Colorlines Magazine articles from November 2006

Colorlines Magazine archives from November 2006

A different truth.(about novelists)(Viewpoint essay)
November 1, 2006... FICTION WRITERS HAVE A PECULIAR ROLE when it comes to politics and race. They sit back, observe and then make up a story. Sometimes, they watch TV (as novelist Chris Abani does), or they read the newspaper (as novelist Octavia Butler did), and...

The adoption stories.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... The articles you presented in the "Making a Family" series (July/Aug. issue) concerning transracial adoption were eye-opening for me, and not in a good way. As a therapist and a member of a racially mixed family, I have tried to be open about...

Desis dating black.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... I read your article on the prevalence of interracial dating and marriage between Asian women and Black men ("Black Men, Asian Women," in the Spring issue). I will confine my comments to South Asian women (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). I am...

ACLU picks our Katrina coverage.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2006... I wanted you to know that the ACLU is submitting a Shadow Report to the United Nations on the U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. One small part of that report is the mention of Orleans Parish Prison...

Chris Abani: the acclaimed Nigerian novelist and poet discusses his new novel on sex trafficking, representations in literature and why fiction might actually matter.(Q & A)(Interview)
November 1, 2006... You have said that the inspiration for your new novella Becoming Abigail was two women you read about and saw in the news, one of whom was forced into prostitution. But there are many people every day in the news facing devastating...

Washington street: a brown man, he had never found comfort in the black and white world of the South. Now a black woman was possibly going to change that.(FICTION)(Novella)
November 1, 2006... THE PREVIOUS EVENING, George drank too much moonshine whiskey. He woke up with a lingering drunkenness and blinding headache. He washed but did not feel clean, and off the Mississippi came a nauseating smell, a mixture of salt and mud and...

Bad teeth: she took buses and walked with her mom and finally arrived at the dental clinic. But would the white dentist really keep her from losing her teeth?(Fictional work)
November 1, 2006... CAVITIES RAN IN OUR FAMILY like dark hair y cerveza. No one, not my father, mother or auntie, had their own teeth. They had cajas, yellow teeth they pulled out at night and dumped in plastic cups of tepid water. They removed their teeth after...

My favorite mysteries.(Daddy Cool)(Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines)(Native Son)(The Maltese Falcon)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett, published in 1930, is the template for many hardboiled stories that appeared over the decades since its inception. The tough, cynical private eye that may not be as crooked as he seems, the intricate...

Marianna's Beauty Salon: they were two Pakistani girls with long hair venturing into forbidden territory--the Dominican hair salon.(Fictional work)
November 1, 2006... WHEN I WALKED BY MARIANNA'S Beauty Salon, I always saw Dominican women, their hair the blonde of a lion's mane, frozen as if the wind had come and left it that way, frozen in place with industrial-strength hairspray. Their skin would be brown...

Bayan ko: she had dreamed of beauty pageants for her children--not political protests, Studio 54 and girls dressing like boys.(FICTION)(Novella)
November 1, 2006... CLARITA PUSHED THE FINAL BOBBY PINS into her hair and turned her face from side to side, sucking in her cheeks for emphasis. Her vanity mirror with the adjustable light was set on "evening," its lavender glow cast a flattering effect on her...

The young adult boom: it's a mixed bag for teens of color.
November 1, 2006... GIVEN THE COMMERCIAL SUCCESS OF THE HARRY POTTER SERIES, publishers are now treating teenage readers as a major consumer market. The number of young adult fiction books published has risen by about 30 percent in the last five years, and in this...

A Cherokee-inspired trilogy.(The Way of Thorn and Thunder)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... SOME OF US READ FICTION to get away from these dismal political times. But novelist Daniel Heath Justice gives us a better option: escape to an imaginary world where our rage can literally cause trees to uproot and strike the white men taking...

Queerness, blackness and memory: often compared to James Baldwin, award-winning Jamaican author Thomas Glave writes the unofficial stories.(Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... IT IS A FALL EVENING in Washington, D.C., the proverbial belly of the beast, and Thomas Glave is reading at Howard University, poking at that belly for being so full and self-satisfied. The acclaimed "Jamerican" writer has just started touring...

The Inheritance of Loss.(Book review)
November 1, 2006... THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS By Kiran Desai Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006 THE MAJESTIC HIMALAYAN PEAK called Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, casts its shadow over most of the protagonists of Kiran Desai's new novel,...

Across a Hundred Mountains.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... Across a Hundred Mountains By Reyna Grande With all the press on immigration this year, it's refreshing to come across a literary novel about the border told from an immigrant's perspective. First-time novelist Grande crossed the...

A Long Stay In A Distant Land.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... A Long Stay In A Distant Land By Chieh Chieng This is an irreverent novel about the Lums, a Chinese family in which the members seem to die too frequently. The young Louis decides that the family is cursed because of killings his...

They Tell Me of a Home.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... They Tell Me of a Home By Daniel Omotosho Black There's an endearing quality to the voice of Tommy Lee Tyson, the 28-year-old protagonist of this novel. He has a simple, earnest mission: to go home again. Having left for college, he...

Belladonna the Virtuous: Off My Chest (New Harlem Productions).(Sound recording review)
November 1, 2006... Well-regarded as a live performer in the Toronto, Canada, spoken-word and music scenes, Belladonna's seven-song EP mixes producer Gerry Sylvia's crackling hip-hop production as well as complex live jazz, blues and folk instrumentation by The...

Salvimex: Uniendo Fuerzes .... y apoca no?! (Bombastic Records).(Hip Hop Realidad)(Sound recording review)
November 1, 2006... SalviMex are the proteges of Los Angeles queer hip-hop/punk legend Deadlee. Their first full-length CD of "Hip Hop Realidad" is a complicated dialogue on love, nationality and struggles within the urban pan-Latino experience. Rapped primarily...

Mid*One: Fall Out Selections EP (Uber Records).(Sound recording review)
November 1, 2006... Stuart "Mid*One" Mahoney has spent the last several years making a name for himself as a key member of the San Jose-based Tributaries crew, having fostered the recent development of the city's hip-hop and spoken-word scenes. Fall Out Selections...

Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere (Downtown Music/Atlantic).(Sound recording review)
November 1, 2006... Former Goodie Mob front-man (and later soloist and Carlos Santana collaborator) Cee-Lo Green and mash-up maven Danger Mouse have managed to create a truly amazing and groundbreaking CD given the potential for interference by corporate marketing...

David Ruffin: The Unreleased Album (Motown/UMG).(Sound recording review)
November 1, 2006... Initially released as a download-only product through ITunes, The Unreleased Album was recently issued on CD and is thankfully available to a much wider audience. The 19 songs comprising the album came from several Ruffin projects that were...

On being discovered: as a writer, I found it carries risks.
November 1, 2006... GROWING UP A BROWN GIRL in the white Midwest, I never saw a single book by a South Asian American writer. I visited the library almost weekly, tore through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, ventured into the adult sections and occasionally...