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Literarylicense
Newbie Poster
Username: Literarylicense
Post Number: 22
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - 07:05 pm: | 
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The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2005 nominees are: (in alphabetical order by author)
Fiction:
Who Slashed Celanirefs Throat? By Maryse CondeŒ
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
American Desert by Percival Everett
Links by Nuruddin Farah
The Madonna of Excelsior by Zakes Mda
The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley
Debut Fiction:
Graceland by Chris Abani
The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips
The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan
Nonfiction:
The Black Interior by Elizabeth Alexander
The Failures of Integration by Sheryll Cashin
Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge by Ellis Cose
Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux
The End of Blackness by Debra J. Dickerson
A Continent for the Taking by Howard W. French
Contemporary Fiction:
Shifting Through Neutral by Bridgett M. Davis
Bling by Erica Kennedy
A Womanfs Worth by Tracy Price-Thompson
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Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 84
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 29, 2005 - 12:28 pm: |
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Thanks for the list. The ones I've read are: The Dew Breaker, Links, The Madonna of Excelsior, The Man in My Basement, Graceland, and The Second Life of Samuel Tyne. |
literarylicense
Newbie Poster
Username: literarylicense
Post Number: 23
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 03:03 pm: |
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Reading Graceland now, read The Darkest Child...who do u think should win debut fiction of the two you've read? |
crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: crystal
Post Number: 210
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 03:43 pm: |
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Thanks for the list LL. That new "contemporary fiction" catagory is interesting. Wonder how they decide what is "fiction" and what is "contemporary fiction". The website says "popular and commercial novels". Sounds like several discussions we've had on this board.
I've only read 3 or 4 of the ones on the list and I'd have to choose The Dew Breaker - loved it! American Desert was pretty good too.
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steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: steve_s
Post Number: 85
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 05:55 pm: |
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Thanks both for the reply and for posting the list. Of the ones I've read I would choose GraceLand in debut fiction and The Dew Breaker for fiction.
I just happen to have read 6 of this year's nominated books, I usually have only read one or two.
I can't help but notice that of the 9 fiction books in both categories, 6 are about political situations outside the United States: Ivory Coast (and Guadaloupe), Haiti, Somalia, South Africa, Nigeria, and Canada (and Ghana). Does that seem unusual?
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literarylicense
Newbie Poster
Username: literarylicense
Post Number: 24
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 11:29 pm: |
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Interesting observation...maybe that is a reflection of a shift in what readers are interested in reading. Are these stories more interesting, because it deals with subject matter many African Americans aren't familiar with? Or maybe it's because too much other unfiltered stories are dominating the black book store shelves, and they want something more "exotic", than erotic. I dunno...
Last year's debut fiction winner "The Purple Habiscus" setting was in Nigeria also.
Just thinking out loud...I also noticed a lot of the titles begin with the word "the"...does that mean, titles with "the" are deeper. :-) |
steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: steve_s
Post Number: 86
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 12:09 am: |
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It's interesting to speculate but it might also be interesting if they published a "long list" like they do for the Booker. Maybe they do already, I'm not very informed about the selection process. It just seems unusual that there are so many books by African and Caribbean authors.
I wanted to add that Links was excellent too. It's an exciting story, with a main character who's a traveller in his former country who confronts many potentially dangerous situations and has to decide how to react. It's like a thinking person's thriller.
The Madonna of Excelsior was good too, but I would say it's more concerned with specific South African cultural issues, although not exclusively.
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emanuel
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: emanuel
Post Number: 92
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 04:29 pm: |
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I've read "The Darkest Child," "The End of Blackness," and "Shifting Through Neutral." I loved "Darkest...". I thought "...Blackness" was interesting and would definitely spark debates. "Shifting" was a little slow-paced for my tastes.
I would like to have seen "Blood on the Leaves" by Jeff Stetson and "The Revolution of the Mentally Dead" by Darrin Osborne on the list as well. |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 93
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 08, 2005 - 09:16 am: |
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I read "A Continent For the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa" by Howard W. French. Shares a passionate committment for African reportage with last year's nominated "Mandela, Mobutu, and Me" by Lynn Duke. Both cover some of the same ground (West Central Africa in the 1990s) but this may contain a little more depth. Can be quite draining to read however in its seemingly endless descriptions of coups, crises, catastrophe, horror, suffering, poverty, wars, genocide, diseases, and humanitarian disasters. On the hopeful side, it presents African history in a way that makes you think about how it got to be the way it is. The first chapter, for instance, "Prehistory," describes the culture of the Ashanti kingdom before the European conquest which one historian has compared to pre-Meiji Japan of the mid-nineteenth century. The chapter about Mali describes the past greatness of its civilization and its more recent experiment in pluralistic government. The author has many specific criticisms of Clinton administration policy on Africa and believes there should be a corporate code of ethics for business with Africa, a limit to the spending on armaments, etc. As an aside, the author is very attuned to the popular music of Africa; there are 5 countries listed in the index under "music." |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 94
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 10, 2005 - 09:43 am: |
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I read "Ever is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi's Dark Past" by W. Ralph Eubanks. It's not nominated for an award, but the author is one of the judges in the nonfiction category. He was 7 years old during Freedom Summer of 1964 and he goes back to investigate events that were happening below the surface during those days. It's a good memoir. |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 95
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 11, 2005 - 02:27 pm: |
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Just want to add that Howard French ("A Continent For the Taking") disputes the Phillip Gourevitch analysis of the "reverse genocide" in Rwanda (of the Hutu by the Tutsi) which spilled over into Zaire and led to the overthrow of Mobutu by Kabila. According to French, Clinton administration policy was based on the Gourevitch interpretation. I have not read Gourevitch but he wrote about Rwanda in The New Yorker and is the author of "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families."
Howard French is a senior writer for the NY Times and as I understand it, a former Times bureau chief for West Africa and later Tokyo.
Here are some audio links in case you're interested. The first 2 are short:
Howard French interviewed by Tony Cox on NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1922986
Howard French interviewed by Alex Chadwick on NPR's Day to Day
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1951113
Howard French's lecture at Calvin College (long):
http://www.calvin.edu/january/2005/french.htm
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