Book Review

As my last blog for "Black History Month", I like to give you my take on the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones.

This historical novel takes place in antebellum Virginia, just a few short years before the Civil War. Although it addresses the well known issues of the day it also focuses in on the one issue many of us may know little about. It speaks to that small group of free African-Americans who owned slaves.

The main character, Henry Townsend is a black plantation and slave owner. His free parents who bought him his freedom never owned slaves themselves and made their living by woodmaking. Henry on the other hand, who was raised during several of his teen years by his former master William Robbins, sees the benefit of owning slaves because how this  "property" would bring him prestige in Manchester County. The novel is populated with what seems like a cast of thousands but each individual is intricately entwined with one another fullfilling a vision Jones is trying to explore.

This novel is not for everyone. It uses several literary techniques that is certainly not mainsteam reading and there are those who would even argue that Jones' way of writing is stilted, awkward and uneven. Yet he won the Pulitzer. Why?

There is depth to this novel regarding race relations and some chracterizations that are fully realized. It may not flow (some would say it's not even a novel but a bunch if vignettes) but there are some passages that are truly deserving of your time.

Next month, my blogs will center on Women's History Month! 

 

New Book on African-American Children's Author Virginia Hamilton

The legacy of Virginia Hamilton, described as “America’s most honored writer of children’s literature,” continues through the efforts of her husband, poet and anthologist Arnold Adoff, who spoke exclusively with American Libraries during February’s observance of Black History Month.

Hamilton, who died February 19, 2002, wrote more than 40 award-winning books. Through those books, her scores of speeches worldwide, and in essays for prominent magazines and journals, Hamilton helped to bridge cultures and generations. Hamilton was the first African American to win the American Library Association’s Association of Library Service to Children’s John Newbery Medal, the first children’s author to win a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, and one of only a handful of Americans to win the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal.


A new book, Virginia Hamilton: Speeches, Essays, and Conversations (Blue Sky Press/Scholastic, February 2009), co-edited by Adoff and Kacy Cook, gives us Hamilton’s voice throughout her career—from her first nationally published essay in 1971 to her final speech at a children’s book festival in 2001. Adoff discussed the book, the creation of the new ALA Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for LifetimeAchievement, and his life with Virginia Hamilton with >AL Associate Editor Pamela A. Goodes.


What will readers experience as they delve into the new publication? They’ll see a side of Virginia Hamilton that they’ve never seen before from her collections of folk tales, her novels, or picture books. There are 33 pieces in the book out of a total of probably more than 150. From the beginnings and the early ’70s until suddenly before her death, you have Virginia in all of her various intellectual and literary emphases. Virginia thought of herself as an African‑American woman, an African‑American novelist, an American woman and novelist, and a mother as well as a biographer of [Paul] Robeson and [W. E. B.] Du Bois. There isn’t a subject—from race to gender to raising children to having a nutty poet for a husband—that she never sought to deal with in one way or another.

She received the McArthur Genius Fellowship and she really was a true genius. I knew that when I first met her in 1958 when nobody was using that word; we were all trying to break in. But she had such attention to thought and detail. It’s a side that hasn’t been presented before even if you were lucky enough to see her Newbery acceptance speech or something like that.


Can you tell us what you consider to be the most interesting, relatively unknown piece about her that’s in this book? The piece that is the most fun is one that we worked on together that’s a conversation. The two of us would occasionally go out and present. And there was a real juggling act, a real balance between husband/wife, African American/Jewish American, novelist and poet, and even New Yorker and Midwesterner. We’d go out and we would highlight the differences between poetry and prose and the differences between the way we viewed raising kids and the way we viewed the work assets that we did—or in my case didn’t—have.


America still isn’t working. I’m not a believer in the easy labeling of the post‑Obama presidency as a post-racial era. America has a long, long way to go. And America still has what William Faulkner called the “sin of slavery.” And race isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. People forget that regardless of your cultural or racial background, you have other aspects of your relationship.


We never collaborated on a book, for example, because we couldn’t agree on how to cook chicken or how to make string beans. And that had as much to do with our cultural background as it did with our skin color. So that’s a fun one.


Is this a book that should be on the shelves of every library, whether it’s public school, academic, or special? Absolutely. It gives you a window into an intellect and it gives you a window into the soul of a major literary figure of the 20th century. It opens up African‑American literature to all professionals—librarians, teachers, and graduate students. And it opens up African‑American literature to students as well. But it also opens up youth literature far beyond children’s literature.


We need more and more specifics of African‑American thought and literary emphases and yearnings for all of the many places in America where we have purposefully, or not so purposefully, re-segregated American schools, libraries, and communities as well as places where young people of color are in large majority.


For example, she used terms that you don’t find on a daily newscast. We tried to eliminate the term “minorities” because we found it very pejorative. Virginia created a term called “parallel cultures,” where people of a variety of cultures live in parallel and that means equal. She coined the phrase “liberation literature” and she talked far more than liberating politically.


In the 1970s when she wrote M. C. Higgins, the Great, she had the giant flag heap of coming down from Sarah’s mountain based on the kind of strip mining that was being done then and teaching today. She wrote books of survival. For young people and adults looking to make sense of the world, books like this, which deal with the various aspects of how we survived in this world, are few and far between.


In light of the newly revised website that you’ve worked on, why is it so important to keep Virginia’s legacy alive to writers, particularly those who happen to be African American? I could be cynical and say all peoples of all kinds keep reinventing the wheel. And I could be less cynical and more sincere in saying that you can’t build a house unless you lay those foundation blocks down. Virginia looked to Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Du Bois, and Robeson for her foundation stones. New generations of African‑American writers and parents need to look to a major foundation stone for their young people. That’s why we’ve gone through a great deal of effort to upgrade the website and we will continue. I have also pledged that all of the 120 other pieces will eventually find their way onto the website. Her Newbery Medal acceptance speech for M. C. Higgins, the Great is on the website for free in its entirety just so people can get a sense of how she used language and what some of her thinking was.


Are there specific roles that you believe libraries can play in helping to keep Virginia’s legacy alive? When we first started to publish—Virginia in ’67 and I did an anthology of what we called negro poetry in those days with I Am the Darker Brother in 1968—it was librarians who took us into their hearts and who opened the rest of America up to them; first, to our work, and, secondly, to who we were. If librarians love you, they will love you first and longest, because they see your works first and they know what they can do. They know the power that they have if they can only struggle to keep their doors open and their libraries staffed. They are the repositories of a nation’s greatness and what a nation needs to become great.


Many of my collections of poetry are out of print or “temporarily” out of stock. That’s the way it is with a great deal of children’s literature, adult literature, and particularly poetry. I always tell people sure we can go on eBay and try and buy a copy at some high price but the book will be found in fine libraries everywhere. There’s no question. We are allies. It was the most wonderful thing when I had a letter from the Library of Congress asking us to deposit Virginia’s manuscripts at the Library of Congress, which we happily have done.


How will those materials that you’ve donated to the Library of Congress aid scholars and researchers? There are rough drafts, notes, and revisions. Literary scholars will be able to see, for example, a proof of the anecdote that’s really true when Virginia’s editor said to her after she saw the M. C. Higgins, the Great manuscript: “Well inevitably we can publish it just the way it is, but if you can go back and work on it, you can really make it a superb book.” Six months later, Virginia had nine different versions, particularly of the first opening chapters. She called me into her room and said, “Oh what’s for dinner Arnold? I’m working here. Listen to this. This is version number seven of the opening of M. C. Higgins.


That’s the kind of thing that literary scholars, teachers, and academics have always loved to find. There’s also a progression of thought. They’ll see a young person from a small town in Ohio make her way to the big city and take on major world issues in her fiction and rediscover a great deal of folklore from a variety of places.


Tell us about the upcoming April opening of the Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff Resource Center at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. What will it include and why Wright State? That’s a wonderful thing. Wright State University is seven or eight miles down the road. What I’ve done is to look around the house and say “Well, what will you do with these hundreds of books, particularly African‑American literature and nonfiction various periodicals?” We worked to expand that resource center, which has now expanded itself beyond African- American literature to include women’s studies and Native peoples. People will be able to come in and use some of the materials that we used over 30 years. There will also be programs. Our son, Jamie Adoff, who lives on the other side of town, also writes for young adults. He and I will be doing programs. There will be poetry readings and guest lectures. And young people will be able to come in and sit down and do some research on the computer terminals.


With the financial squeeze on libraries, public libraries, and academic libraries particularly, this expanded resource center will be open to young people as well as institutions of higher education in the whole Miami Valley. Students who go to Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio, for a two‑year degree; students who go where my son graduated from, Central State University in Wilberforce, a historically African‑American college; and students who go to Wittenberg University in Springfield—the whole Great Lakes region—will be provided a resource far beyond the geographic center.


Talk to us about the inaugural Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement announced during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Boston. It took years to create and it’s wonderful. Walter Dean Myers, an old dear friend and an extraordinary novelist in his own right for over 40 years, is the first recipient. The committee called me at 7 that morning, 7:30, as they love to do. That’s one of the fun things. We’ll all be there, I think its June 29th on a Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C., to see him get that award as the first recipient.


What’s real different about it is every other year it’s a writer or illustrator and in the intermittent years, the award will be given to a professional in the field. It might be a librarian. It might be a professor. It might be a publisher. Somebody who’s worked hard to encourage, foster, and present African‑American literature to young people around the country.


 
This article has been taken from American Libraries magazine.

And More African-American Titles

Another new release that has garnered praise is Rawn James Jr.'s Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall and the Struggle to End Segregation.

This title examines the celebrated 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case by profiling the lives of its two principle architects. Charles Hamilton Houston , the first black man on the Harvard Law Review was a brilliant lawyer and teacher, and Thurgood Marshall was one of his students at Howard University. This pair opened the NCAAP's legal office and spent years devising the legal campaign against educational disparity that culminated in the Brown case. Hamilton died before the case was fully developed but Marshall would victoriously argue it and ultimately end up on the Supreme Court himself after breaking the back of the "separate but equal" philosophy of education.  

Bulk of this review was taken from Bookpage Magazine.

More New Titles of African-American Life

Yesterday I talked about the new Nina Simone biography and today I would like to offer you some other new titles in celebration of Black History Month.

reviews by Bookpage Magazine

The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation by Wesleyan University professor Andrew Lewis spotlights the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, established in 1960, whose members were younger and more radical than theuir counterparts in the NAACP and other black organizations. The book shows that the SNCC had a large, nmostly positive impact on the Civil Rights movement, and that its major goals wren't nearly as radical as many claimed.

University of Maryland professor Ira Berlin's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations studies four centuries of black relocation to and within America.  Berlin presents what he deems an updated approach to African-American culture, one that doesn't just cover progress from slavery to civil rights, but also incorporates the struggles of more recent black immigrants to the U.S. This title contains its share of controversial views about black culture, but it is thoroughly reserached and well-documented.

More tomorrow.

New Bio of Nina Simone

Continuing my spotlight on "Black History Month", a new biography of jazz siner Nina Simone has just been released and is reviewed below by Booklist Magazine.

"My baby just cares for, my baby just cares for me..."

Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone.

Cohodas, Nadine (author).


Born in 1933, Eunice Waymon was a musical prodigy, amazing North Carolina churchgoers with her piano playing beginning at age four. Serious, proud, and hardworking, she dreamed of becoming a classical pianist and only began performing her unique blend of classical, gospel, jazz, and pop when she took a nightclub gig to earn money for graduate school. Eunice’s spontaneous invention of her alter ego, Nina Simone, is evidence of her formidable capacity for improvisation, the lifeblood of her world-altering music and the skill that helped her survive the bloody turmoil of the civil-rights era. Cohodas infuses every scene with electrifying detail and penetrating insights into Simone’s struggles as an African American musician of phenomenal talent and exalted ambition. Cohodas provides gripping descriptions of Simone’s indelible music along with profoundly moving accounts of her commanding, increasingly militant, and eventually downright bizarre stage presence. From her regal demeanor to her friendships with James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, courageous activism, and the tragedies that pushed Simone into mental illness, Cohodas chronicles every turn with precision and empathy. The result is a wrenching story of how racism can undermine even the most ascendant life, and a dramatic portrait of an uncompromising, audacious, and beleaguered musical genius of conscience.

Top 10 Black History Nonfiction for 2010

Now besides the award winners, there were some other great African-American reads especially in the area of non-fiction. Listed below are the top 10 as selected by Booklist Magazine.


The Dandy Dons: Bill Russell, K. C. Jones, Phil Woolpert, and One of College Basketball’s Greatest and Most Innovative Teams. By James W. Johnson. 2009. Univ. of Nebraska, paper, $19.95 (9780803218772). Powered by Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, the 1955–56 NCAA champion University of San Francisco Dons compiled a 60-game winning streak, in the process altering basketball forever.


Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America. By Beryl Satter. 2009. Holt/Metropolitan, $28 (9780805076769). Satter’s inspection of her father’s career helping black Chicagoans keep homes purchased under exploitative contracts is a personal as well as historical study of the national disgrace of housing segregation.


Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll. By David Kirby. 2009. Continuum, $19.95 (9780826429650).
When Kirby hears America singing, it sounds like Little Richard. Ride along on his high-octane travelogue-cum-meditation on the Georgia Peach, and you’ll second the perception.


“A Long Time Coming”: The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and the Historic Election of Barack Obama. By Evan Thomas and the staff of Newsweek. 2009. PublicAffairs, hardcover, $22.95 (9781586486075). Real-life stories get no more compelling than this crisply anecdotal chronicle of the campaign and election of the first African American U.S. president.


Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. By Clarence E. Walker. 2009. Univ. of Virginia, $22.95 (9780813927770); paper, $13.95 (9780813927787). Walker views the complexities of American race relations through the prism of the contradictions between Jefferson’s writings on race and his 38-year relationship with his slave Sally Hemings.


Post Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity. By Ytasha L. Womack. 2010. Lawrence Hill, paper, $16.95 (9781556528057). One-size-fits-all definition of black identity is crumbling, Womack says, as burgeoning disparate constituencies (young professionals, immigrants, bi- and multiracials, etc.) impact black America.


Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. By James Gavin. 2009. Atria, $27 (9780743271431).
Maintaining a classy image through decades of pop-music and racial-climate changes and despite personal insecurities, singer Horne is a mesmerizing icon in Gavin’s pages.


Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson. By Wil Haygood. 2009. Knopf, $27.95 (9781400044979). Haygood compares the achievements of the all-time great boxer with those of three similarly innovative contemporaries of his: poet Langston Hughes, singer Lena Horne, and jazzman Miles Davis.


Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. By Robin D. G. Kelley. 2009. Free Press, $30 (9780684831909). The first full biography of the pianist-composer who cocreated bebop is a landmark of jazz literature that dispels a cloud of myths as it brings Monk alive for his generations of fans.


Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. By Robert J. Norrell. 2009. Harvard/Belknap, $35 (9780674032118). In a more nuanced assessment of the post-Reconstruction leader long disparaged for racial accommodation, Norrell argues that Washington’s strategy was that of the fox rather than the lion.

Coretta Scott King Award

This is my second blog about an African-American award in literature, the prestigious Coretta Scott King Award. This award has grown since its inception in the late 1960s. At its humble inception at the May 1970 dinner gala of the New Jersey Library Association, Lillie Patterson was honored for her biography, Martin Luther King, Jr. Man of Peace. In 1982 the American Library Association recognized the Coretta Scott King Award as an association award. For a more complete history consult two works: The Coretta Scott King Awards Book, From Vision to Reality Edited by Henrietta Smith, American Library Association, 1994 and The Coretta Scott King Awards Book, 1970-1999, Edited by Henrietta M. Smith, American Library Association, 1999.

Here are the 2010 winners:


“Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal,” written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, is the King Author Book winner. The book is illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, published by Carolrhoda Books, a division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.


Illustrator Award Winner: “My People,” illustrated by Charles R. Smith Jr., is the King Illustrator Book winner. The book was written by Langston Hughes and published by ginee seo books, Atheneum Books for Young Readers.


Author Honor Book: “Mare’s War” by tanita s. davis and published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Illustrator Honor Books: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” illustrated by E. B. Lewis, written by Langston Hughes and published by Disney - Jump at the Sun Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group.


John Steptoe New Talent Author Award:  “The Rock and the River,” written by kekla magoon, is the Steptoe winner. The book is published by Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division.


Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement: Walter Dean Myers is the winner of this first-ever Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award pays tribute to the quality and magnitude of beloved children’s author Virginia Hamilton. Myers’ books include: “Amiri & Odette: A Love Story,” published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic; “Fallen Angels,” published by Scholastic Press; “Monster,” published by Amistad and HarperTeen, imprints of HarperCollins Publishers; and “Sunrise Over Fallujah,” published by Scholastic Press.

2010 Zora Neale Hurston Award

This is the season for award giving. You've got your Oscars, Grammmys and Razzies and literature is no exception. In our continuation of celebrating Black History Month, today and tommorow I'll spotlight two awards given to African-Americans for their contribution to African-American literature.



Anthony Loum of the Brooklyn Public Library has been selected as the 2010 winner of the Zora Neale Hurston Award.

Mr. Loum was selected for his work in planning and ensuring the quality of programs delivered by the Brooklyn Public Library in the 2009 Big Read for which Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was the chosen book. Mr. Loum coordinated with key partners for the use of performance spaces, performers and the materials used and donated for the book discussions, screenings and craft workshops. These programs, which were innovative and targeted a variety of age groups, took place at locations across the city. The programs and events introduced Hurston to a new audience of readers and provided professional development workshops to support the continued reading of Hurston’s works in city schools.


The Zora Neale Hurston Award, which is administered by the Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), recognizes a RUSA member’s significant efforts to promote African American writers and African American literature in their libraries. Through the generous sponsorship of HarperCollins, the award enables the winner to further their professional development so that they can continue to build multicultural collections and serve diverse populations.


Mr. Loum was selected by the 2010 Zora Neale Hurston Award Committee, which includes Chairperson Bergis Jules, Deborah Costa, Charlene Rue, Lucy Lockley and John Lawrence.


The Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need.

"The Underground Railroad"

Here's another program at the library to celebrate Black History Month.....

Join local author, adventurer, teacher and explorer Rick Rhodes on Friday, February 12, at 2:00 p.m. as he walks you through the history of the Underground Railroad. He has researched the journey of African-Americans from the shackles and chains of slavery in the Old South to a new land of freedom and eventual liberation. Admission is free and both kids and adults are welcome!


Captain Rhodes has more than just a few stories to tell, and his passion to share American History with audiences is infectious! His programs focus on some of the lesser-known historical facts and are enhanced by a multi-media slide show. Rhodes, whom some people call a “History Detective,” has researched and written eight guidebooks. Wherever he’s been, he has engrossed himself in local history, and he has a passion to share this with readers.

Library Kicks-Off Black History Month

Today, the first of February kicks-off Black History Month and your Palm Harbor Library will be celebrating it through various in-house programs. As we go along I'll let you know about each of them as well as highlighting recent African-American literary award winners, events and book reviews such as the Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Known World".   



We start off the month by asking you to join Palm Harbor Library on Friday, February 5, at 2:00 p.m. for a vocal performance by local singer Angela Filer-Johnson. Enjoy beautiful renditions of everything from gospel music to the blues to Broadway tunes. Admission is free.


Call 727-784-3332, Ext. 3006, for further information. The library is located at 2330 Nebraska Avenue.