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Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 220
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 08:50 am: | 
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I picked up "Midnight Mover" (Bobby Womack's autobio) based on recommendations here. Very interesting read. He sure has lived!
I also have Jan Beatty's new collection of really intense poems, "Red Sugar". |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 116
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 11:35 am: |
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Ummm yes, "Red Sugar"...interesting read. You parlayed the word "intense" to describe it. I will give it that and then some.
Jan Beatty plays with words the way a master butcher plays with a slaughtered calf. Brutally artistic cuts that leave very little to go to waste. The poems are brazen but not ribald. Nice reading and her delivery is fairly solid through out the book.
Good call Ferociouskitty. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2946
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 01:17 pm: |
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Hi, FK and Rondall!
I have not been reading books outside of books for work, as I am pretty busy w/an upcoming move. However, I have been reading magazines like a maniac.
I really enjoyed the June issue of EBony. As I have mentioned on here before, I had not picked up let alone bought an Ebony for years but when I purchased the "In Our Lifetime" issue I was very impressed with the changes and improved quality of the writing and layout. The June issue is the Black music issue. They have several good profiles of artists that are not "mainstream" Black music.
Also, the June issue of The Atlantic is worth a read. Three good brief pieces on Obama's campaign, including how he has revolutionized both fund raising and use of the Internet. Also, very interesting article about the role that lack of paved roads has played in our (and any one else's) inability to be effective in Afghanistan.
Also, an informative review of Barbara Walters' new tell-all. (This was also pretty funny, such as the following: "In her day, Barbara Walters was a roundheels, a home-wrecker, and a two timer, which out to have made for great copy, but reading about these events was as off-putting as having your own mother tell you about the first time she reached orgasm.... She has apparently waited 40 years to tell the world that she was once romantically involved with a married black man, but 'Barbara Wlaters' and 'jungle fever' are not concepts one wants jangling together in the imagination" LOLOL!
Finally, I also highly recommend the Summer issue of B**** magazine. It features a very good read by our own FK! Plus several of the other articles are a good read. Besides the articles FK already mentioned on another thread I also enjoyed the piece of female fandom of Star Trek, one on reproductive technologies, and a nice tribute to Toni Cade Bambara and review of the new anthology, "Savoring the Salt."
On a side note: When the heck did magazines get so expensive??? LOL |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6940
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 01:39 pm: |
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Smells Like Dead Elephants
Lilith's Brood
Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The life of Col. Edward M. House
Paris 1919
What'd I Say |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 221
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 01:58 pm: |
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Rondall:
Jan Beatty is actually my neighbor, but I don't know-her-know-her. "Red Sugar" is the 2nd collection of hers that I've read. I like "Boneshaker"--the many Pittsburgh references were cool.
Have you read her other collection? I think it's called "Mad River". |
Crystal
Veteran Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 412
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 02:05 pm: |
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Chris - I really enjoyed Lilith's Brood. I've been thinking of re-reading it since reading Butler's Fledgling [loved it!]. She wrote the most sensual stories!
I'm finishing up The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie - I kind of got bogged down in the 2nd half of the book but it's an interesting story of Emperior Akbar of India/Persia. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 327
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 04:27 pm: |
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Finished "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and I just read a YA book at the library about Loving v. Virginia by Karen Alonso, which makes the important connection between integration and what was euphemistically referred to at the time as "social equality." I'm now finishing up "Another Country" after completing "Just Above My Head" (a song which appears in both novels, as does Since I Fell For You)
On the other hand (!), some of the jazz musicians in this novel are vaguely reminiscent of Captain Ahab's Parsee harpooner Fedallah:
"[The audience was] being assaulted by the saxophonist who perhaps no longer wanted their love and merely hurled his outrage at them with the same contemptuous, pagan pride with which he humped the air. And yet the question was terrible and real; the boy was blowing with his lungs and guts out of his own short past; somewhere in that past, in the gutters or gang fights or gang shags; in the acrid room, on the sperm-stiffened blanket, behind marijuana or the needle, under the smell of piss in the precinct basement, he had received the blow from which he never would recover and this no one wanted to believe. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?"
Except on weekends, Greenwich Village of the late 1950s might have been the second most liberal milieu after Maui. This novel has more interracial relationships of every conceivable stripe than I remembered, and despite the one which ends tragically, these are not stigmatized (at least so far).
By contrast, in Just Above My Head, except for the gratuitous obscenity about the white female Freedom Rider, the only interracial relationship occurs between the main character Arthur and the novel's sole white character: a Fanonian stereotype of a guilt-ridden Frenchman named Guy, who, following his miltary service in the Algerian War, takes an Algerian lover named "Mustapha," before hooking up with Arthur, who gives him an earful about white colonialism(!)
Both novels actually contain some great writing, however, I naturally prefer the spirit of the former.
And there ya have it. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12312
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 06:20 pm: |
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I tried to finish Nathan McCall's book "Them", a book about white people moving into black communities, reclaiming and revitalizing the neigborhoods they had previously abandoned to Blacks. McCall's treatment of this subject was such a parody that it lacked substance and didn't hold my interest. |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 224
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 07:14 pm: |
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Finally, I also highly recommend the Summer issue of B**** magazine. It features a very good read by our own FK!
...and it's now available online:
http://bitchmagazine.org/article/aint-i-a-mommy |
Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 569
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 - 11:44 pm: |
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Still reading the 'Oscar Wao' book but making much more progress this time around. Diaz's writing has definitely encouraged me to take more risks and pull fewer punches in my own fiction. I'm reading it about 45 minutes a day. It's a pleasure to just read great writing and not have to take notes to write a book review on it. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12320
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 14, 2008 - 11:24 am: |
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Your article was very well-written and researched, FK. It was also quite informative and thought-provoking. Good job!
As opinionated as I am, motherhood has always been a subject about which I have no strong convictions. As a black working mother, I kinda felt that the more a woman experienced in life, the better mother she made for her children. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2954
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 14, 2008 - 12:19 pm: |
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I agree w/Cynique re: FK's article.
Maybe this should be on another thread, but one thing I thought about when reading your piece was the idea that maybe the parallel "Black momoir" would actually be about Black women who are not mothers, and who appear not to be headed in that direction at all.
To me, that is where some of the similar guilt may come in. The idea that Black women are letting down the race and their extended families by not becoming mothers. Maybe some of these women are not mothers not by choice or their own expectations. They may be seen/see themselves, for example, as exchanging educations (selfish) for supporting a Black man and furthering the Black family (self-less). It has been my experience that these women have traditionally been expected to shoulder the "other-mother" roles in the Black community. Well, what of women who choose not to be the neighborhood mother? Who say "no" to relatives looking for them to be guardians for the children of kin who are not doing so well? Who decide to use their child-free lives to do other things of their choosing--travel, further education, making art, whatever?
Do you know of any pieces about this topic? |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 225
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 15, 2008 - 11:30 am: |
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Thanks, ladies.
Yvette, you raise a great topic. Seriously, I think you should pitch it to "B*tch." Oh, wait...a little birdie told me you have other, bigger writing fish to fry...teehee.
Maybe I'll pitch it to "B*tch". You have until a week from today to claim it, or it's mine! ;-) |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 118
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 16, 2008 - 02:53 pm: |
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Quote Ferociouskitty: Have you read her other collection? I think it's called "Mad River"?
Yes, and I liked it. I think Terrance Hayes introduced me to her work. I follow much of what Pittsburg Press puts out. I have love for those who have love for Etheridge Knight. |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 226
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 16, 2008 - 03:23 pm: |
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Rondall:
Terrance is good people! He and his wife are friends are mine. I LOVE LOVE LOVE his work.
Do you have a personal connection to Pittsburgh, or do you just follow the Press? |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 768
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 16, 2008 - 05:27 pm: |
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Hey Rondell,
How about a little background on Etheridge Knight. It seems to me that my guy Thumper has mentioned him. I believe he's some relationship to Thump. Fill us in.
Oh, so that I don't burn up the thread, I am reading Bare-Knuckle Negotiation. Yeah, getting to old to fight so I thought it would be imperative that I be able to talk my way through the storm *smile*. It's not really about fighting, it's about negotiations, arguement. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2956
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 09:55 am: |
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a little background on Etheridge Knight
I absolutely adore Knight--Indianapolis's own!!! In case you are still looking for info, here are a couple of posts I wrote on him:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/perry032/impossible/31days_essen.html
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/perry032/impossible/we_free_singers_be.html
The first contains several links w/additional information; the second includes a YouTube video interpretation of his most famous poem, as well as a link to the EK festival web page. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2957
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 09:56 am: |
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Maybe I'll pitch it to "B*tch".
LOL! Go for it, girl! |
Afrika
Veteran Poster
Username: Afrika
Post Number: 111
Registered: 06-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 10:10 am: |
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Greetings,
I am reading children books, art and culture books by various authors.
Peace
Afrika Midnight Asha Abney |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 776
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 10:12 am: |
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Vettep
Can always count on you to be right on time. Indianapolis huh, I kind of thought so, I knew there was a connection. |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 120
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 12:36 pm: |
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Yes Carey. Etheridge Knight, Jr. is Thumper's uncle.
And my background on Etheridge is this: I am a grown ass man but the first time I ever read The Idea of Ancestry I cried. It was a part of a collection called "Dice or Black Bones" printed in 1970. From that point on I was hooked on Etheridge Knight, Jr.
Amazing poet with amazing range. He spoke to me from a place I could easily identify with and I loved him for that. It was good fortune that I ended up in Indianapolis and had a chance to get to know his family. It helped me to understand and appreciate him even more.
To Ferociouskitty: Tell Terrance punk azz to give me a shout. Brother just disappeared all of the sudden. And I do not have any connection to PA. |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 235
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 12:49 pm: |
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Rondall:
LOL, I will tell him exactly that. Our daughters go to school together, and we were all hanging out at a local amusement park on the last day of school. We will definitely be seeing them this summer, and I will give him your kind regards. ;-)
Not long ago, MacNeil Lehrer Newshour came to their house and did a segment on Terrance as part of a contemporary poets series. You can watch it here (just scroll down to find his):
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/video.html |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 783
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 03:39 pm: |
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Hello Afrika
I noticed you have jump in a few times. You don't have many words but it's nice to know that you are there. |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 122
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - 04:23 pm: |
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Wow...I missed this one.
I love Taha Muhammed Ali. I saw him in person a few months ago. What an amazing man. Check out his translated work and if he is ever appearing near you, do yourself a favor and check him out.
Kevin Young is like a mad genius. I wish I would have got a chance to hang with him while he was at Indiana U.
Nice...real nice. Thanks |
Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 570
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - 07:50 pm: |
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I finally finished Junot Diaz's book. Excellent and exciting read! I didn't care much for the historical stuff or the Spanish without translation but I understand it's probably more for the Spanglish speakers than me. It might be the first Pulitzer prize-winning novel I've read (Did Invisible Man win?). I thought a book had to be artsy to win the prize. This book had lots of profanity and graphic sex talk so I was surprised it won. Although, it did make the book.
Up next for me is "After the Dance," the debut novel from Lori Johnson (http://loridjohnson.blogspot.com). |
Libralind2
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 1053
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - 08:48 pm: |
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I have the following books to read:
What Happened-Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, Scott McClellan
Crabs In A Barrel, Byron Harmon
Eight Men, Richard Wright
Blood Child, Octavia E Butler
You Gotta Sin To Get Saved, J.D. Mason
Song Yet Sung, James McBride
I have to finish Orange,Mint and Honey by Carleen Brice.
Hi Steve
LiLi..
...oh I forgot Harlem Godfather by Mayme Johnson & Karen E Quinones Miller |
Robynmarie
Veteran Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 791
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - 09:55 pm: |
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I just finished a novel called "Port Mungo" about two British painters-older woman, younger man-who relocate to the tropics of Honduras and experience an unthinkable tragedy.
Written by Patrick McGrath. He is an insightful writer with a wicked turn of phrase, but as with so many books these days, he couldn't sustain the high level until the end. |
Rondall
Moderator
Username: Rondall
Post Number: 124
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 - 10:50 am: |
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Here is one for you, Bone Black by Bell Hooks. Excellent book from 1996 about a young woman finding her space in a world that she could not fit in. She is also the author of "Happy to be Nappy".
Favorite quote:
I read poems. I write. That is my destiny. Standing on the edge of the cliff about to fall into the abyss, I remember who I am. I am a young poet, a. writer. I am here to make words. I have the power to pull myself back from death-to keep myself alive. (hooks 1996: 182) |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 341
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 06:48 am: |
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I tried to finish Nathan McCall's book "Them", a book about white people moving into black communities,[...] McCall's treatment of this subject was such a parody that it lacked substance and didn't hold my interest.
I hear ya, Cynique. Even the always empathetic Laura Miller called it an "artless" novel. It seems that the once-fashionable post-Bigger neo-brute has lost some of his once considerable power to induce hand-wringing consternation.
I finally finished Junot Diaz's book. Excellent and exciting read! I didn't care much for the historical stuff or the Spanish without translation but I understand it's probably more for the Spanglish speakers than me. It might be the first Pulitzer prize-winning novel I've read (Did Invisible Man win?). I thought a book had to be artsy to win the prize. This book had lots of profanity and graphic sex talk so I was surprised it won. Although, it did make the book.
Emanuel, How are you? "Invisible Man" was one of the first winners of the upstart National Book Award in 1953, while the more established Pulitzer was won that year by Hemingway for Old Man and the Sea (I just checked the Pulitzer Web site but alas, the category of "Nominated Finalists" was not created until 1980, so I don't think we know how Invisible Man or East of Eden fared against it.
I'm glad you liked it. It seems solidly within the Pulitzer tradtion of stories which explicate how the immigrant experience gives rise to genre-bending new forms of American expression (see previous winner Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," but substitute Eastern Europe Jews and comic book superheroes for Dominicans and science fiction, the Golem of Prague for the Fuku Americanus, etc.
I suppose there's a reason why the woman on the left has the same name as the main character:
http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/311506 |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 342
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 06:55 am: |
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Hi, LiLi  Impressive reading list. I'm undecided right now. |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 245
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 07:46 am: |
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Steve: Re: Elizabeth de Leon...That's Junot's fiancee (unless they've since married). |
Ferociouskitty
Veteran Poster
Username: Ferociouskitty
Post Number: 246
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 08:28 am: |
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I finished "Red Sugar" (Rondall, it totally mellowed out in the middle, to the end. I wasn't expecting that...). Now I'm on to (in no particular order):
Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
(bedtime read-aloud with my kids)
The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates (need to finish)
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas (need to finish)
Best American Magazine Writing 2007 (need to read for a class I'm teaching in the fall)
Anais Nin a biography by Deidre Bair
From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas 1900-2002 edited by Ishmael Reed (some selected passages; it's a big book!)
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. A friend gave me this as a bday gift. It's a collection of letters/poems that Hughes wrote to Sylvia Plath, to whom he was married, over the course of 25 years, beginning a few years after her suicide. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6954
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 10:09 am: |
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Chris - I really enjoyed Lilith's Brood. I've been thinking of re-reading it since reading Butler's Fledgling [loved it!]. She wrote the most sensual stories!
(I didn't care for it so much. I thought it was pretty weak Sci Fi--my favorite books by her were the two Parables books--Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. |
Libralind2
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 1055
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 22, 2008 - 08:57 pm: |
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Thanks Steve
LiLi |
Crystal
Veteran Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 415
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 23, 2008 - 01:19 pm: |
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Hey CH - it's funny, I don't really read her for the SciFi'ness. I just like her people [er… guess I should say “characters”]. I do like the differentness of the storylines possible with the genre but I’m not sure what makes “good” SciFi– if I like it I read it. I’ve enjoyed a couple of books by Brandon Massey and his anthologies and a couple by David Bernard. I see Massey has a new one coming out next week and Tananarive Due and Walter Mosley both have new ones out. Maybe I’ll have a SciFi reading summer. |
Vanders
First Time Poster
Username: Vanders
Post Number: 1
Registered: 06-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 - 04:49 pm: |
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Hi libralind 2;
This is my first time on the site and I don't have to much computer savvy, so I hope I am responding to the right person. I like you list of book reads. I read James Mcbride's Sung Yet Sung and absolutely loved it. It was a quick read as the main character was an escape slave on the run who had two slave catchers after her. McBride made you feel like you were running with her. There is much more to the story line so after you read it please let me know what you think. I also read the Bumpy Johnson story and thought it was a good piece about crime/mob life and Bumpy was really a likable character. He know alot of famous people during his time which was cool. Keep reading and I hope to talk to you soon. Vanders |
Libralind2
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 1058
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008 - 11:25 pm: |
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Hi Vanders. Thank you !! And Welcome to the board. I will certainly share my thoughts about Sung Yet Sung once I finish reading. I stopped to read From Dusk To Dawn by Niambi Brown Davis whew it is SO GOOD. Ive read up to chapt 4 so far and I cant wait to return to the story. I hate I dont have the time to read my books in one sitting. ::sigh::
LiLi |
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