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Books by John
Oliver Killens
Youngblood /
And Then
We Heard the Thunder /
The Cotillion
/
The Great Black Russian
A Man-Aint-Nothin But A Man Adventures of John Henry /
Slaves /
Sippi A Novel /
Black-SouthernVoices: An Anthology
Great-Gittin-Up-Morning: A Biography of Denmark
Vesey /
The Black Man's Burden
Keith
Gilyard,
Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of
John Oliver Killens (2003)
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Bio
Sketch
John Oliver Killens (January 14,1916–October
27, 1987),
born in Macon, Georgia, to Charles Myles, Sr., and
Willie Lee (Coleman) Killens. John Killens credits his
relatives with fostering in him cultural pride and
literary values. His father Charles encouraged him to
read a weekly column by Langston Hughes; his mother
Willie Lee, president of the Dunbar Literary Club,
introduced him to poetry; and his great-grandmother
filled his boyhood with the hardships and tales of
slavery.
More Bio
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The Cotillion,
Alexs Pate writes in his introduction to the new Coffee House
Press edition of the novel, “was written for the black reader
of the Black Power era” (Pate, The Cotillion, XI). As
such, the material herein might seem dated, relegated to the
year, 1968, in which it was written. Pate goes on to write that
Killens “was at the forefront of delineating the details of
what it meant to be a black writer in the Black Arts Movement”
(XIII).
Coal Charcoal and Chocolate Comedy
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Now,
lest the wrong impression be given, there were always
some Southern Negroes who had no need to be defensive,
had no good white folks to speak of, and always spoke
their minds and told it like it was. One of them told me
a fantastic (true) story about a young man who had come
back from the second World-Wide Madness, and built up a
promising vegetable trucking business. He was married
and had a couple of children, and through industry and
faith in free enterprise had built up a fairly
successful business.
DownSouth, UpSouth
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I have to stop and thank Louis
too for his insight and support. He sort of inspired me to write
Liberation
Memories. Louis knew and was vocal about
the fact that John had been underappreciated in critical
circles. Only a few people—like Addison Gayle and William Wiggins,
Jr.—tried to do him justice in the
scholarly literature. But even they missed articulating some of
the richness of John's writings. And Arthur Flowers is a good
friend of mine—and present-day underappreciated novelist and
Killens protégé.
Interview with Keith Gilyard
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Table
posted 22 September 2007
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John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary
Activism
By Keith
Gilyard
“I congratulate Keith Gilyard
for bringing to life, in the pages of this absorbing
book, a figure of genuine importance who certainly
deserves a full-scale biography.”—Arnold
Rampersad, author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography
John Oliver
Killens is a genius of the South, and Keith Gilyard
has honored this youngblood, civil rights and union
activist, novelist, dramatist, and screenwriter in a
superb biography. Gilyard’s engaging written voice
draws us into a dramatic and important life, and his
deep commitment to the highest standards of research
inspires our trust and admiration. John Oliver
Killens ably documents and brings to life the
yearnings and accomplishments of a major figure in
our national literature.—Rudolph
P. Byrd, Goodrich C. White Professor of American
Studies, Emory University |
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But just before noon the school ground
swarmed with police. They strode into
classrooms without even a 'good morning' to
the teachers and dragged out scared kids,
many of them crying. They even dragged them
out of the outhouses and snatched them as
they tried to flee the school ground. They
took some who had been in the 'riot' and a
number who'd never even heard about it.
Somehow they missed yours truly. I felt left
out and rejected, insulted even, especially
since I was the bosom buddy of the kid who
had started it.
Then frightened black mothers were brought
down to the jailhouse to whip their children
in front of the policemen to teach them not
to fight white children. The alternative was
the reformatory, though not a single white
child was rounded up. Thus they drove the
lesson home, the lesson that every black
American must learn one way or another: that
he has no inalienable right to defend
himself from attack by Mister Charlie; that
even though he can expect his own black
person to be violated at any moment, he must
remember better than anything else in this
world that the white man's person is
inviolable so far as he is concerned. The
cruelest aspect of this story is how they
used black mothers to drive this lesson
home. Killens
and the Black Man's Burden
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The
ghettoes of the North are as firmly entrenched in the
urban centers as they are in any Southern city. They are
citadels of black despair, a despair that expresses
itself in dope addiction, alcoholism, the numbers
racket, school drop-outs, juvenile delinquency, teen-age
gang warfare, crime and prostitution, and more
positively in occasional riots. It is a curious thing
the way most Northern newspapers designated the Harlem
rioters as hoodlums, while the rioters on the beaches of
New Hampshire and Oregon were merely pranksters,
students, high-spirited youngsters. Psychologists were
quoted in The New York Times as saying that the young
people who ran amuck on the fancy beaches of America
last Labor day were in “quest of their identity.” Well,
is there a youth who has been more deprived of his
identity than the youth of Harlem? I honestly believe,
though I say this with all kinds of trepidation, that
the Harlem riot was a healthy thing for the country and
for Harlem. The wonder is that it took so long for our
patience to wear thin.
DownSouth, UpSouth
AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books
For July 1st through August
31st 2011
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 * *
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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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 4 November 2007
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