Fun Summer Reads

[blk_reign]

I read both of these in college.. they're good reads...


Ann Petry The Street  As much a historical document as it is a novel, this 1946 winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship is the poignant and unblinkingly honest story of a young black woman's struggle to live and raise her son by herself amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s

Nella Larson Quicksand and Passing Nella Larsen's novels Quicksand(1928) and Passing(1929) document the historical realities of Harlem in the 1920s and shed a bright light on the social world of the black bourgeoisie. The novel's greatest appeal and achievement, however, is not sociological, but psychological. As noted in the editor's comprehensive introduction, Larsen takes the them of psychic dualism, so popular in Harlem Renaissance fiction, to a higher and more complex level, displaying a sophisticated understanding and penetrating analysis of black female psychology.

[elegantpearl01]

Some good black history reads:

1.  Ivan Van Sertima--They Came Before Columbus; Black Women in Antiquity
2.  Chinua Achebe--Things Fall Apart
3.  Carter G. Woodson--The Miseducation of the Negro; Afican Heroes and Heroines
4.  Cheikh Anta Diop--The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality
5.  Frances Cress Welsing--The Isis Papers
6.  Assata Shakur--Assata
7.  Elaine Brown--Taste of Power
8.  Elridge Cleaver-Soul on Ice
9.  Dr. Henry Louis Gates & Dr. Cornel West-The Future of the Race
10  Carl T. Rowan--Dream Makers, Dream Breakers (Biography of Justice Thurgood Marshall)

[scurred1]

Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell. Yeah, he's not everyone's cup of tea but he has an interesting point of view. It will either make you really angry or make you reconsider some of your beliefs about racism and culture.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594030863/qid=1117408244/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-2844706-8273432?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[prettylily]

I love reading and I'm so happy it's summer so that I can read the books that I really want to read.

This past week and a half, I finished, The Men of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor (excellent) and Harlem Redux by Persia Walker (Excellent book based in the Harlem Renaissance).

I'm starting Angel of Harlem in a few, but it starts off kind of slow.  Hopefully it'll pick up.

[faith2005]

hey swb, i read "a taste of reality" and it was pretty good. some parts of it were sorta shallow though. i think i would have enjoyed it more if i was lounging on a beach somewhere in the dominican republic. 

[Fabyahluss]

hey swb, i read "a taste of reality" and it was pretty good. some parts of it were sorta shallow though. i think i would have enjoyed it more if i was lounging on a beach somewhere in the dominican republic. 

LOL. That's interesting. Which parts did you think were shallow??

[faith2005]

hey, i don't think we've ever been online at the same time. hmm, i think that the epilogue was really shallow, and non-satisfying. i though that the whole her falling in love with dude just after one date was sorta contrived. i also thought the sections where "the man" was talking were a little overdone. i mean, i don't believe in "the man" in the sense that there are 3 men sitting somewhere plotting. but i thought it was a good book overall.

oh and quicksand and passing are two books that i could discuss again and again. blk--did you think there were sexual overtones to the relationships in passing? and thats why things fell apart.

oh and elegant, i knew there was a reason i liked you--frances cress welsing, cheikh anta diop AND ivan van sertima. but where is dr. akbar on your list? 

[blk_reign]

you know i need to reread it..it's been some years.. but i know that that was a heavy part of discussion in my african american women writers course... i don't want to speak on it and put my foot in my mouth until i become familar with the characters again.. .give me a couple of days and we'll come back to this 

oh and quicksand and passing are two books that i could discuss again and again. blk--did you think there were sexual overtones to the relationships in passing? and thats why things fell apart.

[Fabyahluss]

hey, i don't think we've ever been online at the same time. hmm, i think that the epilogue was really shallow, and non-satisfying. i though that the whole her falling in love with dude just after one date was sorta contrived. i also thought the sections where "the man" was talking were a little overdone. i mean, i don't believe in "the man" in the sense that there are 3 men sitting somewhere plotting. but i thought it was a good book overall.

Yeah, I think you're right about us never being online at the same time, but I've only started gettin online once finals were done, so maybe that's why!

But yeah, I feel you on the sections with the three executives. I mean, it just exaggerated the ways in which people imagine white people in power to be, but I see how you could've found it overdone.  And although I don't necessarily picture a scene exactly like that when imagining racial oppression in the workplace, I wouldn't be at all surprised if actual conversations like the ones illustrated in the book took place. For the most part though, I think those types of beliefs are so embedded in some people's thought processes that it doesn't even need to be articulated when those people are communicating with others who think the same way. It's sort of like an unspoken understanding.

I know a lady well who worked in a predominantly white corporate firm and experinced the SAME thing that the woman in A Taste of Reality experienced in regards to getting passed over for a much less qualified, but white, applicant. Moreover, she has told me about discrimination that takes place all the time in the firm she works at, although it is hardly ever discussed, especially the way that it was discussed in the book. Nowadays, it doesn't have to be and still doesn't lose its effectiveness.

[elegantpearl01]

Faith, you know going to school/residing in Tally Dr. Akbar is a must....that man is a powerful lecturer....I am glad you feel me though....I love reading works from black intellectuals and scholars, it makes me wish I would have gotten that Ph.d at times...I feel they do more important work than the average attorney.