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Books by Sam
Greenlee
The Spook Who Sat By the Door /
Ammunition! Poetry and Other Raps
Baghdad Blues: A Novel /
Blues for an African Princess
"Be-bop man/be-bop woman" 1968-1993: Poetry and
other raps
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Be-Bop Man/Be-Bop Woman
By Sam
Greenlee
Ashanti Man
I am a be-bop man; I used to dance to Charlie
Parker; we slid light and cool to Dexter’s
rough-edged tone rubbed bellies to Jug’s soft-edged
tone; tapped toes to A Taxi War Dance and Prez’s
lyrical war cry. I mamboed to Diz, Chano Pozo, Ma-chito
and Candido and knew there was another Perez named
Prado. I cried rivers with Dinah Washington; saw red
sails in the sunlight sounds of Lady Day and Nat
King Cole; sat through sad and muted moods to Miles’
mute-melded micro-phone musings. I fell in and out
of love with the music of Ahmad Jamal and Ronnell
Bright in counterpart to the savage sound of the
Sixty-Third Street El.
Fulani Woman
I am a be-bop woman; I used to dance to Charlie
Parker, Duke, Diz and Count Basie and he told me he
loved me on that soft, sultry dancing the Bop at Al
Benson’s Battle of the Bands at the Pershing
Ballroom when Jug played A Red Top and won again. We
scatted A Donna Lee down Cottage Grove Avenue and
pass the Trianon Ballroom, very up-tempo and A
Moody’s Mood. I did Lady Day and he laid behind me
scatting obbligato like Prez used to do on A Fine
and Mellow and I was fine and mellow on that fine
and mellow summer day, with him smiling love on me
and we were as young and immortal as the music we
worshiped. We did the “Walk” while waiting for the
stoplight to change with humming in my ear and as we
ran across Sixty-First Street; I started as Sarah
and ended as Ella at the other curb.
Ashanti Man
I am a be-bop man. I used to dance to Charlie
Parker, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, A Little Jazz
and Howard McGhee and they danced with us through
the South Side streets and into Washington Park. We
took off our shoes to run barefoot through the
grass, shunning the hot, black asphalt paths; winos
sat surrounding a paper bag-clad bottle; lovers
lounged on the grass near the lagoon; a junky nodded
in the sun-dappled shade of a tree; somewhere a baby
cried and another laughed; night people sat and
waited for their sunless day’s work to begin. Old
men and women fished at the edge of the lagoon with
grandchildren at their sides; broad-brimmed straw
hats shading their faces from the sun; their bamboo
poles held gently in work-hardened hands, legacy of
the south that had bred them and abandoned decades
ago, its memories lying light and faded on their
shoulders like a hand-woven shawl. They watched the
bobber for the sign or a nibble but the bluegills,
sunfish and perch would not blot the memory of the
sweet taste of catfish, freshly caught and fried. A
kite bobbed on the sunny breeze and we bobbed our
heads in time with it, bopping A Dexter’s Deck and
passed a car playing Muddy Waters singing I’m a
rolling stone. She took my hand and clothed me with
her smile and Sonny Rollins ran through my head and
out my mouth and she gave me back Moody’s flute.
Fulani Woman
I am a be-bop woman. I used to
dance to Charlie Parker and he danced with me to my
apartment on Forty-Seventh and Vincennes. I lit a
stick of sandalwood incense while he checked out my
sounds and I had the women all the way to Bessie and
the other Smith girls and Ma Rainey, Ivy Anderson,
Sarah, Lurlean Hunter, Ella, Lady Day, and Carmen
MacRae, Lorez Alexandria from the West Side and Miss
Dinah Ruth Jones Washington out of a South Side
Baptist church choir and how many sisters singing A
Nearer My God To Thee, including me, dreamed of
becoming another Miss Jones. Miss Jones is what we
called her as she swept regally through the Pershing
Ballroom to hang backstage with Prez, Miles, Bird,
Max Roach, Clifford Brown and on down and the crowd
parting before her like the Red Sea before Moses. We
knew who Carmen MacRae meant when she sang, Have you
met Miss Jones?
Ashanti Man
I am a be-hop man and we danced
to Dinah Washington, with her singing along with the
record sounding like Dinah’s little sister. We ate
barbecue from a joint on Forty-Seventh, with the
taste of smoke in it and a salad she made in her
spotless kitchen and I talked of college and running
track and writing because I could not separate them
in those days and she listened to my searching
poems, searching for a voice my own as much as
searching for myself. At dawn we went to bed. Not my
first time for sex, but my first time of making love
and we danced once again in bed in the way she had
of knowing how I was going to move before I did it.
We spent Sunday in bed with the Sunday tapers strewn
about us and once made love with the sound of the
sports section crinkling beneath our dancing hips.
Ashanti Man
I am a be-bop man, she is a Be-Bop woman and we two
danced to Charlie Parker, and still do!
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Sam
Greenlee—novelist, poet, screenwriter, journalist,
teacher and talk show host—was born 13 July 1930 in
Chicago. He attended Chicago public schools. At age
fifteen, Greenlee participated in his first sit-in
and walked his first picked line. His social
activism continues. In 1952, Greenlee received his
B.S. in political science from the University of
Wisconsin and the following year attended law
school. He transferred to the University of Chicago
to study international relations from 1954 to 1957.
In 1957, he began a seven-year career with the U.S.
Information Agency as a foreign services officer,
serving in Iraq, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Greece,
and in 1958 he was awarded the Meritorious Service
Award for bravery during the Baghdad revolution.
Greenlee's novel
The Spook Who Sat By the Door , was
published in 1968. Prize-winning its
fictionalization of an urban-based war for African
American liberation became an underground favorite.
Greenlee co-wrote a screenplay adaptation of the
novel, and in 1973
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
was released on film. The film was an overnight
success when it was released but was unexpectedly
taken out of distribution.
Greenlee has written numerous novels, stage plays,
screenplays and poems. He moved back to Chicago
after several years of voluntary exile in Spain and
West Africa and is hosted a radio talk show program.
He is presently working on his autobiography.
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Sam Greenlee
(born July 13, 1930) is an African American writer,
best known for his novel The
Spook Who Sat by the Door, first published in London by Allison
& Busby in March 1969, which was made into the 1973
movie of the same name and won
The Sunday Times Book of the Year award. Other
works include
Baghdad Blues, a 1976 novel based on his
experiences traveling in
Iraq in the 1950s, Blues for an African
Princess, a 1971 collection of poems, and
Ammunition, a 1975 collection of poems. In 1990
Greenlee was the
Illinois
poet laureate.
Born in
Chicago, Greenlee attended the
University of Wisconsin (BS, political science,
1952) and the
University of Chicago (1954-7). He is a member
of
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. He served in
the military (1952-4), earning the rank of first
lieutenant, and subsequently worked for the
United States Information Agency, serving in
Iraq (in 1958 he was awarded the
Meritorious Service Medal for bravery during the
Baghdad revolution),
Pakistan,
Indonesia, and
Greece between 1957 and 1965. He undertook
further study (1963-4) at the
University of Thessaloniki, in Greece, where he
lived for three years.—Wikipedia
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Ammunition: Poetry and Other Raps
By Sam Greenlee
Greenlee is also
known for such works as
Blues for an African Princess
(1971), a collection of poems. His novel
Baghdad Blues (1976) and
Ammunition: Poetry and Other Raps
(1975) both deal with African
Americans’ pain, anger, and fear,
particularly that of those who are
caught up in the racism and oppression
of government agencies.
Greenlee's contributions to the literary
tradition in African American literature
have caused his readers to examine
closely the racial awareness or
unawareness within agencies and
institutions that are designed to serve
all Americans. His presentation of
African Americans’ duality and
paradoxical existence in a racist
society is still providing scholars with
text to investigate the themes of
racism. Greenlee is masterful in his
presentation of characters and
community; his work is saturated with
the African American literary tradition.—Answers |
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Sam Greenlee is
relaxed. He sits lotus style on a rainbow-striped
blanket, rolling cigarettes and talking in
reflective, short streams about the rage that fueled
his 1969 underground classic The
Spook Who Sat by the Door. "I planted the seed and I'll live to
see it grow," says Greenlee. The seed was a portrait
of a black CIA agent who trains a Chicago street
gang to orchestrate a Mau Mau-style war on whitey.
Its growth was stunted, Greenlee has long contended,
by a campaign to keep the 1973 film version of the
book out of theaters. "They haven't discouraged me,"
says Greenlee, 63. "I'm old but I'm not tired. I'm
satisfied with my career, I've done the right
thing."
Growing up in
the 30s and 40s in west Woodlawn, Greenlee lived an
"idyllic" childhood filled with Sunday school, Boy
Scouts, and the rural, southern values of his
parents. He went to Englewood High and earned a
track scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in
1948. He began a graduate degree in international
relations at the University of Chicago. "I went to
two white, brainwashing institutions. But I'm the
black dog that didn't fall for Pavlov's scam," he
says with a chuckle.
Greenlee joined
the foreign service in 1957. "I wanted to see the
world," he says, stroking his silver beard. "Baghdad
was my first post; they were having a revolution. I
was in Pakistan and Greece while both countries were
having a coup. What I've lived is far more exciting
than anything I could make up."
After eight
years, he left the foreign service but stayed on the
Greek island of Mykonos, where he began writing his
first novel. "I never could write while I was
surrounded by those people," he says of his
colleagues. "I was so enraged when I came home every
night. I was watching them undermine whole cultures.
The U.S. is the biggest threat to world peace there
is."—the
relaxed rage of Sam Greenlee
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Baghdad Blues
The Revolution That Brought Saddam
Hussein to Power
By Sam Greenlee
This book is based on the real life
experience of a black man posted to
Baghdad in the late 1950s and employed
by the US Information Bureau. His white
colleagues are totally out of touch with
the emerging political unrest protesting
the corrupt royalist regime and when the
revolution erupts, the US embassy is
shocked. The king it supports is killed
and the entire city of Baghdad is
plunged into political chaos and
violence. Sam Greenlee is a most
engaging story teller...a very
interesting read! Gives insight into
Saddam Hussein's ability to rise to
power given the preceding historical
events.—amazon
customer |
On YouTube
The Spook Who Sat
by the Door /
Part 2 of 11
/
Part 3 of 11 /
Part 4 of
11 /
Part 5 of 11 /
Part 6 of
11
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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1960
1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 12 February 2009
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