ChickenBones: A Journal
for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes
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The “land” was the property at Jerusalem. The land for which Daddy left no will. It was done purposively, I
believe. He built a large house, eight rooms downstairs and several low ceiling rooms upstairs. His idea was
that anyone who went to the city and had problems could always come home. They would have a place to return.
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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
34
October 23, 1985
Dear Doc,
How are you I am not So well. But I do hope this may Find you doing OK. I haven’t heard from you since second in September. I dont Know Whether you sent the money or not. But I diden get it.*
I dont feel like riten But I want you to Know I am still alive.** Listen we are starting on to get this land straighten out.*** Are you still interested in helping us if So let me Know right a Way.
PS I going to Baltimore the 2nd of November. So if you answer this letter Rite to Lucinda address I hope I feel like going. So let me hear from you, Bye.
From Mother
love you
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Commentary
* I cant recall why she was late getting the money. Maybe I was tardy in sending it.
**At the writing of this letter, Mama was seventy-four. I was indeed preoccupied with many emotional problems. I was involved with three women: Ella Jean, Shequita Cyprian, and a poet Mona Lisa Saloy. My head was all over the place. I was also considering returning to school to get my doctorate in English. I also wanted to write a biography of Marcus Christians life and thought the doctoral work would sustain further work on Christian. I, however, did not know how I would support myself undertaking such a task. My contract with UNO ended in the spring of 1986.
***The “land” was the property at Jerusalem. The land for which Daddy left no will. It was done purposively, I believe. He built a large house, eight rooms downstairs and several low ceiling rooms upstairs. His idea was that anyone who went to the city and had problems could always come home. They would have a place to return. If the property was in anyones name, that person would undermine the purpose for which he built such a large house. Though the house and property served that purpose for me and Annie, they both have caused a lot of bad feelings among Mamas children and grandchildren who desired to gain sole control of the house and property.
Yet, because Daddys legacy exists in the form that it does, it has held the family together, though in an odd sort of way. For both house and property are his memorials to himself and to his life. In this sense, he still lives in our lives and we can not get beyond that, nor should we desire to do so. My estimation is that the situation will never be resolved, unless one of the sisters or their descendants are willing to be bought out. Otherwise there will never be an agreement and there will continue to be until the last family member breathes his last breath, family tension over Daddys memorial to himself. In a manner, it is a fight over his body.
I excused myself from the struggle. I have had enough. I want to get along with all my people. For certain I still have a sentimental attachment to the place, for that is where I was raised and grew up. For me, it is sacred ground and returning there intermittently revitalizes me. For my roots run deep in that soil. Both the living and the dead speak to me when I am there. They speak to me of both their pains and their joys. There is no better place in the world than at this Jerusalem. For me, it has a much deeper meaning and significance than that Jerusalem in the so-called Holy Land.
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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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Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label ‘trafficked’ does not accurately describe migrants’ lives and that the ‘rescue industry’ serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. “Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality.”Lisa Adkins, University of London
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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.WashingtonPost
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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
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update 31 December 2011
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