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Books by Arthur Flowers
De Mojo Blues
/ Another Good Loving Blues
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Reviews of
De Mojo Blues
A Novel by A.R. Flowers
Three black soldiers are dishonorably
discharged from the Vietnam War due to a mutinous "fragging"
incident. They return home resolved to take on the world, but
ambition and poverty begin to dissolve their precious
brotherhood forged in the trenches of southeast Asia.
To counter this growing fragmentation, the
hero-prophet of the group, Tucept HighJohn, inspired by a set of
mystical bones passed on to him by a dying brother in Vietnam,
undergoes "hoodoo" training in his isolated house on
stilts in a wilderness park in Memphis. His new self-mastery
enables him to relive his memories of Vietnam and to rally his
ex-companions-in-arms with a vision of the triumph of black
people everywhere.
This rich first novel about the Vietnam
inheritance of three black combat veterans, written in an
original, rhythmic prose, marks the debut of a gifted young
black novelist.—Publisher
Weaving the experiences of the
veterans in war and in peace, Arthur Flowers forces us to
understand why the powerless become mythmakers trying to
determine their own destiny. De Mojo Blues portrays the
ugliness and violence of war, but it's a story told with humor
as only a brother can tell it.—Rosa Guy
Art's jungle war scenes were so
vivid and dynamic that I literally craved more of them.—Louise Merriwether
Arthur Flowers novel is a late
twentieth-century fable . . . not only a compelling tale of
several young black men fighting in a war on behalf of ideals
that are not honored in the country where they are not espoused,
but also a meditation on tradition, destiny, and the exercise of
mojo (power) as a healing force in a world poised for
destruction.—Wesley Brown
Arthur Flowers is one of the most
serious, interesting, and blue deep artists to appear in some
time!—Amiri Baraka
His fast wit comes at you from
every whichaway.—Ishmael Reed
De Mojo Blues is a resounding
success. . . . Walk, run, get to the nearest bookstore and buy
this book.—John Oliver Killens Published by E.P.
Dutton, New York, 1986 posted Fall 2002 Arthur
Flowers, a Memphis native, is the author of two novels,
De Mojo Blues and Another Good Loving Blues (Ballantine Books), and a children's story,
Cleveland Lee's Beale Street Band. He is a
Vietnam veteran, blues singer, co-founder of the New Renaissance
Writer's Guild. In addition, he is the webmaster of Rootsblog:
A Cyberhoodoo Webspace and a performance artist whose presentation, Delta Oracle: A Griot
Speaks in Tongues, keeps him busy and Professor of MFA Fiction at Syracuse University.* * *
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Michelle Alexander: US Prisons, The New Jim Crow
/
Judge Mathis Weighs in on the execution of Troy Davis
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By
Michelle
Alexander
The
mass incarceration of people of color through the War on
Drugs is a big part of the reason that a black child
born today is less likely to be raised by both parents
than a black child born during slavery. The absence of
black fathers from families across America is not simply
a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time
watching Sports Center. Hundreds of thousands of black
men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away
for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed
by whites. Most people seem to
imagine that the drug war—which has swept millions of
poor people of color behind bars—has been aimed at
rooting out drug kingpins or violent drug offenders.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This war has
been focused overwhelmingly on low-level drug offenses,
like marijuana possession—the very crimes that happen
with equal frequency in middle class white communities.
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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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update 28 July 2008
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