Member: Aberjhani

CollectionsYour library (501), Currently reading (1), Favorites (2), All collections (501)

Reviews53 reviews

Tagsbiography (71), poetry (68), spiritual philosophy (59), american history (52), harlem renaissance (47), african-american history (42), mysticism (38), race relations (37), african-american literature (34), essays (30) — see all tags

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GroupsA Pearl of Wisdom and Enlightenment, African-American Fiction/Nonfiction, BBC Radio 3 Listeners, Biographies, Memoirs and Autobiographies, Book reviewers, Books on Books, Books that made me think, Editors, Researchers, Whatever, Jack Kerouac, Mystical & Spiritual. —show all groups, Poetry Fool, Proust, Writer-readers

Favorite authorsAberjhani, Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Honoré de Balzac, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Rosemary Daniell, Junot Díaz, Henry Dumas, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Aretha Franklin, Kahlil Gibran, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Kafka, Dambudzo Marechera, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Anaïs Nin, Barack Obama, Ben Okri, Grace Paley, François Rabelais, Eugene Redmond, Sallie Ann Robinson, Jean-Paul Sartre, Susan L. Taylor, Jean Toomer, Luther E. Vann, Vaughnette Goode-Walker, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Shared favorites)

Other favoritesTelfair Museum Jepson Center for the Arts, The Diaspora Marketplace, Charles Morris Center, Red Piano Too Art Gallery, New Orleans Auction Galleries

About meI enjoyed the amazing honor throughout 2010 of serving as editor for the Civil War Savannah Series. Such a project would be an important one under any circumstances but for me it was especially so because Savannah is my hometown. And also because the first volume of the series has been published during the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War and during a year declared by the United Nations as the International Year for People of African Descent.

I also spent a lot of time in both 2009 & 2010 logging stories as the National African-American Art Examiner http://www.examiner.com/x-16968-AfricanAmerican-Art-Examiner

There, I covered stories about the controversial death row case of Troy Anthony Davis and Mark Allen McPhail, as well as the life and death of Michael Jackson, and stories on emerging artists in the American Southeast.

I did a lot of blogging at Red Room, where I was honored to be inducted into the Red Room Hall of Fame at http://store.redroom.com/hall-fame

My latest books are: "ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love"; "The American Poet Who Went Home Again," a memoir; the novel "Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World" which combines my passion for fiction and music; and the poetry collection "The River of
Winged Dreams" (2010).

My creative passions in general got a big boost in 2007 with the creation of Creative Thinkers International at http://www.creativethinkersintl.ning.com .

However: it was my passion for books that led me to manage bookstores for more than a dozen years after having served as a military journalist for eight with the U.S. Air Force. When responsibilities as a full-time caregiver forced to stop managing bookstore, I picked up my pen and started writing again. In between doing what had to be done as a caregiver taking care of a parent at home, I somehow managed to produce three books: I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY; ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE; and THE WISDOM OF W.E.B. DU BOIS.

The great thrill of co-authoring an encyclopedia on the Harlem Renaissance is that doing so meant reading tons of books on virtually every subject: history, biographies, fiction, drama, psychology, art, music, political science, race relations, poetry, sexuality, cultural trends, fashion, and much more. Until working on the encyclopedia, my library could probably be divided into categories of literary fiction, biographies, metaphysical studies, poetry, and African-American studies. Post the encyclopedia, the percentage of history books blew up in a big way.


Aberjhani

About my libraryMy library is one that grew while I lived in many different places: colleges in Savannah, St. Petersburg, Fla.; Philadelphia; St. Paul, Minn.; and San Francisco; military and other travels all over the world. Call it an eclectic mix of biographies, spiritual philosophy, language dictionaries, history books, books I've written, books I wish I had written, French literature translations, Harlem Renaissance era reference titles, tons on my favorite poets such as Rumi, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Rilke...

Homepagehttp://www.examiner.com/x-16968-AfricanAmerican-Art-Examiner

Also onAmazon, Blogger, hi5, Red Room (author), Twitter

Real nameAberjhani

LocationUSA

Account typepublic, lifetime

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/Aberjhani (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Aberjhani (library)

Member sinceOct 25, 2006

Currently readingMoon Charleston and Savannah (Moon Handbooks) by Jim Morekis