Richard Prince’s Book Notes™: Book-Buying Season
A number of black journalists have been toiling away at nonfiction books throughout the year, in hopes that they’ll be remembered when book-buying season approaches. Here is some of their work, along with books about black journalists or of special interest to journalists of color.
John Blake
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John Blake, reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has “Children of the Movement” (Lawrence Hill Books, $24.95)
Blake, 40, tells Journal-isms: “Black journalists often get ‘ghettoized’ at our jobs. We’re typically assigned to cover civil rights stories which, over the years, have seldom varied in the way we present them. ‘Children of the Movement’ does something difficult. It presents a fresh angle on a topic that seems to have been thoroughly covered – the civil rights movement.
“I profile the children of the civil rights leaders such as Dr. [Martin Luther] King, MLK III, Stokely Carmichael and Julian Bond. But I also profile the children of segregationist leaders such as Gov. George Wallace” of Alabama. “My question throughout the book: How are the children of these iconic figures shaped by their parents’ legacies?
“The answers I discovered say a lot about how misunderstood the movement is and how so many civil rights families are still grappling with the wounds they suffered during that era.”
Steven D. Classen
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Steven D. Classen, assistant professor of communications studies at California State University, Los Angeles, has “Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969” (Duke University Press, $74.95 hard cover; $21.95, paper).
Last March, we reported that historically black Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., was to expand its journalism program this fall and establish a communications department. It was one of the ongoing benefits of a landmark media case in Jackson, Miss. In 1970, the Federal Communications Commission gave a biracial nonprofit organization control of Jackson’s WLBT-TV, taking it from a life insurance company. The station had systematically ignored news and programming about African Americans, complainants said. In a landmark ruling in 1965, the courts ruled that public interest groups have a right to challenge broadcast licenses and that the commission must rule on the complainants’ charges.
A white academic, Classen has written one of two recent books about that case and that era. The other is “Changing Channels” by Kay Mills, as a story about both books in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger noted in May.
The money for the new Tougaloo College program comes from profits from the biracial organization’s sale of the station to a second group, also biracial. CBS-TV’s Randall Pinkston is also grateful. “He was one of the first beneficiaries of an affirmative-action hiring push begun after a citizen’s group challenged WLBT’s license in a test case. The success of that challenge spurred TV stations around the country to unlock doors for black journalists,” as another Clarion-Ledger story reported.
Ellis Cose
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Ellis Cose, contributing editor at Newsweek magazine and author of “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” and six other previous books, returns with “Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge” (Atria, $22).
“Why are aboriginal people around the world demanding apologies and satisfaction for actions that go back decades and, in some cases, centuries? Why are some black Americans obsessed with the idea of reparations for slavery? Why do people insist that memories of the Holocaust be kept alive? The answer, of course, is that the past matters. It shapes the present no less than a mother shapes a child,” Cose writes.
Such is the premise of Cose’s short (199-page) exploration that takes him from South Africa to East Timor, interviewing subjects and instructing the reader in lessons learned.
“All over the world, buried bones are being dug up — in Iraq, in Peru, in Rwanda, in Bosnia,” Cose concludes. “And it is not just to turn the remains over to grieving families — though that is generally one of the purposes. There is also a growing awareness that those bones hold important information, information that can be of inestimable value to societies struggling to learn from their mistakes.”
Lewis W. Diuguid
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Lewis W. Diuguid, columnist, editorial board member and vice president for community resources at the Kansas City Star, has “A Teacher’s Cry: Expose the Truth about Education Today” (Universal Publishers, $25.95, paper)
Diuguid spent four years, from 1995 to 1999, at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kan. The experience led to more than 100 columns, many of which are reproduced here.
“I have fought the devil and invested quite a chunk of change to get this published,” Diuguid told Journal-isms. “The reason is the theme: To improve public education, parents and all other adults need to become more involved in all schools and schools need to be more open to people, making them the centerpiece of the community. The book takes a pick ax to No Child Left Behind, and it talks about how that underfunded legislation adds to the bullying and mistreatment of teachers. The book quotes a principal who says when you don’t feed the teachers they will eat the children. Students of color are the ones suffering the most.”
Lolis Eric Elie
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Lolis Eric Elie, local columnist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, has edited “Cornbread Nation II: The United States of Barbecue” (University of North Carolina Press, $17.95, paper) for the Southern Foodways Alliance, which compiles the best of Southern food writing.
Elie and a photographer researched America’s barbecue culture in 1993 while both were on the road with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. The result was the handsomely packaged and elegantly written “Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country” (1996).
New Orleans-born Elie still loves barbecue. In his introduction to this collection, he writes that many have written about barbecue, but “few of them approach the subject with any appreciation of the seriousness of barbecue history and sociology. While these books start off from the assumption that barbecue is a saleable subject, they often fail to recognize the extent to which any serious study of barbecue must of necessity contain within it a wide range of insights about American history and culture. So this anthology contains information that, while not necessarily new, is often overlooked.”
“I am also hoping that the selection of these pieces is a step toward the crafting of a Southern geography so precise and nuanced as to be beyond the capabilities of any cartographer,” he writes at another point. “So this anthology is about the South of tradition, in which funerals and food naturally go together . . . where the celebrated chefs are not always men in toques, but old Southern cooking women . . . with traditions so old and otherworldly as to be scarcely recognizable to many of us . . . “
Cecil Harris
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Cecil Harris, a freelance sportswriter who has worked for The Hockey News, The Sporting News, Newsday and the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., has “Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey” (Insomniac Press, $22.95).
“In my predominantly black neighborhood, nobody played hockey, nobody watched hockey and nobody who looked like us played hockey — or so we thought,” Harris writes. Yet he got hooked on it. But he said, “It seemed I always had to justify my affinity for hockey,” and thus, “I began to wonder how black hockey players felt in the same environment.
“Each black player, I found, has had to wage a personal battle for acceptance and respect. Some eventually receive it while others never do. But to every black man determined to make a way in professional hockey, self-respect has always mattered more. Facing abuse that is verbal, physical or psychological because of their colour [the publisher is Canadian] has been an unfortunate reality for almost all of them. How black players dealt with that reality, and continue to deal with it, is what makes each one unique. But what unites them is a sheer love of the game and a desire to make the ice smoother for those who follow in their skate marks.”
It is the first book of its kind, Harris says.
John Head
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John Head, a writer and lecturer and former editorial columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who has also worked at the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, has ““Standing in the Shadows: Understanding and Overcoming Depression in Black Men” (Broadway Books, $22.95).
This is the kind of book to put away for a less celebratory time, perhaps. Yet it can inspire stories for other journalists to pursue. Head tells a personal story about his own dealings with depression, even as he basked in success as a journalist. But, he says, the black community is in denial about an illness it often minimizes as “the blues” or “having a nervous breakdown.” He also explores the relationship of racism to depression in black men, citing fledgling research.
“This book is a plea for black men with depression to walk out of the shadows, to stop suffering in silence, and a plea for our people to remove the stigma attached to mental illness,” he writes. “This book urges the criminal justice and social services systems to seriously consider depression’s effect on the behavior of African American men, and to factor in that effect in formulating policies aimed at changing the behavior.
“This book argues that our culture and our history in this country make black men especially vulnerable when depression strikes. We are less likely to seek the help of mental health practitioners. When we do seek help, we are more likely to be misdiagnosed, improperly medicated, and/or offered treatment that lacks cultural sensitivity and therefore is less effective than it could be.”
Chester Higgins Jr.
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Chester Higgins Jr., a photographer at the New York Times since 1975, offers “Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer’s Journey” (Doubleday, $29.95), his sixth book.
“This is a story about my life as a photographer, my growth as an artist, and my search for individual and collective identity, and about how the Spirit has come to influence this process,” Higgins writes in this coffee-table book of text and black-and-white photos. The first half is a retrospective of his childhood, which includes a time as a child preacher in New Brockton, Ala., as well as his career. The second section recounts his adult journeys, including his visits to Africa.
On his Web site, Higgins, 58, says that “Civil rights was the catalyst that started me photographing. Photography came into my life as I was becoming more and more aware that one did not have to accept racism – one could fight it. I began to see photography as a vehicle for my own personal growth.
“. . . Because the positive in the African American community is not being looked at enough, I concentrate on what is neglected and goes unseen. I am not needed to tell the negative part of the story because so many people tell it so well. The negative point of view has a purpose, as does the positive. The negative can encourage humanitarians to make change. But I believe that real, lasting change comes from within. I want to provide a positive model – to show what can be and inspire change from within.”
Denene Millner, Angela Burt-Murray, Mitzi Miller
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Denene Millner, articles editor at Parenting magazine; Angela Burt-Murray, assistant managing editor at Teen People magazine; and Mitzi Miller, an associate editor at Jane magazine, have collaborated on ““The Angry Black Woman’s Guide to Life” (Plume, paper, $12).
In one chapter of the 146-page collection, the trio discusses “Our Sisters in the Struggle: Angry White Women.” They include Barbara Walters, Martha Stewart, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Joan Rivers, Sinead O’Connor, Pink, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Roseanne Barr, Joan Crawford, Arianna Huffington, author Candace Bushnell, Courtney Love and Lorena Bobbitt (misspelled as “Bobbit,”) the woman who in 1993 cut off her husband’s private parts.
Nicholas Patler
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Nicholas Patler, a white “struggling writer and speaker” who did his 2001 graduate thesis at Harvard on William Monroe Trotter, has “Jim Crow and the Wilson Administration: Protesting Federal Segregation in the Early Twentieth Century” (University Press of Colorado, $31.95).
“On November 12, 1914, William Monroe Trotter, editor of the Guardian newspaper, went to the White House to confront President Woodrow Wilson,” writes Derrick Z. Jackson on the Web page of the Trotter Group, an organization of African American columnists. “Trotter had supported Wilson’s election, but lynching was flaring up, and segregation was more rigid than ever. Trotter asked Wilson where he stood.
“Wilson replied: ‘Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit. . . . Your manner offends me.’ A 45-minute argument ensued during which Trotter said: ‘Two years ago, you were regarded as a second Abraham Lincoln. . . . Now we colored leaders [who supported Wilson] are denounced in the colored churches as traitors to our race.'”
“The argument made the front page of The New York Times. . . . Trotter was perhaps the most ‘rude’ African-American journalist this nation has produced. “
In this book, Patler “presents the first in-depth study of the historic protest movement that challenged federal racial segregation and discrimination during the first two years of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency,” the publisher says. “Patler provides a thorough examination of the two national organizations that led these protest efforts — the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and William Monroe Trotter’s National Equal Rights League — and deftly contextualizes the movement, while emphasizing the tragic, enduring consequences of the Wilson administration’s actions.”
Patler is collaborating on a screenplay on Trotter’s life.
Georgia Scott
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Georgia Scott, an art director at the New York Times, has “Headwraps: A Global Journey” (Public Affairs, $35).
Released just before last Christmas, this coffee-table book has eye-popping photographs. The NABJ member explains how it came about in the book’s publicity material:
“In 1994, my attempts to learn how to tie my own headwraps inspired me to investigate their origins. I started by interviewing immigrants and was surprised to learn many had little knowledge of their own traditions. I also called cultural institutions and scoured libraries, but still found almost no information. No one, it seemed, had ever written about headwraps.
“In 2000, I took a leave of absence from the New York Times, mapped out an itinerary, cashed in my stock, and bought a stack of plane tickets five inches thick. I set off for a trip across five continents and a dozen seas with the singular, determined purpose of documenting the world’s headwraps. Along the way, I got a rash from bed bugs, ate a heaping bowl of fish-lip soup, took almost 4,000 photographs, and logged more than 55,000 miles of travel. I also saw lots and lots of headwraps. This book is the result of that adventure: the world in headwraps.”
Craig Seymour
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Craig Seymour, a former staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who has written for Vibe magazine and now is on the staff of Atlanta’s alternative Creative Loafing, has “Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross” (Harper Collins, $24.95)
“The book basically grew out of my longtime love for Luther’s music,” Seymour told Journal-isms. “I’d interviewed him in the past and, after his stroke, I thought it was a perfect time to look back on his life and pay tribute to his artistry. I think other black journalists should read it because it sheds light on one of the most important black pop culture figures of the past 25 years.”
Juan Williams
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Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio and commentator for Fox News, has “I’ll Find a Way or Make One: A Tribute to Historically Black Colleges and Universities” (Amistad, $35), written with Dwayne Ashley, president of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.
This 453-page book is filled with profiles of historically black colleges and universities, but also goes back to slavery — when black captives were forbidden to learn to read — to provide historical context for the quest of African Americans for education.
“To be a black person without an education is to find independence and freedom always out of reach,” Williams, author of “Eyes on the Prize” and a biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, writes in the foreword. “Segregationists knew this as surely as they knew that night-riding Klansmen and indiscriminate lynching served to intimidate any black soul seeking to stand on equal ground with fellow Americans. History has revealed they were right to fear educated black people. The trained black mind is the cornerstone of insitutions created to advance black freedom, ranging from black churches to black businesses, political and civic groups, and, of course, black colleges.”
The book even addresses a current debate over why some African Americans with Ph.D.s insist on being called “Dr.”: Citing stereotypes about blacks, the foreword says, “The best rebuttal for any charge of stupidity is a degree, preferably a degree that confers the title of ‘doctor’. . . . To be an educated black man or woman is to spit in the devil’s eye.”
All royalties go to the Marshall Scholarship Fund, which assists students attending public black colleges and universities — not all of which are members of the United Negro College Fund.
Not by or about black journalists, but of interest:
Emily Bernard
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Emily Bernard, a University of Vermont faculty member who edited the letters of writers Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, has edited “Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships” (Amistad, $23.95), a book perfect for the spirit of Unity: Journalists of Color.
Reminiscent of Claudine C. O’Hearn’s 1998 book “Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural,” Bernard has put together a collection of writers whose essays describe their friendships with a person of another race. While their writing styles vary, the pieces do plumb racial subtleties as they explore various combinations: white and black, Latino and white, black and Asian. For many readers, it will serve as an introduction to these writers. The full-fledged journalists include Sandra Guzman, former editor in chief of Latina magazine; and Somini Sengupta, now a correspondent in Africa for the New York Times.
Aaron McGruder
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Aaron McGruder, creator of “The Boondocks” comic strip, and Reginald Hudlin, the writer and director, have collaborated on “Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel” (Crown, $25 hard cover; $13.95 paper).
How’s this for a plot: Predominantly black, poverty-ridden East St. Louis, Ill., decides to secede from the Union after its citizens are disenfranchised en masse in the 2000 election.
President Bush decides not to stop the secession, on the advice of Secretary of State Colin Powell but over the objections of Vice President Cheney. (Condoleezza Rice explains to Bush the difference between “succeed” and “secede.”) But things get out of hand. The city-state, which picks a new name for itself, a new flag, new currency and the like — all reflecting its citizens’ tastes — strikes gold as a place for shady characters from abroad to launder money.
The idea was first presented as a screenplay, but no one bought this “‘revolutionary’ work of political satire.” So it is a “graphic novel,” a hard-cover, book-length comic strip without balloons. As with “The Boondocks” comic strip, if some of the material were in other-than-black hands, there might be an outcry. But only black minds could have produced most of this, and it is clear that the novel is written with love. It won’t be accused of heavy-handedness, as “The Boondocks” often is.