When Tejan Karefa-Smart asked his uncle, James Baldwin, “When are you going to write a book about me?” he may not have expected his Uncle Jimmy to follow through so quickly. Baldwin’s only children’s book, Little Man, Little Man, which was published in 1976, chronicles a day in the life of three black children in 1970s Harlem. Four-year-old TJ, 7-year-old WT, and 8-year-old Blinky skip rope, dance in the streets, and run errands for their neighbors, but they also see the cops shoot a fleeing suspect, neighborhood boys do drugs, and the friendly Miss Lee drink gin out of sadness. “A children’s story for adults, an adult story for children,” Little Man, Little Man’s dust jacket beamed at the time, “that only a great novelist can produce.” And yet, reviewing the book for the New York Times in 1977, Julius Lester panned it as a great novelist’s admirable but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at producing children’s literature, and the book quickly went out of print. Almost four decades later, Little Man, Little Man is being reissued for a contemporary audience that may be more receptive to its ambition not to smooth over the complexity of growing up black in America. Continue reading at 'Slate'
[ Slate | 2018-08-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Tejan Karefa-Smart asked his uncle, James Baldwin, “When are you going to write a book about me?” he may not have expected his Uncle Jimmy to follow through so quickly. Baldwin’s only children’s book, Little Man, Little Man, which was published in 1976, chronicles a day in the life of three... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2018-08-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#contemporary audience
Novelist Jacinda Townsend and writer James Bernard Short join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the movie American Fiction, which is based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett. Townsend and Short discuss how the film addresses race in the publishing industry via... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-02-08 09:08:33 UTC ]
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From the 19th century to the present, the photos collected in Todd Brewster’s latest book offer glimpses into the lives of our nation’s youngest members. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-05-19 09:00:43 UTC ]
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James Alan McPherson is famous as the first Black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction; a new book aims to bring fresh attention to his masterful nonfiction. The volume’s editor, poet and writer Anthony Walton, joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss On Becoming an... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-02-16 09:55:09 UTC ]
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A former assistant to Toni Morrison, Ahearn was the steward of Baldwin’s archives and managed the film rights to his books. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-01-23 05:00:00 UTC ]
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"Today" show book club pick "Memphis" traces the lives of three generations of Black women. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-04-12 14:16:05 UTC ]
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The memoirist Sarah Manguso’s first novel is about a young girl’s life in a small, snowy New England town. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-02-06 10:00:06 UTC ]
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Many are taught to expect that they’ll end up in the justice system, Kristin Henning writes. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-11-12 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Shola Von Reinhold has won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction for "tour de force" debut Lote (Jacaranda), while Doireann Ní Ghríofa has taken the Biography award for the "luminous" A Ghost in the Throat (Tramp Press). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-25 04:22:39 UTC ]
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From COVID-19 vaccines to mental health, officials see barbers as playing an important role in advancing public health. In a barbershop in North St. Louis County, owner Randy Barnes listens as one of his barbers tells him that COVID-19 vaccines cause women to become infertile. That barber had... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2021-08-11 07:00:54 UTC ]
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Imbolo Mbue’s follow-up to “Behold the Dreamers” follows a familiar desecration made wrenchingly fresh by the power of Mbue’s storytelling. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-16 05:42:46 UTC ]
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In her new book, Anna Malaika Tubbs shines a light on the strong women behind three influential Black leaders Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-02-12 07:00:00 UTC ]
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Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain gather activists and scholars to write a group history. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-02-05 13:00:00 UTC ]
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The influential cookbook author helped shape the nation’s culinary identity—for better and for worse. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2020-11-29 13:00:00 UTC ]
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“African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song,” edited by Kevin Young, contains an overwhelming amount of variety and history. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-11-10 20:51:39 UTC ]
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THIS PAST APRIL, the Cleveland-based indie press Belt Publishing released The Last Children of Mill Creek, a memoir by Vivian Gibson. At just 150 pages, the book is a spare, elegant jewel of a work, chronicling the author’s childhood growing up in segregated St. Louis in the 1950s. In 1959, when... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-09-17 12:30:03 UTC ]
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Lucy Ellmann has won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction with her epic stream of consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar), while George Szirtes has taken the biography award for The Photographer at Sixteen (MacLehose). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-08-21 03:12:44 UTC ]
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Raven Leilani’s debut novel follows an interracial, intergenerational affair as it leads to an unusual redefinition of family. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-08-06 09:00:04 UTC ]
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Princeton’s Eddie S. Glaude Jr. argues that the 1960s writer has prescient words for us. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-07-17 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Authors aren’t allowed mutual reviews in the Book Review anymore, but in the 1950s there was a moment of kismet. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-06-26 09:44:07 UTC ]
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