Country Way East, Okemos MI, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 I believe that novels have the mystical ability to enter our lives at a moment in which we find ourselves standing at the crossroads in-search of something that change our hearts and minds in effort to teach us a deeper meaning of life and love and …
Book Review: ‘Scribes of Redemption: Letters from an Incarcerated Father to His Incarcerated Son’ by Ahjamu Baruti
Life is funny like that: the road we take, Serling’s signpost ahead, the mis-directed arrow with no GPS capability, point indiscriminately missed. This is it - the lesson - deeply imbedded in Ahjamu Baruti’s collected notes, Scribe’s of Redemption: Letters from an Incarcerated Father to His Incarcerated Son. Baruti’s letters are passionate and profoundly insightful; his sociopolitical observations pensive and intellectual, tender and sharp. He is a scholar, …
Book Review: Monique Mensah’s ‘Inside Rain’
WINNER OF THE 2010 BEST BOOKS AWARD FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN FICTION!! So, as a matter of course, I found myself disenchanted, repulsed, and put off by the very thing that I once felt obligated to promote and support…. However… Monique Mensah’s new novel, Inside Rain, has sparked new interest in my once waning faith that …
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Book Review of Tiffany Nicole Robinson’s debut novel ‘My Own Terms’
Tiffany Nicole Robinson’s debut novel My Own Terms was meant to be a wondrously triumphant tale of one woman’s attempt to re-discover the meaning of life and what it means to be happy, single, and free. But, because of bad writing, underdeveloped characters, and lack of a strong plot (or any plot for that matter) Robinson’s book reads more like …
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Check out my book review of ‘Race and the University: A Memoir’, by George Henderson in Winter 2011 of Journal of Negro Education…
Dying on the Edge: Maggie, Pathology…and Francine’s Craft
Craft does a marvelous job opening this ambitious novel in proper “multicultural” context (even though Carroll City is fictitious) giving us a bird-seye view of rich culture, smells, tastes, interiors, all meshed in a darlingly spiced martini-mix of Creole du Jour. Even more interesting is the descriptive pictures she gives of Maggie French. This following passage - the opening of the book - is as good as it gets: Maggie French was beautiful in the eyes of most beholders, especially in men’s eyes. Even cheap mirrors reflected it. At times, Maggie felt empowered by her beauty, but at other times it failed her. Her hair was thick and silken, light ash brown, with long,thinned bangs and blunt cut-cut to shoulder length. Her alabaster skin had a hint of cream. Her eyes changed from pale violet to deep purple, framed by thick, dark, long lashes. She had an arrogantly perfect nose and lusciously full lips in an oval face. Face carried her sensuous five-foot-seven-inch body like the model she once had been.
BOOK REVIEW: SHAKA SENGHOR’S ‘CRACK: VOLUME I’!!
Eldridge Cleaver did it. Yusef Shakur did it. His daddy, Ahjamu Baruti, did it too. Tookie William’s did it with Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir, and Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Live From Death Row put us right at the frontlines of penal life. So it is no wonder to get another former ghetto misfit, funky roustabout, fractured miscreant, bad-boy ex-felon to …
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Book Review: ‘Propelling Faith’ by Dr. Janice Connor
Brenda noticed me and grabbed my hand to join her for a drink. What’s up Push baby? Nothing much, ’bout ta get my head straight. She knew that meant relaxing with friends over drink, smoke and talking plenty cash-money shit amidst thick billowy smoke-rings. I really did not want to sit with Brenda because she …
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Book Review: ‘Miles Away… Worlds Apart’ by Alan Sakowitz
Alan Sakowitz’s book arrived on my doorstep just as I began to digest the whole Bernie Madoff reality. I was confused: how can a man swindle folk out of a billion dollars and end up in jail? How does one like Madoff NOT plan for the get-a-way day? How does a man with a billion dollars …
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Book Review: ‘The Life and Thoughts of Shaun Pascal’ by N. S. Ugezene
Perhaps Nadalina could have rescued The Life and Thoughts of Shaun Pascal from imminent obscurity, but this internal love affair fails because Ugezene is unable to transcend his own limited ideology of life, people, spaces and places, in order to reflect more deeply, to examine with passion. As a result, all we really get is a distillated abstraction of …
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what about the kennedys 
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