Celebrate Black History Month!

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song is by Kevin Young, editor. Across a turbulent history, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people voice their passionate resistance to slavery. This volume captures the power and beauty of this diverse tradition and its challenge to American poetry and culture. The volume also features biographies of each poet and notes that illuminate cultural references and allusions to historical events. --(adapted from jacket.)

And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK is by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kevin M. Burke. The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS series, And Still I Rise--a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos" -- "Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise: From Black Power to the White House explores the last half-century of the African American experience. More than fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of Black Power, the United States has both a Black president and Black CEOs running Fortune 500 companies-- and a large Black underclass beset by persistent poverty, inadequate education, and an epidemic of incarceration. Harvard professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. raises disturbing and vital questions about this dichotomy. How did the African American community end up encompassing such profound contradictions? And what will "the Black community" mean tomorrow? Gates takes readers through the major historical events and untold stories of the sixty years that have irrevocably shaped both the African American experience and the nation as a whole, from the explosive social and political changes of the 1960s, into the 1970s and 1980s-- eras characterized by both prosperity and neglect-- through the turn of the century to today, taking measure of such racial flashpoints as the Tawana Brawley case, O.J. Simpson's murder trial, the murders of Amadou Diallo and Trayvon Martin, and debates around the NYPD's "stop and frisk" policies. Even as it surveys the political and social evolution of black America, And Still I Rise is also a celebration of the accomplishments of black artists, musicians, writers, comedians, and thinkers who have helped to define American popular culture and to change our world. 

George Washington Carver: A Life is by Christine Vella. Nearly every American can cite at least one of the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. The many tributes honoring his contributions to scientific advancement and black history include a national monument bearing his name, a U.S.-minted coin featuring his likeness, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Born into slavery, Carver earned a master's degree at Iowa State Agricultural College and went on to become that university's first black faculty member. A keen painter who chose agricultural studies over art, he focused the majority of his research on peanuts and sweet potatoes. His scientific breakthroughs with the crops both of which would replenish the cotton-leached soil of the South helped spare multitudes of sharecroppers from poverty. Despite Carver's lifelong difficulties with systemic racial prejudice, when he died in 1943, millions of Americans mourned the passing of one of the nation's most honored and well-known scientists. Scores of children's books celebrate the contributions of this prolific botanist, but no biographer has fully examined both his personal life and career until now. 

The Man Called Brown Condor: the Forgotten History of an African American Fighter Pilot is by Thomas E. Simmons. The forgotten true story of American war hero John Charles Robinson, a.k.a. The Brown Condor of Ethiopia, and the commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Corps during the brutal Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935. Simmons brings to life Robinson's success in becoming a pilot, his expertise in building and assembling his own working aircraft, his influence on the establishment of a school of aviation at Tuskegee Institute. More than a biography of a black pilot who became a US hero, this book provides insight on racial conditions in the first half of the twentieth century and illustrates the political intrigue within a League of Nations afraid to face the rise of Fascism. 

African American Fiction

 K'Wan's latest is Black Lotus 2: The Vow. "It's been months since Kahllah El-Amin, aka the Black Lotus, hung up her pistols, retired from the murder-for-hire business, and finally found peace. But when a police officer is murdered and a familiar flower is left at the crime scene, all signs point to it being the work of the Black Lotus. Someone is trying to frame her. Things get more complicated when the case is handed to Detective James Wolf, a former adversary who has since become a friend. To clear her name, Kahllah is forced out of retirement and once again must don the mask of the Black Lotus. She races against time to catch the real killer while trying to outrun her most formidable rival. Their deadly game leads to a shocking truth buried under a mountain of lies, as Kahllah attempts to find justice in a world devoid of light." (from Amazon.com)

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a National Book Award Finalist written by Deesha Philyaw. This collection of nine stories features four generations of characters struggling with what they want to be in this world. They are caught between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions. Fourteen-year-old Jael has a crush on the preacher’s wife. Lyra realizes that her own discomfort with her body is holding her back in her relationship. Caroletta’s yearly arrangement with her childhood best friend is up in the air as Y2K looms. A serial mistress has to lay down the rules for her married lovers. Finally, grieving strangers find comfort in one another’s embrace in the parking lot of a hospice. These church ladies are seductive, vulnerable, unfaithful, unrepentant, and as free as they deserve to be.

The Prophets is a novel by Robert Jones, Jr.  Isaiah and Samuel belonged to one another. It was that way in the beginning, and it is the way it will be until the end. These two enslaved young men try to find moments of happiness as they tend to the animals in the master’s barn. They manage to transform a hollowed-out shed into a place of refuge and hope in a world ruled by a cruel master. When an older fellow slave begins preaching the master’s gospel in order to gain favor, the other slaves begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love—once so simple—is now seen as sinful and a clear danger to the harmony of the plantation. As the tension builds, the weight of the centuries comes crashing down, culminating in an inevitable reckoning.

Rumaan Alam is the author and National Book Award Finalist for Leave the World Behind. Amanda and Clay are looking forward to their vacation out in a remote corner of Long Island in a luxurious home they’ve rented for a week. It’s a chance to leave their hectic life in New York City behind and to reconnect with their teenage son and daughter. Late one night there is a knock on the door and an older couple—Ruth and G. H. who claim to own the home—have arrived in a panic. The strangers inform the family that a sudden blackout has swept New York and they have nowhere else to go. They have come to the country for shelter. With the TV and internet down, and no cell phone service, Amanda and Clay cannot verify their story. Should they trust this intruding couple? What has happed back in New York? Is the vacation home a safe place for the two families? Are they safe from one another? These are the questions at the center of this suspenseful and provocative novel.

African-American History Month

February sees the U.S. celebrating African-American History Month. The following are some of our most recent non-fiction books on the subject. Why not check one out and expand your knowledge of our history and culture?

"The little-known story of an iconic photographer, whose work captured―and influenced―a critical moment in American history. Who was Ernest Withers? Most Americans may not know the name, but they do know his photographs. Withers took some of the most legendary images of the 1950s and ’60s: Martin Luther King, Jr., riding a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Emmett Till’s uncle pointing an accusatory finger across the courtroom at one of his nephew’s killers; scores of African-American protestors, carrying a forest of signs reading "I am a man." But while he enjoyed unparalleled access to the inner workings of the civil rights movement, Withers was working as an informant for the FBI. In this gripping narrative history, Preston Lauterbach examines the complicated political and economic forces that informed Withers’s seeming betrayal of the people he photographed. Withers traversed disparate worlds, from Black Power meetings to raucous Memphis nightclubs where Elvis brushed shoulders with B.B. King. He had a gift for capturing both dramatic historic moments and intimate emotional ones, and it may have been this attention to nuance that made Withers both a brilliant photographer and an essential asset to the FBI. Written with similar nuance, Bluff City culminates with a riveting account of the 1968 riot that ended in violence just a few days before Dr. King’s death. Brimming with new information and featuring previously unpublished and rare photographs from the Withers archive not seen in over fifty years, Bluff City grapples with the legacy of a man whose actions―and artistry―make him an enigmatic and fascinating American figure." (from Amazon.com)

"The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating in Sen. Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses, a lack of physical evidence, and pervasive racial prejudice the case was closed without any indictments. But as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously expressed it, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and US Attorney Doug Jones tried and convicted the final two in 2001 and 2002, representing the correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice nearly forty years in the making. Jones himself went on to win election as Alabama’s first Democratic Senator since 1992 in a dramatic race against Republican challenger Roy Moore. Bending Toward Justice is a dramatic and compulsively readable account of a key moment in our long national struggle for equality, related by an author who played a major role in these events. A distinguished work of legal and personal history, the book is destined to take its place as a canonical civil rights history." (from Amazon.com)

"The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combated it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored "home rule" to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation. An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds." (from Amazon.com)

"Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collage-ist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison's oeuvre." (from Amazon.com)

New Literary Fiction

 Author Leila Slimani offers a portrait of a modern, imperfect woman in her novel Adele. "Adèle appears to have the perfect life: She is a successful journalist in Paris who lives in a beautiful apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But underneath the surface, she is bored--and consumed by an insatiable need for sex. Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. Suspenseful, erotic, and electrically charged, Adèle is a captivating exploration of addiction, sexuality, and one woman's quest to feel alive." (from Amazon.com)

Gbontwi Anyetei brings an African perspective to the classic noir novel in his first novel. "Mensah is a London Noir. A crime novel with a difference set in the deprived streets of Hackney amongst the African community, a stone throw away from affluent and gentrified parts of the borough and Islington. It pays homage to Raymond Chandler and introduces us to the charismatic Mensah, a black hero for our times. Mensah is the kind of man you go looking for when you have a problem. He might cause mayhem and carnage on the way but he will get the job done. So when a would-be African pop star disappears her rich husband puts Mensah on the case. Soon things start to go wrong and Mensah finds he is the one being hunted. The mean streets of Hackney spell danger for him. Mensah is set in an African city in the heart of London." (from Amazon.com)

Death is Hard Work is a novel by Syrian-born author Khaled Khalifa. "Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is―after all―only a two-hour drive from Damascus. There’s only one problem: Their country is a war zone. With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings’ decision to set aside their differences and honor their father’s request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way―as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed―will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them." (from Amazon.com)

"Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s new historical page-turner--The Last Thing You Surrender--is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States. An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman’s life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese . . . a young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war . . . a black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion. Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?" (from Amazon.com)

Author Daniel Sanchez Arevalo captures the grief and disbelief of a newly widowed woman in Alice's Island. "Alice Dupont’s perfect marriage was a perfect lie. When her husband, Chris, dies in a car accident, far from where he should have been, Alice’s life falls apart. After the police close the case, she is left with more questions than answers. While learning to cope with her loss and her new identity as a single mother of two, Alice becomes obsessed with unraveling the mystery surrounding her husband’s death and decides to start her own investigation. Retracing her husband's last known whereabouts, she soon discovers clues that lead her to a small island near Nantucket. As she insinuates herself into the lives of the island’s inhabitants in an effort to discover what they knew about her husband, Alice finds herself increasingly involved in their private lives and comes to a disturbing realization: she has been transformed into a person she no longer recognizes. In seeking an answer to what her husband was doing before he died, Alice discovers not only a side of him she never knew, but sides of her own character she has never explored. Part mystery, part moving family drama, part psychological page-turner, Alice’s Island is a novel whose vivid characters hold the reader rapt right up until the final page." (from Amazon.com)

For the Love of Mississippi

First, let's look at the people of Mississippi through two of it's most important pastimes--football and the Blues.

Mississippi JUCOS: the Toughest Football League in America is by X.M. Frascogna, Jr., X.M. Frascogna, III, and Martin Frank Frascogna. "Mississippi JUCO football is one of the oldest and most colorful leagues in America. Tucked away in Mississippi arguably the most rabid football state of all is a self-contained, highly unique football ecosystem. The Mississippi JUCO football league, or, as the locals refer to it, JUCO ball , or simply the League , consists of fourteen Junior Colleges (now referred to as Community Colleges except for one) all inside the boundaries of Mississippi. On the surface the League has the characteristics of any small college football conference one might find at the NCAA Division II or III levels. However, upon closer examination you discover a fascinating athletic subculture. Depending on one s perspective JUCO ball could be described as a league wrapped in violence and brutality, a vicious athletic underworld. But to most of the players matriculating through the JUCO League, it is football Nirvana. Hidden from the national media JUCO teams in the Magnolia State compete for the League s Championship each year. Every game played during the season matters and many are bitter rivalries. The result is all out war from the beginning of the season to the last regular season game. The two playoff games for the League s Championship are like Armageddon I and II. The League has produced literally thousands of players who have gone on to compete at the NCAA Division I and professional levels. The number of JUCO players who go on to play at four year colleges at the Division II and III levels is staggering. However, even more impressive is the large percentage of the coaching profession who are graduates of the JUCO league. Famous JUCO coaches such as Dobie Holden, Sim Cooley, the Delta Fox Jim Randall, Bull Cyclone Sullivan, Goat Hale, H.C. Hook Stone, Joe Renfroe and A.J. Kilpatrick are spread throughout the annuls of the League. The record books bulge even more when considering the accomplishments of Bobby Ray Franklin, Parker Dykes, Billy Ward, Mike Eaton, Wooky Gray, Gene Murphy, James Sloan, Hugh Shurdon and George Sekul. Love it or despise it, Mississippi JUCO ball is unique." (Amazon.com)

Live from the Mississippi Delta by Panny Flautt Mayfield, "showcases a rare collection of photographs and stories about musicians from Robert Plant, B. B. King, and ZZ Top to local guitarists playing gigs on the weekend. Panny Flautt Mayfield, a lifelong Delta resident from Tutwiler and an award-winning journalist, documents multiple decades of blues and gospel music in her native land. Her first book collects over two hundred black-and-white and color photographs from a long career of photographing live music. Featuring text by Robert Plant in honor of Mayfield, the book opens with him addressing senior citizens gathered in Tutwiler to honor their town as the birthplace of blues. From there, the book proceeds throughout the Delta from juke joints and festivals to blues markers and museums. Mayfield presents images and tales of local icons such as Early Wright, Wade Walton, and the Jelly Roll Kings, as well as international celebrities. She shares intimate photos, including Garth Brooks and Bobby Rush charming elementary school kids in West Tallahatchie, along with insider stories and photos of B. B. King's Homecoming, the Governor's Awards, the Delta Blues Museum, the Sunflower and King Biscuit festivals, and a fascinating side trip to Norway's Notodden Blues Festival, which has a rich sister-city relationship with Clarksdale and the Sunflower Festival. Years ago volunteer tour guide Shirley Fair announced to visitors that there is a church or a juke joint on every corner in Clarksdale. Those demographics are still mostly accurate. Igniting a high-octane finale are photographs taken at iconic juke joints such as Smitty's Red Top, the Bobo Grocery, the Rivermount Lounge, Po' Monkey's, Hopson, Shelby's Dew Drop Inn, the Rose, Ground Zero, Sarah's Kitchen, Margaret's Blue Diamond, and Red's." (Amazon.com)

For a look at Mississippi's natural resources, why not try one of these?

Guide to Birding Coastal Mississippi by Judith A. Toups, Jerry Bird, and Stacy Jon Peterson highlights the wonderful birds that populate Mississippi's Gulf Coast area. "Each year a wide variety of birds and numerous birders flock to Mississippi's Gulf Coast, making it one of the most exciting bird watching locations in the US. In this definitive guidebook, three seasoned Mississippi birders lead the reader through the area's swamps, forests, and beaches, dispensing plenty of insider advice along the way. Maps and bar graphs illustrating monthly probability of occurrence ensure that, no matter what time of year, visitors will find a trip to the region to be a rewarding birding experience. Includes listings for all coastal species and the months in which they appear as well as detailed maps for Lamar, Forrest, Perry, Greene, Pearl River, Stone, George, Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson Counties." (Alibris.com)

In Mushrooms of Mississippi and Other Fungi and Protists, George H. Dukes, Jr. takes us around the state and introduces the reader to one of the most overlooked and misunderstood organisms on the planet: Fungi. "A compendium of over 200 species of naturally occuring macroscopic mushrooms and related fungi, Mushrooms of Mississippi presents textual and photographic records on facing pages for quick and easy reference. Edible, poisonous, and hallucinogenic forms are described; the role of fungi in the environment, including saprobic and parasitic relationships, beneficial and harmful effects and habitats is documented." (Amazon.com) Dukes also includes some very cute photos of his "mushroom hunting" dogs.