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Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 309
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 01:02 pm: | 
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Hello All,
I'm back from my little impromptu sabbatical!! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I did. Alas, it is time to get back to work.
I have just finished reading the Langston Hughes biographies that was assigned as CWMYB reading selections this month and last. I LOVED THEM!! I strongly recommend that anyone interested in writing or Langston Hughes read both volumes of this biography.
While I'm in the biography mood, I'm going to read this month's CWMYB selection, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375415327/aalbccom-20
There is going to be a PBS special concerning Jack Johnson called Unforgivable Blackness, but I don't know when its going to be on. I plan on reading the book before its broadcasted. |
Carey
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 399
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 02:18 pm: |
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Well Well Well, it's about time. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss you but I am NOT going to say it. But, it's good to see that you're alive and well. I even had to take up for you a few times........yeah, I couldn't let them beat-up on ya while you weren't even around. Don't take it like I liked you or something, I just needed to stand on fairness  .
WELCOME BACK! |
A_womon
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1201
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 02:30 pm: |
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Hi Thumper,
Hope you enjoyed your min vacation! Welcome back. |
Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 312
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 11:57 pm: |
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Hello All,
Carey and A_womon: Thank you. It's good to be back!
Carey: You know you love me!! *LOL* Ain't no shame in it. It's easy to understand why!! |
Carey
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 401
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 08:43 am: |
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Yeah...... ..right
See, and I thought you might just come back like that guy in that movie. You know the doctor that was a jerk and hit his head or something and turned into a nice compassionate fellow. It was either Harrison or Kevin Kline, I can't remember. Anyway, boy was I reaching for the stars, how could I have even thought of such a thang. That's like trying to turn an onion into a sweet peach. *smile* |
Augustuzziah
Newbie Poster
Username: Augustuzziah
Post Number: 5
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 09:01 am: |
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I loved the movie, The Great White Hope, always will - but Ward's book, Unforgivable Blackness, was better. The doc is suppose to air in Feb. Reading, Arc of Justice, shortly before Ward made for an interesting holiday period |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 929
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 10:20 am: |
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Thumper:
Oh no ya don't! I wanna git all up in yo' personal bidness--ie
Where you been? |
Jmho
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Jmho
Post Number: 100
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 11:05 am: |
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Thumper, echoing the others -- welcome back! |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 51
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 01:34 pm: |
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I agree about Arc of Justice, subtitled A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. Written by Kevin Boyle, it won the 2004 National Book Award for nonfiction. It's a story of mob violence against a black physician who moves into a white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. He and ten others, mostly professional men, were accused of shooting and murdering a white man during the attack. The second part is a gripping courtroom drama with Clarence Darrow for the defense -- just a few months after his appearance in the Scopes Monkey Trial. In telling the story of the doctor's family -- from rural Florida after the Civil War to the urban North after the Great Migration -- it gives the reader a sense of the progresssion of Jim Crow racism. I think it does that better than just about any book I've read, including some of the hefty civil rights biographies I've read. It also depicts an activist, even courageous Talenteth Tenth, as W.E.B. Du Bois had envisioned it.
Geoffrey C. Ward of course co-authored Ken Burns' "Jazz: A History of America's Music," but I think its Ellisonian viewpoint is that of Messrs. Murray, Marsalis, Crouch, et al. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 53
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 07:53 pm: |
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Arc of Justice is the story of Dr. Ossian Sweet (pronounced "Ocean Sweet").
http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=201&category=events
I read almost 60 books this year and Arc of Justice was my favorite in nonfiction.
Here's my list of nonfiction books read in 2004, all excellent books:
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age -- Kevin Boyle
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism -- Cornel West
The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory -- Scot R. French
The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity -- Stanley Crouch
Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today -- Alan Huffman
All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education -- Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.
Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution -- David Waldstreicher
White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP -- Kenneth Robert Janken
Clement Greenberg: A Life -- Florence Rubenfeld
Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir -- Anatole Broyard
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx -- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy -- Carlos Eire
And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert -- Rosalyn M. Story
Compostition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler -- Kathryn Talalay
Marian Anderson: A Singer's Journey -- Allan Keiler
A Short History of Reconstruction -- Eric Foner
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words -- Jay Rubin
Crabcakes: A Memoir -- James Alan McPherson
Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature -- Darryl Pinckney |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 54
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 03:19 pm: |
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Oh, I just finished Farah Jasmine Griffin's book about Billie Holiday, If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery.
Just started Michelle Mercer's new biography of Wayne Shorter, "Footprints." Interesting what he reads! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1929
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 16, 2005 - 02:41 am: |
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Steve, how did you like Billie Holiday's latest biography? I read her autobigraphy a long time ago, but in later years people said it wasn't really that accurate and that she fabricated a lot of stuff.
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Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 55
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 16, 2005 - 09:47 am: |
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Hi Cynique, Only have a few pages to go in the Wayne Shorter biography but I think Michelle Mercer did a beautiful job. She interviewed him extensively and it's a pleasure to read. He suffered a lot of tragedy in his life. I knew that his beloved wife died in the TWA disaster over Long Island Sound, but not some of the other things. I was familiar with the names of some of his family members through his song titles.
I also loved Farah Jasmine Griffin's book but it's not a biography, she describes it as a black feminist reclamation of the myth surrounding Billie Holiday (for instance, she interprets TV and print advertising which uses Billie's image). So it's part cultural studies and the author also has a deeply-felt personal connection to the music through her beloved father who introduced her to jazz (something she has in common with many musicians). However, she's not a musician, she's an academic with a Harvard background who I believe is on the faculty of the Columbia Jazz Studies Dept. with Robert O'Meally, who wrote his own book about Lady Day. She makes a lot of very interesting points. It's not too long, I think you might like it.
She explains in the preface that unlike O'Meally, Donald Clarke, and the author of a forthcoming biography of Holiday, she didn't have access to the Linda Kuel interviews with Holiday because the cost was prohibitive. That's not democratic. She finds the Clarke biography problematic but not for its inaccuracies.
She's correct in this:
The two competing philosophies of black art to emerge from Baraka's book and Ellison's review have become one of the most significant debates within African-American cultural and intellectual history.
Her perspective may be a little different than mine, but not that much. |
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