talented enough to turn such prose into poetry." "Kirkus Reviews" summarizes that "Men We Reaped" is "a modern rejoinder to "Black Like Me", "Beloved" and other stories of struggle and redemption—beautifully written, if sometimes too sad to bear", while "Publishers Weekly" calls it "riveting", and declares that "Ward has a soft touch, making these stories heartbreakingly real through vivid portrayal and dialogue."

2850adb9-d032-4493-9b6a-2ae9119d653f

m2d2_wiki

Self-Portrait in Black and White Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race is a 2019 book by Thomas Chatterton Williams. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company on October 15, 2019. Thesis. Thomas, the son of a black father and a white mother, who grew up identifying as black, explains in the book how he has come to unlearn his racial identity. Publication and promotion. The book was published by W. W. Norton & Company on October 15, 2019. Williams appeared on "Real Time with Bill Maher" on October 18, 2019 to promote the book. Reception. At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the book received a cumulative "Mixed" rating based on 11 reviews: 2 "Rave" reviews, 3 "Positive" reviews, 3 "Mixed" reviews, and 3 "Pan" reviews.

cfb47f76-3318-47ab-bbef-d8984595e167

m2d2_wiki

Working with the Hands Working with the Hands by Booker T. Washington is described by its author as a sequel to his classic "Up From Slavery". The full title of the work is Working with the hands; being a sequel to "Up From Slavery," covering the author's experiences in industrial training at Tuskegee Links. Archive.org scan of "Working with the Hands"

c60adbbb-c4d2-4853-952e-ac75c9cde6b9

m2d2_wiki

I, Tina I, Tina: My Life Story is a 1986 autobiography by Tina Turner, co-written by MTV news correspondent and music critic Kurt Loder. The book was reissued by Dey Street Books in 2010. Content. The book details Tina Turner's story from her childhood in Nutbush, Tennessee to her initial rise to fame in St. Louis under the leadership of blues musician Ike Turner which became an abusive marriage, leading up to her resurgence in the 1980s. Contributors. The book contains passages from many of Turner's family, friends and associates, among those are: Reception. The book became a worldwide best-seller when it was released and led to the film adaptation, "What's Love Got to Do with It", in 1993 starring Angela Bassett as Turner. In 1999, Ike Turner released his own autobiography, "Takin' Back My Name", which in part is a rebuttal of the image presented of him in Tina's book and the film.

b1bfa3c8-a123-4d4d-b8ef-639feb6271be

m2d2_wiki

Revolutionary Suicide Revolutionary Suicide is an autobiography written by Huey P. Newton with assistance from J. Herman Blake originally published in 1973. Newton was a major figure in the American black liberation movement and in the wider 1960's counterculture. He was a co-founder and leader of what was then known as the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defence with Bobby Seale. The Chief ideologue and strategist of the BPP, Newton taught himself how to read during his last year of high school, which led to his enrollment in Merrit College in Oakland in 1966; the same year he formed the BPP. The Party urged members to challenge the status quo with armed patrols of the impoverished streets of Oakland, and to form coalitions with other oppressed groups. The party spread across America and internationally as well, forming coalitions with the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cubans. This autobiography is an important work that combines political manifesto and political philosophy along with the life story of a young African American revolutionary. The book was not universally well received but has had a lasting influence on the black civil rights movement and resonates today in the Black Lives Matter movement. Background. Huey P. Newton co-founded, with Bobby Seale, and was one of the leaders of, the Black Panther Party (BPP). The party was founded in Oakland California in October 1966 at a time of rising racial tension in the USA. There had been serious race riots in the Harlem area of New York in 1964 and Watts area of Chicago in 1965. Radical black leader Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 at a rally in Harlem. Newton was heavily influenced by Malcolm X and by other revolutionary movements of the period. The BPP were seen as leaders of the Black Power movement as the Civil Rights movement waned and more radical groups came to the fore, however this view is disputed by some historians. The party issued a ten point program, reiterated in Revolutionary Suicide, which focused on the black community having the freedom to determine their own destiny and advocated for black people to carry weapons and confront police. This led to conflict with the police and Newton was jailed in September 1968 for the manslaughter of a police officer, John Frey. In the book Newton describes a confrontation with police but other than being shot himself he says he has no memory of the events. While he was in prison, he was visited regularly by J. Herman Blake, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz. During one visit the idea of writing a book was discussed. The initial idea was that Blake would write a biography of Newton. They began the process while Newton was still in prison. Blake would transcribe their conversations onto a tape recorder immediately after the visits. Following a campaign by supporters, Newton was released in August 1970. Following his release Newton and Blake decided that the book would be an autobiography. The book covered his life from his early days in Oakland up to his trip to China in 1971. Synopsis. Revolutionary Suicide was written when Newton was only 31 and he dedicated the book to his parents. As well as being the story of his life up to that point it is also includes his manifesto and political philosophy. In the opening manifesto section Newton outlines his idea of ‘revolutionary suicide’ as opposed to what he describes as ‘reactionary suicide’. Reactionary suicide is a suicide brought about by despair with one's social conditions. On the other hand, Newton says a ‘revolutionary suicide’ is a death brought about by forcibly challenging the system and repressive agencies that can lead a person to commit reactionary suicide. In other words, the revolutionary knows he or she will risk death but chooses to fight to improve the conditions for their community rather than submit to the existing state that have created these conditions. The book goes on to describe his time growing up tough on the streets of Oakland, how he taught himself to read by studying Plato's Republic, his political awakening and the formation of the BPP with Bobby Seale. The next chapters detail the shooting of officer Frey, his trial conviction and later release. The later chapters cover the period after his release and his attempts to rebuild the Party. The last chapters cover his visit to China and what he describes as the ‘defection’ of Eldredge Cleaver. While Revolutionary Suicide is written in the first person, in an interview in 2007 Blake claims to have done the actual writing. Commercial and critical reception. On its initial publication in 1973 the book was featured on the front page of the book sections of both the New York Times and the Washington Post. This prominence is an indication of the importance of the book at the time although it garnered mixed reviews. in the New York Times Review of Books, Murray Kempton, wrote a long feature article on the Revolutionary Suicide under the by-line ‘At one and the same time the goodest and the baddest’. The essay focuses more on Newton himself than his book. Kempton, a broadcaster and critic, is both complementary and highly critical of Newton. The Washington Post review by American author Lee Lockwood in its Bookworld section is positive. In another New York Times review Christopher Lehmann-Haupt writes that, while the book was eagerly anticipated, it is ”boring” and argues that Newtons main aim in the work is to the change the image of the Panthers. Ernest M. Collins from the Department of Government at Ohio University wrote a review, which praised Newton's writing when it was “confined to institutions with which he is familiar” but described his views on the wider political world as ‘shallow’. A review in the Times in London by John Arderne Rex called it “perhaps the best written book by a black leader to come out of the United States”. Rex was a Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick and an author. He praises the book for being a mature political philosophy and for Newtons interest in social justice. Analysis. Newton's writing and ideas met with a mixed reception. Political scientist John McCartney claimed he was the black power movements foremost political thinker. In his book ‘Huey P. Newton, the Radical Theorist’ the scholar of African American politics Professor Judson L. Jefferies discussed how Newton's interest in philosophy and his wide reading influenced his thinking. Jefferies said his writing did not compare favourably to Malcolm X or Martin Luther King but praised him as one of the most important black thinkers of the time. Brian Sowers pointed out the influence of Plato's ‘Republic” on Revolutionary Suicide, particularly the second half of the book, and compares Newton to a modern-day Socrates. The academic Davi Johnson, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Southwestern University claimed that Newtons rhetoric sat in a tradition mould of conservative rhetoric and he and the Black Panther Party, were not the quite the outsider dangerous force portrayed in the media at the time. Johnson pointed out how Newton used the rhetorical device of jeremiad, a list of complaints about the prevailing society, in a very traditional and conservative way and in that sense his rhetoric was not so revolutionary. Another academic, Joanna Freer, writing in the journal American Studies, claims that author Thomas Pynchon critiqued Newtons concept of revolutionary suicide in his popular novel "Gravity's Rainbow”. Freer says that Pynchon through his character Wimpe is critical of Newton's belief in Marxist dialectical materialism and in the idea that revolution was inevitable. Judson L Jefferies summarised the reviews of Revolutionary Suicide as “harsh”. He summarises a number of reviews but points out that in many cases the reviews are focused on Newton and the BPP rather than the book in question. He argues that the authors of these reviews seem to be intent on undermining Newton based on their own idea of who he is rather than giving the book a fair review. The term "revolutionary suicide" was appropriated by Jim Jones, leader of the new religious and socialist movement Peoples Temple. Jones ignored Newton's definition of the phrase, instead using the term to describe actual suicide as a form of revolutionary protest. The term was used by Jones to describe the mass murder/suicide that took place at Jonestown, Guyana on 18 November 1978. Jones' use of the phrase "revolutionary suicide," as recorded on an audio tape of the mass death, has been widely quoted and used in media coverage of the event. From 2013 the Black Lives Matter movement rose to prominence in the USA in response to the continuing police brutality against African Americans. Many writers and scholars noted the similarities in the grassroots nature of both the BLM and the BPP and in many of the programs they advocated. Both organisations were formed in Oakland. However, writers also pointed to differences in approach and methods. A key point was that in 2016, 50 years after Newton formed the BPP and forty-three years after the publication of Revolutionary Suicide African American communities were still facing similar issues to those outlined in the book by Newton. The English musician and singer Julian Cope released an album in 2013 called Revolutionary Suicide. He acknowledged that he took the name from Newtons work and explained how he interpreted the term as being about “ultimate freedom” adding” surely we can also be our own hangman if it gets too much?”. Contents. Revolutionary Suicide begins with a manifesto in which Newton discusses his ideas of revolutionary and reactionary suicide. The book is divided into thirty-three chapters and six parts. Part one is about Newtons early life growing up in a poor but loving family Oakland. He talks about the failure of the public-school system to educate him. Part two covers his troubled teenage years and time at Merritt College. In this section he describes how he taught himself to read by borrowing his older brother Melvin’s copy of Plato’s “Republic”. In the third part he describes his political awakening and the founding of the BPP with Bobby Seale. This part also includes a summary of the BPP's Ten-point program and a chapter on how Eldridge Cleaver joined the BPP. Part four revolves around the shooting of officer Frey and Newtons wounding and subsequent hospitalisation. In part five he describes the trial and time in prison. The final part details his release and subsequent attempts to maintain and restructure the BPP and his retrial. In the final chapters he talks about his controversial trip to China in September 1971. He contrasts the behaviour and role of police in China with the police force in the USA. On his trip he met the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai though not the head of state, Communist Party Leader Chairman Mao Zedong. Newton was impressed with China. He then has a final short chapter that deals with Cleaver's decision to leave the party and move to Algeria. This is followed with an epilogue entitled ‘I Am We” which Newton says is based on an old African saying. In this he reiterates the difference between revolutionary and reactionary suicide and quotes both Mao's Little Red Book and the Gospel of St. Paul to illustrate his point. The book's original cover photograph shows Newton sitting on a type of throne holding a rifle and a spear. The image was seen as controversial as it played into the violent imagery which had surrounded the BPP. Early photographs of party members in black shirts and berets carrying weapons shocked many. The photograph is regarded as an iconic image of the counterculture in USA. The image had been produced as a publicity poster for the BPP. The original photographer is unknown. The photograph was described by Bobby Seale as a “centralized symbol of the leadership of black people in the community”. The original hardcover edition contained several pages of photographs. These include family photographs, photographs of other panther party leaders and one of Newton with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai taken on his visit to China in September 1971. Publication history. The first edition was published in hardcover in 1973 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. New York. This edition did not have an introduction. In England the publisher was Wildwood House. The book was published in both hardback and paperback editions. . This edition was published with a different cover. It featured a side profile shot of Huey Newton replacing the more controversial enthroned photograph. In 1995 Writers and Readers published a softcover edition with the original cover photograph. In September 2009 Penguin books published a paperback edition as part of its Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition series. . The paperback had a deckle edge, a cover illustration by Ho Che Anderson and an introduction by Newton's widow Fredrika Newton. An e-book version was released at the same time.

4d139c6c-e555-4b7e-98bc-53dae90432f2

m2d2_wiki

Up from Slavery Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of American educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). The book describes his personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of both teachers and philanthropists who helped in educating Black people and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and a feeling of dignity to students. His educational philosophy stresses combining academic subjects with learning a trade (something which is reminiscent of the educational theories of John Ruskin). Washington explained that the integration of practical subjects is partly designed to reassure the white community as to the usefulness of educating Black people. This book was first released as a serialized work in 1900 through "The Outlook", a Christian newspaper of New York. This work was serialized because this meant that during the writing process, Washington was able to hear critiques and requests from his audience and could more easily adapt his paper to his diverse audience. Washington was a controversial figure in his own lifetime, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others, criticized some of his views. The book was a best-seller, and remained the most popular African American autobiography until that of Malcolm X. In 1998, the Modern Library listed the book at No. 3 on its list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century, and in 1999 it was also listed by the conservative "Intercollegiate Review" as one of the "50 Best Books of the Twentieth Century". Plot summary. "Up from Slavery" chronicles more than forty years of Washington's life: from slave to schoolmaster to the face of southern race relations. In this text, Washington climbs the social ladder through hard, manual labor, a decent education, and relationships with great people. Throughout the text, he stresses the importance of education for the black population as a reasonable tactic to ease race relations in the South (particularly in the context of Reconstruction). The book is in essence Washington's traditional, non-confrontational message supported by the example of his life. Chapter summaries. Chapter 1. "A Slave Among Slaves": In the first chapter, the reader is given a vivid yet brief sight of the life of slaves, as seen from the author's point of view. Basically, it speaks of the hardships the slaves endured before independence and their joys and hassles (arguments) after liberty. The first chapter explains about his suffering in that plantation and the end days of his slavery. The author feels that his life had its beginning in midst of the most miserable surroundings. He explains about his living conditions, and how his mother works hard to make the days end. Chapter 2. "Boyhood Days": In the second chapter, the reader learns the importance of naming oneself as a means of reaffirming freedom and the extent to which freed men and women would go to reunite their families. After families had reunited and named themselves, they would then seek out employment (often far from their former masters). The reader learns the story behind the author's name: Booker Taliaferro Washington. The second chapter also gives an account of cruel labour of both adults and children in the mines at the city of Malden. Furthermore, Booker is strongly attracted towards education and oscillates between the extensive schedule of the day's work and the school. The second chapter also describes the character of Booker's mother and her role in his life. Chapter 3. "The Struggle for Education": Washington struggles, in this chapter, to earn enough money to reach and remain at Hampton Institute. That was his first experience related to the importance of willingness to do manual labor. The first introduction of General Samuel C. Armstrong Chapter 4. "Helping Others": Conditions at Hampton are discussed in this chapter, as well as Washington's first trip home from school. He returns early from vacation to aid teachers in the cleaning of their classrooms. When Washington returns the next summer, he is elected to teach local students, young and old, through a night school, Sunday school, and private lessons. This chapter also gives the first mention of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Chapter 5. "The Reconstruction Period (1867-1878)": Washington paints an image of the South during Reconstruction Era of the United States, with several assessments of Reconstruction projects including: education, vocational opportunities, and voting rights. He speaks of the Reconstruction policy being built on "a false foundation." He seeks to play a role in forming a more solid foundation based upon "the hand, head, and heart." Chapter 6. "Black Race and Red Race": General Armstrong calls Washington back to Hampton Institute for the purpose of instructing and advising a group of young Native-American men. Washington speaks about different instances of racism against Native Americans and African Americans. Washington also begins a night school at this time. Chapter 7. "Early Days at Tuskegee": Once again General Armstrong is instrumental in encouraging Washington's next project: the establishment of a normal school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama. He describes the conditions in Tuskegee and his work in building the school: "much like making bricks without straw. Washington also outlines a typical day in the life of an African American living in the country at this time. In May 1881, General Armstrong told Washington he had received a letter from a man in Alabama to recommend someone to take charge of a "colored school" in Tuskegee. The man writing the letter thought that there was no "colored" person to fill the role and asked him to recommend a white man. The general wrote back to tell him about Washington, and he was accepted for the position. Washington went there and describes Tuskegee as a town of 2,000 population and as being in the "Black Belt" of the South, where nearly half of the residents were "colored" and in other parts of nearby counties there were six African-American people to one white person. He explains that he thinks the term 'Black Belt' originated from the rich, dark soil of the area, which was also the part of the South where slaves were most profitable. Once at Tuskegee, his first task was to find a place to open the school and secured a rundown "shanty" and African-American Methodist church. He also travelled around the area and acquainted himself with the local people. He describes some of the families he met and who worked in the cotton fields. He saw that most of the farmers were in debt and schools were generally taught in churches or log cabins and these had few or no provisions. Some, for example, had no means of heating in the winter and one school had one book to share between five children. He goes on to relate the story of a man aged around 60. He told Washington he had been sold in 1845 and there had been five of them: "There were five of us; myself and brother and three mules." Washington explains he is referring to these experiences to highlight how improvements were later made. Chapter 8. "Teaching School in a Stable and a Hen-house": Washington details the necessity of a new form of education for the children of Tuskegee, for the typical New England education would not be sufficient to effect uplift. Here is also the introduction of long-time partners, George W. Campbell and Lewis Adams, and future wife, Olivia A. Davidson; these individuals felt similarly to Washington in that mere book-learning would not be enough. The goal was established to prepare students of Tuskegee to become teachers, farmers, and overall moral people. Washington's first days at Tuskegee are described in this chapter, as is his method of working. He demonstrates a holistic approach to his teaching in that he researched the area and the people and how poverty stricken many were. His visits also showed how education was both a premium and underfunded, and therefore justifies the setting up of this new facility. Tuskegee is also seen to be set in a rural area, where agriculture was the main form of employment, and so the institute's later incarnation as an industrial school that was fit for teaching its students skills for the locale is justified. He encountered difficulties in setting up the school, which he opened on July 4, 1881, and this included some opposition from white people who questioned the value of educating African Americans: "These people feared the result of education would be that the Negros would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them for domestic service." He describes how he has depended on the advice of two men in particular and these were the ones who wrote to General Armstrong asking for a teacher. One is a white man and a former slave holder called George W. Campbell. The other is a "black" man and a former slave called Lewis Adams. When the school opened they had 30 students and these were divided roughly equally between the sexes. Many more had wanted to come, but it had been decided that they must be over 15 and have had some education already. Many who came were public school teachers and some were around 40 years of age. The number of pupils increased each week and there were nearly 50 by the end of the first month. A co-teacher came at the end of the first six weeks. This was Olivia A. Davidson and she later became his wife. She had been taught in Ohio and came South as she had heard of the need for teachers. She is described as brave in the way she nursed the sick when others would not (such as caring for a boy with smallpox). She also trained further at Hampton and then at Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham. She and Washington agreed that the students needed more than a 'book education' and they thought they must show them how to care for their bodies and how to earn a living after they had left the school. They tried to educate them in a way that would make them want to stay in these agricultural districts (rather than leave for the city and be forced to live by their wits). Many of the students came initially to study so that they would not have to work with their hands, whereas Washington aimed for them to be capable of all sorts of labor and to not be ashamed of it. Chapter 9. "Anxious Days and Sleepless Nights": This chapter starts by stating how the people spent Christmas drinking and having a merry time, and not bearing in mind the true essence of Christmas. This chapter also discusses the institute's relationship with the locals of Tuskegee, the purchase and cultivation of a new farm, the erection of a new building, and the introduction of several generous donors, mostly northern. The death of Washington's first wife, Fannie N. Smith, is announced in this chapter. He had a daughter named Portia. Chapter 10. "A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw": In this chapter, Washington discusses the importance of having the students erect their own buildings: "Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of marring the looks of some building by lead pencil marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student remind him: 'Don't do that. That is our building. I helped put it up.'" The bricks reference in the title refers to the difficulty of forming bricks without some very necessary tools: money and experience. Through much labour, the students were able to produce fine bricks; their confidence then spilled over into other efforts, such as the building of vehicles. Chapter 12. "Raising Money": Washington travels north to secure additional funding for the institute with which he had much success. Two years after a meeting with one man, the Institute received a cheque of $10,000 and, from another couple, a gift of $50,000. Washington felt great pressure for his school and students to succeed, for failure would reflect poorly on the ability of the race. It is this time period Washington begins working with Andrew Carnegie, proving to Carnegie that this school was worthy of support. Not only did Washington find large donations helpful, but small loans were key which paid the bills and gave evidence to the community's faith in this type of education. Chapter 13. "Two Thousand Miles for a Five-Minute Speech": Washington marries again. His new wife is Olivia A. Davidson, first mentioned in Chapter 8. This chapter begins Washington's public speaking career; first at the National Education Association. His next goal was to speak before a Southern white audience. His first opportunity was limited by prior engagements and travel time, leaving him only five minutes to give his speech. Subsequent speeches were filled with purpose: when in the North he would be actively seeking funds, when in the South encouraged "the material and intellectual growth of both races." The result of one speech was the Atlanta Exposition Speech. Chapter 14. "The Atlanta Exposition Address": The speech that Washington gave to the Atlanta Exposition is printed here in its entirety. He also gives some explanation of the reaction to his speech: first, delight from all, then, slowly, a feeling among African Americans that Washington had not been strong enough in regards to the 'rights' of the race. In time, however, the African-American public would become, once again, generally pleased with Washington's goals and methods for African-American uplift. Washington also speaks about the African-American clergy. He also makes a much disputed statement about voting: "I believe it is the duty of the Negro – as the greater part of the race is already doing – to deport himself modestly in regard to political claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from the possession of property, intelligence, and high character for the full recognition of his political rights. I think that the according of the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair. I do not believe that the Negro should cease voting…but I do believe that in his voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence and character who are his next-door neighbors…I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black man in the same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust, but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of such a law is to encourage the Negro to secure education and property. I believe that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot box in the South will cease." Chapter 15. "The Secret Success in Public Speaking": Washington speaks again of the reception of his Atlanta Exposition Speech. He then goes on to give the reader some advice about public speaking and describes several memorable speeches. Chapter 16. "Europe": The author is married a third time, to Margaret James Murray. He speaks about his children. At this time, he and his wife are offered the opportunity to travel to Europe. Mixed emotions influenced their decision to go: Washington had always dreamed of traveling to Europe, but he feared the reaction of the people, for so many times had he seen individuals of his race achieve success and then turned away from the people. Mr. and Mrs. Washington enjoyed their trip, especially upon seeing their friend, Henry Tanner, an African-American artist, being praised by all classes. During their time abroad, the couple was also able to take tea with both Queen Victoria and Susan B. Anthony. Upon arriving back in the United States, Washington was asked to visit Charleston, West Virginia, near his former home in Malden. Chapter 17. "Last Words": Washington describes his last interactions with General Armstrong and his first with Armstrong's successor, Rev. Dr. Hollis B. Frissell. The greatest surprise of his life was being invited to receive an honorary degree from Harvard University, the first awarded to an African American. Another great honor for Washington and Tuskegee was the visit of President William McKinley to the institute, an act which McKinley hoped to impress upon citizens his "interest and faith in the race." Washington then describes the conditions at Tuskegee Institute and his resounding hope for the future of the race. Context. The America of the 1880s and 1890s was one of white hostility toward African Americans. There was also the belief that the African American race would not have been able to survive without the institution of slavery. Popular culture played in to the ideas of "black criminality and moral decline" as can be seen in the characters Jim Crow and Zip Coon. When Washington began his writing and public speaking, he was fighting the notion that African Americans were inherently stupid and incapable of civilization. Washington's primary goal was to impress upon the audience the possibility of progress. Furthermore, living in the Black Belt, Booker T. Washington was vulnerable to mob violence and was, therefore, always mindful not to provoke the mob. As would be expected for a man in such precarious position, when violence erupted, he tried to stem his talk of equality and progress so as not to exacerbate the situation. Lynching in the South at this time was prevalent as mobs of whites would take the law into their own hands and would torture and murder of dozens of men and women, including white men. The offenses of the victims included: "for being victor over a white man in a fight;" "protecting fugitive from posse;" "stealing seventy-five cents;" "expressing sympathy for mob's victim;" "for being father of boy who jostled white women." It is clear that any white person to show sympathy or offer protection for African-American victims would be labeled complicit himself and become vulnerable to violence by the mob. In 1901, Reverend Quincy Ewing of Mississippi charged the press and pulpit with uniting public sentiment against lynching. Lynching would continue into the 1950s and 1960s. Some blame Washington's comparatively sheepish message upon a lack of desire for true African-American uplift. Some, taking into account the environment in which he was delivering his message, support Washington for making any public stance at all. The relationship between Washington and his critics. Since publishing, "Up From Slavery" paints Booker T. Washington as both an "accommodationist and calculating realist seeking to carve out a viable strategy for black struggle amidst the nadir of race relations in the United States." While more contemporary ideas of black civil rights call for a more provocative approach, Washington was certainly a major figure in his time. Most critiques of him target his accommodationism, yet his private life was very much aimed at opposition through funding. The Atlanta Exposition speech shows his dual nature, giving everyone present something to agree with, no matter their intention. Washington deserves praise for "seeking to be all things to all men in a multifaceted society." Many do argue against his being characterized as an accommodationist: "He worked too hard to resist and to overcome white supremacy to call him an accommodationist, even if some of his white-supremacist southern neighbors so construed some of his statements. Having conditions forced on him, with threat of destruction clearly the cost of resistance, does not constitute a fair definition of accommodation." Historians are thoroughly split over this characterization. W. E. B. DuBois initially applauded Washington's stance on racial uplift, at one point he went as far as to say of the Atlanta Exposition speech: "here might be a real basis for the settlement between whites and blacks in the South." DuBois, in his book "The Souls of Black Folk", congratulates Washington for accomplishing his first task, which was to earn the ear of the white southern population through a spirit of sympathy and cooperation. He also acknowledges the unstable situation in the south and the necessity for sensitivity to community feelings, yet he believes that Washington has failed in his sensitivity to African Americans. DuBois asserts that there are many educated and successful African Americans who would criticize the work of Washington, but they are being hushed in such a way as to impede "democracy and the safeguard of modern society." This is where their paths would diverge: Washington with his "Tuskegee Machine" and DuBois with the "Niagara Movement." In 1905, the Niagara Movement issued a statement enumerating their demands against oppression and for civil rights. The Movement established itself as an entity entirely removed from Washington in conciliation, but rather a new, more radical course of action: "Through helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America is unjust." For a time, the Movement grew very successfully, but they lost their effectiveness when chapters began to disagree with one another. Eventually, the Movement's efforts translated into the development of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Of course there were other participants in this discussion of the future of the African-American race, including that of W. H. Thomas, another African-American man. Thomas believed that African Americans were "deplorably bad" and that it would require a "miracle" to make any sort of progress. As in the case of Washington and DuBois, Washington and Thomas have areas of agreement, though DuBois would not so agree: that the best chance for an African American was in the areas of farming and country life. In some respects, it is hard to compare the two as each has different intentions. Similarly, Thomas Dixon, author of "The Clansman" (1905), began a newspaper controversy with Washington over the industrial system, most likely to encourage talk of his upcoming book. He characterized the newfound independence of Tuskegee graduates as inciting competition: "Competition is war…. What will the [southern white man] do when put to the test? He will do exactly what his white neighbor in the North does when the Negro threatens his bread—kill him!" In popular culture. In September 2011, a seven-part documentary television and DVD series was produced by LionHeart FilmWorks and director Kevin Hershberger using the title "Up From Slavery". The 315-minute series is distributed by Mill Creek Entertainment. This series is not directly about the Booker T. Washington autobiography "Up From Slavery", but tells the story of Black Slavery in America from the first arrival of African slaves at Jamestown in 1619 to the Civil War and the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which prohibits the government from denying a citizen the vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (i.e., slavery), the third of the Reconstruction Amendments which finally ended the legitimacy of slavery in the United States.

323048bc-0230-42db-be8d-15626b539813

m2d2_wiki

The Autobiography of Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination. The "Autobiography" is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue. He described their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm X's life. While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book's publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm X's literary choices. For example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley. Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation which Malcolm X had rejected, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of "suspense and drama". According to Manning Marable, "Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism" and he rewrote material to eliminate it. When the "Autobiography" was published, "The New York Times" reviewer described it as a "brilliant, painful, important book". In 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. In 1998, "Time" named "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" as one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books. James Baldwin and Arnold Perl adapted the book as a film; their screenplay provided the source material for Spike Lee's 1992 film "Malcolm X". Summary. Published posthumously, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" is an account of the life of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little (1925–1965), who became a human rights activist. Beginning with his mother's pregnancy, the book describes Malcolm's childhood first in Omaha, Nebraska and then in the area around Lansing and Mason, Michigan, the death of his father under questionable circumstances, and his mother's deteriorating mental health that resulted in her commitment to a psychiatric hospital. Little's young adulthood in Boston and New York City is covered, as well as his involvement in organized crime. This led to his arrest and subsequent eight- to ten-year prison sentence, of which he served six-and-a-half years (1946–1952). The book addresses his ministry with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam (1952–1963) and his emergence as the organization's national spokesman. It documents his disillusionment with and departure from the Nation of Islam in March 1964, his pilgrimage to Mecca, which catalyzed his conversion to orthodox Sunni Islam, and his travels in Africa. Malcolm X was assassinated in New York's Audubon Ballroom in February 1965, before they finished the book. His co-author, journalist Alex Haley, summarizes the last days of Malcolm X's life, and describes in detail their working agreement, including Haley's personal views on his subject, in the "Autobiography"s epilogue. Genre. The "Autobiography" is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. Literary critic Arnold Rampersad and Malcolm X biographer Michael Eric Dyson agree that the narrative of the "Autobiography" resembles the Augustinian approach to confessional narrative. Augustine's "Confessions" and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" both relate the early hedonistic lives of their subjects, document deep philosophical change for spiritual reasons, and describe later disillusionment with religious groups their subjects had once revered. Haley and autobiographical scholar Albert E. Stone compare the narrative to the Icarus myth. Author Paul John Eakin and writer Alex Gillespie suggest that part of the "Autobiography"s rhetorical power comes from "the vision of a man whose swiftly unfolding career had outstripped the possibilities of the traditional autobiography he had meant to write", thus destroying "the illusion of the finished and unified personality". In addition to functioning as a spiritual conversion narrative, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" also reflects generic elements from other distinctly American literary forms, from the Puritan conversion narrative of Jonathan Edwards and the secular self-analyses of Benjamin Franklin, to the African American slave narratives. This aesthetic decision on the part of Malcolm X and Haley also has profound implications for the thematic content of the work, as the progressive movement between forms that is evidenced in the text reflects the personal progression of its subject. Considering this, the editors of the "Norton Anthology of African American Literature" assert that, "Malcolm's "Autobiography" takes pains to interrogate the very models through which his persona achieves gradual self-understanding...his story's inner logic defines his life as a quest for an authentic mode of being, a quest that demands a constant openness to new ideas requiring fresh kinds of expression." Construction. Haley coauthored "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", and also performed the basic functions of a ghostwriter and biographical amanuensis, writing, compiling, and editing the "Autobiography" based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and his subject's 1965 assassination. The two first met in 1959, when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for "Reader's Digest", and again when Haley interviewed Malcolm X for "Playboy" in 1962. In 1963 the Doubleday publishing company asked Haley to write a book about the life of Malcolm X. American writer and literary critic Harold Bloom writes, "When Haley approached Malcolm with the idea, Malcolm gave him a startled look ..." Haley recalls, "It was one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain." After Malcolm X was granted permission from Elijah Muhammad, he and Haley commenced work on the "Autobiography", a process which began as two-and three-hour interview sessions at Haley's studio in Greenwich Village. Bloom writes, "Malcolm was critical of Haley's middle-class status, as well as his Christian beliefs and twenty years of service in the U.S. Military." When work on the "Autobiography" began in early 1963, Haley grew frustrated with Malcolm X's tendency to speak only about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Haley reminded him that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X, not Muhammad or the Nation of Islam, a comment which angered Malcolm X. Haley eventually shifted the focus of the interviews toward the life of his subject when he asked Malcolm X about his mother: I said, 'Mr. Malcolm, could you tell me something about your mother?' And I will never, ever forget how he stopped almost as if he was suspended like a marionette. And he said, 'I remember the kind of dresses she used to wear. They were old and faded and gray.' And then he walked some more. And he said, 'I remember how she was always bent over the stove, trying to stretch what little we had.' And that was the beginning, that night, of his walk. And he walked that floor until just about daybreak. Though Haley is ostensibly a ghostwriter on the "Autobiography", modern scholars tend to treat him as an essential and core collaborator who acted as an invisible figure in the composition of the work. He minimized his own voice, and signed a contract to limit his authorial discretion in favor of producing what looked like verbatim copy. Manning Marable considers the view of Haley as simply a ghostwriter as a deliberate narrative construction of black scholars of the day who wanted to see the book as a singular creation of a dynamic leader and martyr. Marable argues that a critical analysis of the "Autobiography", or the full relationship between Malcolm X and Haley, does not support this view; he describes it instead as a collaboration. Haley's contribution to the work is notable, and several scholars discuss how it should be characterized. In a view shared by Eakin, Stone and Dyson, psychobiographical writer Eugene Victor Wolfenstein writes that Haley performed the duties of a quasi-psychoanalytic Freudian psychiatrist and spiritual confessor. Gillespie suggests, and Wolfenstein agrees, that the act of self-narration was itself a transformative process that spurred significant introspection and personal change in the life of its subject. Haley exercised discretion over content, guided Malcolm X in critical stylistic and rhetorical choices, and compiled the work. In the epilogue to the "Autobiography", Haley describes an agreement he made with Malcolm X, who demanded that: "Nothing can be in this book's manuscript that I didn't say and nothing can be left out that I want in it." As such, Haley wrote an addendum to the contract specifically referring to the book as an "as told to" account. In the agreement, Haley gained an "important concession": "I asked for—and he gave—his permission that at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subject to his review." These comments became the epilogue to the "Autobiography", which Haley wrote after the death of his subject. Narrative presentation. In "Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography", writer and professor John Edgar Wideman examines in detail the narrative landscapes found in biography. Wideman suggests that as a writer, Haley was attempting to satisfy "multiple allegiances": to his subject, to his publisher, to his "editor's agenda", and to himself. Haley was an important contributor to the "Autobiography"s popular appeal, writes Wideman. Wideman expounds upon the "inevitable compromise" of biographers, and argues that in order to allow readers to insert themselves into the broader socio-psychological narrative, neither coauthor's voice is as strong as it could have been. Wideman details some of the specific pitfalls Haley encountered while coauthoring the "Autobiography": You are serving many masters, and inevitably you are compromised. The man speaks and you listen but you do not take notes, the first compromise and perhaps betrayal. You may attempt through various stylistic conventions and devices to reconstitute for the reader your experience of hearing face to face the man's words. The sound of the man's narration may be represented by vocabulary, syntax, imagery, graphic devices of various sorts—quotation marks, punctuation, line breaks, visual patterning of white space and black space, markers that encode print analogs to speech—vernacular interjections, parentheses, ellipses, asterisks, footnotes, italics, dashes ... In the body of the "Autobiography", Wideman writes, Haley's authorial agency is seemingly absent: "Haley does so much with so little fuss ... an approach that appears so rudimentary in fact conceals sophisticated choices, quiet mastery of a medium". Wideman argues that Haley wrote the body of the "Autobiography" in a manner of Malcolm X's choosing and the epilogue as an extension of the biography itself, his subject having given him carte blanche for the chapter. Haley's voice in the body of the book is a tactic, Wideman writes, producing a text nominally written by Malcolm X but seemingly written by no author. The subsumption of Haley's own voice in the narrative allows the reader to feel as though the voice of Malcolm X is speaking directly and continuously, a stylistic tactic that, in Wideman's view, was a matter of Haley's authorial choice: "Haley grants Malcolm the tyrannical authority of an author, a disembodied speaker whose implied presence blends into the reader's imagining of the tale being told." In "Two Create One: The Act of Collaboration in Recent Black Autobiography: Ossie Guffy, Nate Shaw, and Malcolm X", Stone argues that Haley played an "essential role" in "recovering the historical identity" of Malcolm X. Stone also reminds the reader that collaboration is a cooperative endeavor, requiring more than Haley's prose alone can provide, "convincing and coherent" as it may be: Though a writer's skill and imagination have combined words and voice into a more or less convincing and coherent narrative, the actual writer [Haley] has no large fund of memories to draw upon: the subject's [Malcolm X] memory and imagination are the original sources of the arranged story and have also come into play critically as the text takes final shape. Thus "where" material comes from, and "what" has been done to it are separable and of equal significance in collaborations. In Stone's estimation, supported by Wideman, the source of autobiographical material and the efforts made to shape them into a workable narrative are distinct, and of equal value in a critical assessment of the collaboration that produced the "Autobiography". While Haley's skills as writer have significant influence on the narrative's shape, Stone writes, they require a "subject possessed of a powerful memory and imagination" to produce a workable narrative. Collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley. The collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley took on many dimensions; editing, revising and composing the "Autobiography" was a power struggle between two men with sometimes competing ideas of the final shape for the book. Haley "took pains to show how Malcolm dominated their relationship and tried to control the composition of the book", writes Rampersad. Rampersad also writes that Haley was aware that memory is selective and that autobiographies are "almost by definition projects in fiction", and that it was his responsibility as biographer to select material based on his authorial discretion. The narrative shape crafted by Haley and Malcolm X is the result of a life account "distorted and diminished" by the "process of selection", Rampersad suggests, yet the narrative's shape may in actuality be more revealing than the narrative itself. In the epilogue Haley describes the process used to edit the manuscript, giving specific examples of how Malcolm X controlled the language. While Haley ultimately deferred to Malcolm X's specific choice of words when composing the manuscript, Wideman writes, "the nature of writing biography or autobiography ... means that Haley's promise to Malcolm, his intent to be a 'dispassionate chronicler', is a matter of disguising, not removing, his authorial presence." Haley played an important role in persuading Malcolm X not to re-edit the book as a polemic against Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam at a time when Haley already had most of the material needed to complete the book, and asserted his authorial agency when the "Autobiography"s "fractured construction", caused by Malcolm X's rift with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, "overturned the design" of the manuscript and created a narrative crisis. In the "Autobiography"s epilogue, Haley describes the incident: I sent Malcolm X some rough chapters to read. I was appalled when they were soon returned, red-inked in many places where he had told of his almost father-and-son relationship with Elijah Muhammad. Telephoning Malcolm X, I reminded him of his previous decisions, and I stressed that if those chapters contained such telegraphing to readers of what was to lie ahead, then the book would automatically be robbed of some of its building suspense and drama. Malcolm X said, gruffly, 'Whose book is this?' I told him 'yours, of course,' and that I only made the objection in my position as a writer. But late that night Malcolm X telephoned. 'I'm sorry. You're right. I was upset about something. Forget what I wanted changed, let what you already had stand.' I never again gave him chapters to review unless I was with him. Several times I would covertly watch him frown and wince as he read, but he never again asked for any change in what he had originally said. Haley's warning to avoid "telegraphing to readers" and his advice about "building suspense and drama" demonstrate his efforts to influence the narrative's content and assert his authorial agency while ultimately deferring final discretion to Malcolm X. In the above passage Haley asserts his authorial presence, reminding his subject that as a writer he has concerns about narrative direction and focus, but presenting himself in such a way as to give no doubt that he deferred final approval to his subject. In the words of Eakin, "Because this complex vision of his existence is clearly not that of the early sections of the "Autobiography", Alex Haley and Malcolm X were forced to confront the consequences of this discontinuity in perspective for the narrative, already a year old." Malcolm X, after giving the matter some thought, later accepted Haley's suggestion. While Marable argues that Malcolm X was his own best revisionist, he also points out that Haley's collaborative role in shaping the "Autobiography" was notable. Haley influenced the narrative's direction and tone while remaining faithful to his subject's syntax and diction. Marable writes that Haley worked "hundreds of sentences into paragraphs", and organized them into "subject areas". Author William L. Andrews writes: [T]he narrative evolved out of Haley's interviews with Malcolm, but Malcolm had read Haley's typescript, and had made interlineated notes and often stipulated substantive changes, at least in the earlier parts of the text. As the work progressed, however, according to Haley, Malcolm yielded more and more to the authority of his ghostwriter, partly because Haley never let Malcolm read the manuscript unless he was present to defend it, partly because in his last months Malcolm had less and less opportunity to reflect on the text of his life because he was so busy living it, and partly because Malcolm had eventually resigned himself to letting Haley's ideas about effective storytelling take precedence over his own desire to denounce straightaway those whom he had once revered. Andrews suggests that Haley's role expanded because the book's subject became less available to micro-manage the manuscript, and "Malcolm had eventually resigned himself" to allowing "Haley's ideas about effective storytelling" to shape the narrative. Marable studied the "Autobiography" manuscript "raw materials" archived by Haley's biographer, Anne Romaine, and described a critical element of the collaboration, Haley's writing tactic to capture the voice of his subject accurately, a disjoint system of data mining that included notes on scrap paper, in-depth interviews, and long "free style" discussions. Marable writes, "Malcolm also had a habit of scribbling notes to himself as he spoke." Haley would secretly "pocket these sketchy notes" and reassemble them in a sub rosa attempt to integrate Malcolm X's "subconscious reflections" into the "workable narrative". This is an example of Haley asserting authorial agency during the writing of the "Autobiography", indicating that their relationship was fraught with minor power struggles. Wideman and Rampersad agree with Marable's description of Haley's book-writing process. The timing of the collaboration meant that Haley occupied an advantageous position to document the multiple conversion experiences of Malcolm X and his challenge was to form them, however incongruent, into a cohesive workable narrative. Dyson suggests that "profound personal, intellectual, and ideological changes ... led him to order events of his life to support a mythology of metamorphosis and transformation". Marable addresses the confounding factors of the publisher and Haley's authorial influence, passages that support the argument that while Malcolm X may have considered Haley a ghostwriter, he acted in actuality as a coauthor, at times without Malcolm X's direct knowledge or expressed consent: Although Malcolm X retained final approval of their hybrid text, he was not privy to the actual editorial processes superimposed from Haley's side. The Library of Congress held the answers. This collection includes the papers of Doubleday's then-executive editor, Kenneth McCormick, who had worked closely with Haley for several years as the Autobiography had been constructed. As in the Romaine papers, I found more evidence of Haley's sometimes-weekly private commentary with McCormick about the laborious process of composing the book. They also revealed how several attorneys retained by Doubleday closely monitored and vetted entire sections of the controversial text in 1964, demanding numerous name changes, the reworking and deletion of blocks of paragraphs, and so forth. In late 1963, Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism. He therefore rewrote material to eliminate a number of negative statements about Jews in the book manuscript, with the explicit covert goal of 'getting them past Malcolm X,' without his coauthor's knowledge or consent. Thus, the censorship of Malcolm X had begun well "prior" to his assassination. Marable says the resulting text was stylistically and ideologically distinct from what Marable believes Malcolm X would have written without Haley's influence, and it also differs from what may have actually been said in the interviews between Haley and Malcolm X. Myth-making. In "Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X", Dyson criticizes historians and biographers of the time for re-purposing the "Autobiography" as a transcendent narrative by a "mythological" Malcolm X without being critical enough of the underlying ideas. Further, because much of the available biographical studies of Malcolm X have been written by white authors, Dyson suggests their ability to "interpret black experience" is suspect. "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", Dyson says, reflects both Malcolm X's goal of narrating his life story for public consumption and Haley's political ideologies. Dyson writes, ""The Autobiography of Malcolm X" ... has been criticized for avoiding or distorting certain facts. Indeed, the autobiography is as much a testament to Haley's ingenuity in shaping the manuscript as it is a record of Malcolm's attempt to tell his story." Rampersad suggests that Haley understood autobiographies as "almost fiction". In "The Color of His Eyes: Bruce Perry's "Malcolm" and Malcolm's Malcolm", Rampersad criticizes Perry's biography, "Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America", and makes the general point that the writing of the "Autobiography" is part of the narrative of blackness in the 20th century and consequently should "not be held utterly beyond inquiry". To Rampersad, the "Autobiography" is about psychology, ideology, a conversion narrative, and the myth-making process. "Malcolm inscribed in it the terms of his understanding of the form even as the unstable, even treacherous form concealed and distorted particular aspects of his quest. But there is no Malcolm untouched by doubt or fiction. Malcolm's Malcolm is in itself a fabrication; the 'truth' about him is impossible to know." Rampersad suggests that since his 1965 assassination, Malcolm X has "become the desires of his admirers, who have reshaped memory, historical record and the autobiography according to their wishes, which is to say, according to their needs as they perceive them." Further, Rampersad says, many admirers of Malcolm X perceive "accomplished and admirable" figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., and W. E. B. Du Bois inadequate to fully express black humanity as it struggles with oppression, "while Malcolm is seen as the apotheosis of black individual greatness ... he is a perfect hero—his wisdom is surpassing, his courage definitive, his sacrifice messianic". Rampersad suggests that devotees have helped shape the myth of Malcolm X. Author Joe Wood writes: [T]he autobiography iconizes Malcolm twice, not once. Its second Malcolm—the El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz finale—is a mask with no distinct ideology, it is not particularly Islamic, not particularly nationalist, not particularly humanist. Like any well crafted icon or story, the mask is evidence of its subject's humanity, of Malcolm's strong human spirit. But both masks hide as much character as they show. The first mask served a nationalism Malcolm had rejected before the book was finished; the second is mostly empty and available. To Eakin, a significant portion of the "Autobiography" involves Haley and Malcolm X shaping the fiction of the completed self. Stone writes that Haley's description of the "Autobiography"s composition makes clear that this fiction is "especially misleading in the case of Malcolm X"; both Haley and the "Autobiography" itself are "out of phase" with its subject's "life and identity". Dyson writes, "[Louis] Lomax says that Malcolm became a 'lukewarm integrationist'. [Peter] Goldman suggests that Malcolm was 'improvising', that he embraced and discarded ideological options as he went along. [Albert] Cleage and [Oba] T'Shaka hold that he remained a revolutionary black nationalist. And [James Hal] Cone asserts that he became an internationalist with a humanist bent." Marable writes that Malcolm X was a "committed internationalist" and "black nationalist" at the end of his life, not an "integrationist", noting, "what I find in my own research is greater continuity than discontinuity". Marable, in "Rediscovering Malcolm's Life: A Historian's Adventures in Living History", critically analyzes the collaboration that produced the "Autobiography". Marable argues autobiographical "memoirs" are "inherently biased", representing the subject as he would appear with certain facts privileged, others deliberately omitted. Autobiographical narratives self-censor, reorder event chronology, and alter names. According to Marable, "nearly everyone writing about Malcolm X" has failed to critically and objectively analyze and research the subject properly. Marable suggests that most historians have assumed that the "Autobiography" is veritable truth, devoid of any ideological influence or stylistic embellishment by Malcolm X or Haley. Further, Marable believes the "most talented revisionist of Malcolm X, was Malcolm X", who actively fashioned and reinvented his public image and verbiage so as to increase favor with diverse groups of people in various situations. Haley writes that during the last months of Malcolm X's life "uncertainty and confusion" about his views were widespread in Harlem, his base of operations. In an interview four days before his death Malcolm X said, "I'm man enough to tell you that I can't put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now, but I'm flexible." Malcolm X had not yet formulated a cohesive Black ideology at the time of his assassination and, Dyson writes, was "experiencing a radical shift" in his core "personal and political understandings". Legacy and influence. Eliot Fremont-Smith, reviewing "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" for "The New York Times" in 1965, described it as "extraordinary" and said it is a "brilliant, painful, important book". Two years later, historian John William Ward wrote that the book "will surely become one of the classics in American autobiography". Bayard Rustin argued the book suffered from a lack of critical analysis, which he attributed to Malcolm X's expectation that Haley be a "chronicler, not an interpreter." "Newsweek" also highlighted the limited insight and criticism in "The Autobiography" but praised it for power and poignance. However, Truman Nelson in "The Nation" lauded the epilogue as revelatory and described Haley as a "skillful amanuensis". "Variety" called it a "mesmerizing page-turner" in 1992, and in 1998, "Time" named "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books. "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" has influenced generations of readers. In 1990, Charles Solomon writes in the "Los Angeles Times", "Unlike many '60s icons, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", with its double message of anger and love, remains an inspiring document." Cultural historian Howard Bruce Franklin describes it as "one of the most influential books in late-twentieth-century American culture", and the "Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature" credits Haley with shaping "what has undoubtedly become the most influential twentieth-century African American autobiography". Considering the literary impact of Malcolm X's "Autobiography", we may note the tremendous influence of the book, as well as its subject generally, on the development of the Black Arts Movement. Indeed, it was the day after Malcolm's assassination that the poet and playwright, Amiri Baraka, established the Black Arts Repertory Theater, which would serve to catalyze the aesthetic progression of the movement. Writers and thinkers associated with the Black Arts movement found in the "Autobiography" an aesthetic embodiment of his profoundly influential qualities, namely, "the vibrancy of his public voice, the clarity of his analyses of oppression's hidden history and inner logic, the fearlessness of his opposition to white supremacy, and the unconstrained ardor of his advocacy for revolution 'by any means necessary.'" bell hooks writes "When I was a young college student in the early seventies, the book I read which revolutionized my thinking about race and politics was "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"." David Bradley adds: She [hooks] is not alone. Ask any middle-aged socially conscious intellectual to list the books that influenced his or her youthful thinking, and he or she will most likely mention "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Some will do more than mention it. Some will say that ... they picked it up—by accident, or maybe by assignment, or because a friend pressed it on them—and that they approached the reading of it without great expectations, but somehow that book ... took hold of them. Got "inside" them. Altered their vision, their outlook, their insight. Changed their lives. Max Elbaum concurs, writing that ""The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was without question the single most widely read and influential book among young people of all racial backgrounds who went to their first demonstration sometime between 1965 and 1968." At the end of his tenure as the first African-American U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder selected "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" when asked what book he would recommend to a young person coming to Washington, D.C. Publication and sales. Doubleday had contracted to publish "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and paid a $30,000 advance to Malcolm X and Haley in 1963. In March 1965, three weeks after Malcolm X's assassination, Nelson Doubleday, Jr., canceled its contract out of fear for the safety of his employees. Grove Press then published the book later that year. Since "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" has sold millions of copies, Marable described Doubleday's choice as the "most disastrous decision in corporate publishing history". "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" has sold well since its 1965 publication. According to "The New York Times", the paperback edition sold 400,000 copies in 1967 and 800,000 copies the following year. The "Autobiography" entered its 18th printing by 1970. "The New York Times" reported that six million copies of the book had been sold by 1977. The book experienced increased readership and returned to the best-seller list in the 1990s, helped in part by the publicity surrounding Spike Lee's 1992 film "Malcolm X". Between 1989 and 1992, sales of the book increased by 300%. Screenplay adaptations. In 1968 film producer Marvin Worth hired novelist James Baldwin to write a screenplay based on "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"; Baldwin was joined by screenwriter Arnold Perl, who died in 1971 before the screenplay could be finished. Baldwin developed his work on the screenplay into the book "One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"", published in 1972. Other authors who attempted to draft screenplays include playwright David Mamet, novelist David Bradley, author Charles Fuller, and screenwriter Calder Willingham. Director Spike Lee revised the Baldwin-Perl script for his 1992 film "Malcolm X". Missing chapters. In 1992, attorney Gregory Reed bought the original manuscripts of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" for $100,000 at the sale of the Haley Estate. The manuscripts included three "missing chapters", titled "The Negro", "The End of Christianity", and "Twenty Million Black Muslims", that were omitted from the original text. In a 1964 letter to his publisher, Haley had described these chapters as, "the most material of the book, some of it rather lava-like". Marable writes that the missing chapters were "dictated and written" during Malcolm X's final months in the Nation of Islam. In them, Marable says, Malcolm X proposed the establishment of a union of African American civic and political organizations. Marable wonders whether this project might have led some within the Nation of Islam and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to try to silence Malcolm X. In July 2018, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture acquired one of the "missing chapters", "The Negro", at auction for $7,000. Editions. The book has been published in more than 45 editions and in many languages, including Arabic, German, French, Indonesian. Important editions include:

a86f9b18-ea6a-484f-af49-bf68b34d4c2e

m2d2_wiki

The Riot Within The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption is a 2012 autobiography of Rodney King (1965–2012). Known by a videotape as a victim of Los Angeles Police Department brutality, he became a civil rights icon. The book is co-authored by Lawrence J. Spagnola, an award-winning writer. Context. King discusses his childhood growing up among loving parents but at times an abusive father, and their shared love for fishing. His father was alcoholic, and he also has had to deal with alcoholism in his adult life. King speaks highly of his teacher Robert E. Jones at John Muir High School, who was openly gay. He discusses his descent into addiction and alcoholism and his run-ins with the law, including when he was stopped and beaten by Los Angeles Police officers. This event was videotaped by a bystander, and carried on national news. There was outrage when the officers were acquitted of charges of excessive force. King reflects on his multicultural heritage. He said that he did not want the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of the officers at trial. King reflects his reluctance as a civil rights icon, after a federal trial in which two of the officers were convicted. The city of LA made a settlement with him, paying damages. He felt as if he attracted opportunists and was used by some. He continued to battle addiction and other issues. The book finally wraps up with his obtaining sobriety and discussing lessons he has learned. Reception. "The Riot Within" received mostly positive reviews by both the independent and mainstream media. Amazon categorization controversy. "The Riot Within" was classified by Amazon as a "Criminal Biography" and was listed next to books about serial killers, mob bosses and hackers. Amazon has refused to comment on why a memoir about a police brutality victim would be listed as such. The book was eventually re-classified under "Memoir and Historical".

0adfa2e0-38a8-4b56-b969-fdf94f19bc64

m2d2_wiki

Makes Me Wanna Holler Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America (1994) is an autobiographical and debut book by Nathan McCall. In an April 2014 interview with "Ebony" magazine, Nathan McCall stated that he was amazed that "Makes Me Wanna Holler" was still selling 20 years after it was originally published.

3da54072-e59e-498c-9ee8-19d1b109573d

m2d2_wiki

I Put a Spell on You (book) I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone is the 1992 autobiography by Nina Simone (1933–2003), written with Stephen Cleary. Publication. The 192-page book was published February 1, 1992 by Pantheon. It was re-released in a 2003 Da Capo Press reprint edition following Simone's death on April 21, 2003; this edition included an introduction, "I Know How it Feels To Be Free: Nina Simone 1933–2003", written by Dave Marsh. Reception. The book received mixed reviews. Reviewing the book in "The Washington Post", Gerald Early felt, "The best part of this autobiography...is Simone's recollection of her childhood," but said "in the end, [the book] seems sketchy and self-defensive...She tells very little either about the times in which she lived, or about the people who were most instrumental to her growth after her childhood," noting his disappointment with this absence given she "occupied an influential and unusual place in American cultural history, attracting Cafe Society-type white audiences at the same time that she maintained her integrity with a politicized young black audience. There is much to be said about the period from 1958 to 1968, and Simone would have been a stunning witness to it." Discussing the latter part of the autobiography, Tom Piazza wrote in "The New York Times", "In the 1970s, through a series of stunningly bad choices (and some plain bad luck), [Simone] began a slide into personal and professional misfortune. If her eagerness to cast the blame in every direction except inward -- at lovers, husbands, managers, America itself -- is irritating, one can't help admiring her survivor's spirit."

432dc6c8-587b-42db-a3ac-94fe42d69aa5

m2d2_wiki

Finding Fish Finding Fish is a 2001 autobiographical book by Antwone Fisher. Antwone Fisher was born in prison to an incarcerated mother and a father who had been shot by a girlfriend. After being placed in foster care, Fisher was treated brutally and blamed for his own misfortunes. He was also sexually abused by a woman who often babysat him from around age 3 to 8. He then was sent to George Junior Republic. Eventually, he found his way into a stable job in the Navy. Later, Fisher became a security guard at Sony Pictures Studios, where his story inspired producer Todd Black to make a film, "Antwone Fisher", based on his story.

dd2fa565-34a9-4de1-a786-bede721f21bc

m2d2_wiki

Surpassing Certainty Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me is a 2017 memoir by Janet Mock. Publication. Published June 13, 2017 by the Atria imprint of Simon & Schuster, "Surpassing Certainty" is Mock's second memoir, following her 2014 "New York Times" bestseller "Redefining Realness". The book's title is an allusion to Audre Lorde, who wrote, "And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking." Content. Following on the discussion of her childhood and adolescence in "Redefining Realness", in "Surpassing Certainty", Mock describes life in her twenties. Reception. Writing in "The New York Times", Jennifer Finney Boylan described "Surpassing Certainty" as "position[ing] its story within a larger history of a struggle for human rights. But Mock’s book is also a work of the heart, much of it focusing on the dissolution of her first marriage, and her journey from a Honolulu strip club to an editor at "People" magazine." "Cosmopolitan" said the book "should be required reading for your 20s." "Elle" named to a list of three "must-read" books for June 2017.

90fc50ba-cf45-424a-a38c-163516bbe58d

m2d2_wiki

Die Nigger Die! Die Nigger Die! is a 1969 political autobiography by the American political activist H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin). The book was first released in the United States in 1969 (by Dial Press) and then in the United Kingdom in 1970 (by Allison & Busby). Brown describes his experiences as a young black civil rights activist, and how they shaped his opinions of white America. He expresses his opinions on what he believes black Americans need to do to break free from white oppression. As a chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and from 1968 a member of the Black Panther Party, he was heavily involved with organizations that espoused a Black Power ideology. After Brown's conviction for murder in March 2002, the book was reprinted by Lawrence Hill Press, with a foreword by Ekwueme Michael Thelwell.

6ffca469-002c-4113-8dde-b9e4933f0b3d

m2d2_wiki

How We Fight for Our Lives How We Fight for Our Lives is a coming-of-age memoir written by American author Saeed Jones and published by Simon & Schuster in 2019. The story follows Jones as a young, black, gay man in 1990s Lewisville, Texas as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Reception. "How We Fight for Our Lives" has earned widespread critical acclaim. It received starred reviews from "Publishers Weekly", "Library Journal" and "Kirkus Reviews". NPR called the book an "Extremely personal, emotionally gritty, and unabashedly honest...outstanding memoir." The Los Angeles Review of Books noted that "Jones displays a poet’s knack for the searing detail, and the pages of his memoir are full of beautiful and surprising images that buoy us through the pain and heartache and often seething rage that fuel its propulsive, precise narration." In 2019 the book won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction; in 2020 it won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, the Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award and the Randy Shilts Award for gay nonfiction. It was listed in "Kirkus Reviews" Best Books of 2019 in the Best Memoirs section and on "Time's" list of must-read books of 2019".

dcf42f20-af6d-48f1-a261-4d6c56fb902b

m2d2_wiki

Pryor Convictions Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences is an autobiography by the American comedian Richard Pryor. The book was published in 1995. Included are details of Pryor's rough childhood growing up in his mother's brothel, his drug problems, his seven marriages, his self-immolation, his life dealing with multiple sclerosis, and his stand-up career.

26ae3d25-4505-4682-b333-7df7fc18fb04

m2d2_wiki

Happiness Becomes You (book) Happiness Becomes You is a memoir published by singer Tina Turner in 2020. Described by the author as "a very personal book that focuses on the core themes of my life: hope, happiness, and faith," it explores details of Turner's life including how she overcame obstacles to achieve happiness and success, and offers Turner's advice on how readers can realize their own dreams. Turner co-authoerd the book with American writer Taro Gold. Turner described "Happiness Becomes You" as a parallel behind-the-scenes story to the HBO documentary film "Tina" (2021). The book is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats. It was published in North America by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, by Droemer Knaur in Germany, and in the UK and Commonwealth nations by HarperCollins. Synopsis. "Happiness Becomes You" contains eight chapters, plus an introduction and afterword, that span the entirety of Turner's life, beginning with stories about her hometown before her birth, then continues through the adversities she faced in her life and career as she worked her way up to eventually become a world-class performer, and concluding with stories about the author's daily life at the time of the book's completion when she was eighty years of age in 2020. The book's eight chapters roughly coincide with the eight decades of Turner's life. Throughout the book, Turner provides inspirational advice and spiritual tools for the reader's self-empowerment and fulfillment, and she shares how her favorite Buddhist principles helped her overcome poverty, prejudice, illness, loss, and other personal and professional challenges. A glossy photo insert is also contained in the book, with sixteen rare and/or never-before-published images of Turner dating from the late 1970s through 2020. Reception. "Happiness Becomes You" was selected as one of the best nonfiction books of the year by Amazon's editors, and chosen as a recommended gift book by the Amazon Book Review during the holiday season after its release on December 1, 2020. The book became a global best seller upon its publication, including eight weeks on the Top 20 of the Spiegel best seller list for Germany, Austria, Holland, and Switzerland. It also reached the No. 1 best selling spot in the spiritual-themed book category. The book received positive reviews from "Publishers Weekly", "USA Today", "Variety", "People", "Library Journal", "Vanity Fair", the "San Francisco Chronicle", and received a starred review from the American Library Association's "Booklist". Soundtrack. Turner curated a twenty-two-song playlist soundtrack for the launch of the book called "Come Up Smiling", that was published by Graydon Carter's "Air Mail" digital magazine and on Spotify. In the accompanying "Air Mail" article, she offered her thoughts on the power of music to lift one's spirits. The playlist consists of tracks from eighteen artists, including Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Andra Day, Jill Scott, Olivia Newton-John, Herbie Hancock, Taro Gold, Marvin Gaye, Janelle Monae and two songs by Turner herself.

1cbef117-d06d-4e9f-8ec6-73d01f0dbaa2

m2d2_wiki

Starting Over (autobiography) Starting Over is a 2011 autobiography by American musician and recording artist La Toya Jackson. The book was published by Gallery Books and was released on June 21, 2011. It made "The New York Times" Best Seller list for the week ending July 2, 2011. Background. The title of the book is a reference to how Jackson "started over" after divorcing her abusive manager Jack Gordon. She stated, "I think it's important for everybody to start over in their life when it's not going properly or the way they think it should go or should be going, or if there's problems in their life." The title is shared with her comeback record, "Starting Over", which was released on the same day as the book. According to Jackson, the album's autobiographical songs inspired the book. Jackson told "Us Weekly" that she decided to write the book when women contacted her after seeing Jackson's 2005 interview on "20/20". "This book was written for people who have endured abuse. Women cannot allow men to rob their self-esteem and self-worth. I want them to know that they can use their voice to make a change." Jackson began working on the book in February 2008 and completed it in Spring 2011. Even though Jackson was pictured with her brother Michael on the hardcover edition, she stated that "the book is not about Michael. 85 percent of that book is about me starting over and encouraging [women]." "The company wanted me to incorporate Michael and I realized he is a part of my life and he just passed so people are going to think I was selfish if I didn't include him." Summary and themes. The book picks up from where her previous autobiography, "", left off. It details her abusive relationship with, and escape from, her manager Jack Gordon. The latter part of the book describes how her brother Michael Jackson confided in La Toya that he feared being killed for his music and publishing estate. In the book La Toya reveals that she feared for Michael's life in the months leading up to his death. Editions. The hardcover version was released on June 21, 2011. The mass market paperback was released on May 29, 2012. Reception. Jackson made "The New York Times" Best Seller list for the week ending July 2, 2011. This was her second book to make the list, the first being "", which peaked at number 2.

d4132a68-d336-457e-aee4-ddc5efbd824e

m2d2_wiki

There Will Be No Miracles Here There Will Be No Miracles Here is a 2018 memoir by Casey Gerald. Further reading. Yo

b648e690-2c88-44eb-8dcc-f692846354b5

m2d2_wiki

A Promised Land A Promised Land is a memoir by Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Published on November 17, 2020, by Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, in the United States and Viking, owned by Penguin Random House, in the United Kingdom, it is the first of a planned two-volume series. Remaining focused on his political career, the presidential memoir documents Obama's life from his early years through the events surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. The book has received many reviews and was put on end-of-year best of lists by "The New York Times", "The Washington Post", and "The Guardian". Commercially, it has been extremely successful and, as of the January 24, 2021 issue, the book has been the "New York Times" best-seller in non-fiction for eight consecutive weeks. The book was highly anticipated and, two months before its release, "The New York Times" remarked that it was "virtually guaranteed" to be the year's top seller, despite its mid-November release date. The book is 768 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into two dozen languages. There is also a 28 hour audiobook edition that is read by Obama himself. Background. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, had previously published two bestselling books. The memoir ' was published in 1995 by Times Books and the political book ' was published in 2006 by Crown. "A Promised Land" follows two years behind First Lady Michelle Obama's bestselling memoir "Becoming", which was also published by Crown and was released on November 13, 2018. It is the first of a planned two-volume series. Every American President since Calvin Coolidge has released a presidential memoir within a few years of leaving the White House; at just over three and a half years, Obama's took longer to write than any of them. The previous president with the longest time between leaving office and publishing their memoir was Richard Nixon. Obama admitted that he originally intended to "write a 500-page memoir and be done in a year" compared to the 700 page memoir after three years which "A Promised Land" is. Content. Obama said in a tweet following the announcement of the publication of the book that he has aimed to "provide an honest accounting of my presidency, the forces we grapple with as a nation, and how we can heal our divisions and make democracy work for everybody". Summary. The memoir, remaining focused on Obama's political life, begins with his early life, details his first campaigns, and stretches through most of his first term as President. The book concludes with the events surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, ending with a meeting between Obama and the Navy SEALs who conducted the raid. While the book remains focused on politics, the first 200 pages of the book, approximately, are devoted to Obama's life and career up through his time in Chicago. Highlights. College. Obama, when describing his days attending college in the 1980s, admitted that he would read Karl Marx, Michel Foucault and Herbert Marcuse in order to impress potential love interests. Obama reminisced that "it’s embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know". Obama evaluated his college reading that "As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless". Descriptions of other politicians. Obama gives favorable descriptions to many of the staffers and other politicians that he encounters throughout his early life and presidency. In her review for the New York Times, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie noted that Obama's "affection for his first-term inner circle" was "moving" and that in his descriptions of others, he "makes heroes of people". The memoir praises Claire McCaskill for "voting her conscience" on the Dream Act, Tim Geithner for his handling of the 2008 financial crisis, and many others. Obama is also critical in his description of some other world leaders, such as by writing that the Vladimir Putin's "satirical image of masculine vigor" is the result of "the fastidiousness of a teenager on Instagram." British Prime Minister David Cameron is described by Obama as someone with “the easy confidence of someone who’d never been pressed too hard by life”. Nobel Prize. Some reviewers commented on Obama's reaction to winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, writing in the book that his simple response was "for what?". Obama elaborated when arriving in Oslo for the Nobel ceremony: "The idea that I, or any one person, could bring order to such chaos seemed laughable... On some level, the crowds below were cheering an illusion." Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Eli Stokols, in their respective reviews, described the reaction as "incredulous". Obama also recalled telling the First Lady the news after an early morning phone call and receiving the reply "that's wonderful honey", before she went back to sleep. In analyzing the response, Adichie noted that Obama "considers his public image overinflated; he pushes pins into his own hype balloons." United Nations. Obama notes in the book, "In the middle of the Cold War, the chances of reaching any consensus had been slim, which is why the U.N. had stood idle as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary or U.S. planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside. Even after the Cold War, divisions within the Security Council continued to hamstring the U.N.'s ability to tackle problems. Its member states lacked either the means or the collective will to reconstruct failing states like Somalia, or prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka." Reception. According to book review aggregator website Book Marks, "A Promised Land" received favorable reviews. From the 33 reviews collected, 12 were classified as "rave", 16 as "positive" and 5 as "mixed". Reviews. In the opening of one review, published as the front page of "The New York Times Book Review" on November 29, 2020, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote that Obama "is as fine a writer as they come" and argued that it is "not merely that this book avoids being ponderous, as might be expected, even forgiven, of a hefty memoir, but that it is nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid." "Publishers Weekly" posted a review stating that Obama "delivers a remarkably introspective chronicle of his rise to the White House and his first two-and-a-half years in office", before closing with: "This sterling account rises above the crowded field of presidential postmortems." The book's entry in "Kirkus Reviews" includes the tag line: "A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader." Walter Clemens wrote a review of the book in the "New York Journal of Books" that opened with "[e]very sentence in this book deserves to be treasured and relished" and closed by stating "anyone who wishes to understand America in the early 21st century should read this book—or listen to it in an audio version narrated by the former president". The book was also reviewed by Eric Foner in "The Times Literary Supplement", who wrote that the book is "elegantly written" and is "certainly among the most impressive contributions to this minor genre", noting: "A gifted writer, he maintains the reader's interest for over 700 pages". Among magazine reviews, Laura Miller, in "Slate Magazine", wrote that the book "is a pleasure to read for the intelligence, equanimity, and warmth of its author—from his unfeigned delight in his fabulously wholesome family to his manifest fondness for the people who worked for and with him, especially early on". "Time" published a review that stated "Obama knows how to tell a good story" and that "[h]is insight into his mindset during his biggest presidential moments is a reminder of his thoughtfulness". The review continued by stating that "from cover to cover, A Promised Land is a reminder of the narrative that Obama has spent his career enunciating". Other reviews were published in "The Wall Street Journal", "The Financial Times", "Entertainment Weekly", "Esquire", and "Oprah Magazine". Among newspaper reviews, Eli Stokols wrote a review of the book that was published in both the "Los Angeles Times", and "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette". Stokols wrote that the book is "deeply introspective and at times elegiac" and has "elegant prose". Stokols went on to write that the book "often reads like a conversation Obama is having with himself", as he would express self-doubt over his various actions and inactions while in office. Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in "The Atlantic" that the book is "an unusual presidential memoir in many ways: unusually interior, unusually self-critical, unusually modern..., and unusually well written." Peter Bergen wrote a review for CNN stating that the book is "moving" and "beautifully written" and finishes the review by stating the second volume "will surely be another very compelling book". In a review in "The Guardian", Gary Younge wrote: "As a work of political literature A Promised Land is impressive" and that "Obama is a gifted writer". In a second review published by "The Guardian", Julian Borger describes the book as "701 pages of elegantly written narrative, contemplation and introspection, in which he frequently burrows down into his own motivations" and that it "delivers amply on the basic expectations of political autobiographies, providing a granular view from the driving seat of power." In a third review in "The Guardian", Peter Conrad wrote: "Like the best autobiographers, Barack Obama writes about himself in the hope of discovering who or even what he is." The book was also reviewed by Carlos Lozada in "The Washington Post", and Nate Marshall in the "Chicago Tribune". The book also received a second review in "The New York Times" that described it as "700 pages that are as deliberative, measured and methodical as the author himself". The review states that, while the book comes during "a time of grandiose mythologizing", Obama "marshals his considerable storytelling skills to demythologize himself". The review then argues that, while it is addressed to "young people who seek to 'remake the world'", the book "is less about unbridled possibility and more about the forces that inhibit it". Several British newspapers, including "The Times", "The Observer", and "The Independent", have published reviews of the book as well. Among other news agencies, it was also reviewed by "The Boston Globe" and NPR. Analysis. In her review, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie criticized Obama for his incessant "reluctance to glory", writing: "It brings an urge to say, in response, 'Look, take some credit already!'". Adichie also noted that Obama had a tendency to be overly self-critical, in a manner she described as "darker than self-awareness but not as dark as self-loathing". She also notes that the extreme self-awareness may have contributed to his "wholesome humanity" and "deep generosity", including his praises of those around him. Adichie continued by writing: "And yet for all his ruthless self-assessment, there is very little of what the best memoirs bring: true self-revelation." Adichie blamed this on Obama's detached style, saying that "[i]t is as if, because he is leery of exaggerated emotion, emotion itself is tamped down." She later stated that the best parts of the memoir are the surprising "gossipy" bits. In her "Slate Magazine" article on November 20, 2020, Laura Miller summarized the book's initial reviews by stating it is "admirable but, depending on their viewpoints, insufficiently intimate, lacking racial indignation, or just a bit glum." Miller also noted that many of the book's critics complained about the book's length, and that despite its length, it is the first of multiple volumes. Miller notes that the book has a tendency to provide "what some consider an excess of background information" when describing situations and protocols. The review goes on to note that many of the explanations can seem "remedial" for "a practiced observer of the executive branch", that Miller acknowledges is "often the sort of person who gets asked to weigh in on such a book". Philip Terzian wrote in "The Wall Street Journal" that "[a]s a matter of substance", the book "tells us little that a newspaper reader wouldn't already know" and that it "can get monotonous at times", going on to write that the "chapters unfold in a formulaic, curiously uniform, fashion". In another review, Edward Luce wrote in "The Financial Times" that the book's main "deficiency" is that Obama "is too reasonable, almost to the point of detachment." Tshilidzi Marwala in "Cape Argus", "The Star" (South Africa) and voices 360 wrote that Obama like light has a dual nature, one the phenomenon and another the politician. Obama the politician achieved many things under hostile environment while Obama the phenomenon was inspirational and won the Nobel prize for no other reason than the fact that he was a phenomenon. He concluded that Obama the politician triumphed over Obama the phenomenon. Awards. Among other acclamations, the book won the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Memoir and Autobiography. It was named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2020" by "The New York Times Book Review", one of "50 notable works of nonfiction in 2020" by "The Washington Post", one of the "Best politics books of 2020" by "The Guardian", and one of the "Best Political Books of 2020" by "Marie Claire". Publication. The book was released on November 17, 2020, soon after the national elections, in hardcover, digital and audiobook formats. The bestselling memoir was published by Crown Publishing Group in the United States and Canada while Viking Press served as publisher in other English speaking countries. Penguin, the parent company of both Viking and Crown, has also translated the book into over twenty languages. Sales. The book was the "New York Times" best-seller for the weeks of December 6, 2020, December 13, 2020, and December 20, 2020, and has been the "Publishers Weekly" Number One Best Seller Overall for three consecutive weeks. The book's first printing was set for a run of 3.4 million copies in the U.S. and Canada. There will be 2.5 million copies printed for international readers. "The New York Times" described the book as being "virtually guaranteed" to be the year's top seller. On November 18, Penguin Books reported that the book sold 887,000 copies in the United States and Canada its first day, surpassing the previous record held by his wife Michelle's 2018 book "Becoming", which sold 725,000 in its first day. By November 24, 2020, the book had sold over 1.7 million copies in North America, breaking the record for first week sales of a presidential memoir. The initial 3.4 million copy run was increased to 4.3 million due to high demand. The first 3.3 million units of the book were sold within its first month and ABC News commented that it "is well on its way to becoming the best-selling presidential memoir in modern times" on December 16, 2020. Release details (English). In English, the book has been released in paperback, hardcover, eBook, and audio versions. The book was published by Crown Publishing Group in the United States and Canada and by Viking Press in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. The unabridged audiobook version of the book, which runs for 28 hours and 10 minutes and is read by Obama himself, is also available on Audible. It is the third presidential memoir read by its author, following "White House Diary" by Jimmy Carter and "Decision Points" by George W. Bush. Translations. Alongside the English original, Penguin Random House announced in September 2020 that 24 translations will be published: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish and Vietnamese.

bcb8845c-f5f6-41af-a823-40cd59906cba

m2d2_wiki

Notes of a Native Son Notes of a Native Son is a collection of ten essays by James Baldwin, published in 1955, mostly tackling issues of race in America and Europe. The volume, as his first non-fiction book, compiles essays of Baldwin that had previously appeared in such magazines as "Harper's Magazine", "Partisan Review", and "The New Leader". "Notes of a Native Son" is widely regarded as a classic of the black autobiographical genre. The Modern Library placed it at number 19 on its list of the 100 best 20th-century nonfiction books. Autobiographical notes. In spite of his father wanting him to be a preacher, Baldwin says he had always been a writer at heart. He tried to find his path as a black writer; although he was not European, American culture is informed by that culture too—moreover he had to grapple with other black writers. Furthermore, Baldwin emphasizes the importance of his desire to be a good man and writer. Part One. "Everybody's Protest Novel". Baldwin castigates Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for being too sentimental, and for depicting black slaves as praying to a white God so as to be cleansed and whitened. He proceeds to repudiate Richard Wright's "Native Son" for portraying Bigger Thomas as an angry black man, viewing this as an example of stigmatizing categorization. "Many Thousands Gone". Baldwin offers a sharp critique of Richard Wright's "Native Son", citing its main character, Bigger Thomas, as unrealistic, unsympathetic and stereotypical. "Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough". Baldwin criticises "Carmen Jones", a film adaptation of "Carmen" using an all-black cast. Baldwin is unhappy that the characters display no connection to the condition of blacks and sees it as no coincidence that the main characters have lighter complexions. Part Two. "The Harlem Ghetto". Baldwin points out that the rent is very expensive in Harlem. Moreover, although there are black politicians, the President is white. On to the black press, Baldwin notes that it emulates the white press, with its scandalous spreads and so forth. However the black Church seems to him to be a unique forum for the spelling out of black injustice. Finally, he ponders on antisemitism amongst blacks and comes to the conclusion that the frustration boils down to Jews being white and more powerful than Negroes. "Journey to Atlanta". Baldwin tells the story that happened to The Melodeers, a group of jazz singers (including two of Baldwin's brothers) employed by the Progressive Party to sing in Southern Churches. However, once in Atlanta, Georgia, they were used for canvassing until they refused to sing at all and were returned to their hometown. They now enjoy success in New York City. "Notes of a Native Son". Baldwin paints a vivid recollection of his time growing up with a paranoid father who was dying of tuberculosis, and his initial experience with Jim Crow style segregation. Prior to his father's death, Baldwin was befriended by a white teacher whom his father disapproved of. Later he worked in New Jersey and was often turned down in segregated places—Baldwin recalls a time he hurled a cup half full of water at a waitress in a diner only to realize his actions could have dire consequences. He goes on to say that blacks participating in military service in the South often got abused. Finally, he recounts his father's death which occurred just before his mother gave birth to one of his sisters; his father's funeral was on his 19th birthday, the same day as the Harlem Riot of 1943.

3198918e-e11e-4b9a-8d83-14024224c5aa

m2d2_wiki

The Color of Water The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, is the autobiography and memoir of James McBride first published in 1995; it is also a tribute to his mother, whom he calls Mommy, or Ma. The chapters alternate between James McBride's descriptions of his early life and first-person accounts of his mother Ruth's life, mostly taking place before her son was born. McBride depicts the conflicting emotions that he endured as he struggled to discover who he truly was, as his mother narrates the hardships that she had to overcome as a white, Jewish woman who chose to marry a black man in 1942. Synopsis. In "The Color of Water" author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. Ruth married Andrew Dennis McBride, a black man from North Carolina. James's childhood was spent in a chaotic household of twelve children who had neither the time nor the outlet to ponder questions of race and identity. Ruth did not want to discuss the painful details of her early family life when her abusive father, Tateh, lorded over her sweet-tempered and meek mother, Mameh ("tateh" and "mameh" are Yiddish terms of endearment for "father" and "mother," roughly equivalent to "daddy and "mommy"). Ruth had cut all ties with her Jewish family, as they had essentially disowned her when she married James's father. Born Ruchel Zylska to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland, Ruth arrived in the United States when she was two years old. Ruth spent her early childhood traveling around the country with her family as her father, Tateh (or Fishel Shilsky), sought employment as a rabbi. Tateh eventually gave up hope of making a living as a rabbi. He settled the family in Suffolk, Virginia, and opened a store in the mostly black section of town, where he overcharged his customers and expressed racist opinions. When Ruth was a child, Tateh sexually abused her and made harsh demands on her to work constantly in the family store. Tateh cheated on his wife, in an affair of which practically everyone in town was aware. Ruth's brother Sam left home at age fifteen, and soon after, Ruth too felt she must leave. She wanted to escape the oppressive environment of both her family and the South. She was also pregnant by Peter, her black boyfriend in Suffolk, and wanted to deal with the pregnancy away from her family. She took trips to New York to stay with relatives, and later moved permanently to Harlem. Ruth's family disowned her when she left, disgusted with her preference for marrying a black man instead of a Jewish man, her general failure to embrace Judaism, and her defiance of her father. Ruth promised her sister Dee-Dee that she would return to Suffolk, but she could not reconcile her family's desires for her life with her own desires for her life. She betrayed her promise to return for Dee-Dee, and her relationship with her sister suffered as a consequence. This separation from her family recurs throughout the memoir as a painful element in Ruth's life. In Harlem, Ruth met Dennis, a black man to whom she was immediately attracted. She married him, converted to Christianity, and became very involved with church activities. The couple experienced a certain degree of prejudice as a result of their interracial marriage. However, Ruth recalls these years of her life as her happiest ones. Dennis and Ruth opened the New Brown Memorial Church together in memory of Reverend Brown, their favorite preacher. They had several children, and eventually moved to accommodate their growing family. When Ruth became pregnant with Dennis's eighth child, James, Dennis fell ill with lung cancer, and died before James was born. Ruth mourned his death deeply and became desperate to find a means to support herself and her eight children. She approached her relatives for assistance, but they refused to have any sort of contact with her. Ruth met her second husband, Hunter Jordan, soon after. They married and eventually had four children together. James weaves his own life story into his mother's story. Ruth's philosophies on race, religion, and work influence him greatly. Ruth always sent her children to the best schools, no matter the commute, to ensure they received the finest possible educations. She demanded respect and hard work from her children, and always treated them tenderly. She had an unwavering faith in God and strong moral convictions. To Ruth, issues of race and identity took secondary importance to moral beliefs. Ruth died at her home in Ewing, New Jersey, on January 9, 2010. Symbols. Black Power. James spoke of the Civil Rights Movement which foreshadowed his decision to lean towards the African-American side of his bi-racial identity. Many of his older siblings had also chosen to only acknowledge that they were African-American. Ruth's bicycle. This symbolized her constant need for movement in order to deal with her stress and depression and escapism. Ruth's mother's song: Love of Birds. When Ruth's mother sang the song "Birdie, Birdie, Fly Away", she was referring to Ruth as the bird, able to move so swiftly and easily, while she referred to herself as the handicapped bird who deserved to be sacrificed and killed. This foreshadowed her death. Reception. The trade paper edition, published in February, 1998, was on the "New York Times" bestseller list for over 100 weeks (2 years), won the 1997 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Literary Excellence, was an ALA Notable Book of the Year, The New York Women's Agenda's first book for "New York City Reads Together" and has sold more than 1.5 million copies. It has been published in 16 languages and in more than 20 countries.

3a76dfe6-9741-4334-9473-cbcc47835162

m2d2_wiki

Down These Mean Streets Down These Mean Streets is a memoir by Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent who grew up in Spanish Harlem, a section of Harlem with a large Puerto Rican population. The book follows Piri through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, joins and fights with street gangs, faces racism (in both New York City and elsewhere), travels, succumbs to heroin addiction, gets involved in crime, is imprisoned, and is finally released. One of the major themes of "Down These Mean Streets" centers on Piri Thomas's identity as a dark-complexioned Puerto Rican. Although he is of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, he is seen as black rather than Hispanic or Latino. His own family rejects the African aspect of their Latino-Caribbean ancestry, causing Piri to spend much of his youth and early adult life contemplating his racial and ethnic identity. The book was originally published in 1967. A special Thirtieth Anniversary Edition in 1997 included a new afterword from the author. A sequel, "7 Long Times", gives more depth to his prison years. Plot Summary. The book opens with a "Prologue" in which Thomas articulates the reason he has written this memoir: “I wanna tell ya I’m here — you bunch of mother-jumpers — I’m here, and I want recognition, whatever that mudder-fuckin word means.” Piri introduces himself as a “skinny, dark-face, curly-haired, intense Porty-Ree-can” who is “unsatisfied, hoping, and always reaching.” The Prologue also introduces a note of loneliness, bitterness, and hatred that will continue through the book. Harlem: The story proper begins in Harlem where Piri is living with his family. The year is 1941, at the tail end of the Depression, and Thomas's father has a job with the Works Progress Administration, while his mother stays at home with the children, often telling them stories of her homeland, Puerto Rico. After the death of Piri’s baby brother Ricardo, the family moves from Spanish Harlem to the Italian section on 114th Street to leave all the bad memories behind. Piri has various encounters with the local kids in the street, and despite various fights, Piri earns the Italians' respect by not ratting on them. The Thomas family moves back to Spanish Harlem where Piri joins a gang of Puerto Rican kids his age, who become known as the TNT’s. Piri and the TNT’s go to the “faggots’ pad” (Thomas 1997, p.55); Piri clearly does not want to go, but he wants to belong: “ … we wanted to belong, and belonging meant doing whatever had to be done” (Thomas 1997, p.55). Piri opens up about his attitudes towards school; he thinks it’s a waste of time and so he often sneaks out. Piri also starts a lemonade stand; he and his friends steal the ingredients and some of the other kids are caught by the police. While Piri manages to escape, he feels guilty and believes he should have stayed there with his people. Suburbia and Return to Harlem: Piri and his family move to the Long Island suburbs. Piri is apprehensive because he has heard bad things about the area, but upon arriving, Piri seems to do quite well in his new neighbourhood. He plays baseball with classmates and attends a school dance where he flirts with a girl named Marcia; however, Piri is shocked to later hear a group of girls at the dance talking about his skin colour. This, along with Poppa seeing another woman, makes Piri very upset. Three months later, Piri ends up leaving Long Island with the intention of starting anew back in Harlem. Here, however, he finds himself homeless. Desperate for cash, Piri searches for work and goes after a position as a sales representative. Still in Harlem, Piri introduces himself to the girl of his dreams, Trina (Carlito Diaz’s sister), and calls her his “Marine Tiger.” Later on, Piri makes a new friend named Brew, who forces Piri to further question his own identity; Brew tries to convince Piri that if your skin is black, then you are a black man, no matter what your ethnicity is. Piri and Brew discuss heading South so that Piri can discover what it means to be a black man. Racial Anxiety and a Trip South: Brew shares with Piri the ABC lesson; this lesson is about how to forgive white men for things such as racism, and how to remain calm in uncomfortable situations because of their skin colour. Piri argues with his brother José because José does not understand why Piri wants to go South; in his view, Piri is Puerto Rican, not black. Piri becomes angry and upset that his own brother does not understand him, and this further intensifies his desire to head South. Poppa makes an effort to relate to and comfort Piri, but Piri still decides to leave, despite the objections from his family. Piri and Brew check into a hotel in Norfolk, and later talk to a man at the ‘National Maritime Union’ building. The two of them share stories with this man regarding being singled out due to the colour of their skin; however, the man disagrees with Brew’s opinions on identity and explains that every man is free to identify himself with the ethnicity that they choose. Piri and Brew head out on the ship, on which Piri works as a waiter. When they arrive in Texas, Piri goes out with a man and they both want to hire sexual workers; Piri says he wants to hire a white woman. Through his various encounters down South, Piri realizes that every place he goes to, no matter what language you speak or where you come from, if you are black, then you are black. A Life of Crime Shortly after Piri heads back to New York, Momma dies and Piri becomes angry and resentful with Poppa upon remembering that he had another woman. Piri goes back to living on the roofs, streets and apartments of friends in Harlem; he also gets back into drugs and begins to sell everything he can to have money for heroin. Luckily, Waneko and his mother eventually help Piri with the drug detoxification process. To distract him from drugs, Piri participates in robberies with Danny, Billy and Loui; with each and every robbery, Piri becomes less and less concerned with the consequences of his actions and all the people he affects and hurts. While Trina is in Puerto Rico, Piri impregnates a different Puerto Rican woman, Dulcien. Piri takes responsibility and buys tickets for Dulcien to go back to New York with the baby. Piri also convinces Louie to get into business again; they, along with Billy and Danny, carry out a robbery in bar/discotheque in downtown New York. However, the robbery doesn't go according to plan; Piri is shot in the chest, and upon trying to escape back to Harlem, he shoots the police officer who shot him. Piri is then arrested and taken to a hospital. Prison Piri wakes up in the hospital, is questioned by police and is transferred to prison to await trial; he is sentenced to no more than 5-15 years for armed robbery, which he will serves at Sing Sing and then Comstock State Prison. In prison, he studies masonry, works in construction, gets his high school diploma as well as other educational certificates. Above all, Piri describes his encounters he has with other inmates. Among the most significant encounters are with a Nation of Islam study group. Piri also begins to read a lot and becomes interested in psychology, and fascinated by the meaning of God and understanding. Piri’s family visits him together for the first time in three years; they share with Piri the news that Trina has gotten married. At the end of nearly four years in prison, Piri is finally eligible for parole; however, he is told that he will have to wait another two years because his case is very serious.As his second appearance before the parole board approaches, he tries to remain calm and collected; he even stops himself from fighting another inmate. Piri is later told by the parole board that he will in fact be going home. Freedom On the big day, Piri awakes, says his goodbyes, collects his belongings and becomes very emotional. They stop for food and Piri debates escaping, but chooses not to. He is welcomed into his new pad in the Comstock State Prison and the very next morning, he goes to the courthouse and is asked to be held in 5,000 bail on each count. Piri is granted three years' probation; finally a free man, he decides to get a job, but he also immediately breaks one of his parole rules by sleeping with a woman who is not his wife. Yet Piri misses Trina and ends up attending a dinner that she is at; he immediately regrets attending after he realizes she wants nothing to do with him. Piri goes back to visit his old building and claims that the mood hasn’t changed one bit. He runs into Carlito who offers him drugs, but Piri tells him he is clean and the memoir ends as he walks out onto the street. Afterward: Piri claims that writing “Down These Mean Streets” was a “soul searching” experience that forced him to go back in time and out-pour “suppressed hurts and angers.” Piri references the Great Depression of the 1930s and speaks about the hardships that were forced upon life in the ghettos of the barrio parts of town. Piri focuses on exploitation, listening to politicians who break their promises, the barrio living conditions and violence in not only the Americas, but the world in general. He suggests that the same conditions still exist today, and that this book was intended to result in improvements, but unfortunately did not. Piri also draws attention to racism, children of the poor, economic inequality and the importance of high-quality education; he ends with a specific focus on children, confidently classifying them as intelligent individuals that need to be considered the top priority. Characters. Piri The book's protagonist is the author himself, Piri Thomas, as he attempts to come to terms with issues of race, ethnicity, and identity. He must navigate through his confusion, anger, frustration and bitterness in a quest to find answers to his questions. Though Piri is born and raised in New York, both his parents are from Puerto Rico. Piri has dark skin like his father, while his mother and brother and sisters have light skin; this is the source of Piri’s curiosity and hostility towards topics such as race and identity. Piri introduces himself as a “skinny, dark-face, curly-haired, intense Porty-Ree-can — Unsatisfied, hoping, and always reaching.” He strives for recognition and manhood. Throughout this journey, he must face the harsh realities of racism and discrimination as he seeks to fit into a variety of contexts, and this gets him in a lot of trouble. From theft to drugs, drugs to prison, and everything in between, Piri realizes that the rejections and frustrations that he experiences are related to the colour of his skin. Piri battles the harsh, mean streets, but in the end he takes what he has learned through his experience with violence, race, love, drugs and sex, and uses it to answer his questions about identity and society. In doing so, Piri puts himself on a path to acceptance by acknowledging that he in fact is a dark man, rather than denying it. Momma Piri’s mother was born in Puerto Rico, and is still closely attached to her homeland. She has fair skin, unlike her husband and Piri. Piri and his mother have a close, solid relationship; they support and understand each other. She sees that Piri is struggling at school and getting into fights, but she doesn’t punish him for his actions. In fact, she lets Piri do what he wants, despite differences in opinion. The two of them have a special kind of love; one that Piri respects and cherishes. When Piri heads South with Brew, he learns that his mother is sick and in the hospital; when Piri returns to see her, she is in very critical condition and later dies. Poppa Piri’s Cuban father has, like Piri, dark skin; both Piri and Poppa initially deny being dark, which is likely where Piri’s curiosity about race stems from in the first place. From a young age, Piri recognizes that his relationship with his father is different than that of his siblings; he believes that his father loves his siblings more than he loves him, and he attributes this lack of love to the fact that he is dark. From this young age, Piri goes out of his way to trigger a loving reaction from his father, but he is not always successful. They tend to get into heated arguments, and Piri tells his father how he feels. Piri often lashes out at his father; for example, when his mother dies, Piri is quick to unload his emotions onto him for having been with another woman. Despite their complicated relationship, at one point in the book, Piri’s father sympathizes with Piri, reassuring him that he knows how hard it is to have dark skin. Trina Trina is Piri’s girlfriend whom he meets soon after she arrives in New York from Puerto Rico. Piri calls her his “Marine Tiger,” after the ship that carried Puerto Ricans to New York, and describes her as having “dark, curly hair, large black eyes, red mouth and a real down figure.” When Piri travels to the South, he tells Trina that he would write to her, and also tells her how much he likes her. Trina goes back to Puerto Rico because her mother was sick, and when she comes back she finds out that Piri has gotten another woman pregnant, she is angry. After Piri goes to prison, Trina meets and ends up marrying a white man. When Piri gets out of prison he goes to visit her, only to find that she has moved on and wants nothing to do with him anymore. Brew: Brew is one of Piri’s “tightest amigos.” He is described as “as black as God is supposed to be white.” Brew is upfront with Piri and expresses his opinions without hesitation; right from their very first meeting, Brew tells Piri that everyone has some kind of pain they struggle with and tends to disagree with Piri’s logic; he questions why Piri denies his blackness to such an extreme, claiming that Piri is a couple shades lighter than him, and even if he was lighter than that, he’d “still be a Negro.” Brew challenges Piri in new ways. He says that "too many Porto Ricans got your eyes closed,” and suggests that Puerto Ricans have social problems too. Brew also claims that Piri doesn’t have the level of understanding that he should have because he’s never been down South, and so they plan to both head down South together so that Piri can further explore race, ethnicity and identity. Piri feels comfortable opening up to Brew about his conflicts with identity. Themes. Racial Identity. Racial identity is a prevalent topic in "Down These Mean Streets". The book tells the story of Piri, a Puerto Rican black man, who has to navigate through a complex system of discrimination and racial prejudice in the USA. Piri’s story portrays the difficulty of navigating through different racial identities. He has a Latino identity because of his Puerto Rican origin. However, he also has a black identity because his physical features relate him directly with the black community. The conflicting positions of both identities put Piri in the difficult choice to affirm both identities in the strict racial binary formation of the US. Piri struggles in how he should identify himself in order to be accepted by his community. For the most part, he identifies himself only as a Puerto Rican, maybe because his "momma", who is from Puerto Rican ancestry affirmed this racial origin to Piri since he was a child. Race and gender. "Down These Mean Streets" explores how race and gender intersect and influence on the life of Piri Thomas. One indication of how this intersection is at play is where Piri embraces the “black macho” persona in an intent to adapt himself to the urban American landscape of New York. In this attempt, Piri appeals to the “hypermasculinized performance of black masculinity as an object of fear and desire.” This means that Piri has a dual sentiment toward the black macho persona. On one side, this archetype is something he rejects since he thinks that by accepting his black identity, he is denying his Puerto Rican heritage. But, on the other hand, this archetype is also desired by Piri, since this mold is the only one that will permit him to be accepted in the US binary racial culture. These both representations, that Piri either embraces or rejects, come from the very hierarchical racial structure that Piri attempts to navigate. Another perspective that this memoir permits to analyze in terms of race and gender, is how characters continually struggle against racial oppression at expense of women and queer subjects. The struggle in search of recognition makes not only Piri but also characters like his father, and Brew, to neglect women and impose chauvinistic attitudes that only hinders more women and queer folks into the hierarchical structure of the United States. Thomas’s autobiography suggests a kind of heteropatriarchal privilege through the presence of sexual encounters between dominant and subordinate identities. It is paradoxical that while this book shows how Piri enjoys of his sexual encounters with women of color, white prostitutes, or queer people of color; those sexual encounters do not affect his internalized racism and sexism. In other words, these sexual contacts do not change Piri's mind, or other’s people minds about women, queers and queer people of color. Thomas’ testimonial story positions males as active and females as passive, enabling only to males subjects to invigorate their masculinity. Piri in "Down These Mean Streets" is a black heterosexual man, who redirects his struggle against his own racial discrimination and impose it on women and homosexual men. An example of this is how Piri and his black friend, Brew, make women and queer folks their sexual targets. One key scene is where Piri and his friends go to buy weed from some transvestites. This scene is very ambiguous since it is difficult to say if the transvestites feminize Piri and his friends or vice versa. For instance, it could be argued that transvestites put Piri in a passive position since in this scene they are the clients, while Piri and his friends might be serving the role of prostitutes. The transvestites are the ones that as a mode of payment, provide liquor and marijuana in exchange of a sexual favor. The response of Piri to this scene is anxiety. Nervous about his feminization, Piri splits his mind from his body, allowing only his body to experience pleasure. On the other hand, in his imagination, he places himself and his friends far from this apartment, at a rooftop party where music, young women and rival gangs occupy the atmosphere. Barroom Sociology (Chapter 18). Chapter 18 of "Down These Mean Streets" is one of the most interesting, since it provides a provocative notion of racial discrimination and identity. In this chapter, Piri and Brew (his friend), has an encounter with another black man in a nightclub in Norfolk (the South of the US). This new man is Gerald Andrew West, a college student from Pennsylvania that is a light-skin African American Gerald introduces a very interesting topic into the conversation, a topic that for Piri is highly contested (and the reason why he went to the South in the first place). Gerald complains that white people allow him only to be a negro (a black man), but negroes do not allow him to be white. Gerald perception of identity reflects that he sees race as a “burden.” He states that white men and black men have the burden of their own skins, respectively. However, he has the burden of both (white and black) skins. Gerald believes in his “right to identify with whatever race or nationality approximates his emotional feelings and physical characteristics.” He is against essentialist view of race, that determines people’s identity only with regard to the color of their skin. On the other hand, Brew, who is a dark-skinned African American from Harlem, represents more the vision of “an angry black nationalists of the 1960s.” Brew believes that if you look like a negro, then you are one, and that there is no way you can escape this destiny. For Brew, the color of your skin is what determines your race. Piri is at the limbo, he is confused about his identity. But, while the social system (and his friend Brew) continually blackens him, he admits to feeling identified as a Puerto Rican. This chapter captures the underlying problem that Piri introduces in the whole book, the search for an identity. Some interpretations can be made with regard to this chapter. For instance, it can be said that Gerald’s research book about Blacks can be understood as the book that Piri himself ends writing (the memoir of Down These Mean Streets), which permits Piri to resolve his own identity crisis. In the whole book, Piri struggles between being a Puerto Rican born and raised in New York and being a black man in the eyes of the US society. However, his identity crisis is resolved once Piri decides to write his memoir. Similarly, Gerald’s intention to research about the history and lives of black people in the South of the US, could be also seen as a way to reconcile his crisis of identity. In this way, Gerald’s decision to go to the South and research about Black would be a metaphor of Piri’s decision to write Down These Mean Streets. Another interpretation of Piri’s decision to go to the South, sustains that Piri does so in order to know “what’s shaking” or what is happening down there. His trip to the South would have meant for Piri, an increase in his solidarity sentiment for Afro American people against white supremacy. This trip has also served him to reinforce his resistance toward the white and black binary that obliterates distinctive elements of his identity. So Piri’s trip to the South can be seen as a continuous struggle for the self-recognition of his own blackness. Nuyorican Literature. The classification of "Down These Mean Streets" as one genre rather than another is a point of contention among literary critics—both from the time the autobiographical novel was initially released and in current academic discourse. "Down These Mean Streets" is a “book claimed by [many] literary traditions, such as U.S. Latin[@] literature or Hispanic literature of the U.S. and Puerto Rican literature written in English.” Anne Garland Mahler of the University of Virginia, on the other hand, classifies "Down These Mean Streets" as “an autobiography and bildungsroman that chronicles the childhood of Piri Thomas, a Harlem-born son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father, in Spanish Harlem in the 1940s.” Clearly, Down These Mean Streets fits all of these descriptions, depending on which point of view the critic takes in their analysis. Most commonly, however, "Down These Mean Streets" is recognized as part of the Nuyorican literary canon (Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the words ‘New York’ and ‘Puerto Rican’, blending both the Spanish and English rules of orthography—‘nu’ instead of ‘new’ and the suffix ‘-ican’ without a final vowel). Just as Nuyorican, which defines an entire canon of literature from over the past several decades, blends the linguistic rules of Spanish and English, it serves as a representation of multiple cultural traditions. Carmelo Esterrich states that “‘Nuyorican’ writing has always been caught in the critical crossfire between two national spaces—Puerto Rico and the U.S. and between their literary and linguistic borders.” With his brief description of the complexity of the Nuyorican canon, Down These Mean Streets, however, seems to fit neatly into place. It contains a great many Spanish words surrounded by an English narrative—so many that Thomas includes a glossary for his monolingual readers to uncover their meaning within the bilingual context of the narrative. The context of the origins of Nuyorican literature, Esterrich affirms, stems from “a very specific social and historical context of Puerto Rican migrations to the United States” which resulted in “the literary movement created in New York in the sixties and seventies by Puerto Ricans who were either born in the city or moved there when they were very young.” The Nuyorican movement is based on a concept of hybridity of Puerto Rican and North American culture. In her analysis of race and gender within Thomas’ book, Marta Sánchez argues that "Down These Mean Streets" is “a hybrid text of testimonial and imaginative literature” which “initiated the nuyorican stage of continental Puerto Rican writing” to create a “cross-pollinated identity.” Thomas’ narrative includes, as Sánchez observes, “many subjects society stereotypically associates with Latino minorities: poverty, educational failure, gang membership, drug addiction, welfare, petty crime, sexual ‘perversity’, and prison life.” By attributing these stereotypes as themes within his narrative, Thomas establishes the North American context as the setting wherein his Puerto Rican heritage struggles to adapt. Moreover, Sánchez states that Thomas “rejected the paradigms of black or white that dominated the period when Down These Mean Streets was published by generating intercultural linkages among Anglo-Americans, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans years before the concepts of hybridity, heterogeneity, and difference gained academic and social repute.” At the time it was first published, in the late 1960s, the civil rights movement was well underway. However, Down These Mean Streets overlaps the cultural division of Black and White that was the societal norm of the time. Thomas’ narrative tells of experiences that straddled multiple racial and cultural identities: his father was Black and his mother White; his parents were Cuban and Puerto Rican, respectively, which didn’t clearly fit the niches carved out by North American society. As Piri Thomas states in an interview with Ilan Stavans, “[a]lthough I was born in el norte my soul is Puerto Rican.” "Down These Mean Streets" is seen by many scholars to be a foundational work of the Nuyorican literary canon. Thomas has been described as “the best known of his generation of writers and is generally considered the chronicler of the barrio since he was the first to describe his experiences as a second-generation Puerto Rican in the United States.” Indeed, Ilan Stavans notes that "Down These Means Streets" is “now considered a classic and has never been out of print.” In another interview, with Lisa McGill, Thomas himself admits “I was one of the first Puerto Rican writers in the U.S. to write about the conditions we were living under. Other Puerto Ricans wrote, but they wrote about Puerto Rico and their home. I wrote about what was happening to us—or at least to me—and the surroundings in those years.” Further on, McGill asks Thomas of his opinions on the term ‘Nuyorican’ and how his book has thus been categorised. Thomas replies, saying “I didn’t want to be categorised. With Nuyorican I was given a name. I really wanted to be a citizen of the world. I wanted to be free because all of my life they were putting me in categories”. When asked if he has since become comfortable with this term, he again replies “No, it’s like when you buy a pair of shoes. If you want to wear those shoes, you wear those shoes. Everyone has accepted Nuyorican, so I just go along with it.” Critic Regina Bernard-Carreño states that “Nuyorican biographies, novels and poetry, spoke directly to [the] misrepresentations of a people and their anti-colonial struggle. An important factor in Puerto Rican immigrant writing and the Nuyorican experience is the articulation of difference and anger [. . .]. Puerto Rican writing exposes anger towards Americanization and assimilation”, just as Thomas does in his book. Bernard-Carreño also asserts that “Nuyorican writing became the genre that included the dynamics of language (bilingualism), bicultural identity (the island vs. the mainland), and the sociopolitics contained therein. While all these dynamics inform Nuyorican writing, language is perhaps one of the critical constructors of the Nuyorican experience and identity…Nuyorican identity became its own culture composed of bicultural and bilingual people.” Censorship. "Down These Mean Streets" has either been banned or challenged in Salinas, California; Teaneck, NJ; Darien, CT; District 25 in Queens, New York City, New York; and in Long Island, New York. According to Regina Bernard-Carreño, “Piri’s Puerto-Ricanness brought him success and enough of an insider perspective to have his book banned by the New York City Board of Education during the 1960s. Due to its explicit depiction of homosexual and heterosexual acts between and among people of color, who are impoverished and live in a ‘ghetto’ full of drugs and other downfalls, Down These Mean Streets was yanked from junior high school libraries in 1971.” While for modern eyes, "Down These Mean Streets" provides a raw account of life in El Barrio, at the time of its first publication in the late 1960s, the subject matter of homosexual sex acts and sexual interaction between races was taboo. Bernard-Carreño later explains that Thomas’ book has since been “used as a major ‘classic’ in courses of anthropology and sociology and excerpted in English literature courses as well” and that Thomas’ writing style categorised Puerto Ricans “through a literary and non-traditional academic lens” which was, perhaps, too contemporary for its time of initial publication. An article from the New York Times 9 May 1971, “Book Ban Splits a Queens School District”, describes a passion-fueled debate at board meeting of Community School District 25 in a neighborhood in Queens County, New York, which lasted nearly five and a half hours. The article reports that there are some who seem to perceive a threat to their social values, specifically because the portrayal of New York’s Puerto Rican community in Down These Mean Streets includes “vulgarities and descriptions of sexual acts.” One parent at this meeting stated that she felt "Down These Mean Streets" “is a beautiful book—full of feelings” and that she views the book as “a learning tool [. . .] [t]he author was willing to expose his gut feelings so we could better understand the problems he faced. It promotes understanding.” Another parent, on the other hand, stated that she wanted her children “to have social awareness and I want them to know what they can do to correct social ills. But they are not ready to be exposed to sexual perversion [as depicted in the Thomas book].” Meanwhile, the article presents the position of the United Federation of Teachers, who “fought the ban and has requested the New York Civil Liberties Union to initiate litigation to remove it.” In an interview, Thomas acknowledges that "Down These Mean Streets" “was censored all over the place.” Specifically, Thomas mentions Darien, Connecticut where a bond was issued unless the book was removed from town’s shelves. Thomas continues, stating that the censorship was due to a worry that it “was going to poison the children’s minds.” While speaking at a college in Darien, Thomas said, “Listen, you can’t keep your kids in a greenhouse. This is the reality of what’s happening.”

53959f3a-927c-455a-bc98-4117cfd84e97

m2d2_wiki

Firefight at Yechon Firefight at Yechon: Courage and Racism in the Korean War, is an autobiography by Charles M. Bussey. Bussey joined the Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black air unit, which protected Allied bombers on missions over Europe during World War II in over North Africa, Italy and finally Germany. Bussey later served as an Army officer in the Korean war. On July 20, 1950, Bussey was returning to his 77th Engineer Combat Company with mail from the states for one of his platoons, when he came across a dozen "lollygagagging" (resting) army truck drivers. Bussey heard fighting in the town ahead, in which Bassey states his company was supposed to provide back up support. He climbed a nearby hill. A kilometer to the rear of the vehicle column he spotted a large body of white-clad Koreans coming toward them. Bussey ordered the drivers to unload the two machine guns and ammunition in their trucks and drag them to the top of the hill. The enemy unit was destroyed. Bussey's group was given credit for killing 258 enemy soldiers in the battle. A day after United States forces occupied Yechon, an Associated Press reporter filed a story about the entire battle and said it was "the first sizable ground victory in the Korean war". Bussey stated that he was denied the Medal of Honor in the battle because a racist white officer, Lt. Col. John T. Corley, felt the nation's highest medal for valor should only be awarded to a black man posthumously. Thirty nine years after the conflict, Bussey could not pinpoint the mass grave site of the dead North Korean soldiers and local civilians could not recall anything about the incident. The Washington Post states that "prejudiced Army historians later insisted, against the evidence...[the Battle of Yechon]...never really happened".

c999bdbf-5cc3-48bc-9cdc-99cac1ef6da8

m2d2_wiki

Vibration Cooking Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl is the 1970 debut book by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and combines recipes with storytelling. It was published by Doubleday. A second edition was published in 1986, and a third edition was published in 1992. The University of Georgia published another edition in 2011. Smart-Grosvenor went on to publish more cookbooks after "Vibration Cooking". "Vibration Cooking" raised awareness about Gullah culture. Scholar Anne E. Goldman compared "Vibration Cooking" with Jessica Harris' "Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons", arguing that, in both books, "the model of the self... is historicized by being developed in the context of colonialism." Scholar Lewis V. Baldwin recommended "Vibration Cooking" for its "interesting and brilliant insights on the social significance of food and eating and their relationship to 'place' in a southern context." The book inspired filmmaker Julie Dash to make the film "Daughters of the Dust", which won awards at the Sundance Film Festival.

03ff8d13-949b-4e85-8c3e-49843b89eaf0

m2d2_wiki

Moonwalk (book) Moonwalk is a 1988 autobiography written by American recording artist Michael Jackson. The book was first published by Doubleday on February 1, 1988, five months after the release of Jackson's 1987 "Bad" album, and named after Jackson's signature dance move, the moonwalk. The book contains a foreword by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It reached number one on the "New York Times Best Seller list". The book was reissued by Doubleday on October 13, 2009 following Jackson's death on June 25, 2009. Production. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was an editor at Doubleday, secured the book deal and paid Jackson a $300,000 advance. As part of the deal Jackson wanted Onassis to write a foreword, which she initially refused not wanting her name on any books she worked on but agreed to three paragraphs. She also edited the book. The first manuscript of the book was written by Robert Hilburn and was refused by the publishers, Doubleday, because it lacked "juicy details". A second manuscript was written by Stephen Davis, which Jackson drastically edited. Jackson finally decided to write the book himself, with help from Shaye Areheart (although there were reports that Areheart later quit after Jackson threw a snake at her). Due to the public interest in Jackson, "Moonwalk" was prepared for publication in secret. Relatives of Doubleday employees were hired as couriers, to deliver portions of the book from the company's head office in Manhattan to the printing plant in Fairfield, Pennsylvania. At the printing plant, the book was given the code name "Neil Armstrong", after the first "moonwalker". Narrative. Dedicated to Fred Astaire, the book discusses Jackson's show business friends, girlfriends and his rise to fame. The book also discusses Jackson's appearance and thoughts on plastic surgery. Jackson stated that up to that point, he had two rhinoplastic surgeries and the surgical creation of a cleft in his chin. He attributed the change in the structure of his face to puberty, weight loss, a strict vegetarian diet, a change in hair style and stage lighting. In the book, Jackson tells of the beatings he received from his father, Joseph. While rehearsing with The Jackson 5, Jackson stated that when they messed up they "got hit, sometimes with a belt, sometimes with a switch." The singer added that his father was "real strict" and "something of a mystery". In September 1988, Jackson telephoned his father to apologize for some of the material in the autobiography. He explained that he hadn't written the book himself and that the critical content was written by "someone else". The singer also reveals how much he has been hurt by the press, asking, "What happened to truth? Did it go out of style?" Reception. "Moonwalk" debuted at number one on both the British newspaper "The Times" and the "Los Angeles Times" bestseller lists. Reaching number two in its first week on "The New York Times" Best Seller list, "Moonwalk" reached number one the following week. Within a few months of its release, "Moonwalk" had sold 450,000 copies in fourteen countries. Ken Tucker, of "The New York Times", stated that if the book had been written by anyone else, it would be dismissed as "an assiduously unrevealing, frequently tedious document." However, he adds that "these are precisely the qualities that make it fascinating". Re-release. "Moonwalk" was re-released on October 13, 2009 as a result of Michael Jackson's death, with a new foreword by Motown founder Berry Gordy and afterword by Shaye Areheart.

311489a2-4e9e-408a-9228-7380216e6263

m2d2_wiki

Divided Soul Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye is a 1985 biography of American soul singer Marvin Gaye. The biography was written by music reviewer David Ritz including conversations he had with the singer, who put the biography together shortly after Gaye's death at the hands of his father Marvin Gay, Sr. in 1984. History. The book came together after Gaye had contacted Ritz shortly after seeing a review Ritz had given on "Rolling Stone" about the album, "Here, My Dear", criticizing critics who he felt didn't get Marvin's message in the album, which was panned at the time of its release in late 1978. Gaye and Ritz had ongoing conversations of the singer's life story, most of it recorded on audio tape. In 1982, while visiting Gaye in Belgium where he was on a self-imposed exile, Ritz continued work on the autobiography when Ritz searched Gaye's room finding explicit comic books, telling the singer, who struggled with depression and other issues, that he "needed sexual healing". An inspired Marvin convinced Ritz to write a few lyrics for what would be Marvin's comeback hit, "Sexual Healing". Gaye and Ritz continued conversations over the biography through 1983 when Gaye went on his U.S. tour promoting his "Midnight Love" album. Their interviews ended abruptly after Gaye was shot and killed by his father on April 1, 1984. Devastated over Marvin's death, Ritz began writing the book and took quotes that Marvin had recited to him over his life from his troubled childhood being brought up in the Pentecostal faith by his father and suffering physical abuse from the same man, to his breakthrough years with Motown and his depression over the death of Tammi Terrell and his tumultuous relationships with Berry Gordy and his two wives Anna Gordy and Janis Hunter. The book was released in 1985 and became a best-seller upon release. A paperback edition was released the following year. Ritz later re-released a new edition in 2003.

91b01d76-357a-41c6-80a7-20f35d4064fa

m2d2_wiki

The Cooking Gene The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South is an American non-fiction book written by Michael W. Twitty. It was published in 2017 and is a food memoir. The author combines intensive genealogical and historical research as well as personal accounts to support the argument that the origin of southern cuisine is heavily based in the continent of Africa.The book was the recipient of the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Writing and Book of the Year. Background. Michael W. Twitty is a Jew by choice and notes within "The Cooking Gene" that the documentation and history found within Jewish cuisine inspired him to write it. The book takes a look at the social ecology surrounding the cuisine traditionally done by African Americans in the southern US. In the book, topics such as genealogy, chattel slavery, sexuality, gender, and spirituality are discussed in addition to foodways. Twitty adds discussions surrounding Soul Food, African American foodways, and Southern Cuisine. Summary. "The Cooking Gene i"s about the influence that the enslavement of Africans by European settlers has had on foodways and history of the Old South. "The Cooking Gene" includes personal narratives, history, recipes, and folk songs. The recipes have African, Native American, and European roots as the author integrates his Jewish faith into African-American cooking. Twitty emphasizes the African flair that has been added to European and Native American ingredients by African American cooks. Additionally, he discusses plants used in cooking that are native to Africa such as sesame, okra, and sorghum. The author discusses how he did not enjoy traditional soul food recipes during his youth but began to accept his African American heritage as he learned to cook. Twitty's experiences growing up led to him to develop an interest in culinary arts. In "The Cooking Gene," the author describes the methods that African Americans used to cook on plantations and travels to the south on what the author called the "Southern Discomfort Tour" to learn more about his family's history and to authentically reproduce meal preparation experiences that former enslaved Africans may have had. Twitty argues that techniques used in African American cooking food have an innate nature and this can be attributed to the supplies Africans and their descendants had available to them during meal preparation. This exploration of the culinary history seeks to raise awareness of diversity of ingredients that African Americans traditionally ate in the South. "The Cooking Gene" also compares and contrasts Jewish and Black foodways, and discusses followers of Judaism in the south. Jewish and Black culinary traditions and items have mingled with each other both in the south and in northern cities. Twitty talks about his conversion to Judaism and expresses his fondness for Jewish cuisine. Reception. "The Cooking Gene" has received positive reception as it has received praise for both its prose as well as what reviewers saw as unique elements that Twitty ties into the book. "The Chicago Tribune" commented on the work, calling it "honest" and "lyrical." It has been named as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2017 and one of "Smithsonian Magazine"'s Ten Best Books About Food in 2017.

29586c82-4be5-4fcb-8b98-31691abff741

m2d2_wiki

My Bondage and My Freedom My Bondage and My Freedom is an autobiographical slave narrative written by Frederick Douglass and published in 1855. It is the second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, and is mainly an expansion of his first, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave". The book depicts in greater detail his transition from bondage to liberty. Following this liberation, Douglass, went on to become a prominent abolitionist, speaker, author, and advocate for women's rights. The book included an introduction by James McCune Smith, who Douglass called the "foremost black influence" of his life.

80453850-29e9-4182-bda4-7c1ab0e619e4

m2d2_wiki

Biography of a Slave Biography of a Slave: Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson is an early record of the experience of slavery, or "slave narrative" in the American south. It was published in 1875, and has been extensively cited by present-day historians studying slavery. Thompson describes in detail his childhood experiences as a slave. The work has been described as a "witness text", written to provide a historical record of experience. Summary. Charles Thompson, an African-American born in Atala County, Mississippi, writes about his life as a slave. Thompson relates events which happened when he was about nine years old, after his owner, a man named Kirkwood, died. Kirkwood had owned many plantations, including the one where Thompson was born near a town called Rockford. Slaves on the plantations were being separated to prevent them from revolting or attempting to escape. At age thirty-seven his mother died. Ben, his uncle, hid from his owners so he could stay with his wife. He evaded the bloodhounds and even the owners walking through the cabin to try to find him when he was just hiding in a hind passage close to his wife. He finally surrendered when his owner agreed that he could be with his wife on another plantation. Thompson goes on to describe his life as an adult slave, including being hired out to other plantations and teaching Christianity to his fellow slaves. The author. Charles Thompson was born near a town called Rockford, on March 3, 1833. His family belonged to a man named Kirkwood, a large slave owner with many different plantations. Thompson later became a preacher in the United Brethren Church.

ab5510e8-a25e-4368-b39e-75a1acfdfefc

m2d2_wiki

Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) is a memoir by Barack Obama that explores the events of his early years in Honolulu and Chicago until his entry into Harvard Law School in 1988. Obama originally published his memoir in 1995, when he was starting his political campaign for the Illinois Senate. He had been elected as the first African-American president of the "Harvard Law Review" in 1990. According to "The New York Times", Obama modeled "Dreams from My Father" on Ralph Ellison's novel "Invisible Man". After Obama won the U.S. Senate Democratic primary victory in Illinois in 2004, the book was re-published that year. He gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC) and won the Illinois Senate seat in the fall. Obama launched his presidential campaign three years later. The 2004 edition includes a new preface by Obama and his DNC keynote address. Narrative. Barack Obama recounts how his parents met, and his own life until his enrollment at Harvard Law School in 1988. His parents were Barack Obama Sr. of Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, who had met while they were students at the University of Hawaii. In the first chapter, speaking of his father, Obama states "[h]e had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old." Obama's parents separated in 1963 and divorced in 1964, when he was two years old. The elder Obama later went to Harvard to pursue his PhD in economics. After that, he returned to Kenya to fulfill the promise to his nation. Obama himself formed an image of his absent father from stories told by his mother and maternal grandparents. He saw his father one more time, in 1971, when Obama Sr. came to Hawaii for a month's visit. The elder Obama, who had remarried, died in a car accident in Kenya in 1982. After her divorce, Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese surveyor from Indonesia who was also a graduate student in Hawaii. The family moved to Jakarta when Obama was six years old. At age ten, Obama returned to Hawaii under the care of his maternal grandparents for the better educational opportunities available there. He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a private college-preparatory school, where he was one of six black students. Obama attended Punahou from the fifth grade until his graduation in 1979. Obama writes: "For my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know." There, he met Ray (Keith Kakugawa), who was two years older and also multi-racial. He introduced Obama to the African-American community. Upon graduating from high school, Obama moved to the contiguous United States for studies at Occidental College. He describes having lived a "party" lifestyle of drug and alcohol use. After two years at Occidental, Obama transferred to Columbia College at Columbia University, where he majored in Political Science. After graduation, Obama worked for a year in business. He moved to Chicago, where he worked for a non-profit as a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's mostly black South Side. Obama recounts the difficulty of the experience, as his program faced resistance from entrenched community leaders and apathy on the part of the established bureaucracy. During this period, Obama first visited Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, which became the center of his religious life. Before attending Harvard, Obama decided to visit relatives in Kenya for the first time in his life. He recounts part of this experience in the final and emotional part of the book. Obama acknowledged his entire memoir to reflect on his personal experiences with race relations in the United States. Book cover. Pictured in left-hand photograph on cover: Habiba Akumu Hussein and Barack Obama Sr. (Obama's paternal grandmother and his father as a young boy, respectively). Pictured in right-hand photograph on cover: Stanley Dunham and Ann Dunham (Obama's maternal grandfather and his mother as a young girl). Persons in the book. With the exception of family members and a handful of public figures, Barack Obama says in the 2004 preface that he had changed names of others to protect their privacy. He also created composite characters to expedite the narrative flow. Some of his acquaintances have recognized themselves and acknowledged their names. Various researchers have suggested the names of other figures in the book: Reception. In discussing "Dreams from My Father", Toni Morrison, a Nobel Laureate novelist, has called Obama "a writer in my high esteem" and the book "quite extraordinary." She praised his ability to reflect on this extraordinary mesh of experiences that he has had, some familiar and some not, and to really meditate on that the way he does, and to set up scenes in narrative structure, dialogue, conversation—all of these things that you don't often see, obviously, in the routine political memoir biography. ... It's unique. It's his. There are no other ones like that. In an interview for "The Daily Beast," the author Philip Roth said he had read "Dreams from My Father" "with great interests," and commented that he had found it "well done and very persuasive and memorable." The book "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician," wrote "Time" columnist Joe Klein. In 2008, "The Guardian"'s Rob Woodard wrote that "Dreams from My Father" "is easily the most honest, daring, and ambitious volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50 years." Michiko Kakutani, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for "The New York Times", described it as "the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president." Writing for the Guardian, literary critic Robert McCrum wrote that Obama had "executed an affecting personal memoir with grace and style, narrating an enthralling story with honesty, elegance and wit, as well as an instinctive gift for storytelling." McCrum had included the book in his list of the 100 best non-fiction books of all time. The audiobook edition earned Obama the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2006. Five days before being sworn in as President in 2009, Obama secured a $500,000 advance for an abridged version of "Dreams from My Father" for middle-school-aged children. "Time Magazine" Top 100 List. In 2011, "Time Magazine" listed the book on its top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923.

29b9125a-b1d1-40c5-9591-f0fec5589e8f

m2d2_wiki

We Beat the Street We Beat the Street: How a Friendship Pact Led to Success is an American autobiography aimed at young adults written by The Three Doctors and Sharon M. Draper on April 21, 2005. The novel shares the experiences of Dr. Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins as well as other professional authors. "We Beat the Street" is the second novel that The Three Doctors were involved in writing, following the 2002 book "The Pact" and preceding the 2007 book "The Bond". Reception. "We Beat the Street" was a "New York Times" children's bestseller for the week ending June 25, 2005. The same year, the Association of Indiana School Library Educators selected the book as a "Read-Aloud Too-Good-to-Miss". In 2006, the book was chosen as a "Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People" by the National Council for the Social Studies and Children's Book Council. The book review committee stated that the book contained a "true and inspiring" autobiographical account. Vicki Sherbert from "The ALAN Review" felt that the authors "spoke honestly of their discouragement, failures, and successes" and "offer encouragement to kids who find themselves in hopeless situations." "School Library Journal"s Francisca Goldsmith thought that the writing was "simple and accessible", adding that "there is plenty of action for reluctant readers." Gillian Engberg wrote in "Booklist" that the book contained inspirational stories and "personal, intimate voices that frankly discuss big mistakes and complicated emotions".

b6509fb6-62aa-4065-8f7d-15bcb3153833

m2d2_wiki

Black Boy Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his upbringing. Wright describes his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party. "Black Boy" gained high acclaim in the United States because of Wright’s honest and profound depiction of racism in America. While the book gained significant recognition, much of the reception throughout and after the publication process was highly controversial. Background. Richard Wright’s "Black Boy" was written in 1943 and published 2 years later (1945) in the early years of his career. Wright wrote "Black Boy" as a response to the experiences he had growing up. Given that "Black Boy" is partially autobiographical, many of the anecdotes stem from real experiences throughout Wright’s childhood. Richard Wright’s family spent much of their life in deep poverty, enduring hunger and illness moving around the country in search of a better life. Wright cites his family and childhood environment as the primary influence in his writing. Specifically, Wright’s family's religious presence throughout his childhood held a strong influence in both his religious outlook and his writing. Similarly, Wright’s experiences growing up in poverty enduring hunger caused considerable distress that he referenced repeatedly in "Black Boy". Most generally, Wright credits his influence of "Black Boy" back to the racial inequalities he sustained throughout his travels in America. Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age. When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in "Black Boy". Wright claims that he chose to write about the experiences referenced in "Black Boy" in an effort to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world.” Plot summary. "Black Boy (American Hunger)" is an autobiography following Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago). "Southern Night". The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. After his father deserts his family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts, uncles and orphanages attempting to take him in. Despite the efforts of various people and groups to take Wright in, he essentially raises himself with no central home. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. Throughout his mischief and hardship, Wright gets involved in fighting and drinking before the age of six. When Wright turns eleven, he begins taking jobs and is quickly introduced to the racism that constitutes much of his future. He continues to feel more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds these circumstances generally unjust and fights attempts to quell his intellectual curiosity and potential as he dreams of moving north and becoming a writer. "The Horror and the Glory". In an effort to achieve his dreams of moving north, Wright steals and lies until he attains enough money for a ticket to Memphis. Wright’s aspirations of escaping racism in his move North are quickly disillusioned as he encounters similar prejudices and oppressions amidst the people in Memphis, prompting him to continue his journeys towards Chicago. The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins understanding American race relations more deeply. He holds many jobs, most of them consisting of menial tasks: he washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals at night. At this time, his family is still suffering in poverty, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly interrogate him about his atheism and "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office, where he meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called "Left Front" and slowly immerses himself in the writers and artists in the Communist Party. At first, Wright thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as timid to change as the southern whites he left behind. The Communists fear those who disagree with their ideas and quickly brand Wright as a "counter-revolutionary" for his tendency to question and speak his mind. When Richard tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it. After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: asserting that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled. For Wright, writing is his way to the human heart, and therefore, the closest cure to his hunger. Genre and style. The genre of Richard Wright’s "Black Boy" is a longstanding controversy due to the ambiguity. "Black Boy" follows Wright’s childhood with a degree of accuracy that suggests it exists as an autobiography, although Wright never confirmed nor denied whether the book was entirely autobiographical or fictitious. None of Wright’s other books follow the truths of his life in the way "Black Boy" does. The book's apparent tendency to intermix fact and fiction is criticized because of the specific dialogue that suggests a degree of fiction. Additionally, Wright omits certain details of his family's background that would typically be included in an autobiographical novel. While Wright may have deviated from historical truths, the book is accurate in the sense that he rarely deviates from narrative truth in the candidness and rawness of his writing. The style in "Black Boy" is so highly regarded because of the frankness that defied social demands at the time of "Black Boy’s" publication. Wright negates the racially based oppression he endured through his ability to read and write with eloquence and credibility as well as with his courage to speak back against the dominant norms of society that are holding him back. Analysis. Given "Black Boy’s" emphasis on racial inequality in America, many of the motifs refer to the lingering aspects of slave narratives in present day. These motifs include violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom. The depictions of lingering racial animosity are at the core of the arguments in favor of censorship for many critics. The prevalence of violence amidst and against Blacks in America ties back to the violence exerted upon slaves generations before. The theme of violence intermixes with the notion of race as Wright suggests that violence is deeply entrenched into a system where people are distinguished based on their race. Regardless of Wright's efforts to break free from this violent lifestyle, a society based on differences will always feed on an inescapable discourse. Wright’s skeptical view of Christianity mirrors the religious presence for many slaves. Throughout "Black Boy", this skepticism of religion is present as Richard regards Christianity as being primarily based on a general inclusion in a group rather than incorporating any meaningful, spiritual connection to God. The general state of poverty and hunger that Wright endures reflects, to a lesser degree, similar obstacles that slaves faced. Wright’s portrayal of hunger goes beyond a lack of food to represent a metaphorical kind of hunger in his yearning for a better, freer life. In his search for a better life in the North, Richard is seeking to fulfill both his physical and metaphorical hungers for more. The cyclical portrayal of poverty in "Black Boy" represents society as a personified enemy that crushes dreams for those who aren’t in command of high society. The strong attempt at maintaining family unity also relates to the efforts amidst slaves to remain connected through such immense hardship. Wright’s longing to journey North in search of improvement embodies the slaves longing to follow the North Star on the freedom trains in search of freedom. Despite the harsh reality upon arrival, throughout "Black Boy", the North is represented as a land of opportunity and freedom. Lastly, Wright’s focus on literacy as a weapon towards personal freedom also reflects the efforts of many slaves hoping to free themselves through the ability to read and write. The emphasis on literacy complicates the notion of finding freedom from a physical space to a mental power attained through education. The most general impact of "Black Boy" is shown through Wright’s efforts to bring light to the complexities of race relations in America, both the seen and unseen. Given the oppression and lacking education for blacks in America, the raw honesty of their hardships was rarely heard and even more rarely given literary attention, making the impact of "Black Boy’s" narrative especially influential. The book works to show the underlying inequalities that Wright faced daily in America. Publishing history. Original publication. Wright wrote the entire manuscript in 1943 under the working title, "Black Confession." By December, when Wright delivered the book to his agent, he had changed the title to "American Hunger." The first fourteen chapters, about his Mississippi childhood, are compiled in "Part One: Southern Night," and the last six chapters, about Chicago, are included in "Part Two: The Horror and the Glory." In January 1944, "Harper and Brothers" accepted all twenty chapters, and was for a scheduled fall publication of the book. "Black Boy" is currently published by HarperCollins Publisher as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Partial publications. In June 1944, the Book of the Month Club expressed an interest in only "Part One: Southern Night." In response, Wright agreed to eliminate the Chicago section, and in August, he renamed the shortened book as "Black Boy." "Harper and Brothers" published it under that title in 1945 and it sold 195,000 retail copies in its first edition and 351,000 copies through the Book-of-the-Month Club. Parts of the Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters were not published together until 1977, by "Harper and Row" as "American Hunger." In 1991, the Library of America published all 20 chapters, as Wright had originally intended, under the title "Black Boy (American Hunger)" as part of their volume of Wright's "Later Works". The Book-of-the-Month-Club played an important role in Wright's career. It selected his 1940 novel, "Native Son," as the first Book of the Month Club written by a black American. Wright was willing to change his "Black Boy" book to get a second endorsement. However, he wrote in his journal that the Book-of-the-Month-Club had yielded to pressure from the Communist Party in asking him to eliminate the chapters that dealt with his membership in and disillusionment with the Communist Party. In order for Wright to get his memoir really “noticed” by the general public, his publisher required that he divide the portions of his book into two sections. Reception. Upon its release, "Black Boy" gained significant traction - both positive and negative - from readers and critics alike. In February 1945, "Black Boy" was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, bringing it immediate fame and acclaim. "Black Boy" was also featured in a list compiled by the Lending Section of the American Library Association labeled “50 Outstanding Books of 1945.” The list, which was compiled by numerous individuals and institutions, acclaims "Black Boy" as “the author's account of his boyhood [that] is a grim record of frustration, race tension, and suffering.” From 1996-2000, the Round Rock Independent School District board in Texas voted 4-2 against a proposal to remove Richard Wright’s "Black Boy" from reading lists at local schools, eventually deciding the content of the book was worthy and necessary in schools. In numerous cases of attempted censorship for "Black Boy", Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, stood up and publicly defended the book, claiming that the censorship of "Black Boy" would be “tantamount to an American tragedy.” "Black Boy" was most recently challenged in Michigan in 2007 by the Howell High School for distributing explicit materials to minors, a ruling that was quickly overruled by a prosecutor who found that “the explicit passages illustrated a larger literary, artistic, or political message.” "Black Boy" has come under fire by numerous states, institutions, and individuals alike. Most petitioners of the book criticize Wright for being anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, overly sexual and obscene, and most commonly, for portraying a grim picture of race relations in America. In 1972, "Black Boy" was banned in Michigan schools after parents found the content to be overly sexual and generally unsuitable for teens. In 1975, the book was challenged in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Tennessee, both places claiming the book was obscene and instigated racial tension. "Black Boy" was first challenged in New York in 1976 by the board of education of the Island Trees Free School District in New York. It was soon the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1982. Petitioners against the inclusion of "Black Boy" described the autobiography as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students." The book was later challenged in Lincoln, Nebraska on accounts of its “corruptive, obscene nature.” In May 1997, the President of the North Florida Ministerial Alliance condemned the inclusion of "Black Boy" in Jacksonville’s public schools, claiming the content is not “right for high school students” due to profanity and racial references.

4f21b473-4d4e-4132-975d-a9171377fd69

m2d2_wiki

Growing Up X Growing Up X: A Memoir by the Daughter of Malcolm X is a 2002 book by Ilyasah Shabazz, the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz. Shabazz wrote the book with Kim McLarin. In "Growing Up X", Shabazz writes about what it was like to grow up in the shadow of her father, a human rights activist who was assassinated when she was two years old. She also writes about her mother and sisters, and her early life growing up, along with her personal memories and feelings about Malcolm X. Shabazz has commented that she was nervous about releasing the book, because she did not want to ruin people's expectations of her, but has received unexpectedly great praise for her writing.

625ef1f7-f5ad-4521-8168-69f32fa960ec

m2d2_wiki

From Black Power to Hip Hop From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism is a 2006 book by Patricia Hill Collins. Published by Temple University Press, the book is centered around Patricia Hill and her experiences with racism in America. The book also includes experiences from other Black men and women and their responses to it. In the end she offers her take on Black youth and how its changing along with how Black nationalism works today. Reception. In a review written by Publisher's Weekly, they write "sociologist Collins (Black Feminist Thought; Black Sexual Politics) turns her eye toward young African American women who have chosen to explore feminism through pop culture instead of academia in this sometimes rousing, sometimes plodding anthology of six essays". Afrikanlibrary.net says "Using the experiences of African American women and men as a touchstone for analysis, Patricia Hill Collins examines new forms of racism as well as political responses to it.In this incisive and stimulating book, renowned social theorist Patricia Hill Collins investigates how nationalism has operated and re-emerged in the wake of contemporary globalization and offers an interpretation of how black nationalism works today in the wake of changing black youth identity."

4034ddcb-2978-4a0c-99b7-0b9dd9940c42

m2d2_wiki

Dark Room Collective The Dark Room Collective was an influential African-American poetry collective. Established in 1988, the collective hosted a reading series that featured leading figures in Black literature. Founding and activities. After attending the funeral of literary icon James Baldwin in 1987, poets Sharan Strange and Thomas Sayers Ellis, then Harvard undergraduates, with poet-composer Janice Lowe, a Berklee College of Music student, co-founded the Dark Room Reading Series in 1988. The series was named for a project called "The Dark Room: A Collection of Black Writing", a library containing the works of black authors which was hosted in a former darkroom on the third floor of their Victorian house at 31 Inman Street in Cambridge. The Dark Room Collective hosted a writing workshop and gatherings of black artists and writers at the house. They were visited by African-American writers including Alice Walker, bell hooks, Toni Cade Bambara, Derek Walcott, Samuel R. Delany, poet Essex Hemphill, Randall Kenan, Terry McMillan, Ntozake Shange, John Edgar Wideman, and Walter Mosley. They hosted a reading series that paired older writers with younger ones. The group was influenced by Rita Dove. Following problems with their landlord, they relocated the reading series to the Institute of Contemporary Art and later to the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. The series ran through approximately 1998, though a "reunion tour" took place in 2012 and 2013. Influence and alumni. The Dark Room Collective has been influential in contemporary American and African-American poetry, inspiring the creation of the Cave Canem Foundation and including many alumni who went on to be highly successful. Future United States Poets Laureate Natasha Trethewey and Tracy K. Smith, "New Yorker" poetry editor Kevin Young, Carl Phillips, Major Jackson, Patrick Sylvain, Tisa Bryant, Danielle Legros Georges, Artress Bethany White, Trasi Johnson, Adisa Beatty, Nehassaiu deGannes, Donia Allen, Della Scott and John Keene were among the members of the collective.

64c618f1-d51e-4323-b82a-5b0e8fafb29d

m2d2_wiki

African-American folktales African-American folktales are the storytelling and oral history of enslaved African Americans during the 1700-1900s. Many are unique to the African-American culture, while others are influenced by African, European, and Native American tales. Overview. African-American folktales are a storytelling tradition based in Africa containing a rich oral tradition that expanded as Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves. In general, most African-American Folktales fall into one of seven categories: tales of origin, tales of trickery and trouble, tales of triumph over natural or supernatural evils, comic heart warming tales, tales teaching life lessons, tales of ghosts and spirits, and tales of slaves and their slave-owners. Many revolve around animals which have human characteristics with the same morals and short comings as humans to make the stories relatable. New tales are based on the experiences of Africans in the Americas, while many of the traditional tales maintain their African roots. Although many of the original stories evolved since African Americans were brought to the Americas as slaves, their meaning and life lessons have remained the same. Themes. African-American tales of origin center around beginnings and transformations whether focused on a character, event, or creation of the world. Some examples of origin stories includes "How Jackal Became an Outcast" and "Terrapin's Magic Dipper and Whip", that respectively explain the solitary nature of jackals and why turtles have shells. Trickery and trouble. Tricksters in folk stories are commonly amoral characters, both human and non-human animals, who 'succeed' based on deception and taking advantage of the weaknesses of others. They tend to use their wits to resolve conflict and/or achieve their goals. Two examples of African-American tricksters are Brer Rabbit and Anansi. Tricksters in African American folktales take a comedic approach and contain an underlying theme of inequality. The National Humanities Center notes that trickster stories "contain serious commentary on the inequities of existence in a country where the promises of democracy were denied to a large portion of the citizenry, a pattern that becomes even clearer in the literary adaptations of trickster figures". The folktales don't always contain an actual 'trickster' but a theme of trickery tactics. For example, Charles Chesnutt's collected a series of stories titled "The Conjure Woman" (1899). One of the story trickster tactics is "how an enslaved man is spared being sent from one plantation to another by having his wife, who is a conjure woman, turn him into a tree...the trickery works until a local sawmill selects that particular tree to cut". During the period of slavery, "and for decades thereafter, trickster tales, with their subtly and indirection, were necessary because blacks could not risk a direct attack on white society". Comic heartwarming tales. Comic and heartwarming African-American folktales “stimulate the imagination with wonders, and are told to remind us of the perils and the possibilities”. The stories are about heroes, heroines, villains and fools. One story, The Red Feather, is a response to the intertwining of cultures, ending with heroes bringing forth gifts. Rabbit Rides Wolf is a story that represents the amalgamation of African and Creek descent where a combined hero emerges during a time of conflict . Teaching life lessons. African folklore is a means to hand down traditions and duties through generations. Stories are often passed down orally at gatherings of groups of children. This type of gathering was known as Tales by Midnight and contained cultural lessons that prepared children for their future. A Diversity of animals with human characteristics made the stories compelling to the young children and included singing and dancing or themes such as greediness, honesty, and loyalty. One story example used for generations of African children is the Tale of The Midnight Goat Thief that originated in Zimbabwe. The Midnight Goat Thief is a tale of misplaced trust and betrayal between two friends, a baboon and a hare, when a conflict between the two arises. The story teaches children to be loyal and honest. Ghosts and spirits. African-American tales of ghosts and spirits were commonly told of a spook or “haint” or “haunt,” referring to repeated visits by ghosts or spirits that keep one awake at night. The story Possessed of Two Spirits is a personal experience in conjuring magic powers in both the living and the spiritual world common in African-American folklore. The story Married to a Boar Hog emerged during the colonial Revolution against the British. The story is of a young woman who married a supernatural being figure, such as a boar, who saves her from a disease like leprosy, club foot, or yaws. Married to a Boar Hog is passed down from British Caribbean slaves in reference to their African Origin and the hardships they endured. Slavery. African-American tales of slavery often use rhetoric that can seem uncommon to the modern era as the language passed down through generations deviates from the standard for racial narrative. The Conjure Woman, a book of tales dealing with racial identity, was written by the African-American author, Charles W. Chesnutt, from the perspective of a freed slave. Chesnutt's tales represent the struggles freed slaves faced during the post-war era in the South. The author's tales provide a pensive perspective on the challenges of being left behind. Chesnutt's language surrounding African American folklore derived from the standards of the racial narrative of his era. By using vernacular language, Chesnutt was able to deviate from the racial norms and formulate a new, more valorized message of folk heroes. Chesnutt writes "on the other side" of standard racial narratives, effectively refuting them by evoking a different kind of "racial project" in his fictional work.”

07cf1083-be50-4240-bcc9-cbea63c58768

m2d2_wiki

Black Arts Movement The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement, active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. Famously referred to by Larry Neal as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of Black Power," BAM applied these same political ideas to art and literature. The movement resisted traditional Western influences and found new ways to present the black experience. The poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is widely recognized as the founder of BAM. In 1965, he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School (BART/S) in Harlem. Baraka's example inspired many others to create organizations across the United States. While these organizations were short-lived, their work has had a lasting influence. Background. African Americans had always made valuable artistic contributions to American culture. However, due to brutalities of slavery and the systemic racism of Jim Crow, these contributions often went unrecognised. Despite continued oppression, African-American artists continued to create literature and art that would reflect their experiences. A high-point for these artists was the Harlem Renaissance—a literary era that spotlighted black people. Harlem Renaissance. There are many parallels that can be made between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. The link is so strong, in fact, that some scholars refer to the Black Arts Movement era as the Second Renaissance. One sees this connection clearly when reading Langston Hughes's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926). Hughes's seminal essay advocates that black writers resist external attempts to control their art, arguing instead that the “truly great” black artist will be the one who can fully embrace and freely express his blackness. Yet, the Harlem Renaissance lacked many of the radical political stances that defined BAM. Inevitably, the Renaissance, and many of its ideas, failed to survive the Great Depression. Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights era, activists paid more and more attention to the political uses of art. The contemporary work of those like James Baldwin and Chester Himes would show the possibility of creating a new 'black aesthetic'. A number of art groups were established during this period, such as the Umbra Poets and the Spiral Arts Alliance, which can be seen as precursors to BAM. Civil Rights activists were also interested in creating black-owned media outlets, establishing journals (such as "Freedomways, Black Dialogue", "The Liberator", ", The Black Scholar and Soul Book") and publishing houses (such as Dudley Randall's Broadside Press and Third World Press.) It was through these channels that BAM would eventually spread its art, literature, and political messages. Developments. The beginnings of the Black Arts Movement may be traced to 1965, when Amiri Baraka, at that time still known as Leroi Jones, moved uptown to establish the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) following the assassination of Malcolm X. Rooted in the Nation of Islam, the Black Power movement and the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement grew out of a changing political and cultural climate in which Black artists attempted to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience. Black artists and intellectuals such as Baraka made it their project to reject older political, cultural, and artistic traditions. Although the success of sit-ins and public demonstrations of the Black student movement in the 1960s may have "inspired black intellectuals, artists, and political activists to form politicized cultural groups," many Black Arts activists rejected the non-militant integrational ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement and instead favored those of the Black Liberation Struggle, which emphasized "self-determination through self-reliance and Black control of significant businesses, organization, agencies, and institutions." According to the Academy of American Poets, "African American artists within the movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience." The importance that the movement placed on Black autonomy is apparent through the creation of institutions such as the Black Arts Repertoire Theatre School (BARTS), created in the spring of 1964 by Baraka and other Black artists. The opening of BARTS in New York City often overshadow the growth of other radical Black Arts groups and institutions all over the United States. In fact, transgressional and international networks, those of various Left and nationalist (and Left nationalist) groups and their supports, existed far before the movement gained popularity. Although the creation of BARTS did indeed catalyze the spread of other Black Arts institutions and the Black Arts movement across the nation, it was not solely responsible for the growth of the movement. Although the Black Arts Movement was a time filled with black success and artistic progress, the movement also faced social and racial ridicule. The leaders and artists involved called for Black Art to define itself and speak for itself from the security of its own institutions. For many of the contemporaries the idea that somehow black people could express themselves through institutions of their own creation and with ideas whose validity was confirmed by their own interests and measures was absurd. While it is easy to assume that the movement began solely in the Northeast, it actually started out as "separate and distinct local initiatives across a wide geographic area," eventually coming together to form the broader national movement. New York City is often referred to as the "birthplace" of the Black Arts Movement, because it was home to many revolutionary Black artists and activists. However, the geographical diversity of the movement opposes the misconception that New York (and Harlem, especially) was the primary site of the movement. In its beginning states, the movement came together largely through printed media. Journals such as "Liberator", "The Crusader", and "Freedomways" created "a national community in which ideology and aesthetics were debated and a wide range of approaches to African-American artistic style and subject displayed." These publications tied communities outside of large Black Arts centers to the movement and gave the general black public access to these sometimes exclusive circles. As a literary movement, Black Arts had its roots in groups such as the Umbra Workshop. Umbra (1962) was a collective of young Black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side; major members were writers Steve Cannon, Tom Dent, Al Haynes, David Henderson, Calvin C. Hernton, Joe Johnson, Norman Pritchard, Lennox Raphael, Ishmael Reed, Lorenzo Thomas, James Thompson, Askia M. Touré (Roland Snellings; also a visual artist), Brenda Walcott, and musician-writer Archie Shepp. Touré, a major shaper of "cultural nationalism," directly influenced Jones. Along with Umbra writer Charles Patterson and Charles's brother, William Patterson, Touré joined Jones, Steve Young, and others at BARTS. Umbra, which produced "Umbra Magazine", was the first post-civil rights Black literary group to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: in 1960 a Black nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who was then working on "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual", 1967), Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, and Sarah E. Wright, and others. On Guard was active in a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and was active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. From On Guard, Dent, Johnson, and Walcott along with Hernton, Henderson, and Touré established Umbra. Authors. Another formation of black writers at that time was the Harlem Writers Guild, led by John O. Killens, which included Maya Angelou, Jean Carey Bond, Rosa Guy, and Sarah Wright among others. But the Harlem Writers Guild focused on prose, primarily fiction, which did not have the mass appeal of poetry performed in the dynamic vernacular of the time. Poems could be built around anthems, chants, and political slogans, and thereby used in organizing work, which was not generally the case with novels and short stories. Moreover, the poets could and did publish themselves, whereas greater resources were needed to publish fiction. That Umbra was primarily poetry- and performance-oriented established a significant and classic characteristic of the movement's aesthetics. When Umbra split up, some members, led by Askia Touré and Al Haynes, moved to Harlem in late 1964 and formed the nationalist-oriented Uptown Writers Movement, which included poets Yusef Rahman, Keorapetse "Willie" Kgositsile from South Africa, and Larry Neal. Accompanied by young "New Music" musicians, they performed poetry all over Harlem. Members of this group joined LeRoi Jones in founding BARTS. Jones's move to Harlem was short-lived. In December 1965 he returned to his home, Newark (N.J.), and left BARTS in serious disarray. BARTS failed but the Black Arts center concept was irrepressible, mainly because the Black Arts movement was so closely aligned with the then-burgeoning Black Power movement. The mid-to-late 1960s was a period of intense revolutionary ferment. Beginning in 1964, rebellions in Harlem and Rochester, New York, initiated four years of long hot summers. Watts, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, and many other cities went up in flames, culminating in nationwide explosions of resentment and anger following the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Nathan Hare, author of "The Black Anglo-Saxons" (1965), was the founder of 1960s Black Studies. Expelled from Howard University, Hare moved to San Francisco State University, where the battle to establish a Black Studies department was waged during a five-month strike during the 1968–69 school year. As with the establishment of Black Arts, which included a range of forces, there was broad activity in the Bay Area around Black Studies, including efforts led by poet and professor Sarah Webster Fabio at Merrit College. The initial thrust of Black Arts ideological development came from the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a national organization with a strong presence in New York City. Both Touré and Neal were members of RAM. After RAM, the major ideological force shaping the Black Arts movement was the US (as opposed to "them") organization led by Maulana Karenga. Also ideologically important was Elijah Muhammad's Chicago-based Nation of Islam. These three formations provided both style and conceptual direction for Black Arts artists, including those who were not members of these or any other political organization. Although the Black Arts Movement is often considered a New York-based movement, two of its three major forces were located outside New York City. Locations. As the movement matured, the two major locations of Black Arts' ideological leadership, particularly for literary work, were California's Bay Area because of the "Journal of Black Poetry" and "The Black Scholar", and the Chicago–Detroit axis because of "Negro Digest/Black World" and Third World Press in Chicago, and Broadside Press and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press in Detroit. The only major Black Arts literary publications to come out of New York were the short-lived (six issues between 1969 and 1972) "Black Theatre" magazine, published by the New Lafayette Theatre, and "Black Dialogue", which had actually started in San Francisco (1964–68) and relocated to New York (1969–72). Although the journals and writing of the movement greatly characterized its success, the movement placed a great deal of importance on collective oral and performance art. Public collective performances drew a lot of attention to the movement, and it was often easier to get an immediate response from a collective poetry reading, short play, or street performance than it was from individual performances. The people involved in the Black Arts Movement used the arts as a way to liberate themselves. The movement served as a catalyst for many different ideas and cultures to come alive. This was a chance for African Americans to express themselves in a way that most would not have expected. In 1967 LeRoi Jones visited Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of Karenga's philosophy of Kawaida. Kawaida, which produced the "Nguzo Saba" (seven principles), Kwanzaa, and an emphasis on African names, was a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy. Jones also met Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver and worked with a number of the founding members of the Black Panthers. Additionally, Askia Touré was a visiting professor at San Francisco State and was to become a leading (and long-lasting) poet as well as, arguably, the most influential poet-professor in the Black Arts movement. Playwright Ed Bullins and poet Marvin X had established Black Arts West, and Dingane Joe Goncalves had founded the "Journal of Black Poetry" (1966). This grouping of Ed Bullins, Dingane Joe Goncalves, LeRoi Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Askia M. Touré, and Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts leadership. As the movement grew, ideological conflicts arose and eventually became too great for the movement to continue to exist as a large, coherent collective. The Black Aesthetic. Although The Black Aesthetic was first coined by Larry Neal in 1968, across all the discourse, The Black Aesthetic has no overall real definition agreed by all Black Aesthetic theorists. It is loosely defined, without any real consensus besides that the theorists of The Black Aesthetic agree that "art should be used to galvanize the black masses to revolt against their white capitalist oppressors". Pollard also argues in her critique of the Black Arts Movement that The Black Aesthetic "celebrated the African origins of the Black community, championed black urban culture, critiqued Western aesthetics, and encouraged the production and reception of black arts by black people". In "The Black Arts Movement" by Larry Neal, where the Black Arts Movement is discussed as “aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept,” The Black Aesthetic is described by Neal as being the merge of the ideologies of Black Power with the artistic values of African expression. Larry Neal attests:"When we speak of a 'Black aesthetic' several things are meant. First, we assume that there is already in existence the basis for such an aesthetic. Essentially, it consists of an African-American cultural tradition. But this aesthetic is finally, by implication, broader than that tradition. It encompasses most of the usable elements of the Third World culture. The motive behind the Black aesthetic is the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world."The Black Aesthetic also refers to ideologies and perspectives of art that center on Black culture and life. This Black Aesthetic encouraged the idea of Black separatism, and in trying to facilitate this, hoped to further strengthen black ideals, solidarity, and creativity. In "The Black Aesthetic" (1971), Addison Gayle argues that Black artists should work exclusively on uplifting their identity while refusing to appease white folks. The Black Aesthetic work as a "corrective," where black people are not supposed to desire the “ranks of Norman Mailer or a William Styron”. Black people are encouraged by Black artists that take their own Black identity, reshaping and redefining themselves for themselves by themselves via art as a medium. Hoyt Fuller defines The Black Aesthetic "in terms of the cultural experiences and tendencies expressed in artist’ work" while another meaning of The Black Aesthetic comes from Ron Karenga, who argues for three main characteristics to The Black Aesthetic and Black art itself: functional, collective, and committing. Karenga says, "Black Art must expose the enemy, praise the people, and support the revolution". The notion "art for art’s sake" is killed in the process, binding the Black Aesthetic to the revolutionary struggle, a struggle that is the reasoning behind reclaiming Black art in order to return to African culture and tradition for Black people. Under Karenga’s definition of The Black Aesthetic, art that doesn’t fight for the Black Revolution isn’t considered as art at all, needed the vital context of social issues as well as an artistic value. Among these definitions, the central theme that is the underlying connection of the Black Arts, Black Aesthetic, and Black Power movements is then this: the idea of group identity, which is defined by Black artists of organizations as well as their objectives. The narrowed view of The Black Aesthetic, often described as Marxist by critics, brought upon conflicts of the Black Aesthetic and Black Arts Movement as a whole in areas that drove the focus of African culture; In "The Black Arts Movement and Its Critics", David Lionel Smith argues in saying “The Black Aesthetic,” one suggests a single principle, closed and prescriptive in which just really sustains the oppressiveness of defining race in one single identity. The search of finding the true “blackness” of Black people through art by the term creates obstacles in achieving a refocus and return to African culture. Smith compares the statement “The Black Aesthetic” to “Black Aesthetics”, the latter leaving multiple, open, descriptive possibilities. The Black Aesthetic, particularly Karenga’s definition, has also received additional critiques; Ishmael Reed, author of Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, argues for artistic freedom, ultimately against Karenga’s idea of the Black Aesthetic, which Reed finds limiting and something he can’t ever sympathize to. The example Reed brings up is if a Black artist wants to paint black guerrillas, that is okay, but if the Black artist “does so only deference to Ron Karenga, something’s wrong”. The focus of blackness in context of maleness was another critique raised with the Black Aesthetic. Pollard argues that the art made with the artistic and social values of the Black Aesthetic emphasizes on the male talent of blackness, and it’s uncertain whether the movement only includes women as an afterthought. As there begins a change in the Black population, Trey Ellis points out other flaws in his essay "The New Black Aesthetic." Blackness in terms of cultural background can no longer be denied in order to appease or please white "or" black people. From mulattos to a "post-bourgeois movement driven by a second generation of middle class," blackness isn’t a singular identity as the phrase "The Black Aesthetic" forces it to be but rather multifaceted and vast. Major works. Black Art. Amiri Baraka's poem "Black Art" serves as one of his more controversial, poetically profound supplements to the Black Arts Movement. In this piece, Baraka merges politics with art, criticizing poems that are not useful to or adequately representative of the Black struggle. First published in 1966, a period particularly known for the Civil Rights Movement, the political aspect of this piece underscores the need for a concrete and artistic approach to the realistic nature involving racism and injustice. Serving as the recognized artistic component to and having roots in the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement aims to grant a political voice to black artists (including poets, dramatists, writers, musicians, etc.). Playing a vital role in this movement, Baraka calls out what he considers to be unproductive and assimilatory actions shown by political leaders during the Civil Rights Movement. He describes prominent Black leaders as being "on the steps of the white house...kneeling between the sheriff's thighs negotiating coolly for his people." Baraka also presents issues of euro-centric mentality, by referring to Elizabeth Taylor as a prototypical model in a society that influences perceptions of beauty, emphasizing its influence on individuals of white and black ancestry. Baraka aims his message toward the Black community, with the purpose of coalescing African Americans into a unified movement, devoid of white influences. "Black Art" serves as a medium for expression meant to strengthen that solidarity and creativity, in terms of the Black Aesthetic. Baraka believes poems should "shoot…come at you, love what you are" and not succumb to mainstream desires. He ties this approach into the emergence of hip-hop, which he paints as a movement that presents "live words…and live flesh and coursing blood." Baraka's cathartic structure and aggressive tone are comparable to the beginnings of hip-hop music, which created controversy in the realm of mainstream acceptance, because of its "authentic, un-distilled, unmediated forms of contemporary black urban music." Baraka believes that integration inherently takes away from the legitimacy of having a Black identity and Aesthetic in an anti-Black world. Through pure and unapologetic blackness, and with the absence of white influences, Baraka believes a black world can be achieved. Though hip-hop has been serving as a recognized salient musical form of the Black Aesthetic, a history of unproductive integration is seen across the spectrum of music, beginning with the emergence of a newly formed narrative in mainstream appeal in the 1950s. Much of Baraka's cynical disillusionment with unproductive integration can be drawn from the 1950s, a period of rock and roll, in which "record labels actively sought to have white artists "cover" songs that were popular on the rhythm-and-blues charts" originally performed by African-American artists. The problematic nature of unproductive integration is also exemplified by Run-DMC, an American hip-hop group founded in 1981, who became widely accepted after a calculated collaboration with the rock group Aerosmith on a remake of the latter's "Walk This Way" took place in 1986, evidently appealing to young white audiences. Hip-hop emerged as an evolving genre of music that continuously challenged mainstream acceptance, most notably with the development of rap in the 1990s. A significant and modern example of this is Ice Cube, a well-known American rapper, songwriter, and actor, who introduced subgenre of hip-hop known as "gangsta rap," merged social consciousness and political expression with music. With the 1960s serving as a more blatantly racist period of time, Baraka notes the revolutionary nature of hip-hop, grounded in the unmodified expression through art. This method of expression in music parallels significantly with Baraka's ideals presented in "Black Art," focusing on poetry that is also productively and politically driven. The Revolutionary Theatre. "The Revolutionary Theatre" is a 1965 essay by Baraka that was an important contribution to the Black Arts Movement, discussing the need for change through literature and theater arts. He says: "We will scream and cry, murder, run through the streets in agony, if it means some soul will be moved, moved to actual life understanding of what the world is, and what it ought to be." Baraka wrote his poetry, drama, fiction and essays in a way that would shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans, which says much about what he was doing with this essay. It also did not seem coincidental to him that Malcolm X and John F. Kennedy had been assassinated within a few years because Baraka believed that every voice of change in America had been murdered, which led to the writing that would come out of the Black Arts Movement. In his essay, Baraka says: "The Revolutionary Theatre is shaped by the world, and moves to reshape the world, using as its force the natural force and perpetual vibrations of the mind in the world. We are history and desire, what we are, and what any experience can make us." With his thought-provoking ideals and references to a euro-centric society, he imposes the notion that black Americans should stray from a white aesthetic in order to find a black identity. In his essay, he says: "The popular white man's theatre like the popular white man's novel shows tired white lives, and the problems of eating white sugar, or else it herds bigcaboosed blondes onto huge stages in rhinestones and makes believe they are dancing or singing." This, having much to do with a white aesthetic, further proves what was popular in society and even what society had as an example of what everyone should aspire to be, like the "bigcaboosed blondes" that went "onto huge stages in rhinestones". Furthermore, these blondes made believe they were "dancing and singing" which Baraka seems to be implying that white people dancing is not what dancing is supposed to be at all. These allusions bring forth the question of where black Americans fit in the public eye. Baraka says: "We are preaching virtue and feeling, and a natural sense of the self in the world. All men live in the world, and the world ought to be a place for them to live." Baraka's essay challenges the idea that there is no space in politics or in society for black Americans to make a difference through different art forms that consist of, but are not limited to, poetry, song, dance, and art. Effects on society. According to the Academy of American Poets, "many writers--Native Americans, Latinos/as, gays and lesbians, and younger generations of African Americans have acknowledged their debt to the Black Arts Movement." The movement lasted for about a decade, through the mid-1960s and into the 1970s. This was a period of controversy and change in the world of literature. One major change came through in the portrayal of new ethnic voices in the United States. English-language literature, prior to the Black Arts Movement, was dominated by white authors. African Americans became a greater presence not only in the field of literature but in all areas of the arts. Theater groups, poetry performances, music and dance were central to the movement. Through different forms of media, African Americans were able to educate others about the expression of cultural differences and viewpoints. In particular, black poetry readings allowed African Americans to use vernacular dialogues. This was shown in the Harlem Writers Guild, which included black writers such as Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. These performances were used to express political slogans and as a tool for organization. Theater performances also were used to convey community issues and organizations. The theaters, as well as cultural centers, were based throughout America and were used for community meetings, study groups and film screenings. Newspapers were a major tool in spreading the Black Arts Movement. In 1964, "Black Dialogue" was published, making it the first major Arts movement publication. The Black Arts Movement, although short, is essential to the history of the United States. It spurred political activism and use of speech throughout every African-American community. It allowed African Americans the chance to express their voices in the mass media as well as become involved in communities. It can be argued that "the Black Arts movement produced some of the most exciting poetry, drama, dance, music, visual art, and fiction of the post-World War II United States" and that many important "post-Black artists" such as Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and August Wilson were shaped by the movement. The Black Arts Movement also provided incentives for public funding of the arts and increased public support of various arts initiatives. Legacy. The movement has been seen as one of the most important times in African-American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African-American Studies programs within universities. The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X. Among the well-known writers who were involved with the movement are Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Hoyt W. Fuller, and Rosa Guy. Although not strictly part of the Movement, other notable African-American writers such as novelists Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed share some of its artistic and thematic concerns. Although Reed is neither a movement apologist nor advocate, he said: I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that. BAM influenced the world of literature with the portrayal of different ethnic voices. Before the movement, the literary canon lacked diversity, and the ability to express ideas from the point of view of racial and ethnic minorities, which was not valued by the mainstream at the time. Influence. Theatre groups, poetry performances, music and dance were centered on this movement, and therefore African Americans gained social and historical recognition in the area of literature and arts. Due to the agency and credibility given, African Americans were also able to educate others through different types of expressions and media outlets about cultural differences. The most common form of teaching was through poetry reading. African-American performances were used for their own political advertisement, organization, and community issues. The Black Arts Movement was spread by the use of newspaper advertisements. The first major arts movement publication was in 1964."No one was more competent in [the] combination of the experimental and the vernacular than Amiri Baraka, whose volume "Black Magic Poetry 1961–1967" (1969) is one of the finest products of the African-American creative energies of the 1960s."

c44aa12a-2725-4ae0-aa9c-d337a6d51771

m2d2_wiki

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron first recorded it for his 1970 album "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox", on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongo drums. A re-recorded version, with a full band, was the B-side to Scott-Heron's first single, "Home Is Where the Hatred Is", from his album "Pieces of a Man" (1971). It was also included on his compilation album, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (1974). All these releases were issued on the Flying Dutchman Productions record label. The song's title was originally a popular slogan among the 1960s Black Power movements in the United States. Its lyrics either mention or allude to several television series, advertising slogans and icons of entertainment and news coverage that serve as examples of what "the revolution will not" be or do. The song is a response to the spoken-word piece "When the Revolution Comes" by The Last Poets, from their eponymous debut, which opens with the line "When the revolution comes some of us will probably catch it on TV". It was inducted to the National Recording Registry in 2005.

6d59cc2a-80d7-40c3-b934-d632324db608

m2d2_wiki

Been There, Done That (book) Been There, Done That: Family Wisdom for Modern Times is a 2016 non-fiction book written by real life husband and wife Al Roker and Deborah Roberts. Overview. An insight into the marriage of media personalities Al Roker and Deborah Roberts.

a4d2f0bd-53e2-433e-bc2c-f67a389d0300

m2d2_wiki

On the Down Low On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of Straight Black Men Who Sleep with Men is a 2004 New York Times Bestselling non-fiction book by J. L. King. The book was released in hardback on April 14, 2004 through Broadway Books and details the sexual lives of African-American men who are on the "down low" or having sex with men while posing or identifying as heterosexual. When the book was initially released, King denied claims that he was gay in both the book and in the media, but later confirmed that he was gay in 2010. Synopsis. In the book King discusses the subject of African-American men who claim to be or otherwise consider themselves to be heterosexual, but hold secret sexual encounters with other men. The men give an outward appearance of only being heterosexual and will hold long-term relationships with women without informing the women or anyone else that they are having encounters, some of which are unprotected, with other men. King also discusses his own personal experience with living on the "down low", as well as what he perceives as potential risks and dangers that some forms of the lifestyle can bring. Reception. Critical reception for "On the Down Low" was mostly positive, with Booklist calling the book "a revealing look at an important social and health issue". Robert Burns, director of Brother to Brother, criticized the book, stating that it "perpetuates stereotypes" and that the down low culture was "more complex" and "doesn't just exist the way (King) explained it". On the Up and Up. In 2005 King's ex-wife Brenda Stone Browder published "On the Up and Up", a non-fiction book that was described as both a "survival guide" and a biography of Browder's life before and after discovering King's activities. See also. General:

46df1254-43db-4519-bac7-a52e257b4898

m2d2_wiki

The Nigger Bible The Nigger Bible is a book by Robert H. deCoy, originally self-published by deCoy and then reissued by Holloway House in 1967, and again in 1972 (). Described as a "key statement" in the Black Power movement, it is a social and linguistic analysis of the word "nigger" and of the origins and contemporary circumstances of the black peoples of America. Content. The form is varied and might be described as a series of reflections. In the preface, Dick Gregory (whose autobiography was entitled "Nigger") writes: "In abolishing and rejecting the Caucasian-Christian philosophical and literary forms while recording his 'Black Experiences,' this writer has removed himself from their double-standard, hypocritical frames of reference". It attempts to tease apart the cultural, philosophical, and scriptural origins of what the author calls an "Alabaster Man", one that experienced the conclusions and prejudices at the root of their oppression. It examines, among other texts, the Christian bible and its terminology. the book explores the power of words, and re-interprets and critiques core western religious and philosophical constructs, including those that are central to much of the modern African-American religious experience. In one of the chapters he discusses "the genealogy of Jody Grind"; Eugene B. Redmond remarks deCoy is one of many African-American writers who "continues a tradition by seeking out folk epics and ballads as sources of poetry". DeCoy re-examines the word "nigger", demystifies it, and attempts to embed critical thinking skills about black personality types and categories. The author deconstructs the Christianity of "Niggers" (including, in his view, Black Muslims) as well as the values of the New Left. The book contains an analysis of the cultural and racial significance of Mardi Gras. DeCoy also published "Cold Black Preach" (1971, ). "The Black Scholar" summarized: "Noted author of the explosive best seller "The Nigger Bible" takes on the black preaching establishment".

2800492a-9568-446b-b8bc-ceb52948c47f

m2d2_wiki

John F. Callahan John F. Callahan is literary executor for Ralph Ellison, and was the editor for his posthumously-released novel "Juneteenth". In addition to his work with Ellison, Callahan has written or edited numerous volumes related to African-American literature, with a particular emphasis on 20th century literature. Some of Callahan's other works include "In the African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in 20th Century Black Fiction", "Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Casebook", and "The Illusions of a Nation: Myth and History in the Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald". Callahan also edited Ellison's short story collection "Flying Home" and co-edited with Albert Murray the Modern Library edition of "Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray". As Darryl Pinckney has observed: "Thanks to Callahan, there are more Ellison titles now than existed during his lifetime." In 2010 Callahan published a fuller version of Ellison's unfinished second novel as "Three Days Before the Shooting". Callahan serves as the Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis & Clark College. He earned his B.A. from the University of Connecticut and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Callahan is the author of "A Man You Could Love", a novel published in 2007 by Fulcrum Publishing. In 2015, Callahan donated his papers to the Lewis & Clark Archives.

53cdb58e-8abd-4de7-aa54-79cb1c7bfca5

m2d2_wiki

Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence is an annual national literary award designed to recognize rising African-American fiction writers. First awarded in 2007, the prize is underwritten by donors of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation in honor of the literary heritage provided by author Ernest J. Gaines, with the winner receiving a cash award ($15,000 as of 2020) "to support and enable the writer to focus on writing." It has been described as "the nation's biggest prize for African-American writers".

1fea41c4-7b54-4ade-b57d-d952fc86b0f1

m2d2_wiki

Black Lies, White Lies Black Lies, White Lies: The Truth According to Tony Brown is a 1995 book by Tony Brown, published by William Morrow & Company. Brown advocates for black self-reliance. He criticizes black politicians' ties to the Democratic Party. He stated that African-Americans make up four "tribes". Richard Kahlenberg of "The Washington Post""stated that "conspiracy theories", including those targeting the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and saying that AIDS research funds are not distributed properly, make up about 33% of the content. Kahlenberg stated that the criticisms of affirmative action for wealthier minorities are "flashes of insight". Background. Brown is a Republican. The book was dedicated to his foster guardians, Elizabeth "Mama" Sanford and Mabel Holmes, Sanford's daughter. Reception. Kahlenberg stated that Brown's "sensationalist style that works better on television than in print" undermines his "legitimate criticisms". "Publishers Weekly" stated that Brown "undermines his case with a broad-brush assessment of the black community", referring to the designation of tribes, "and exaggerated references to black leaders' support for (and America's drift to) ``socialism.""

30df9888-3b24-4579-9bbc-ea5be312a6de

m2d2_wiki

Kimani Press Kimani Press was formed by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd. in December 2005, with the purchase of the Arabesque, Sepia, and New Spirit Imprints from BET Books. Arabesque was the first line of original African-American romance novels from a major publishing house, and published two single-titles each month until it ceased publication in February 2015. The Sepia imprint featured commercial women’s fiction, and New Spirit served the growing African-American inspirational marketplace with both fiction and non-fiction releases. In July 2006, Harlequin launched Kimani Romance, the only African-American series imprint in the marketplace today, with four new releases each month. In May 2017, it was announced that Harlequin was no longer acquiring titles for the Kimani Romance imprint, with the final titles due to be released in 2018. In February 2007, Kimani TRU was launched targeting a young-adult, multi-cultural audience with one new release each month. This line ceased publication in October 2014. Since 2005, Kimani Press novels have been available in eBook format, a portable downloaded alternative to the standard paperback. Kimani Press imprints. The name 'KIMANI' is of Kikuyu Origin. Arabesque: The leading line of African-American romances. An-award-winning imprint of traditional and contemporary romance novels written by African-American authors. The last title was released in February 2015. Kimani Romance: Series romance. The last title will be released in 2018. Kimani Tru: Young-adult fiction featuring African-American youth. The last title was released in October 2014. Kimani Press Special Releases : Special Releases from favorite Kimani Press authors. The last title was released in January 2015.

08c74a0a-4caf-434b-81b6-04209ba16591

m2d2_wiki

Black Renaissance in D.C. The Black Renaissance in D.C. was a social, intellectual, and cultural movement in Washington, D.C. that began in 1919 and continued into the late 1920s. Background. Before the start of the Black Renaissance, Washington, D.C. developed an educated and prosperous Black middle class, made up of Black intellectuals and scholars who often studied at Howard University. Washington, D.C. had the country's largest Black community from 1900 to 1920, heavily influencing the development of the Black Renaissance in the area. While the Black Renaissance movement ultimately began in Harlem, Manhattan, New York, with the Harlem Renaissance, the movement ultimately spread to cities across the United States. In Washington, D.C., the movement began on July 19, 1919, with the alleged sexual assault of a white woman by a black predator. The event was never confirmed, but it incited inflammatory responses from the four daily newspapers in the city. Several hundred whites formed a mob near Murder Bay off of Pennsylvania Avenue, a neighborhood known for prostitution and violence. The mob went on to assault a Black couple who were walking on 9th and D Streets, Southwest. Many prominent figures in the Harlem movement had strong roots in Washington, D.C. and heavily influenced the movement there. Development. Music. U-Street was known as a place of entertainment and jazz music. The street was often referred to as "Black Broadway".

7c91c5b4-314d-4fcb-aa1d-d0c198a8d4ed

m2d2_wiki

Afro-Brazilian literature Afro-Brazilian literature has existed in Brazil since the mid-19th century with the publication of Maria Firmina dos Reis's novel "Ursula" in 1859. Other writers from the late 19th century and early 20th century include Machado de Assis, Cruz e Sousa and Lima Barreto. Yet, Afro-Brazilian literature as a genre that recognized the ethnic and cultural origins of the writer did not gain national prominence in Brazil until the 1970s with the revival of Black Consciousness politics known as the Movimento Negro. History. Literature written by individuals or groups of African ancestry in the present-day nation of Brazil, it can trace its origins to the 19th century. However, oral traditions of histories and narratives can be traced back to the 16th century when African slaves were brought across the Atlantic to work in the Portuguese colonies. Written forms of Afro-Brazilian literature do not appear until the 19th century with publications by writers such as Maria Firmina dos Reis, Cruz e Sousa and Machado de Assis. There also existed during the 19th century a vast wealth of literature on Afro-Brazilians written by White Brazilians. Many of these writers were abolitionists that included Castro Alves, Joaquim Nabuco, Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, and Naturalist writers that included Aluísio Azevedo, Jose Veríssimo, and Raul Pompéia. The well known Bahian author of the 20th century, Jorge Amado, also included many aspects of Afro-Brazilian culture and religion in many of his novels such as "Tenda dos Milagres" ("Tent of Miracles") and "A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro Dágua" ("The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell"). With the largest population of African descendants outside of Africa found in Brazil, the importance of focusing on Afro-Brazilian literature has increased in recent years with the publication of multiple anthologies and literary criticisms revolving around Afro-Brazilian writers. Furthermore, Afro-Brazilian literature reflects the complex relationship between Brazil's long history of slavery, its politics of branqueamento (racial whitening) that were implemented by the Brazilian government during the late 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and the myth of racial democracy that pervaded and still exists within the Brazilian national consciousness. Major writers/contributors. 19th century. Maria Firmina dos Reis. Born in São Luiz do Maranhão October 11, 1825, Maria Firmina dos Reis was a mulata woman living in a segregated society. Her maternal aunt was crucial in her education as well the writer Sotero dos Reis. During the beginning of the 1880s, she creates the first free and coed state school in Maranhão while simultaneously maintaining a constant presence in the local press publishing poetry, fiction and chronicles. In 1859, she publishes her best known book, "Úrsula" which focuses on the issue of slavery from the perspective of the "Other". Because of the attitudes regarding the silencing and submission of women in 19th-century Brazilian society, Maria Firmina dos Reis omits her name from the cover of "Úrsula" and writes the pseudonym "Uma Maranhense” (A Maranhese woman). It is not until 1975, when Horácio de Almeida publishes a facsimile of "Úrsula", that Maria Firmina dos Reis is revealed as the author of the book. Machado de Assis. Considered to be the greatest Brazilian writer and the first writer to be inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Machado de Assis was a mulatto (more specifically, a quadroon) whose grandparents were slaves. 20th century. Quilombhoje. An Afro-Brazilian literary group founded by a group of Paulistanos in 1980 by Cuti, Oswaldo de Camargo, Paulo Colina, Abelardo Rodrigues and others, its objective was to discuss and deepen the understanding of Afro-Brazilians in literature. It also desired to promote the habit of reading and to develop and to encourage studies, research and analysis concerning Black literature and culture. The group is best known for its annual publication of "Cadernos Negros" (Black Notebooks), an anthology of poetry, fiction, and essays by Afro-Brazilian writers, artists and intellectuals. In collaboration with other organizations and academic literary departments, they have created courses, seminars, and debates about Afro-Brazilian literature and questions of race in literature. Since 1999 the group is coordinated by Esmeralda Ribeiro and Márcio Barbosa. Late 20th/early 21st century. Paulo Lins. Best known for his novel "Cidade de Deus" ("City of God"), Paulo Lins currently teaches at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. "Cidade de Deus" was the result of eight years of ethnographic fieldwork that Lins conducted in the favela of the same name and where he grew up as a child. Lins is currently working on a book that deals with slavery in Brazil since the 15th century. Ferréz and Literatura Marginal (Marginal Literature). Literatura Marginal was another Afro-Brazilian literary group founded by a group of writers and artists from the São Paulo favela of Capão Redondo in 2005. This literary group has a strong relationship with the hip-hop culture of São Paulo with writers crossing over into the production of rap, and rap artists crossing over into the field of literary production. One of the leaders of Literatura Marginal, Ferrez, is considered to be the most published and best known writer of this group. His first publication came in 1997 with a collection of poetry entitled "Fortaleza da Desilusão" (Fortress of Disillusion). He then published two novels: "Capão Pecado" and "O Manual Pratico do Odio" (The Practical Manual of Hate). His writings have a prominent aesthetic of gratuitous violence and sex that conveys life in the urban periphery. The use of slang and Afro-Brazilian cultural and historical allusions is commonly found throughout his novels as well. Afro-Brazilian literary studies and criticism. In recent years, Afro-Latino Studies has gained attention in U.S., Latin-American, European and African universities. Within this broad field of study, Afro-Brazilian Literary & Cultural Studies has also gained traction in National Literature, Anthropology, History, and other academic departments. Several notable books include "The Afro-Brazilian Mind: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literary and Cultural Criticism", edited by Niyi Afolabi (Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin), that brings together writers, academics, and intellectuals from the U.S. and Brazil to focus on the genre of Afro-Brazilian literature and culture. Another important book is "Writing Identity: The Politics of Afro-Brazilian Literature" by Emanuelle Oliveira (Associate Professor, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Vanderbilt University) uses Pierre Bourdieu's theory of culture production to analyze Quilombhoje's literary and cultural production as Afro-Brazilians. "Black Brazil: Culture, Identity, and Social Mobilization", edited by Randal Johnson and Larry Crook, is a collection of essays that focus on Afro-Brazilians through the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, literary studies, religious studies, and performance studies.

4c8aef9a-d194-48ec-a19d-f58875d49074

m2d2_wiki

Afrocentricity (book)

d43a636a-2351-4201-9102-6b8f41df818e

m2d2_wiki

Writing Black Britain Writing Black Britain 1948–1998 is an anthology of black British writings published in 2000 and edited by James Procter. The selection of writings includes many well-known writers such as Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. This is an interdisciplinary collection and contains a variety of writings that discuss different forms of representation, i.e. films, music, and photography. It is centred on works of the diaspora, including Caribbean, African, and South Asian experiences. This collection is the first of its kind and critically engages with both the construction and community of "black Britain" and power relations. Every writer has something to say about their own positionality and how they've come to theorize black Britain. The book is subdivided into three main parts covering distinct time periods: 1948 to late 1960s, later 1960s to mid-1980s, and mid-1980s to late 1990s. Each main part is framed by an introduction and then divided between "literature" and "essays and documents". While many anthologies following were filled with pieces written specifically for the anthology's publication, "Writing Black Britain" is a collection of previously published text. These pieces were initially compiled in order to prevent misinterpretation and inaccuracy about Black communities in Britain and Germany. Because of this, the anthology was aimed at speaking to mainstream white audiences in order to highlight the Black presence in European life. When reading and discussing "Writing Black Britain", it is important to keep in mind the fact that it was designed for use in university coursework and the potential effect this may have had on what materials were and were not included for publication. Periodising post-war black Britain. In "Writing Black Britain" we are reminded of the accountability we all need to share in how we tell history. This anthology contains literature that begins with 1948, an important year because of the HMT "Empire Windrush". However, "Writing Black Britain" recognizes the genealogy of black Britain pre-1948. The introduction states, "an introduction to the project of this anthology requires both an account of the historical conditions in which it is embedded and a consideration of the problems and potentialities of recuperating a 'block' (1948–98) of black British literary and cultural production 'anterior' to it. I will now turn to that symbolic year, 1948, as a means of grounding this Introduction." This allows the collection to present a critical look at what has also been forgotten in the foregrounding of the year 1948. It serves as a reminder of the continuity within the anthology's timeline of violence against black racialized bodies. The book goes into details of violence against black racialized bodies, such as the killings that took place on the account of race. Yet, the sole presence of blacks in Britain is not the only minority discussed; there is also the discussion of South Asian, African, and Caribbean cultural production within Britain. The Caribbean Artists Movement. This anthology engages with blackness and the Caribbean Community in Britain, especially looking at migration and how art serves as resistance. The Caribbean Artists Movement began in Britain, giving this discussion local relevance. In the first section, Claudia Jones speaks to the cultural identity formation of Afro-Caribbeans. Feminism within "Writing Black Britain". Recognizing the centrality of black women struggles within the formation of a black Britain, within this anthology black women speak to power differentials and intersectionality in their essay. As Hazel Carby states, "The fact that black women are subject to the 'simultaneous' oppression of patriarchy, class, and 'race' is the prime reason for not employing parallels that render their position and experience not only marginal but also invisible." The "Handsworth Songs" Letters. The anthology brings conversations to light, including the conversation/debate that occurred between Stuart Hall, Darcus Howe, and Salman Rushdie. The Black Audio Film Collective released their film "Handsworth Songs" (1986), and there was much to say about it and its implications. The film looks at the "riots" of 1985 in Handsworth and South London.

100b70ba-ea01-42dd-a80c-375fdc4a90d0

m2d2_wiki

The Atlantic Sound The Atlantic Sound is a 2000 travel book by Caryl Phillips. It was published in the UK by Faber and Faber and in the US by Knopf. In the words of the "Publishers Weekly" review: "Journeys, as forces of spiritual and cultural transformation, bind this trio of nonfiction narratives, which explores the legacy of slavery in each of the three major points of the transatlantic slave trade." Geoffrey Moorhouse, assessing the book for "The New York Times", wrote: "Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, but he's been an Englishman almost from the start, and has since become nearly as much at home in New York as he is in London. He is uncommonly well placed, therefore, to ponder the relationship between people of his own ancestry and those of Europe and North America, as well as that which has lately and self-consciously been pursued by black Americans and West Indians anxious to reclaim their stake in Africa. Because he's a writer and not an academic or a polemicist, he has done this lyrically in "The Atlantic Sound," with an extremely balanced assessment divided into five episodes, each casting further light on the intricate patterns and prejudices of race." Exploring what constitutes "home", Phillips repeats a journey he made as a child in the late 1950s on a banana boat from the Caribbean to Britain, then visits three cities pivotal to the African diaspora: Liverpool in England, where many ships involved in the triangular trade departed; Elmina on the coast of Ghana, site of the most important slave fort in Africa; and Charleston in the US south, where one-third of African Americans were landed and sold into bondage, and where Phillips makes a pilgrimage to Magnolia Cemetery to lay flowers at the grave of Julius Waties Waring, a white judge who played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement. Writing in "The Guardian", reviewer Maya Jaggi notes: "It is characteristic of Phillips's vision that, in excavating the hidden history of this antebellum tourist centre, he draws imaginative links between diasporic wanderers and a white man whose moral stand made him an outcast in his own hometown." The book was described by "Kirkus Reviews" as: "A splendidly honest and vividly detailed venture into some of history's darkest corners—by a novelist who is also a superb reporter."

514e8662-3f38-43a4-acd8-ac1b859796e1

m2d2_wiki

Gents (novel) Gents is a novel by Warwick Collins first published in 1997. It is set in the unlikely environment of a "Gentlemen's" toilet, somewhere in London. The story describes the lives of three West Indian immigrants who run a public urinal in London. Collins claimed it was stimulated in part by his memories of apartheid when he lived as a child in South Africa. The New York Times reviewer wrote: "Mr. Collins is able to express, deftly, several contrasting views of homosexuality. ..., resolves to make up his own mind about "alternative" life styles and does precisely that, with a mixture of love and logic."

9c988e6e-2f5e-4cbe-a4d9-a0ac49318f93

m2d2_wiki

Daughters of Africa Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora, edited and introduced by Margaret Busby, who compared the process of assembling the volume to "trying to catch a flowing river in a calabash". First published in 1992, in London by Jonathan Cape (having been commissioned by Candida Lacey, now publisher of Myriad Editions), and in New York by Pantheon Books, "Daughters of Africa" is regarded as a pioneering work, covering a variety of genres — including fiction, essays, poetry, drama, memoirs and children's writing — and more than 1000 pages in extent. Arranged chronologically, beginning with traditional oral poetry, it includes work translated from African languages as well as from Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The anthology's title derives from an 1831 declaration by Maria W. Stewart (1803–1880), the first African-American woman to give public lectures, in which she said: "O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! awake! arise! no longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties." A companion volume entitled New Daughters of Africa, featuring a further 200-plus contributors, was published in 2019. As described by Bernardine Evaristo in "The Guardian" in June 2020: "Bringing together fiction, poetry, memoir and essays, both books are an incredible introduction to black women’s writing from around the world, and feature every established name you can imagine, as well those who deserve to be better known." Associated with the anthology is the Margaret Busby "New Daughters of Africa" Award for a woman student from Africa. Reception. "Daughters of Africa" was widely praised on publication. Reviewing the anthology for Black British newspaper "The Weekly Journal", Evie Arup wrote: ""Daughters of Africa" is a literary first. Never before has the work of women of African descent world-wide been gathered together in one volume. The breadth of this collection is startling... This book should be required reading for any student of literature, and a standard reference book in school libraries, and, to paraphrase that well known slogan, 'every home should have one. A reviewer from "The Independent" observed: "This book may seem to be about literature but in the end it is as much a testament to language: its power to create attitudes as well as its potency as a means of expression." Described by "The Observer" as a "glorious fat anthology that makes a history out of a selection, and puts an unsung group of people on the map", according to "Library Journal", it is "an invaluable text for courses on women writers and writers of African descent", and Keneth Kinnamon in "Callaloo" saw it as "impressive", noting: "Brief headnotes and long bibliographies enhance the value of this important volume." Lorna Sage in the "Independent on Sunday" concluded that ""Daughters of Africa" has a paradoxical universality", while "The Washington Post Book World" called it: "A magnificent starting place for any reader interested in becoming part of the collective enterprise of discovering and uncovering the silent, forgotten, and underrated voices of black women." The reviewer for "Black Enterprise" wrote: "It is a landmark anthology... Busby's first-of-a-kind anthology is a poignant reminder of how vast and varied the body of black women's writing is." It has also been called "groundbreaking in its presentation and exposure of the work of female African writers", "one of the most significant assemblages of writers across the diaspora" and "the ultimate reference guide to the writing of 'daughters of Africa. The "Times Literary Supplement" review by Maya Jaggi stated: "With rare exceptions, anthologies of black writing and of women's writing have given the impression that there was very little literary endeavour by black women before the 1980s. Margaret Busby's impressive and imaginative selection of 'words and writings', "Daughters of Africa", finally destroys that misconception, while tracing continuities within a tradition of women's writing, deriving from Africa yet stretching across continents and centuries." Jaggi goes on to say: "Some writings (such as those by ancient Egyptian or Ethiopian queens) have been selected primarily for their historical significance, or to celebrate little-known landmarks of achievement. Most, however, have been chosen for their literary qualities, making the anthology a source of continual pleasure and surprise. (...) The cumulative power of this monumental and absorbing anthology stems from the clarity and vibrancy of the voices it assembles. While effectively dismissing the equation of oppression with 'voicelessness', it restores marginalized or isolated writers to the centre of their own rich, resilient and truly international tradition." The anthology was included in "Sacred Fire: "QBR" 100 Essential Black Books", which said: ""Daughters of Africa" is a monumental achievement because it is the most comprehensive international anthology of oral and written literature by women of African descent ever attempted. (...) The success of the collection is that it clearly illustrates why all women of African descent are connected by showing how closely related are the obstacles, the chasms of cultural indifference, and the disheartening racial and sexual dilemmas they faced. In so doing, the collection captures the range of their singular and combined accomplishments. "Daughters of Africa"′s accomplishment lies in its glorious portrayal of the richness and magnitude of the spiritual well from which we've all drawn inspiration and to where we've all gone for sustenance, and as such, it is a stunning literary masterpiece." The anthology was on the Royal African Society's list of "50 Books By African Women That Everyone Should Read", was named by "Ms Afropolitan" as one of "7 non-fiction books African feminists should read", features regularly on many required-reading lists, and in the words of Kinna Likimani: "It remains the ultimate guide to women writers of African descent." Contributors. More than 200 women are featured in "Daughters of Africa", including: Influence and legacy. The anthology inspired Koyo Kouoh to edit a German-language equivalent, "Töchter Afrikas", that was published in 1994. In 2009 "Daughters of Africa" was on "Wasafiri" magazine's list of 25 Most Influential Books from the previous quarter-century. In November 2017, "Wasafiri" included a special feature marking the 25th anniversary of the first publication of "Daughters of Africa", including an interview with the editor by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, an article by Candida Lacey and contributions from Ayobami Adebayo, Edwige-Renée Dro, Angela Barry, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Nadifa Mohamed, and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers about the influence of the anthology on them. "Importantly, it was a beacon for every young black woman who dreamed of writing. Phillippa Yaa de Villiers told Busby, 'We were behind the bars of apartheid — we South Africans had been cut off from the beauty and majesty of African thought traditions, and "Daughters of Africa" was among those works that replenished our starved minds.'" Listing many of the names included in "Daughters of Africa", Tom Odhiambo of the University of Nairobi stated: "These writers can be described as the matriarchs of African literature. They pioneered 'African' writing, in which they were not simply writing stories about their families, communities and countries, but they were also writing themselves into the African literary history and African historiography. They claimed space for women storytellers in the written form, and in some sense reclaimed the woman’s role as the creator and carrier of many African societies’ narratives, considering that the traditional storytelling session was a women’s domain." "New Daughters of Africa". In December 2017, it was announced that a companion volume, entitled New Daughters of Africa, had been commissioned from Margaret Busby by Myriad Editions. Published on 8 March 2019 and characterised as "a behemoth of thought and reflection, exploring sisterhood, tradition, romance, race and identity – individually, and at large", "New Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of writing by women of African descent" features a further 200 writers: "The new volume expands on and reinforces the assertions of its predecessor. While including texts from the nineteenth century to the present, the book focuses primarily on writers who have come of age in the decades following "Daughters of Africa"s publication." Contributors are arranged according to decade of birth, "to give context to the generational links", as the editor states, and to continue to chart the black feminist literary canon. The anthology contains not only many well-known names but "a host of literary notables of the future". Kevin Le Gendre states in his review in "Echoes" magazine that "this inspiring collection punches above its very considerable weight... The result is great diversity within a supposed minority, a resounding statement of the infinitely rich life experience of the 'sisters' drawn from Africa and the Diaspora. As was the case with the acclaimed first edition there is a commendable balance between those who are known and those who are unknown but nonetheless have illuminating things to say...Busby has grouped the texts by decade, reaching right back to the pre-1900, which results in a clear and vivid sense of evolution in both style and subject matter." Among the contributors to "New Daughters of Africa" are: Adeola Solanke, Adrienne Kennedy, Afua Hirsch, Aida Edemariam, Aja Monet, Akosua Busia, Aminatta Forna, Amma Asante, Anaïs Duplan, Andaiye, Andrea Levy, Andrea Stuart, Angela Barry, Anni Domingo, Arthenia Bates Millican, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Ayeta Anne Wangusa, Ayòbámi Adébáyò, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Barbara Jenkins, Beatrice Lamwaka, Bernardine Evaristo, Beverley Bryan, Bonnie Greer, Bridget Minamore, Camille T. Dungy, Candace Allen, Candice Carty-Williams, Carolyn Cooper, Catherine Johnson, Chibundu Onuzo, Chika Unigwe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chinelo Okparanta, Claudia Rankine, Cordelia Ray, Danielle Legros Georges, Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Diana Evans, Diana Ferrus, Diane Abbott, Donika Kelly, Doreen Baingana, Dorothea Smartt, Edwidge Danticat, Edwige-Renée Dro, Effie Waller Smith, Elizabeth Keckley, Elizabeth Nunez, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Ellen Banda-Aaku, Esi Edugyan, Eve Ewing, Florida Ruffin Ridley, Gabeba Baderoon, Gabrielle Civil, Glaydah Namukasa, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Hannah Azieb Pool, Harriet Anena, Hawa Jande Golakai, Hilda Twongyeirwe, Imbolo Mbue, Irenosen Okojie, Isabella Matambanadzo, Jackee Budesta Batanda, Jacqueline Bishop, Jay Bernard, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Jennifer Teege, Jesmyn Ward, Joan Anim-Addo, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, Juliane Okot Bitek, Kadija Sesay, Karen Lord, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Ketty Nivyabandi, Kit de Waal, Lebogang Mashile, Leila Aboulela, Leone Ross, Lesley Lokko, Linda Bellos, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Lola Shoneyin, Maaza Mengiste, Makhosazana Xaba, Malika Booker, Malorie Blackman, Margo Jefferson, Marie NDiaye, Marina Salandy-Brown, Marion Bethel, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Meta Davis Cumberbatch, Mildred Barya, Minna Salami, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Nadia Davids, Nadifa Mohamed, Nah Dove, Nalo Hopkinson, Namwali Serpell, Nana-Ama Danquah, Nana Asma'u, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Natalia Molebatsi, Natasha Trethewey, Nawal El Saadawi, Nikky Finney, Nnedi Okorafor, Noo Saro-Wiwa, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, Olúmìdé Pópóọlá, Panashe Chigumadzi, Patience Agbabi, Patrice Lawrence, Patricia Cumper, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Rashidah Ismaili, Rebecca Walker, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Rosamond S. King, Roxane Gay, Sade Adeniran, Safia Elhillo, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Sapphire, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Sarah Parker Remond, Sefi Atta, Simi Bedford, Sisonke Msimang, Stella Dadzie, SuAndi, Sue Woodford-Hollick, Summer Edward, Susan Kiguli, Taiye Selasi, Tanella Boni, Tess Onwueme, Tiphanie Yanique, Trifonia Melibea Obono, Valerie Tagwira, Verene Shepherd, Verna Wilkins, Wangui wa Goro, Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ, Warsan Shire, Winsome Pinnock, Yaba Badoe, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Yemisi Aribisala, Yewande Omotoso, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Yvonne Bailey-Smith, Yvonne Vera, Yvvette Edwards, Zadie Smith, Zandria Robinson, Zita Holbourne, Zoe Adjonyoh, Zukiswa Wanner, and others. "New Daughters of Africa" was launched in London at the South Bank Centre on 9 March 2019 at the WOW Festival, and contributors were subsequently featured at many other festivals and venues in the UK and abroad, including at the Wimbledon BookFest, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad, the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, and Somerset House. Editions of the anthology have also been published in the US by Amistad (HarperCollins) and in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers. Selected review coverage for "New Daughters". The review in the "Irish Times", describing "New Daughters of Africa" as a "vast and nuanced collection", notes that it is "arranged in order of the women's birth decades, a chronological reminder that African women have been creating art for many centuries; the youngest included are still in their twenties. ... a necessary wealth of work – a welcome addition to any book shelf and a compulsory education for anyone unaware of the countless gifted African women journalists, essayists, poets and speakers who should influence how we see the world." John Stevenson concluded his review in "Black History Month" magazine by saying: "Every Black home should own a copy of the book. The literary voices of Black women need to be heard even more urgently now." Imani Perry wrote in the "Financial Times": "Anthologies can read as mere assortment or collection. But their function, particularly when well composed — as is the case with this book — can be much more deliberate. Busby's choice to organise the writers by generation, rather than region or date of publication, has a powerful effect. From the 18th century to the present, the location of black women across borders — yet always in the winds of political, economic and social orders — emerges. Questions of freedom, autonomy, family, race and social transformation present themselves in generational waves. Thus, with more than 200 contributors, this anthology is also a social and cultural world history." The review by in the Kenyan "Daily Nation" said: "It is the kind of literary compendium that many prospective African women writers need to have today..."New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent" is a collection that the expert on literature, women studies, gender studies, African history; the feminist reader/scholar; or even the general reader will find refreshing considering the scope of the writing, as well as helpful as a reference source." Paul Burke's review in "NB" magazine, rating the anthology 5/5, stated: "This is a beautiful, challenging and triumphant collection of writing that increases our understanding of humanity and entertains royally. ...I'm just bowled over by the quality and breadth of contributions here but also the way they coalesce. The writing is, depending on each author's style, sharp, funny, romantic, confrontational and politically astute. This book has a heart and a sense of purpose and I think it's fair to say it is important and so relevant for our times. Anyone interested in Africa, gender politics, good storytelling and writing that pushes the boundaries of the form will love this book. ...This is a full on sensory experience, a stimulation for the brain and for the heart and some of the writing here stirs the blood and twists the gut. ...The depth of psychological, political, economic and cultural insight here is awe inspiring." In the opinion of the reviewer for the "New York Journal of Books": "Here is the book so many have been waiting for. The book to make sense of so many others...The topics are just as varied and shine bright lights on the lives of critically underrepresented women of color, and on the contributions of these gifted literary scholars: motherhood, slavery, love, work, immigration, assimilation, friendship, thwarted aspiration, infidelity, racism, marriage, poverty, and on and on. In fact, the only thing that is not varied here is the gloriously even quality of the writing. These are stories for crying and laughing and thinking. They are narratives for understanding, for seeking, for finding, yes, because it is a catalogue of lives that are not shown as much and as consistently as we need them to be. ...It is, perhaps, this bulk, this excess, this non-superfluous surplus, this literal and literary embarrassment of riches that sends the strongest of messages. Yes, there is this much talent and achievement here in the literature of people of color, the roots of these writers in Africa, but their immense contribution extends to every continent. It is this good. It is this great. So, how is it that it continues to be such a low percentage of all that is published, widely distributed, critiqued, discussed, taught, and shared?" Scholarship and awards. Connected with the new anthology, the Margaret Busby "New Daughters of Africa" Award was announced by the publisher, Myriad Editions, in partnership with SOAS, University of London, that will benefit an African woman student, with accommodation provided by International Students House, London. The launch of the award was made possible by the fact that, as well as Margaret Busby and her publisher donating to the fund from the anthology's earnings, all the contributors waived their fees in support of the cause. The first recipient of the award was announced in July 2020 as Idza Luhumyo from Kenya. Also in 2020, Busby and Myriad teamed with community-interest organization The Black Curriculum – founded to address the lack of black British history being taught – to donate 500 copies of "New Daughters of Africa" to schools in the UK. "New Daughters of Africa" was nominated for a 2020 NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work, alongside books by Petina Gappah, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jacqueline Woodson, and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, who was the eventual winner for Fiction.

aba30f28-5f81-4379-b0cf-5bc35857beb1

m2d2_wiki

Saga Prize The Saga Prize was a literary award for new Black British novelists, which ran from 1995 to 1998. History. The actress and writer Marsha Hunt established the Saga Prize in 1995 to recognise the literature emerging from indigenous black Britons' experiences. The prize – of £3,000 and a book contract – was for unpublished first novels. To be eligible, entrants needed a black African ancestor and to have been born in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland. The prize was sponsored by the travel firm Saga plc. Judges included Andrea Levy and Margaret Busby. The "afrocentric" nature of the Saga Prize and its restrictive definition of blackness caused controversy. The Commission for Racial Equality objected to its creation, and the Society of Authors refused to support it. The prize was successful, nevertheless, and ran for four years until 1998, winners including Diran Adebayo and Joanna Traynor.

3a9326d4-1772-4a16-a72e-a8b5ce1f8bc2

m2d2_wiki

Frances-Anne Solomon Frances-Anne Solomon (born 28 June 1966) is a Caribbean British-Canadian filmmaker, writer, producer, and distributor. She lives between Toronto, Canada, and Barbados. Biography. Born in England of Trinidadian parents, Frances-Anne Solomon began her professional life at the BBC in England, where she built a successful career as a producer, first with BBC Radio then with BBC television drama. She also produced and directed independent films through her company Leda Serene Films. In 1999, she moved her company to Canada, where she continued to write, direct, and produce films, television programs, theatre plays, and new media projects. In 2001, she founded CaribbeanTales, a charitable organisation producing, exhibiting and distributing educational multi-media projects based on Caribbean-heritage stories. The CaribbeanTales International Film Festival, founded in 2006 and based in Toronto, includes an annual festival, community screening series, and youth-focused film challenges. The CaribbeanTales Incubator Program develops original content for the regional and international market, CTFF also holds workshops and festivals in other territories, including to date Barbados, Belize, and Cuba. In 2010, Solomon founded CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution Inc, the first film distribution company in the English-speaking Caribbean dedicated to the marketing and sales of Caribbean-themed films. In 2014 she launched CaribbeanTales-TV, a video-on-demand platform. Solomon is a Director member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Early life. Solomon is the granddaughter of Trinidad and Tobago independence politician Dr. Patrick Solomon. When her grandfather left politics and took a role as a diplomat, the family lived in different countries including Canada, the United States, Europe and Venezuela. She moved back to Trinidad at nine years old, and attended the girls' "prestige" school, Bishop Anstey High School. At 18 she moved to Canada to live with her mother, and discovered a love of the arts, studying theatre at the University of Toronto's U.C. Playhouse, and poetry with Jay Macpherson. In 1986, she moved to England, to work for the BBC. Career. She trained in television production through the two-year BBC Production Training Program and worked with "Ebony", the Corporation's first Black magazine programme, before being hired as a Radio Drama producer in London. While there she was responsible for helping to introduce a number of initiatives aimed at diversifying the talent pool in BBC Radio Drama. Many great talents got their first entry to Radio Drama in this way, including actors Adjoa Andoh and Clarence Smith to the BBC Drama Repertory Company, producers Pam Fraser Solomon and Nandita Ghose, composer Dominique Le Gendre and writers Parv Bancil, Maya Chowdhry, Rukhsana Ahmad, Tanika Gupta and Jackie Kay among others. Solomon returned to television as a Script Editor for ScreenPlay, a strand of mostly studio-based TV dramas. Between 1992 and 1998 she worked as a script editor and then as a producer and executive producer for BBC Single Drama and Films under George S. J. Faber. For the BBC she produced and executive-produced feature films, including "Speak Like a Child", director John Akomfrah's narrative debut, and "Love Is The Devil", John Maybury's award-winning first feature. She credits her time at the BBC as providing her with a grounding, and vision of the importance and creative power of public service broadcasting. In 1993, Solomon won a place on the prestigious BBC Drama Directors Course. While working as a Drama Producer for the BBC, she continued to run her own company Leda Serene Films, where she developed, produced and directed films including "What My Mother Told Me", a Trinidad-based autobiographical story of generational violence in the context of a middle-class family; and "Peggy Su!", produced by BBC Films. Set in a Chinese laundry in Liverpool in the 1960s, it remains one of the only British films to depict the lives of the Chinese in Britain. Ultimately she found the racism of the British film and television industry constraining, and like many of her peers, chose to emigrate. Returning to Canada in 2000, she founded the CaribbeanTales Media Group and continued to develop and produce television, feature films and new media projects. "Lord Have Mercy!", produced with Claire Prieto and Vanz Chapman, was Canada's first multicultural sitcom, and starred Russell Peters alongside Caribbean stars Leonie Forbes and Dennis "Sprangalang" Hall. "A Winter Tale", CityTV, 2007, depicts a Caribbean-Canadian community plagued by gun violence in Toronto. Solomon is the director of "HERO", a hybrid feature, inspired by elements of the life of Trinidad and Tobago war hero, judge and jurist Ulric Cross. Solomon was the recipient of the 2018 Visionary Award from the ReelWorld Film Festival. On 1 July 2019 Solomon was one of 842 new members invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. The 2019 class is 50% women, 29% people of color, and represents 59 countries. CaribbeanTales. CaribbeanTales Inc. CaribbeanTales Inc a not-for-profit company was formed in 2001, originally as an internet platform for Caribbean-themed film and arts. Early projects include CaribbeanTales.ca, a multimedia e-newsletter, and "Literature Alive", a multi-faceted project including an educational website, audio books, and a documentary series, profiling Caribbean authors, many of whom are based in Canada. The non-profit company became a registered Canadian charity in 2014. In 2006, Solomon founded the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival in Toronto as a platform for Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora films and filmmakers from the region. The CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival, during Black History Month in Toronto, screens Africentric films in schools and communities. The Film Festival Group has also produced festivals and events in Barbados and New York. CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution. While teaching film at the University of the West Indies in 2009, she consolidated her connections in the region. This led to the creation of CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution, a Barbados-based company, and the first film distribution company dedicated to international distribution of Caribbean-themed audio visual content. The company was co-founded with cultural industries specialist Dr. Keith Nurse, businessman Terrence Farrell, and filmmakers Lisa Wickham and Mary Wells, with the goal to tackle head-on problems of the monetisation of Caribbean-themed content and the development of the Caribbean Film Industry. Creators of Colour Incubator. The Creators of Colour Incubator (formerly CaribbeanTales Incubator Program), also founded in 2010, an annual program that takes place during the Toronto International Film Festival, aims to train filmmakers in the creation and marketing of sustainable content, and has been committed to helping to develop an infrastructure and international profile for Caribbean films, in the region and the diaspora. The Program has evolved into a development and production hub for regional content. In 2015, CaribbeanTales won a five-year sponsorship and production deal with Flow, the brand name for Cable and Wireless Ltd, the largest telecommunications conglomerate in the Caribbean. The deal, brokered with Flow C.E.O John Reid, supports the production of at least three television series pilots a year from the CaribbeanTales Incubator Program. In 2016, the first of these projects were selected: "Caribbean Girl NYC" by Mariette Monpierre, "Battledream Chronicle" by Alain Bidard, and "Heat" by Menelik Shabazz. Production is underway in New York, Martinique and Barbados respectively. In 2017 Flow and CaribbeanTales expanded their relationship to give Flow subscribers around the Caribbean access to CaribbeanTales vast catalogue of films through Television on demand. CaribbeanTales-TV. CaribbeanTales established an online VOD platform CaribbeanTales-TV.

73af4d81-25c6-4170-b7a7-0218e2465d31

m2d2_wiki

Buchi Emecheta Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta ( born in 21 July 1944, died in 25 January 2017) was a Nigerian novelist, based in the UK from 1962. she wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She authored more than 20 books, including "Second Class Citizen" (1974), "The Bride Price" (1976), "The Slave Girl" (1977) and "The Joys of Motherhood" (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby. Emecheta's themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. She once described her stories as "stories of the world, where women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." Her works explore the tension between tradition and modernity. She has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948". Early life and education. Emecheta was born on 21 July 1944, in Lagos, Nigeria, to Igbo parents, Alice (Okwuekwuhe) Emecheta and Jeremy Nwabudinke. Her parents were from Umuezeokolo Odeanta village in Ibusa, Delta State. Her father was a railway worker and moulder. Due to the gender bias of the time, the young Buchi Emecheta was initially kept at home while her younger brother was sent to school; but after persuading her parents to consider the benefits of her education, she spent her early childhood at an all-girl's missionary school. When she was nine years old her father died ("of complications brought on by a wound contracted in the swamps of Burma, where he had been conscripted to fight for Lord Louis Mountbatten and the remnants of the British Empire"). A year later, Emecheta received a full scholarship to Methodist Girls' School in Yaba, Lagos, where she remained until the age of 16. During this time, her mother died, leaving Emecheta an orphan. In 1960, she married Sylvester Onwordi, a schoolboy to whom she had been engaged since she was 11 years old. Later that year, she gave birth to a daughter, and in 1961 their younger son was born. Onwordi immediately moved to London to attend a university, and Emecheta joined him there with their first two children in 1962. She gave birth to five children in six years, three daughters and two sons Her marriage was unhappy and sometimes violent, as chronicled in her autobiographical writings such as 1974's "Second-Class Citizen". To keep her sanity, Emecheta wrote in her spare time. However, her husband was deeply suspicious of her writing, and he ultimately burned her first manuscript, as revealed in "The Bride Price", eventually published in 1976. That was her first book, but she had to rewrite it after the first version had been destroyed. She later said "There were five years between the two versions." At the age of 22, pregnant with her fifth child, Emecheta left her husband. While working to support her children alone, she earned a B.Sc (Hons) degree in Sociology in 1972 from the University of London. In her 1984 autobiography, "Head Above Water" she wrote: "As for my survival for the past twenty years in England, from when I was a little over twenty, dragging four cold and dripping babies with me and pregnant with a fifth one—that is a miracle." She went on later to gain her PhD from the university in 1991. Career. Emecheta began writing about her experiences of Black British life in a regular column in the "New Statesman", and a collection of these pieces became her first published book in 1972, "In the Ditch". The semi-autobiographical novel chronicled the struggles of a main character named Adah, who is forced to live in a housing estate while working as a librarian to support her five children. Her second novel published two years later, "Second-Class Citizen" (Allison and Busby, 1974), also drew on Emecheta's own experiences, and both books were eventually published in one volume by Allison and Busby under the title "Adah's Story" (1983). These three stories introduced Emecheta's three major themes which were the quest for equal treatment, self confidence and dignity as a woman. Her works Gwendolen (1989) also published as family, Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000) differ in some way as they address the issues of immigrants life in Great Britain. From 1965 to 1969, Emecheta worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London. From 1969 to 1976, she was a youth worker and sociologist for the Inner London Education Authority, and from 1976 to 1978 she worked as a community worker in Camden, North London, meanwhile continuing to produce further novels with Allison and Busby – "The Bride Price" (1976), "The Slave Girl" (1977), "The Joys of Motherhood" (1979) and "Destination Biafra" (1982) – as well as the children's books "Titch the Cat" (1979) and "Nowhere To Play" (1980). Following her success as an author, Emecheta travelled widely as a visiting professor and lecturer. She visited several American universities, including Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1980 to 1981, she was senior resident fellow and visiting professor of English at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. From 1982 to 1983, Emecheta, together with her son Sylvester, ran the Ogwugwu Afor Publishing Company, publishing her own work under the imprint, beginning with "Double Yoke" (1982). She received an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary, 1982–83, and was one of "Granta"′s "Best of the Young British Novelists" in 1983. In 1982, she lectured at Yale University, and the University of London. She became a Fellow at the University of London in 1986. Over the years, Emecheta worked with many cultural and literary organizations, including the Africa Centre, London, and with the Caine Prize for African Writing as a member of the Advisory Council. Buchi Emecheta suffered a stroke in 2010, and she died in London on 25 January 2017, aged 72. Most of her fictional works are focused on sexual discrimination and racial prejudice informed by her own experiences as both a single parent and a black woman living in the United Kingdom. Awards and recognition. Among honours received during her literary career, Emecheta won the 1978 Jock Campbell Prize from the "New Statesman" (first won by Chinua Achebe's "Arrow of God") for her novel "The Slave Girl", and she was on "Granta" magazine's 1983 list of 20 "Best of Young British Novelists". She was a member of the British Home Secretary's Advisory Council on Race in 1979. In September 2004, she appeared in the "A Great Day in London" photograph taken at the British Library, featuring 50 Black and Asian writers who have made major contributions to contemporary British literature. In 2005, she was made an OBE for services to literature. She received an Honorary doctorate of literature from Farleigh Dickinson University in 1992. Legacy. In 2017, Emecheta's son Sylvester Onwordi announced the formation of the Buchi Emecheta Foundation – a charitable organisation promoting literary and educational projects in the UK and in Africa – which was launched in London on 3 February 2018 at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, together with new editions of several of her books published by Onwordi through his Omenala Press. Among participants in the celebration – "a gathering of writers, critics, artists, publishers, literature enthusiasts and cultural activists from all over the world, including London and other parts of the U.K., France, Germany, U.S., Canada, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and the Caribbean" – were Diane Abbott, Leila Aboulela, Carole Boyce Davies, Margaret Busby, James Currey, Louisa Uchum Egbunike, Ernest Emenyonu, Akachi Ezeigbo, Kadija George, Mpalive Msiska, Grace Nichols, Alastair Niven, Irenosen Okojie, Veronique Tadjo, Marie Linton Umeh, Wangui wa Goro, and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf. Buchi Emecheta features at number 98 on a list of 100 women recognised in August 2018 by "BBC History Magazine" as having changed the world. In March 2019, Camden Town Brewery launched a football kit using artwork featuring "some of the most inspiring female icons to have influenced the brewery's home borough of Camden". On 21 July 2019, which would have been Emecheta's 75th birthday, Google commemorated her life with a Doodle. In October 2019 a new exhibition space in the library for students at Goldsmiths, University of London, was dedicated to Buchi Emecheta.

51d90d20-42b0-4eb4-8248-19263fd34bee

m2d2_wiki

Pam Fraser Solomon Pam Fraser Solomon FRSA is a British producer/director of Guyanese heritage, whose work spans four decades in theatre, radio, film, television and education, winning prizes such as the Commission for Racial Equality "Race in the Media Award" in 1999. Her career in fringe and repertory theatre includes working for venues such as the Sheffield Crucible and the Theatre Royal Stratford East, and she is currently the Head of Creative Producing at Mountview drama school. Background. Born in Guyana and raised in London, England, Pam Fraser Solomon holds a master's degree from Middlesex University. Her early career included work in fringe and repertory theatre, with venues such as the Sheffield Crucible, the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Haymarket Theatre, and as a director for theatre companies Temba and BTC (Black Theatre Co-operative) in the 1980s. Bonnie Greer quoted Fraser Solomon in a 2006 "Guardian" article as saying: "In those days, black theatre was the new kid on the block, surviving from production to production or, if you were very lucky, season to season...The difference between black theatre and the rest was that many of us had degrees in drama or English, even physics – but we didn't dress the stage with it. You didn't have to be into theatre to make black theatre, and black theatre didn't always happen in black theatre spaces. But oddly, everyone knew exactly what they were talking about when they said 'black theatre'. Often we were expected to be 'black' and produce something alternative, preferably 'ghetto'. Funding bodies could ask you to be 'theatre' today and 'black' tomorrow. It was shifting sands." Speaking of how her Guyanese heritage and the experience of growing up in London as a Black woman has impacted her work, Fraser Solomon has said: "People like me with experiences that can inform characterisation and storytelling, subtly changing the emphasis, can lead drama away from comfort zones. This doesn't make me better than others, but it makes my contribution equally valid. I see the world through the eyes of a Black woman, so in that sense all my intuition eventually leads back to that fact." From 1991, Fraser Solomon was for 16 years a senior producer with BBC Radio, where she directed more than a hundred hours of audio dramas, and she was involved in major arts events such as the Africa95 and Africa '05 festivals, as well as the 2007 Abolition commemoration season. She wrote and produced for BBC Radio 4 in January 2001 the programme "Stealing the Glory", about the Arctic explorer Matthew Henson, presented by Colin Salmon. Her television drama work encompasses producing several episodes of "EastEnders" and "Holby City", and she was the development producer for the BBC short film "One Night In White Satin". She was an executive producer of the 2007 BBC2 television documentary "In Search of Wilberforce", presented by Moira Stuart. Also in 2007, Fraser Solomon produced on BBC Radio 3 "The Lamplighter" by Jackie Kay, who has written about the commissioning of the work for the season marking the bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act 1807: "After we had finished recording The Lamplighter, we sat around talking about the complex business of what we remember and what we forget. Pam Fraser Solomon said that her great grandmother, whose mother had been born enslaved, often had an enigmatic expression on her face. She'd say: 'I'm just listening to where the breeze is coming from.' I thought of all the silences - the silences from African people who do not want their children to hear about slavery, and from white people who do not want to discuss the family tree with its roots in a plantation in the Caribbean." Continuing her career as a freelance producer, director and script editor, Fraser Solomon was involved in projects including the production of the documentary film "Divided by Race, United in War and Peace", about Caribbean war veterans and their struggles against colour prejudice and racism. She took up the position of Head of MA Creative Producing at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in 2018. She is also Co-Chair of Theatre Deli. Among her awards as a producer/director are a 1999 Commission for Racial Equality "Race in the Media Award" (RIMA) for Radio Drama as director of Margaret Busby's play based on C. L. R. James's novel "Minty Alley", first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 1998, featuring Geff Francis, Vivienne Rochester and Burt Caesar. Fraser Solomon has served as a judge for prizes including The Whickers Radio & Audio Funding Award (RAFA).

8f689ec7-49f6-48d9-97eb-271ea2b0444b

m2d2_wiki

Caryl Phillips Caryl Phillips (born 13 March 1958) is a Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist. Best known for his novels (for which he has won multiple awards), Phillips is often described as a writer, since much of his fictional output is defined by its interest in, and searching exploration of, the experiences of peoples of the African diaspora in England, the Caribbean and the United States. As well as writing, Phillips has worked as an academic at numerous institutions including Amherst College, Barnard College, and Yale University, where he has held the position of Professor of English since 2005. Life. Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts to Malcolm and Lillian Phillips on 13 March 1958. When he was four months old, his family moved to England and settled in Leeds, Yorkshire. In 1976, Phillips won a place at Queen's College, Oxford University, where he read English, graduating in 1979. While at Oxford, he directed numerous plays and spent his summers working as a stagehand at the Edinburgh Festival. On graduating, he moved to Edinburgh, where he lived for a year, on the dole, while writing his first play, "Strange Fruit" (1980), which was taken up and produced by the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. Phillips subsequently moved to London, where he wrote two more plays "Where There is Darkness" (1982) and "Shelter" (1983) that were staged at the Lyric Hammersmith. At the age of 22, he visited St. Kitts for the first time since his family had left the island in 1958. The journey provided the inspiration for his first novel, "The Final Passage", which was published five years later. After publishing his second book, "A State of Independence" (1986), Phillips went on a one-month journey around Europe, which resulted in his 1987 collection of essays "The European Tribe". During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Phillips divided his time between England and St. Kitts while working on his novels "Higher Ground" (1989) and "Cambridge" (1991). In 1990, Phillips took up a Visiting Writer post at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He remained at Amherst College for a further eight years, becoming the youngest English tenured Professor in the US when he was promoted to that position in 1995. During this time, he wrote what is perhaps his best-known novel, "Crossing the River" (1993), which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. After taking up the position at Amherst, Phillips found himself doing "a sort of triangular thing" for a number of years, residing between England, St Kitts, and the U.S. Finding this way of living both "incredibly exhausting" and "prohibitively expensive", Phillips ultimately decided to give up his residence in St. Kitts, though he says he still makes regular visits to the island. In 1998, he joined Barnard College, Columbia University, as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order. In 2005 he moved to Yale University, where he currently works as Professor of English. He was made an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2000, and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2011. Works and critical reception. Phillips has tackled themes on the African slave trade from many angles, and his writing is concerned with issues of "origins, belongings and exclusion", as noted by a reviewer of his 2015 novel "The Lost Child". Phillips's work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1993 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for "Crossing the River" and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book award for "A Distant Shore". Phillips received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award for "Dancing in the Dark" in 2006.

bb5f58d6-adb2-490b-8fe6-d9f0b5222dce

m2d2_wiki

Mary Seacole Mary Jane Seacole ("née" Grant; 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British-Jamaican nurse, healer and businesswoman who set up the "British Hotel" behind the lines during the Crimean War. She described this as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers", and provided succour for wounded servicemen on the battlefield, and nursed many of them back to health. Coming from a tradition of Jamaican and West African "doctresses", Seacole displayed "compassion, skills and bravery while nursing soldiers during the Crimean War", through the use of herbal remedies. She was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton. Mary Seacole relied on her skill and experience as a healer and a doctress from Jamaica. Schools of nursing in England were only set up after the Crimean war, the first being the (Florence) Nightingale Training School, in 1860 at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Seacole was arguably the first nurse practitioner. Hoping to assist with nursing the wounded on the outbreak of the Crimean War, Seacole applied to the War Office to be included among the nursing contingent but was refused, so she travelled independently and set up her hotel and tended to the battlefield wounded. She became popular among service personnel, who raised money for her when she faced destitution after the war. In 1858 a four-day Fundraising Gala took place on the banks of the river Thames, to honour Mary Seacole. Crowds of about 80,000 attended, including veterans, their families and Royalty. After her death she was largely forgotten for almost a century, but was subsequently recognised for her success as a woman. Her autobiography, "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" (1857), is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman, although some aspects of its accuracy have been questioned by present-day supporters of Florence Nightingale. The erection of a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London, on 30 June 2016, describing her as a "pioneer", has generated controversy and opposition from Nightingale enthusiasts, such as Lynn McDonald, and others researching the period. Early life, 1805–25. Mary Jane Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, in the Colony of Jamaica, the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army, and a free Jamaican woman. Her mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed "The Doctress", was a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines. Mrs Grant also ran Blundell Hall, a boarding house at 7 East Street, which was considered one of the best hotels in all of Kingston. Silvia Federici argues that in the 16th and 17th centuries, European ruling elites carried out witch-hunts that in effect destroyed the folk medicine practised by working-class white women. In contrast, Jamaican doctresses mastered folk medicine, had a vast knowledge of tropical diseases, and had a general practitioner's skill in treating ailments and injuries, acquired from having to look after the illnesses of fellow slaves on sugar plantations. The role of a doctress in Jamaica was a mixture of a nurse, midwife, masseuse and herbalist, drawing strongly on the traditions of Creole medicine. Other notable Jamaican doctresses, who practised good hygiene and the use of herbal remedies in 18th-century Jamaica included, alongside Mrs Grant, Cubah Cornwallis, Sarah Adams and Grace Donne, who nursed and cared for Jamaica's wealthiest planter, Simon Taylor. They practised the use of good hygiene a century before Florence Nightingale wrote about its importance in her book "Notes on Nursing". At Blundell Hall, Seacole acquired her nursing skills, which included the use of hygiene, ventilation, warmth, hydration, rest, empathy, good nutrition and care for the dying. Blundell Hall also served as a convalescent home for military and naval staff recuperating from illnesses such as cholera and yellow fever. Seacole's autobiography says she began experimenting in medicine, based on what she learned from her mother, by ministering to a doll and then progressing to pets before helping her mother treat humans. Because of her family's close ties with the army, she was able to observe the practices of military doctors, and combined that knowledge with the West African remedies she acquired from her mother. In Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, neonatal deaths were more than a quarter of total births, at a time when British-Jamaican planter Thomas Thistlewood wrote about European doctors employing questionable practices such as mercury pills and the bleeding of the patient. However, Seacole, using traditional West African herbal remedies and hygienic practices, boasted that she never lost a mother or her child. Seacole was proud of both her Jamaican and Scottish ancestry and called herself a Creole, a term that was commonly used in a racially neutral sense to refer to the children of Europeans and Africans or Indigenous Americans. In her autobiography, "The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole", she records her bloodline thus: "I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family." Legally, she was classified as a mulatto, a multiracial person low on the Jamaican social ladder; Robinson speculates that she may technically have been a quadroon. Seacole emphasises her personal vigour in her autobiography, distancing herself from the contemporary stereotype of the "lazy Creole", She was proud of her black ancestry, writing, "I have a few shades of deeper brown upon my skin which shows me related – and I am proud of the relationship – to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved, and whose bodies America still owns." The West Indies were an outpost of the British Empire in the late 18th century, and the source or destination of one-third of Britain's foreign trade in the 1790s. Britain's economic interests were protected by a massive military presence, with 69 line infantry regiments serving there between 1793 and 1801, and another 24 between 1803 and 1815. This meant that large numbers of British troops succumbed to tropical diseases for which they were unprepared, providing West Indian nurses such as Seacole with large numbers of patients on a regular basis. In 1780, one of Seacole's predecessors, Cornwallis, was a Jamaican mixed-race doctress who nursed a young Horatio Nelson back to health in Port Royal after two-thirds of his force succumbed to tropical disease. In contrast to the Jamaican Maroons, whose populations experienced regular growth, the white population of Jamaica was constantly ravaged by diseases and illnesses. While the Maroons relied on the "doctresses" such as Queen Nanny to provide for their healthcare needs, the white planters depended on the questionable treatments provided by European doctors. Mary Seacole spent some years in the household of an elderly woman, whom she called her "kind patroness", before returning to her mother. She was treated as a member of her patroness's family and received a good education. As the educated daughter of a Scottish officer and a free black woman with a respectable business, Seacole would have held a high position in Jamaican society. In about 1821, Seacole visited London, staying for a year, and visited her relatives in the merchant Henriques family. Although London had a number of black people, she records that a companion, a West Indian with skin darker than her own "dusky" shades, was taunted by children. Seacole herself was "only a little brown"; she was nearly white according to one of her biographers, Dr. Ron Ramdin. She returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a "large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale". Her later travels would be as an "unprotected" woman, without a chaperone or sponsor – an unusually independent practice at a time when women had limited rights. In the Caribbean, 1826–51. After returning to Jamaica, Seacole cared for her "old indulgent patroness" through an illness, finally returning to the family home at Blundell Hall after the death of her patroness (a woman who gave financial support to her) a few years later. Seacole then worked alongside her mother, occasionally being called to provide nursing assistance at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp. She also travelled the Caribbean, visiting the British colony of New Providence in The Bahamas, the Spanish colony of Cuba, and the new Republic of Haiti. Seacole records these travels, but omits mention of significant current events, such as the Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica of 1831, the abolition of slavery in 1833, and the abolition of "apprenticeship" in 1838. She married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in Kingston on 10 November 1836. Her marriage, from betrothal to widowhood, is described in just nine lines at the conclusion of the first chapter of her autobiography. Robinson reports the legend in the Seacole family that Edwin was an illegitimate son of Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton, who was adopted by Thomas, a local "surgeon, apothecary and man midwife" (Seacole's will indicates that Horatio Seacole was Nelson's godson: she left a diamond ring to her friend, Lord Rokeby, "given to my late husband by his godfather Viscount Nelson", but there was no mention of this godson in Nelson's own will or its codicils.) Edwin was a merchant and seems to have had a poor constitution. The newly married couple moved to Black River and opened a provisions store which failed to prosper. They returned to Blundell Hall in the early 1840s. During 1843 and 1844, Seacole suffered a series of personal disasters. She and her family lost much of the boarding house in a fire in Kingston on 29 August 1843. Blundell Hall burned down, and was replaced by New Blundell Hall, which was described as "better than before". Then her husband died in October 1844, followed by her mother. After a period of grief, in which Seacole says she did not stir for days, she composed herself, "turned a bold front to fortune", and assumed the management of her mother's hotel. She put her rapid recovery down to her hot Creole blood, blunting the "sharp edge of [her] grief" sooner than Europeans who she thought "nurse their woe secretly in their hearts". Seacole absorbed herself in work, declining many offers of marriage. She later became known to the European military visitors to Jamaica who often stayed at Blundell Hall. She treated and nursed patients in the cholera epidemic of 1850, which killed some 32,000 Jamaicans. In Central America, 1851–54. In 1850, Seacole's half-brother Edward moved to Cruces, Panama, which was then part of New Granada. There, approximately up the Chagres River from the coast, he followed the family trade by establishing the Independent Hotel to accommodate the many travellers between the eastern and western coasts of the United States (the number of travellers had increased enormously, as part of the 1849 California Gold Rush). Cruces was the limit of navigability of the Chagres River during the rainy season, which lasts from June to December. Travellers would ride on donkeys approximately along the Las Cruces trail from Panama City on the Pacific Ocean coast to Cruces, and then down-river to the Atlantic Ocean at Chagres (or vice versa). In the dry season, the river subsided, and travellers would switch from land to the river a few miles farther downstream, at Gorgona Most of these settlements have now been submerged by Gatun Lake, formed as part of the Panama Canal. In 1851, Seacole travelled to Cruces to visit her brother. Shortly after her arrival, the town was struck by cholera, a disease which had reached Panama in 1849. Seacole was on hand to treat the first victim, who survived, which established Seacole's reputation and brought her a succession of patients as the infection spread. The rich paid, but she treated the poor for free. Many, both rich and poor, succumbed. She eschewed opium, preferring mustard rubs and poultices, the laxative calomel (mercuric chloride), sugars of lead (lead(II) acetate), and rehydration with water boiled with cinnamon. While her preparations had moderate success, she faced little competition, the only other treatments coming from a "timid little dentist", who was an inexperienced doctor sent by the Panamanian government, and the Roman Catholic Church. The epidemic raged through the population. Seacole later expressed exasperation at their feeble resistance, claiming they "bowed down before the plague in slavish despair". She performed an autopsy on an orphan child for whom she had cared, which gave her "decidedly useful" new knowledge. At the end of this epidemic she herself contracted cholera, forcing her to rest for several weeks. In her autobiography, "The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands", she describes how the residents of Cruces responded: "When it became known that their "yellow doctress" had the cholera, I must do the people of Cruces the justice to say that they gave me plenty of sympathy, and would have shown their regard for me more actively, had there been any occasion." Cholera was to return again: Ulysses S. Grant passed through Cruces in July 1852, on military duty; a hundred and twenty men, a third of his party, died of the disease there or shortly afterwards en route to Panama City. Despite the problems of disease and climate, Panama remained the favoured route between the coasts of the United States. Seeing a business opportunity, Seacole opened the British Hotel, which was a restaurant rather than an hotel. She described it as a "tumble down hut," with two rooms, the smaller one to be her bedroom, the larger one to serve up to 50 diners. She soon added the services of a barber. As the wet season ended in early 1852, Seacole joined other traders in Cruces in packing up to move to Gorgona. She records a white American giving a speech at a leaving dinner in which he wished that "God bless the best yaller woman he ever made" and asked the listeners to join with him in rejoicing that "she's so many shades removed from being entirely black". He went on to say that "if we could bleach her by any means we would [...] and thus make her acceptable in any company[,] as she deserves to be". Seacole replied firmly that she did not "appreciate your friend's kind wishes with respect to my complexion. If it had been as dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and just as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value." She declined the offer of "bleaching" and drank "to you and the general reformation of American manners". Salih notes Seacole's use here of eye dialect, set against her own English, as an implicit inversion of the day's caricatures of "black talk". Seacole also comments on the positions of responsibility taken on by escaped African-American slaves in Panama, as well as in the priesthood, the army, and public offices, commenting that "it is wonderful to see how freedom and equality elevate men". She also records an antipathy between Panamanians and Americans, which she attributes in part to the fact that so many of the former had once been slaves of the latter. In Gorgona, Seacole briefly ran a females-only hotel. In late 1852, she travelled home to Jamaica. Already delayed, the journey was further made difficult when she encountered racial discrimination while trying to book passage on an American ship. She was forced to wait for a later British boat. In 1853, soon after arriving home, Seacole was asked by the Jamaican medical authorities to provide nursing care to victims of a severe outbreak of yellow fever. She found that she could do little, because the epidemic was so severe. Her memoirs state that her own boarding house was full of sufferers and she saw many of them die. Although she wrote, "I was sent for by the medical authorities to provide nurses for the sick at Up-Park Camp," she did not claim to bring nurses with her when she went. She left her sister with some friends at her house, went to the camp (about a mile, or 1.6 km, from Kingston), "and did my best, but it was little we could do to mitigate the severity of the epidemic." However, in Cuba Seacole is remembered with great fondness by those she nursed back to health, where she became known as "the Yellow Woman from Jamaica with the cholera medicine". Seacole returned to Panama in early 1854 to finalise her business affairs, and three months later moved to the New Granada Mining Gold Company establishment at Fort Bowen Mine some away near Escribanos. The superintendent, Thomas Day, was related to her late husband. Seacole had read newspaper reports of the outbreak of war against Russia before she left Jamaica, and news of the escalating Crimean War reached her in Panama. She determined to travel to England to volunteer as a nurse with experience in herbal healing skills, to experience the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war" as she described it in Chapter I of her autobiography. A part of her reasoning for going to the Crimean was that she knew some of the soldiers that were deployed there. In her autobiography she explains how she heard of soldiers that she had cared for and nursed back to health in the 97th and 48th regiments were being shipped back to England in preparation for the fighting on the Crimean Peninsula. Crimean War, 1853–56. The Crimean War lasted from October 1853 until 1 April 1856 and was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the United Kingdom, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the conflict took place on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea and Turkey. Many thousands of troops from all the countries involved were drafted to the area, and disease broke out almost immediately. Hundreds perished, mostly from Cholera. Hundreds more would die waiting to be shipped out, or on the voyage. Their prospects were little better when they arrived at the poorly staffed, unsanitary and overcrowded hospitals which were the only medical provision for the wounded. In Britain, a trenchant letter in "The Times" on 14 October triggered Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, to approach Florence Nightingale to form a detachment of nurses to be sent to the hospital to save lives. Interviews were quickly held, suitable candidates selected, and Nightingale left for Turkey on 21 October. Seacole travelled from Navy Bay in Panama to England, initially to deal with her investments in gold-mining businesses. She then attempted to join the second contingent of nurses to the Crimea. She applied to the War Office and other government offices, but arrangements for departure were already underway. In her memoir, she wrote that she brought "ample testimony" of her experience in nursing, but the only example officially cited was that of a former medical officer of the West Granada Gold-Mining Company. However, Seacole wrote that this was just one of the testimonials she had in her possession. Seacole wrote in her autobiography, "Now, I am not for a single instant going to blame the authorities who would not listen to the offer of a motherly yellow woman to go to the Crimea and nurse her ‘sons’ there, suffering from cholera, diarrhœa, and a host of lesser ills. In my country, where people know our use, it would have been different; but here it was natural enough – although I had references, and other voices spoke for me – that they should laugh, good-naturedly enough, at my offer." Seacole also applied to the Crimean Fund, a fund raised by public subscription to support the wounded in Crimea, for sponsorship to travel there, but she again met with refusal. Seacole questioned whether racism was a factor in her being turned down. She wrote in her autobiography, "Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?" An attempt to join the contingent of nurses was also rebuffed, as she wrote, "Once again I tried, and had an interview this time with one of Miss Nightingale's companions. She gave me the same reply, and I read in her face the fact, that had there been a vacancy, I should not have been chosen to fill it." Seacole did not stop after being rebuffed by the Secretary-at-War, she soon approached his wife, Elizabeth Herbert, who also informed her "that the full complement of nurses had been secured" (Seacole 78, 79). Nightingale reportedly wrote, "I had the greatest difficulty in repelling Mrs Seacole's advances, and in preventing association between her and my nurses (absolutely out of the question!)...Anyone who employs Mrs Seacole will introduce much kindness - also much drunkenness and improper conduct". Seacole finally resolved to travel to Crimea using her own resources and to open the British Hotel. Business cards were printed and sent ahead to announce her intention to open an establishment, to be called the "British Hotel", near Balaclava, which would be "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers". Shortly afterwards, her Caribbean acquaintance, Thomas Day, arrived unexpectedly in London, and the two formed a partnership. They assembled a stock of supplies, and Seacole embarked on the Dutch screw-steamer "Hollander" on 27 January 1855 on its maiden voyage, to Constantinople. The ship called at Malta, where Seacole encountered a doctor who had recently left Scutari. He wrote her a letter of introduction to Nightingale. Seacole visited Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, where she asked for a bed for the night. Seacole wrote, "Mrs. B. questions me very kindly, but with the same look of curiosity and surprise. What object has Mrs. Seacole in coming out? This is the purport of her questions. And I say, frankly, to be of use somewhere; for other considerations I had not, until necessity forced them upon me. Willingly, had they accepted me, I would have worked for the wounded, in return for bread and water. I fancy Mrs. B— thought that I sought for employment at Scutari, for she said, very kindly – "Miss Nightingale has the entire management of our hospital staff, but I do not think that any vacancy – " Seacole interrupted Bracebridge to inform her that she intended to travel to Balaclava the next day to join her business partner. In her memoirs, she reported that her meeting with Nightingale was friendly, with Nightingale asking "What do you want, Mrs. Seacole? Anything we can do for you? If it lies in my power, I shall be very happy." Seacole told her of her "dread of the night journey by caique" and the improbability of being able to find the "Hollander" in the dark. A bed was then found for her and breakfast sent her in the morning, with a "kind message" from Bracebridge. A footnote in the memoir states that Seacole subsequently "saw much of Miss Nightingale at Balaclava," but no further meetings are recorded in the text. After transferring most of her stores to the transport ship "Albatross", with the remainder following on the "Nonpareil", she set out on the four-day voyage to the British bridgehead into Crimea at Balaclava. Lacking proper building materials, Seacole gathered abandoned metal and wood in her spare moments, with a view to using the debris to build her hotel. She found a site for the hotel at a place she christened Spring Hill, near Kadikoi, some along the main British supply road from Balaclava to the British camp near Sevastopol, and within a mile of the British headquarters. The hotel was built from the salvaged driftwood, packing cases, iron sheets, and salvaged architectural items such as glass doors and window-frames, from the village of Kamara, using hired local labour. The new British Hotel opened in March 1855. An early visitor was Alexis Soyer, a noted French chef who had travelled to Crimea to help improve the diet of British soldiers. He records meeting Seacole in his 1857 work "A Culinary Campaign" and describes Seacole as "an old dame of a jovial appearance, but a few shades darker than the white lily". Seacole requested Soyer's advice on how to manage her business, and was advised to concentrate on food and beverage service, and not to have beds for visitors because the few either slept on board ships in the harbour or in tents in the camp. The hotel was completed in July at a total cost of £800. It included a building made of iron, containing a main room with counters and shelves and storage above, an attached kitchen, two wooden sleeping huts, outhouses, and an enclosed stable-yard. The building was stocked with provisions shipped from London and Constantinople, as well as local purchases from the British camp near Kadikoi and the French camp at nearby Kamiesch. Seacole sold anything – "from a needle to an anchor"—to army officers and visiting sightseers. Meals were served at the Hotel, cooked by two black cooks, and the kitchen also provided outside catering. Despite constant thefts, particularly of livestock, Seacole's establishment prospered. Chapter XIV of "Wonderful Adventures" describes the meals and supplies provided to officers. They were closed at 8 pm daily and on Sundays. Seacole did some of the cooking herself: "Whenever I had a few leisure moments, I used to wash my hands, roll up my sleeves, and roll out pastry." When called to "dispense medications," she did so. Soyer was a frequent visitor, and praised Seacole's offerings, noting that she offered him champagne on his first visit. To Soyer, near the time of departure, Florence Nightingale acknowledged favourable views of Seacole, consistent with their one known meeting in Scutari. Soyer's remarks—he knew both women—show pleasantness on both sides. Seacole told him of her encounter with Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital: "You must know, M Soyer, that Miss Nightingale is very fond of me. When I passed through Scutari, she very kindly gave me board and lodging." When he related Seacole's inquiries to Nightingale, she replied "with a smile: 'I should like to see her before she leaves, as I hear she has done a deal of good for the poor soldiers.'" Nightingale, however, did not want her nurses associating with Seacole, as she wrote to her brother-in-law. Seacole often went out to the troops as a sutler, selling her provisions near the British camp at Kadikoi, and nursing casualties brought out from the trenches around Sevastopol or from the Tchernaya valley. She was widely known to the British Army as "Mother Seacole". Apart from serving officers at the British Hotel, Seacole also provided catering for spectators at the battles, and spent time on Cathcart's Hill, some north of the British Hotel, as an observer. On one occasion, attending wounded troops under fire, she dislocated her right thumb, an injury which never healed entirely. In a dispatch written on 14 September 1855, William Howard Russell, special correspondent of "The Times", wrote that she was a "warm and successful physician, who doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battlefield to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing." Russell also wrote that she "redeemed the name of sutler", and another that she was "both a Miss Nightingale and a [chef]". Seacole made a point of wearing brightly coloured, and highly conspicuous, clothing—often bright blue, or yellow, with ribbons in contrasting colours. While Lady Alicia Blackwood later recalled that Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay ...". Her peers, though wary at first, soon found out how important Seacole was for both medical assistance and morale. One British medical officer described Seacole in his memoir as "The acquaintance of a celebrated person, Mrs. Seacole, a coloured women who out of the goodness of her heart and at her own expense, supplied hot tea to the poor sufferers [wounded men being transported from the peninsula to the hospital at Scutari ] while they are waiting to be lifted into the boats…. She did not spare herself if she could do any good to the suffering soldiers. In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day she was at her self-chosen post with her stove and kettle, in any shelter she could find, brewing tea for all who wanted it, and they were many. Sometimes more than 200 sick would be embarked in one day, but Mrs. Seacole was always equal, to the occasion". But Seacole did more than carry tea to the suffering soldiers. She often carried bags of lint, bandages, needles and thread to tend to the wounds of soldiers. In late August, Seacole was on the route to Cathcart's Hill for the final assault on Sevastopol on 7 September 1855. French troops led the storming, but the British were beaten back. By dawn on Sunday 9 September, the city was burning out of control, and it was clear that it had fallen: the Russians retreated to fortifications to the north of the harbour. Later in the day, Seacole fulfilled a bet, and became the first British woman to enter Sevastopol after it fell. Having obtained a pass, she toured the broken town, bearing refreshments and visiting the crowded hospital by the docks, containing thousands of dead and dying Russians. Her foreign appearance led to her being stopped by French looters, but she was rescued by a passing officer. She looted some items from the city, including a church bell, an altar candle, and a three-metre (10 ft) long painting of the Madonna. After the fall of Sevastopol, hostilities continued in a desultory fashion. The business of Seacole and Day prospered in the interim period, with the officers taking the opportunity to enjoy themselves in the quieter days. There were theatrical performances and horse-racing events for which Seacole provided catering. Seacole was joined by a 14-year-old girl, Sarah, also known as Sally. Soyer described her as "the Egyptian beauty, Mrs Seacole's daughter Sarah", with blue eyes and dark hair. Nightingale alleged that Sarah was the illegitimate offspring of Seacole and Colonel Henry Bunbury. However, there is no evidence that Bunbury met Seacole, or even visited Jamaica, at a time when she would have been nursing her ailing husband. Ramdin speculates that Thomas Day could have been Sarah's father, pointing to the unlikely coincidences of their meeting in Panama and then in England, and their unusual business partnership in Crimea. Peace talks began in Paris in early 1856, and friendly relations opened between the Allies and the Russians, with a lively trade across the River Tchernaya. The Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 March 1856, after which the soldiers left Crimea. Seacole was in a difficult financial position, her business was full of unsaleable provisions, new goods were arriving daily, and creditors were demanding payment. She attempted to sell as much as possible before the soldiers left, but she was forced to auction many expensive goods for lower-than-expected prices to the Russians who were returning to their homes. The evacuation of the Allied armies was formally completed at Balaclava on 9 July 1856, with Seacole "... conspicuous in the foreground ... dressed in a plaid riding-habit ...". Seacole was one of the last to leave Crimea, returning to England "poorer than [she] left it". Though she had left poorer, her impact on the soldiers was invaluable to the soldiers she treated, changing their perceptions about her as described in "the Illustrated London News:" "Perhaps at first the authorities looked askant at the woman-volunteer; but they soon found her worth and utility; and from that time until the British army left the Crimea, Mother Seacole was a household word in the camp...In her store on Spring Hill she attended many patients, cared for many sick, and earned the good will and gratitude of hundreds". Sociology professor Lynn McDonald is co-founder of The Nightingale Society, which promotes the legacy of Nightingale, who did not see eye-to-eye with Seacole. McDonald believes that Seacole's role in the Crimean War was overplayed: However, historians maintain that claims that Seacole only served "tea and lemonade" do a disservice to the tradition of Jamaican "doctresses", such as Seacole's mother, Cubah Cornwallis, Sarah Adams and Grace Donne, who nursed and cared for Jamaica's wealthiest planter of the 18th century, Simon Taylor. They all used herbal remedies and hygienic practices in the late eighteenth century, long before Nightingale took up the mantle. Social historian Jane Robinson argues in her book "Mary Seacole: The Black Woman who invented Modern Nursing" that Seacole was a huge success, and she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family. Mark Bostridge points out that Seacole's experience far outstripped Nightingale's, and that the Jamaican's work comprised preparing medicines, diagnosis, and minor surgery. The Times war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing "A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons." Back in London, 1856–60. After the end of the war, Seacole returned to England destitute and in poor health. In the conclusion to her autobiography, she records that she "took the opportunity" to visit "yet other lands" on her return journey, although Robinson attributes this to her impecunious state requiring a roundabout trip. She arrived in August 1856 and opened a canteen with Day at Aldershot, but the venture failed through lack of funds. She attended a celebratory dinner for 2,000 soldiers at Royal Surrey Gardens in Kennington on 25 August 1856, at which Nightingale was chief guest of honour. Reports in "The Times" on 26 August and "News of the World" on 31 August indicate that Seacole was also fêted by the huge crowds, with two "burly" sergeants protecting her from the pressure of the crowd. However, creditors who had supplied her firm in Crimea were in pursuit. She was forced to move to 1, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden in increasingly dire financial straits. The Bankruptcy Court in Basinghall Street declared her bankrupt on 7 November 1856. Robinson speculates that Seacole's business problems may have been caused in part by her partner, Day, who dabbled in horse trading and may have set up as an unofficial bank, cashing debts. At about this time, Seacole began to wear military medals. These are mentioned in an account of her appearance in the bankruptcy court in November 1856. A bust by George Kelly, based on an original by Count Gleichen from around 1871, depicts her wearing four medals, three of which have been identified as the British Crimea Medal, the French Légion d'honneur and the Turkish Order of the Medjidie medal. Robinson says that one is "apparently" a Sardinian award (Sardinia having joined Britain and France in supporting Turkey against Russia in the war). The Jamaican "Daily Gleaner" stated in her obituary on 9 June 1881 that she had also received a Russian medal, but it has not been identified. However, no formal notice of her award exists in the "London Gazette", and it seems unlikely that Seacole was formally rewarded for her actions in Crimea; rather, she may have bought miniature or "dress" medals to display her support and affection for her "sons" in the Army. Seacole's plight was highlighted in the British press. As a consequence a fund was set up, to which many prominent people donated money, and on 30 January 1857, she and Day were granted certificates discharging them from bankruptcy. Day left for the Antipodes to seek new opportunities, but Seacole's funds remained low. She moved from Tavistock Street to cheaper lodgings at 14 Soho Square in early 1857, triggering a plea for subscriptions from "Punch" on 2 May. However, in "Punch"s 30 May edition, she was heavily criticised for a letter she sent begging her favorite magazine, which she claimed to have often read to her British Crimean War patients, to assist her in gaining donations. After quoting her letter in full the magazine provides a satiric cartoon of the activity she describes, captioned "Our Own Vivandière," describing Seacole as a female sutler. The article observes: "It will be evident, from the foregoing, that Mother Seacole has sunk much lower in the world, and is also in danger of rising much higher in it, than is consistent with the honour of the British army, and the generosity of the British public." While urging the public to donate, the commentary's tone can be read as ironic: "Who would give a guinea to see a mimic-sutler woman, and a foreigner, frisk and amble about on the stage, when he might bestow the money on a genuine English one, reduced to a two-pair back, and in imminent danger of being obliged to climb into an attic?" Further fund-raising and literary mentions kept Seacole in the public eye. In May 1857 she wanted to travel to India, to minister to the wounded of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but she was dissuaded by both the new Secretary of War, Lord Panmure, and her financial troubles. Fund-raising activities included the "Seacole Fund Grand Military Festival", which was held at the Royal Surrey Gardens, from Monday 27 July to Thursday 30 July 1857. This successful event was supported by many military men, including Major General Lord Rokeby (who had commanded the 1st Division in Crimea) and Lord George Paget; more than 1,000 artists performed, including 11 military bands and an orchestra conducted by Louis Antoine Jullien, which was attended by a crowd of circa 40,000. The one-shilling entrance charge was quintupled for the first night, and halved for the Tuesday performance. However, production costs had been high and the Royal Surrey Gardens Company was itself having financial problems. It became insolvent immediately after the festival, and as a result Seacole only received £57, one quarter of the profits from the event. When eventually the financial affairs of the ruined Company were resolved, in March 1858, the Indian Mutiny was over. Writing of his 1859 journey to the West Indies, the British novelist Anthony Trollope described visiting Mrs. Seacole's sister's hotel in Kingston in his "The West Indies and the Spanish Main" (Chapman & Hall, 1850). Besides remarking on the pride of the servants and their firm insistence that they be treated politely by guests, Trollope remarked that his hostess, "though clean and reasonable in her charges, clung with touching tenderness to the idea that beefsteak and onions, and bread and cheese and beer, comprised the only diet proper to an Englishman." "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands". A 200-page autobiographical account of her travels was published in July 1857 by James Blackwood as "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands", the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. Priced at one shilling and six pence (1/) a copy, the cover bears a striking portrait of Seacole in red, yellow and black ink. Robinson speculates that she dictated the work to an editor, identified in the book only as W.J.S., who improved her grammar and orthography. In the work Seacole deals with the first 39 years of her life in one short chapter. She then expends six chapters on her few years in Panama, before using the following 12 chapters to detail her exploits in Crimea. She avoids mention of the names of her parents and precise date of birth. In the first chapter, she talks about how her practice of medicine began on animals, such as cats and dogs. Most of the animals caught diseases from their owners, and she would cure them with homemade remedies.  Within the book, Mrs. Seacole discusses how when she returned from the Crimean War she was poor, whereas others in her same position returned to England rich. Mrs. Seacole shares the respect she gained from the men in the Crimean War. The soldiers would refer to her as "mother" and would ensure her safety by personally guarding her on the battlefield. A short final "Conclusion" deals with her return to England, and lists supporters of her fund-raising effort, including Rokeby, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Newcastle, William Russell, and other prominent men in the military. Also within the Conclusion, she describes all of her career adventures experienced in the Crimean War as pride and pleasure.The book was dedicated to Major-General Lord Rokeby, commander of the First Division. In a brief preface, the "Times" correspondent William Howard Russell wrote, "I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead." The "Illustrated London News" received the autobiography favorably agreeing with the statements made in the preface "If singleness of heart, true charity and Christian works- of trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless women on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battlefield can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers". In 2017 Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 best nonfiction books, calling it "gloriously entertaining". Later life, 1860–81. Seacole joined the Roman Catholic Church circa 1860, and returned to a Jamaica changed in her absence as it faced economic downturn. She became a prominent figure in the country. However, by 1867 she was again running short of money, and the Seacole fund was resurrected in London, with new patrons including the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Cambridge, and many other senior military officers. The fund burgeoned, and Seacole was able to buy land on Duke Street in Kingston, near New Blundell Hall, where she built a bungalow as her new home, plus a larger property to rent out. By 1870, Seacole was back in London, living at 40 Upper Berkley St., St. Marylebone. Robinson speculates that she was drawn back by the prospect of rendering medical assistance in the Franco-Prussian War. It seems likely that she approached Sir Harry Verney (the husband of Florence Nightingale's sister Parthenope) Member of Parliament for Buckingham who was closely involved in the British National Society for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded. It was at this time Nightingale wrote her letter to Verney insinuating that Seacole had kept a "bad house" in Crimea, and was responsible for "much drunkenness and improper conduct". In London, Seacole joined the periphery of the royal circle. Prince Victor (a nephew of Queen Victoria; as a young Lieutenant he had been one of Seacole's customers in Crimea) carved a marble bust of her in 1871 that was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1872. Seacole also became personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales who suffered with white leg and rheumatism. In the census of 3 April 1881, Seacole is listed as a boarder at 3 Cambridge Street, Paddington. Seacole died on 14 May 1881 at her home, 3 Cambridge Street (later renamed Kendal Street) in Paddington, London; the cause of death was noted as "apoplexy". She left an estate valued at more than £2,500. After some specific legacies, many of exactly 19 guineas, the main beneficiary of her will was her sister, (Eliza) Louisa. Lord Rokeby, Colonel Hussey Fane Keane, and Count Gleichen (three trustees of her Fund) were each left £50; Count Gleichen also received a diamond ring, said to have been given to Seacole's late husband by Lord Nelson. A short obituary was published in "The Times" on 21 May 1881. She was buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Harrow Road, Kensal Green, London. Recognition. While well known at the end of her life, Seacole rapidly faded from public memory in Britain. However, in recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in her and efforts to acknowledge her achievements. She was cited as an example of "hidden" black history in Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" (1988), like Olaudah Equiano: "See, here is Mary Seacole, who did as much in the Crimea as another magic-lamping lady, but, being dark, could scarce be seen for the flame of Florence's candle." She has been better remembered in Jamaica, where significant buildings were named after her in the 1950s: the headquarters of the Jamaican General Trained Nurses' Association was christened "Mary Seacole House" in 1954, followed quickly by the naming of a hall of residence of the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and a ward at Kingston Public Hospital was also named in her memory. More than a century after her death, Seacole was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. Her grave in London was rediscovered in 1973; a service of reconsecration was held on 20 November 1973, and her gravestone was also restored by the British Commonwealth Nurses' War Memorial Fund and the Lignum Vitae Club. Nonetheless, when scholarly and popular works were written in the 1970s about the Black British presence in Britain, she was absent from the historical record, and went unrecorded by Dominican-born scholar Edward Scobie and Nigerian historian Sebastian Okechukwu Mezu. The centenary of her death was celebrated with a memorial service on 14 May 1981 and the grave is maintained by the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, an organization founded in 1980 by Jamaican-British Auxiliary Territorial Service corporal, Connie Mark. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected by the Greater London Council at her residence in 157 George Street, Westminster, on 9 March 1985, but it was removed in 1998 before the site was redeveloped. A "green plaque" was unveiled at 147 George Street, in Westminster, on 11 October 2005. However, another blue plaque has since been positioned at 14 Soho Square, where she lived in 1857. By the 21st century, Seacole was much more prominent. Several buildings and entities, mainly connected with health care, were named after her. In 2005, British politician Boris Johnson wrote of learning about Seacole from his daughter's school pageant and speculated: "I find myself facing the grim possibility that it was my own education that was blinkered." In 2007 Seacole was introduced into the National Curriculum, and her life story is taught at many primary schools in the UK alongside that of Florence Nightingale. She was voted into first place in an online poll of 100 Great Black Britons in 2004. The portrait identified as Seacole in 2005 was used for one of ten first-class stamps showing important Britons, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the National Portrait Gallery. British buildings and organisations now commemorate her by name. One of the first was the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at Thames Valley University, which created the NHS Specialist Library for Ethnicity and Health, a web-based collection of research-based evidence and good practice information relating to the health needs of minority ethnic groups, and other resources relevant to multi-cultural health care. There is another Mary Seacole Research Centre, this one at De Montfort University in Leicester, and a problem-based learning room at St George's, University of London is named after her. Brunel University in West London houses its School of Health Sciences and Social Care in the Mary Seacole Building. New buildings at the University of Salford and Birmingham City University bear her name, as does part of the new headquarters of the Home Office at 2 Marsham Street. There is a Mary Seacole ward in the Douglas Bader Centre in Roehampton. There are two wards named after Mary Seacole in Whittington Hospital in North London. The Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton named its outpatients' wing "The Mary Seacole Wing" in 2010, in honour of her contribution to nursing. The NHS Seacole Centre in Surrey was opened on 4 May 2020, following a campaign led by Patrick Vernon, a former NHS manager. It is a community hospital which will first provide a temporary rehabilitation service for patients recovering from Covid-19. The building was previously called Headley Court. An annual prize to recognise and develop leadership in nurses, midwives and health visitors in the National Health Service was named Seacole, to "acknowledge her achievements". The NHS Leadership Academy has developed a six-month leadership course called the Mary Seacole Programme, which is designed for first time leaders in healthcare. An exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary of her birth opened at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London in March 2005. Originally scheduled to last for a few months, the exhibition was so popular that it was extended to March 2007. A campaign to erect a statue of Seacole in London was launched on 24 November 2003, chaired by Clive Soley, Baron Soley. The design of the sculpture by Martin Jennings was announced on 18 June 2009. There was significant opposition to the siting of the statue at the entrance of St Thomas' Hospital, but it was unveiled on 30 June 2016. The words written by Russell in "The Times" in 1857 are etched on to Seacole's statue: "I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead." A biopic feature film is being made of her life by Racing Green Pictures and producer Billy Peterson. The film stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Mary Seacole. A short animation about Mary Seacole was adapted from a book entitled "Mother Seacole", published in 2005 as part of the bicentenary celebrations. Seacole is featured in BBC's "Horrible Histories", where she is portrayed by Dominique Moore. Viewer complaints about the show led the BBC Trust to conclude that the episode's portrayal of "racial issues was materially inaccurate". A two-dimensional sculpture of Seacole was erected in Paddington in 2013. On 14 October 2016, Google celebrated her with a Google Doodle. Controversies. Seacole's recognition has been controversial. It has been argued that she has been promoted at the expense of Florence Nightingale. Sociology professor Lynn McDonald has written that "...support for Seacole has been used to attack Nightingale's reputation as a pioneer in public health and nursing." There was opposition to the siting of a statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas' Hospital on the grounds that she had no connection with this institution, whereas Florence Nightingale did. Dr Sean Lang has stated that she "does not qualify as a mainstream figure in the history of nursing", while a letter to "The Times" from the Florence Nightingale Society and signed by members including historians and biographers asserted that "Seacole's battlefield excursions ... took place post-battle, after selling wine and sandwiches to spectators. Mrs Seacole was a kind and generous businesswoman, but was not a frequenter of the battlefield "under fire" or a pioneer of nursing." An article by Lynn McDonald in "The Times Literary Supplement" asked "How did Mary Seacole come to be viewed as a pioneer of modern nursing?", comparing her unfavourably with Kofoworola Pratt who was the first black nurse in the NHS, and concluded "She deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care". Jennings has suggested that the race of Seacole has played a part in the resistance by some of Nightingale's supporters. The American academic Gretchen Gerzina has also affirmed this theory, claiming that many of the supposed criticisms leveled at Seacole are due to her race. One criticism made by supporters of Nightingale of Seacole is that she was not trained at an accredited medical institution. However, Jamaican women such as Seacole and Cubah Cornwallis, and even the Nanny of the Maroons, developed their nursing skills from West African healing traditions, such as the use of herbs, which became known as obeah in Jamaica. According to the writer Helen Rappaport, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the West African and Jamaican creole "doctress", such as Cornwallis and Sarah Adams, who both died in the late 1840s, often had greater success than the European-trained doctor who practised what was then traditional medicine. These doctresses of Jamaica practised hygiene long before Nightingale adopted it as one of her key reforms in her book "Notes on Nursing" in 1859. It is possible that Nightingale learned about the value of hygiene in nursing from the practices of Seacole. Seacole's name appears in an appendix to the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum, as an example of a significant Victorian historical figure. There is no requirement that teachers include Seacole in their lessons. At the end of 2012 it was reported that Mary Seacole was to be removed from the National Curriculum. Opposing this, Greg Jenner, historical consultant to "Horrible Histories", has stated that while he thought her medical achievements may have been exaggerated, removing Seacole from the curriculum would be a mistake. Susan Sheridan has argued that the leaked proposal to remove Seacole from the National Curriculum is part of "a concentration solely on large-scale political and military history and a fundamental shift away from social history." Many commentators do not accept the view that Seacole's accomplishments were exaggerated. British social commentator Patrick Vernon has opined that many of the claims that Seacole's achievements were exaggerated have come from an establishment that is determined to suppress and hide the black contribution to British history. Helen Seaton claims that Nightingale fitted the Victorian ideal of a heroine more than Seacole, and that Seacole managing to overcome racial prejudice makes her "a fitting role model for both blacks and non-blacks". In "The Daily Telegraph", Cathy Newman argues that Michael Gove's plans for the new history curriculum "could mean the only women children learn anything about will be queens". In January 2013 Operation Black Vote launched a petition to request Education Secretary Michael Gove to drop neither her nor Olaudah Equiano from the National Curriculum. Rev. Jesse Jackson and others wrote a letter to "The Times" protesting against the mooted removal of Mary Seacole from the National Curriculum. This was declared successful on 8 February 2013 when the DfE opted to leave Seacole on the curriculum.

8c08440f-4b83-44d6-b24e-1806c4df298d

m2d2_wiki

David Olusoga David Adetayo Olusoga (born January 1970) is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He has presented historical documentaries on the BBC and contributed to "The One Show" and "The Guardian". Early life and education. David Olusoga was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a Nigerian father and British mother. At five years old, Olusoga migrated to the UK with his mother and grew up in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. He was one of a very few non-white people living on a council estate. By the time he was 14, the National Front had attacked his house on more than one occasion, requiring police protection for him and his family. They were eventually forced to leave as a result of the racism. He later attended the University of Liverpool to study the history of slavery, and in 1994, graduated with a BA (Hons) History degree, followed by a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism at Leeds Trinity University. Career. Olusoga began his TV career behind the camera, first as a researcher on the 1999 BBC series "Western Front". Realising that black people were much less visible in the media and historically, Olusoga became a producer of history programmes after university, working from 2005 on programmes such as "Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich", "The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith" and "Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner?". Subsequently he became a television presenter, beginning in 2014 with "The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire", about the Indian, African and Asian troops who fought in the First World War, followed by several other documentaries and appearances on BBC One television's "The One Show". In 2015 it was announced that he would co-present "Civilisations", a sequel to Kenneth Clark's 1969 television documentary series "Civilisation", alongside the historians Mary Beard and Simon Schama. His most recent TV series include "", "The World's War", "A House Through Time" and the BAFTA award-winning "Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners". Also a writer, Olusoga has written stand-alone history books as well as ones to accompany his TV series. He is the author of the 2016 book "Black and British: A Forgotten History", which was awarded both the Longman–History Today Trustees Award 2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017. His other books include "The World’s War", which won First World War Book of the Year in 2015, "The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism" (2011) which he co-authored with Casper Erichsen, and "Civilisations" (2018). He was also a contributor to the "Oxford Companion to Black British History", and has written for "The Guardian", "The Observer", "New Statesman" and "BBC History" magazine; since June 2018 he has been a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which publishes "The Guardian". Olusoga was included in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the "Powerlist", a ranking of the 100 most influential Black Britons, and in the 2021 edition he made the Top 10 most influential, ranking eighth. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to history and to community integration. He received his medal from the Queen in January 2019. On appointing him as a professor in 2019, the University of Manchester described him as an expert on military history, empire, race and slavery, and "one of the UK's foremost historians". Olusoga gave his inaugural professorial lecture on "Identity, Britishness and the "Windrush"" at the University of Manchester in May 2019. In response to the global Black Lives Matter movement with protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, Olusoga's "Black and British: A Forgotten History" was re-broadcast on the BBC and made available on BBC iPlayer along with "Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners", also fronted by him. On 13 November 2020, the BBC announced that it had commissioned "Barack Obama Talks To David Olusoga", a special programme in which President Obama discusses the first volume of his presidential memoirs, "A Promised Land". The programme aired on 19 January 2021. In January 2021 Olusoga appeared on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs", where he discussed his childhood experiences of racism and his love of blues music. Among his choices of music were "Can't Blame the Youth" by Bob Marley and the Wailers and "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson. His luxury item was an acoustic guitar and his choice of book was "The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An Age Like This, 1920–40".

5341eacc-bb04-4fc7-b9a7-5378029c4a97

m2d2_wiki

George Lamming George Lamming (born 8 June 1927) is a Bajan novelist, essayist and poet and an important figure in Caribbean literature, who first won critical acclaim with his debut novel, "In the Castle of My Skin" (1953). He has held academic posts including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and has lectured extensively worldwide. Early life and education. George William Lamming was born on 8 June 1927 in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed African and English parentage. After his mother married his stepfather, Lamming split his time between this birthplace and his stepfather's home in St David's Village. Lamming attended Roebuck Boys' School and Combermere School on a scholarship. Encouraged by his teacher, Frank Collymore, Lamming found the world of books and started to write. Career. Lamming left Barbados to work as a teacher from 1946 to 1950 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, at El Colegio de Venezuela, a boarding school for boys. He then emigrated to England where, for a short time, he worked in a factory. As he later wrote: "Migration was not a word I would have used to describe what I was doing when I sailed with other West Indians to England in 1950. We simply thought we were going to an England that had been painted in our childhood consciousness as a heritage and a place of welcome. It is the measure of our innocence that neither the claim of heritage nor the expectation of welcome would have been seriously doubted. England was not for us a country with classes and conflicts of interest like the islands we left. It was the name of a responsibility whose origin may have coincided with the beginning of time. ...<br> "The emigrants were largely men in search of work. My friend and fellow traveller, the late Samuel Selvon of Trinidad, was a poet and short-story writer then halfway through his first novel, A Brighter Sun. Sam and I had left home for the same reason - to make a career as a writer. This was a journey to an expectation, and between 1948 and 1960 every West Indian novelist of significance within their region made a similar journey: Wilson Harris, Edgar Mittleholzer, Ian Carew of Guyana, Roger Mais, Andrew Salkey and John Hearne of Jamaica. In 1951 Lamming became a broadcaster for the BBC Colonial Service. His writings were published in the Barbadian magazine "Bim", edited by his teacher Frank Collymore, and the BBC's "Caribbean Voices" radio series broadcast his poems and short prose. Lamming himself read poems on "Caribbean Voices", including some by the young Derek Walcott. Lamming's first novel, "In the Castle of My Skin", was published in London in 1953. It won a Somerset Maugham Award and was championed by eminent figures the like of Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Wright, the latter writing an introduction to the book's US edition. Lamming was subsequently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and became a professional writer. He began to travel widely, going to the United States in 1955, the West Indies in 1956 and West Africa in 1958. His second novel, "The Emigrants", (1954), which focuses on the migrants' journey and the process of resettlement, was described by "" as "very thought-provoking. It shows how adrift black people can be as they search for a political, economic and social context. It should also be read as an example of how black people have tried to use the novel to tell their own unique story in a unique way." He entered academia in 1967 as a writer-in-residence and lecturer in the Creative Arts Centre and Department of Education at the University of the West Indies, Kingston (1967–68). Since then, he has been a visiting professor in the United States at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Connecticut, Brown University, Cornell University, and Duke University and a lecturer in Denmark, Tanzania, and Australia. Lamming also directed the University of Miami's Summer Institute for Caribbean Creative Writing. In April 2012, he was chair of the judges for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and served as chief judge for the inaugural Walter Rodney Awards for Creative Writing 2014. Writing. Lamming is the author of six novels: "In the Castle of My Skin" (1953), "The Emigrants" (1954), "Of Age and Innocence" (1958), "Season of Adventure" (1960), "Water with Berries" (1971) and "Natives of My Person" (1972). His much acclaimed first novel, "In the Castle of My Skin", featuring an autobiographical character named G., can be read as both a coming-of-age story as well as the story of the Caribbean. His 1960 collection of essays, "The Pleasures of Exile", is a pioneering work that attempts to define the place of the West Indian in the post-colonial world, re-interpreting Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and the characters of Prospero and Caliban in terms of personal identity and the history of the Caribbean. A more recent (1995) collection of essays is "Coming, Coming Home: Conversations II – Western Education and the Caribbean Intellectual". Honours and recognition. Brown University held a two-day series of events celebrating Lamming, 8–9 March 2011. In May 2011 the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) awarded Lamming the first Caribbean Hibiscus Award in acknowledgement of his lifetime's work. In 2014, he won a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. George Lamming Primary School, located at Flint Hall, St Michael, was named in his honour and opened on 2 September 2008. His work is celebrated through the George Lamming Pedagogical Centre, housed at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination (EBCCI), with annual distinguished lecture series held annually in June, the month of Lamming's birth. His personal literary collection is housed at the Sidney Martin Library, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.

57fa9039-575a-4641-a616-4b60594c0963

m2d2_wiki

Nadifa Mohamed Nadifa Mohamed (, ) is a Somali-British novelist. She featured on "Granta" magazine's list "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in 2014 on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. She has also written short stories, essays, memoirs and articles in outlets including "The Guardian", and contributed poetry to the anthology "New Daughters of Africa" (ed. Margaret Busby, 2019). Personal life. Mohamed was born in 1981 in Hargeisa, Somaliland. Her father was a sailor in the merchant navy and her mother was a local landlady. In 1986, she moved with her family to London for what was intended to be a temporary stay. However, the civil war broke out shortly afterwards in Somalia, so they remained in the UK. Mohamed later attended the University of Oxford, where she studied history and politics. In 2008, she visited Hargeisa for the first time in over a decade. Mohamed resides in London and is working on her third novel. Literary career. Mohamed's first novel, "Black Mamba Boy" (2010), described in "The Guardian" as "a significant, affecting book of the dispossessed", is a semi-biographical account of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and '40s, during the colonial period. She has said that "the novel grew out of a desire to learn more about my roots, to elucidate Somali history for a wider audience and to tell a story that I found fascinating." A "fictionalized biography", it won critical and popular acclaim in countries as far away as Korea. The book won the 2010 Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2010 "Guardian" First Book Award, the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize, and the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It was also long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2013, Mohamed released her second novel, "The Orchard of Lost Souls". Set in Somalia on the eve of the civil war, it was published by Simon & Schuster. Reviewing it in "The Independent", Arifa Akbar said: "If Mohamed's first novel was about fathers and sons ... this one is essentially about mothers and daughters." In 2014 "The Orchard of Lost Souls" won the Somerset Maugham Award and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. In December 2013, Mohamed was one of 36 writer and translator participants at the Doha International Book Fair's Literary Translation Summit in Qatar. She was chosen as one of "Granta" magazine's "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in April 2014 was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Her writing has also been published in such outlets as "The Guardian" and Literary Hub, as well as in the anthology "New Daughters of Africa" (2019), which includes poetry by Mohamed. In June 2018 Mohamed was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative.

728509cb-33c2-4078-8df5-bf1ab9584ed8

m2d2_wiki

Jackie Kay Jacqueline Margaret Kay, (born 9 November 1961), is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works "Other Lovers" (1993), "Trumpet" (1998) and "Red Dust Road" (2011). Kay has won a number of awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011. Since 2016, she has been Scots Makar, the national poet laureate of Scotland. She was appointed as chancellor of the University of Salford in 2015. Biography. Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1961, to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple, Helen and John Kay, and grew up in Bishopbriggs, a suburb of Glasgow. They adopted Jackie in 1961, having already adopted her brother, Maxwell, about two years earlier. Jackie and Maxwell also have siblings who were brought up by their biological parents. Her adoptive father worked for the Communist Party full-time and stood for Member of Parliament, and her adoptive mother was the Scottish secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. As a child Kay suffered racism from children and teachers at school. John Kay died in 2019 at the age of 94. As a teenager she worked as a cleaner, working for David Cornwell—who wrote under the pen-name John le Carré—for four months. She recommended cleaning work to aspiring writers, saying: "It’s great ... You’re listening to everything. You can be a spy, but nobody thinks you're taking anything in." Cornwell and Kay met again in 2019; he remembered her, and had been following her. In August 2007, Jackie Kay was the subject of the fourth episode of the BBC Radio 4 series "The House I Grew Up In", in which she talked about her childhood. Initially harbouring ambitions to be an actor, she decided to concentrate on writing after Alasdair Gray, a Scottish artist and writer, read her poetry and told her that writing was what she should be doing. She studied English at the University of Stirling and her first book of poetry, the partially autobiographical "The Adoption Papers", was published in 1991 and won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1992. It is a multiply voiced collection of poetry that deals with identity, race, nationality, gender, and sexuality from the perspectives of three women: an adopted biracial child, her adoptive mother, and her biological mother. Her other awards include the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award for "Other Lovers", and the Guardian Fiction Prize for "Trumpet", inspired by the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for the last fifty years of his life. In 1997, Kay published a biography of blues singer Bessie Smith, which was reissued in 2021. An abridged version read by the author featured as BBC Radio 4's "Book of the Week" in the last week of February 2021. Kay writes extensively for stage (in 1988 her play "Twice Over" was the first by a Black writer to be produced by Gay Sweatshop Theatre Group), screen and for children. Her drama "The Lamplighter" is an exploration of the Atlantic slave trade. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2007, produced by Pam Fraser Solomon, during a season marking the bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act 1807, and was published in printed form as a poem in 2008. In 2010 Kay published "Red Dust Road", an account of her search for her biological parents, who had met each other when her father was a student at Aberdeen University and her mother was a nurse. The book was adapted for the stage by Tanika Gupta and premiered in August 2019 at the Edinburgh International Festival in a production by National Theatre of Scotland and HOME, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and Cultural Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University. Kay lives in Manchester. She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project "Sixty-Six Books", her piece being based on the book of Esther from the King James Bible. In October 2014, it was announced that she had been appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Salford, and that she would be the university's "Writer in Residence" from 1 January 2015. In March 2016, Kay was announced as the next Scots Makar (national poet of Scotland), succeeding Liz Lochhead, whose tenure ended in January 2016. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours for services to literature, and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours, again for services to literature. Kay was on the list of the BBC's 100 Women announced on 23 November 2020. Personal life. Kay is a lesbian. In her twenties she gave birth to a son, Matthew (whose father is the writer Fred D'Aguiar) and later she had a 15-year relationship with poet Carol Ann Duffy. During this relationship, Duffy gave birth to a daughter, Ella, whose biological father is fellow poet Peter Benson. Selected works. Some other poetry used in GCSE Edexcel Syllabus

d7b72ee1-f9ef-41a5-a62f-cc3b5c168087

m2d2_wiki

Petronella Breinburg Petronella Breinburg (1927 – 5 November 2019) was a Surinamese British author, playwright and professor and one of the first black British authors to write picture books about black children. "My Brother Sean", illustrated by Errol Lloyd and published by The Bodley Head in 1973, was followed by a series, including "Sean Goes to School", "Sean's Red Bike" and "Doctor Sean". She also wrote books focused on older children, including her first book "Legend of Suriname", "Us Boys of Westcroft" and "Stories from the Caribbean". Her early books, published at a time where black authored books were rare, provided one of the first opportunities for black children in Britain to read stories they could identify with. Biography. Breinburg, of mixed European and African heritage, was born in Suriname in 1931. Her father, a policeman, died when she was 12 and the family – there were six children – went to live with her grandmother, near an old Dutch plantation. This grandmother used to terrify the children with tales about the old Dutchman who had owned the plantation. Influenced by a lineage of storytellers, Breinburg enjoyed writing from a young age, winning local competitions from age eight and writing her first play at 13. She was educated at St. Rosa and St. Margaret's Convent in Suriname before training as a teacher. After emigrating to Guyana with her husband, she gave birth to two children. In Guyana, she was a member of the Red Cross Society for 10 years, serving for some time as Lieutenant of the Girls Life Brigade. She came to the UK with her two children to join her husband in 1961. Breinburg was a supply teacher in London, where her experience of racism and representation shaped her writing. Breinburg obtained her doctorate in education with linguistics at University of Keele, with one year at Amsterdam University and a stint as a research fellow at the linguistic department of the University of Sheffield. She was then appointed to Goldsmiths' University of London, where she was a senior lecturer and head of the Caribbean Centre. Breinburg published books for children, teenagers, and for adults. She also wrote a number of plays and poetry. Breinburg died on 5 November 2019.

040ee4a4-c578-4ddb-95a2-bc994d3b0892

m2d2_wiki

Valerie Bloom Valerie Bloom MBE (born 1956) is a Jamaican-born poet and a novelist based in the UK. Early years. Born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, Bloom moved to England in 1979. She attended the University of Kent at Canterbury and earned an honours degree, and was later awarded an honorary master's degree. She has been living in Kent ever since. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours. Works. Valerie Bloom has published several collections, the most recent of which is "Whoop an' Shout!" Her first collection was "Touch Mi, Tell Mi", published by Bogle-L'Ouverture in 1983, and this was followed by "Duppy Jamboree" (Cambridge University Press, 1992), "Let me Touch the Sky", "The World is Sweet" and "Hot like Fire". She has also edited a number of collections, including "One River Many Creeks " and "A Twist in the Tale". Bloom has written lyrics for world jazz ensemble Grand Union Orchestra, including "Can't Chain Up Me Mind" on their 1989 live show and album, "Freedom Calls." The show featuring Bloom's lyrics was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in January 1990. Her first novel was "Surprising Joy" (2003). Her next novel, "The Tribe", was published by Macmillan Children's Books in 2007. She writes poetry both in English and Jamaican patois (and has been referred to as "a successor to Louise Bennett"). Many of her performances include a "crash course" in patois for audience members unfamiliar with the language. She has performed widely throughout the UK and abroad and has appeared on many radio and TV programmes. In 2005, she made a series of three programmes focusing on Jamaican poetry for BBC Radio 4 entitled "Island Voices". Selected bibliography. Poetry For children — poetry and picture books Novels Anthologies (edited) Guides

2e695d56-7c57-4787-b898-aeae5f33b97f

m2d2_wiki

Marsha Hunt (actress, born 1946) Marsha Hunt (born April 15, 1946) is an American actress, novelist, singer and former model, who has lived mostly in Britain and Ireland. She achieved national fame when she appeared in London as Dionne in the long-running rock musical "Hair". She enjoyed close relationships with Marc Bolan and Mick Jagger, who is the father of her only child Karis. According to Hunt, The Rolling Stones' controversial hit song "Brown Sugar" was based on her. She has written three novels, as well as three volumes of autobiography, which include a frank account of life as a breast cancer sufferer. Early life. Hunt was born in Philadelphia in 1946 and lived in North Philadelphia, near 23rd and Columbia, then in Germantown and Mount Airy, for the first 13 years of her life. Hunt remembers Philadelphia with affection, particularly the "Philadelphia steak sandwiches and the bad boys on the basketball court". Hunt's mother, Inez, was her primary parent and worked as a librarian in a local library. Hunt's father, Blaire Theodore Hunt, Jr., was one of America's first black psychiatrists but he did not live with Hunt; she found out when she was 15-years old that he had committed suicide three years previously. Hunt was brought up by her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother; three strong but very different women. Hunt describes her mother Inez as "extremely intelligent and education-minded", her Aunt Thelma as "extremely Catholic but very glamorous", and her grandmother Edna as an "extremely aggressive...ass-kicking" independent Southern woman. Hunt credits the experience of having been poor with teaching her not to be materialistic. Her family put a great deal of emphasis on academic performance, and Hunt did very well in school. In 1960, the family moved to Kensington, California, which Hunt still regards as home, so that her brother and sister could attend Oakland High School and prepare to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Hunt also went to Berkeley, in 1964, where she joined Jerry Rubin on protest marches against the Vietnam War. In her book "Undefeated" she recalled that during her time at Berkeley they "were sitting in for the Free Speech Movement, smoking pot, experimenting with acid, lining up to take Oriental philosophy courses, daring to co-habit, and going to dances in San Francisco." Move to London. In February 1966, Hunt booked a flight for a brief trip to London, where she was temporarily detained before a fellow detainee gave her details of contacts, including John Shepherd, who worked on the television show "Ready Steady Go!". Through Shepherd, she met Kenny Lynch, and then appeared as an extra in Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Blow-Up". Hunt has said that in London in the 1960s "anything seemed possible." She briefly lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, before returning to London where she became a backing singer with Alexis Korner's trio "Free at Last". She then met and began a short relationship with musician John Mayall, inspiring Mayall's songs "Marsha's Mood" and "Brown Sugar". Although Hunt indicates that she had no great musical talent, she worked as a singer for 18 months after arriving in England, intending to earn her fare back home. Marriage to Mike Ratledge. In late 1966, Hunt met Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine. Hunt was having trouble getting a visa extension to stay in England and proposed to Ratledge. Ratledge and Hunt were married on April 15, 1967. The Soft Machine were heavily booked and there was no time for a honeymoon, but Ratledge and Hunt were able to spend two months together before the band headed for France later that year. Hunt said in 1991 that she and Ratledge never held hands and never kissed, though "...he comes for Easter. But that's what we called 'married'." While the two have remained good friends, Hunt says the secret to a happy marriage is to "separate immediately." When Hunt and Ratledge reached their 40th wedding anniversary, Hunt called Ratledge up and said, jokingly, "We should renew our vows." Music career. After her marriage in 1967, Hunt took a singing job with Long John Baldry's band Bluesology, alongside keyboard player Reg Dwight. She also auditioned for Ratledge's band Soft Machine, and in 1968, briefly joined the group The Ferris Wheel. That same year, Hunt achieved national fame in England when she appeared as "Dionne" in the rock musical "Hair", a box-office smash on the London stage. Hunt only had two lines of dialogue in "Hair", but she attracted a lot of media attention and her photo appeared in many newspapers and magazines. Her photograph was used on the poster and playbill of the original London production, photographed by Justin de Villeneuve. Her 1968 photo also replaced the original LP artwork when Readers Digest re-issued the LP in Europe in 1976. Hunt says that the role was a perfect fit for her, expressing who she actually was. She was one of three Americans featured in the London show, and when the show began she had no contract to perform. When the show opened she was featured in so many stories that she was offered a contract right away. Hunt played at the Jazz Bilzen and Isle of Wight music festivals in August 1969 with her backup band "White Trash". Hunt's first single, a cover of Dr John's "Walk on Gilded Splinters", produced by Tony Visconti, was released on Track Records in 1969; it became a minor hit. An album, "Woman Child" (also produced by Tony Visconti) (in Germany released under the title "Desdemona"), followed in 1971. In May 1977, an album with disco songs was released in Germany with the title "Marsha". It was recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and produced by Pete Belotte (co-producer with Giorgio Moroder of many Donna Summer albums) Hunt met Marc Bolan in 1969 when she went to the studio where Bolan's group was recording "Unicorn". Tony Visconti said that when Bolan and Hunt met, "[y]ou could see the shafts of light pouring out of their eyes into each other... We finished the session unusually early, and Marc and Marsha walked out into the night hand in hand." According to Hunt, the relationship between the two was based on more than physical attraction, though she also recalled that her commercial visibility put her in opposition to Bolan's philosophy that "the serious art of music...was validated by obscurity." In 1971, after the birth of her daughter Karis, she appeared for a while in the musical "Catch My Soul", and acted alongside Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the film "Dracula A.D. 1972". She signed a recording contract with Phonogram Records, and led her own band, 22, which the record company insisted on billing as "Marsha Hunt's 22". The band included guitarist Hugh Burns, with whom Hunt lived for three years. The band toured, released two singles, "Medusa" and "(Oh No! Not) The Beast Day", and recorded a set of demos of songs largely written by Hunt. These were later released in Germany and Poland as an album, "Attention! Marsha Hunt", though Hunt was unaware of its release until a 2020 interview with her. The band 22 split up after they had their equipment stolen and Hunt's daughter became ill. From 1973, Hunt co-presented with Sarah Ward a popular late-night radio show, "Sarah. Marsha and Friends", on London's Capital Radio. Also in 1973, as a member of a panel organised by British magazine "Melody Maker" to discuss women in music and options open to black women, Hunt suggested that black women needed to make use of the "side-door" in the industry, entering as "the statutory representative" before they could make music under their own terms. In 1976, she released two funk-pop singles produced by Steve Rowland, and the following year issued an album, "Marsha", produced by Pete Bellotte, which she later described as "a musical departure that had nothing to do with my own taste". She moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, and fronted a punk rock-influenced band, Marsha & The Vendettas. From there, she moved to Australia, and recorded a single, "Pleasure Zone", written with David Dundas and produced by Ricky Fataar. Modelling. Three months after "Hair" opened, Hunt was on the cover of British high-fashion magazine "Queen", the first black model to appear on their cover. In 1968, Hunt posed nude for photographer Patrick Lichfield after the opening night for "Hair" and the photo appeared on the cover of British "Vogue"'s January 1969 issue. Almost 40 years later Hunt again posed nude for Litchfield, recreating the pose for her "Vogue" cover five weeks after she had had her right breast and lymph glands removed to halt the spread of cancer. The photo appeared on the cover of her 2005 book "Undefeated", about her battle with cancer. She was pleased to work with the photographer under such differing circumstances, though in her autobiography she expressed confusion as to why the photo has been so often reprinted. Hunt has also been photographed by Lewis Morley, Horace Ové, and Robert Taylor. Relationship with Mick Jagger. In 1991, Hunt said that she met Mick Jagger when The Rolling Stones asked her to pose for an ad for "Honky Tonk Women", which she refused to do because she "didn't want to look like [she'd] just been had by all the Rolling Stones." Jagger called her later, and their nine or 10-month affair began. According to Christopher Sanford's book "Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight", Hunt told journalist Frankie McGowan that Jagger's shyness and awkwardness won her over, but that their relationship was conducted mostly in private because their social scenes were very different. In London, November 1970, Hunt gave birth to Jagger's first and her only child, Karis. According to Hunt, the pair planned the child but never intended to live together. According to Tony Sanchez in "Up and Down with the Rolling Stones", Jagger considered proposing to Hunt but did not because he did not think he loved Hunt enough to spend the rest of his life with her, while Hunt, for her part, did not think they were sufficiently compatible to co-habit satisfactorily. In 1973, when Karis was two years old, Hunt asked the courts in London for an affiliation order against Jagger and eventually settled out of court. Jagger called the suit "silly." He agreed to set up a trust fund for Karis and pay $17 a week for her support until she reached 21, but he was allowed to deny his paternity on record. In 1978, Hunt filed a paternity suit in Los Angeles asking for $580 a week and for Jagger to publicly claim their daughter. At the time Hunt was unemployed and received welfare payments from Aid to Dependent Children. In 1979, Hunt won the paternity suit saying she wanted "only to be able to say to my daughter, when she's 21, that I didn't allow her father to neglect his responsibilities." Through the years Jagger became close to Karis; he took her on holiday with his family when she was a teenager, attended her Yale University graduation and her 2000 wedding, and he was at the hospital for the birth of her son in 2004. As of 2008, he continued to see her and her family. Citing the binding tie of a child, Hunt says she still sees Jagger, but has a closer relationship with Jagger's mother. In 1991, Hunt indicated that she left the door open for Jagger to come back to his child and admired the fact that he did. Commenting on rumours about her life, Hunt said of the apocryphal story that she approached Jagger at a party and told him that she wanted to have his baby: "You must have read that on the internet. One reason I haven't had it removed is that it is proof that the internet is full of absolute bullshit. Ridiculous things have been written about me so often that we won't even go there." In December 2012, Hunt sold a series of love letters written to her in the summer of 1969 by Mick Jagger. The letters were sold by Sotheby's of London. The letters sold for £182,250 ($301,000). "Brown Sugar". Christopher Sanford writes in his book "Mick Jagger" that when the Rolling Stones released the song "Brown Sugar" there was immediate speculation that it referred to Hunt or to soul singer Claudia Lennear. In her autobiography, "Real Life" (1985), Hunt acknowledged that "Brown Sugar" is about her, among a few other songs, which she reiterated in her book "Undefeated" (2006). When Hunt was asked for an interview with the "Irish Times" in 2008 how she felt about the song, she said: "it doesn't make me feel any way at all." However, Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman stated in his book "Rolling With The Stones" (2002) that the lyrics were partially inspired about Lennear. In 2014, Lennear told "The Times" that the song is about her because she was dating Jagger when he wrote it. She was also the titular dedicatee Marsha in Robert Wyatt’s song "To Carla, Marsha and Caroline (For Making Everything Beautifuller)" from his album End of and Ear. Writing. Autobiography. Hunt began writing in 1985, and her first book was her autobiography, "Real Life: The Story of a Survivor" (1986). She found the process of writing more difficult than she expected, but did not stop there, continuing in 1996 with another autobiography, "Repossessing Ernestine: A Granddaughter Uncovers the Secret History of Her American Family", about her search for her father's mother Ernestine who was placed in an asylum for nearly 50 years. After Hunt's father committed suicide when she was 12-years old, Hunt's contact with her father's family was sporadic. Hunt tracked down her father's father Blair Hunt shortly before he died in 1978 to find him living sedately in a seedy part of town with his companion of 60 years. Hunt discovered that her grandfather had been a public school administrator and a leading member of Memphis's black community. Blair Hunt talked about his "poor dear sick wife" who he had "put away" many years before. Hunt discovered that her father's mother, Ernestine, had been born in 1896 as a free black and that she grew up in Memphis, "an intelligent, remarkably beautiful young woman who excelled in school and was greatly envied for her pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair." Hunt tracked her grandmother down to a rundown nursing home, and although Hunt was unable to discover why Ernestine spent 50 years behind bars, Hunt wrote that the reasons may have had more to do with racism and sexism than insanity. In 2005, Hunt released her memoir about her battle with cancer, "Undefeated". Novelist. In 1990, Hunt published her first novel, "Joy", about a woman who grew up to join a singing group reminiscent of The Supremes before dying an early death. Set in a posh New York apartment in the course of one day in the spring of 1987, the novel contains frequent flashbacks that describe life in a black neighbourhood in the 1950s and 1960s. The book also deals with stardom in the music business and some people's inability, despite their riches, to make their own American Dream come true and to lead fulfilled lives. Hunt indicates that within her novel, all the characters are victims who are also guilty, a reflection of real life where "[w]e get hurt, but we're also hurting each other all the time." Hunt wrote "Joy" while touring England with a group performing "Othello" and said her fellow actors made fun of her while she was writing the book; given her reputation, she feels, they may have thought her an aspiring Joan Collins. Hunt says "Joy" is also about the colourism that existed within black society at the time, where girls with fairer skin and longer hair were preferred to girls with kinky hair and more stereotypically Black characteristics. Hunt said that living in England and exploring its accents taught her how beautiful Black language was, a "culturally important" feature she preserved in her novel. Hunt's second novel, "Free", published in 1992, tells the story of freed slaves and their children living in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1913. Hunt's novel "Like Venus Fading" (1998) is inspired by the lives of Adelaide Hall, known as the "lightly-tanned Venus", Josephine Baker and Dorothy Dandridge. Hunt wrote her first four books whilst living in isolation in a remote hideaway in France called "La montagne". With no one for company but a barn cat who came to eat each morning, and the people she saw once a day at a nearby "patisserie", she was inspired to write by silence and boredom. Editor. In 1999, Hunt sought a job of writer-in-residence at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison and later collected selected writings from the prisoners and edited "The Junk Yard: Voices From An Irish Prison". The book contains 15 stories divided into five sections: Childhood, Family Life, The Score, Criminal Life and Prison Life. One publisher was critical of the repetitive themes of urban poverty, addiction, and life in prison, but Hunt responded by asserting that it is worth considering why the inmates had such similar tales to tell. "The Junk Yard: Voices From An Irish Prison" became a number-one bestseller in Ireland in 1999. Activist. In 1995, Hunt set up the Saga Prize, to unearth new British-born black literary talent and recognise the literature emerging from indigenous black Britons' experiences. Awarded to "the best unpublished novel by a writer born in Great Britain or The Republic of Ireland having a black African ancestor", the prize, while attracting criticism from the Commission for Racial Equality, ran for four years until 1998, winners including Diran Adebayo and Joanna Traynor. During the 1997 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Hunt staged a one-woman protest, picketing Charlotte Square about the "shoddy administration" of the festival. The director of the festival was fired in the aftermath of her protest. Current projects. Hunt has been working on a book about Jimi Hendrix that she considers her life work. She indicates that no one alive can share her perspective on the matter, "because he and I shared something – black Americans who came to London were transformed and re-packaged for the U.S., although I never became successful there and he did." No release date has been given. Acting. Theatre. In 1971, Hunt played Bianca in "Catch My Soul", the rock-and-roll stage version of "Othello" produced by Jack Good. In 1973, she wrote, produced and directed a new London show entitled "Man to Woman", the music from which was released on vinyl in 1982 by Virgin Records, featuring vocals by Robert Wyatt. In 1975, Hunt appeared as Sabina in "The Skin of Our Teeth". In 1991, Hunt appeared as Nurse Logan in the world premiere of Arthur Miller's "The Ride Down Mount Morgan" at London's Wyndham's Theatre. Hunt became a member of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1994, Hunt performed a one-woman play in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival playing Baby Palatine, a 60-year-old woman who becomes the wardrobe mistress to a female pop group. The play is based on Hunt's novel "Joy" (1990). Hunt was directed in the play by her daughter Karis Jagger, who has said that it was her mother's idea. Jagger says that the pair "spent six weeks rehearsing in France. Because the weather was so good we marked out the shape of the stage with my teddy bears and rehearsed in the garden." Film. Hunt's film career included appearances in "Dracula A.D. 1972" (1972), "Britannia Hospital" (1982) directed by Lindsay Anderson, "The Sender" (1982), "Never Say Never Again" (1983), "" (1985), and "Tank Malling" (1989). Television. In 1988, Hunt played Elvi Rogers in "The Play on One: Unreported Incident". In 1990, Hunt played Bianca in the BBC television production of "Othello" directed by Trevor Nunn. Documentaries. In 1997, when Irish documentary filmmaker Alan Gilsenan made "God Bless America", featuring six American cities seen through the eyes of six American authors, Hunt was invited to participate, and her participation resulted in "Marsha Hunt's Philadelphia". According to Gilsenan, Hunt attributes the success of American democracy and capitalism to the crime of slavery, a crime that must be understood if America is to have peace. Hunt fell in love with Gilsenan and moved to the Wicklow mountains near Dublin with him, where in 1999 she helped him fight colon cancer, drawing on her own experiences with the disease. Hunt is no longer romantically involved with Gilsenan, who has since married and fathered a child, but as of 2008 still sees him. Hunt has also been the subject of a documentary, "Beating Breast Cancer" on ITV, broadcast on September 26, 2005. Cancer. In late 2004, Hunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and was told to have surgery to remove her right breast and her lymph nodes. Hunt postponed seeking treatment for five months, later wondering if she would have faced first stage rather than third stage cancer had she not. When she chose to have surgery, she decided to have it done in Ireland, because she felt that the Irish are more supportive and comfortable with illness than people in the U.S.; she envisaged that treatment in the U.S. would feel impersonal. Hunt decided to have a complete mastectomy with no following reconstruction. She says, "Reconstruction – as if the breast is miraculously put back to the way it was. In fact, pretty much all you get is your cleavage back; you don't get any feeling or sensitivity... They take muscles from your back, skin from your thighs, fat from your stomach. You had a breast removed, but the rest of you was fine. Now half your body is hacked about – and for what?" On the day of her operation Hunt wrote a note on her breast to the surgical team, telling them to have fun, make sure they took the right breast off and drew them a flower. Once the operation was over Hunt says she did not mourn the loss of her breast, but felt happy that the cancer had been removed. Her view of the experience of mastectomy states that the surgery left her with a "battle scar" that makes her feel sexier, as it is a memento of what she has survived. In July 2007 Hunt spoke about her breast removal with a 12-year-old boy, telling him that she is now like the Amazons of old who would have a breast removed so that when they went into battle they could use their bow without their breast getting in the way when they let their arrows fly. After her mastectomy, she contracted the superbug MRSA and had to be treated with Zyvox. She also had chemotherapy. Not wanting to wait for her hair to fall out naturally, she decided to control it herself, throwing a party where her guests took turns cutting off locks of her hair. The "Irish Independent" reported on August 27, 2008, that Hunt stood on a table at the opening of the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin to let everyone see that she had survived third-stage breast cancer after a treatment of chemotherapy, radiation and Herceptin therapy at the hospital. Personal life. Hunt says that the biggest misconception people have about her is that she is wealthy, though she describes herself as "rich in spirit". Hunt has been true to her belief that wealth is not necessary for happiness and has lived the "writing life" for the past two decades. She enjoys the solitude of living on her own and finds that being single means she has encounters and experiences that she would not have if she were part of a couple, where others might choose not to intrude and where she would have to co-ordinate her schedule with another. Hunt has lived in Ireland since 1995. She also lives in France, where she owns a home in the countryside about 60 miles from Paris. Black/American identity. When Hunt came to live in Europe she found that people there called her an American, not an African American or Black. She herself describes her skin colour as "oak with a hint of maple", and notes that "[o]f the various races I know I comprise—African, American Indian, German Jew and Irish—only the African was acknowledged." Hunt invented her own word to describe herself, based on the French word "melange" (mixture) and the word melanin: Melangian. Hunt said in 1991 that there is a pain inflicted by the black community on itself, which it fears to communicate openly. She also says that living overseas for most of her life has made her a foreigner in the US. She said, "I'm scared to walk through Harlem... more scared than you, because if I walked through Harlem with the weird shoes and the weird accent, I'd get my butt kicked faster than you. In a way, I'm the betrayer." Hunt is featured in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian Institution museum in Washington D.C. that opened in 2016 at a ceremony led by President Barack Obama.

98bb9c08-e9ca-4637-b870-f9bbf1e93993

m2d2_wiki

John La Rose John La Rose (27 December 1927 – 28 February 2006) was a political and cultural activist, poet, writer, publisher, founder in 1966 of New Beacon Books, the first specialist Caribbean publishing company in Britain, and subsequently Chairman of the George Padmore Institute. He was originally from Trinidad and Tobago but was involved in the struggle for political independence and cultural and social change in the Caribbean in the 1940s and 1950s and later in Britain, the rest of Europe and the Third World. Biography. Early life in the Caribbean: 1927–60. John Anthony La Rose was born in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1927, the younger son of Ferdinand La Rose, a cocoa trader, and his teacher wife Emily. He had four sisters and a brother. La Rose attended the local Roman Catholic school, and at the age of nine won a scholarship to St. Mary's College, Port of Spain. After finishing school he taught at St. Mary's and later became a leading insurance executive in Colonial Life, which was then in the process of becoming the biggest insurance company in the Caribbean. He later lived and taught in secondary schools in Venezuela, before coming to Britain in 1961. His interest in culture – so-called serious music, literature and folk language and proverbs – preceded his commitment to politics and trade unionism. He saw these and cultural activity as interrelated in a vision of change. He wrote in his statement "About New Beacon Review" that his conception aimed "at the expression of the radical and the revolutionary. More easily definable in politics, and more complex and less easily definable, or indefinable, in the arts and culture". As an executive member of the Youth Council he produced their fortnightly radio programme "Voice of Youth" on Radio Trinidad; and in the mid-1950s, he co-authored with the calypsonian Raymond Quevedo – Atilla the Hun – the first serious study of the calypso, originally entitled "Kaiso, A Review", subsequently published as "Atilla's Kaiso" (1983). La Rose helped to form the Workers Freedom Movement (WFM) in the 1940s and was editor of the few published copies of their journal "Freedom". He became an executive member of the Federated Workers Trade Union (later merged in the National Union of Government and Federated Workers), and later General Secretary of the West Indian Independence Party, which was formed out of the merger of the WFM with active trade unionists. He was later involved with the struggle within the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (OWTU) by the "Rebels" for a radical, democratic and more representative trade unions, for one member one vote in regular periodical elections by secret ballot. The "Rebel" candidates won the elections in 1962 and he retained his close links with the OWTU and the international trade union movement, serving as the European representative of the OWTU from the 1960s until his death in 2006. Life and work in Britain: 1961–2006. La Rose moved to Britain in 1961, making his home in London, while maintaining his close links with the Caribbean. In August 1966 he founded New Beacon Books, the first specialist Caribbean publishers, booksellers and international bookservice. Later in December 1966, he was co-founder with Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Andrew Salkey of the influential The Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He was chairman of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in 1972/73, the period when the IRR was establishing its independence, and was also chairman of Towards Racial Justice, which was the vehicle for publishing the campaigning journal "Race Today". From the mid-1960s La Rose became closely involved in the Black Education Movement, including the fight against Banding, and against the wrongful placing of West Indian children in schools for the Educationally Sub-normal. In 1969, he founded the George Padmore Supplementary School, one of the first of its kind, and helped to found the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association, which published Bernard Coard's "How The West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System" (1971). Later in the 1980s La Rose helped to found the National Association of Supplementary Schools and was its chairman for two years. In 1966, he was a founder member of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and a national council member of this important anti-war movement. In 1975 he co-founded the Black Parents Movement from the core of the parents involved in the George Padmore Supplementary School after an incident in which a young black schoolboy was beaten up by the police outside his school in the London Borough of Haringey. The Black Parents Movement later formed an alliance with the Black Youth Movement and the Race Today Collective, which had, with the "Race Today" journal, by then separated from the IRR. Together they established a formidable cultural and political movement, successfully fighting many cases against police oppression and arbitrariness and for better state education. It was the Alliance that formed the New Cross Massacre Action Committee in response to the alleged arson attack which resulted in the death of 14 young blacks, and mobilised 20,000 black people and their supporters on 2 March 1981 – known as the Black People's Day of Action – to protest the death of the young people and the failure of the police to conduct a proper investigation. La Rose was Chairman of the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. In 1982 he was instrumental in the founding of Africa Solidarity, in support of those struggling against dictatorial governments and tyranny in Africa. That year he also became Chairman of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya, whose founding members included the Kenyan novelist and critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. One of La Rose's greatest achievements was the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books (1982–95) organised originally jointly with Bogle-L'Ouverture Books and Race Today Publications. He was joint director with Bogle-L'Ouverture's Jessica Huntley of the Book Fair at its inception. After the withdrawal of Bogle-L'Ouverture from the organising committee, he became its sole director. Held in the UK, at first in London and then also in other parts of the country, the Book Fairs and Book Fair Festivals brought together people from across the globe to participate in debates, forums, readings, musical events, films, plays and other cultural productions, as well as to browse through stalls from a multiplicity of publishers. They celebrated the enormous cultural and political achievements, addressed key issues of the times, and mirrored the achievements of black people throughout the world. In response to concerns about the rise in fascism and xenophobia, La Rose helped to found European Action for Racial Equality and Social Justice in 1989, bringing together anti-racists and anti-fascists from Belgium, Italy, France and Germany. La Rose was editor-in-chief of New Beacon Books until his death in 2006. He edited the occasional journal "New Beacon Review" (1968, 1985, 1986) and co-edited with Andrew Salkey the special issue of the magazine "Savacou" (Nos. 9/10, 1974) that provided a comprehensive anthology of black writing in Britain during the period of the Caribbean Artists Movement. La Rose published his first collection of poems, "Foundations", in 1966 and his second collection, "Eyelets of Truth Within Me", in 1992 (both published by New Beacon Books). His poems and essays have been widely anthologised, and his journalism was published regularly in "Race Today". He co-authored "Kaiso Calypso Music: David Rudder in Conversation with John La Rose" in 1990. He co-produced and scripted the documentary film "Mangrove Nine", about the resistance to police attacks on the popular Mangrove restaurant in the early 1970s, with the film director Franco Rosso. He produced a short film on the Black Church in Britain as part of a "Full House" BBC 2 television programme on the Caribbean arts in 1973. In 1991 La Rose, together with a number of colleagues, founded the George Padmore Institute (GPI), a library, archive and educational research centre housing materials relating to the life experiences of Caribbean, African and Asian communities in Britain. The aims and objectives of the Institute are to organise: a library, educational resource and research centre, that will allow the materials in its care to be available for use by interested individuals and groups, both in person at the Institute and through the use of modern storage, retrieval and communication methods; educational and cultural activities, including conferences, courses, seminars, talks and readings; the publication of relevant materials. He was the Chairman of the George Padmore Institute from its inception until his death in 2006. In introducing La Rose's talk on "The Politics of Culture: Writing and Publishing Today", which he organised as the Borough of Islington's Writer in Residence in London in May 1985, the novelist, playwright and critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o wrote: "John La Rose is immensely aware of the revolutionary potential of literature and culture in the world today. As a writer, publisher and cultural activist, he has helped in the growth of many writers in Africa, Caribbean, Europe and America. Rarely has anybody come into contact with him without being affected by his generous, searching, modern renaissance spirit." Legacy. John La Rose is the subject of the 2003 documentary film "Dream to Change the World — A Tribute to John La Rose", directed by Horace Ové and edited by Pete Stern. The John La Rose Short Story Competition took place as part of the international conference "On Whose Terms? Critical Negotiations in Black British Literature and the Arts" organised by Goldsmiths College London in March 2008. Judged by R. Victoria Arana, Margaret Busby, Courttia Newland and Kadija Sesay, the competition was won by Molara Wood with her story "Written in Stone". In 2011 BBC Radio 4 broadcast the programme "What We Leave We Carry: The Legacy of John La Rose", presented by Burt Caesar, with contributions by Sarah White, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Margaret Busby, Susan Craig-Jones and Gus John. The John La Rose Memorial Lectures comprised a series of three held since 2010, when the first lecture was given by David Abdulah, speaking on "Politics and People's Power after Obama". In 2011, Jayne Cortez spoke on "The Changing Nature of Black Cultural Politics", and Ngugi wa Thiong'o delivered the third lecture in 2013. In 2013, La Rose was the posthumous recipient, together with Sarah White, of the Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters presented by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest as a "lifetime achievement award to recognise service to Caribbean literature by editors, publishers, critics, broadcasters, and others". The exhibition "Dream to Change the World: The Life & Legacy of John La Rose" took place at Islington Museum from 22 May to 29 August 2015. A number of associated public events and workshops for schools were held during the course of the exhibition.

5ef80171-fbaf-48ba-bd4a-352717b7a8ac

m2d2_wiki

Stella Dadzie Stella Dadzie (born in 1952, London) is a British educationalist, activist, writer and historian. She is best known for her involvement in the UK's Black Women's Movement, being a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the 1970s and co-authoring "" with Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan. Early life and career. Dadzie was born in London to a white English mother and Ghanaian father, who was the first trained pilot in Ghana and after joining the RAF and flew as a navigator in missions over Belgium during the Second World War. Dadzie was in foster care in Wales for about 18 months, before being returned to her mother at the age of four. Interviewed in 2020, Dadzie said: "We experienced poverty, homelessness and racism – my mother was ostracised as she had a black child and was a single parent. We moved around London a huge amount, as we were constantly getting thrown out by racist landlords. There was a lot of pain and suffering." Dadzie did not meet her father and siblings until she was 12. In her twenties she attended protests in London and Greenham Common. She was a founder member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (1978–1982), a group that challenged white domination of the feminist movement. "The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain" was published in 1985 by Virago Press, having been commissioned by the publisher five years earlier in 1980. The authors relied on interviews and their stories are woven together to address the experiences of Black women in Britain and the development of the UK's Black Women's Movement. "The Heart of the Race" won the 1985 Martin Luther King Award for Literature. The book was reissued by Verso (with a new foreword by the "Guardian" columnist Lola Okolosie) in 2018. In a final chapter added to the new edition, Dadzie states: "In these crucial times we need to remember who we are, remember what we've come from, remember what we've achieved, and never let that be forgotten, because it gives us power, strength and vision. This is what feeds the enthusiasm and the energies of the next generation." Dadzie has written widely on curriculum development and good practice with black adult learners, and the development of anti-racist strategies with schools, colleges and youth services. Her poetry has been published in "Tempa Tupu! Africana Women's Poetic Self-Portrait" (Africa World Press, 2008), and in the 2019 anthology "New Daughters of Africa" (edited by Margaret Busby).

0d11fc87-5cc6-4fe6-bcab-5a79fcdeaca9

m2d2_wiki

Michaela Coel Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson (born 1 October 1987), known professionally as Michaela Coel, is a British actress, screenwriter, director, producer and singer. She is best known for creating and starring in the E4 sitcom "Chewing Gum" (2015–2017), for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance; and the BBC One/HBO comedy-drama series "I May Destroy You" (2020). She is also known for her work in other Netflix productions, including guest starring in the series "Black Mirror" (2016–2017), starring as Kate Ashby in the series "Black Earth Rising" (2018) and as Simone in the film "Been So Long" (2018). Early life. Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson was born in London on 1 October 1987. Her parents are Ghanaian. She and her older sister grew up in London, primarily Hackney and Tower Hamlets, with her mother. Her parents were never married and although Coel lived with her mother, her father stayed geographically and emotionally close throughout her childhood. She attended Catholic schools in East London, and has said that, during primary school, she bullied other pupils, claiming it was caused by her isolation as the only black pupil in her age cohort. The isolation did not continue into her secondary education at a comprehensive school. From 2007 to 2009, Coel attended the University of Birmingham, studying English Literature and Theology. She took a Ché Walker masterclass after meeting Walker at open mic nights. In 2009, she transferred to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she was the first black woman enrolled in five years. She won the Laurence Olivier Bursary award, which helped her fund her schooling. During her time at Guildhall, she attended the Mark Proulx workshop at Prima del Teatro and took the Kat Francois Poetry Course at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2012. Career. In 2006, Coel began performing at poetry open mics in Ealing. As she continued to do open mics, she was encouraged by actor, playwright and director Ché Walker, who saw her perform at Hackney Empire, to apply to Guildhall. As a poet, Coel has performed on many stages including Wembley Arena, Bush Theatre, Nuyorican Poets Cafe and De Doelen, Rotterdam. She went by the name Michaela The Poet. In 2009, Coel joined the Talawa Theatre Company summer school program TYPT. During her time at Talawa, Coel was in the TYPT 2009 production of "Krunch", directed by Amani Naphtali. That same year, Coel released an album entitled "Fixing Barbie", which featured her work as a poet and musician. In 2011, Coel released the record "We're the Losers". In 2012, Coel's play, "Chewing Gum Dreams", was her senior graduation project at Guildhall and it was first produced at the Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick. The play featured Coel in a one-woman show telling the dramatic story of a 14-year-old girl named Tracey. The play then went on to be produced by the Bush Theatre (2012), Royal Theatre Holland (2012), Royal Exchange Theatre (2013) and the National Theatre (2014). It received positive reviews. Coel appeared in the Channel 4 drama "Top Boy" and has had leading roles at the National Theatre, including the award-nominated "Home" and the critically-acclaimed "Medea" at the Olivier Theatre. In August 2014, Channel 4 announced that Coel would write and star in a new sitcom called "Chewing Gum", inspired by her play "Chewing Gum Dreams". "C4 Comedy Blaps" were released as teasers in September 2014, and the series began on E4 in October 2015. Her performance earned her the British Academy Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance in 2016. She also won a BAFTA for Breakthrough Talent for writing the show. "Chewing Gum" received overwhelmingly positive reviews. In 2015, Coel appeared in BBC One drama "London Spy". In 2016, she played Lilyhot in the E4 sci-fi comedy-drama "The Aliens", which was shot in Bulgaria. "Chewing Gum" returned for a second series in January 2017. She also appeared in the "Nosedive" and "USS Callister" episodes of Charlie Brooker's series "Black Mirror". She also had a small role in the 2017 film "". In 2018, Coel starred in "Black Earth Rising", a co-production between BBC Two and Netflix, where she played Kate, the main character. She also starred as Simone in the musical drama film "Been So Long", which was released on Netflix to positive reviews in October 2018. Coel created, wrote, produced, co-directed and starred in the comedy-drama series "I May Destroy You", inspired by her own experience of sexual assault. The show launched on BBC One in the UK and HBO in the US in June 2020 to widespread acclaim. Coel acknowledged refusing $1 million from Netflix after the streaming service declined to offer her intellectual property ownership of her show. Coel was included in "Time" magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2020. She was also named as one of the breakout stars of 2020 for film. Coel also appeared in British "Vogue"'s 2020 list of influential women. Furthermore, in the 15th annual "Powerlist" of the most influential people of African or African-Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom, Coel was ranked fourth for the impact of her work on "I May Destroy You". Personal life. At the 2016 BAFTA Awards, Coel wore a dress designed by her mother, made of Kente cloth. She has said that, like her "Chewing Gum" character Tracey, she became very religious in the Pentecostal faith, and embraced celibacy. Coel stopped practising Pentecostalism after attending Guildhall. She identifies as aromantic. Discography. EP LPs

c1e8965b-7432-46a4-a86b-ea8d3281a343

m2d2_wiki

Margaret Busby Margaret Yvonne Busby OBE, Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also titled Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison (1944–2011) the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B). She edited the anthology "Daughters of Africa" (1992), and its 2019 follow-up "New Daughters of Africa". She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". Education and early years. Margaret Yvonne Busby was born in 1944, in Accra, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), to Dr George Busby and Mrs Sarah Busby ("née" Christian), who both had family links to the Caribbean, particularly to Trinidad, Barbados and Dominica. Dr Busby (1899–1980) was a lifelong friend of Kwame Nkrumah's mentor George Padmore and attended school with C. L. R. James at Queen's Royal College, winning the Island Scholarship, which enabled him to travel to Britain in 1919 to study medicine. After initial studies at Edinburgh University, he transferred to University College, Dublin, to complete his medical qualifications, and then practised as a doctor in Walthamstow, East London, before relocating to settle in the Gold Coast in 1929. Through her maternal line, she is a cousin of BBC newscaster Moira Stuart, and her grandfather was George James Christian (1869–1940), a delegate at the First Pan-African Conference in London in 1900, who migrated to the Gold Coast in 1902. Leaving school in Sussex when she was 15, Busby went on to study English at Bedford College (later merged with Royal Holloway College), London University, where she edited her college literary magazine as well as publishing her own poetry, and graduated with a BA Honours degree at the age of 20. She was married to British jazz musician and educator Lionel Grigson (1942–1994). Publishing. While still at university she met her future business partner Clive Allison at a party in Bayswater Road, and they decided to start a publishing company. After graduating, Busby briefly worked at the Cresset Press – part of the Barrie Group – while setting up Allison and Busby (A & B), whose first books were published in 1967, making her the then youngest publisher as well as the first African woman book publisher in the UK – an achievement she has assessed by saying: "[I]t is easy enough to be the first, we can each try something and be the first woman or the first African woman to do X, Y or Z. But, if it's something worthwhile you don't want to be the only. ...I hope that I can, in any way, inspire someone to do what I have done but learn from my mistakes and do better than I have done." She was Allison & Busby's Editorial Director for 20 years, publishing many notable authors including Sam Greenlee (author of "The Spook Who Sat by the Door", the first novel published by A & B, in 1969), C. L. R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Chester Himes, George Lamming, Roy Heath, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, Val Wilmer, Colin MacInnes, H. Rap Brown, Julius Lester, Geoffrey Grigson, Edward Blishen, Dermot Healy, Adrian Mitchell, Matthew Sweeney, Jill Murphy, Christine Qunta, Michael Horovitz, Alexandra Kollontai, Gordon Williams, Carlos Moore, Michèle Roberts, Molefe Pheto, Arthur Maimane, Maurice Nyagumbo, Giles Gordon, Claire Rayner, Clive Sinclair, Mineke Schipper, Chris Searle, Richard Stark, James Ellroy, Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Thomson Davis, B. Traven, Alexis Lykiard, Jack Trevor Story, Michael Moorcock, Mervyn Peake, John Clute, Julian Savarin, Ralph de Boissière, Andrew Salkey, Harriet E. Wilson, and Miyamoto Musashi. Busby was subsequently Editorial Director of Earthscan (publishing titles by Han Suyin, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, René Dumont, Carolina Maria de Jesus, and others), before pursuing a freelance career as an editor, writer, and critic. Writing, editing and broadcasting. As a journalist, she has written for "The Guardian" (mainly book reviews or obituaries of artists and activists including Jessica Huntley, Buzz Johnson, Jayne Cortez, Jan Carew, Rosa Guy, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Florynce Kennedy, Barry Reckord, Frank Crichlow, Connie Mark, Glenn Thompson, August Wilson, Pearl Connor-Mogotsi, Geraldine Connor and Binyavanga Wainaina), "The Observer", "The Independent", "The Sunday Times", the "New Statesman", and elsewhere, for both the general press and specialist journals. "Daughters of Africa" (1992) and "New Daughters of Africa" (2019). Busby compiled "Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present" (London: Cape, 1992), described by "Black Enterprise" as "a landmark", which includes contributions in a range of genres by more than 200 women. Widely reviewed on publication, it is now characterised as containing work by "the matriarchs of African literature. They pioneered 'African' writing, in which they were not simply writing stories about their families, communities and countries, but they were also writing themselves into the African literary history and African historiography. They claimed space for women storytellers in the written form, and in some sense reclaimed the woman's role as the creator and carrier of many African societies' narratives, considering that the traditional storytelling session was a women's domain." Busby edited a 2019 follow-up volume entitled "New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent" (first published by Myriad Editions in the UK), featuring another 200-plus writers from across the African diaspora. A reviewer in "The Irish Times" commented: "Sometimes you need an anthology to remind you of the variety, strength and nuance of writing among a certain region or group of people. "New Daughters of Africa" is indispensable because African voices have been silenced or diminished throughout history, and women's voices even more so." Connected with the 2019 anthology, the "Margaret Busby "New Daughters of Africa" Award" was announced by the publisher, in partnership with SOAS, University of London, that will benefit an African woman student, covering tuition fees and accommodation at International Students House, London. Other book work. Busby has contributed to books including "" (eds Sarah LeFanu and Stephen Hayward, 1990), "Mothers: Reflections by Daughters" (ed. Joanna Goldsworthy, 1995), "IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain" (eds Kadija Sesay and Courttia Newland, 2000), "Why 2K? Anthology for a New Era" (2000), "The Legacy of Efua Sutherland" (2007), "Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70" (2012), "99 words" (ed. Liz Gray, 2011), "If I Could Tell You Just One Thing...: Encounters with Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice" (by Richard Reed, 2016), "Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible" (by Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke, 2018), and Chris Fite-Wassilak's "The Artist in Time" (July 2020). In 2014, Busby co-authored with Ishmahil Blagrove "Carnival: A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival". Among other books for which she has written introductions or forewords are the Penguin Modern Classics edition of "A Question of Power" by Bessie Head, "Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta" (ed. Marie Umeh, 1996), and "Beyond Words: South African Poetics" (with Keorapetse Kgositsile, Don Mattera, Lebo Mashile and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, 2009). With Darcus Howe, Busby co-edited "C.L.R. James's 80th Birthday Lectures" (Race Today Publications, 1984), and she is co-editor with Beverley Mason FRSA of "No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990", a 2018 publication arising out of the 2015–16 exhibition "No Colour Bar" held at the Guildhall Art Gallery. Busby was a prominent participant in the major 2019 exhibition "Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers" at Somerset House, and contributed an introductory essay for the catalogue. Broadcasting and dramatizations. Busby has regularly worked for radio and television since the late 1960s, when she presented the magazine programme "London Line" for the Central Office of Information, as well as "Break For Women" on the BBC African Service, and later "Talking Africa" on Spectrum Radio, in addition to appearing on a range of programmes including "Kaleidoscope", "Front Row", "Open Book", "Woman's Hour", and "Democracy Now!" (USA). Her abridgements and dramatizations for BBC Radio include books by C. L. R. James, Jean Rhys, Wole Soyinka, Timothy Mo, Sam Selvon, Walter Mosley, Henry Louis Gates, Lawrence Scott and Simi Bedford. Busby's play based on C. L. R. James's novel "Minty Alley", and produced by Pam Fraser Solomon, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1998, winning a Commission for Racial Equality "Race in the Media Award" (RIMA) in 1999. She was also part of Penumbra Productions, an independent production company, with other members including Horace Ové, H. O. Nazareth, Farrukh Dhondy, Mustapha Matura, Michael Abbensetts and Lindsay Barrett, among whose projects was a series of films based on lectures by C. L. R. James in the 1980s. Her writing for the stage includes "Sankofa" (1999), "Yaa Asantewaa – Warrior Queen" (UK/Ghana, 2001–02), directed by Geraldine Connor, and "An African Cargo" (Greenwich Theatre, 2007) directed by Felix Cross. She has also been a song lyricist. In 2014, following the death of Maya Angelou, Busby scripted a major tribute entitled "Maya Angelou: A Celebration", which took place on 5 October at the Royal Festival Hall during the Southbank Centre's London Literature Festival; directed by Paulette Randall, and chaired by Jon Snow and Moira Stuart, the celebration featured contributions from artists including Adjoa Andoh, Angel Coulby, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicola Hughes, Ella Odedina, NITROvox, Roderick Williams and Ayanna Witter-Johnson. Literary activism. She has worked continuously for diversity within the publishing industry, writing in a 1984 article in the "New Statesman": "Is it enough to respond to a demand for books reflecting the presence of 'ethnic minorities' while perpetuating a system which does not actively encourage their involvement at all levels? The reality is that the appearance and circulation of books supposedly produced with these communities in mind is usually dependent on what the dominant white (male) community, which controls schools, libraries, bookshops and publishing houses, will permit." In the 1980s, she was a founding member of the organization Greater Access to Publishing (GAP), which engaged in campaigns for increased Black representation in British publishing. Other members of this multi-racial group, which held a conference in November 1987 particularly to highlight publishing as an option for Black women, included Lennie Goodings, Maggie Scott, Ros de Lanerolle, Yvonne Collymore, Paula Kahn, Toks Williams, Kothai Christie, and Jacqui Roach. Busby was the patron of Independent Black Publishers (IBP), a trade association chaired by Verna Wilkins. The aim of IBP, as Busby was quoted as saying, was to "provide a forum for progressive black publishers to share initiatives, maximise mutual strengths and identify common difficulties, with a view to having a more effective impact on the book trade and the wider publishing industry", and in 2007 at the London Book Fair a joint IBP stand showcased the books of Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, Tamarind Books, the X Press, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, Joan Anim-Addo's Mango Press, and other ventures. In a 2012 interview with Tricia Wombell, Busby said: "It is important to document and celebrate the achievements of many of our Black creatives (…) so that they do not get written out of history simply because their importance may not be recognised by the mainstream." A participant in numerous literary festivals and conferences internationally, Busby has interviewed and been "in conversation" with such writers as Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Nawal El Saadawi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o. and Ben Okri. Busby was appointed chair of the 2020 Booker Prize judges, other members of the panel including Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson. Busby has previously judged several other literary competitions, among them the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Book Prize (for which she was chair of the judges in 2012), Africa39, and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa (chair of judges, 2018). In 2021, she served as a judge in the Trade category of the British Book Awards.<ref>

28dd5672-e623-4afc-bc3f-92ec2993ed16

m2d2_wiki

Tolu Ogunlesi Tolu Ogunlesi (born 3 March 1982) is a Nigerian journalist, poet, photographer, fiction writer, and blogger. Ogunlesi was appointed to the role of Special Assistant on Digital/New Media by President Muhammadu Buhari on 18 February 2016. Early life and education. Ogunlesi was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Nigerian parents and has lived most of his life in Nigeria. He attended the International School Ibadan. He also holds a 2004 Bachelor of Pharmacy (B. Pharm) degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. In 2011, he earned a MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK. Career. As a creative writer, he is the author of a collection of poetry, "Listen to the Geckos Singing from a Balcony" (Bewrite Books, 2004), and a novella, "Conquest & Conviviality" (Hodder Murray, 2008). Among publications in which his fiction and poetry have appeared are "The London Magazine", "Wasafiri", "Farafina", "PEN Anthology of New Nigerian Writing", "Litro", "Brand", "Orbis", "Nano2ales", "Stimulus Respond", "Sable", "Magma", "Stanford’s Black Arts Quarterly" and "World Literature Today". In 2006 he was awarded a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry prize, in 2008 the Nordic Africa Institute Guest Writer Fellowship, and in 2009 a Cadbury Visiting Fellowship by the University of Birmingham. He has twice been a winner of the annual CNN Multichoice African Journalist Awards, in 2009 (the Arts and Culture prize) and in 2013 (Coca-Cola Company Economics & Business Award), as well as being shortlisted for the inaugural PEN/Studzinski literary prize. As a journalist, he has been a contributor to "Tell Magazine", "The Guardian" (Lagos), "Daily Independent" (Nigeria), "New Age", "Forbes Africa", "The Guardian" (UK), "Financial Times", "HuffPost", "Business Day" (Nigeria), and "Premium Times". He was Arts Manager Nigeria for the British Council between 2011 and 2012, and has worked as a Features Editor and Editorial Board member of "Next" newspaper, and as a West Africa Editor for "The Africa Report" magazine from 2014 to 2015. He was a 2015 New Media Fellow of the U.S. State Department's International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP). He has said of his writing career: "I started with poetry. Then I tried my hands at fiction — my first short story, Solemn Avenue was inspired by Helon Habila's "Waiting for an Angel". And then I moved to journalism — magazine pieces, interviews, satire, reviews, opinion pieces. I have tried my hands at radio drama, at television scripting. I hope to write a full-length play this year. Looking back, I think I have grown comfortable with constantly expanding the possibilities of my writing, and refusing to allow myself be held down by any particular genre." On 18 February 2016, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Ogunlesi as his Special Assistant on Digital/New Media.

002871eb-cb69-489a-b740-40c8b81b9bfd

m2d2_wiki

Malorie Blackman Malorie Blackman (born 8 February 1962) is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues. Her critically and popularly acclaimed "Noughts and Crosses" series uses the setting of a fictional dystopia to explore racism. Her book "New Windmills Spring" sold out within a week of publishing it. Early life. Malorie Blackman was born in Clapham, London. Her parents were both from Barbados. At school, she wanted to be an English teacher, but she grew up to become a systems programmer instead. She earned an HNC at Thames Polytechnic and is a graduate of the National Film and Television School. She married Neil Morrison in 1992 and their daughter Ivey was born in 1995. Author. Blackman had her book "New Windmills Spring" sold out within a week of publishing it. Ever since, she has written more than 60 children's books, including novels and short story collections, and also television scripts and a stage play. Her work has won over 15 awards. Blackman's television scripts include episodes of the long-running children's drama "Byker Grove" as well as television adaptations of her novels "Whizziwig" and "Pig-Heart Boy". She became the first person of colour writer to work on "Doctor Who" ever (something almost accomplished by Robin Mukherjee 29 years earlier, during the run of the original series with the unmade "Alixion"). Her books have been translated into over 15 languages including Spanish, Welsh, German, Japanese, Chinese and French. Blackman's award-winning "Noughts & Crosses series", exploring love, racism and violence, is set in a fictional dystopia. Explaining her choice of title, in a 2007 interview for the BBC's "Blast" website, Blackman said that noughts and crosses is "one of those games that nobody ever plays after childhood, because nobody ever wins". In an interview for "The Times", Blackman said that before writing "Noughts & Crosses", her protagonists' ethnicities had never been central to the plots of her books. She has also said, "I wanted to show black children just getting on with their lives, having adventures, and solving their dilemmas, like the characters in all the books I read as a child." Blackman eventually decided to address racism directly. She reused some details from her own experience, including an occasion when she needed a plaster and found they were designed to be inconspicuous only on white people's skin. "The Times" interviewer Amanda Craig speculated about the delay for the "Noughts & Crosses" series to be published in the United States: "though there was considerable interest, 9/11 killed off the possibility of publishing any book describing what might drive someone to become a terrorist". "Noughts and Crosses" is now available in the US published under the title "Black & White" (Simon & Schuster Publishers, 2005). "Noughts & Crosses" was No. 61 on the Big Read list, a 2003 BBC survey to find "The Nation's Best-Loved Book", with more votes than "A Tale of Two Cities", several Terry Pratchett novels and "Lord of the Flies". She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. In June 2013, Blackman was announced as the new Children's Laureate, succeeding Julia Donaldson. Personal life. Malorie Blackman lives with her husband Neil Morrison and daughter Elizabeth in Kent, England. In her free time, she likes to play her piano, compose, play computer games and write poetry. She is the subject of a biography for children by Verna Wilkins. In March 2014, Blackman joined other prominent authors in supporting the Let Books Be Books campaign, which seeks to stop children’s books being labelled as 'for girls' or 'for boys'. In August 2014, Malorie Blackman was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue. Works. Television scripts. Her novel "Operation Gadgetman!" was also adapted into a 1996 TV movie directed by Jim Goddard and starring Marina Sirtis.