Do Progressives need a book club?

We'll see about that book club. The Progressive Book Club launches tomorrow. I'm curious about their selections, but have always been wary of book and music clubs. I always fear I'm going to be sucked into a contract that I'll hate later. I wonder how they'll combat that feeling - I can't be the only progressive who shies away from such.
Read the NYTimes story.


Obama Moment
Earlier this week I was in love with this article about the reaction to Obama by Blacks in France. And very pleased to see an author quoted in it - I hope her book is or will be available in English. Her name is Leonora Miano and the book title is “Tels des Astres Éteints” (“Like Extinguished Stars”).

Can't believe I missed it
Tananarive Due's book, Blood Colony, came out on June 3. I love her work and that storyline in particular. I can't believe I let the date get by me. I will get a copy in a week or so.

Upcoming and recent releases:
Palace Council, by Stephen L. Carter on July 8
The Importance of Being Dangerous, by David Dante Troutt on June 3 (love this title)
Catwalk, by Deborah Gregory on June 24
"Keeping Down the Black Vote: The Politics of Election Administration in America", by Frances Fox Piven, Lori Minnite, Margaret Groarke, Dec. 8, 2008
A Mercy, by Toni Morrison, Nov. 11, 2008 (set in the American past - that was the only description on Amazon - curious).

Will Scarlet ever fade?

I just read an article at Diversity Inc. about America's favorite books. The Bible is number one. No. 2? It's that old favorite, Gone With the Wind. It's the favorite across the whole group surveyed.

I still haven't read it. And I only saw the movie 8 years ago.

Maybe one day I'll read it. It is the second favorite book of our nation, supposedly.

Read the story for yourself.

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.

Quick hits from the last few days

NYTimes Review of Race Card by Richard Thompson Ford. Subtitle: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.
From my quick read of the review, it sounds like the book is worth reading - though I am getting a bit of a conservative vibe from it. I'm working on doing more nonfiction reading and less escaping from reality, so perhaps this makes it to the to-be-read list.

A group of newspaper cartoonists are banding together to do strips on one topic this Sunday - the lack of diversity in newspaper comics. Read more in the Washington Post.

I went to John Ridley's blog on NPR.org for the first time today. And then went over to their NPR mobile set up - NPR content on your phone - that made me happier than I should admit.

Did you know that NPR has a "Race" page? Neither did I. Here it is.

Book trailer: Kimberla Lawson Roby

Here's the trailer for Kimberla Lawson Roby's new title, Sin No More.




She'll be in Savannah this weekend for the Savannah Book Festival - a first event for the city. See all of her tour dates here.

Other African American authors appearing at the festival include:

Tina McElroy Ansa
Cora Daniels
Michael A. Fletcher
Dr. Robert Franklin (Pres. of Morehouse College)
Kevin Merida

A couple of events and two promotion resources

Nathan McCall in Charlotte From an e-mail forwarded to me.
Hello to All,

Nathan McCall, the NY Times best selling author of "Makes Me Wanna Holler", will be in Charlotte Saturday to support The Brown Angel Center, which helps formerly incarcerated women become financially independent. McCall, who was formerly incarcerated, will be at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church talking about his life and his debut novel, "Them." A book signing will follow. The event starts at 1 pm and admission is $7. Books will be on sale. The church is at 3400 Beatties Ford Road. Please share this information!
I am sure you will find his story very motivating.

Thank you for your support.

Patrice Gaines
The brown Angel Center

And from another forwarded e-mail (both from Tina McElroy Ansa):
You are invited to hear:

Dr. Henry Louis Gates
W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois

Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University
Sunday, February 3, 2008
3:00 p.m.

St. John Baptist Church
522 Hartridge St.
Savannah, GA 31401
Free and Open to the Public
Followed by Catered reception with the speaker

For More Information:
912-234-8000
www.kingtisdell.org
www.savannnahblackheritagefestival.com
(Please forward to your contacts)


A former publishing executive has launched a web-based broadcast with and about authors. Read the NYTimes story here. See the broadcast here [actually, you can't see it yet - just sign up for notification]. It's called Titlepage TV and the tagline is "Passionate Conversations About Books."

A social networking and promotion site for authors - Red Room - got a lot of attention this week because of the site's involvement in a special blog effort to promote Patry Francis' book, The Liar's Diary. Francis is having a health crisis and won't be able to promote her book in the traditional way - so more than 300 bloggers did it for her today by writing about her and the book. If you visit Red Room and visit the blog section, you'll see many posts about her.

Shows what writers can do when they come together - what if authors did that every day of the year - gather to focus on one another's books?

Catching up - Karibu and The Root

Many of you have already heard about the news that Karibu books in the Baltimore-D.C. area is closing. If you haven't, here's the link to the store site, with a letter about the closing:
http://www.karibubooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp

And here are the articles:
Baltimore Sun: Readers say goodbye to a friend
Washington Post: Karibu Bookstores to Close Doors in DC Area
Publishers Weekly: Karibu Books to Close

With all the Black bookstore closings and the troubling news about the economy, it seems like a good time for someone to pull together a proposal to do a history of the contemporary Black bookstores in this country. And talk about what they brought/bring to the community and why they succeed or falter.

The Root
Henry Louis Gates and The Washington Post launched a new online magazine called The Root today. I didn't have much time to spend on the site, but I did like Kim McLarin's essay about Michelle Obama. She writes that it is Mrs. Obama who makes her (McLarin) really like the Senator - since he chose a sister who is one of us. One of those brown-skinned girls, "reglar" but not ordinary.

A new favorite thing

Booktour.com
I've become a fan of booktour.com, both as a tool for author publicity and as a cool way for readers to hear about authors on tour in their area. My new favorite thing on the site is "following" authors that I'm interested in - and the possibilities for fans, colleagues and organizations to leverage booktour.com for content on their sites.

Here's one of the things that caught my eye:



Putting an author's tour schedule on your site. This is great for small presses and authors who don't have the time or resources to update their information in multiple places - or who want an easy way to pass this on for use on affiliate, fan and other sites.

So if you haven't checked out booktour - go over now. It's easy, free, and puts authors names in front of readers - very likely new readers to many writers.

Awards - and completion theory

The American Library Association - Association for Library Service for Children announced its literary awards this week, including the Caldecott and Newberry medals. See the winners here.
What I love about reading the awards announcements are finding out about authors and books that I haven't seen before - or being nudged toward those works that have been in my sight for awhile but not quite urgent reads yet. Here are some children's authors or illustrators of African descent who are new to me this week:
Sundee Frazier
Ashley Bryan
Magarita Engle, The Poet Slave of Cuba
Christopher Paul Curtis, Elijah of Buxton

Great to see more than one title with boys of African descent - I will probably get multiple copies of those.

About completion ...
Years ago, around a kitchen table, I had a good laugh with two friends over one of us having completion disorder - starting, but not finishing things. Let's just say that I should not have laughed, as I'm in the same boat now. I'm not much of a finisher - I start things really well and love it, but have trouble getting to the finish line.

So I was really glad to see Marilynn Griffith's post today about completion and her 8-minute to your novel talk. Here's a link to the notes from that talk - just reading this today helped me feel like things are possible and I don't always have to be surrounded by incomplete dreams. Wonderful for writers who are surrounded by lots of obligations. I hope I'll have a chance to hear her do the workshop in person - hint, hint Mrs. G.

Mad at Gloria

It always comes to this, at some point in our American conversation.

Gender v. race. Choose your sides.

Gloria Steinem had an Op-Ed in today's NYTimes entitled, "Women Are Never Front-runners."

In it she makes her case that women are never in the lead and that

"Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House."

She also says this:

"That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot,"

I find this unbelievable - that Gloria Steinem can put out such a half-baked version of how race and gender work in this country. The above is a technically true statement, but glosses over the reality of Black men, and later, Black women and the vote in the U.S. In many places Black men had the right to vote in name only - and faced many obstacles before ever reaching the polls - including the threat and reality of violence.

How dare she count that as a privilege.

I have so many encounters that remind me of this useless call to see whose privilege, whose struggle, trumps. In the company of so-called progressives, I am continually amazed by the blindspots in individuals knowledge of American history and their interpretation of how gender and race operate here.

I know that there will be lots of commentary about this Op-Ed - and were I to have the choice, I would love to see Pearl Cleage or Michael Eric Dyson write back on this. (And had Mad at Miles pulled off my own bookshelf and handed to me tonight during my rant on this - that's like fanning the flames, for sure - in the best way possible).

I think I'm calm enough to go to sleep - and I did mention one book!

A round of links

Playing on the PC tonight - thus I can do links! Woo hoo.

Quickly, though :).

I didn't even know there was a NC Literary Festival. Apparently it is a challenge to put it on each year. The 2008 festival isn't happening, but UNC - Chapel Hill is stepping up to the plate to make it happen in 2009.

How are all those other festivals surviving if universities can't keep festivals alive? And is moving it around every two years worth it, if the institutions struggle to keep it going?


New term to me: shopdropping
I read this in the NYTimes, after it was linked to by MJ Rose. So it's likely an old term and I'm just showing my square-ness by using it late in the game. Same as it ever was.

In case you don't know shopdropping is putting things (either re-placing them or bringing them from outside) where they don't belong in retail establishments to make a point or build buzz.

I feel a bit of tension around that idea - I like it, but I know I'd be teed off if I picked up a shopdropped item that didn't make me happy, like something from the right side of the political spectrum.

Any authors who've shopdropped out there? Let us know how that worked out for you ...

Transitioning hardware

I am trying mightily to begin using a Mac as my only personal computer at home. But I keep running into frustrating (for me) wrinkles - like not seeing a hyperlink button in the blogger window. So I am posting individual notes rather than one long item here.

What is most frustrating for me is that I don't feel I have any time for the things I imagine I like to do - like this blog, writing and just playing on the computer. So a little glitch - when I need to be done in 15 minutes, can ruin the idea altogether.

Today (and on previous occasions, too) I read that what really makes distinguishes successful people is that they do not see failure as an end point. I am trying to work through that issue - as I struggle with failure - it is an endpoint for me and I have left most of my dreams behind because of first failures.

Can you tell it's the first day of the new year, yet? I am, like many, ruminating on what's lost, what's ahead and what I need to fix within myself. Aargh. (yes - I jump from missing buttons on screen to self-evaluation and melancholy).

It would be so lovely for the screen to look just they way it does on the PC - with the hyperlink button.

Alice Walker's papers ...

Are now at Emory University in Atlanta (my alma mater!). I can't wait to see them - they should be available for viewing sometime next year.
Tayari Jones posted about this - and had some comments on the notion of where papers land.
Here's an AJC article about Emory and Alice Walker.