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Books by
Marvin X
Love and War: Poems /
In the Crazy House Called America /
Woman: Man's Best Friend /
Beyond Religion Toward Spirituality
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In the Crazy House Called America
Essays By Marvin X
"He
walked through the muck and mire of hell
and came out clean as white fish and
black as coal" Reviews
Marvin
X has always been in the forefront of pan African writing.
Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the
revolutionary school of African writing. In the Crazy House
is solid writing!—Amiri Baraka (aka
LeRoi Jones), Newark, New Jersey
In
terms of being modernist and innovative, he's centuries ahead of
anybody I know.—Dennis Leroy
Moore, filmmaker, Brecht Forum, New York
Courageous
and outrageous! He walked through the much and mire of hell and
came out clean as white fish and black as coal.—from the foreword
by James W. Sweeney, Oakland, CA
In
the Crazy House Called America is for brothers especially.
It is a book all black men should grab hold of and digest, if
for no other reason than to experience just how redemptively
healing and liberating being honest can be.—Junious Ricardo
Stanton, New York
Marvin
X is doing the kind of thing we should be doing, bringing
"psychodrama" into didactic nonfiction. Beyond that,
it's good literature.—Dr. Nathan Hare,
San Francisco
The
stories are heartfelt, theoretical, insightful, passionate and
private, with psychosocial, political recommendations and
commentary on what black folks need to do to get reparations,
our "40 Acres and a Mule."—from the
Introduction by Suzette Celeste, MPA, MSW, Richmond California
"The
Maid, The Ho', The Cook" was one of the most beautiful
pieces about real love I've ever read. The image of
"crack-heads" as scandalous and without human dignity
is destroyed by Marvin's recollection of this sister with whom
he fell in love.—Lil Joe, Los
Angeles, CA
One
of the things that makes this book a great joy is the range of
subjects vital to all types of Black folks from richest to
poorest.—John
Woodford, former editor in chief of Muhammad Speaks
When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or
any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin
X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express
black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.—James G. Spady, Philadelphia
New Observer
In the Crazy House Called America, Essays By Marvin X, 200 pp. / $19.95
plus $5.00 for handling and mailing: Black Bird Press, 3116 38th
Ave., Suite 304, Oakland, CA, 94619.
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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updated 10 April
2009
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