Books by Louis Reyes Rivera
Who Pays The Cost (1978) /
This One For You (1983) /
Scattered
Scripture
Bum Rush the Page
(co-editor) /
The Bandana Republic (co-editor)
Sancocho: A Book of Nuyorican Poetry by Shaggy Flores
(edited by Louis Reyes Rivera)
* * *
* *
Books and Recordings by Piri
Thomas
Down These Mean Streets
/
Savior Savior Hold My Hand /
Seven Long Times /
Stories from El Barrio
Sounds of the Streets /No
Mo' Barrio Blues).
* * *
* *
On the Passing of Piri
Thomas
By Louis Reyes
Rivera
Novelist Piri
Thomas made his transition last month, Monday, October
17, in his home in El Cerrito, California, after
succumbing to pneumonia. Born in Harlem Hospital on
September 30, 1928, of a Puerto Rican mother and Cuban
father, Piri grew up in East Harlem, with experiences
that served as the substance for his bestselling memoir,
Down These Mean Streets (1967). He later wrote
two other novels,
Savior Savior Hold My Hand and
Seven Long Times, several plays (The Golden
Streets and Ole Ole Oy Vey), short stories (Stories
from El Barrio), and two CDs of poetry and music
(Sounds
of the Streets and
No Mo' Barrio Blues).
The subject of
three films, including
Every Child is Born a Poet,
Piri, along with Pedro Juan Soto (Spiks, 1956), Jaime
Carrero (Neo-Rican Jetliner and Other Poems,
1958, Jesús Colón (A Puerto Rican in New York,
1961), was viewed as among the lead writers whose works
served as cornerstones for what became known as a
Nuyorican Literary Movement. Piri’s writing career began
in the mid-1950s, while he was serving time in prison.
According to Piri, one day, a fellow prisoner hollered
out that someone had written a book about him and passed
him a copy of John Oliver Killens’
Youngblood (Piri’s
prison nickname. In short, the novel inspired him so
much that he decided he, too, could write about his
life. After leaving prison, he returned to New York and
sought out Killens, who, in turn, invited him to join
the Harlem Writers Guild, over which workshop Killens
presided as chair.
With such a mix of
established and budding writers as Maya Angelou, Mari
Evans, Irving Burgie, Lonnie Elder III, John Henrik
Clarke, Lofton Mitchell, Rosa Guy, Louise Merriwether,
Sarah E. Wright, et al, critiquing his work, Piri was
able to hone and complete the memoir that would help set
an initial street-hip tone to what eventually manifested
as Nuyorican Poetics. Not so much that he taught or
mentored the likes of Miguel Algarin, Jose Angel
Figueroa, Pedro Pietri, Americo Casiano, Sandra Maria
Esteves, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Luz Maria Umpierre, et
al—but
that his work, coming when it did, in fact, affirmed
their own possibilities as they too dared to pick up
both pen and paper to assert that full range of their
inner selves—like
it lay!
He is survived by
his wife, Suzie Dod Thomas, of El Cerrito, CA, nine
children, and nine grandchildren. The family requests
that, in lieu of gifts and flowers, interested parties
may send tax deductible donations (payable to Social
Justice, earmarked for the Piri Thomas Fund) may be made
in his name and sent to: Piri Thomas Memorial Fund, c/o
Social Justice/Global Options, PO Box 40601, San
Francisco, CA 94140. Email sentiments may be sent to Cheverote@aol.com.
Memorials are now in initial planning stages for New
York, the Bay Area, and Orlando. Piri Thomas’ web site
can be accessed at
www.Cheverote.com.
* *
* * *
Piri Thomas
(September 30, 1928 – October 17, 2011) was a writer and
poet whose autobiography
Down These Mean Streets became a best-seller.
Thomas (birth name: Juan Pedro Tomas) was born to a
Puerto Rican mother and
Cuban father. His childhood neighborhood in the
Spanish Harlem section of New York City was riddled
with crime and violence. According to Thomas, children
were expected to be gang members at a young age, and
Thomas was no exception. Thomas was also exposed to
racial discrimination because of the color of his skin
and because he was Hispanic.
Thomas was involved
with drugs, gang warfare and crime, and spent six years
in prison as a consequence. While in prison, Thomas
reflected on the teachings of his mother and father. He
came to realize that a person is not born a criminal.
Consequently he developed a conviction that he should
use all of his street and prison know-how to reach
at-risk youth, and to help them avoid a life of crime.
In 1967, Thomas received funds from the Rabinowitz
Foundation to write and publish his best-selling
autobiography
Down These Mean Streets. The book describes his
struggle for survival as a Puerto Rican/Cuban born and
raised in the
barrios of New York. It has been in print for over
43 years. His other works include Savior, Savior Hold My
Hand; Seven Long Times; and Stories from El Barrio.
Thomas was
influential in the
Nuyorican Movement and worked on a book titled A
Matter of Dignity. He also worked on an educational film
titled Dialogue with Society. Thomas traveled around the
U.S.,
Central America and
Europe, giving lectures and conducting workshops in
colleges and universities. He was the subject of the
film Every Child is Born a Poet: The Life and Work of
Piri Thomas, by Jonathan Robinson, which featured a
soundtrack by
Kip Hanrahan. On October 17, 2011, Thomas died from
pneumonia at his home in El Cerrito, California. He is
survived by his wife Suzie Dod Thomas, six children, and
three stepchildren.—Wikipedia
* *
* * *
Louis Reyes Rivera, award-winning
poet/essayist, has been a mainstay in cultural activism
for well over thirty years. Often referred to as the
“Janitor of History,” he has taught literature and
history since 1969. A recognized scholar on African
American and Caribbean history and literature, Rivera
also creates poetry and essays viewed by many as a
bridge between African American and Latino communities.
Rivera has assisted
in the publication of well over 200 books, including
Great Black Russian: A Novel on the Life and Times of
Alexander Pushkin (Wayne State Univ. Pr., 1989) by
John Oliver Killens, Addison Gayle; Portraits of the
Puerto Rican Experience (IPRUS, 1984) by Adál
Alberto Maldonado. In the past few years, Rivera has
edited:
Sancocho: A Book of Nuyorican Poetry (Dark
Souls, 2001), by Shaggy Flores, who follows in the
tradition of Arturo Schomburg and Rivera; The
Nubian Gallery: A Poetry Anthology (Blacfax
Publications, 2001), an exciting collection of
provocative and memorable poems by talented
African-Americans writers; and Bum Rush The Page: A
Def Poetry Jam (Crown Publishers, 2001), edited with
Tony Medina, an anthology that places emphasis on the
poem and its subject matter, not the poet, which makes
for a remarkably democratic anthology. Rivera is also an
editor of the long-awaited
The Bandana Republic (Soft Skull Press, 2006),
edited with Bruce George. Compiled by two former street
gang members, The Bandana Republic is a literary
first—an anthology that speaks from the standpoint of
past and present gang members; a collection of poetry
and prose that reflects the creative and intellectual
sides of those who come from the undercurrent of urban
centers.—Phatitude
See also Rivera Bio
* *
* * *
|
Piri
Thomas Spanish Harlem Author, Dies at
83—Joseph Beger—19 October 2011—The 1967
memoir,
Down These Mean Streets, was a best
seller and eventually a staple on high
school and college reading lists. . . .The
memoir, a best seller and eventually a
staple on high school and college reading
lists, appeared as Americans seemed to be
awakening to the rough cultures that poverty
and racism were breeding in cities. A new
literary genre had cropped up to explore
those conditions, in books like “Manchild in
the Promised Land,” by Claude Brown, and
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”
Down These Mean Streets joined that
list. The memoir, Mr. Thomas wrote on
his Web site, had “exploded out of my
guts in an outpouring of long suppressed
hurts and angers that had boiled over into
an ice-cold rage.” The novelist Daniel
Stern, reviewing the book in The New York
Times, called it “another stanza in the
passionate poem of color and color-hatred
being written today.”
In the
memoir, Mr. Thomas described how he was
brought up as the only dark-skinned child
among seven children, the son of a Puerto
Rican mother, Dolores Montañez, and a Cuban
father, Juan Tomás de la Cruz. His dark
skin, Mr. Thomas recalled, made him feel
like an outlier in his own family and
neighborhood, where he was taunted about
this looks. Even his father, he felt,
preferred his lighter-skinned children. |
 |
He described the
bravado, or “machismo,” that he affected on the streets.
Protecting his “rep” led him to “waste” people who
insulted him, he wrote. He sniffed “horse”— heroin—even
though he knew the consequences. “The world of street
belonged to the kid alone,” he wrote. “There he could
earn his own rights, prestige, his good-o stick of
living. It was like being a knight of old, like being 10
feet tall.” As a merchant seaman in the Jim Crow South,
he wrote, he persuaded a white prostitute to sleep with
him because, he told her, he was really Puerto Rican,
not black. He then enjoyed stunning her by telling her
she had just slept with a black man.
He returned home
while his mother was dying in a poor people’s ward at
Metropolitan Hospital and resumed his old ways—selling
and using drugs and robbing people. In one holdup he
wounded a police officer and landed in prison for seven
years, a harrowing time he vividly evoked. It was in
prison that he finished high school and began thinking
about writing. He found, he wrote, that words could be
used as bullets or butterflies. He called writing “the
Flow.”—Yahoo
* * *
* *
|
If in
the Moment Of Passing
By Piri Thomas
If in the moment of
passing of an eternity,
I could have the interfaced essence,
The power of looking back at me,
I would say it truly as I would for the
world--
Let me be free.
I know that the blood
that pounds and pulses its way
through my veins,
Does not alter the course toward the star
that not only I,
But all can aim for.
It is a beauty that we all can reach.
It is a beauty that we all can teach.
Given unto each one,
what do we truly own, except that
which we truly are,
And what we can choose, be it a rainbow, a
star,
Or the agony of a past of present scars.
I am not a poet who makes things unreal,
I am a poet who makes one feel the strength
that is
in our people.
Human beings upon the face of this beautiful
earth,
Who must know their dignity, their honor, no
matter their
race,
No matter their creed--from the moment of
their birth.
Born of earth and universe. Punto.
*
* * * *
Sermon from the
Ghettos
By Piri Thomas
I speak for myself
as my mind rushes back into time
when I held in my hands
a beauty that was truly mine.
I was a child
running through dark ghetto streets
letting the sea of hatred and bigotry
wash over me.
I was too young to know.
But Momma filled my eyes
with the wondrous city,
where there was pity,
and all its pearly gates.
And oh, yeah, all the beautiful wisdoms
that flow from up there.
Hey, world, sit not in
churches
and bend your knees in prayer.
And mouth not the words of Christ
of peace on earth and goodwill to all
if you know in your hearts that
you are truly lying, lying.
Oh, America, hey, world!
Do not spread a table with good food and
comfort,
such as never seen by the children of your
fellow human-beings,
Don't buy toys for your
children bought at the price
of other children sacrificed,
Build not your golden gardens
on the blood of children crucified,
Oh America, hey world,
For while you are smiling and living well,
black children, brown children, red
children,
yellow children, white children, multi-colored
children,
children, children, children,
because of your hypocrisy,
because of greed
are dying, physically,
mentally, spiritually,
and secretly in broad daylight,
broad daylight.
A child out of twilight
Flying towards sunlight.
Born anew at each A.M.
Like a child out of twilight
Flying towards sunlight
Born anew at each A.M. |
* * * *
*
Afterword
Down These Mean Streets
By
Piri Thomas)
Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition
.......Thirty years
ago in 1967, Alfred-A. Knopf published my first book,
Down These Mean Streets. It has been
in print since that time and is now considered a classic
of its kind. When Vintage Books decided to put out a
thirtieth-anniversary edition of
Down These Mean Streets, and I was
asked if I would care to write an afterword for the
special edition, I was more than glad.
.......Writing
Down These Mean Streets was a
soul-searing experience for me, in which I forced myself
to go back into time to see the sees, do the dos, hear
the hears, and feel the feelings over and over and over
again, at times feeling certain past traumatic
experiences seven times stronger.
Down These Mean Streets exploded out
of me in an outpouring of suppressed hurts and angers
that had boiled over into an ice-cold rage.
.......Many
of us who lived through those desperate years known as
the Great Depression of the 1930s struggled to survive
the hardships of life in the ghettos of our barrio parts
of town, where the invasions of hot- and cold-running
cockroaches and king-sized rats always seemed to come
from other apartments but never from your own. There was
always the pain from the pressure of fear brought about
by racism: although many black and brown lives were
snuffed out at the end of a rope, any means would do,
including baseball bats.
.......We
all went through the exploitation that came from greed
and listened to politicians wearing smiles on their
faces that were wasted because they did not match what
was in their hearts, making promises that never came to
be.
.......In
prison, I did my best to keep love alive in me by tuning
in to the love that my mother, Dolores Montañez Tomas,
had instilled in my heart as a child. I would remember
when she lay dying in the poor people's ward in
Metropolitan Hospital and I was by her side. She was
thirty-six years old and I was her firstborn, her
negrito. At night in my cell, from time to time, I
would nourish my soul from her love, reliving past warm
memories. I believe love is the barrio's greatest
strength. The proof is on the faces of the children who,
against heavy odds, can still smile with amazing grace
as they struggle to survive and rise above the mean
streets.
.......I
wrote about the conditions of life in the barrio back
then, but in spite of books like
Down These Mean Streets,
Manchild
in the Promised Land, and
The Wretched of the
Earth, alas, the same conditions still exist for the
poor today. In fact, they are worsening, with increased
cutbacks of vital programs ‹which up to now had given
some of the poor a fighting chance ‹while at the same
time national weapons production climbs. Further, with
higher unemployment and more cutbacks planned, with
high-quality education already out of reach for most
poor children, and with the fast-growing number of
homeless who come in all colors, our streets have turned
into battlegrounds in the Crack Wars. The toll rises as
our young people kill each other as well as the innocent
in drive-by shootings.
.......Violence
roams the streets of America as well as the streets of
the world. Today our prisons are bulging with inmates,
most of them doing time for drugs. When I was in prison
some fortyseven years ago, 85 percent of the inmates
were white, while 15 percent were black and brown. I
visit prisons from time to time and know that now 15
percent of the inmates are white and 85 percent of the
inmates are the blacks and browns.
.......Racism is a
most sad and terrible part of America's history. We know
for a fact that since the Reconstruction days following
the Civil War, racists in white hoods or dressed
otherwise have worked very hard to return things to
their version of the good ol' plantation days.
.......Children
of the poor are not fools, and many are of the mind
that, on the whole, society really does not give a crap
about them. So when we hear society expressing that "the
children are our future," many of us ask, "Whose
children and whose future?" The young are full of
concern about the growing numbers of hate crimes, church
burnings, and racist riots in prisons that are bursting
at the seams. As far as I'm concerned, a quality
education is the best way to rise above the ghettos and
escape out of the trap of poverty‹that is, unless one
hits the bull's-eye by winning the lottery.
.......The
truth is, when the economy goes into a slump, Americans
of all colors fall into worse living conditions. These
bad living conditions are not the fault of other colors,
so let's quit looking for scapegoats; sadly, the real
culprit is, and has always been, a breed named greed.
What else can it be, except greed, when it's a known
fact that 2 percent of the population receive 98 percent
of the wealth? This inequality certainly has to affect
the welfare and education of the children of the other
98 percent of the population, who are forced to get by
with a measly 2 percent share of the national wealth.
Besides, who created their wealth in the first place?
.......There
are multitudes who have died fighting throughout history
for all kinds of causes. But I've yet to hear of a
worldwide cause in the name of the children of the
earth. Children are not stupid, they are all born with
innate intelligence and the spirit of discernment. I
believe every child is born a poet and every poet is
born a child. I believe that every child is 360 degrees
of the circle of creativity. I believe that every child
is born of earth and universe, so how can any child be
considered unimportant and dehumanized, relegated to
being a minority, a "less than?"
.......Skin
color is not a sign of intelligence, no more than it is
a sign of stupidity. That is an erroneous theory taught
by those who entertain racist views such as those found
in The Bell Curve. Children become what they are
taught or not taught; children become what they learn or
don't learn. We humans are similar to each other, but
like fingerprints and cultures, not quite the same, so
viva la diferencia and let's get to know one
another, born of respect. Hopefully, this will lead us
to caring and then sharing with the children of the
world.
.......John
Kennedy once quipped, "Who said life was fair?" I'd like
to say, "So let's make life fair. Let America set a
beautiful new standard of caring, not only for our own
children, but for all the children of the world."
.......You
may ask, "Where do we start?" As a writer, I am
concerned with words, names. And names applied to human
beings have great importance, since names can be
positive or negative, bullets or butterflies. When I was
a young muchacho back in those barrio days, I
would hear brothers and sisters call each other names
like, "Hey, nigger" or "Hey, spic!" I didn't care for
those terms back then and I still don't care for them
today. When I was a kid running down dark ghetto
streets, there was a saying from which I learned wisdom.
"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will
never harm me." The first part about "stones breaking my
bones" is right, but the part about "words will never
harm me" is bullshit!! Words can harm a child when they
are negative, like "nigger" or "spic" or "minority." Why
should we repeat the indignity by referring to each
other with contemptuous racist terms? We must learn
words can be bullets or butterflies, we must learn to
say what we mean and mean what we say. For if we are
what we eat, we are what we think, so let's not mug each
other with racism and hatred, which are not the sole
domain of one color.
.......My
father Juan, also known as Johnny, once gave me some
advice in the art of survival, saying, "Listen, hijo,
sometimes you don't look where you're going and you
stumble into trouble. You must learn how to spot danger
by learning to smell the ca-ca at least twenty miles
away, for remember, son; that mierda not only walks on
two feet, but it comes in all colors." I moved to
exercise my powers of being able to smell ca-ca twenty
miles away and to recognize the difference between ca-ca
and flowers, when my father stopped me. "Por favor,
son, before you start out to smell other people's ca-ca,
smell your own first, otherwise you'll get so used to
smelling everyone else's, you might forget you have
quite a bit of your own." Punto! (How's that for barrio
wisdom from Papi, and as for Mami, she'd say, among
other things, "Negrito, tell me who you walk with
and I'll tell you who you are." Punto!)
.......I
would be very happy if we were all to enter a wonderful
new era, where the children of earth, and not weapons of
war, are considered the top priority. I have been told
that what I'm looking for is utopia. So, vaya!!, so what
is wrong with that? Imagine, our world in unity, pooling
creativity and technology in order to heal the earth of
the horrors inflicted on her in the name of greed. Look
at the huge amounts of deadly toxic waste buried where
children live and animals graze. Look at the poisons
dumped in our waters. Wouldn't it be great to live in a
world where peace and justice were a foregone conclusion
and calamities were only natural and not man-made?
.......In
writing
Down These Mean Streets, it was my
hope that exposure of such conditions in the ghetto
would have led to their improvement. But, thirty years
later, the sad truth is that people caught in the
ghettoes have not made much progress, and in fact, have
moved backwards in many respects--the social safety net
is much weaker now. Unfortunately, it's the same old
Mean Streets, only worse.
.......I
was taught that justice wears a blindfold, so as not to
be able to distinguish between the colors, and thus
makes everyone equal in the eyes of the law. I propose
we remove the blindfold from the eyes of Lady Justice,
so for the first time she can really see what's
happening and check out where the truth lies and the
lies hide. That would be a start.
.......Viva the children of
all the colors! Punto!
Piri Thomas
January 1997
Source:
Cheverote
* * *
* *
I loved to read as
a kid. The reason I loved to read was because I was
introduced by a very caring teacher to a very caring
librarian on 110th Street in my Barrio. She allowed me
to take out two books and I would go to the fire escape
and turn my blanket into a hammock and I'd just sit back
reading. I'd read whatever I found. I loved adventure
stories, I loved science fiction or traveling to other
universes. I loved the energies of Jack London and the
white wolf and fang, everything, the feelings. Actually,
I didn't have a whole lot of time to read until I went
to prison, where I found out that I could create a world
in my mind that would take me away from all that if I
really tuned myself to books and my imagination. One
night, a brother whose nickname was Young Blood knocked
on my prison cell. He knocked very low and I said "Aha"
and he said "Tommy, Tommy, they wrote a book with my
name on it, Young Blood, you know, and, man, I want you
to read it. It's by a brother man, a black brother." At
that time, we were calling each other black. And he
handed me the book through the bars and it was called
Youngblood by John Oliver Killens. He was an attorney
who was also a very fine writer, a beautiful black human
being. I read the book; it had been read by so many
people that the pages were like onion skin. When I
finished reading it, Young Blood asked, "what'd you
think of it, Tommy?" and I said "Man, it was really
dynamite, you live it, the whole feeling." And I added
"Young Blood, you want to know something?" and he said
"yeah" and I said, "I could write too." And he smiled at
me and he said "yeah I know you can, Tommy" and that's
when I began to write what would one day be known as
Down These Mean Streets. At that
time, it was entitled Home Sweet Harlem.— Piri
Thomas
“Race and Mercy: A Conversation with Piri
Thomas” llan Stavans
posted 13 November 2011
* * *
* *
 |
A Tribute to Piri Thomas
Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture
May 23rd, 6:00 pm
Sponsored by Hostos Community College, and
produced and directed by the noted poet and
author, José Angel Figueroa and co-produced
by Elba Cabrera, this special evening will
feature performances of Mr. Thomas’ poetry,
as well as works by a broad range of
artists, friends, and people that he
influenced. The ‘cast’ includes Amiri
Baraka, Miriam Colon Valle, Modesto Lacen,
Tato Laviera, and Hilda Rivera-Pantojas &
Danza Fiesta, and his wife Suzie Dod Thomas,
among others. Also included in the program
will be a remembrance of Louis Reyes Rivera,
another brilliant poet whose voice was
stilled earlier this year.
The
program itself is designed to reflect his
love, not just of words, but of the
rainbow-hued people of the urban communities
who inspired him. There will be a screening
of the documentary film
Every Child is Born a Poet:
The Life and Work of Piri Thomas
directed by Jonathan Meyer Robinson, and a
special presentation from the digital
archives of master photographer, George
Malave. Each individual performance piece,
be it dance, poetry, essay, or personal
recollection, will be staged to celebrate
the way that he lovingly embraced language
as force of nature. One that he wielded with
care because of his deep and abiding respect
for its power. |
Piri Thomas
burst onto the scene in 1967 with his memoir
Down These Mean Streets. The book’s brutally
honest depiction of life as a young Black Puerto
Rican growing up in El Barrio was arguably the
first to acknowledge the experiences of Latinos
in urban America. His follow up books
Savior Savior Hold My Hand, and
Seven Long Times, and helped established him in
the literary scene, but his passion for words
led him beyond simple autobiographical narrative
and into poetry. And this is where his profound
influence is still found to this day.
A photographic
exhibition “Constructing the Legacy of Piri Thomas” will
be on display courtesy of Centro Library and
Archives, Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter
College.
A Tribute to the
Life and Times and Works of Piri Thomas at the Hostos
Center for the Arts and Culture promises to be an
incredible evening filled with laughter and tears of joy
that come from the depths of the soul. Come and see for
yourself. As Piri would say “CHEVEROTE, PUNTO!”
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
 |
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
By
Michael Lewis
Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give
the reader a guided tour through some of the
disparate places hard hit by the fiscal
tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and
Ireland, tracing how very different people
for very different reasons gorged on the
cheap credit available in the prelude to
that disaster. The book—based on articles
Mr. Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine—is
a companion piece of sorts to The Big
Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his
bestselling 2010 book about the fiscal
crisis. Like that earlier book its focus is
narrow. It doesn’t aspire to provide a broad
overview of the debt crisis but instead
hands the reader a small but sparkling prism
by which to view the problem, this time from
a global perspective.At times Mr. Lewis can
sound a lot like Evelyn Waugh: shrewd,
observant and savagely judgmental,
dispensing crude generalizations about other
countries, even as he pokes fun at himself
as a disaster tourist. Mr. Lewis’s ability
to find people who can see what is obvious
to others only in retrospect or who somehow
embody something larger going on in the
financial world is uncanny. .—New
York Times |
* * *
* *
|
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and
the Education of a President
By
Ron Suskind
A new
book offering an insider's account of the
White House's response to the financial
crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim
Geithner ignored an order from President
Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of
major banks. According to Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the
incident is just one of several in which
Obama struggled with a divided group of
advisers, some of whom he didn't initially
consider for their high-profile roles.
Suskind interviewed more than 200 people,
including Obama, Geithner and other top
officials . . . The book states Geithner and
the Treasury Department ignored a March 2009
order to consider dissolving banking giant
Citigroup while continuing stress tests on
banks, which were burdened with toxic
mortgage assets. . . .Suskind states that
Obama accepts the blame for mismanagement in
his administration while noting that
restructuring the financial system was
complicated and could have resulted in
deeper financial harm. . . . In a February
2011 interview with Suskind, Obama
acknowledges another ongoing criticism—that
he is too focused on policy and not on
telling a larger story, one the public could
relate to. —Gopusa
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. — WashingtonPost
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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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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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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 22 May 2012
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