may i recommend

[evanovitch]

African American Literature Beyond Race... an alternative reader....edited by Gene Andrew Jarrett ...
"...argues that anthologies too often ignore the generalist premise of "The Value of Race Literature," allowing race to over determine the idea of African American Literature. "

great collection of stories by many black authors

of interest to me,written in the introduction of the first author presented, was this bit...this chap was Frank J Webb (1828-1894)

..."in 1858, after spending some winter months in southern France, the Webbs moved to Kingston, Jamaica, where the Duke of Argyle had offered Webb a position in the post office. Mary continued her public performance in Kingston and Spanish Town, but her health soon took a turn for the worse, and she died of consumption on June 17, 1859.

Frank remained at the post office in Kingston, and in December 1864 he married the Jamaican Mary Rosabell Rodgers, They were to have four Jamaican-born children between 1865 and 1869 and two more American-born children later, for Webb went back to the United States in 1869, took courses at Howard University Law School , and worked as a part-time clerk for the Freedman's Bureau....."

i found that interesting re black americans at that period migrating to Jamaica...

any way, this is a recently published anthology which covers black writers from the Postbellum Period 1865-1900 to the Contemporary Period after 1965

worth the read indeed...

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

My Skin was my Sin...the progeny of Africa in America ......Quincy S Smith

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

THE JOURNEY...How to live by faith in an uncertain world...by Billy Graham


it is fabulous ...absolutely fabulous...

[ QUOTE ]
"You will only make this journey once. What kind of journey will it be?' Billy Graham [ QUOTE ]

'In this culminating work of a lifetime, the remarkable Billy Graham invites you to join him in discovering God's plan for this exciting journey called life. Wherever you are in your journey-just beginning, at the middle,or near the end-you've already learned that life offers a variety of paths. And each fork and crossroad requires a decision-some minor and others that can literally change your life. How do you choose the right path and maneuver the inevitable speed bumps and potholes that lie before you?

The good news is that you aren't alone, says Graham. Not only did God carve out the path for us, but He wants to join us on the journey-to help us with challenges along the way, and eventually lead us home.

With characteristic clarity and passion, the world-renowned author and evangelist leads us step by step, offering insight that only comes from a life spent with God. We learn about God's purpose for our lives and what Jesus has done for us. We discover how to deal with temptation, destructive habits, and life's disappointments. And we are given practical advice on prayer, knowing God's will, making right decisions, strengthening our marriage, and coping with the pain, suffering, and grief that come along with the way. This magnum opus from Billy Graham, seasoned with many personal stories from his own life, offers wisdom,encouragement, hope and inspiration-for anyone who wants to make the most of....

The Journey

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

if u r a Nelson DeMille fan , as I am,then make a note of this upcoming book...is a likkle wait [img]/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70394-bawlout.gif[/img]but his books r always gooooood

Coming In November --- WILD FIRE


Welcome to the Custer Hill Club --- a men's club set in a luxurious Adirondack hunting lodge whose members include some of America's most powerful business leaders, military men, and government officials.

Ostensibly, the club is a place to relax with old friends. But one fall weekend, the club's Executive Board gathers to talk about the tragedy of 9/11 --- and finalize a retaliation plan, known only by its codename:Wild Fire.

That same weekend, a member of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force is found dead.

Soon it's up to Detective John Corey and his wife, FBI Agent Kate Mayfield to unravel a terrifying plot that starts with the Custer Hill Club and ends with American cities locked in the crosshairs of a nuclear device. Corey and Mayfield are the only ones who can stop the button from being pushed, and global chaos from being unleashed...

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend



shrivers row by kevin baker...the third book in his storyline of incorporating real people in period pieces...the 'Malcolm' being referred to her is Malcolm X and this is his first time in NY

Prologue

Harlem waits.

Patched and tarred. Hawked and bitten in the winter, smothered and melted in the heat.

Harlem waits…

Under its broad skies, pincered between two rivers. Within sight of salvation, the city’s lights, the jeweled bridges. Battered and besieged, on its knees, but unbowed. With blood in its mouth—

Harlem waits,

and listens for its savior.



MALCOLM

The rest of the crew were giggling like schoolboys, shrugging off their kitchen uniforms in the cab. Struggling into suits that were more conservatively cut than Malcolm’s but still sharp—light blue and greens, and creamy whites, with bright, skinny ties that gave him a pang of consternation.

“I thought you said this was a righteous town,” he scoffed at them. “How’m I gonna be gunnin’ the hens with you three togged like that?”

“Listen to Mr. Samuel D. Home,” Paddy scoffed at him. “Son, you should latch on to the fact that this is the Apple.”

“You gonna get conked up good, you don’t mind us!”

Malcolm grinned back at them, feeling as if he would burst out of the cab.

“Hey. I’m mellow as a cello, rippin’ an’ rompin’, trippin’ an’ stompin’.”

“Uh-huh. This is Harlem, son.”

“What for, what for?”

He peered avidly out the cab window, wondering if it had anything to do with women.

“Keep lookin’.”

“For what?”

“Then he saw him. A monolith. A fantastic hallucination, a human balloon swaying in the waves of heat floating up from the pavement. But there was no denying him—at least six-three and two hundred seventy-three pounds, standing right out in the middle of the street, directing traffic. A black man in a police uniform.

“That’s Lacy!”

“There he is! Hey, Lacy!”

They waved out the window, calling his name, making mocking noises though there remained a note of pride in their voices. Lacy only stared at them balefully, planted inalterably in the middle of the intersection, lugubriously waving the cars on. Malcolm still gawking out the back window of the cab as they passed, unable to get his mind around the sight.

“A cop. A black cop,” he marveled.

“Sure, they got ’em up here, you know,” Lionel snorted. “You should see Big Ben Wallace. Ol’ Mr. Terror make Lacy look like a schoolteacher. Or the Four Horsemen—”

But Malcolm had already stopped listening, staring out at the amazing sidewalk scene emerging all around them. Suddenly there was color everywhere, as if someone had just switched the screen to Technicolor, like in The Wizard of Oz, which he had seen six times back in Michigan. Men wearing green, and yellow, and red sports shirts. Men wearing porkpie hats, and Panamas, and fedoras, men in white and lemon-lime and peach ice-cream suits—even men wearing sharper zoots, he had to admit, than what he had on himself.

“And women. He was sure that he had never seen so many beautiful women in his entire life. There were women everywhere, at least two for every man, not counting the clusters of soldiers and sailors who gaped and gestured at them from every street corner. Women wearing gold and ruby-red glass in their ears, and open-toed platform heels that made them sway with every step. Women in tight violet and red and blue print dresses, held up only by the thinnest of shoulder straps over their smooth, brown backs. Women striding up from the subways, stepping regally down from the trolleys and the elevated, and women, everywhere he looked, strolling out of smoking storefronts, as if their smoldering presence had touched them off.

“‘What—they on fire?’ Malcolm asked in bewilderment, squinting at the smoky little shops, the mysterious lettering in their windows that boasted WE OFFER: The Apex—Poro—Nu Life—Hawaiian Beauty Systems—

“‘Mm-hmm, you bet they are,” the cabbie laughed up front. “Those Thursday girls, they always on fire! Even when they ain’t getting’ their hair straightened—”

“You in luck, Nome,” Lionel told him. “It’s Thursday. Kitchen Mechanics’ Night. All those maids an’ mammies, an’ calkeener broads—Friday’s they one day off. They be gunnin’ for you tonight.”

“For real?”

“Course for real, Samuel D.!”

“Where you think we should take him first?” Willard asked the others. “Up the Savoy, beat out a few hoof riffs? Braddock’s? The Elks? Take him to a buffet flat an’ have a good laugh?”

“Nah, man. We gotta take him by Small’s first.”

“Yeah, Small’s. That’s the place to get him his first drink in Harlem!”

First they had the cab let them off at Mrs. Fisher’s boardinghouse, where they dropped off their train bags in the sliver-thin rooms where they would bunk for the layover. They clambered right back out onto the sidewalk—and it was then that Malcolm realized everything was moving even faster than it had looked from inside the taxi; as if the sidewalk itself had been set on some war-speed assembly line, activated the moment they put their feet to it.

“It caught them up immediately, rushing them past chicken restaurants and hamburger joints, and closed-up basement dance halls, and heat-dazed winos lying in the doorways. Past barbershops that advertised ‘Conk It Up! No Burning!’ and more of the smoking beauty parlors where Malcolm could now make out the women in pink smocks pressing irons down on other women’s hair like it was so much laundry.

“They moved past all the squatting curb vendors selling used book, and carved African animals, and jewelry that shone a little too brightly. Past men with carts full of wilted daisies, and roses and violets, and men selling long, red-orange slices of cantaloupe and watermelon, with glistening cut mouth of the remaining melon set just above their heads, so that they seemed to mimic their own red mouths and wagging tongues. There were men selling halves of oranges, and alligator pears, and rings of coconut slices floating in dishes of water and their own fragrance, while the men chanted ritually over them, ‘Yo tengo guineas! Yo tengo cocoas! Yo tengo pinas, tambien!’—and the peddlers who made sudden, high-pitched terrifying noises, shrieking ‘Wahoo! Wahoo! Wahoo!’ before throwing back their heads and singing out their ditties to the sky, or at least to the upper stories of the tenements above them:

‘Got blackberries today, folks!

Blackberries for the baby,

Blackberries for the ol’ lady,

Blackberries for the ol’ man—

If you ain’t got no ol’ man, take me!”



JONAH

It started to rain before dawn that Sunday, hard little pellets that raked their bedroom window, so that Jonah knew he would have to be up early. By the time he eased the big, green Lincoln out of its back-alley garage, the rain had begun to taper off, but between the weather and the gas rationing, he was sure the buses would be out again. After he dropped Amanda off at the church, he trolled up and down Lenox, and Eighth Avenue, in the big car, looking for any members of his congregation who might still be waiting at a bus stop.

All along the way he saw the ministers from every other church in Harlem, doing the same. Exchanging friendly waves and honks with them—at least all those who still had a car, and the ration points to fuel it. Picking up entire families still huddled under the bus shelters. More women than men, as was always the case, but especially so now with the war on. The older church mothers in their proud hats, undaunted by the rain. The children with their hair and clothes immaculately combed and pressed. The boys in blazers that were too big too small, showing inches of white cuff, and the plastic tabs on their neckties; little girls in dresses that spread out above their knees like umbrellas, and shiny black patent shoes—

Jonah would fill the Lincoln with as many as he could, then move on to the next family, rolling down the window to tell them the buses were out. The mother or father would lean in, nodding—the news nothing they hadn’t expected to hear. They would thank him solemnly, and begin to walk slowly up toward the church, moving as fast as the youngest or the oldest among them could manage.

By late morning it had settled into a blustery, turbulent day; the dark gray clouds skittering across the sky, and the fleeting water rainbows forming and dissolving on the sidewalk. A day of illusions, and second glances. Passing “Beale Street,” at 133rd and Seventh, Jonah glimpsed the working girls there still staggering along the curb—soaked to the skin, disappearing into doorways. Men in uniform climbing up from the after-hours bars below the street, ducking back down behind the stoops when they spotted the armbands of approaching MPs. Harlem never did shut down anymore. Not even on Sunday—

At 132nd Street, idling at a light, he noticed a crowd drawn to a pair of women evangelists. He had seen them on the corner before. The one tall and slender as a reed, belting out Bible passages, the other one short and pudgy. The short one held the umbrella, stretching to raise it up over her partner, and the Bible—while at the same time she interpreted each verse in a shrill, raucous shout, and according to her own vehement theology.

“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no Paraoh an’ the Israelites. I’m talkin’ ’bout the he-in’ and she-in’ a you Harlemites, right here an’ right now!” she ranted, while the crowd around her laughed and clapped.

“I’m talkin’ ’bout how mothers and fathers teach their chillen one thing in the South but they do another thing in the North, and they will surely pay the penalty. God will not be mocked!”

The people gathered there laughed some more. The Harlem of the simmering anger, of all the strange curbside congregations he had noticed, gone for the moment, between Sunday, and the rain. Just in front of him, at the perimeter of the crowd, Jonah watched a young man, still wearing the sports shirt and slacks he had no doubt put on the night before, smiling sheepishly. Telling the woman with him, “Man, that old lady is sure steppin’ on my toes! Gosh, that one hit my pet corn awful hard!”

After a little while he had become almost mesmerized by the drizzle and that steady beat of his windshield wipers, the every changing street scene before him. Making wider and wider loops around the neighborhood, swinging down past the Harlem Defense Center, where he watched the happy, smiling young men on leave, walking out with pretty, slim brown women on their arms. Driving past a group of sailor messmen, who stood and squatted on their haunches outside Jock’s Place—pulling on cigarette butts, their faces blank and desolate, while they listened to the jukebox blasting “Don’t Stop Now” through the open door. Still more families, still plodding their way toward church—his, or someone else’s. Walking with immense, careful dignity, trying to avoid stepping into puddles or being splattered by the passing cars, waiting every few yards for the children to catch up.

And watching them, Jonah was filled with a surpassing love, For the churchgoing families—but also for the high-stepping soldiers and the blue sailors, and the Mutt-and-Jeff evangelists, and the insecure young man. Even for the working girls, soaked to the skin out on the pavement. He was almost dizzy with it, in that moment. Feeling his love encompass all of it, here where he lived in Harlem, this little enclave of so much sin, and despair, and hopelessness, but also of such immeasurable beauty. At 125th Street, he noticed the Checker cabs already taking the more optimistic fans up for the doubleheader scheduled that afternoon at the Polo Grounds—each of them with enough empty seats to carry an entire family to church. The white faces in the back windows staring out alertly, awash in apprehension and distaste. Jonah was in turn filled with nothing but pity for them, to be passing through this wondrous place but to know it so little. Thinking of a verse from Lamentations—“Is it nothing to you, all ye who pass by?”

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

Summer, 1943. Harlem is a never-ending carnival. Soldiers and sailors, hustlers and glamour girls fill its streets, looking for excitement. Every night, dance halls like the Savoy Ballroom are filled with frenzied jitterbuggers, and the best jazz musicians in the world face off in rent parties and clubs such as Small's Paradise.
Yet underneath the glitter, Harlem's black residents remain second-class citizens, shut out of most jobs, charged double the rents of white New Yorkers, and alternately ignored and harassed by the police. In military training camps throughout the South, their enlisted sons are beaten, jailed, even murdered. Harlem is a tinderbox, waiting for a match.

Along these restless streets, two very different young men cross paths. Their chance encounter will change both their lives and presages the coming battle for civil rights. Malcolm Little is a street hustler, a numbers runner and pot dealer; a naive, cocky, troubled teenager fresh off the train, dazzled by everything around him -- and not yet the iconic civil rights leader, Malcolm X, that he will become. The Reverend Jonah Dove is the minister of one of Harlem's greatest churches and a resident of Strivers Row, one of the community's most elite neighborhoods.

Their lives intersect when Malcolm rescues Jonah and his wife from a group of drunken white soldiers. For Jonah, it is a crowning indignity that brings on a crisis of faith. Though still ashamed of his attempt to "pass" as white during college, he has begun to do so again, on secret trips away from Harlem.

Malcolm is haunted by his own past, in a family riven by extreme poverty, mental illness, and racial prejudice. He plunges ecstatically into thenightlife of Harlem. It is the life Malcolm has long envisioned for himself -- yet he finds it hollow at the core. Lonely and confused, he starts to have odd dreams and visions of a mysterious black prophet who calls himself Elijah, the beginning of a religious conversion that will overthrow his whole world.

As race riots break out across the homefront, and Harlem slides toward the brink, Jonah and Malcolm must confront their own demons. Their next meeting, in the midst of turmoil, will lead them both to make fateful choices, for themselves and for their community.

Strivers Row completes the "City of Fire" trilogy begun with Dreamland and Paradise Alley. Master storyteller Kevin Baker has once again woven an epic tale set against the panoramic backdrop of a vanished New York. Here is a world of dream books and lindyhoppers, jazz greats and secret cults -- the forgotten black history of New York City, restored to passionate life on every page.

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

faithful spy .......alex berenson

just 3/4th thru this one having started it this evening and am loving it....it tells the story of a CIA agent who has become embedded in Al Queda....his family heritage includes Lebanese....he was gone for ten years, and within that time, has converted to Islam but not the thinking of the extremists...he is still loyal to the US but sees the failings etc....he comes bak to the US and of course is believed to have gone bad...so he goes underground ...while the terrorists r still hard at work wreaking havoc in the US...two bombs have been exploded and a major plan is in the works...then a terrorist is captured and broken and tells the tale of an American Al Queda operative who is in the US making way for the big plan.....ooooh mi looking forward to the rest of it...the writing is superb, the story moves along quickly and it is a fabulous read....

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

wonderful twist in di story....brilliant indeed...the final terrorist plan was to happen in Times Square ....really good book...enuff intrigue etc ...well written especially for a first novel it would seem....worth the read

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

Fear of The Dark ...Walter Mosley

Watts, 1956. Time for another 15 rounds of unsought violence for bookseller Paris Minton and his friend Fearless Jones.

Surrounded by men-and quite a few women-who think they're tough, Paris (Fear Itself, 2003, etc.) considers himself a coward. He's been afraid of the dark ever since the April Fool's night when he spent five hours locked in a crawl space beneath his bookstore with the cooling corpse of his lover Jessa Brown's ex-boyfriend Tiny Bobchek, shot through the head. Burying Tiny in a shallow grave with the help of Fearless and legendary killer and storyteller Van Cleave takes the heat off Paris but doesn't rescue him from the danger brought by another visitor: Paris's cousin Ulysses S. Grant IV, more aptly known as Useless.

Realizing that the apple of his Aunt Three Hearts' eye has graduated from theft to large-scale blackmail, Paris reluctantly enlists the help of Fearless and a dozen more questionable allies in tracking down the head blackmailers before the mounting pile of casualties includes him.

It's an unlikely task for Paris, who claims to be always afraid, and Fearless, who may be incapable of doing long division. Luckily, the clouds obscuring the labyrinthine plot frequently lift to reveal the clarity of Paris's wisdom, as when he observes that kindly Fearless constantly fights only because "we were poor and we were black and so we either fought or we lost ground."

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

The Messenger by Daniel Silva ..i am breathless...mi juss start it but had to come an put it on mi list....i got turned on to this author the same time i read the DaVinci Code...read his The Confessor and recommended it on the site along wid the Code...

this is the latest in the series by the author...the main character is Gabriel, an Israeli spy/assassin who moonlights as an art restorer....needless to say the age old conflict figures heavily in the books ....
and these books are soooo well crafted....the latest gets off to a resounding start with an explosive within the Vatican...nuff said....

btw, in the book, Gabriel is identified as the Gabriel....u know , the chief of the group given the mandate by Golda Meir to seek out and destroy the assassins involved in the Munich Massacre...Olympic Stadium...

mi gaan again cause mi get di book yessiday an juss a get to reading it an it sweet sooo tilll

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

oh di book nice so till...mi all a tek break fi prolong it....di terrorist dem manage fi blow awf di dome...yes dat one an almoss tek out di pontiff...my lips r sealed but u haffi read dis book if u like political intrigue in ur mystery...u know like Le Carre etc of old...oooohhhhh.... [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70377-loveeyes.gif[/img]

[SandiF]

Re: may i recommend

I have "My Skin was my Sin"...to be read. I've got 'bout 5 books 'back-to-back' to read.

[ QUOTE ]
My Skin was my Sin...the progeny of Africa in America ......Quincy S Smith

[/ QUOTE ]

[LINSTEAD]

Re: may i recommend

SandiF,

Have you included "ROAD TO DAMASCUS" in your list?
I intend to discuss "MY SKIN WAS MY SKIN" when I have completed reading it. It's a bit complex, isn't it?

Have you read "IN THE CASTLE OF MY SKIN" ?

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

Africa Bible Commentary
Edited By: Tokunboh Adeyemo

Description:
In the 19th century, Europeans regarded Africa as the "dark continent."

Now, in the 21st century, it's home to the fastest-growing churches on the globe!

Produced by both English- and French-speaking Africans, this groundbreaking work gives a firsthand look at how people outside the West approach and interpret Scripture.

1616 pages, hardcover from Zondervan.

[evanovitch]

Re: may i recommend

Ressurection ...a novel...Tucker Malarkey

there have been many attempts since the success of the DaVinci Code to duplicate wat was written...i am sure authors r hoping to duplicate the sales more dan the writing..anyhow, this book is close to the writing and the sustained interest of the subject matter

i am half way thru the book an trying to stretch it out...the subject matter is intriguing and the writing style is not as intense as DaVinci...

it is based on a real happening to start with...bak in 1940s the Nag Hammadi documents were rediscovered...these documents were suppressed by the early Christian Church some 2000 years ago...anyhow, this novel is built around this real event...fascinating read fi real