Robert Fleming

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In time for Black History Month, publishers are honoring a community that has enriched the American social, cultural and political landscapes. While many of the books featured here chronicle the African-American fight for freedom and equality, others address the challenges that have produced a unique sense of determination and strength of will in the black community. The exceptional titles listed below explorations of both well-known and neglected chapters of African-American history are the perfect ways for readers to celebrate this special month. An impressive range of viewpoints is collected in Voices in Our Blood, an anthology of pieces, written by novelists, poets, critics and journalists, that explore aspects of the civil rights movement. Some of the most important authors and thinkers of the 20th century are featured in this fascinating book, including Richard Wright, John Lewis, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Taylor Branch and James Baldwin. Included here are essays, reportage and memoir, along with classic pieces like Alex Haley's 1963 interview of Malcolm X for Playboy. Compiled by John Meacham, managing editor at Newsweek, Voices in Our Blood spans five decades, providing a kaleidoscopic look at the movement that changed the face of the nation.

The lengthy, complex relationship between two of the most vital figures of the Harlem Renaissance is immortalized in Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964. Following the pair of literary giants over a period of nearly four decades, this engrossing collection documents an unconventional friendship. Van Vechten, a noted white writer, acted as mentor to the younger black poet, helping Hughes get his first book published. Their correspondence is collected here for the first time, and the exchange between these great minds makes for fascinating reading. Hughes and Van Vechten comment knowledgeably on culture, art and politics, and both share gossip about common acquaintances like Zora Neale Hurston, H. L. Mencken and James Baldwin. Edited by Emily Bernard, assistant professor of African-American studies at Smith College, this collection provides new insight into the genius of two icons of the printed word.

History has never sufficiently recognized the achievements of heroic black women like Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks and Fannie Loy Hamer. With her pioneering new book, Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement From 1830 to 1970, journalist Lynne Olson sets out to right this oversight. A comprehensive look at the females black and white who helped engineer the fight for civil rights, Freedom's Daughters traces the movement from its beginnings in the 1800s, when women worked to abolish lynching, to contemporary times, when they organized history-making protests. A moving tribute to female freedom fighters that also examines the women's rights movement, Olson's provocative book demands that we take a second look at the contributions made by these courageous individuals.

With Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television, scholar and media expert Donald Bogle gives readers the first exhaustive account of blacks on network television. Covering the programs that featured African-American performers, from cartoonish 1950s hits like Amos n' Andy and Beulah to the wild, racy programming on WB and the Fox Network in the 1990s, Bogle dissects racial and cultural stereotypes in this compelling and informative book. Great scholarship and lively writing make Primetime Blues a must for anyone interested in the history of the tube and its effect on American race relations.

An engaging look at what has become a major status symbol among African Americans, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in Americaexamines the cultural and political significance of hair among black women. Written by Ayana Byrd, a former research chief for Vibe, and Lori L. Tharps, a reporter for Entertainment Weekly, Hair Story chronicles the history of black hair, from afros to braids, dreadlocks to weaves. The evolution and import of all the major styles are included here, along with interviews with women who have worn them. An entertaining study that also covers milestones in the history of black hair, profiling important figures like hair care industry giant Madame C. J. Walker, this is an impressive work of cultural history.

Finally, mention must be made of another recent book, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963by David Levering Lewis. A companion volume to his earlier work, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, Lewis' latest book opens with Du Bois' tenure as the editor of the NAACP publication The Crisis during the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence was at an all-time high. Lewis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and historian, vividly chronicles Du Bois' life, from his work at the magazine to his emergence as a worldwide leader in the struggle to end racism and colonialism. A balanced, well-researched narrative, this important book is full of revelations about a complex, aristocratic black figure.

Robert Fleming is the author of The African American Writers Handbook (Ballantine).

In time for Black History Month, publishers are honoring a community that has enriched the American social, cultural and political landscapes. While many of the books featured here chronicle the African-American fight for freedom and equality, others address the challenges that have produced a unique sense of determination and strength of will in the black […]
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Let's face it. Not every writer has been able to make the leap from the romance category to mainstream fiction without producing a literary stumble or losing a bit of her audience. That is not the case for Donna Hill, dubbed the queen of African-American romance, whose latest novel, If I Could, features many of the author's trademark qualities: strong characterizations, complex moral questions and absorbing plot lines. Regina Everette, the book's heroine, is having a mid-life crisis of monumental proportions. A journalist, she fights emotional burnout from one too many crime stories, insensitive editors with a need for the grisly and sensational, and grueling deadlines. Her restlessness has now seeped into her life after hours, shattering the false calm of her sedate marriage with the seemingly perfect husband. That sense of emptiness and frustration compels her to leave Russell, her husband, and her job on the newspaper for a chance to find her own peace and follow her dream of being her own boss. Neither her husband, children or friends know what to make of this sudden transformation in Regina and hope she'll snap out of it. Hill does a fine job of detailing her character's inner conflicts without sinking into a tirade of psychobabble and soapy pathos. Even Regina, as Hill portrays her, seems to be making it up as she goes along.

Nobody is more spooked by the changes in Regina's personality than her two gal-pals, Antoinette and Victoria, but they fail to persuade her to hold on to what they see as the perfect life. The turmoil in Regina's life forces her friends to question what is happening in their own tidy, stale existences and to realize that neither of them is truly satisfied with her own identity as a woman or a wife.

Hill uses her trio of female characters to ask a bevy of moral questions that probably confront most women at some point in their lives. First, how much are you willing to sacrifice for your own brand of happiness? Second, are you willing to deal with the consequences of your choices without excessive regret and second-guessing? To put these questions and others under the spotlight, she creates a series of engrossing scenes that delve deeply into the timely issues of female enpowerment, self-determination, race, class and the duality of choice.

As the novel proceeds, both of Regina's girlfriends watch their own lives derail, while their floundering buddy slowly regains her footing and reclaims her life on her own terms.

If I Could should be a welcome treat for Hill's fans of her unconventional romance novels as well as a revelation for critics soured on the ongoing series of cookie-cutter relationship fiction coming to market. This is commercial fiction with heart, soul and bite.

Let's face it. Not every writer has been able to make the leap from the romance category to mainstream fiction without producing a literary stumble or losing a bit of her audience. That is not the case for Donna Hill, dubbed the queen of African-American romance, whose latest novel, If I Could, features many of […]
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When the Johnson brothers, James Weldon and Rosamond, wrote the song, "Lift Every Voice And Sing, in 1900 to honor President Lincoln's birthday, they certainly had no idea how important their creation would be to future generations of African Americans. In a glowing new collection that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the anthem, 100 voices have been assembled to comment on the song's influence on their lives and on the state of race relations in the nation.

The Johnsons intended the inspirational song to serve as a musical protest against the humiliating conditions of Jim Crow and the bloody wave of racial lynchings that were sweeping the country. The book's editors, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, a veteran civil rights activist, and Sondra Kathryn Wilson, literary executor of the James Weldon Johnson estate, work hard to keep the historical angle front and center. Following an informative introduction by the editors, the authors let each of the assembled voices speak in brief essays.

Historian John Hope Franklin reminisces about his days as a young Fisk University student when he heard James Weldon Johnson dramatically recite the song's lyrics during one of his lectures. Poet Maya Angelou tells how the residents of her impoverished hometown of Stamps, Arkansas, would cry when singing the song, thinking of what opportunities time could bring for their children. Entertainer Harry Belafonte praises the song's "dual message of the dark past of slavery and hope. Former U.S. Senator Ed Brooke remembers how the song revived the sagging spirits of the enlisted men and officers of the segregated Negro 366th Infantry Combat regiment fighting in Italy during the Second World War. The collective impact of the tribute is supported by an eye-catching collection of photographs from the fabled archives of the Schomberg Center for Black Research in Harlem, many of them never previously viewed. Lift Every Voice And Sing is highly recommended for those interested in African American history, the growing pains of democracy and America as a glorious work in progress.

When the Johnson brothers, James Weldon and Rosamond, wrote the song, "Lift Every Voice And Sing, in 1900 to honor President Lincoln's birthday, they certainly had no idea how important their creation would be to future generations of African Americans. In a glowing new collection that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the anthem, 100 voices […]
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With the arrival of Black History Month comes the expectation of a host of African-American books, geared not only to that unique, highly creative community but to the general population as well. Mainstream publishers now understand that there is a large readership waiting for books that reflect African-American issues and concerns, so it is not unusual that the bookshelves are full of new volumes during the month of February. In the roundup that follows, we at BookPage have selected a precious few of the large collection of books currently available.

Fiction

Some African-American literary critics often lament the alleged lack of gifted young black novelists coming up, mistakenly comparing the young lions to legends such as James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. However, the emergence of such talents as R.M. Johnson, the author of the acclaimed The Harris Men, has quieted many of the naysayers. His latest novel, Father Found, chronicles the obsession of Zale Rowen, founder of Father Found, an organization that finds absent dads and forces them to fulfill their emotional and financial obligations. Zale's zeal for a social cause costs him dearly, bringing him to serious illness and crisis in this timely, disturbing novel that is certain to win Johnson much attention.

Venise Berry's All of Me follows her best-selling debut, So Good, with a humorous, insightful look at America's obsession with weight as Serpentine Williamson, a Chicago TV reporter blessed with the good life, learns the importance of self-esteem when everything she holds dear is threatened. This is Berry at her best, wry and knowing, using a new twist on the triumph-over-adversity motif.

While veteran novelist Kristin Lattany may be best known for her most popular book, The Landlord, her new work, Do unto Others offers us a different side of the author with the absorbing story of Zena and her husband Lucious, whose world is rocked by the entry of an unpredictable young African girl into their household. The novel is a scathing reminder of the futility of racism, the assumptions of Afrocentrism, and the occasional absurdity of political correctness.

The notion of May/December romance gets a fresh coat of paint in Patty Rice's novel Somethin' Extra, when Genie Gatlin, who specializes in safe married men, meets David Lewis, a man 30 years her senior. He shows her the full range of love and commitment, despite her fears and doubts. Rice writes with a candid, realistic view of amour that pulls very few punches.

Jeffrey Renard Allen's exceptional debut epic, Rails Under My Back, tells the complex story of the lives and loves of two brothers, Lucifer and John Jones, and their wives, Gracie and Sheila McShan. This multilayered, intricate fable delves deep into the themes of love, survival, responsibility, and trust, as the choices of the parents bear unforeseen consequences for their children. Sweeping, experimental, and rewarding.

Nonfiction

Call him an intellectual, call him an activist, Harvard University professor Cornel West is a man who defies category with an encyclopedic mind that is stumped by no topic or realm of study. His stand-out collection of social commentary, memoir, interviews, and essays, The Cornel West Reader, attests to his prowess as cultural analyst and academic philosopher-theologian with its astute observations on everything from Marxist theory and black sexuality to black-Jewish relations and rap.

A rare opportunity to enter the minds of three pivotal African-American leaders is presented by Dr. Sondra Kathryn Wilson, literary executor of the James Weldon's Johnson Papers and editor of In Search of Democracy: The NAACP Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins 1920-1977. Every page of this collection of essays, reports, speeches, and editorials yields a wealth of information about this trio of extraordinary men.

Biographies of noted African Americans have become very popular in recent years, gaining both in quality and critical notice. Maverick social critic Michael Eric Dyson, currently Ida B. Wells-Barnett University professor and professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, has reinterpreted our common perceptions of civil rights Rev. Martin Luther King with his latest book, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. King, Dyson says, would have been a supporter of affirmative action, socialism, and a modest degree of separatism. In this controversial evaluation, the black spokesman was allegedly cynical about whites, believed America had spurned him, and suffered mightily from depression. This is a book destined to spark debate and a firestorm of criticism.

In the latest celebration of the genius of trumpeter Louis Armstrong, editor Thomas Brothers has sifted through the extensive archives of the master jazz horn man to compile Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words, an intriguing mix of letters, autobiographical sketches, magazine articles, and essays spanning Satchmo's long, eventful life. This assemblage reveals Armstrong to be a smart, clever wit, a master communicator, and a colorful human being with a heart as big as his musical sound.

With two competing books and a film on former boxing champion Rubin Hurricane Carter currently available, former New York Times reporter James Hirsch's Hurricane is one of the most engrossing takes on the ups and downs of the man who became an international cause celebre when wrongly convicted for the 1967 murder of three whites. Carter was later freed when evidence of police corruption was uncovered. Much care is taken in Hirsch's book to render Carter's spiritual and political transformation, as well as his lengthy legal battle.

Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African American Research, has been a very busy man. First he, with Lynn Davis serving as his photographer, has produced a wonderful travel book on Africa's hidden past, Wonders of the African World, following his journey through 12 of the continent's most beautiful countries. A companion to a PBS TV special, the book gets much of its distinctive flavor from Gates's inspired narrative, which is accompanied by 66 photos, seven full-color maps, and over 130 illustrations. Definitely an item worth having for anyone wishing to know more about the mystery that is Africa.

Possibly Gates's greatest achievement comes in his editing, with an assist from fellow Harvard Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, of the landmark Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. For anyone wishing to learn more about Africa or America, this resource fills the bill with over 3,500 entries, hundreds of maps, tables, charts, and photographs. Every conceivable topic, from culture to politics, is covered in detail and expertly cross-referenced in this incredible fount of facts, figures, and general information.

The release of the splendid African Ceremonies by writer Angela Fisher and photographer Carol Beckwith has been the subject of much talk in recent weeks. A spectacular visual treat, the book redefines the coffee-table volume with its breathtaking images and sensitive text on the daily ritual of tribal culture. What the book says so skillfully is that no matter how different the external trappings of regional life may appear, the age-old rites of passage remain essentially the same. National Geographic, eat your heart out.

Robert Fleming is a journalist in New York City.

With the arrival of Black History Month comes the expectation of a host of African-American books, geared not only to that unique, highly creative community but to the general population as well. Mainstream publishers now understand that there is a large readership waiting for books that reflect African-American issues and concerns, so it is not […]
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Inspired by the tragic 1994 Susan Smith incident in North Carolina, Richard Price sought to understand the social and cultural effects of a heinous crime cruelly exploited by a headline-thirsty media and insensitive political opportunists without regard for truth on a mid-sized American city fraught with racial tensions. The result of his curiosity is his latest and most accomplished novel, Freedomland, which continues his astute explorations of race, power and intricate human relationships in the same neighborhood that was the setting of his celebrated work, Clockers.

When Brenda Martin, a young white single mother, alleges her vehicle was car-jacked by a black man near the infamous Armstrong housing projects, every person with an ambition or an agenda comes forth to take unfair advantage of the situation. Complicating matters is the fact that according to the grief-stricken mother, her 4-year-old son, now missing, was asleep in the backseat of the car at the time of the hijacking. The city is cleaved in two along racial lines, with the residents of the African-American neighborhood of Dempsy squaring off against the whites of the blue-collar neighborhood of Gannon. A false arrest of a black man only inflames the volatile atmosphere, pushing events to the brink of violence.

In the hands of a less capable novelist, this book could have emerged as cheap melodrama, but Price tinkers with the currently blurred format of the American whodunit, fashioning a penetrating study of his three leading characters. The focus of the town's pity and compassion, Martin is revealed as a complex, troubled woman with several grim secrets tucked away in her past. Nothing touches the heart like the abduction or death of a young child. But nothing here is as it seems, which is what Detective Lorenzo Council, assigned to the case, instinctively feels in his gut. He has split loyalties. His sentiments are with the residents of the Armstrong projects, where he grew up and where his mother still lives, but his duty is to uphold the law. Council's task of ferreting out the truth is constantly hampered by the media, especially the dogged sleuthing of Jesse Haus, a white reporter out to build a reputation from the Martin case. She will do whatever it takes to carve out a niche for herself on the front page above the fold. Like Council, Haus believes Martin knows more than she is saying. As this unlikely pair struggles to solve the crime, others outside the two warring communities stir up more rancor by appealing to the irrational and the bigoted.

The skill of a premier novelist such as Price comes in his ability to hold the reader's attention as he continually shocks and surprises with a rapid series of brutally frank scenes. The pacing is fierce. He never lets up. He dissects the growing controversy surrounding the crime, studying it under a microscope like a lab researcher, ultimately satirizing our national obsession with anything sordid and provocative. The dirtier, the better.

However, the climax of Freedomland fulfills all of the criteria of the modern mystery fable, permitting Price to insert a few twists and turns near the wild conclusion, leaving the reader breathless but satisfied.

Inspired by the tragic 1994 Susan Smith incident in North Carolina, Richard Price sought to understand the social and cultural effects of a heinous crime cruelly exploited by a headline-thirsty media and insensitive political opportunists without regard for truth on a mid-sized American city fraught with racial tensions. The result of his curiosity is his […]
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Charles Frazier uses reverse psychology to great advantage in his debut novel, Cold Mountain, a Civil War saga with blood on its bayonets and romance in its gentle soul. The author takes some creative risks by reshaping the true battle tales of his great-great-grandfather into an epic story that accumulates power and purpose with each turn of the page.

Our hero, Inman, much like the sensitive lead character in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, is sickened by the wanton waste of young lives on the battlefield and torn between the traditional conflict of valor and cowardice. In the field hospital, the injured Confederate private witnesses the brutality of both sides in the most bloody of American armed struggles, the War Between the States. 

Emotionally shaken, Inman realizes that he will be returned to the front and possible death as soon as he is well. He watches men on both sides ordered to charge into lethal barrages of gunfire and cannon shot, only to fall after a few precious steps. The author makes some disturbing cultural and social commentary as Inman considers the war philosophy of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who felt armed conflict was "an instrument for clarifying God's obscure will," a view not shared by the youthful soldier who dons new clothes and decides to reclaim his old life regardless of the consequences.

So the eventful journey back to his sweetheart, Ada, begins. Frazier takes us into the life and mind of Ada, a young girl stunned by the sudden death of her consumptive father. Despite the man's standing in the community as a preacher, no one comes forward to help her until another fatherless young woman, Ruby, appears. Together they team up to put Ada's farm back into operation, trading and bartering for the goods and services they need. It is the emotional bond betwee these two sturdy souls and their startling evolution as characters which lift this novel above and beyond the usual offerings in historical fiction.

Lyrical and magnificent in its narrative power, this is one of the most promising literary debuts in some time. And we are truly glad that Charles Frazier remembered all those marvelous Civil War yarns his great-great-grandaddy passed along.

Charles Frazier uses reverse psychology to great advantage in his debut novel, Cold Mountain, a Civil War saga with blood on its bayonets and romance in its gentle soul. The author takes some creative risks by reshaping the true battle tales of his great-great-grandfather into an epic story that accumulates power and purpose with each […]

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