February TIOLI Read a Book By or About An African American Woman

This is an offshoot of February's TIOLI challenge. The main thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/108561

I think African American Women have a unique perspective on life. Just thinking of some of the feminist science fiction writers I've loved, I find Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkins look at possibilities with a greater acceptance of unexpected and unpleasant outcomes. In fact, I have sworn off Butler more than once because her writing can be so harsh. I've read little science fiction/fantasy lately so I'm looking forward to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms most of all. These are my planned reads for the topic:

Mama Day - Gloria Naylor
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
Passing - Nella Larsen
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N. K. Jemisin
The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson
Getting Mother's Body - Suzan-Lori Parks
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Last year I read an ARC of Wench and met the author (lovely lady). The book is just out in paperback and I think would fit this challenge well.

I meant to read Wench last year. I'm going to have to add it.

I've been meaning to read Zami by Audre Lorde for ages. This would be a good opportunity.

ForeignCircus and lahochstetler, make sure you go to the main thread and add your books to the right challenge. Just click on the Challenges 1-7 and add yours to challenge #6.

I have this thread starred.

I have several planned for this challenge:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
My Confederate Kinfolk by Thulani Davis

Here's the excellent Washington Post article that inspired me to add Wench to my wishlist.

I'd like to recommend a favorite book of short stories by ZZ Packer. The book is Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Its best story is the opening one called "Brownies". That story is kind of funny but keeps stereotyping in perspective. I just love it!

cbl_tn, I picked up My Confederate Kinfolk in Atlanta over the holidays. I haven't read it so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

SqueakyChu, the ZZ Packer kept moving up and down in my TBR list last year. I've heard great things about the book.

*pokes at ZZ Packer's book to move it up higher in Deseree's TBR list*

I really, really wish she'd write a novel. It would be superb!

ETA: ZZ Packer, I mean. If Deseree wants to write a novel, that would be okay, too! :)

I think I've read "Brownies" somewhere, just from the title and looking at a couple of one sentence blurbs, but I can't for the life of me remember where. I know I haven't read the whole collection. Hmm.

Anyway, I think this challenge is a wonderful time to pick up Octavia Butler's Wild Seed, which I didn't get around to in January.

I read The Book of Night Women last year, and according to the article cited, it looks like it has in common with Wench the nature of the "romantic" relationship between master and slave and how the slave used one of the few things available for bargaining. I'm looking forward to Wench, it seems to have made a much bigger splash. I think a major drawback to Night Women's popularity is that it's written in dialect. Some of the people in my reading group couldn't get past that, though I found if you just surrendered yourself to the story the dialect no longer was a problem.

Alas, this old feminist has to admit I've never read Audre Lorde. Now could be the time.

I did read ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere and it seems to have slipped through my swiss cheese brain.

For this challenge I'll plan to read one novel (probably Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone), one nonfiction book (The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson), and one poetry collection (Sonata Mulattica by Rita Dove).

I was waiting to see what you'd be reading for this challenge, Darryl!

I found a free Kindle download of The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, whose first husband is one of my all-time favorite poets.

I skimmed the first few paragraphs of the title story and it seemed very lush and romantic -- perfect for February!

I just finished Eden, Ohio for a January challenge, but Joyce mentioned I should go ahead and list it here as another idea for this challenge.

It's a relatively obscure book, only about a dozen members have it on LT, but it's about the fictional town of Eden, founded by Eliza, a former slave, during the Civil War. The book then progresses through generations of Eliza's family (each naming their eldest daughter Eliza) and how the future Elizas become the de facto guardians of the town's residents as it goes through good times and bad and through lean times and progress.

Overall I had a positive opinion of the book. My only wish is that more time would have been spent with the generations immediately following the war - some barely garnered a chapter - and less time on the more modern problems.

I also downloaded The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories, it's .99 on Nook. I feel like a hoarder listing all these books.

Patrick, how did you pick such an obscure book? I was reading your post as if it were a real town and just discovered that you said fictional. I'm going to have to look for it.

(Found a used copy) February is the month that has an extra 10 days to read all these books, isn't it?

well, as my profile states, I do love obscure books. But there is actually a good reason for this one. I work for an audiobook publisher, and we have an imprint which exclusively consists of contemporary African American authors. As one of the sales managers, I am expected to listen to most of our products, and to do so effectively, we rotate through the dozens of imprints the company offer (Romance, Inspirational, Mystery, Business, etc.) to make sure we listen to a variety. Eden, Ohio was one of our titles in the African American imprint. It wasn't until I went to log it onto LT that I realized how obscure it actually was. Doesn't bode well for my acquisitions department - it's hard to sell a title no one has ever heard of, so they should be doing a better job - but I do stumble across a lot of unique books in this way.

I'm currently listening to an obscure business title for the same reason - Inbound Marketing and will count it for another February challenge

What an ideal job, you lucky guy, you.

I'm put the ZZ Packer on my March reading list :P

pbadeer, I will check out Eden, Ohio. Thanks for providing a description.

I'm put the ZZ Packer on my March reading list

:)

I reread the Washington Post review ( that goddesspt2 posted) of Wench, and I can see why some people think the author of the article hadn't read the book.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012102960.....


The header is A tender spot in master-slave relations, and there are tender spots, just not the ones one would expect if this were a romance novel because there is certainly no romance. There's sex, and there's what the master thinks should be regarded by his slave as romance. I think that's where the book is so successful. There are several decisions in the book I can't really understand, ones made by Mawu and Lizzie; but I can pretty well understand the master. He owns Lizzie as much as he owns the chairs and table in his house. Now if he were to treat his table really nicely, like give it a fine oil rub, he couldn't realistically expect the table to show gratitude because it's inanimate. That's part of the joy of having animate property. You can kick it if you want, and if you pet it you expect it to wag its tail. Drayle can treat Lizzie like an animal, but he expects her to be grateful for every little humane thing he does for her, as he says at one point in the book she's only a woman, and a slave woman at that. The strange thing is that Lizzie, Reenie, Mawu, Sweet, Philip and the other slaves do on occasion recognize their own humanity , some of them more and more often than others. Dolen Perkins-Valdez does a great job of showing a few sides of slavery and some very interesting relationships, there's even one sympathetic white woman.

Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane by Franya J. Berkman





Alice Coltrane (1937-2007) was an accomplished musician well before she met John Coltrane, the legendary jazz saxophonist, in the early 1960s. Born Alice McLeod to a musical family on the East End of Detroit, she was exposed at a young age to black religious and folk music in her church, where she served as the three choirs' pianist and arranger, and to modern jazz at home, where her half-brother Ernest Farrow was an accomplished musician, and throughout the Motor City, as she studied under and played alongside well known artists such as Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Yusef Lateef and Sonny Stitt. Her fellow musicians described her as an innovative pianist, whose phrasing integrated her knowledge of those different musical genres into a unique style. Unfortunately her talent earned her little recognition, due to the double prejudice of race and gender, as many "girl musicians" who were not singers or hard driving musicians were not taken seriously, and because most jazz musicians gained their fame in New York, Los Angeles or elsewhere.

McLeod decided to further her career by moving to Paris along with a local scat singer, who she married before leaving Detroit, but she soon returned to her home town with her young daughter after she divorced him. She performed locally with Terry Gibbs' band, until she met John Coltrane on tour. The two married soon after, and after three years of being a mother to their three children, Trane invited her to replace McCoy Tyner as the group's pianist in 1965, as he replaced his classic quartet with musicians that better fit his abstract music that stretched the boundaries of jazz and incorporated elements of Eastern music. Trane's health failed, and he died in 1967 of liver cancer at the age of 41. However, Alice continued where her husband and teacher left off, and continued to explore his music in her own fashion, as she used her past experiences to produce her own music that incorporated avant garde jazz with Indian music. She recorded more than 20 albums over the next 40 years, including Ptah, the El Daoud (1970), Universal Consciousness (1972), Transcendence (1977) and Translinear Light (2004), and became a spiritual leader of a Hindu center in California. The success of Translinear Light led to a brief comeback in 2006, as she played with her son Ravi Coltrane, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Roy Haynes, but passed away the following year.

Alice Coltrane's life and music has long been under-recognized, and Franya Berkman chose her as the subject of her PhD thesis in ethnomusicology, which she extended into this work. Through interviews with Alice and those musicians who performed with her, Berkman effectively dispels the falsehoods about this talented musician and spiritual seeker, and the reader gains an appreciation for her talent prior to, during, and after her years with Trane. This book would be best appreciated by those with some familiarity with Alice Coltrane's music, as it is more of a musical analysis than a biography, but it is an excellent introduction to this amazingly talented artist.

I think ZZ Packer's Brownies have more fun than I did. I'm hoping to reread the Nella Larsen books and would also like to reread Gorilla My Love by Toni Cade Bambara, a collection of short stories. Maybe I'll try to look at Black Women Writers at Work.

For crime and mystery fans, have you read any Charlotte Carter, Paula Woods, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Chassie West, Yolanda Joe? I'd like to catch up with their books this month but probably won't manage it.

>18 Citizenjoyce: I thought the point of having books on Nook/Kindle was to avoid being a hoarder!

I can't resist adding *Their Eyes Were Watching God*. I'm the 7th person listing it, so I changed the points total from 14 to 15. Someone go behind me if I did it wrong :-)

Edited to set off book title since touchstone didn't load -- and to add that the book's in my middle school library but the kids never check it out. Once I read it and make an Accelerated Reader quiz for it, I expect it to be very popular.

Ah the power, Megi! You are the Oprah of your middle school.

Kidzdoc, it sounds like Alice Coltrane accomplished a great deal, did she feel under recognized or is it only the people who have just discovered her who think so?

I am currently enthralled with Douglass' Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Earlier in the year, I read with my students A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I spotted this gem on the TBR shelf and decided to give it a try!

Jewell Parker Rhodes seems so familiar to me, but I looked at the list of her books, and I haven't read any. Let us know how she is, it looks like quite a subject.

Deseree, I just saw your review of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans. That was a wonderful book! I was lucky to have gotten it as an Early Reviewer in 2010. As a matter of fact, I tweeted the author to tell her how much I liked her book after I finished it! :)

I definitely would recommend that book for this challenge.

Hmmm? Why are the touchstones not working tonight?

I reserved Zami by Ardre Lorde at the library, and when I went to check on how far along I am in the list, it appears someone stole it. They couldn't have waited til next month? Well, if their conscience gets the better of them, maybe they'll bring it back in time.

Isn't it lovely to have touchstones working again?

>27 Citizenjoyce:. I guess I am a book-pusher, inadvertently. I was reading Their Eyes Were Watching God while stuck on bathroom monitor duty during a school dance today when another teacher noticed the book and PLEADED with me to let her borrow it right away. I did, so off to change the wiki until I can find another copy.

On BookTV Saturday the 5th at noon ET:
2010 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist - The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
About the Program

Isabel Wilkerson presents a history of the Great Migration, when approximately six million African Americans migrated to northern and western locales from the South from 1915 to 1970. Ms. Wilkerson recounts the many reasons people had for leaving the South, the difficult travel that many incurred, and the geographical shift in population due to the migration. According to Ms. Wilkerson, 90% of African Americans lived in the South at the start of the 20th century, following the Great Migration, 47% of African Americans lived outside of the South. Isabel Wilkerson discusses her book at the Atlanta History Center. Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction.

About the Authors
Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson is a journalism professor and director of narrative nonfiction at Boston University. She is a former feature writer for the Chicago bureau of the New York Times, where she was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She has also been a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the George Polk Award.

Megi53 - You loaned someone a book while you were reading it? I see canonization in your future.

He's not a woman but, on BookTV
American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt
Daniel Rasmussen
About the Program

Daniel Rasmussen recalls the largest slave revolt in American history. On January 8, 1811, 500 slaves, adorned in military uniforms and equipped with assorted weapons embarked on taking New Orleans. The author reports on their march upon the city and the outcome, over one hundred slaves were killed and the event deliberately excluded from many historical accounts of the time. Daniel Rasmussen discusses his book at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans.

About the Authors
Daniel Rasmussen

Daniel Rasmussen graduated from Harvard University in 2009, where his thesis was the recipient of the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize. For more information, visit danrasmussen.net.

Saturday, February 5th at 8pm (ET)
Sunday, February 6th at 10pm (ET)
Sunday, February 13th at 12am (ET)

One more, I couldn't resist because it's Angela Davis and Toni Morrison, Sunday the 6th at 4:30am ET

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave - A New Critical Edition

Angela Davis presents a critical edition of Frederick Douglass' memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave Written By Himself. Ms. Davis explores the abolitionists intellectual life and recalls the several other editions of Douglass' memoir. Angela Davis is joined in conversation with Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison at the New York Public Library in New York City.

About the Authors
Angela Davis

Angela Davis is the author of numerous books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography and Women, Race, and Class. Ms. Davis is professor emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz.


Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her novel Beloved and in 1993 was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ms. Morrison is the author of numerous books, including Sula and The Bluest Eye. She is professor emerita at Princeton University.

I started Harlem is Nowhere tonight and have added it to the Wiki (despite LTs objections) for this challenge.

The book I'm thinking of reading is Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond. The author, Essie Mae Washington-Williams* is the daughter of the white late South Carolina (USA) senator and his black maid.

*I won this book at the 2010 Bookcrossing holiday party but didn't think it would be a book I'd want to read. Now that it qualifies for a TIOLI challenge, I'd be quite excited and happy to read it! Figures, eh?

Work has been crazy this week but catching up on everyone:

Squeakychu, You hit it right on the head for Wench and the Washington Post article. You have the same debate going on re Sally Hemings and TJ about their relationship being a romantic one. Did Hemings have a choice? Or was she just making the best of a bad situation? I really enjoyed Suffocate. I can't wait until her next book. I have so many reviews I need to write - sooooo backlogged. Hopefully this weekend I can get a few more knocked out. Btw, Dolen is in town right now. She's visiting my daughter's old high school and one of the colleges. I will see her on Sunday. Her book just made the NYT bestsellers list (I think #15). I also love book-tv (though I tend to get back-logged on watching everything I've taped) - Need more hours in the day for book stuff. Haven't watched the Toni Morrison/Angela Davis one yet.

elkidee, I have not gotten into too much mystery by black writers (something I would like to ratify - maybe 2012 - sigh), but I did find a site that focuses on this Myst Noir. I read Walter Mosley (Jonathan Demme is bringing the Leonid McGill books to HBO) and I read Black Water Rising by Attica Locke last year.

kidzdoc, great review on Coltrane - will add to my wishlist of items

jacqueline065, I do like Jewell Parker Rhodes. I'm re-reading her Marie Laveau mystery series as she's coming out with the latest installment this year 'Hurricane'

Citizenjoyce - I picked up American Uprising last week. Probably won't get to it for a couple of months. Bloggers have loved it but an interesting review I read (maybe Washington Post) kinda gave it some negative criticism because the author is only 23 and they didn't feel that it didn't measure up in some areas.

I picked up my copy of The Color Purple on CD at the library today. I finished my first audiobook TIOLI, and I'm on my second. I've got quite a bit of road travel this month, so hopefully I'll finish that one (House of Mirth) in time to listen to The Color Purple for this challenge.

Citizenjoyce, re Angela Davis. Women, Race, and Class, though I read it ages ago, was a really good book. She also wrote another book from a feminist perspective through the lens of Blues musicians called Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday.

Another author that writes prolifically from the black feminist perspective is bell hooks.

Goddesspt2, thanks for the recommendation. My library system even has copies of both Blues legacies and Black feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday and Women, Race and Class, so I've requested them.

I've just finished Nella Larsen's Quicksand, and am still figuring out my thoughts. Since several other people are down to read this, I have started a thread for discussion of this and Passing. Please come and join in the conversation!

I just saw the BookTV presentation of Daniel Rasmussen talking about American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt. He does look very young but he detailed some of his research at Harvard and it sounded very thorough, and he mentions discussing the project with Henry Louis Gates who thought it was a good idea. The talk seemed well received.

#27: Kidzdoc, it sounds like Alice Coltrane accomplished a great deal, did she feel under recognized or is it only the people who have just discovered her who think so?

I would guess the latter, based on Alice Coltrane's comments about herself in the book. She was a very spiritual and deeply religious woman, who was quite content in her role as a wife to John Coltrane and the mother of the three children they had together. Trane invited her to become the pianist in his band, and she was initially reluctant to join the group. After his death she focused on exploring his music, instead of popularizing it or seeking to gain financially from it, and she became deeply immersed in Eastern religion and the creation of a religious center based on Hindu philosophy, which she headed. I doubt that she spent much time thinking about what others thought of her music or legacy.

#37: Madeline, your post about biracial writers reminded me of a book I have, One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life by Bliss Broyard, the daughter of the late Anatole Broyard, who was the long time editor of The New York Times Book Review and the author of Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, a book I greatly enjoyed. Anatole was a light skinned Creole from New Orleans, who married a European woman and passed for white for most of his life, and it was only after his death that his daughter Bliss met her paternal relatives and learned that she was part African-American. I started reading it (pre-LT), liked what I read, but didn't finish it. Hmm...I'm very tempted to pick it up now.

Here's a NYT article about Bliss Broyard and the book:

A Daughter Discovers Branches of the Family Tree Pruned by Her Father

> 44

Re: One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life

Sounds interesting...and I think you *should* pick it back up. Go for it, Darryl!

Biraciality of the author seems like an interesting theme in and of itself. There is so much to say about that issue when considering non-Americans as well as people of different races. I won't discuss that here and now, however, because it's too easy to pull this thread's unique theme off onto new and ever-lengthening non-qualifying tangents! :)

The link to the article didn't get included in your post. :(

#45: Thanks, Madeline; I've fixed the link.

Biraciality of the author seems like an interesting theme in and of itself.

I agree with you, that would be a great theme. Maybe next month?

Thanks!

Maybe next month?

Well, maybe if someone wants to take that theme and run with it. I never even hint at what I'm going to do ahead of the each month's posting! :)

#47: I'd be happy to do it. I have several books by biracial authors in addition to Bliss Broyard's memoir, including several that are high on my TBR list:

Zadie Smith: On Beauty, Changing My Mind
Sadie Jones: The Outcast
Timothy Mo: The Redundancy of Courage, The Monkey King

Those authors come to mind immediately; I'll bet that I have other books by biracial writers.

Not to mention our President... :)

*smacks head*

> 44

That was a facinating article, Darryl. I wasn't aware that race was included on birth certificates. That smacks of the stamp of Jüde (Jew) on my father's passpost of WWII-era Germany. Anyway, I didn't see race on my own birth certificate, but did find it on my aunt's birth certificate of August 12, 1915. The race (both "W" or white) of both of her parents was indeed listed.

My husband then checked the birth certificate of his mother who was born in El Salvador. Her race (to my best knowledge) is pure Salvadoran indian. She is listed as "ladina" on her birth certificate. My husband says that is the equivalent of white. He says also that some people are listed as mestizo (Caucasian plus indian) but she was not. Odd, huh?

Race is such a weird thing to identify! I am so against race as an identifying factor (especially on the U.S. census). It makes my daughter beserk!

My daughter's background of ancestors (on the great-grandparent level) includes Caucasian European (5/8) and Salavdoran indian (3/8) "blood". So what does that make her?! Does the Caucasian "win" because of percentage? Or does the color of her skin in the summer son make her "lose"? On the other hand, does her "minority" status make her "win" when she gets a scholarship based on the color of her skin or her "race"? Tough questions!

It's becoming harder and harder to define race in the United States as continuing generations of mixed races intermarry. I'll be very happy when the day comes that race does not have to be identified on a government document.

Do you know when race was taken off of the U.S. birth certificate and why? Just curious.

ETA: Oops! I went off on a tangent after all, but that's okay because my next book will be the one I took the poll about above...so I get a black woman into this issue after all! :)

ETA2: Er, maybe I won't get to that book any time soon. I see that my husband just picked it up a few minutes ago and started reading it himself!

> 48

Re: Zadie Smith

She's not African American. Her mom's Jamaican and her dad is British Caucasian. I loved her book White Teeth but could not stand on Beauty ... so much so, that I couldn't finish it. Sorry!

I'll have to check out the other two authors that you mentioned.

*inserts message to Joyce*

Have I told you recently how much I enjoy your thought-provoking TIOLI themed reads and discussions each month? If not, consider yourself told!

I thought that race, including whether the baby was of Hispanic origin regardless of race, was still included on birth certificates.

Right, Zadie Smith (and Sadie Jones) are not African American, but they are biracial. Ms Jones' father is Jamaican, and her mother is a white Briton.

I thought that race, including whether the baby was of Hispanic origin regardless of race, was still included on birth certificates.

I just looked again at my younger son's birth certificate. He was born in 1982 in Washington, DC. There is no mention of race or of being of Hispanic descent.

> 54

Coming back to your question about race on the birth certificate, it seems that the official bureaus and hospital do have that information, but the people who receive copies of the birth certificate do not. Now *that* is scary. Read the wikipedia article about the long form and the short form of birth certificates.

ETA: An official agency has information about you (about which you don't know) before you're old enough to realize it!!

#57: Right; I was thinking about the long form certificates, as I knew that information about race and Hispanic origin was collected and reported by the government.

How long into the future do you predict that the U.S. government will continue to collect data about race?

I suspect that it will always be collected.

:(

The Color Purple is the first of four planned reads for this challenge. I finished it yesterday, and I'm still collecting my thoughts. I thought Celie's voice was the more powerful of the two women whose letters make up the book. I was constantly amazed by her ability to express a broad range of thought and emotion with just a few simple words. The aspect of the book that most intrigued me, though, was the internal conflict Nettie experienced as a missionary in Africa - her strong connection to the place while at the same time feeling like an outsider in a different culture.

I too loved The Color Purple, cbl_tn, both the book and the movie. It brings up so many themes: patriarchy, race, sexuality, revenge, redemption, resilience, otherness. Everyone needs to read this one.

The census now lets you mark pretty much whatever you want, any combination of races. My half sister is half Spanish, my stepfather came from Spain. Now, to look at, one could hardly find anyone more white bread than she, but I believe she has used the Hispanic card when it helped her. In essence we're all the same with people within a race having more genetic differences than people between races, but race is still important to mark. Well, let me reword that. Class is important to mark, but that isn't done. It is important to know where there is a larger number of people of lower socio economic class to know where more aid should be provided. Race stands in for class which sometimes allows people who can claim a race, but don't need extra support to get the support others should have instead.

I've had the one-drop discussion with people before, such a bizarre idea.

And thank you Madeline for your thank you.

I woke up last night thinking about the one drop rule and decided it was perfectly reasonable. If you own slaves, or sharecroppers, and want to make sure they stay in their place it's a good idea to make sure they have no hope that they or their children, grand children, great, great, great, great....grandchildren will ever be considered human.

I've finished The Warmth of Other Suns and this woman sure did her research. She's combined 3 almost novellas as she describes the established routes African Americans used to escape the Jim Crow South into the North and West. There's the lovely, undereducated Ida Mae Brandon Gladney who leaves Mississippi with her family for Chicago, the not educated quite enough but union organizer at heart George Swanson Starling who escapes almost certain death in Florida to live in New York, and the way too proud for his own good, professional man Dr. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster who drove from Louisiana to a very big life in Los Angeles. I didn't realize that you could figure out where a person come from by knowing where they ended up. A large proportion of the African American immigrants to my city came from Tallulah, Louisiana and another city I can't remember, but they say bad things about each other. Isabel Wilkerson discusses the fact that these people were escaping Jim Crow country, but that they began and ended as Americans. They were non-immigrant immigrants who acted like the other immigrants we've read about. They continued to treasure the foods of their home towns, maintained societies celebrating their home towns, sent money home, sometimes maintained the accents of their youth for life, valued family and education and worked very hard. Evidently at some point people tried to say blacks left the South for elsewhere chasing better welfare payments, but that they were in reality less likely to be on welfare than people born in their new communities.

Your heart goes out to the people she profiles as she discusses their lives in relation to the history of the time. I even ended up with feelings for Dr. Foster who could be a very difficult and controlling person.

Now I've started Quicksand and find I love Nella Larsen's style.

I finished Passing by Nella Larsen. I did find it interesting, and I'm sure I gained insight into lives of black women in the era of the Harlem Renaissance, but couldn't find it in me to give the book more than 3 stars (and I usually really dislike giving less than 4).

My main quibble is the ending--I felt like it was slapped together and tacked on--nothing was really resolved.

Of course, this is just my opinion, and I think I'll have to check out Quicksand by Nella Larsen to see how I like that.

This is a great challenge and a wonderful thread!

Karen O.

I just finished Passing, and I think I liked it much better than you, Karen, even the ending. I've discssed it a little on the Passing and Quicksand thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/109226

I just started listening to The Color Purple, I forgot it was narrated by the author. I'm looking forward to it.

I am also listening to The Color Purple--Alice Walker's reading is wonderful.

I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God and Zora Neale Hurston is the personification of what I wrote in the OP about African American women authors being harsh. This is not a book a woman can just snuggle with and enjoy. Written mostly in dialogue, she also has some third person narration. This paragraph is the beautiful heart of the novel:
She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking into the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!
Now that's erotic literature. Love is very important to Janie, but her bees sting. I think Richard Wright was so dismissive of Hurston not because of her stinging bees but because she, as a black women, had the audacity to write about the importance of personal growth and interpersonal connection instead of raging politically. I, as a white woman, love the way she describes Janie's growth, but those bees. They very effectively show a woman who is willing to accept imperfection and even hostility from those she loves.

The whole book to me was a push-pull of connection. Very shortly after the paragraph quoted I stopped being comfortable with the writing, and never got that comfort back.

>69 Citizenjoyce:: a few sentences after the wonderful pear-tree paragraph you quoted -- was when one of our new teachers wandered by, saw me reading it, and pleaded to borrow it that very minute.

Now that you posted, "I stopped being comfortable with the writing, and never got that comfort back", I guess I'm just as glad.

Oh no, just because I wasn't comfortable, doesn't mean I wasn't engrossed. This is a book well worth reading and thinking about, but you gotta wince at some parts, and then you think, "Would I have done that? Would I have reacted like that?" Discuss it with your friend who borrowed it from you. I bet it'll lead to lots of thoughts about relationships.

OK, after thinking about it overnight, I realize that I was not uncomfortable for all of Their Eyes Were Watching God. I could real about Janie's different relationships and understand what was going on. But Tea Cake, well, he takes the cake. That was where things went very far from anything I would expect. All the relationships were pretty uncomfortable for me and gave the most to think about.

Billie Holiday was singing this song for Janie, Aint Nobody's Business

There ain't nothing I can do
Or nothing I can say
That folks don't criticize me
But I'm going to do
Just as I want to anyway
And don't care just what people say
If I should take a notion
To jump into the ocean
Ain't nobody's business if I do
If I go to church on Sunday
Then cabaret all day Monday
Ain't nobody's business if I do
If my man ain't got no money
And I say "take all mine, honey"
Ain't nobody's business if I do
If I give him my last nickel
And it leaves me in a pickle
Ain't nobody's business if I do
But I'd rather my man would hit me
Than follow him to jump up and quit me
Ain't nobody's business if I do
I swear I won't call no copper
If I'm beat up by my papa
Ain't nobody's business if I do
Nobody's business
Ain't nobody's business
Nobody's business if I do

I've been thinking about Zora Neale Hurston, because I just can't let this novel go. I know she wrote a couple of studies about hoodoo, and I remember from reading Not In Kansas Anymore that she's well respected in hoodoo circles. In hoodoo, as in many of the magic based religions there is no good-bad duality. Good and bad are all mixed together into one whole. Practitioners don't try to separate the two, they celebrate the whole being or situation. That idea does help with the ability that I see in some of the African American women I know to be so forgiving. I can even see it in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in the treatment of the gods.

Lest we think women can be too forgiving, Billie sings another side in

Billie's Blues
I love my man
I'm a liar if I say I don't
I love my man
I'm a liar if I say I don't
But I'll quit my man
I'm a liar if I say I won't

I've been your slave, baby
Ever since I've been your babe
I've been your slave
Ever since I've been your babe
But before I'll be your dog
I'll see you in your grave

My man wouldn't give me no breakfast
Would'nt give me no dinner
Squawked about me supper then he put me outdoors
Had the nerve to lay a matchbox on my clothes
I didn't have so many
But I had a long, long way to go

I ain't good-looking
And my hair ain't curled
I ain't good-looking
And my hair ain't curled
But my mother, she gave me something
That's gonna tear me through this world

Some men like me 'cause I'm happy
Some 'cause I'm snappy
Some call me honey
Others think I got money
Some tell me "Billie,
Baby you're built for speed."
Now if you put that all together ***************
It makes me everything a good man needs

I feel better about this one, not that Tea Cake was as bad as this man was, but his friends, I don't know, maybe.

I've read elsewhere online that it's Toni Morrison's 80th birthday today.

I finished My Confederate Kinfolk by Thulani Davis for this challenge. Davis is an African American author. She discovered that her grandmother's father was white, the youngest son of a cotton family with extensive land and slave holdings in Missouri, Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. I had hoped for more about Davis's African American great grandmother, a former slave, and her relationship with a white man from the privileged class, as well as more about her grandmother's experience as a biracial child in the last quarter of the 19th century in the deep South. However, the book sticks pretty closely to the scope suggested by the title -- Davis's white Confederate ancestors, the Campbells. Davis seems to be both fascinated and repelled by the members of her great-grandfather's family.

I agree, it seems My Confederate Kinfolk would want to look at both sides of the family. Well, people write the books they want to write, not the ones we wish they would.

Happy Birthday Toni Morrison (thanks elkiedee). I saw that interview with her and Angela Davis. She seems quite full of humor and good will, and very proud of her new something - knee or hip. She's one of the people who benefited from the Northern migration. She mentioned growing up in a nice little integrated town in Ohio where she didn't feel denigrated because of her race. In fact, she said that she was walking home with a little boy once and he tried to torment her by calling her an Ethiopian. She just looked at him like he was crazy and went home and asked her mother what an Ethiopian was. Her mother said it was someone from a country in Africa where people have said that all of humanity came from. She continued to think her little boy tormentor was just silly, not that she was in any way a lesser person.

We had our Their Eyes Were Watching God book club meeting today. This is the first book in a year that everyone has liked. One woman did say she took an African American Literature course in 2002 and her teacher didn't teach any Hurston. She said her teacher was a radical feminist lesbian, so we tried to guess why she didn't want to teach Hurston, if it was because of her conservative politics or because she allowed Janie to continue to be completely in love with a man who slapped her around. Whatever her reason, what a terrible omission.

There is a very cool biography of Huston called Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. It includes replicas of her letters, poetry, tons of photographs, and an audio CD with her singing folk songs and giving interviews.

>77 Citizenjoyce: people write the books they want to write, not the ones we wish they would

That's a great way to put it! I think My Confederate Kinfolk is a book Davis needed to write, but it's not necessarily a book a lot of people will need to read.

Tanglewood: A CD of her singing folk songs? I'd like to hear that. I've been listening to Billie Holiday all month, I wonder how she compares.

Cbl_tn, it's not necessarily a book a lot of people will need to read. Also well put.

I just went back and read what goddesspt2 said about Mama Day - that this was her favorite Gloria Naylor and that it was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. I know so little about Shakespeare, but as I finished the book (crying so hard I upset all 6 of my dogs) I thought, now this is the way to write a tragedy. I recently finished Edgar Sawtelle which was supposed to have been based on Hamlet, that was not the way to write tragedy. I'm so glad I read both in the same month so that I could compare them. There are so many noble characters in this story: Mama Day herself, bigger than life and completely in touch with it in all its triumphs and tragedies; her loving sister Abigail; her grand niece Cocoa, proud and fierce (she never would have let a man slap her around); and her husband George, equally proud but unable to see anything but the practical route to a defined goal. There was also a trifling man, a colorful jester-like character, a nervous, confused, longing woman; and a mountainous heap of malevolence who was able to fool those who didn't look closely. This is the book I've been looking for all month. I wish everyone who loved good literature would read it.

I finished up the Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler ,this evening. I 'm pretty sure that I've owned for it a year, meaning to get to it before now. Also, glad I was able to read a book that at least one other person read for this challenge.

What did you think of her, Jacqueline?

I was not disappointed! I think I have read 10 novels by her. Lauren Olamina's character seems to be a self-reflective journey that Butler had taken on her religious and spiritual beliefs. I wondered why Tananarive Due used a portion of EarthSeed to as a tribute to Butler. I haven't stop reading to sit down and write my thoughts on a few pearls I read for this challenge. So I'll make sure to post my reviews by the end of the month.

Good, I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say.

I finished Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science, not for this challenge but it does tie in. There's quite a great deal about slavery on sugar plantations mostly in South America and the Caribbeans, some in Louisiana. Marc Aronson says that, harsh as slaves were treated in general, they usually did manage to survive, unlike those who worked in sugar. It was the only form of slavery in which the slaves kept dying off so more and more had to be imported. After Haiti became free, because of slave revolt, the plantation owners moved to Louisiana where slavery still existed and Napoleon had made sure it was well suited for sugar production. Louisiana became the only state in which the number of slaves births did not surpass the number of deaths. So I wonder when slaves always worried about being sold "down river" if they meant being sold into sugar rather than cotton. I wish I'd read this book before The Book of Night Women. I think it would have made the story all the more powerful.

I received a tweet today, which informed me that Agate Publishing is giving away free e-book versions of Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans by Rosalyn Story, for the remainder of African-American History Month. It's a novel set in post-Katrina New Orleans, and, for what it's worth, it's gotten excellent reviews on Amazon. I'm not familiar with the book or the author, but I'll certainly give it a try.

More info: Free Wading Home!

I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs for this challenge. It's a book I've intended to read for a while, and I'm glad it finally made it to the top of my TBRs.

I enjoy reading 19th century memoirs, so I expected to like this book. I did like it, but not as much as I expected. Jacobs wrote under a pseudonym and changed names of places and people. I understand that decision, but it made the book feel a bit like fiction to me. The heavy emotional appeal was a little off-putting to this 21st century reader. I've been conditioned by politicians and advertisers to be wary of that sort of approach. I have a recent biography of Harriet Jacobs by Jean Fagan Yellin in my TBR stash and I'm going to try to work it in soon. Hopefully next month. I would expect it to have more details and documentation than Jacobs was comfortable putting in her memoir.

Thanks, kidzdoc. I'm going to put this on the Girlybooks site too, if you don't mind. Wading Home looks good. I'd never heard of Rosalyn Story, but she interviews well.

I'm about 1/2 way through Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl. My edition has quite a bit of background information abut Jacobs and the writing of the story. Some stories are so strange they seem like fiction. I'm going to take the word of Jacobs, her editor and other reviewers and believe this is true.

I read a free download on my eReader with no added commentary. I believe Jacobs' story is true. It's just that, for me, the style seems to detract from the impact of her account rather than enhance it. Sort of like a song where the music doesn't seem to fit the words.

#89: You're welcome, Citizenjoyce. Please post this info about Wading Home wherever you'd like; I posted it to my Club Read thread and the African/African American Literature group yesterday.

Rosalyn Story has mentioned that the free download has given Wading Home a lot of publicity.

There is almost no chance I will be able to finish this by the end of the month, but I wanted to go ahead and comment on it on this thread.

Utilizing my skill at identifying obscure books, I found another audiobook through my company (this time with 135 members on LT) - The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips.

I am about half way through, and I am enjoying it immensely. Welll, "enjoy" may be the wrong word because it is a very uncomfortable storyline. Tam is one of Roselle's 10 children, and the one one with the darkest skin color. In this house, only the children with the lightest skin can amount to anything, and even though Tam is the smartest, her mother does not want her to go to school, and feels she should just clean houses as that's the best she can amount to. Did I mention this is Georgia in the 60's.

This is a messed-up house. None of the children know who their fathers are, the mother prostitutes herself along with her lightest skinned daughters for spending money, and they are brutally beaten. But what is the most difficult (for me) to handle is the unwavering love Tam offers to her mother.

Although I haven't finished it, I would still feel safe in recommending this title. Probably something you may not have come across on your own.

I read Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston today, her first novel, which was based on the lives of her parents in Alabama and Florida from the end of Reconstruction to the 1920s. I liked it better than I thought I would, and I'll give it 4 stars. I'll review it tomorrow.

Wading Home is a story on two levels. Politically it's he story of powerful people and their ability to creatively steal from those with property but no power, so of course its setting in post Katrina New Orleans is perfect. At one point Rosalyn Story mentions of houseless people, such a perfect description. These people are not homeless, their land is their home but Katrina destroyed their houses and they don't have the finances to rebuild or restore. But Rosalyn Story in a rather No-Drama-Obama mode pulls back from the anger such a tale could generate first by removing the land grab from the city of New Orleans to a rural homestead and secondly by focusing not on evil but on the love and friendship evinced by the characters. Add to love between people and of people for their land is a strong emphasis on good food. This book needs to be read with fork in hand.

It was the perfect lead in to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a non fiction work which tells the story of the African American woman who unwittingly gave cells from her cancerous cervix which became the basis of decades worth of scientific research and discovery. The cells have made millions of dollars for private companies and been the basis of research that saved countless lives, yet the Lacks family has lived in poverty and sickness and often cannot afford health insurance. Being a work of non fiction, Henrietta Lacks has only a hint of an optimistically happy ending. Just as Rosalyn Story looks at many sides of the property grab story, Rebecca Skloot examines the "theft" of Lacks's cells from both personal and societal
viewpoints. No easy answers are offered, rather a hope that people will act in moral ways, which alas we know often does not happen.

One could say that the writing style of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were too genteel for the topic of escape from the evils of slavery, but women in the 19th century valued gentility, Harriet Jacobs perhaps more than most because she felt her readers might find some of her life choices indicative of low morals rather than survival tactics. I was surprised that the attempted "wooing" of "Linda" seemed so much like the wooing referred to in Wench, though I imagine Perkins-Valdez is very familiar with this work. I hadn't thought that wooing had any part in master-slave relations, but rather that such relationships stemmed from more straight forward rape. However, I'm sure it eased the conscience of some slave owners to think that their paramours had willingly succumbed to their charms. Spiritual leaders like Dinesh D'Souza and historians like Thaddeus Russell have have parroted the Confederate belief that idealizing the rebellion against slavery is a source of disability among some African Americans. In his book The End of Racism (D'Souza) asserted that the "American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well." Russell says that slave families were of course split up, but so were non slave families because children had to be sent from home to work. Jacobs, having heard that argument even in the 19th century describes just such English families that have to separate to find work but who are able to communicate with each other, thus maintain the family. Slave families, once broken up, often didn't even know where the various members had been sent.

The most impressive part of the book to me was the account of the slave's life once she had escaped to the North. Just as all romances used to end with marriage, "and they lived happily ever after", accounts of escape from slavery usually end with the joy of escape. However, in the US the slave couldn't relax in her new found freedom because she was at all times subject to capture and return even from the "enlightened" cities of Boston and New York. The description Jacobs gives of the way she raised her children, sending one to boarding school and the other off with a brother reminded me of the Filipino people I have known and the fluid child rearing methods immigrants have always used to try to guarantee the futures of their children.