Life Sentences: Freeing Black Relationships is a Black man's response to the devastating effect of the Euro-Western concept of love on Black relationships. Author Mzee Lasana Okpara (formerly Fred Hord) demonstrates keen insight and confronts complex contemporary and historical issues which thwart efforts towards genuine bonding between the Black man and woman. Okpara's voice is intimate, challenging, and resolute.
Cranston Knight
La Brigada
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The poems in ""La are"" are about the impact of Spain on La Brigada, the American unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War. As Cranston Knight states, the poems are about ""those who struggled in a time vortex to save millions in a forgotten war, a forgotten country."" To bridge the cultural and language gap in the telling of these stories, Knight includes a selection of the book's poems in both English and Spanish.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors
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Written in the tradition and style of the Black Arts Movement, this collection contains lyrical poems, laced with satirical allusions and political exhortations to Black readers.
Estella Conwill Majozo
Jiva Telling Rites
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This is a collection of poems in verse and short prose that tells the story of a woman's anguish and growth in a hostile environment. The poems move into praise songs for people deemed worthy of recognition.
Mzee Lasana Okpara (Fred Lee Hord)
Into Africa, Being Black
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This precious volume of new and selected poems justly widens Dr. Hord's space among the poets of the Black Arts Movement. He remains, as John O. Killers would state, one of the long distance runners. He is in a league with Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Jayne Cortez, Eugene Redmond, Lucille Clifton, Kalamu ya Salaam, and others who created a movement that helped to change America and the world for the literate and liberated majority.
Cranston Knight
In the Garden of the Beast
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Chronicling the lives of an African American soldier, his Vietnamese lover, and their child, this poetry collection deals painfully and poignantly with the reality of the Vietnam war.
Patti Renee Rose
In Search of Serenity
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Rose chronicles her family's pain, hope, courage, and determination as they explore possibilities for a cure to AIDS offered by holistic medicine, vegetarianism, AZT, and Kemron.
Sterling Plumpp
Hornman
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""HornMan"" is a poetry collection dedicated to the legendary musician, Von Freeman.
Jacqueline Imani Bryant
Gwendolyn Brooks and Working Writers
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Seventeen writers, educators, and close friends of the late poet contribute their praise through this collection of brief anecdotes from actual encounters with Gwendolyn Brooks. The contributors relate the poet's influences on their art, their lives, and the world; expressing their indebtedness for the revolutionary language of her poems, her universal maternity, and her outstanding kindness. Some of Brook's most influential poems are included such that this tribute keeps her words and wisdom alive.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Why L.A. Happened
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A series of essays discussing the reasons for and the solutions to the rioting that took place in Los Angeles in 1992 and the violence that grew out of it in Atlanta.
Lasana D. Kazembe
Write To Be
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Poetry from Writers in Stateville Prison
Kim L. Dulaney
Where I've Been
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Contemporary urban America comes alive in this eclectic compilation of short and flash fiction with an inner-city aesthetic filtered through the brevity of hip-hop culture.
Herbert G. McCann
Greenwood
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The unprecedented prosperity and creativity of the Roaring Twenties acts as a striking counterpoint to the poverty of a young Southwestern town in this eloquent tale drawn from real sources of African American history. The hopeful residents of Greenwood, Oklahoma, are still suffering economically but plan to turn their lives around. Richard Rowland's love for Sarah Page worries his father and offends the sensibilities of the people who hold the power of life and death over him. L. J. McSpadden is the son of slaves who has overcome incredible odds to become a success and yet is the thorn in the side of men more powerful than he. And William Hogg is driven to build the greatest city in the Southwest. Many more men pass through town who help shape the economic and political standards of the time, but when their goals collide with the citizens of Greenwood, a conflagration ignites that terrifies some and excites others.
James D. Montgomery Sr.
Full Circle - Race, Law & Justice (Hardcover)
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Full Circle is the story of one of the foremost attorneys of the last half century - Attorney James D. Montgomery, Sr. He is recognized as a well-respected statesman and passionate advocate who has devoted his career to challenging racist systems and policies espoused by the American justice system. Working with other Civil Rights Leaders of the time, Attorney Montgomery fought for - often with little or no pay - a fair criminal justice system, desegregated Chicago public schools, fair housing, and an end to police brutality.
Kwaku Person-Lynn
First Word
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An informative collection of narratives (in their words) from some of the most prominent and important Black scholars, artists. From Kwaku Person-Lynn: The most important thing to remember is that the person I am talking with has a body of knowledge that needs to be preserved for the next generation. We needed to hear our history and culture from our perspective….To know that thousands were listening to the teachings of John Henrik Clarke, Cheikh Anta Diop, Yosef-ben-Jochannan, Ivan Van Sertima, Frances Cress Welsing, W.E.B. DuBois, Asa Hilliard, Na’im Akbar, and many others was transformative to so many lives.
Darryl Holmes
Wings Will Not Be Broken
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This short volume of poetry shows the inner self of an African American artist.
Philip C. Kolin
Emmett Till in Different States
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The poems in Emmett Till in Different States span more than 7 decades of events in Emmett Till’s legacy from the 1940s to the present. In them Philip Kolin shows how Emmett Till’s importance has expanded from being a Civil Rights martyr to becoming a choric, heroic commentator on the tragedies of Civil Rights injustices (e.g. Medgar Evers’s murder, the Freedom Riders, the murders of Chicago’s children, Trayvon Martin), and a voice of conscience for America to hear and heed. The title of this collection points to the multiple ways we can see Emmett Till through time and space (e.g. geographic, historical, psychological, and theological.) Kolin weaves other voices throughout the poems in this collection, most notably Mamie Till, Gospel great Mahalia Jackson who bought Till’s gravestone, an old black woman (Aunt Aretha) who meets Till in the Delta, Till’s fictionalized brothers (other black men who have been slain and their bodies left to rot), his fictionalized sister based upon the Shulamite woman in the Song of Songs, the Chicago River, and even Carolyn Bryant, the white woman whom Till was said to have offended. These voices–and Till’s as well–emerge from a variety of traditions–Biblical, the blues, classical mythology, spirituals. According to Natasha Trethewey, the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States, “In the history of a nation still on the long journey toward full realization of its creed, there are stories that need to be told again and again. The murder of Emmett Till is one such story; it belongs to all of us and should be sung by many different voices. In Emmett Till in Different States, Philip Kolin adds his voice—a necessary retelling so that we might be transformed by the listening.”
Brian Gilmore
Elvis Presley Is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem
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Intertwining wit, satire, sensitivity, and rich verbal imagery, this collection of free verse celebrates the triumph of Black culture.
Tony Medina
Committed to Breathing
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Emerging with a varied political sensibility, this book explodes the bourgeois self-indulgence of American culture to give a lambasting critique of its current global ultra-exploration and political repression. Exploring pressing and complicated social issues, the book incorporates humor, invective, and vigor while analyzing life, beauty, and the defiance of denial and despair.
W. D. Wright
Crisis of the Black Intellectual (Hardcover)
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A reexamination of Harold Cruse's classic ""Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, "" published in 1967 at the height of the civil-rights movement and now required reading in African American studies courses, this polemic pays tribute to the earlier book's importance and takes to task the current generation of black scholars for failing to meet Cruse's rigorous standards for public commentary. Detailing the evolution of black-intellectual discourse since the 1960s, this assessment points to a lack of ongoing discussion about the role of intellectuals--black or white--in our society and insists that the experience of black Americans is so complex it deserves the closest and most honest scrutiny possible from black writers and academics. Instead, the book is sad to report, today's scholars are often caught up in media battles such as those described in the chapters ""Three of a Kind: Black Conservatives, Black Liberals, and Black Radicals"" and ""Why Black Female Intellectuals Tend to Shout.""
Dolores E. Cross
Breaking Through the Wall (Hardcover)
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The autobiography of Dolores Cross's journey from the housing projects of Newark, New Jersey, to her appointment as president of Morris Brown College. She tells of her journey out of poverty, through the tumult of the 60s and the civil rights movement
Estella Conwill Majozo
Blessings for a New World
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The symbiotic relationship between poems and paintings is explored in this stimulating volume. As a premiere example of convergence art, in which two or more different kinds of art react to and interact with one another, the collection draws a comparison between multidisciplinary art and multiculturalism by equating medium with race. By pairing the work of a renowned poet and public artist with the paintings of a beloved children's book illustrator, the book shows how effectively art can take a multimedia approach and yet convey a single message: how new historical and cultural possibilities can arise when differing disciplines work together, whether referring to different kinds of art or different kinds of people.
Gwendolyn A. Mitchell
Describe the Moment
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Featuring poetry, short plays, and short stories, this collection contains content written by young people as part of Chicago's Gallery 37 Project, an art education program for youths aged 14–21. The illustrations are also done by the participants in the 1998 Gallery 37 program.
Mzee Lasana Okpara (Fred Lee Hord)
Black Culture Centers
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A compilation of essays presenting the conditions and promises of the university for African American faculty and students that is enhanced by the development of Black culture centers in the university community.
Marcia Sutherland
Black Authenticity
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""Black Authenticity"" exposes fundamental differences in the psychologies of people of African and European descent. These differences, which are manifested in the oppressive behavior of Europeans, must be revealed before Africans can recreate an authentic Black psychology. Marcia Sutherland analyzes the various problems which plague the African world and outlines a liberated psychology which must be adopted if people of African descent are to become an independent people.
Thabiti Lewis
Ballers of the New School
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""Ballers of the New School"" uses American sports culture to challenge and explore notions of race in America. Dr. Lewis pushes back against topics such as anti-intellectualism, jingoism, and exploitation in collegiate athletics, as well as the role of sports culture in cultivating notions of masculinity. The book fearlessly critiques and challenges the notion that sports culture has altruistically functioned as a progressive pioneer of social and racial progress and offers a reexamination of the narrative of American sport as a leading contributor to racial progress by pointing to glass ceilings in areas of leadership on and off fields of play. The reconstructions as well as challenges to modern athletes that ""Ballers of the New School"" offers makes it a usable book of sometimes uncomfortable, but necessary truths.
Eric Lee Bowers
Asunder
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Best of friends since college, Chance and Roberta Williams and Michael and Lauren Hubbs have perfect relationships, perfect careers, and perfect lives. Or do they? A freak accident takes Roberta's life, leaving the three remaining friends with a shattered reality: their perfect existence is nothing more than an illusion masked by secrets, deception, and jealousy. The loss of his wife and unborn child being too much to bear, Chance gives in to grief. Quickly evolving into a psychotic killer, he creates for his remaining friends a world that is something short of a nightmare. ""Asunder"" is a thriller that will leave readers on the edge of the seat.
