Meet Girl Detectives Katrin and J. Dyanne DuBois!

Katrin's Chronicles

"Remember Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden? Now meet girl detectives Katrin and J. Dyanne DuBois! Written by screen and television writer, Valerie C. Woods (http://www.vcwoods.com) this breakthrough novel, Katrin's Chronicles: The Canon of Jacqueléne Dyanne, expands the girl detective genre to include these smart, sister sleuths from the south side of Chicago."  Read more here:  http://www.sfgate.com/business/press-releases/article/Introducing-African-American-Girl-Detectives-4722611.php


Read an excerpt from the book on Wood's website here:  Katrin's Chronicles: The Canon of Jacqueléne Dyanne Vol. 1

Manning Marable Wins Pulitzer Prize

Manning Marable
1950 - 2011

The 2012 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today and among them, the late Manning Marable who won the Pulitzer Prize for history Monday, honored for his book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, which was decades in the making.

Marable was a professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. Marable authored several texts and was active in progressive political causes.

Marable's Writings:  

• How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983) ISBN 9780896081659
• Race, Reform and Rebellion (1991) ISBN 9780878054930
• Beyond Black and White (1995) ISBN 9781859840498
• Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance, and Radicalism (1996) ISBN 978-0813388281
• Black Liberation in Conservative America (1997) ISBN 9780896085596
• Black Leadership (1998) ISBN 9780231107464
• Let Nobody Turn Us Around (2000) ISBN 978-0847699308
• Freedom: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle (with Leith Mullings and Sophie Spencer-Wood, 2002) ISBN 978-0714842707
• The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life (2003) ISBN 978-0465043941
• W. E. B. DuBois: Black Radical Democrat (2005) ISBN 978-1-59451-019-9
• The Autobiography of Medgar Evers (2005, with Myrlie Evers-Williams) ISBN 0465021778
• Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) ISBN 978-0670022205

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_Marable

I Think I'll Call It Morning...

I Think I'll Call It Morning

I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine

and paint it all over my sky.

Be no rain. Be no rain.

I'm gonna take the song from every bird

and make them sing it just for me.

Be no rain.

And I think I'll call it morning from now on.

Why should I survive on sadness

convince myself I've got to be alone?

Why should I subscribe to this world's

madness

knowing that I've got to live on?

I think I'll call it morning from now on.

I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine

and paint it all over my sky.

Be no rain. Be no rain.

I'm gonna take the song from every bird

and make them sing it just for me.

Why should I hang my head?

Why should I let tears fall from my eyes
when I've seen everything that there is to see

and I know that there ain't no sense in crying!

I know that there ain't no sense in crying!

I think I'll call it morning from now on.

Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1, 1949) is an American poet, musician, and author known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word soul performer and his collaborative work with musician Brian Jackson. His collaborative efforts with Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues and soul music, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. The music of these albums, most notably Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, influenced and helped engender later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul. Scott-Heron’s recording work is often associated with black militant activism and has received much critical acclaim for one of his most well-known compositions “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. On his influence, Allmusic wrote “Scott-Heron’s unique proto-rap style influenced a generation of hip-hop artists”.



For more about Gil Scott heron, visit his website, http://gilscottheron.net/about/.


http://www.afropoets.net/gilscottheron.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron

A Negro Love Song

"Heart and Soul" by John Holyfield

"Seen my lady home las' night,

Jump back, honey, jump back.

Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,

 Jump back, honey, jump back.

Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,

Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,

An' a smile go flittin' by -

Jump back, honey, jump back.  



Hyeahd de win' blow thoo de pine,

 Jump back, honey, jump back.

Mockin'-bird was singin' fine,

Jump back, honey, jump back.

An' my hea't was beatin' so,

When I reached my lady's do',

Dat I could n't ba' to go -

Jump back, honey, jump back.

Put my ahm aroun' huh wais',

Jump back, honey, jump back.

Raised huh lips an' took a tase,

Jump back, honey, jump back.

Love me, honey, love me true?

 Love me well ez I love you?

An' she answe'd, "'Cose I do"-

Jump back, honey, jump back."

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American to gain national eminence as a poet. Born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, he was the son of ex-slaves and classmate to Orville Wright of aviation fame.



Although he lived to be only 33 years old, Dunbar was prolific, writing short stories, novels, librettos, plays, songs and essays as well as the poetry for which he became well known. He was popular with black and white readers of his day, and his works are celebrated today by scholars and school children alike. 

1975 US Postage Stamp

His style encompasses two distinct voices -- the standard English of the classical poet and the evocative dialect of the turn-of-the-century black community in America. He was gifted in poetry -- the way that Mark Twain was in prose -- in using dialect to convey character.

In Paul's short life, he produced 12 books of poetry, four books of short stories, a play and five novels. 

Read more about Paul Laurence Dunbar at:  http://www.dunbarsite.org/biopld.asp



Gathering Sounds

"I gather up each sound you left behind and stretch them on our bed.

each nite I breathe you and become high."  

Sonia Sanchez



Sonia Sanchez

 Renown poet and professor, Sonia Sanchez has been known for her innovative melding of musical formats - like the blues - and traditional poetic formats like haiku and tanka.  Sanchez was the first to create and teach a course based on Black Women and literature in the United States.

Here's Sonia reciting, "Put On the Sleeves of Love" from her upcoming book, Morning Haiku, which will be published January 25, 2011.  Check out her website at http://www.soniasanchez.net/.

I was first introduced to Sonia Sanchez in the movie, love jones when Nina quoted the poem above to when talking to Darius on a date.  Nina's character said that Sanchez's poems made her want to burn her notebook...and I thought, "now I just HAVE to read those poems."

Stay tuned as we highlight black poets monthly.

Having the Nerve to Walk

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions."

Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen

Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God), established the African American vernacular as one of the most vital, inventive voices in American literature. This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original.