ChickenBones: A Journal
for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes
www.nathanielturner.com 
When we were poor /we laughed, we cried we remembered history / and those who died now we live without that pride.
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Books by Latorial Faison
Secrets of My Soul: A Collection of Poetry / Immaculate Perceptions
28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History I / 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History II
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When We Were Poor
By Latorial Faison
When we were poor we had more ambition more self respect we knew the value of a week’s paycheck When we were poor we praised one God shared one love had a common goal to rise above When we were poor we laughed, we cried we remembered history and those who died now we live without that pride. Now that we have we seem to have forgotten the requirements, the dreams and the core of self respect instilled way down inside us. Now that we have it’s often every man for himself to get and to get more so that for the next man there’s not much left. Now that we have we love less, we hate more the sisters and brothers we walked hand in hand with when we were poor.
posted 10 September 2005
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Latorial Faison, a native of Courtland, VA, studied English and Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and VA TECH. Faison has been writing poetry since adolescence, but in March 2000 she walked onto the literary scene as the founding editor of Poetically Speaking, a globally read online poetry magazine. In 2001 Faison’s first book collection of poems, Secrets of My Soul, was published. This collection set the stage for what would follow in later publications such as Immaculate Perceptions in 2003, and two collections, 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History I (2006) and 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History II ( 2008).
Faison has been published in various literary journals, magazines, anthologies, and online publications. She has been published in the US and abroad in the following: Anointed Magazine, Whispers of Inspiration, The Digital Drum sponsored by BET, Facets Literary Magazine, RiverSedge, The Nubian Chronicles, Seeker Magazine, Timbooktu, The Taj Mahal Review, Red River Review, and many other venues.
Latorial’s story “On Good Ground” is featured in the 2003 NAACP winner, Keeping the Faith, a collection of nonfiction essays on love, courage, healing and hope from Black America edited by Tavis Smiley. Her work has also received notice on radio shows like The Tom Joyner Morning Show and PowerTalkFM.com.
She has taught for various colleges and universities in the U.S. Currently, Faison is an Online Instructor for DeVry University. Latorial Faison is currently accepting speaking engagements as well as opportunities to appear and read poetry. For information on upcoming events, visit the EVENTS page of this site. Invite Latorial Faison, Poet & Author, to your next community, church, school, college, or university event. http://latorial.faithweb.com/Biographyl
Visit her online at http://www.latorialfaison.com/
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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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Edited by Marie Evans
This unique volume provides each writers reflection on her work, an evaluation of that writer by two perceptive critics, and detailed biographical and bibliographical data. Included are Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and ten other outstanding writers.
This unique volume provides each writers reflection on her work, an evaluation of that writer by two perceptive critics, and detailed biographical and bibliographical data. Included are Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and ten other outstanding writers.
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A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
By Natasha Trethewey
Beyond Katrina is poet Natasha Tretheweys very personal profile of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and of the people there whose lives were forever changed by hurricane Katrina. Trethewey spent her childhood in Gulfport, where much of her mothers extended family, including her younger brother, still lives. As she worked to understand the devastation that followed the hurricane, Trethewey found inspiration in Robert Penn Warrens book Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South, in which he spoke with southerners about race in the wake of the Brown decision, capturing an event of wide impact from multiple points of view. Weaving her own memories with the experiences of family, friends, and neighbors, Trethewey traces the erosion of local culture and the rising economic dependence on tourism and casinos.
She chronicles decades of wetland development that exacerbated the destruction and portrays a Gulf Coast whose citizensparticularly African Americanswere on the margins of American life well before the storm hit. Most poignantly, Trethewey illustrates the destruction of the hurricane through the story of her brothers efforts to recover what he lost and his subsequent incarceration.
Renowned for writing about the idea of home, Tretheweys attempt to understand and document the damage to Gulfport started as a series of lectures at the University of Virginia that were subsequently published as essays in the Virginia Quarterly Review. For Beyond Katrina, Trethewey has expanded this work into a narrative that incorporates personal letters, poems, and photographs, offering a moving meditation on the love she holds for her childhood home.
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By Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
Somebody has to tell the truth sometime, whatever that truth may be. In this, her début full collection, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie offers up a body of work that bears its scars proudly, firm in the knowledge that each is evidence of a wound survived. These are songs of life in all its violent difficulty and beauty; songs of fury, songs of love. ‘Karma’s Footsteps’ brims with things that must be said and turns the volume up, loud, giving silence its last rites. “Ekere Tallie’s new work ‘Karma’s Footsteps’ is as fierce with fight songs as it is with love songs. Searing with truths from the modern day world she is unafraid of the twelve foot waves that such honesties always manifest. A poet who “refuses to tiptoe” she enters and exits the page sometimes with short concise imagery, sometimes in the arms of delicate memoir. Her words pull the forgotten among us back into the lightning of our eyes.Nikky Finney / Ekere Tallie Table
Her Voice / Mother Nature: Thoughts on Nourishing Your Body, Mind, and Spirit During Pregnancy and Beyond www.ekeretallie.com
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By Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly noted the collection’s “lyric brilliance” and “political impulses [that] never falter.” A New York Times review stated, “Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we’re alone in the universe; it’s to acceptor at least endurethe universe’s mystery. . . . Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief. Smith’s pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the books first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant.” Life on Mars follows Smith’s 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet’s second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African Americans.
The Bodys Question (2003) was her first published collection. Smith said Life on Mars, published by small Minnesota press Graywolf, was inspired in part by her father, who was an engineer on the Hubble space telescope and died in 2008.
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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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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery
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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 3 July 2012
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Related files: Sounds of Blackness When We Were Poor Revelations Chaos After Katrina . . . A Poem for Rudy Terry Gross Interviews Natasha Trethewey