Natalie Moore talks The South Side

Greetings! My apologies for the long hiatus between postings; but I was out of the country for several weeks, visiting the West Bank in Palestine.

We've had an exciting summer: an author talk by Ethan Micaeli on The Defender: how the legendary black newspaper changed America; AAL discussions of The Sellout and Democracy in Black, both of which had huge turnouts. We're keeping up the momentum with our September book, Natalie Moore's The South Side. As you look what it means to live in a middle class black neighborhood, you may want to read this excellent  article, Affluent and Black; Still Trapped by Segregation, from the New York Times (thanks to Carolyn Laughlin for sharing!)

In other news...we're moving!! Starting in October, the African American Lit group will meet at the new Gibbs-Morrison Center at Dodge and Church in Evanston. Times and dates will remain the same. There is ample parking both on street and in the lot across the street on Church.


annddd...in African American cultural news, there are some great movies coming out featuring African American stories. The Black Harvest Film Festival continues this week through September 1st at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Hot tickets include Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger, and Maya Angelou's' And Still I Rise.

August Wilson fans: set your calendars for December 16th and the release of the first ever feature film based on the Century Cycle plays: Fences starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, and starring most of the cast from the acclaimed 2010 Broadway revival. Group outing anyone?

More Library news: next spring we're launching a community read based on The Other Wes Moore. Wes Moore will be speaking in Evanston courtesy of the Family Action Network, (which is bringing Congressman John Lewis to Evanston this coming Monday August 29th!) We'll be looking for local organizations: churches, clubs, school groups etc. to host discussions, so please let me know if you are interested!

We'll catch up September 20th, 7 pm at the Library for The South Side. If you haven't yet gotten your copy, call or stop by the 2nd floor desk: 847-448-8620. And remember, October 25th at Gibb-Morrison for Cory Booker's United!

See Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison; Meet Mrs Paul Robeson

Did you know that legendary photographer Gordon Parks and legendary author Ralph Ellison were friends, and collaborated in the late 40s, early 50s? I sure didn't, but thanks to the Art Institute of Chicago, I do now. If you haven't already, check out "Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem", running through August 28th, which exhibits Parks' photographic illustrations of scenes from Ellison's novel, which originally appeared in Life magazine. As the exhibit states:

This exhibition reunites for the first time the surviving photographs and texts intended for the two projects, including never-before-seen photographs by Parks from the collections of the Art Institute and the Gordon Parks Foundation and unpublished manuscripts by Ellison. Revealed in these frank depictions of Harlem is Ellison and Parks’s symbiotic insistence on making race a larger, universal issue, finding an alternative, productive means of representing African American life, and importantly, staking a claim for the black individual within—rather than separate from—the breadth of American culture.

Have you signed up for the African American Interest newsletter yet? You can get my personal selections of interesting African American themed books every month by clicking here.

At the moment I'm reading...

Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson

Tags:  /  Biographies & Memoirs

Check the Library Catalog

Eslanda "Essie" Cardozo Goode Robeson lived a colorful and amazing life. Her career and commitments took her many places: colonial Africa in 1936, the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, the founding meeting of the United Nations, Nazi-occupied Berlin, Stalin's Russia, and China two months after Mao's revolution. She was a woman of unusual accomplishment—an anthropologist, a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist, and an internationally sought-after speaker. Yet historians for the most part have confined Essie to the role of Mrs. Paul Robeson, a wife hidden in the large shadow cast by her famous husband. In this masterful book, biographer Barbara Ransby refocuses attention on Essie, one of the most important and fascinating black women of the twentieth century. 

Let me know what you think! Possible book discussion for the fall?

See you all on June 21st for The Sellout! Several copies still available at the 2nd floor desk; call 847-448-8620 to get one.

Jam on the Vine

This month we're reading Jam on the Vine, LaShonda Katrice Barnett's fascinating and gripping novel of life as a female African American journalist in the early 20th century. A perfect complement to the age of "intersectionality", Jam on the Vine features Muslim characters, gay and bi-sexual characters, and  feminist characters, unafraid to speak out and to be themselves. Like role model Ida B. Wells, Ivo and Ona, the heroines of  Jam on the Vine take on racism without apology. In her fictional newspaper, Ivoe boldly states:

  "Whitecappers, Ku Klux Klan, police, and lynchers beware! The black worm has turned. The United States has done much to stoke the embers of unrest. But a race that has furnished thousands of the best soldiers that the world has ever seen will no longer be content to turn the left cheek when smitten upon the right. Vigilante rule shall not prevail".

When we think of African Americans during this time period, we often  leap to stereotyped images of quivering terrified victims, or docile servants. It's good to be reminded that even during the worst of the Jim Crow years, "The Nadir" of African American life, there were courageous men, AND women who stood up to injustice and tyranny.

For a brilliant nonfiction take on the significance of African American Newspapers, read The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America.

See you May 17th! We've still got copies of Jam on the Vine at the 2nd floor desk.

Evanston Literary Festival Starts This Week

Welcome to the 2nd annual Evanston Literary Festival! Co sponsored by the Chicago Book Expo, Northwestern University's Creative Writing program, Bookends and Beginnings bookstore  and Evanston Public Library, the festival is bringing over 50 author readings, book discussions, exhibitions and other literary events to Evanston between May 4th and May 14th. Quite a few will be of interest to readers of African American themed literature...

"Writing American Race History Today"
 Saturday, May 7, 3 to 4:30 pm Bookends and Beginnings Bookstore 1712 Sherman Ave., Alley #1, 

Northwestern religion Professor Sylvester Johnson NU law professor and legal historian Steven Lubet discuss writing about America's racial past in light of today's controversies. How does an understanding of the past help us understand race relations in America today? And how do race relations today influence how historians research and write history? Professor Johnson's main area of study is African-American religion--see his African American Religions, 1500-2000 (Cambridge, 2015). Professor Lubet has written several books on slavery, abolitionism, and emancipation in mid-19th century America, among them Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (Harvard, 2010). Their conversation will shed light on the turbulent past and the no less turbulent present in race relations in America.



"Writing From Life With Parneshia Jones, Megan Stielstra, and Ross Ritchell"

Saturday, May 7, 5 pm Bookends & Beginnings, 1712 Sherman Ave., Alley #1
The lines between “fact” and “fiction” are often blurred in literature, and the places where the two intersect can be both goldmine and minefield for writers. How do individual writers use life experiences in their work? Are some subject off-limits for publication? This event features a poet (Jones), a novelist (Ritchell), and an essayist (Stielstra) discussing these questions and reading from their works.

#LoveStories: A First Look Reading

Sunday, May 8, 3-4:30 pm, Community Meeting Room, Evanston Public Library
Join us for a special sneak peek! Inspired by #BLACKLIVESMATTER  #LoveStories by Gloria Bond-Clunie, Marsha Estell and Tania Richard is a three part play exploring the breadth of love in a world of deadly conflict. This is a world premiere play commissioned by Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre.
Gloria Bond-Clunie is the founder of Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre and an internationally recognized playwright. Marsha Estell is an accomplished actor and playwright; FJT produced her hit play Heat and her critically acclaimed one-woman play Big Butt Girls and Other Fantasies/The Remix. Tania Richard’s brilliant one-woman play Truth Be Told was commissioned and produced by FJT; she too is an accomplished actor and playwright.
Read more: #LoveStories: A First Look Reading 
 

 

Amina Gautier Reads from The Loss Of All Lost Things

Monday, May 9, 7 pm, Community Meeting Room, Evanston Public Library
The fifteen stories in The Loss of All Lost Things explore the unpredictable ways in which characters negotiate, experience, and manage various forms of loss. They lose loved ones; they lose their security and self-worth; they lose children; they lose their ability to hide and shield their emotions; they lose their reputations, their careers, their hometowns, and their life savings. Often depicting the awkward moments when characters are torn between decision and outcome, The Loss of All Lost Things focuses on moments of regret and yearning.  


  Amina Gautier, PhD., is the author of three  short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy and the The Loss of All Lost Things. At-Risk was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Award, The First Horizon Award, and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction Award. Now We Will Be Happy was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award and a USA Best Book Award. The Loss of All Lost Things was awarded the Elixir Press Award in Fiction.


 An Evening of Storytelling and Sharing: Exploring Racism
Friday May 13th, 6 pm potluck, 7pm program Unitarian Church of Evanston, 1330 Ridge Ave 

Professional storytellers Susan O'Halloran and Mama Edie Armstrong will tell their stories beginning at 7pm after a potluck supper in the Unitarian Church Sanctuary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

Saturday, May 14, 4 pm Community Meeting Room, Evanston Public Library

Contributors to the new Truthout essay collection, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States—including Kelly Hayes, Sarah Macaraeg, Page May, Maya Schenwar, and Monica Trinidad—read from the book.

African American culture and literature is strong in Evanston!

This spring we are experiencing a mini-Renaissance of African American cultural events here in Evanston...and much of it is at the Evanston Public Library! A few highlights I hope you'll attend...

A Celebration of Belizean Culture

Sunday, April 10, 3-5 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library

Belize Culture and Heritage Association (BCHA) in conjunction with the Evanston Public Library brings you an afternoon of fun-filled Belizean activities and treats. Join us for an array of folk songs, dance and childhood games and  come experience some of the savor/sweet treats of Belize. It’s bound to be a blast! So come out, bring the entire family and let us introduce you to Belize and all its beauty.

 

African Presence in Mexico

Sunday, April 17, 3 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library

Africa has had a long and extensive influence in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. From Yanga, the leader of the first successful slave revolt, to some of Mexico’s most famous heroes of independence, the African presence cannot be denied. Paulina Nava of the National Museum of Mexican Art  will trace the Moorish influence of Spain, to the African Diaspora in the Americas, and highlight some of Mexico's forgotten history. This lecture corresponds to the National Museum of Mexican Art’s 2006 national touring exhibition, The African Presence, and is part of the Big Read and Latino Americans 500 grant projects.

 

African American Literature Discussion: Negroland

Tuesday,  April 19, 7 pm, Small Meeting Room, Main Library
Born in upper-crust black Chicago, daughter of a pediatrician and a socialite, Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among the "colored aristocracy" blue-vein society. Since the nineteenth century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of "Negroland", a small region of African America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.
Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments--the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of postracial America--Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions.
Copies of Negroland will be held at the 2nd floor desk. Please register or call 847-448-8620 to get a copy.
For more information, including related  interviews, videos and other websites, see the AAL blog.

Check out our new monthly newsletter, African American Interest!

The Black Male Experience in Evanston: a Panel Discussion

Saturday, April 23, 4-6 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library

What is it like to be a Black male in Evanston? Join us in this panel discussion as we explore the history of the Black Male in Evanston, their current experience, as well as challenges and opportunities this poses for Evanston in the future. Come hear personal testimonies as well as what the latest research says of race relations among Evanston families, in our institutions, and across our communities. Share in exceptional stories of exceptional men whose experiences shed light and questions on race relations today. Panelists include Bennett Johnson, President, Path Press, Inc., Lionel Jean-Baptiste, Circuit Court Judge of Cook County, Dino Robinson, Founder of Shorefront and the Shorefront Legacy Center, Dereck Woods, 28-year volunteer coach of F.A.A.M. (Fellowship of Afro-American Men), and co-founder, Black Men Against Violence, and Nathan Norman, Youth/Young Adult Outreach Worker, City of Evanston Illinois Government.


Part of the Quality of Mercy Project, a three-month public programming initiative which invites our community to discuss the complex issues arising from the themes of Dead Man Walking, the play by Tim Robbins, adapted from the book by Sister Helen Prejean, playing at Piven Theatre Workshop April 16-May15. A collaborative effort of six key community partners: Piven Theatre Workshop, Chicago Innocence Center, Evanston Art Center, Evanston Twp High School, Literature for All of Us, and the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy.

Documentary: Whatever Happened to Idlewild?

Sunday, May 1, 3 - 5 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library

Once called “The Black Las Vegas,” Idlewild was a wondrous place where African Americans could vacation and relax during America’s segregated Jim Crow era. Idlewild was an incredibly vibrant community from the 1920s through 1960s, but it is now far from being the luxury haven that it once was. The documentary “Whatever Happened to Idlewild” showcases the former “Black Eden” and proposes answers to what has come of the historical resort town. Following the screening of the film, we invite you to participate in a stimulating discussion led by director Coy Davis.
Cosponsored by Shorefront Legacy Center of Evanston.

#LoveStories: A First Look Reading

Sunday, May 8, 3-4:30 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library
Join us for a special sneak peek! Inspired by #BLACKLIVESMATTER  #LoveStories by Gloria Bond-Clunie, Marsha Estell and Tania Richard is a three part play exploring the breadth of love in a world of deadly conflict. This is a world premiere play commissioned by Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre.
Gloria Bond-Clunie is the founder of Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre and an internationally recognized playwright. Marsha Estell is an accomplished actor and playwright; FJT produced her hit play Heat and her critically acclaimed one-woman play Big Butt Girls and Other Fantasies/The Remix. Tania Richard’s brilliant one-woman play Truth Be Told was commissioned and produced by FJT; she too is an accomplished actor and playwright. Part of the Evanston Literary Festival.

Part of the Quality of Mercy Project, a three-month public programming initiative which invites our community to discuss the complex issues arising from the themes of Dead Man Walking, the play by Tim Robbins, adapted from the book by Sister Helen Prejean, playing at Piven Theatre Workshop April 16-May15. A collaborative effort of six key community partners: Piven Theatre Workshop, Chicago Innocence Center, Evanston Art Center, Evanston Twp High School, Literature for All of Us, and the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy. 

This program is presented as part of the 2016 Evanston Literary Festival.


 

 

 

Amina Gautier Reads

Monday May 9th, 7:00 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library
The fifteen stories in The Loss of All Lost Things explore the unpredictable ways in which characters negotiate, experience, and manage various forms of loss. They lose loved ones; they lose their security and self-worth; they lose children; they lose their ability to hide and shield their emotions; they lose their reputations, their careers, their hometowns, and their life savings. Often depicting the awkward moments when characters are torn between decision and outcome, The Loss of All Lost Things focuses on moments of regret and yearning.

This program is presented as part of the 2016 Evanston Literary Festival.

 

Amina Gautier, PhD., is the author of three  short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy and the The Loss of All Lost Things. At-Risk was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Award, The First Horizon Award, and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction Award. Now We Will Be Happy was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award and a USA Best Book Award. The Loss of All Lost Things was awarded the Elixir Press Award in Fiction.

  

 

African American Literature Discussion: The Sellout

Tuesday, May 17, 7 pm, Main Library, Small Meeting Room
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality--the black Chinese restaurant.  Named one of the best books of 2015 by the New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal.
Copies of The Sellout will be held at the 2nd floor desk. Please register or call 847-448-8620 to get a copy.
For more information, including related  interviews, videos and other websites, see the AAL blog.  
Check out our new monthly newsletter, African American Interest! 

 

Fathers and Daughters: My Soul to His Spirit

Sunday, June 12, 3 pm - 4:30 pm, Community Meeting Room, Main Library

Author Melda Beaty reads from her compilation of stories and letters written by African American girls and women to their fathers. It gives voice to the sentiments of love, pain, disappointment, fulfillment, betrayal, and confusion for a diverse group of black women as they chronicle a journey of healing and redemptive love towards their fathers. My Soul to His Spirit: Soulful Expressions from Black Daughters to Their Fathers won the 2006 National Fresh Voices Award.

Girls and women in the community are invited to share their own stories an writings about their fathers at this event.

Beaty is an author, playwright, college English professor, and writing consultant.  Her debut novel, Lime (2012), explores notions of beauty and bonds of friendship set against the horrors of domestic violence. Her current play, Front Porch Society, which was read at The National Black Theatre Festival, delves into the complex lives of four elderly black women in rural Mississippi Delta on the eve of the 2008 presidential election.

 

The Land of Privilege: Margo Jefferson's Negroland

This month we're reading Negroland, Margo Jefferson's memoir of growing up light skinned, middle class and privileged in 1950s Chicago. She explains how despite the benefits of a comfortable lifestyle, she and members of her generation were under constant pressure to "uplift the race" not "show their color" or contaminate themselves by associating with lower class, often darker skinned African Americans.

In an interview with NPR's Fresh Air, Jefferson reveals that, ultimately, it was the Black Power movement that led her to question some of the tenets that she had grown up with: "Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with," she says. "That whole belief ... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness ... all of that just began to burst open."

Is the concept of "Negroland" a relic of the past, or do upper class African Americans still experience the  pressures Jefferson faced? And how strong is the class/color dividing line in 21st century Black America? We'll wrestle with these questions at our discussion on April 19th, 7:00 pm.

**Jefferson will be speaking as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival on April 30th . Her talk, accompanied by Darryl Pinckney, author of  Black Deutschland , is on "Style and the Black Bourgeoisie". Not to be missed!

Some books exploring similar terrain:

Black bourgeoisie by Franklin Frazier
The new Black middle class by Bart Landry
Two classic studies on black upward mobility and social culture.









Disintegration : the splintering of Black America by Eugene Robinson
Examines conflicts between 4 different subgroups within African American life: the "Abandoned" urban underclass; the "Mainstream" educated middle class; the super-rich, super elite "Transcendent"; and the "Emergent" population of mixed race and African/Caribbean immigrants.

The rage of a privileged class by Ellis Cose

 Looks at  the subtle forms of prejudice that black professionals endure: a black woman may be hired in public relations, but then whites will see the position as weak and nonintellectual; a black male lawyer hired to fill a quota may file brilliant briefs, but he'll be held back from a partnership. Written in 1993, but still pertinent.

Is Bill Cosby right? : or has the Black middle class lost its mind? by Michael Eric Dyson

Well, no one thinks Bill Cosby is right about anything these days, but this remains a provocative look at the "Afristocracy" and their disdain for low income urban Black Americans.

Oyeyemi's Racially Reimagined Fairy Tale

Greeting! Can't believe it's been nearly 3 months since I last posted! Thanks to everyone who attended the combined KeepintiReal/AAL discussion of My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, the gripping memoir by Jennifer Teege, an African/German woman who accidentally discovered that her  father was the Nazi commandant from Schindler's List.




For March, we are back to fiction with Boy Snow Bird, Helen Oyeyemi 's  "gloriously unsettling" re-working of the Snow White. In a small town in the mid-50s, the birth of a dark skinned baby girl unravels a marriage, a family and a town; and a young mother finds herself becoming the "evil stepmother" she never imagined she could be. Join us for the discussion next Tuesday March 15th at 7:00pm! We have copies available at the 2nd floor desk: call 847-448-8620 to reserve yours.


Some new books of interest...


Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
Sports historians Roberts and Smith  delve deeply into the little-known intricacies and tragic consequences of the close bond between the mentoring Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X and the young boxer Cassius Clay. As the authors tell the gripping personal stories of these two passionate revolutionaries and seekers, they cover Clay's genius for audacious self-promotion and strategic self-concealment, and Malcolm X's dream of resolving his increasingly dire conflict with the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad by bringing Clay and his burgeoning international fame fully into the fold. Vividly set within the coalescing civil rights movement, this incisive anatomy of a fatal friendship turns on the bitter irony that Clay, soon to become Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X became brothers in spirit by virtue of their shared insistence on equality and freedom in a racist society, only to be drawn to the Nation of Islam, which betrayed and terrorized them both, forcing them apart and ultimately murdering Malcolm X. Roberts and Smith portray both of these courageous and controversial, inspired and inspiring men with fresh, stinging clarity, and extend our perception of the interconnectivity of race, religion, sports, and media during this violent and transformative era, which is so very germane today.


The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, by Ethan Michaeli.
The 2nd Baptist Men's group will be reading this in June, but now is your chance to get a head start! As you may remember from reading The Warmth of Other Suns, The Chicago Daily Defender played a key role in spreading hope to African American residents of the Deep South during the Great Migration; letting them know about job opportunities, and keeping them in touch with friends and relatives how had moved north.For decades, it has chronicled Chicago, and indeed national black society offering an alternative perspective on the issues of the day. Micaheli's book is the first comprehensive history of this iconic newspaper.

Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution has Created a New American Majority , by Steve Phillips
A manifesto to those seeking to change the way politics plays out in America today. 51 percent of eligible voters in America today are progressive people of color and progressive whites. Phillips has a background in both politics and law, and here he lays out reasons why white politicians (mainly calling out the whole of the Democratic party) have stalled in producing effective social change stemming from the progressive movement's failure to utilize this new and diverse eligible voting majority. The book pulls no punches (there's a chapter titled, "Fewer Smart-Ass White Boys") but is ultimately hopeful.  This slim yet jam-packed call to action will be in demand, both because Phillips is a popular pundit and because the time is ripe for an upheaval in politics-as-usual.

Democracy in Black : How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, by Eddie Glaude

  It has been only a few months since Ta-Nehisi Coates struck the American nerve, in Between the World and Me, by pointing out that our racial history is more deeply ingrained in racism than Gunnar Myrdal suggested. Here Princeton scholar Glaude adds to that debate by equating our racist history to a basic gap in values, the notion that black lives matter less in this country and always have. He proves his point cogently, perhaps with less passion than Coates but with more than enough documentation to move the argument along this new and painful track. This is every bit as important a book as Coates' more personal account.

The Other Blacklist: The African American Literacy and Cultural Left of the 1950s, by Mary Helen Washington

Considering that any effort to achieve racial equality was viewed as subversive in the Cold War era, is it any wonder that so many black artists and writers were viewed as Communists? Yet very little has been written about the black artists and writers who were surveilled, investigated, and blacklisted because of their beliefs and their work. Literary scholar Washington remedies that neglect with this engrossing look at six artists: novelist and essayist Lloyd L. Brown, visual artist Charles White, playwright and novelist Alice Childress, poet and novelist Gwendolyn Brooks, novelist Frank London Brown, and novelist and activist Julian Mayfield.. Though some were Communist Party members and others not, they were all drawn to the Left's appreciation of black folk culture and support for the ideal of self-determination, themes that figured prominently in their work.