CDs by Gil-Scott Heron

From South Africa To South Carolina (1976)  Winter In America (1974)  / Pieces Of A Man (1971) / The First Minute Of A New Day

The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron  /  Moving Target

*   *   *   *   *

Books by Gil-Scott Heron

 The Vulture and The Nigger Factory) / Small Talk At 125th And Lenox

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott-Heron, Spoken-Word Musician, Dies at 62—By The Associated Press—May 27, 2011—Musician Gil Scott-Heron, who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry on songs such as "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," died Friday at age 62. A friend, Doris C. Nolan, who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company, said he died in the afternoon at St. Luke's Hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip.  "We're all sort of shattered," she said. Scott-Heron's influence on rap was such that he sometimes was referred to as the Godfather of Rap, a title he rejected.

"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating 'hooks,' which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," he wrote in the introduction to his 1990 collection of poems, "Now and Then." He referred to his signature mix of percussion, politics and performed poetry as bluesology or Third World music. But then he said it was simply "black music or black American music." "Because Black Americans are now a tremendously diverse essence of all the places we've come from and the music and rhythms we brought with us," he wrote. . . .

Scott-Heron recorded the song that would make him famous, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," which critiqued mass media, for the album 125th and Lenox in Harlem in the 1970s. He followed up that recording with more than a dozen albums, initially collaborating with musician Brian Jackson. His most recent album was "I'm New Here," which he began recording in 2007 and was released in 2010. Throughout his musical career, he took on political issues of his time, including apartheid in South Africa and nuclear arms. He had been shaped by the politics of the 1960s and the black literature, especially of the Harlem Renaissance.

Scott-Heron was born in Chicago on April 1, 1949. He was raised in Jackson, Tenn., and in New York before attending college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Before turning to music, he was a novelist, at age 19, with the publication of The Vulture, a murder mystery.He also was the author of The Nigger Factory, a social satire.—NYTimes

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott-Heron was the bridge between The Black Arts Movement and Hip Hop. Surely we are from Allah and to Him we return.—Marvin X

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott-Heron dies aged 62—Poet and songwriter was hailed as 'Godfather of Rap' after penning "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"—David Sharrock

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott's Role in an Untelevised Revolution

By Howard Rambsy

With the passing of Gil Scott-Heron [1949-2011], we're certain to hear about his wonderful career as a poet and musician over the coming days, weeks . . . years. As we should.  But there's another story that relates to "Scotty," as his childhood friends in Jackson, Tennessee, where he was raised, used to call him.  On January 25, 1962, Gil Scott-Heron and two other students were sent by their guardians to Tigrett Junior High School, effectively desegregating the school, and later by extension the school system.  I know what you're asking. Hadn't the Supreme Court declared in that 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education that it was unconstitutional to segregate public schools? Yep, but listen: some of these Southern towns don't care about your fancy laws and equality and constitution.

I heard about Scotty as one of those three students who helped desegregate the schools before I became aware of his talents and many contributions as a poet and musician. Well, in a way, I heard about his very early years as a musician because he took piano lessons with my aunt when adolescent growing up in Jackson. The schools in Jackson, where I was raised, did not officially become desegregated until the early 1990s. I was just starting high school at the time.  It was in the 1962, after Gil Scott-Heron and others went to Tigrett, that got black folks unofficially attending more than just the black schools.  

When the older folks who really helped change the system reflected on things at the time of official desegregation in the early 1990s, they'd mention this guy Scotty, along with his classmates such as Brenda Moses and Madeline Walker who were the first black students to go to the white schools. I've been switching back and forth saying Gil Scott-Heron and Scotty, as I spoke with my aunt early today about him. She, like all his other friends in Jackson, only knew him as Scotty.  In 1963, Lille Scott, his grandmother died, and so Scotty left Jackson and moved to New York City with his mother. Scotty was then on the road to becoming "the" Gil Scott-Heron. 

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Source: SIUEB

*   *   *   *   *

Breath of Life Presents

Gil Scott-Heron & His Music

Reviews by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya Salaam

I’d intended to write about something else this week, but I woke up on a particularly good side of the bed this morning (‘this morning’ being the morning of December 31st, the last morning of 2005) and thereby decided to write instead about a few songs that express the way I feel this morning: realistic and determined yet joyful and optimistic.

Actually, it isn’t just this morning—I’m in the midst of the longest streak of consecutive good days that I can ever recall having. I’m not talking about a few days. I’m not even talking about a few weeks. I’m talking about a couple of months or more without a single day that I didn’t actually enjoy. At first, I kept waiting for my usual cantankerous, ornery, cynical self to reappear. But every morning, I’d go in the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face and there’d be the same happy face looking back at me. So, I give in. I’m officially happy.

On to the music . . .

Gil Scott-Heron is probably best-known for his stridently political material—songs like “Johannesburg,” “The Bottle,” and of course, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”—but my favorite Gil Scott Heron songs are the ballads. Invariably pensive and reflective yet always filled with hope, Gil’s ballads range in tone from the political (Winter In America ) to the nostalgic (“A Very Precious Time”) to the outright optimistic (“A Lovely Day”). 

Gil wrote so many great ballads that it’s impossible for me to pick a favorite, but at the moment, the one I’m feeling the most (no doubt because of the imminent New Year) is “Beginnings" (The First Minute Of A New Day).” “Beginnings” is a lament, I admit that, but the soaring vocals and the raw honesty of the lyrics raise my spirits. And, although Gil sings “We’re struggling here / Faced with our every fear / Just to survive,” that isn’t the part that stays with me after the song ends. The part that stays with me is when he sings “We’re searching out our every doubt / And winning.” And winning. That’s the part I always remember.

The lyrics to “A Very Precious Time” read like a requiem to innocence: “Was there a touch of spring? / Was there the faintest breeze? / And did she have a pink dress on? / And when she smiled…could you almost touch the warmth?” But “Precious Time” isn’t a simple nostalgia trip, that isn’t Brother Gil’s style. In the bridge, Gil defines his wistful look back as a means to remain in the present, to remain cognizant of the reasons we struggle on, even when we would much rather give in: “And now they got me trying to define in later life how much her love means to me / And it keeps me struggling to remember my first touch of spring.” The song ends with Gil picking out notes on his keyboard and humming softly to himself “La-da da-da da-da-dum…”—a statement of considerable eloquence which, in my opinion, sums up the matter perfectly.

“A Lovely Day” and “I Think I’ll Call It Morning” are peas in a pod: twin dedications to joy, happiness, and freedom. It isn’t often that a revolutionary is willing or able to give in to unvarnished optimism. So listen to these two tracks and decide for yourself: if a conflicted and complicated musical revolutionary like Brother Gil can write and sing earnest paeans to sunshine and flowers, what kind of mood do you want to be in today? What kind of mood do you want to be in tomorrow? What kind of mood do you want to be in next year?

Happy 2006, mi jente. Let’s do this! —Mtume ya Salaam

*   *   *   *   *

It’s not easy  

It’s not easy being Gil Scott-Heron, an icon everyone respects as well as a fuck-up everyone feels sorry for. How do you contain the contradiction of being an insightful, revolutionary artist and a habitual addict? My man, Richard Pryor had a similar problem, except he never was seen as a political leader. If any one artist represents the post-civil rights journey of African Americans, it’s Gil Scott-Heron.

Mtume likes Gil’s music. He got it from his Mama & Daddy. Literally. At some points, Gil was playing damn near everyday in the house. I still play Gil’s music, but I no longer play it with unadulterated joy—today, Gil’s music always calls to mind contradictions and the difficult struggle of coping with, and sometimes even overcoming, those human failings we all have, those failings which Gil has in spades.

Gil has a deep catalogue, deep as in beaucoup beautiful songs and deep as in profound music. Turn the lights out, sit quietly in the dark and review your life; if you’re over 35, a few of these songs are damn near guaranteed to churn up shit inside you that will make even the hardest of the hard blink back a tear or two.

In the midst of all of his contradictions and shortcomings, one thing Gil never did was lie about it in his music. All he is (as they say, the good, the bad… etc.) is in there, poetically so, beautifully so, sing-along so. Who else would be honest enough to say, home is where the hatred is…? A junkie on his way back home.

Ultimately, Gill is uplifting not because he is perfect, but rather because he is honest about his flaws, and in being so honest about being so fucked up, he encourages us who are less fucked up than he is to be honest about our own contradictions.

A little further down the line, I think I’ll do a Gil Scott-Heron write-up, but for now, let’s just resolve: regardless of how painful it be, let’s make a pact that we will at the very least be honest with ourselves about who we actually are.—Kalamu ya Salaam

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott-Heron—b. 1 April 1949, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Raised in Jackson, Tennessee, by his grandmother, Scott-Heron moved to New York at the age of 13. His estranged father played for Glasgow Celtic, a Scottish football team. Astonishingly precocious, Scott-Heron had published two novels (The Vulture and The Nigger Factory) plus a book of poems (Small Talk At 125th And Lenox) by 1972. 

He met musician Brian Jackson when both were students at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, and in 1970 they formed the Midnight Band to play their original blend of jazz, soul and prototype rap music. Small Talk At 125th And Lenox was mostly an album of poems (from his book of the same name), but later albums showed Scott-Heron developing into a skilled songwriter whose work was soon covered by other artists: for example, LaBelle recorded his "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and Esther Phillips made a gripping version of "Home Is Where The Hatred Is."

In 1973, Scott-Heron had a minor hit with "The Bottle," a song inspired by a group of alcoholics who congregated outside his and Jackson's communal house in Washington, DC. Winter In America (on which Jackson was co-credited for the first time) and The First Minute Of A New Day, the latter for new label Arista Records, were both heavily jazz-influenced, but later sets saw Scott-Heron and Jackson exploring more pop-orientated formats, and in 1976 they scored a hit with the disco-based protest single, "Johannesburg".

  From South Africa To South Carolina (Arista 1976)  Winter In America (Strata-East 1974)  Pieces Of A Man (Flying Dutchman 1971)

posted 3 January 2005

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott-Heron is back—and as challenging as ever—By Patrick Neate—When I suggest to Scott-Heron that his work has been a victim of his convictions, he responds with enthusiasm: “Did we make people feel uncomfortable? Maybe we did, but that’s for them to judge. Like I say, we’ve been heard of more than we been heard. So, if they felt uncomfortable, at least that would mean they heard it. . . .

“As far as I’m concerned, what we were doing was necessary. When we released Johannesburg, people didn’t want to talk about South Africa; so we were taking a chance. I felt somebody’s got to bring it up, but I didn’t necessarily intend it to be me. I would have rather it was congressmen or those intended to talk about these things, but they wouldn’t. But if my children were to ask me what I’d said, I wanted to have an answer. Nowadays, there are more artists prepared to address these issues and that makes it harder to control. But then they could control it simply by removing my stuff from the shelves. And they did. Now they’d have to take out half the f***ing store.” He laughs heartily. TimesOnline

*   *   *   *   *

New York Is Killing Me

Excerpts by Alec Wilkinson

9 August 2010

Scott-Heron’s parents separated when he was two years old, and while his mother went to Puerto Rico to teach English he lived with his grandmother in Jackson. “My grandmother was dead serious,” he said one day, sitting on his couch. “Her sense of humor was a secret. She started me playing the piano. There was a funeral parlor next door to our house, and they had this old piano that they used for wakes and funerals, and they were getting ready to take it to the junk yard. She wanted me to play hymns for the ladies’ sewing circle that met every Thursday, and she bought the piano for six dollars, and she paid a lady up the street five or ten cents a lesson to teach me to play four hymns, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus,’ ‘Rock of Ages,’ ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ and I can’t think of the other one. I was eight years old, and I had started to listen to WDIA in Memphis, and they would play the blues. When I was practicing, I would have to mix them, because my grandmother was not big on the blues. When she was out in the yard, I can play what I want, but if she’s in the house I got to mix John Lee Hooker with ‘Rock of Ages.’ ”

The phone rang, but he ignored it. “I found my grandmother dead,” he went on. “It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn’t stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis”—he leaned back and held his legs and arms stiff—“and I’m done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it. I went outside and saw the woman from the house going to work, and she came and took over. I was twelve.”  

With his mother and her brother, Scott-Heron moved to an apartment in the Bronx, and his mother went to work for the city housing authority. Before long, his uncle moved out, and his mother couldn’t afford the rent, so she put her name on a list for an apartment in a project in Chelsea, in Manhattan. “Black people didn’t want to live in Chelsea, but we just wanted to go somewhere,” Scott-Heron said. “We started in ’65. It was eighty-five per cent Puerto Rican, fifteen per cent white, and me.”  . . .

Scott-Heron was one of five black students among a class of a hundred, and in his second year he got in trouble for playing the piano. “They had a beautiful Steinway they used for the choir and the chorus, but I got caught using it to play the Temptations,” he said. “A guy came in and screamed at me to stop, and they put a sign up saying ‘Do Not Play.’ A few days later, he came in, and I’m sitting under the sign playing the piano. So they told me they were going to call my mother, and I laughed—not because I was being disrespectful, although he took it that way—but because I thought, You really don’t want to get my mother into this.

But they called her and told her to come to a disciplinary meeting, and the evening before she asked me what had happened, and I told her. And she said, ‘Well, did you hit the man?,’ and I said, ‘No, I was playing the piano.’ I tried to explain that there had been no rule against it until I did it. A lot of kids had been going up there to play ‘Chopsticks,’ I said, and she asked me again, did I hit him. She had reached the conclusion that I had done something so awful that I didn’t want to describe it, because she couldn’t imagine that they had called her up there to tell her I had been playing the piano.”

The meeting took place around a horseshoe-shaped table. “My mother listened to them, and when they were finished she said, ‘You all know where we live, and the difficulties of our life, so I’m not going to talk about that. We got burglaries, assaults, muggings—it’s not the best place to raise a child—but whenever something happens down there that might involve my son, I don’t call you. I figure that’s my area, and this is yours. Now, I have read your discipline handbook, and what I suggest you do is expel him, because it’s this way or that, near as I can tell, so what I’m going to do right now, since this is your area, I’m going to leave and go to work, because if I don’t get there soon, they’re going to take half my day’s wages from me, and when I get home this evening he’ll tell me what you decided, but, if you’re asking my opinion, you have to expel him. We have really enjoyed it here, and it has added to my son’s life, and I think we’ve added to your ethical-culture thing, but I’m going to go now, and you’ll excuse my son because he’s got to walk me to the subway. Thank you all very much.’ She got up and put on her coat, and I took a hard look at the man who had started all this, to say, ‘See, I told you you didn’t want to get my mama involved.’

“She walked to the subway in a stone silence. All she said was ‘I want you to leave these people’s piano alone. You’re not here to play the piano.’ I said, ‘What if they expel me?’ ‘Then you won’t have to worry about it; you’ll be someplace else. You leave these people’s stuff alone, and when you tell me something from now on I’ll believe you.’ ”  Scott-Heron was made to stay after school three Wednesdays in a row to wash out the brushes in the art room. A classmate, Roderick Harrison, says that he remembers two things about Scott-Heron. “He could hold a classroom or a hallway in thrall” is one of them. The other recollection is of his mother. “She was,” he told me, “imposing.” —NewYorker

*   *   *   *   *

The Vulture and The Nigger Factory is an omnibus edition of the two highly successful novels from the early 1970s by one of America's most outspoken and important postwar commentators on race, politics, and culture Scott-Heron's highly successful two novels are now packaged together for the first time. The Vulture—First published in 1970 and digging the rhythms of the street, where the biggest deal life has to offer is getting high, The Vulture is a hip and fast-moving thriller. It relates the strange story of the murder of a teenage boy called John Lee—telling it in the words of four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Just who did kill John Lee and why? ‘Here lies a man with a kind heart and a good will.’ . . . All the nice comments that were whispered about you . . . were as worthless as the air that transported them from mouth to ear.

The Vulture relates the strange story of John Lee’s murder—telling it in the words of four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Just who did kill John Lee and why? A hip and fast-moving thriller.

The Nigger Factory is a biting satire set on the campus of Sutton University, Virginia. The failure of Sutton to embrace the changing attitudes of the Sixties has necessitated (has caused) disaffection among the black students and revolution is nigh.

*   *   *   *   *

Father of hip-hop, Gil Scott-Heron is a survivor—Jonathan Takiff Philadelphia Daily News—In the late 1960s and '70s, there were none hipper or signifying more on the conscious black arts scene than Gil Scott-Heron. The Lincoln University- and Johns Hopkins-educated poet, author and English professor also discovered his voice as a dramatically throaty, impassioned jazz- and blues-tinged singer. Though he has just released the long-overdue album I'm New Here, he was nurturing a modern neo-soul sound long before the style had a name. And if you ask any of the world's most relevant rappers — from Chuck D to Common — who inspired them, odds are good they'll cite this guy.

In fact, Scott-Heron is still living down his rep as “the father of hip-hop,” cited for predicting (first to a bongo beat and later with a jazz combo) that "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." He also put a harsh spotlight on South African apartheid in the bluesy holler "What's the Word? Johannesburg," pondered the social cost of putting "Whitey on the Moon" and characterized the presidency of former actor Ronald Reagan as just another B Movie. So what does Scott-Heron think of all he's wrought? “My kids like hip-hop, and I like my kids,” he said diplomatically. “That's who they're ready for. I'm not supposed to like it. They're not doing it for me.” HoustonChronicle

*   *   *   *   *

Gil Scott-Heron on You-Tube

Me And The Devil  /  Winter in America  / We Beg Your Pardon  / Message to the Messengers  / Johannesburg  / The Bottle  / Is That Jazz?  / Ain't No Such Thing As A Superman

I'm New Here  / Me and the Devil  /  New York Is Killing Me  /  I'll Take Care of You

Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 1 of 6 /  Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 2 of 6  / Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 3 of 6 

 Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 4 of 6 /  Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 5 of 6  / Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 6 of 6

*   *   *   *   *

[Gil Scott-Heron] was a great poet, a giant of the spoken word, and Gil Scott Heron spoke about politics as it was.  He challenged the corrupt nature of the Nixon Administration, and the fact that Ford had pardoned Nixon.  When I was a young man growin' up in South Carolina, Gil Scott Heron sang about nuclear weapons that were being built in South Carolina, nuclear radiological waste that was being stored in South Carolina.  He sang about the connection between South Carolina and South Africa.  Gil Scott Heron spoke truth to power, and was probably one of the last contemporary artists whose words challenged the empire that is America.  And you don't have any writers or any poets or any musicians that can parallel his work on the contemporary scene. To say he's the father of modern hip hop, of modern rap is to say that they have words in common with him, but surely the message doesn't even compare to his body of work and the teaching, the radical progressivism that he represented throughout his life, no one can match that. . . .  

His body of work is just so large.  I mean everyone remembers "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," but a lotta people don't remember "H20GATE, Watergate Blues," in which he sang about Richard Nixon and Watergate, or, when Gerald Ford gave Nixon a pardon, "We Beg Your Pardon, America," or "Whitey on the Moon": "Rat bit my sister today, but Whitey's on the moon."   That's an awesome song.  His body of work is just so huge that y'know one thing about his passing that has been kind of a mixed blessing is that people have gone back to listen to all the work that he produced in his life.—Kevin Alexander Gray  / AnnGarrison

*   *   *   *   *

The Funk Era and Beyond New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture Edited by Tony Bolden Paying homage to the ancestors (Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Professor Longhair), sitting at the feet of the elders (George Clinton, Sly Stone, James Brown) and welcoming a brand new generation of griots headed by funkmaster Aaron McGruder, The Funk Era and Beyond fills the largest remaining gap in the conversation on African-American music. Bolden's collection is theoretically sophisticated, endlessly provocative and, best of all, a joy to read.”—Craig Werner, Professor and Chair, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America This engaging book takes the reader on a journey across the multi-layered and multidisciplinary terrain of funk. This series of essays on music and the visual and literary arts reveal how ‘da funk’ represents innovation and aesthetic principles rooted in the Black vernacular, which defines the uniqueness of Black creativity. The Funk Era and Beyond is a must-read to understand funk as a philosophy, an attitude, a way of life, and more broadly, a cultural phenomena.—Portia K. Maultsby, Indiana University and editor of African American Music: An Introduction

*   *   *   *   *

 

The Funk Era and Beyond New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture Edited by Tony Bolden Table of Contents I. Prelude from the Funkmaster * Sly Stone and the Sanctified Church--Mark Anthony Neal * II. Introduction * Theorizing the Funk: An Introduction--Tony Bolden * III. Inside the Funk Shop: Writings on the Funk Band Era *A Philosophy of Funk: The Politics and Pleasure of a Parliafunkadelicment Thang!—Amy Nathan Wright * James Brown: Icon of Black Power—Rickey Vincent * "The Land of Funk": Dayton, Ohio--Scot Brown * From the Crib to the Coliseum: An Interview with Bootsy Collins—Thomas Sayers Ellis * IV.Impressions: Funkativity and Visual Art * Cane Fields, Blues Text-ure: An Improvisational—Karen Ohnesorge * Good Morning Blues—Maurice Bryan * Shine2.0: Aaron McGruder's Huey Freeman as Contemporary Folk Hero—Howard Rambsy II * V. Funkintelechy: (Re)cognizing Black Writing *Alabama—Aldon Nielsen * Jazz Aesthetics and the Revision of Myth in Leon Forrest's There Is a Tree More Ancient than Eden—Dana Williams * Living the Funk: Lifestyle, Lyricism, and Lessons in—Carmen Phelps * Modern and Contemporary Art of Black Women * Cultural Memory in Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men Ondra Krouse-Dismukes* VI. Imagine That: Fonky Blues Rockin and Rollin * Funkin' with Bach: The Impact of Professor Longhair on Rock'n'Roll—Cheryl L. Keys * Blue/Funk as Political Philosophy: The Poetry of Gil Scott-Heron—Tony Bolden Tony Bolden is Associate Professor of African American Literature and Culture, University of Alabama and is the author of Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture

*   *   *   *   *

AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books

 

Fiction

#1 - Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark
#2 - Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree
#3 - Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane
#4 - Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper
#5 - Stackin' Paper 2 Genesis' Payback by Joy King
#6 - Thug Lovin' (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark
#7 - When I Get Where I'm Going by Cheryl Robinson
#8 - Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby
#9 - The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane

#10 - Covenant: A Thriller  by Brandon Massey

#11 - Diary Of A Street Diva  by Ashley and JaQuavis

#12 - Don't Ever Tell  by Brandon Massey

#13 - For colored girls who have considered suicide  by Ntozake Shange

#14 - For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree

#15 - Homemade Loves  by J. California Cooper

#16 - The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper

#17 - Player Haters by Carl Weber

#18 - Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare

#19 - Stackin' Paper by Joy King

#20 - Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey

#21 - The Upper Room by Mary Monroe

#22 – Thug Matrimony  by Wahida Clark

#23 - Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark

#24 - Married Men by Carl Weber

#25 - I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter

Non-fiction

#1 - Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
#2 - Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans
#3 - Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane
#4 - Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper
#5 - Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant
#6 - Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey
#7 - The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight
#8 - The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing
#9 - The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson

#10 - John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History  by Ahati N. N. Toure

#11 - Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley

#12 -The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

#13 - The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell

#14 - The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

#15 - Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can't Commit  by RM Johnson

#16 - Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins

#17 - Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell

#18 - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

#19 - John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard

#20 - Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris

#21 - Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice

#22 - 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino
#23 - Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul by Tom Lagana
#24 - 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields

#25 - Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class  by Lisa B. Thompson

*   *   *   *   *

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

*   *   *   *   *

Salvage the Bones A Novel by Jesmyn Ward On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost

*   *   *   *   *

The Last Holiday: A Memoir By Gil Scott Heron Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian / Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio)  / Gil Scott-Heron & His Music  Gil Scott Heron Blue Collar  Remember Gil Scott- Heron

*   *   *   *   *

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)

*   *   *   *   *

Ancient African Nations

*   *   *   *   *

If you like this page consider making a donation

online through PayPal

*   *   *   *   *

Negro Digest / Black World

Browse all issues

1950        1960        1965        1970        1975        1980        1985        1990        1995        2000 ____ 2005        

Enjoy!

*   *   *   *   *

The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery

*   *   *   *   *

The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

*   *   *   *   *

BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS   BCP Digital Printing