Black Issues Book Review articles from September 2000

Black Issues Book Review archives from September 2000

from the editor-in-chief.
September 1, 2000... This may well be the best issue of BIBR ever. After nearly 20 years in the business of publishing black magazines, but only in my second year since launching BIBR, I get a thrill seeing this new publication mature. It reminds me of seeing my...

executive editor's view.(Brief Article)(Editorial)
September 1, 2000... Racial Profiling at the Bookstore--and in Our Hearts and Minds It's a 21st century dilemma our grandparents would not have imagined: Now that we have more than a handful of books by and about people of African descent available for sale in...

letters to the editor.
September 1, 2000... DEAR EDITOR, I was very disappointed with the depth and research involved in "Loving Her" (BIBR, May-June 2000). There were several points that should have been explored which would have made this article a more beneficial and helpful one....

Deals.
September 1, 2000... Novelist Tina McElroy Ansa's upcoming film "Baby of the Family," based on her novel of the same name, will be the inaugural film project of the Macon Film and Music Commission. During the press conference, Mayor C. Jack Ellis, of Macon, Ga.,...

Making Moves.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Two of the publishing industry's most dynamic executives, Manie Barron and Christine Saunders have recently aced some huge power leaps. "I always thought I'd put in my twenty years at Random House, get my Tiffany clock, then ride (or...

Striver's Row.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Named after Harlem's famed middle-class district, Striver's Row is Villard Books' boldest foray into African American publishing. Villard associate editor and chief of Striver's Row, Melody Guy, says the trade paperback imprint will serve an...

A Publishing Institution Switches Hands.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Clara Villarosa, African American matron of independent book retailing, has sold her celebrated Denver, Col. store The Hue-Man Experience. The 16-year-old shop remains in African American hands: Darryl Walker, 40; Kim Martin, 29; and Joi Afzal,...

Certified Geniuses.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The MacArthur Foundation has spoken: Patricia J. Williams and Deborah Willis are geniuses. The ultra-prestigious MacArthur Fellows Program, nicknamed the Genius Grant, has inducted into its 2000 class Williams, 48, a professor at Columbia...

From the Wild, Wild West to Harlem's Literary Salons.
September 1, 2000... Wallace Thurman started out as an outsider in Mormon Utah and brought his own uniquely witty satire to the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance Wallace Thurman was a genius to his friends and colleagues of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes...

Cutting Out the Middle Man.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Turning your stack of rejections into a successful business When is self-publishing not simply a wonderfully empowering choice--but the only option? When you're the author of such nonfiction titles as N***** Please, (Milligan Books, 1996),...

Associations for the Self-Published.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Publishers Marketing Association (PMA) This association was founded in 1983 to serve book, audio and video publishers in the United States and around the world. It is a trade association for independent publishers. PMA offers membership...

on the shelf.
September 1, 2000... Popular fiction is exploding, giving readers something soft to sink into like a fresh stack of autumn leaves. E. Lynn Harris and Eric Jerome Dickey, with their rapid climb up the best seller lists, are testament to the rising recognition of...

Dark Matter.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Dark Matter A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora editor Sheree R. Thomas Warner Books, July 2000, $24.95, ISBN 0-446-52583-9 Like the Sputnik launch of 1957, the publication of this anthology expands the frontiers of...

Alien Child.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Alien Child by Mona Lee Open Hand Publishing Inc., March 1999 $12.95, ISBN 0-940-88062-8 Mona Lee's latest contribution to sci-fi strives toward the noble goal of addressing the social inequalities prevalent in today's world. Readers are...

Shadow Lover.(Review)(Brief Review)
September 1, 2000... Shadow Lover by Hope C. Clarke A New Hope Publishing, November 1999 $15.00, ISBN 1-929-27900-0 Shadow Lover is an original piece of erotic horror fiction about a battered woman's plight to escape the hands of her abusive husband and his...

Cosmic Suicide: The Tragedy and Transcendence of Heaven's Gate.(Review)(Brief Review)
September 1, 2000... Cosmic Suicide: The Tragedy and Transcendence of Heaven's Gate by Rodney Perkins and Forrest Jackson The Pentaradial Press, July 1997, $12.00, ISBN 0-965-95120-0 A definitive study of the Heaven's Gate cult. Consisting of neither tabloid...

Rising.(Review)(Brief Review)
September 1, 2000... Rising by Darnella Ford iUniverse, June 2000, $22.95 ISBN 0-595-09504-6 After a brutal assault, a woman fights back against her attacker as violent flashbacks turn a simple Thanksgiving dinner into a nightmare with surprising consequences....

Captain Blackman.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Captain Blackman by John A. Williams Coffee House Press, April 2000, $15.95, ISBN I-56689-096-9 First published in 1972, Williams' masterpiece, which mixes historical research with fictional fantasy, surely stands the test of time. If...

Not a Day Goes By.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Not a Day Goes By by E. Lynn Harris Doubleday, August 2000 $1.95, ISBN 0-385-49824-1 Between an unhappy beginning and an unhappy ending, Harris tells the tale of a Dawg and a Diva, and the havoc of their individual lives. Readers of...

The Flip Side of Sin.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Flip Side of Sin by Rosalyn McMillan Simon and Schuster, July 2000 $24.00, ISBN 0-684-86287-5 Isaac Coleman has to reclaim and rebuild his life after years in prison for accidentally killing a 12-year-old girl who was the governor's...

Passport to Knowledge.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Here's a list of online resources specifically designed for the self-published author. Independent BookArts, Inc. (IBA) IBA distributes anything on line that is independently produced--meaning that the creative work was paid for by the...

One Woman Short.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... One Woman Short by Nelson George Simon & Schuster, June 2000 $12.00, ISBN 0-684-86461-4 George's new novel gives a bird's-eye view of single life from a male perspective. Rodney Hampton comes to grips with his bachelorhood when his best...

For the Love of Money.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... For the Love of Money by Omar Tyree Simon & Schuster, August 2000 $24.00, ISBN 0-684-87291-9 A true diva, softened a bit since first introduced to readers in Tyree's '96 novel, flyy girl, Tracy Ellison Grant makes an electric and sparkling...

Della's House of Style.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Della's House of Style by Rochelle Alers, Donna Hill, Felicia Mason, Francis Ray St. Martin's Press, July 2000, $6.50, ISBN 0-312-97497-3 The four stories that make up this continuous string of novellas are a fine sequel to this writing...

Always and Forever.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Always and Forever by Beverly Jenkins Avon Books, September 2000, $5.99 ISBN 0-380-81372-4 You can't always judge a book by its cover. Jenkins writes African American historical romances set in nineteenth-century America. She has developed...

Romance in the Fall ...(Bibliography)
September 1, 2000... Cuddle up with a romance novel and bring a warm glow into your cool, fall evenings. Try these new titles... A Lifetime Loving You by Mechelle Avey Cadeau Moments, September 2000, $6.99, ISBN 1-930-75840-5 A light-hearted, fast-paced,...

Butterscotch Blues.(Review)
September 1, 2000... Butterscotch by Margaret Johnson-Hodge St. Martin's Press, June 2000 $23.95; ISBN 0-312-26484-4 In her fourth novel for St. Martin's Press, Margaret Johnson-Hodge takes on a challenging subject as she crafts her fiction around a troubled...

The Mystique of Zadie Smith.(Review)
September 1, 2000... North London's gift to contemporary literature protests in a BIBR interview that her writing is nothing special. Yeah, sure. Zadie Smith, Jamaican British novelist, is an intellectually exquisite ray of light on the horizon of...

White Teeth.(Review)
September 1, 2000... White Teeth by Zadie Smith Random House, May 2000, $24.95, ISBN 0-375-50185-1 Many people, whether they admit it or not, have thought about suicide--have wished, if only momentarily, they were dead. Archibald Jones, a forty-something white...

Country Music Gets Some Color.(Bibliography)
September 1, 2000... New books show superstar Charley Pride is not the first and only Throughout the twentieth century, Charley Pride has been considered the apex of the black presence in country and western music. But a look back reveals that he hasn't been...

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, An Early Cry for Civil Rights.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, An Early Cry for Civil Rights by David Margolick Running Press, March 2000, $18.95 ISBN 0-762-40677-1 When the song "Strange Fruit" was written by a Jewish man named Lewis Allan in 1939, the...

Blacks in the West.(Bibliography)
September 1, 2000... Gallop across the untamed West with the recollections and stories of African American trail blazers. The Adventures of Elizabeth Fortune by K. Follis Cheatham Blue Heron Publishing, October 1999 $16.95 ISBN 0-936-08544-4 Elizabeth...

June Jordan's True Grit.(Review)
September 1, 2000... Her searing new memoir is a triumphant portrait of the artist as a young black girl These poems, they are things that I do in the dark reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready? --June Jordan, from Things That I Do in the...

poetic license.(Bibliography)
September 1, 2000... Poetic license is a new department in which poet and publisher Haki Madhubuti and occasional other guest writers will reflect on a wide range of matters related to verse, both printed and spoken. The spoken and written word, along with the...

Natural Birth.(Review)
September 1, 2000... Natural Birth by Toi Derricotte Firebrand Books, February 2000 $10.95, ISBN 1-563-41-120-2 "The clock is stuck on pain," writes author Toi Derricotte, in her moving, painful, yet vivid poem about a woman who, sixteen years after this...

Night When Moon Follows.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Night When Moon Follows by Cheryl Boyce Taylor Long Shot Productions, March 2000 $12.20, ISBN 0-965-47384-8 Bursting with life, love and death, lush as a tropical forest and pristine as the clear waters of Maracas Bay, Taylor's second book...

Dawnsong!(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Dawnsong! by Askia Toure Third World Press, May 2000 $12.95, ISBN 0-88378-209-X In his latest collection of lyrical poetry, political activist and scholar Askia Toure delivers twenty-one epic poems grounded in African history and...

The Whole World View.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The black diaspora offers unique insights on twenty-first century globalization Global standardization of economies, labor and technologies is causing tectonic shifts in the ways in which we relate to others across the street and within...

Souls Grown Deep: African Vernacular Art of the South, Volume One.(Review)
September 1, 2000... Souls Grown Deep: African Vernacular Art of the South, Volume One Tinwood Books, w/ The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library October 2000, $100.00, ISBN 0-965-37660-5 In the past, museums and commercial...

Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace Edited by Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor The MIT Press, May 2000, $35.00, ISBN 0-262-65051-7 For the past decade, writers and curators Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor have...

Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Ike Ude.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Ike Ude MIT Press, March 2000, $25.00, ISBN 0-262-52280-2 In his photographs, Nigerian-born artist Ike Ude examines issues of race, gender and sexuality, subverting the viewer's expectations of the same...

Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999, $26.25, ISBN 1-899-84610-7 This intriguing catalogue, accompanied by a CD-ROM, was published on the occasion of Piper's traveling exhibition "Relocating the...

Basquiat.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Basquiat by Franklin Sirmans Tony Shafrazi Gallery Publications, September 1999, $85.00, ISBN 1-891-47514-2 Born in Brooklyn of Haitian and Puerto Rican parents, painter Jean-Michel Basquiat came of age in New York's East Village club...

A Few Good Men.
September 1, 2000... In publishing, African American men are as scarce as Hen's teeth, but a stalwart cadre are still making a difference. The room at New York University's Center for Publishing was packed, mostly with black women who had come out on a mild,...

arena Higher Learning?(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Black atheletes are the key players in college sports. But when will academia train them to succeed in the classroom and beyond? Some sport authorities used to say that black college sports "died" when integration took root in the...

TABOO: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and why We're Afraid to Ask.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... TABOO: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and why We're Afraid to Ask by Jon Entine Perseus Book Group, January 2000 $25.00, ISBN 1-891-62039-8 At one time black athletes couldn't be good enough. Now it appears that we're too good. Blacks...

Coaching Your Kids in the Game of Life.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Coaching Your Kids in the Game of Life by Ricky Byrdsong with Dave and Neta Jackson Bethany House Publishers, May 2000 $17.00, ISBN 0-764-22353-4 The nation was outraged by the way Ricky Byrdsong died. Murdered in July 1999, during a...

The Devil and Sonny Liston.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches Little Brown & Co., April 2000, $24.95, ISBN 0-316-89775-2 Three images of Sonny Liston emerge. The first is a pugilist with an attitude. The second is that of a powerful man who was on top of the...

scoreboard.(Bibliography)
September 1, 2000... And the Walls Came Tumbling Down--Kentucky and Texas Western, and the Game That Changed American Sports by Frank Fitzpatrick Simon and Schuster, March 1999, $24.00, ISBN 0-684-83551-7 College basketball changed when heavily favored,...

Writing Out of the Box.(Interview)
September 1, 2000... Two of our most distinguished authors of genre fiction talk about setting the literary imagination free Octavia Butler. Walter Mosley. A writer's conference at the Smithsonian. An intriguing combination. Her height is imposing. Her ebony...

Police Brutality: An Anthology.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Police Brutality: An Anthology edited by Jill Nelson W.W. Norton & Company, May 2000, $24.95, ISBN 0-393-04883-7 Edited with journalistic precision, a well-chosen group of thinkers go deep inside the story of police abuses in America and...

Home and Exile.(Review)
September 1, 2000... Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe Oxford University Press, June 2000 $18.95, ISBN 0-19-513506-7 Chinua Achebe, the pre-eminent Nigerian novelist, is undoubtedly one of the most important writers of our time. His novel, Things Fall Apart--the...

Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux by J. Ronald Green Indiana University, press, September 2000, $29.95, ISBN 0-253-33753-4 This expose--a critical look at the work of legendary early black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux in the context...

Becoming American.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Becoming American Personalized Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women edited by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah Hyperion, February 2000, $23.95 ISBN 0-786-86589-X This collection of twenty-three personal essays by first-generation immigrant...

Against Race: Imaging Political Culture Beyond The Color Line.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Against Race: Imaging Political Culture Beyond The Color Line by Paul Gilroy Belnap Press of Harvard University, April 2000, $29.95, ISBN 0-674-00096-X Suppose you awoke one day to discover that race in America was no longer an issue....

The Black Image in the White Mind.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Black Image in the White Mind by Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki University of Chicago Press, June 2000 $26.00, ISBN 0-226-21075-8 bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Kimberle Crenshaw, Charles Lawrence and others have done much to bring...

Boys Into Men: Raising Our African American Teenage Sons.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Boys Into Men: Raising Our African American Teenage Sons by Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Ph.D., A. J. Franklin, Ph.D., & Pamela Toussaint E. P. Dutton, April 2000, $23.95, ISBN 0-525-94496-6 Many mainstream books on parenting are useful and welcome...

What Ever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl: The Impact of Fatherlessness on Black Women.(Review)
September 1, 2000... What Ever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl: The Impact of Fatherlessness on Black Women by Jonetta Rose Barras One World, May 2000, $25.00, ISBN 0-345-42246-5 While its title appears to promise a factual exposition on the impact of absent...

Black Mothers: Songs of Praise & Celebration.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Black Mothers: Songs of Praise & Celebration by Kristin Clark Taylor Doubleday, May 2000, $24.95 ISBN 0-385-49579-X Take a look on the shelves of your local bookstore and notice a proliferation of books in praise of black mothers. This is...

Miracles of Mentoring: The Joy of Investing in Our Future.(Review)
September 1, 2000... Miracles of Mentoring: The Joy of Investing in Our Future by Thomas W. Dortch, Jr. and The 100 Black Men of America, Inc. Doubleday, May 2000, $22.95 ISBN 0-385-49991-4 A virtual blueprint for a more organic system of dedicated mentorship,...

A Small Place.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid Ferrar Straus and Giroux, April 2000 $10.00, ISBN 0-374-52707-5 There are places worth revisiting not to relive joyful memories, but to allow for the catharsis that comes from exposing festering wounds so...

A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile by lames Alan McPherson Simon & Schuster, February 2000, $24.00, ISBN 0-684-83464-2 James Alan McPherson, the celebrated essayist, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection Elbow Room,...

Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind And Spirit.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind And Spirit by Queen Afua Ballantine Books, April 2000, $28.00 ISBN 0-345-42348-8 Queen Afua, perhaps the best-known advocate for Khamitic (Egyptian) spirituality and natural health,...

The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist.(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist I have been an astronomy buff most of my life and have followed the works of Dr. Tyson since I first heard about him in the mid-nineties. His latest book, written in the...

What's Love Got To Do With It?(Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... What's Love Got To Do With It? by Donna Franklin Simon and Schuster, August 2000, $25.00, ISBN 0-684-81851-5 Almost twenty pages of quotes and notes still do not separate fact from opinion. It's hard to pinpoint Franklin's intended...

All Things Censored.(Review)
September 1, 2000... America's most famous death-row inmate publishes another collection of gripping commentary All Things Censored by Mumia Abu Jamal with Noelle Hanrahan Seven Stories Press, May 2000, $29.95, ISBN 1-583-22022-4 So titled because National...

Partners in Their Prime.(Review)
September 1, 2000... On the page Donna Grant and Virginia DeBerry speak in one voice to produce a brilliant new saga of family ties The real-life tale of Grant and DeBerry almost seems too incredible to be true: two New York women--one living in Manhattan, the...

Guides for the Black College Student.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... A series of recent titles offer useful information to help students complete--and succeed--on campus In 1982, Brown University graduate, Barry Beckham and a group of students published the first edition of the Black Students Guide to...

Alice Walker.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The African American who Most Inspires my vision of America's future "It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up...

Book Promotion Goes Digital.(Buyers Guide)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... A selection of the best online resources for black authors--and book lovers too! Any published author knows the mantra: promote, promote, promote. Writersandpoets.com can help. For $99.95 and a $50.00 set-up fee, Writersandpoets.com will...

From All Over Creation.(Review)
September 1, 2000... With special consideration to The Fisher King, Scribner, October 2000, $23.00, ISBN 0-684-87283-8 In a manner that can only be described as luminous, Paule Marshall's literary work spans time and geography to embrace history from the...

Labor Day Choices.(Review)(Brief Review)
September 1, 2000... Nellie Stone Johnson: Hungry The Life of an Activist by David Brauer Ruminator Books, February 2000, $23.00 ISBN 1-886-91335-8 An engaging oral history of Nellie Stone Johnson's tough, and candid perspective as a social activist, labor...

The Doctor Is In.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Harlem Hospital MDs use literature as a vehicle for studying psychiatry On a recent Friday morning, in the seventh floor conference room of Harlem Hospital's Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Olubansile A. Mimiko has the rapt attention of nine...

Sowing the Seeds of Sustained Success.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Homework assignments help parents keep kids on the right track As the academic year gets underway, parents are again faced with the age-old concern of how much and how often should they be involved with their child s homework. Homework...

Expanding Your School Library.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... It's back to school time, and hopefully your children have had a fun and active summer that included reading. The beginning of the school year is always filled with orientations, parent-teacher conferences, and parent organization meetings to...

Bud, Not Buddy.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis Delacorte, September 1999, $15.95, ISBN 0-385-32306-9, Ages 9-12 Author Christopher Paul Curtis has an utterly engaging imagination peopled with plucky, unforgettable characters like Bud ("not...

Crazy Horse's Vision.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Crazy Horse's Vision by Joseph Bruchac Illustrated by S. D. Nelson Lee & Low Books Inc., April 2000 $16.95, ISBN 1-880-00094-6, Ages 4-8 Joseph Bruchac, of Abenaki Indian descent, is poet, storyteller and writer of numerous award-winning...

Wings.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Wings by Christopher Myers Scholastic Press, April 2000 $16.95, ISBN 0-590-03377-8, Ages 4-8 The celebrated and award-wining author/ illustrator, Christopher Myers, shares his hopes for young children. His past works include Harlem, a...

The Girl Who Spun Gold.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Girl Who Spun Gold by Virginia Hamilton Illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon The Blue Sky Press, Scholastic Inc., August 2000, $16.95, ISBN 0-590-47378-6, Ages 4-8 The folktale of a wicked man who helps a woman spin thread or straw into...

I Am a Gymnast.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... I Am a Gymnast As told by MacKenzie Foster Photographed by Jane Feldman Random House Books for Young Readers June 2000, $14.99, ISBN 0-375-80251-7 "Hi, you don't know me yet, but maybe someday you will." These are the words of adorable...

The Sound That Jazz Makes.(Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The Sound That Jazz Makes by Carole Boston Weatherford Illustrations by Eric Velasquez Walker & Company, May 2000, $16.95, ISBN 0-802-78720-7, Ages 4-8 Weatherford pens a soft poetic journey of rhythm in this illustrated history outlining...