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Books by Marcus Bruce
Christian
Song of the Black Valiants: Marching Tempo
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High Ground: A Collection of Poems /
Negro soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans
I am New
Orleans: A Poem
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900 /
The Liberty Monument
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War, Thin Walls & the Common Man
June
4, 1944
I
noticed that the children are calling each other Japanee,
Nipponee, German and big-nosed Hitler now, instead of nigger as
a term of opprobrium. The last term is now forgotten--until after the war.
Christmas,
December 1944, 7:15 p.m., Sunday evening
It
was December, 1944, the year of growing victories for the
Allies. Winston Churchill, it was said, by a member of
Parliament, had just 'laid the ghost of the Four Freedoms' in a
recent talk. The United States had the Japs nearly on the run,
and the pockets of its citizens--white and black--were running
with bills and silver that they couldn't spend on luxuries, and
were spending on liquor and whatever they could get their hands
upon. Russia, having about finished her fight with Germany, was looking
upon the Capitalist countries with eyes that daily grew more and
more realistically in what they saw, and caused its tongue to
speak in like fashion. The Years of the Great Steal, the old
years that most of the great nations had known before the war,
were slowly creeping back into existence.
The
Man [Christian] was beginning to wonder just how much the common
man would really gain from this ghastly upheaval. Only God
knows, he thought. Patsey, living next door in the house called
"Thin Walls," was wondering when her daddy would be
coming back home from across the sea. Evelyn, her mother, was
beginning to wonder when her sailor boy friend would be getting
home for good, and what would happen if both her husband,
Patsey's father, and the boy friend both showed up at the same
time or about the same time. The walls of the little
three-roomed house were growing in greater need of repair daily.
They were rotting away. The rain beat in through them and wet
the plaster in many places, leaving large water stains and
mildew spots after the weather had cleared.
The
cold winds of December and January whipped in between the chinks
and crevices of the weatherboarding, riddled with termites, and
found its way into the rooms where lived the Negro man on one
side and the white woman and her two children on the other. Cold
fingers reached up through the cracks in the floor, and the
parts of the floor where the joice supports were giving away and
rotting. The house daily dipped further towards the street--so
much so now that the last cement-covered brick foundation
upon which the bathroom rested stood an inch or more removed
from the sleeper that had formerly rested on it.
The
man [Christian] in his side and the white woman in her side kept
their gas fires going sometimes day and night and especially in
cold damp weather. E.C. had a cold, and the little girl Patsey
had one too. Their mother, usually stricken with periodic spells
of asthma, was continually hoarse and spoke
in a hoarse, discouraged voice. When the window panes began to
fall out, the two occupants put them back with their own hands.
When the sash broke an fell to the joices, their weight pushed
through the thin, cheap termite eaten weatherboarding and fell
to the ground where it lay. They did not worry to pick them up.
They had stopped painting and decorating the house. The walls
were getting too bad. But they continued to pay the same rent month after month.
<<---Previous
Next--12->> * *
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Selected Letters
Selected Diary Notes Memories of Marcus B. Christian
(Cains) Christian's
BioBibliographical Record Introduction to I AM NEW
ORLEANS
A
Theory of a Black Aesthetic Magpies,
Goddesses, & Black Male Identity
Activist Works on Next Level of Change
Intro to I Am New
Orleans
Letter from Dillard University
A
Labor of Genuine Love
Letter of Gift of
Photos
Letters from
LSU and Skip Gates * * *
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900
By Marcus Bruce
Christian
Study of the blacksmith
tradition and New Orleans famous lace
balconies and fences.
Acclaimed during his life as the unofficial
poet laureate of the New Orleans
African-American community, Marcus Christian
recorded a distinguished career as
historian, journalist, and literary scholar.
He was a contributor to Pelican's
Gumbo Ya Ya, and also wrote many
articles that appeared in numerous
newspapers, journals, and general-interest
publications. |
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Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist
at Work
By Edwidge Danticat
Create Dangerously
is an eloquent and moving expression of
Danticat's belief that immigrant artists
are obliged to bear witness when their
countries of origin are suffering from
violence, oppression, poverty, and
tragedy.
In this deeply personal book, the
celebrated Haitian-American writer
Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and
exile, examining what it means to be an
immigrant artist from a country in
crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus'
lecture, "Create Dangerously," and
combining memoir and essay, Danticat
tells the stories of artists, including
herself, who create despite, or because
of, the horrors that drove them from
their homelands and that continue to
haunt them. Danticat eulogizes an aunt
who guarded her family's homestead in
the Haitian countryside, a cousin who
died of AIDS while living in Miami as an
undocumented alien, and a renowned
Haitian radio journalist whose political
assassination shocked the world. |
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Danticat writes about the Haitian novelists she
first read as a girl at the Brooklyn Public Library,
a woman mutilated in a machete attack who became a
public witness against torture, and the work of
Jean-Michel Basquiat and other artists of Haitian
descent. Danticat also suggests that the aftermaths
of natural disasters in Haiti and the United States
reveal that the countries are not as different as
many Americans might like to believe..— CaribbeanLiterarySalon
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Review and Interview by Kam Williams
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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