Book Review: Zora and Langston

The Collabo Fallout

Stars: 4/5

I read other reviews where some thought that this book was too scholarly. Well, for one, it was well-researched, including the author re-tracing the trip Zora and Langston took through the South. Secondly, there were several words I had to use google to get the definition. However! I thought the story of their relationship and their relationships with others was absolutely fascinating!

Their relationship status went from ride-or-die: “Langston was not just Zora’s best friend, but one of the few people with whom she felt a deep kinship.”(p.176) to, they in for a squabble, no doubt:  “If Mule-Bone was Zora and Langston’s child, the fight over its fate was their epic custody battle.” (p.190).

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Book Review: The Sword and the Shield

Malcolm X as the sword wielding,"...black Americas prosecuting attorney" and MLK Jr, the shield carrying "...nations chief defense attorney."

Stars: 4/5

As I was reading about the relationship between Martin & Malcolm, I began thinking about a binary star system (and my knowledge of celestial science is beyond limited, but work with me here). I envisioned these two giants of men spinning around each other, their action plans diverging greatly at the onset. Their gravitational fields - stronger than anything in the vicinity - pulled & pushed on each other and others close to them. Over time they became stronger, brighter, magnetic, and in the end, a sort of convergence of philosophy; almost identical. Even though they were in the same space, history has them meeting only once, but destiny has them linked together forever. Hopefully, The Sword and the Shield will have you in deep reflection as well. This is my third Peniel Joseph book on the shelf.  I was waiting for the release of this book and it was worth the wait.




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additional sources:
*  Review in NY Times

*  video source:  National Council for History Education webinar, 2020

Book Review: First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory

“Dead men make such convenient heroes.”

Stars: 4/5

Very good (3.5 - 4 stars). Well researched. Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of information on Crispus Attucks, which has allowed inaccuracies and rampant suppositions to seep into the historical narrative of this man. Kachun sets the record straight. As an honest broker, Kachun keeps a vetted biographical framework intact as he traverses from 1770s to present day; debunking falsehoods and speculation to produce a reliable profile of the man whose death sparked a revolution.



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Book Review: We Are The Change We Seek

We Are The Change We Seek

Stars: 4/5

It should not be forgotten what an outstanding orator President Barack Obama was/is. Contained here are 27 selected speeches chronologically ordered from 2002 - 2017. Since all of us have heard him speak numerous times, the voice in my head, as I was reading, was Barack Obama's. It was a refreshing journey; one I may take again in its entirety or just hit some of the favorites: 'A More Perfect Union', 'Amazing Grace', or the 'Trayvon Martin' speech.
 

[video:  Interview Excerpt . CBS News Red & Blue, Jan., 2017]


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Book Review: Sweat the Technique

“With wisdom which means wise words being spoken.“- My Melody

Stars: 4/5

Part memoir, part deconstruction of the genius behind the creative process that produced many of the greatest rap songs of the late eighties and early nineties. Rakim, The God MC, grants us entry into his inner sanctum where he reveals his methodology that is founded on five pillars of creativity: Purpose, Inspiration, Spirituality, Consciousness and Energy. The seemingly innate ability to recall and rap along to many of Rakim’s songs should be proof that Nobody Beats The R when it comes to lyrical construction & content; never to be relegated to the record crate of bygone music.

Rakim, Sweat The Technique Lecture and Book Signing. ATL. 2019

 

















 




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Book Review: The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation

Stars: 4/5

My plan was to read this book *before* watching the film of the same name by Nate Parker. The book provides context to the movie without many spoilers, allowing the movie to retain its emotional impact. I had read The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion by Stephen Oates some years back (see my review there), so if you are looking for a book specifically about Nat Turner that is an excellent one as this book is a companion piece to the movie. In this book, there are essays by distinguished authors about Nat Turner, other slave rebellions and their leaders, Nate Parker outlining his journey in making the movie from inception to wrap, and there is commentary from others who contributed to making the film.

I may be a little late to the game - the movie and book came out in 2016 - but if you haven't done so already, I suggest immersing yourself in both, as I did. As Nate Parker so eloquently puts it, he's hoping you will become 'activated', "...that words like healing, resistance, self-determination, faith, equality, and justice will find a useful place in your daily vocabulary. That we all, collectively, have a riotous disposition toward injustice. That we use our occupational, social, and technological tools to rise up against injustice that exists in our daily ecosystem." p.31.

[video:  Brith of a Nation movie trailer,  2016]



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Book Review: Looking For Lorraine

Her writing penetrated concentric layers of darkness to allow "...truth to see the light." p. 180.

Stars: 4/5

When reading Looking for Lorraine you will be immersed in everything Lorraine Hansberry. From her literary work, large & small, public & private, to her family, mentors, contemporaries, colleagues, friends and foes. All of these are interwined with Lorriane's activism; for example, you wouldn't understand the complexity of her relationships or the true meaning of her art, without understanding what she believed in and what she was fighting for. Kudos to Prof. Imani Perry for her scholarship and bringing us Lorraine as we haven't seen her before.



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Book Review: The Color of Money

 
The Color of Money

Stars: 4/5

Very good. If you're like me, you’ve probably read a number of books on the African-American experience spanning the gamut, from historical to present day perspectives. Here's another for your bookshelf from a economic standpoint, covering: black banking, corporate & government malfeasance, and their persistence of a financial policy intended to keep black communities in a state of financial disrepair.
 
Professor Baradaran ranges from the beginning when “...the currency of the South was the slave” and the government’s underhanded dealing of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, to President Nixon and his approach (Black Capitalism) to counter Black radicalism of the 70’s, to the FDIC’s unscrupulous behavior in handling the failure of the Freedom National Bank of Harlem. All this, and more, revealing how these deliberate actions, behavior and strategies are meant to maintain economic inequality.
 
 
   video:  Postal Banking: An old solution to a new problem.  M. Baradaran.  TEDxUGA

 
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Book Review: The Family Tree

 
Acknowledging the darkness

Stars: 4/5

In 1912, in Harris County, Ga., at the oak tree next to the baptismal font at Friendship Baptist Church, four Negroes were hanged for the murder of Norman Hadley. One of the four was a woman, the first in Georgia to be lynched, one a preacher, and two farmers. There was no trial, just an angry mob intent on meting out their form of justice:

An “...oft-repeated lesson...from those long ago days: that when the community wants a lynching, the community will get a lynching.” p 155

It’s one thing to be an investigative reporter and this bit of history is suddenly revealed to you; it’s another when it happened in your hometown and you uncover the role your great-grandfather, the Sheriff, and grandfather, the Deputy Sheriff, has played in the ghastly lynching. In both instances, this is the case for author Karen Branen.

Facing what seems to be an insurmountable headwind of family secrets and racial tension, Karen Branen is a truth-seeker and a truth-teller determined to salve to wounds of the past by exposing a history that is painful. A courageous effort on the part of Branen, to “..acknowledge the darkness in family history...” (p.180).

Similar to What Virtue There Is In Fire (Sam Hose lynching in Newnan, Ga.) and Fire In A Canebreak (quadruple lynching in Walton County, Ga.), The Family Tree will move you with its vivid recounting and brutal honesty (Branan, who is white, provides an inside peek into her family’s position on race and race relations).

[video:  NewsOne. 2016.  NewsOne Now feat. R. Martin]

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Book Review: Fire In A CaneBreak

What was in the dark, never came to light.

Stars: 4/5

Fire In a Canebrake is about the 1946 unsolved lynching of 4 black Georgians, George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom, in Walton County, Georgia.

By all accounts Roger Malcom, a tenant farmer, was the primary target in retaliation for his near-fatal knife assault on his white landlord, Barnette Hester.  George, Mae Murray, and Roger’s wife, Dorothy, had the misfortune of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, FBI investigators uncovered where there may have been a motive to lynch George Dorsey as well; his flirtations with white women.

Despite coming close to breaking the case on a number of instances, the investigator’s leads in identifying suspects never fully panned out.  Townsfolk were either too scared to cooperate, purposely gave misleading information, or had moved away.  The horrific act, it’s legacy, “... the nation would never again see as many victims lynched on a single day after July 25, 1946” (p. 75), and the unsolved nature of the case, is a scar on Walton County that remains to this day; an unspoken but persistent reminder of the injustice of the past.

Very good read & may be of interest to native Georgians.

historical marker

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Book Review: Winning the Long Game

Winning the Long Game

Stars: 4/5

Winning the Long Game is a presentation of Krupp and Shoemaker’s model for Strategic Leadership. The premise of their thesis is the most successful of strategic leaders are consistent in their knowledge and application of six disciplines: Anticipate, Challenge, Interpret, Decide, Align and Learn. Those who are adept in the practice of all six disciplines are better prepared to shape and execute their strategy in an environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
 
A chapter is dedicated to each one of the six disciplines. Each discipline is explored further and bolstered by a case study of real-world leaders & enterprises (e.g. Elon Musk of Telsa, Pope Francis, Sara Blakely, Whole Foods) who embody the spirit of that particular skill. Also included are action plans and best practices on how to reach higher levels of proficiency in each area. The final chapter is dedicated to two visionary leaders who at some level possess all the necessary skills but one masters the art of strategic leadership and the other’s short-sightedness leads to poor execution.


 Steven Krupp, Co-author of Winning The Long Game.  2015.  www.youtube.com

 
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Book Review: The King Years

The 'Years' just flew by

Stars: 4/5

One would be hard-pressed attempting to condense a 2300+ page trilogy down to a 290 page paperback, but that’s what author, Taylor Branch, did. According to Branch, The King Years  “..is a condensation, a short distillation, of the 18 most essential moments in the Civil Rights movement between [19]54 and 1968. It’s kind of like a re-introduction and re-interpretation of a transformative era in our history."  You would probably agree that it is always good idea to get reaquainted with Dr. King, his words and his deeds; and The King Years gives you a chance to do that without a huge commitment. The King Years, providing highlights from Birmingham to Selma to Memphis, just to name a few, offers enough moments of the movement to satisfy but yet leaves you yearning for much, much more.


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credits & sources:
* Taylor Branch, 2013. interview with Conn Jackson. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IalnC9aNlag
* Simon & Schuster, 2013

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Book Review: Strange Fruit

“There was a certain willful purpose when she sang that tune." (p.102)

Stars: 4/5

Abel Meeropol, white Jewish schoolteacher in New York City, after being so moved by an image of a lynching (speculated that the photo is the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion Indiana) wrote a poem about it. After being set to music, Meeropol's poem became the song ultimately known as Strange Fruit. The song was played for jazz singer, Billie Holiday, and she sung it for the first time in front of an audience in 1939. Billie said she was nervous at first and "...was scared people would hate it."

But from that point on, Strange Fruit and Billie Holiday became intertwined in jazz history.  Sure, others sang it, others certainly tried, but no one could sing it like Billie Holiday:

“When Billie sings it, you feel as if you’re at the foot of the tree.” p.78

“Not only did you see the ‘fruit’ evoked in all its graphic horror, but you saw in Billie Holiday the wife or sister or mother of one of the victims beneath the tree, almost prostrate with sorrow and fury…” p.76-77

“...and with every defeat she suffered, with every additional increment of abuse she endured or inflicted upon herself, the more personal the song came to seem. The confidence with which she’d first sung it gave way to pure pathos.” p.89-90

According to Meeropol, who heard her sing the song, said: “She gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation, which could jolt an audience out of its complacency anywheres[sic].” p.30

In 1999, Time magazine named it the song of the century.


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sources:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/158933012/the-strange-story-of-the-man-behind-strange-fruit
DVD: Jazz by Ken Burns, Episode Six, Chapter: "Strange Fruit"


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Book Review: Death Of A King

“Ultimately it isn’t so important how long you live.  The important thing is how well you live.” - MLK (p.168)

Stars: 4/5

Death Of A King chronicles the final year of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life: from April 4th, 1967 and Beyond Vietnam, MLK’s anti-war speech, to April 4th, 1968, that fateful day of his assassination.

As described in detail, MLK’s tumultuous final year is fraught with SCLC fundraising troubles, infighting amongst his closest confidants, defending his position from outside forces including media & former allies, and contending with the rise of black militancy as the new movement garnering its share of new young black recruits.

According to the research by Smiley and Ritz, despite the darkest of days, battling bouts of depression and deprivation of quality family time, MLK still continued the march to change the hearts and minds of a nation.


BookTV, 2014

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Book Review: Tomlinson Hill

 
Tomlinson:  In Black and White
 
Stars: 4/5
 
Chris Tomlinson’s undertaking to uncover his family’s history of owning slaves is highly commendable.  From the arrival of the first Tomlinson in Falls County, Texas and purchasing the land that would become Tomlinson Hill to the last African-American with the Tomlinson name to reside there, the author chronicles his ancestry through some of black history’s major epochs:  slavery, Civil War, emancipation, reconstruction, segregation, desegregation.
 
Chris Tomlinson’s experience as an AP journalist covering international affairs provides for unfiltered writing when it comes to race relations. He writes fluidly and openly about his family’s racist past and his own encounters when dealing with race. In tracing the roots of the white Tomlinson family and the slaves they owned with the same namesake, the author was finally able to prove something that he always heard but was never really explained to him. His research revealed how his white ancestors were the slaveowners of the ancestors of famous now-retired NFL running back LaDanian Tomlinson.
 

 
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Book Review: Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

A good introduction to the principles of Critical Race Theory.

Stars: 4/5

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, as the title suggests, is intended to be a primer. Critical Race Theory (CRT), “...considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, context, group- and self-interest, and even feelings and the unconscious.” (p.3).

Authors Delgado and Stefancic provide the basic foundation behind the the theory as well as explaining some of the principles such as: interest convergence, structural determinism, and [legal] storytelling, to name a few. Also, in the interest of fair-mindedness, one of the later chapters is dedicated to those with opposing viewpoints and expounds on what that opposition entails.

At the conclusion of each chapter, ‘classroom exercises’ , ‘questions and comments’, and ‘suggested readings’ are provided for further clarity and analysis. I personally thought the exercises and questions were constructive and thought-provoking; a noble attempt to provide practical application of theory via real-world scenarios.

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Book Review: Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man

“...Mandela’s life is a model not just for our time but all time.” p.19

Stars: 4/5

Richard Stengel has managed to distill from a sea of notes, taken from interviews with Nelson Mandela for Long Walk to Freedom , fifteen valuable life lessons. This ‘portrait’ of a freedom fighter provides a peek into some of Mandela’s personal mantras; those which equipped Mandela with, among other things, a moral compass, a sustaining force of will and a principled temperament that only a few possess:

“Nelson Mandela is a man of principle - exactly one: Equal rights for all, regardless of race, class, or gender.” p.103

Richard Stengel on meeting Nelson Mandela

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Book Review: Burning Uncle Tom's Cabin

That Burning Desire for Freedom

Stars: 4/5

After a series of events by his master and his wife’s master, protagonist George Harris, finds himself turning his dream of providing for a better life for himself and his family into a reality.  Although George’s plan did not immediately include his enslaved wife and son fleeing the clutches of their master, their own harrowing tale of escape happens to coincide with his.   Just as every great action-adventure movie has a chase scene, Burning Uncle Tom’s Cabin has its own 19th century version; complete with a band of slave catchers in pursuit, heroic feats and narrow escapes. Waters writing style makes for an enjoyable read; easily slipping back in time to follow George as he navigates his way to freedom.

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Book Review: Black Cool

Black Cool Deconstructed

Stars: 4/5

Here, those whose creative talent is pegged at way beyond substantial, attempt to decode Black Cool in all its forms; What is it?, Who has it?, Who owns it? etc…. What you will get in return is an eclectic blend of responses that spans the gamut and, in of itself, is testament to the diversity that can be found in something otherwise known, monochromatically, as Black.  

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Book Review: The Second Machine Age

Skynet is not self-aware…...yet!

Stars: 4/5

That’s one of the things we all want to know, right?   When will computers & machines take over the world and we begin the battle, Us versus Them, a la the Terminator movies. Well, MIT’s Brynjolfsson and McAfee do not necessarily provide a timeline on when humans will need to “scorch the sky” (The Matrix), but they do provide superb insight into obstacles that have impeded the progress in AI and sentient machines: Moravec’s paradox, even the best computers are poor at large-frame pattern matching, complex communication, etc…   They also make the case that, at present, we are standing at the threshold of a great explosion in technological advancement, of the like we have never seen before, The Second Machine Age.

Other questions and topics also addressed by the authors:
- What does it take to survive in the future? It’s not Us versus Them, it’s more like Us working with Them. Which types of jobs are destined to be automated, which are not? Future state calls upon the next gen to be creative thinkers, problem solvers, and innovators as opposed to individuals specializing in a specific career or possessing a finite set of skills for a given industry.
- Policy and economics, “the spread and the bounty.” Does innovation and technological progress help us all or does it seem as though only a select few reap the financial rewards of advancements in technology or both?
- Up to this point, why is technological progress barely keeping up with the new and innovative ideas we keep dreaming up. How and why will that be different in the Second Machine Age.




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