Quick finds

My mind is on the theatre this week, so of course that's all I see out there in the world of the web.

Here's a new collection of essays on African American women playwrights:
Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook, by Philip Kolin. Read an article about it here.

I was going to order it, but it's $120.00! So, it's to the library for me.

Laurence Fishburne is doing a one-man show on Thurgood Marshall's life in NYC. Read the NYTimes story.
I am a hopeless Fishburne fan - hopefully I can get up there to see him in this show.

And ...
Mediabistro's Galleycat has an interesting post up - short though - about whether women's fiction covers are anti-feminist. You know the focus on pink, the backs of women's bodies, body parts, shoes and shopping bags. I read it yesterday and today and it made me ask whether urban fiction covers are racist.
They often focus on hyper sexual images of Black people.
The books and the art are very focused on hard, thug life stereotypes.
Maybe they are actually anti-feminist and racist too. A two-fer in your local bookstore.

Don't Call It a Comeback

Yes - I'm slacker blogger of the week. It hasn't quite been two months - just really close.

But I'm willing to get back into this blog thing.

The Crime Sistah blog has a post up about book signings - apparently authors sell between 4 and 7 books at signings. THat seems really, really low to me. And hardly worth the travel effort. But the connections are worth it - I hope!

I'll be interested to see what kind of discussion follows that post.

Celebrity author - pro or con?
Tananarive Due's new novel, Blood Colony, will be out in June of this year. I can't wait to read that - it's the third in a series that I love.

She co-authored, with Blair Underwood and her husband, Steven Barnes, Casanegra. The mystery novel is the first in a series and the second will be out in September. Blair was quoted somewhere recently - unfortunately I can't remember where! - and mentioned his second novel would be out in September. He did not mention his co-authors, but I'm sure that's just because of space.

Random author events to share

Chris Abani will speak in Orlando on Thursday (3/6).

Check out Carleen Brice (Orange Mint and Honey) tour schedule.

And there's an interview on Bookslut with Natasha Trethewey.

Fact Checkers need not apply

This is really wild. It amazes me that there was such limited fact-checking on this story about a biracial (white and Native) woman's gangland memoir. Especially now, when some of the research is or should be so much easier with eletronic databases. I wonder how many publishers are scrambling to cover bases on recently published or about-to-be-published memoirs.

If you haven't heard about this, read or listen to stories about Love and Consequences, a completely fake memoir published last week. To good reviews.
NYTimes story (different than above)
Galley Cat surveys the reactions
NPR's report

I wonder ...
If the book would have gotten so much attention, or even been published if it was a Black woman's story?
Would it have been fact checked more closely?
Was the story marketable mostly because the woman is part white and looks white?
It's interesting to me that in some ways this seems like a story that boils down to:
Woman Raised by Wolves [Black people] Tells Story.
Somehow, telling her story as the outsider raised by the outsiders/savages, was really a good sell for her, her agent and publishing company. And no, I haven't read it, just riffing off the coverage and descriptions so far.

What do you think?

This and that for Monday

I can't wait to get a copy of Incognegro, by Mat Johnson. A graphic novel about passing? That is so in my vein - not to mention how many times I said "incognegro" in my 20s. It will be my first graphic novel, though. Read the review in the NYTimes.

Things I shouldn't have access to: mobile access to Amazon.com. That's not even right. I try to forget that I can get there from my phone, because it's too, too easy to buy. And we don't have enough shelves at the moment.

Quick hits on a couple of resources

Deberry/Grant - the two-woman writing team - has a new book out, Gotta Keep on Tryin'. It's the sequel to their first novel.

And on their blog, they referenced Connie Briscoe's blog - which is fabulous! She is interviewing authors and publicists. Recent interviews include Deberry/Grant, Lolita Files (who also has a blog) and Connie writes about writing. Go see - and bookmark it.

An unfinished work by Richard Wright has been pieced together and published. Tayari Jones says - leave dead authors' work alone.

Here's the review of the book, A Father's Law, from the NYTimes.

And from the review:

But context is one thing; text is another. In this case, text threatens to ambush context before context even gets to town. “A Father’s Law” is not simply an unfinished novel; it is an unfinished novel in abject need of revision. Its flaws are so many and so foregrounded that they all but dare the reader to work through them and engage the ideas with which Wright was grappling. Without having first read his thunderous classics, one might plausibly dismiss this author as a tendentious, technically naïve amateur and disdain the works that made him indispensable in American letters.

This and that

Mark Sarvas posted a link to an article in the Los Angeles Wave about African American authors, serious literature and the important role Black booksellers and independent publishers play in promoting our authors. Rosie Milligan, founder of Black Writers on Tour, and James Fugate of Eso Won books are quoted.
Read it here: Extending their shelf lives

Want more on the concerns about serious Black literature and street lit?

Check out the notes from the ringshout group - a new group that launched this year.

Their members have been writing about it, including Bridgett Davis' essay on theroot.com - which I haven't read yet, but will.

Thanks to Eisa Ulen for the links - she is a ringshout founder as well.

Promotion find of the day

I saw a reference recently to a site, www.bookmovement.com, that I hadn't heard of in all my trolling for book-related stuff. So I'm sharing it in case you haven't heard of it either.

Book Movement is a site for book clubs and allows clubs and members to list and rank the books that they're reading. So the site turns that into lists of the popular books among book clubs.

I searched a couple of African American authors names - by no means an exhaustive list, just a casual search.
Here's what I found on the site - titles by:
Pearl Cleage
Christopher Abani
Alice Walker
Carl Weber
Anthony Grooms
Walter Mosley

I didn't see anyway for authors to feed in to the system - other than paying for featured placement. But perhaps it would be a tool worth mentioning to fans in book clubs.