New novel 'Home' brings Toni Morrison back to Ohio

 OBERLIN, Ohio – At 81, Toni Morrison, who's won the Nobel Prize for her novels about the sorrows and joys of African-American life, has a new book and a new hip.
 
 

Her 10th novel, Home (Knopf, $24), released Tuesday, features an angry and troubled black Korean War veteran in the 1950s. It's set mostly in Georgia, where Morrison has never lived. But it's brought her from her home in New York back to Ohio, where she was born and raised.

In an interview during a three-day visit to Oberlin College, she says that despite a hip replacement, her back is "problematic." Her diagnosis: "Two little discs seem to be engaged or something." She gets around by wheelchair or supported on the arms of others.MORE

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Kadir Nelson paints 'the heart and soul' of America

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NEW YORK – Author/illustrator Kadir Nelson, 37, went to college on an architectural scholarship, but quickly fell in love with painting, which led to his first job.

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  Image on the cover of 'Heart and Soul;' author Kadir Nelson.

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Image on the cover of 'Heart and Soul;' author Kadir Nelson.

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"A dream job," he calls it, with a new film studio named DreamWorks.

In 1996, Nelson worked as a "visual development artist," creating artwork that, as he puts it, "would fuel the director's vision."

• PHOTOS: See paintings from 'Heart and Soul'

The director was Steven Spielberg. The film wasAmistad, based on an 1839 mutiny aboard a slave ship that led to a case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

That job stirred Nelson's interest in history, especially African-American history, which he remembers as being treated as a "sidebar" in school. He now sees it as "essential to understanding the great story of America."

And that's the theme of Nelson's latest illustrated book,Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans (Balzer & Bray, $19.99, for ages 9 and up).

In 108 pages, including 44 full-page color paintings, it goes from Revolutionary-era slavery to President Obama's election, told in the voice of a woman who's seen it all.

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Book News: Oprah Winfrey to produce ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ for HBO

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” the nonfiction best-seller by Rebecca Skloot, will become an HBO film.

And it has some big names behind it. The executive producers include Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball(”True Blood”). Other executive producers are Kate Forte and Peter Macdissi.
In its synopsis, HBO says the book “tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black mother in Baltimore, whose cancerous cells — taken without her knowledge – enabled some of the most significant advances in 20th century medicine, but with devastating, and later liberating, effects on her family.”
In announcing the movie, HBO had no news on casting or production. But because of HBO’s recent efforts in long-form programming — “The Pacific,” “Temple Grandin,” “You Don’t Know Jack” — “Henrietta Lacks” has found the best possible home. MORE

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The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

THE TRIALS OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY: AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK POET AND HER ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS
By Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

While telling the astonishing and ultimately tragic story of Phillis Wheatley, he includes an equally compelling meditation on how the questions of race and equality that haunted our Founders 250 years ago are considerably changed from how we think about race today.
With a good flair for storytelling, Mr. Gates jump-starts us ahead to a day in October 1772 when 18-year-old Phillis is brought before a panel of the most powerful government and cultural officials of the Bay Colony to decide a momentous issue that had become an international cause celebre: Was it possible that an African slave - and a female slave at that - had the intellectual capacity to write classical poetry in English?
This was not an idle question of literary quibbling, as Mr. Gates emphasizes. The issue at root was whether Africans were, according to many of the leading thinkers of the day - such as Francis Bacon, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - descendants of another "species of men," related more to apes than Europeans. The fundamental question of the basic humanity of African slaves underpinned the moral juggling that most found necessary to justify the forcible enslavement of fellow creatures.
That underpinning was already starting to crack. That same year, the British high courts ruled in the famed Somerset case that a slave brought into Britain could not be taken against his will out of the country and back to slavery. It was a long time before Britain outlawed slavery inside its borders, but the fact that anti-slavery advocates could bring such a legal action and win it was truly earthshaking.
As Mr. Gates tells it, the questioning of Phillis about her literary gifts was another such tremor that shook the moralistic justification for slavery. The incident also marked the seminal moment in the development of black American literature and, with irony, another of the trials she would undergo. As it turns out, the panel of Boston's great and good - most of them slave owners - came away convinced that the poems they examined had in fact been written by her.
It seems Phillis had been something of a prodigy from the start. John Wheatley testified that within 16 months of her arrival from Africa, Phillis had learned to speak and read English. Her first poem was written by the time she was 11, and at 13, she had her first poem published in a local newspaper. By 1772, Phillis was in correspondence with well-known literary figures in England and her owners were busy arranging for a London printer to publish a collection of her poetry, which became the first book ever to be published in English by a person of African descent. Its release in 1773 on both sides of the Atlantic made her a true international celebrity. MORE

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Pam Grier''s New Book, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts

In her new memoir, “Foxy: My Life in Three Acts” (Hachette Book Group), Ms. Grier, 60, revisits a career that took off in the early 1970s when she became blaxploitation cinema’s first female action hero. She sprang to prominence again in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film, “Jackie Brown,” and she popped up in the 21st century in the groundbreaking Showtime television series “The L Word,” about the lives of lesbians.
“Foxy,” however, reveals a darker personal life, including, for the first time, the details of her sexual assault at 6. It also recounts the diagnosis of cervical cancer Ms. Grier received in her late 30s and the untimely deaths and suicides of family members and friends. There is space, too, for her romances with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who wanted her to convert to Islam), Freddie Prinze (who battled drugs and wanted her to have his baby) and Richard Pryor (who thought she could help save him from drugs).MORE

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Book Notes: Guyette explores African-American history in state

Historian Elise A. Guyette is the author of "Discovering Black Vermont: African-American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790-1890" (University of Vermont Press/University Press of New England).

The book explores three generations of a black family in Chittenden County, starting in the years after Vermont's statehood.
In news material about the book, James Brewer Stewart, professor emeritus of history at Macalester College, writes:
"By so vividly illuminating the history of a truly forgotten people -- African-Americans who lived in a small, rural Vermont community -- 'Discovering Black Vermont' is a revelation."MORE

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The Coretta Scott King Book Awards

Tuesday April 27, 2010

Since today is the anniversary of the birth of Coretta Scott King, it seems like a good time to highlight the Coretta Scott King Book Awards. According to the American Library Association, the purpose of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards is "encourage the artistic expression of the African American experience via literature and the graphic arts, including biographical, historical and social history treatments by African American authors and illustrators." I was pleased to learn that Charles R. Smith Jr. is the recipient of the 2010 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for his sepia-toned photographs that illustrate My People by Langston Hughes. See my review of My People. The 2010 Coretta Scott King Author Award winner is Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, author of Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal. The 2010 Coretta Scott King Book Awards also include two Honor Books and the John Steptoe New Talent Award. See my article about the Coretta Scott King Book Awards for more about the awards and previous winners.

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Shaq Supports Mom as she Promotes Her Book

CLEVELAND — Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal is known for his scoring, rebounding and interior defense, but he came up with a big assist before Wednesday night’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
The 7-foot-1 O’Neal sat next to his mother, Lucille, in the concourse at Quicken Loans Arena, greeting fans and signing her new book, “Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go: From Mental Welfare to Mental Wealth.”
The book details Lucille’s journey through life, which includes being an unwed teenage mother living on welfare, issues with alcoholism and ending her 30-year marriage.
“I’m very proud of her,” said Shaquille, who sat with son Shareef at the table. “I think for her it’s more about helping young, single women. We’re living in dire, tough times and I’m sure there are a lot of single women out there that just want to give up. MORE

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Authors Announced For the Arkansas Literary Festival April 8-11

Arkansas Literary Festival announces authorsLike last year — and maybe even more so — there aren't really any big names headed to the seventh annual Arkansas Literary Festival, which'll is happening April 8-11 throughout the River Market area.

Still, some good looking authors and programs. After just a quick scan through, here are some that stood out to me:

*Nolan Richardson biographer Rus Bradburd

*Marjorie Rosen, author of “Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town into an International Community,” who had readings cancelled in Bentonville and Rogers libraries last year. David Koon wrote about it then.

*The Oxford American Southern Food Issue panel, which includes New Orleans Times Picayune columnist Lolis Eric Elie and restaurant writer Brett Anderson along with Sam Eifling, who's writing about the nature of Arkansas food for the issue.

*Martha Hall Foose, author of the FANTASTIC cookbook "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea," and Katherine Whitworth, talking about food. More

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Annual ZORA! Festival draws thousands to Eatonville

EATONVILLE – Zora Neale Hurston died 50 years ago, but her spirit and writings continue to be paramount for this small African-American community north of downtown Orlando.

As she had done decades earlier, fans of the dominant Harlem Renaissance author strolled down Eatonville's main street on Saturday to absorb the rich culture of the country's first incorporated all-black town, which Hurston often described in her novels. Cultural and art enthusiasts visited the town to honor the author and other black artists and scholars during the annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities – ZORA! Festival.

The event makes history real, said Sharahn Slack of Orlando. She played the abolitionist Harriett Tubman in a skit outside the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church to encourage people, particularly youth, to pursue their dreams and celebrate their community – messages she says Hurston spread through her work.

"History is something to be celebrated rather than learned. When you celebrate history, it becomes personal," Slack, 16, said.

The three-day Outdoor Festival of the Arts, which wraps up today, is the conclusion of ZORA! Festival. It draws thousands of visitors from all over the U.S. and overseas each year. Event organizers estimate 250,000 people will attend this year's event. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/os-zora-street-festival-20100130,0,248500.story

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Say You're One Of Them

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.
Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent. MORE

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Queen of the Court: An Autobiography by Serena Williams

From gang violence to an inspiring trip to Ghana, the life of the younger Williams sister has been about much more than tennis, says Tim Adams
"You know I was always really very, very good," Venus said at the time, grinning. "Serena, on the other hand, wasn't very good at all. She was small, really slim and the racket was way too big for her. Hopeless. She started playing especially good tennis at around 15, which was soon enough – I mean, she won the US Open two years later – but still it was quite late compared to me." She then summed up the distinction in shorthand: "You know," she said, "I was always Venus …"

Serena, though, as this memoir makes clear, wasn't always Serena. Her book allows us to see how the younger half of the greatest sister act sport has known came out of the shadow of "V" through a process of intense self-invention. Serena recalls at one point how she was once asked how many grand slam titles she thought she would have won had Venus, her greatest rival, not stood in her way. She answered that she did not think she would have won any at all; Venus was her spur – her great advantage in life was that she knew from a very early age that if she could just beat her sister then she could beat anybody in the world.

She learnt through this to be at her best when everything was against her. Throughout her career, Serena has been in the habit of writing down inspirational words on Post-it notes and sticking them to her racket bag. Sometimes they read like text messages from Martin Luther King: "Show no emotion," she will write, "UR black and U can endure anything. Endure. Persevere. Stand tall." Or: "Be strong. Be black. Now's your time 2 shine. Be confident. They want to see you angry. Be angry, but don't let them see it."More

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We Are In Transition

We ask that you bear with us as we continue to make the necessary changes to The African American Book Review.
Thank You.

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Steve Harvey's Book Is Headed To The Big Screen

Cover via Amazon

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FcQ4SRWUL._SL75_.jpgScreen Gems has acquired rights to turn comedian Steve Harvey's book "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man" into a feature.

Harvey wrote the humorous book of advice for women seeking to better understand their male counterparts, an exercise inspired by a segment on Harvey's syndicated morning radio show.

Will Packer will produce, and Harvey will be exec producer. Screen Gems prexy Clint Culpepper will begin canvassing writers to hear different pitches for an ensemble comedy about romantic relationships. Culpepper first worked with Harvey when the latter acted in "You Got Served.""Steve has always provided an easily relatable perspective on men, the way they view women and their seemingly complex but surprisingly simple emotional needs," Culpepper said. Culpepper and Packer flew to Dallas on Sunday to close the deal with Harvey.

Packer recently produced "Obsessed," is shooting "Takers" and prepping a remake of "The Big Chill" for Screen Gems. MORE

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To Tell The Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B.Wells

Born to slaves in 1862, Ida B. Wells became a fearless antilynching crusader, women’s rights advocate, and journalist. Wells’s refusal to accept any compromise on racial inequality caused her to be labeled a “dangerous radical” in her day but made her a model for later civil rights activists as well as a powerful witness to the troubled racial politics of her era. In the richly illustratedTo Tell the Truth Freely, the historian Mia Bay vividly captures Wells’s legacy and life, from her childhood in Mississippi to her early career in late nineteenth-century Memphis and her later life in Progressive-era Chicago.

Wells’s fight for racial and gender justice began in 1883, when she was a young schoolteacher who traveled to her rural schoolhouse by rail. Forcibly ejected from her seat on a train one day on account of her race, Wells immediately sued the railroad. Though she ultimately lost her case on appeal in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, the published account of her legal challenge to Jim Crow changed her life, propelling her into a career as an outspoken journalist and social activist. Also a fierce critic of the racial violence that marked her era, Wells went on to launch a crusade against lynching that took her across the United States and eventually to Britain. Though she helped found the NAACP in 1910 after resettling in Chicago, she would not remain a member for long. Always militant in her quest for racial justice, Wells rejected not only Booker T. Washington’s accommodationism but also the moderating influence of white reformers within the early NAACP. The life of Ida B. Wells and her enduring achievements are dramatically recovered in Mia Bay’s To Tell the Truth Freely.

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NeNe Leakes New Book: Never Make The Same Mistake Twice

Outrageous, captivating, and unafraid to tell it like it is, Nene Leakes shares her wild journey from a scandalous past to the pinnacle of reality television stardom. Lauded by her fans for her refreshing honesty, infectiously genuine style, and clever sense of humor, Nene is an empowered, self-made woman who has not forgotten where she came from and knows exactly where she wants to go.

In this straight-talking and provocative memoir Nene charts her journey from family black sheep to single mother to making good and realizing her dreams. With her charm and bold, self-possessed voice, Nene tackles her painful childhood; the abuse she suffered at the hands of a violent boyfriend; her struggle to support her firstborn son; and her path to true love, self-acceptance, and pride.

In Never Make the Same Mistake Twice, Nene dishes on her cast mates; takes on the rumors about her past; and shares hard-earned and inspiring life lessons in her fierce, no-nonsense, and irreverent style.

Product Details
Touchstone, August 2009
Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1-4391-6730-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-6730-4

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E. Lynn Harris New Novel To be Published This Fall

E. Lynn Harris' book tour will go forward in honor of the author.

Harris honor: E. Lynn Harris wanted to do a "thank you" tour this fall, meeting with fans in small cities to get back to promoting his novels on a "grass-roots level," says Karen Hunter, whose Pocket Books imprint will publish his novel Mama Dearest in September. MORE

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Author E. Lynn Harris Dies at Age 54

Long before the secret world of closeted black gay men came to light in America, bestselling author E. Lynn Harris introduced a generation of black women to the phenomenon known as the "down low."

Harris endeared such characters to readers who were otherwise unfamiliar with them, using themes and backdrops familiar to urban professionals, conditioned by their upbringings, their church leaders or their friends to condemn and criticize homosexuality in the African-American community. A proud Razorback cheerleader at the University of Arkansas who struggled with his own sexuality before becoming a pioneer of gay black fiction, Harris died Thursday at age 54 while promoting his latest book in Los Angeles.

Publicist Laura Gilmore said Harris died Thursday night after being stricken at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, and a cause of death had not been determined. She said Harris, who lived in Atlanta, fell ill on a train to Los Angeles a few days ago and blacked out for a few minutes, but seemed fine after that.

An improbable and inspirational success story, Harris worked for a decade as an IBM executive before taking up writing, selling the novel "Invisible Life" from his car as he visited salons and beauty parlors around Atlanta. He had unprecedented success for an openly gay black author and his strength as a romance writer led some to call him the "male Terry McMillan."

In 15 years, Harris became the genre's most successful author, penning 11 titles, ten of them New York Times bestsellers. More than four million of his books are in print.

McMillan had just spoken to Harris about a week ago, to tell him she would pay tribute to him in her upcoming book by having a character read one of his titles, "And This Too Shall Pass."

"He was thrilled," McMillan said. "I loved his spirit and generosity. I loved that he found his own niche in the world of fiction, and I'm grateful to have known him. This just breaks my heart."

He went on to mainstream success with works such as the novel "Love of My Own" and the memoir "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted." MORE

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Stephen L. Carter Loves to Keep His Readers Guessing

Yale Law School professor Stephen L. Carter leads a double life — his best-selling novels include The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White. His latest, Jericho's Fall (Knopf, $25.95), revolves around Jericho Ainsley, a disgraced and dying former CIA director, and his onetime lover. Carter, 54, spoke with USA TODAY from his office in New Haven.More

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Author Details Story of Incarcerated Vocal Group

It sounds like a film script: five African-American men incarcerated at the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville during the '40s and '50s form a vocal group and release a hit record. But the story is true.

The blues quintet, dubbed The Prisonaires, was led by Johnny Bragg, who was serving 594 years for multiple counts of rape, and included William Stewart, serving 99 years for witnessing the murder of a man; Marcel Sanders, facing one to five years for involuntary manslaughter; Ed Thurman, serving 99 years for murdering a man who killed his dog; and John Drue Jr., serving three years for larceny.

They made history with their song, "Just Walkin' in the Rain," which was released on Sun Records in 1953.

Jay Warner, a six-time Grammy-winning music publisher and the founder of National League Music recounts The Prisonaires story in "Just Walkin' in the Rain: The True Story of the Prisonaires: the Convict Pioneers of R&B and Rock & Roll" (Renaissance Books, $25).

The tale is complex and inspiring as it deals with the issues of civil rights and prison reform, but its main focus is on the relationship between Bragg and the governor of the time, Frank Clement.

"It's really two men from opposite ends of the social and political spectrum who find a need in each other.

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