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Books by Mona Lisa Saloy
Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems
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Visited
Home on Monday
Conversation After the Flood
With Jerry Ward, Miriam Mona Lisa Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:01:31
EDT
Dear Mona Lisa & Jerry,
Today I talked with Karen Green, a Dillard
professor who knows you, and she told me that Dillard is paying
its faculty.
Apparently, her sister, who is in Houston,
has direct deposit and received her salary, but Karen doesn't
have dd. She had to call the following number--1 (877)
888-0100--to give them her address. She also gave me the
e-mail address of the provost (?), which is bparker Smith@yahoo.com.
She said there's a space in the middle of the name, but that
doesn't look right to me.
Karen is in Natchez with her parents.
I hope that you are doing
better this week than last.
Take care,
Miriam
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Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:05:11 -0500
Dear Miriam and Mona Lisa,
Since I had direct deposit, Dillard did put
my final August check in the bank; I'll have to go online to see
if there was a September 15 deposit. Dillard now has a new
websit: www.dillard.edu which contains updated news and
other information. When I talked with Dean Taylor last
week, there was a strong possibility that Dillard would offer
classes in January from the Morris Brown campus. That would be
an historically noteworthy happening.
I have an apartment in Vicksburg and am doing
some volunteer teaching at Tougaloo College as my alumni gift.
Working with students also prevents my falling into self-pity
about what I may have lost in New Orleans. Doing a two-week
seminar at Grinnell College (24 Oct-4 Nov) will also help.
I am working on various entries about the disaster and my oddly
convoluted states of mind and my brain walking a tightrope to
somewhere under the title "THE KATRINA PAPERS." Let us
pray we do not have to add a "RITA CODA."
Mona Lisa, it would be good if John Lowe and
the LSU English Department could sponsor a Red Beans &
Ricely Yours party for you next month or in November.
I am sure those of us who are in driving distance would come for
the celebration.
Love,
Jerry
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Visited Home on Monday
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 2:40 PM
Hey now Jerry and Miriam,
If you don't know, I've accepted a Visiting
Assoc. Prof. position at the University of Washington
for the year. They begin school next Wednesday; I need
the job so I can keep my property.
Y'all, I visited New Orleans on Monday. Ishmael
Reed's words are more than on target. My beloved New Orleans
is a ghost town, like the abandoned towns of the old west, empty,
dead, no grass, nothing growing, no one there. Jerry, can
you imagine Dillard with all dead grass? That's what's
there, deadness, and the surrounding homes were flooded like mine.
I salvaged a few clothes, some research, my soggy Kaufman books
since I'd like to finish that work and get it to a publisher.
Everything is ruined, my library, even my clothes--the smell is
unimaginable; already, I've washed them again and again, hoping to
at least recover my jeans and some shirts. Some fine things
are in the dry cleaner, and because everything floated around, I
couldn't get to my winter coat. All my shoes are gone, my
beautiful kitchen and new bedroom; I had just renovated last year.
How can we all rebuild at once? At least, in my
neighborhood, our old shotgun homes are still standing. In
the East, it is more of a war zone with massive damage to most
every home and more extensive flooding. It was horrible.
Even if Dillard opens in January, who will be there, who will come
into this?
I'm exhausted, and trying to get everything in
order before flying out on Friday, the 23rd of Sept.
I'll get together, with my sister Barbara too,
who lives in Seattle as well, one great reason to pick that
place. I have so much to be thankful for since daily I see
so many without jobs or a place to go. God help us all.
Please keep in touch. Hugs to you both.
Red Beans and Ricely Thankful and Hopeful,
Mona Lisa
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005 4:55 PM
Rudy, Mona Lisa was one of the first
persons whom I contacted, and I knew that you were worried about
her. This is so sad, and it's like so many of the stories
that are coming out of New Orleans: everything lost, in
shambles, moldy and mildewed. How can a person go back to
that? Maybe M. L. can because (I think) she's young and will
have the energy to undertake the monumental job of rebuilding, but
what about the aged and sick and disheartened and clinically
depressed? -- Miriam * * * *
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Dillard University's Creative
Writing Program
Study with Published Awarded Writers
Mona
Lisa Saloy and Dedra Johnson
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Red Beans and Ricely Yours
By Mona Lisa Saloy
Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy has achieved a similar liberation and transformation with
this new book of poems. Such personal victories always deserve great
applause, especially when they are achieved so wonderfully.
No writer or group of writing comes to mind
of Black New Orleans that captures the New Orleans life in so
wondrous a painting, musical composition—not Kalamu ya Salaam,
not Brenda Marie Osbey, not even Marcus Bruce Christian. None
expresses such love and devotion, none so realistically and
approachable, none so fully and delightfully as we find in
Red Beans and Ricely Yours(2005). These fifty poems or so of a
life murdered by human neglect and disregard are insights won
with blood and tears.
I remind you the book should have been the
first three sections (36 poems), except for a few other poems in
the other two sections (16 poems). Whatever flaw the book may
have, one delights even in them. All the poems are well done and
will be enjoyed. Folks, we have a classic here that will make an
excellent gift for any occasion. I have the hardback edition. One
on your shelf, everybody’ll know you have good taste, New Orleans
style.
A final note: I’m told that Louis Armstrong
used to sign all his letters
Red Beans and Ricely Yours.
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties. Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
Pulitzer Prize for History 2012 Winner—For a
distinguished and appropriately documented
book on the history of the United States,
Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by
the late Manning Marable (Viking), an
exploration of the legendary life and
provocative views of one of the most
significant African-Americans in U.S.
history, a work that separates fact from
fiction and blends the heroic and tragic.
(Moved by the Board from the Biography
category.)—Pulitzer
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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.
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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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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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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 /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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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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update
5 May 2012
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