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Books by Jamie Walker
101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves: A Gift for Women
of All Ages (2002) /
Signifyin’ Me: New and Selected Poems (2005)
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Meet the New Generation of Civil
Rights Leaders
By Alanna Miller
Jamie Walker boycotts with her chapters,
marches with her sentences, and riots with her words.
"Do not be afraid of the spoken word, queen. For the use of
the word and oral tradition is indigenous to our people, our
culture," Walker writes in 101 Ways Black Women Can
Learn to Love Themselves.
Walker, 26, published her first book this year which is part
autobiography and part black feminist manifesto for the new
millennium. Walker is the face of the next generation’s black
feminist leaders.
"Jamie Walker is truly one of our future leaders. We will
hear more from Ms. Walker and the world is a better place for
her being part of it," said Janet Sims-Wood, a supervisor
at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University,
where Walker worked purchasing books. The Moorland-Springarn
Research Center is one of the world’s largest and most
comprehensive centers for the documentation of the history and
culture of people of African descent.
Walker grew up in a single parent household in Oakland,
California, surviving a childhood of poverty and abuse, which
she shared in her book. She went to San Francisco State
University, studying drama and black studies. After graduating
magna cum laude, Walker acted in numerous plays with the San
Francisco Mime Troupe and the African-American Shakespeare
Company, as well as some independent films.
Walker became depressed though and moved to the East Coast and
Howard University to get her master’s in African-American and
Caribbean Literature. Currently, she is pursuing her doctorate
at Howard University.
"I’ve never, ever in my life felt so bad," said
Walker. "But out of the depression came the light."
The depression was further fueled by a falling out with her
mentor, who in her book she only refers to as Olivia, to protect
her privacy. The falling out was over Walker moving to Howard
University.
Walker’s book was inspired by the depression and learning how
to love herself again. She began writing it when she was 21 and
finished the book last year.
"The book is about resistance, self-love, and power,"
Walker said.
All the criticism for the book has been positive thus far and
the book has gotten considerable attention. Surprising, since
the book was self-published by Walker’s JD Publishing Group.
"What best characterizes Jamie’s writing is a
straightforwardness and an ability to get to the point,"
said D. Kamili Anderson, director of the Howard University
Press, where Walker works in the marketing department.
"Jamie is a wonderful and talented person. I’m impressed
by her insight as well as her warmth," said Yanick Rice
Lamb, the former senior-editor of Heart and Soul magazine and
BET Weekend. "She is a giving person who is progressive,
community-minded, and sisterly."
The book has been picked up by numerous book clubs and literary
publications, such as Black Book News. The notoriety has led to
negotiations for a two-book deal with Simon and Schuster Inc.,
including a re-release of this book.
Walker is somewhat taken aback by the success of her debut
publication: "It’s just now taking off."
Walker says she has gotten e-mails and letters from women,
especially rape and abuse victims, around the world, including
Italy and Australia, telling her how the book touched them.
"I think all women can find some insightful message in
Jamie’s writings. I am very proud of her writing,"
Sims-Woods said.
Walker participates in traditional political activity,
protesting the war in Iraq and for affirmative action, most
recently. She is also a member of the Black Writer’s Guild of
Maryland, which encourages young people to read and aids current
black writers.
"One of the great things about Jamie is her appreciation of
her past and our rich history," Lamb said. "She is
also the first class of students in the Visionary Heritage
Program to chronicle the contributions of our elders."
Walker’s elder in the program is Esther Cooper Jackson, one of
the founders of Freedomways magazine, with W.E.B. DuBois
and his wife. The magazine featured the writings of some of the
most prominent civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King
Jr.
"I think that the activism is fueled by my writing and my
writing is fueled by activism," Walker said.
Walker is now working a "coming of age" novel that is
partly autobiographical, "The Black Writers’ Guide to
Getting Published and Marketing Your Books," and a
collection of work and criticism of Sonia Sanchez with a forward
written by acclaimed black author, Maya Angelou. Sanchez is a
poet and a female leader in black writing. Sanchez taught one of
the first black studies classes.
"It really has impressed me that so young a woman has such
wisdom," Anderson said. "She has such patience with
her peers [especially] with a lot of black women living in
denial."
"I’m expecting great things from Jamie. She’s given us
just a taste of what’s in store." Lamb said.
"I wanted to raise the consciousness level of the
folk," Walker said. "[I wanted black women to know]
she is a queen and a gift."
Source:
http://www.inform.umd.edu/studentorg/unwind/features032003-21.html
posted 5 October 2003
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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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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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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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Negro Digest / Black World
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Enjoy!
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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 /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
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