Richard Prince’s Book Notes™: 10 for the Holidays
Despite recent news, being a journalist involves more than enduring layoffs and grieving fallen heroes and heroines. Many have been hard at work over the past year, practicing their craft in book-length form. Here are the nonfiction fruits of some of those labors, by or about black journalists; some are suitable for holiday giving. More will follow in coming days.
Jason Miccolo Johnson
Photographer Jason Miccolo Johnson, well known to those who attend conventions and other events of the National Association of Black Journalists, where he often photographs, produced “Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African American Worship Experience,” (Bulfinch, $29.95), a coffee-table adornment that claims to be “the first photographic book to capture the essence and rhythms of the black Christian church.”
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Johnson, a freelancer who has been a Navy photographer and ran USA Today’s photo lab for 3 1/2 years, has for 25 years been the official general conference photographer for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. When the Washington Informer asked about his hopes for the book, he said, “I hope that people will return to the Black church, take a second look. I hope that they will have a greater appreciation and value for the Black church and I hope to leave a legacy for the next generation to see where we came from.”
The late Gordon Parks, the Renaissance man who died in March, wrote the foreword, and longtime journalist Barbranda Lumpkins Walls, known for her work as a USA Today and Heart and Soul magazine editor, is one of its essayists.
The book uses “a visual ‘call-and-response’ style of shooting,” Johnson writes in the preface. "e;’Soul Sanctuary’ is about witnessing the story of African American worship experience through focusing on the subjects’ hands and eyes, one of my photographic trademarks. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then truly the hands are the tour guides.”
A traveling exhibition of “Soul Sanctuary” continues until March at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va.
Yvonne Latty
Yvonne Latty, a reporter who took a buyout last year at the Philadelphia Daily News and teaches journalism at Villanova University, wrote “In Conflict: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out on Duty, Loss, and the Fight to Stay Alive” (PoliPointPress, $24.)
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In 2004, Latty wrote “We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans from World War II to the War in Iraq.” This is a follow-up, featuring the stories of 25 soldiers.
“The soldiers Latty has chosen are, by design, a robustly diverse lot — black, white, Hispanic, Native American, straight, gay, young and middle-aged, country kids and ghetto youths, old-stock citizens and recently arrived immigrants, from every corner of the nation, and of every political stripe,” Art Carey wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Latty, 44, admires them all.”
“Her journalistic model was Studs Terkel, Latty says. She interviewed all but three soldiers in person, using a tape recorder to capture their stories,” spending a lot of time at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
The publisher’s Web site has excerpts from the book. Latty’s work is being workshopped into a play that will premiere at Temple University in Philadelphia in the fall of 2007, Latty told Journal-isms.
Adam Clayton Powell III
Adam Clayton Powell III, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication who has reported for and directed local broadcast news operations over four decades, wrote “Reinventing Local News: Connecting Communities Through New Technologies.” (Figueroa Press, $15, paper), a 111-page report that concludes:
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The best local news on television may not be broadcast; the best local news on television might not even be on television; the best local news on radio was on all-news and news-talk stations; the best local news on the Internet was on the Web sites of local daily newspapers; the best local news in all media was associated with the growth of “micro-local news”; media managers underestimate younger audiences; local news is now global; and local news needs innovation.
“This report is a snapshot from a twelve-month period starting in mid-January 2003, focusing primarily on the U.S. No one really knows the future, so predictions by the most august or humble must be taken with a very large grain of salt,” Powell writes. “However, this can be a source of joy, as the fictional mathematician Valentine exclaimed with pleasure in Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Arcadia’: ‘It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.'”
William C. Rhoden
William C. Rhoden, New York Times sports columnist, wrote “Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete” (Crown, $23.95).
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“It’s basically a book about black power,” Rhoden told Journal-isms. “Here’s a mainstream publishing company and I am with a mainstream newspaper, and I’m writing about black power — and we can do that,” he said. The book, which goes into paperback in July, “makes the cogent argument that black athletes’ ‘evolution’ has merely been a journey from literal plantations — where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings — to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs,” the dust jacket says.
“There’s a hunger for this conversation,” Rhoden said he has found. “I think people realize that when people know their history, they act with a whole different level of responsibility: You are the last of a long line of African Americans who played athletics and knew they represented the hopes and aspirations of a people.”
Executives in the front offices of pro teams have ordered 40 and 50 copies to distribute to players; the book has been on the New York Times best-seller list, and Rhoden said he has found a receptive audience on college campuses. He says his model was the 1967 work by Harold Cruse, “The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.”
Michelle Singletary
Michelle Singletary, the no-nonsense syndicated personal finance columnist for the Washington Post, has “Your Money and Your Man: How You and Prince Charming Can Spend Well and Live Rich” (Random House, $19.95).
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“This book is aimed at women in two different situations,” Singletary writes in her introduction.
“It’s for women who need to start paying attention to the red flags that indicate they’ve got some serious money issues with their boyfriends or fiances. It’s also for married women who know that issues precipitated by money may be weakening their marriage or, even worse, destroying it.”
“Self-help books don’t get more practical than this one,” Bruce Brinkman, a certified financial planner, wrote in the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star. But Anya Kamenetz, in a review appearing in the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, said, “Some readers may be turned off by her frankly Christian outlook, with scriptural quotes throughout. And some of her rules, summed up at the end of each section, seem more like moral judgments. She’s against cohabitation, even for engaged couples; she thinks soliciting cash gifts for your wedding is ‘avaricious’; and she doesn’t like prenuptial agreements.”
The paperback is to be published Jan. 30.
The Trotter Group
DeWayne Wickham, the columnist for USA Today and Gannett News Service who served as editorial director, and Wayne Dawkins, a Hampton University journalism faculty member who was its editor, compiled “Black Voices in Commentary: The Trotter Group” (August Press, $15.95, paper), a collection of pieces by 23 black columnists, including two from Journal-isms.
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Included are Betty Winston Bayé, Lisa Baird, Dawkins, Lewis Diuguid, Gregory Freeman, Loretta Green, Derrick Jackson, Vernon Jarrett, Tannette Johnson-Elie, Eugene Kane, Jerry Large, Wil LaVeist, Dwight Lewis, Norman Lockman, Errol Louis, Peggy Peterman, Richard Prince, Rochelle Riley, Gregory Stanford, Adrienne Washington, Rod Watson, Tonyaa Weathersbee and Wickham, all past or present members of the Trotter Group. Their namesake is William Monroe Trotter, legendary publisher of the Boston Guardian, who challenged President Woodrow Wilson in the last century.
“In the first decade of the 21st century, some of the most powerful voices of the black intelligentsia can be found on the pages of newspapers,” Wickham writes in the introduction.
“These black journalists are also the conscience of America. They are the road posts that guard against this nation losing its way, and the shepherds who insist that its democratic ideals be enjoyed by all Americans.”
Juan Williams
Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio and political analyst for Fox News Channel, wrote “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It” (Crown, $25.)
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One of the most controversial books by a black journalist this year, criticism of it prompted Williams to write an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times in rebuttal.
Williams told Journal-isms: “‘Enough’ is a New York Times best-seller. Even more gratifying, the book has started a national conversation. People are opening the door that was closed because of fear of ‘airing dirty laundry’ or giving support to ‘right wing demagogues’ who don’t have the best interests of black people at heart. ‘Enough’ goes past the fear of bigots to say that people who care about important issues in black America have to talk, have to think about the future and act now. With in-depth reporting, the book embraces the controversy over Bill Cosby’s comments on the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision and offers people steps for self-empowerment. That includes discussions of how to improve schools that educate minority children; how to strengthen families; how to speak honestly about a hip-hop culture that celebrates criminals.
“The reaction to the book has been great. Talks at bookstores have been overflowing and people have been almost universally supportive. The criticism has come from Al Sharpton and some intellectuals. Sharpton called me the ‘black Ann Coulter.’ The intellectuals make the case that systemic racism cannot be excused for its complicity in the problems facing poor people, especially poor black people. American media has been open to the debate, especially cable. Liberals and conservatives, both black and white, have had me on their programs. My message is that racism is a fact, but the inspiring story of black America is about overcoming, and we have to tap into the great tradition of black leadership that emphasized uplift.”
A paperback edition is planned.
Gary Younge
Gary Younge, a black British journalist who covers the United States for the Guardian newspaper in England, wrote “Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States” (The New Press, $17.95, paper). It offers a perspective one rarely encounters in the States—or elsewhere, for that matter.
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“In general, the foreign correspondent is the quasi-anthropological white guy with a safari hat and for obvious reasons, that’s not my perspective,” Younge told Journal-isms. “As I say in the introduction, when Americans say, ‘If it wasn’t for us you’d be speaking German’ (only white Americans ever say this) I usually respond: ‘No, if it wasn’t for you I’d be speaking Yoruba.’
“So my critique of America in this particular moment is borne from an experience of colonialism that forces a parallel critique of European colonialism too. In other words, while I was glad that the French opposed the war, I have had too many bad experiences in France to crack open a bottle of Chablis. I think maybe that comes through most in the war pieces like ‘The limits of generosity,’ ‘The US, race and war’ and ‘Blame the white trash.’
“On the other hand, my assessment of race here is that of an outsider . . . ‘Different Class,’ which suggests that African Americans have increasingly little interest and even an antagonistic relationship with the rest of the black diaspora, has raised the most eyebrows. It’s a subject me and my wife, an African American who I met at the [Washington] Post 10 years ago, go backwards and forwards on a lot.”
Not by black journalists, but of interest:
David Margolick
David Margolick, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and former legal affairs writer at the New York Times, has “Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink” (Knopf, $26.95), a 2005 hardcover that was released in paperback in October ($15.95). The tale of the epic Louis vs. Schmeling heavyweight championship bouts of 1936 and 1938 was on many a list of last year’s best books. But Margolick told Journal-isms he was “disappointed there hasn’t been more reaction in the African American community. This guy deserves to be commemorated,” he said of Louis. “People have short memories, and the 1930s seems remote.”
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Joyce Carol Oates wrote in the New York Times that, “When the second fight, of June 1938, pitting the 24-year-old American Negro titleholder, Louis, against the 32-year-old Schmeling, the Nazis’ star athlete, was fought at Yankee Stadium, the contest was as much between the United States and Nazi Germany as between two superbly skilled athletes. There were almost 70,000 spectators and an estimated 100 million radio listeners throughout the world: ‘the largest audience in history for anything.'”
What makes the book especially relevant to journalists of color is its liberal use of contemporary material from the black press. “I can’t imagine any other sports book relying so heavily on the black press,” Margolick said. “It was an eye-opening experience. It is a scandolously underutilized resource.” He said he spent hours in New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, reading —and later quoting from — the work of such black journalists as Roi Ottley of the New York Amsterdam News and Al Monroe of the Chicago Defender, about whom he is still looking for more information. He interviewed the late journalists Vernon Jarrett and Frank Bolden. The book “is a slice of America’s racial history. It’s a portrait of the greatest sports hero in history.” Muhammad Ali “was one of many when Ali was around,” he said. By contrast, “Joe Louis was it. He was the only hero. He had the stage to himself,” Margolick said.
“When Ali was around, blacks had made their way, however haltingly or incompletely, into many areas in mainstream America. In Louis’s time, there was virtually no one else who bridged the racial divide, and no one else of such heroic proportions in his own community. He was pretty much all there was. That’s what made him so remarkable, and why it’s amazing he’s been so forgotten.”
Justine Priestley
Justine Priestley is author of “By Gertrude Wilson: Dispatches of the 1960s from a White Writer in a Black World” (Vineyard Stories, $21.95)
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Who knew? The New York Amsterdam News, the Harlem weekly, had a white female writer on its the staff in the 1960s. Priestley used the pen name Gertrude Wilson. This book is a collection of 76 newspaper columns on race, race relations and the modern civil rights movement that she wrote for the Amsterdam News.
“How did Justine Priestley, an upper-class, white lady and an upper eastside New Yorker living on Park Avenue, become a regular writer for this leading and prestigious Black weekly? The Martha’s Vineyard Times wrote a year ago. “She was clearly unique and distinguished in this position. She lived the last 25 of her 83 years here on Martha’s Vineyard where she wrote the book. She died on the Island in August 2004.”
“Priestley wrote: ‘As I read the paper, I was appalled at its singular bias. All White people, it seemed to me, were described as bigoted, blind to the evils of blatant prejudice and outright persecution of [Blacks]. I complained to Jimmie Hicks,” the editor, “saying that his paper was one-sided and as biased as the biases he decried.’
“‘If you feel that way,’ Hicks said, ‘Why don’t you write some columns from a [White] point of view?’
“The column was called ‘White on White.’ It carried an editor’s note: ‘The writer of this column is a white Park Avenue mother with a keen perception of today’s world who has moral courage to voice her reaction to events around her.’ After a year she gained general reporting assignments in addition to the column.”
