ChickenBones: A Journal
for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes
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Ahmose Zu-Bolton, Yusef Komunyakaa, and I remodeled a huge fish market on Piety Street
into a community arts center. Yusef and I built a stage and a bar. I bought a few of Mamas quilts
and hung them from the ceiling for visual and sound effect. To make the project work I even
moved into the building so that the bills could be paid.
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Letters of an Abiding Faith:
Legacy of a Slave’s GrandDaughter to her Son
written by Ella Lewis to her Son (Rudolph Lewis)
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Letter 32
February 25, 1985
Dear Doc,
These Quilts $15 Each. Are hand tack made in Va By Ella Lewis and Mrs. Jeralene Williams.*
Eight Quilts at $15 Each. 2 Quilts no Charge is For
Doc Lewis From his
Mother
Ella Lewis
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Commentary
*Jeralene Williams is Miss Geraldine Williams, a neighbor of Mama’s who lived on the same road as Jerusalem Church. They were involved in a number of quilting bees.
Ahmose Zu-Bolton, Yusef Komunyakaa, and I remodeled a huge fish market on Piety Street into a community arts center. Yusef and I built a stage and a bar. I bought a few of Mamas quilts and hung them from the ceiling for visual and sound effect. To make the project work I even moved into the building so that the bills could be paid. We had a juke box and a pool table. Couches we found in alleys I had them restored. Unable to get a liquor license, Ahmose sold liquor illegally, which made Yusef nervous. Yusef eventually backed out of the arrangement and so Ahmose was unable to get cosigners for a grant to support the center further. It all folded. because of his excessive drinking. Then Ahmose, who first developed the idea of the center, became antagonistic toward me because I had gained power in the deal and he was unable to pay the $500 I gave him as a loan. He hired a band which I also paid out of my pocket. That money I also never recuperated. But I did not have a problem with that.
Ahmose became more and more belligerent. Eventually, I had to take the money out of his hide. In this matter, however, I was not the aggressor. But I have my limits. We began to duke it out. Every time I knocked him down he would pop right up and come for more. And I gave it to him. There was blood everywhere. I almost put his eye out from blows to the head. He was bold. But rather stupid from my point of view. But booze will make a person behave that way. Yet I gave him what he desired, a way out of paying his monetary debt.. I hate myself when I lose my temper in this manner. As a child, Daddy used to whip me terribly for my temper, my beating up on my cousin Norman.
The whole matter blew over and the law was not brought into it. His wife, a dramatic actor and a good one I am told, threatened to have me locked up. But she was just blowing off steam. On a later occasion, I visited Ahmose, who is an excellent but rather undeveloped poet, at his community center in the community of Marigny. We shook hands and behave as if nothing ever happened. I didnt go there especially to see him. I went there with another New Orleans poet named Yictove, who published an excellent volume of spoken word poems, D.J. Soliloquy (1988).
I gave Yusef one of Mamas quilts as a gift. I also had photos taken of the quilts, had them enlarged and framed and gave them to Mama as presents. They hang now in the family house. My greatest regret is that I eventually lost the friendship of both Ahmose and Yusef. Maybe they were never really my friends. These matters are difficult to assess. It is quite possible that my money temporarily bought me the friendship of both of them. Whatever the case, it was a small price to have paid and I would do it again. I learned a great deal through the experience and have stored away excellent memories. I hold no animosity toward either poet and if I meet them tomorrow I would greet them as long-lost brothers.
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AALBC.com’s 25 Best Selling Books
Fiction
#1 – Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark #2 – Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree #3 – Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane #4 – Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper #5 – Stackin’ Paper 2 Genesis’ Payback by Joy King #6 – Thug Lovin’ (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark #7 – When I Get Where I’m Going by Cheryl Robinson #8 – Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby #9 – The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane
#10 – Covenant: A Thriller by Brandon Massey
#11 – Diary Of A Street Diva by Ashley and JaQuavis
#12 – Don’t Ever Tell by Brandon Massey
#13 – For colored girls who have considered suicide by Ntozake Shange
#14 – For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree
#15 – Homemade Loves by J. California Cooper
#16 – The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper
#17 – Player Haters by Carl Weber
#18 – Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare
#19 – Stackin’ Paper by Joy King
#20 – Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey
#21 – The Upper Room by Mary Monroe
#22 Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark
#23 – Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark
#24 – Married Men by Carl Weber
#25 – I Dreamt I Was in Heaven – The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter
Non-fiction
#1 – Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable #2 – Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans #3 – Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane #4 – Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper #5 – Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant #6 – Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey #7 – The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight #8 – The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing #9 – The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson
#10 – John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History by Ahati N. N. Toure
#11 – Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley
#12 –The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
#13 – The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell
#14 – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
#15 – Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can’t Commit by RM Johnson
#16 – Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins
#17 – Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
#18 – A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
#19 – John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
#20 – Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris
#21 – Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice
#22 – 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino #23 – Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul by Tom Lagana #24 – 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields
#25 – Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class by Lisa B. Thompson
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A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family thats about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrinas inexorable winds is the voice of Wards narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her familys raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brothers blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt. Her fathers hands are like gravel, while her own hand slides through his grip like a wet fish, and a handsome boys muscles jabbered like chickens. Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isnt usually just metaphor for metaphors sake. She conveys something fundamental about Eschs fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, whats salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
By Melissa V. Harris-Perry
According to the author, this society has historically exerted considerable pressure on black females to fit into one of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless Mammys behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to white folks domestic concerns, often at the expense of those of her own familys needs. By contrast, the relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry points out how the propagation of these harmful myths have served the mainstream culture well. For instance, the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for black females to feel a maternal instinct towards Caucasian babies.
As for the source of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their own bodies during slavery given that they were being auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 — The Founding of Haiti
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update 31 December 2011
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