Category: Book Reviews

So, here I am again…the fork in the road, the Shakespearean crisis: "to be or not to be" a book reviewer. Beverly Rowley's book, Relationship Contract: Let's Keep it Real, places me at, yet, another crossroad dilemma where - as a book reviewer - I am forced to reconsider my time and efforts, whether worth the sacrifice, or …

Continue reading "Book Review: Beverly Rowley’s ‘Relationship Contract’: Let’s Keep It Real’"

Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt. –James Baldwin   Oh! She looks so...delightfully bored, Janaya Black, I thought to myself as I stood in front of the odd collection of writers and folk-alike, a linear view beyond Versandra Kennebrew, …

Continue reading "Book Review: Beautiful Rage: The Break of Dawn’ by Janaya Black"

I’d spent the best of the brisk evening at Camelot discussing art, literature, Detroit, and the direction of my novel with my good friend and confidante, (Ypsilanti poet) Nina Simmone. It was getting late and Nina opened another bottle of wine while I looked through her small collection of books, searching for something to soothe my dreary …

Continue reading "Book Review: Infants Of The Spring, by Wallace Thurman"

I arrived in Michigan later than I’d originally planned. I made an appointment with Sylvia Hubbard to discuss matters of writing, books, literary criticism, my practicum and, once again, the current state of urban literature. I was also eager to talk to Sylvia about her collection of short stories, the purpose of literature, and my new …

Continue reading "Book Review: Anatole Broyard, When Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir"

Short story writing is a serious craft to learn because it requires a certain mastery of time, space, and reflection. Not many do it well and those who dare to go out on this crooked and unstable limb often return broken, bewildered and bruised. Katherine Mansfield, Zora Neale Hurston, and Charles Bukowski are three of several …

Continue reading "Book Review: Nariscia Lott, Weepin’ Willa: A Collection of Short Stories"

Here’s what I’m tripping on: I ran into author Sydney Molare on Facebook, checked out some excerpts of her hot new joint, I Want It Now, was impressed, and solicited her to send me a review copy. In between here and there, a new Kerouac bio, a re-read of Herb Boyd’s Baldwin bio, managing my extensive …

Continue reading "Book Review: Devil’s Orchestra, by Sydney Molare"

It was Paul Maher’s Kerouac biography - or the Ann Charter one - or maybe even Kerouac’s On The Road that first introduced me to William S. Burroughs. Burroughs was one of the key figures of the Beat Generation which Kerouac served (quite reluctantly) as chairman of the board. Like Ginserg, Kerouac, Huncke, and a few others, Burroughs …

Continue reading "Book Review: Queer, by William S. Burroughs"

Kafka said that what we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the …

Continue reading "Book Review: Window 2 My Soul, by Yusef Shakur"