What Makes an Alpha Male?


Willie: To the ladies, what are the qualities you look for most in alpha men? More important, what first impression when meeting turns your clock? Africa: It’s horrible to get into “lists” of qualities but since you said ‘first impressions,’ I kind of like that better my brother. For me, a man who is able …

Book Review: MG Hardie: It Ain’t Just The Size


MG Hardie’s recent book, It Ain’t Just The Size, had sat on my desk a full week after I’d retrieved it from the post office.  (I decided to read IAJTS before my hedonistic trip to San Diego, just after I’d completed Svetlana Lavochkina’s interesting short story, Like a Real Man.) Hardie’s book will be the last …

Book Review: bell hooks, Ain’t I A Woman: black women and feminism


  In Bell Hooks’ seminal book, Ain’t I A Woman: black women and feminism, she is angry, disappointed, highly critical, and leaves no stone unturned. Everyone and everything falls under her critical magnifying glass of historical observation of white male patriarchal oppression, critically examining the failure of various historical freedom movements to include black women. Hooks argues …

Book Review: Christopher Reid and Valerie J. Lewis Coleman, The Forbidden Secrets of the Goodie Box


 Instead of reading Dale Ray Lewis’s highly anticipated book of short stories, My People’s Waltz; instead of reading Cheryl Lynn Greenberg's To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression; instead of taking a chance with Robert Goolrick’s new book,  A Reliable Wife; instead of taking time to read Anton Chekhov’s “Murder” …