April 18, 2009
Porch Stories: A Grandmother’s Guide to Happiness
by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Atria Paperback
Award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction Jewell Parker Rhodes is a master of her craft, understanding how both real and imagined stories can serve as a pathway to enlightenment. Porch Stories is Rhodes’s tribute to her beloved grandmother, a real account of the love she received and the lessons she learned.
Jewell Parker Rhodes was left in the care of her father and his mother when her own mother abandoned the family. Grandmother Ernestine’s house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was home to four other grandchildren as well. And while its crumbling bricks, lack of air-conditioning, and neighborhood rodents meant that life was anything but easy, the family house was filled with love. Everyone on their street knew and loved Grandmother Ernestine; men would tip their hats and children would rush up for a hug any time she was outside.
No one loved Grandmother Ernestine more than Jewell, who would pass up a movie with her cousins to sit outside on Ernestine’s front stoop and listen to her stories and her words of comfort. Jewell would later move out West to live with her mother and father as they reattempted marriage. But that was a short-lived experience. Before long, she was back in the loving arms of her grandmother, whose wisdom and warmth gave all of her children the tools to overcome the ordinary and extraordinary challenges life brings. Porch Stories, described by Rhodes as “an intergenerational love song,” is a loving tribute that is at once candid, courageous, and reverent — a literary portrait of family love that readers from all walks of life can see in themselves.
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April 4, 2009
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Triangular Road: A Memoir
by Paule Marshall
Basic Civitas Books
Available January 26, 2010 in Paperback
In Triangular Road, famed novelist Paule Marshall tells the story of her years as a fledgling young writer in the 1960s. A memoir of self-discovery, it also offers an affectionate tribute to the inimitable Langston Hughes, who entered Marshall’s life during a crucial phase and introduced her to the world of European letters during a whirlwind tour of the continent funded by the State Department. In the course of her journeys to Europe, Barbados, and eventually Africa, Marshall comes to comprehend the historical enormity of the African diaspora, an understanding that fortifies her sense of purpose as a writer.
In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Paule Marshall offers an indelible portrait of a young black woman coming of age as a novelist in a literary world dominated by white men.
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March 31, 2009
Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story
by Asha Bandele
Available 02/01/09
From the author of The Prisoner’s Wife, a poetic, passionate, and powerful memoir about the hard realities of single motherhood
When Asha Bandele, a young poet, fell in love with a prisoner serving a twenty-to-life sentence and became pregnant with his daughter, she had reason to hope they would live together as a family. Rashid was a model prisoner, and expected to be paroled soon. But soon after Nisa was born, Asha’s dreams were shattered. Rashid was denied parole, and told he’d be deported to his native Guyana once released. Asha became a statistic: a single, black mother in New York City.
On the outside, Asha kept it together. She had a great job at a high-profile magazine and a beautiful daughter whom she adored. But inside, she was falling apart. She began drinking and smoking and eventually stumbled into another relationship, one that opened new wounds. This lyrical, astonishingly honest memoir tells of her descent into depression when her life should have been filled with love and joy. Something Like Beautiful is not only Asha’s story, but the story of thousands of women who struggle daily with little help and much against them, and who believe they have no right to acknowledge their pain. Ultimately, drawing inspiration from her daughter, Asha takes account of her life and envisions for herself what she believes is possible for all mothers who thought there was no way out–and then discovered there was.
January 14, 2009
Life Against All Odds
by Alfred Cave
Available 11/26/08
Before he was in his teens, Alfred Cave was already an orphan, a runaway, and a homeless person on the mean streets of New York. Five decades later, he would retire after heading the nation’s largest supported work program, as well as his own successful federal contracting company. This amazing story is recounted in Against All Odds, a stirring account of Cave’s surviving and thriving despite all life could throw at him.
A wide-ranging yet intimate memoir, Against All Odds follows Cave beginning with his earliest recollections in a violently racist South. But the deep-seated attitudes there don’t disappear when he escapes to the North and, later, the U.S. Army. Cave brings readers along for the ride as he rises to a Major, commanding two battalions and receiving a Bronze Star. It’s a revealing glimpse into an ambitious African American soldier’s unique experiences navigating the military’s hesitantly integrated ranks, and the challenges of raising a family along the way. As he returns to the private sector, Cave continues to document an engrossing cast of characters – some endearing, others maddening – that readers won’t soon forget.
January 10, 2009
The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir
by Jennifer Baszile
Available 01/13/09
A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in “integrated,” post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s.
At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people “have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people.” When she asked her teacher about it, it was confirmed as true. The next morning, Jennifer’s father accompanied her to school, careful to “assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom.”
This was the first of many skirmishes in Jennifer’s childhood-long struggle to define herself as “the black girl next door” while living out her parents’ dreams. Success for her was being the smartest and achieving the most, with the consequence that much of her girlhood did not seem like her own but more like the “family project.” But integration took a toll on everyone in the family when strain in her parents’ marriage emerged in her teenage years, and the struggle to be the perfect black family became an unbearable burden.
A deeply personal view of a significant period of American social history, The Black Girl Next Door deftly balances childhood experiences with adult observations, creating an illuminating and poignant look at a unique time in our country’s history.
January 8, 2009
This is a 4CD, 3hrs 20min unabridged audio book (memoir) by Rosemary Kariuki Machua. It is a very captivating story of a daughters quest for justice after three decades of her father’s brutal political assassination. Rosemary Kariuki Machua tells of her memories of the father a Kenyan Independence political heavy weight.
At the time of his death, J.M Kariuki was a millionaire. It is not clear how he amassed his fortune so quickly without somehow engaging on the same vice he was very critical of. His family did not benefit from his wealth, as Kenyatta’s government conspired against them. J.M Kariuki is remembered by Kenyans as a hero as he came to represent the force against the evils that have hemmed the country to this day.
In this powerful audio book, Rosemary clearly points out the sprouting of a culture of political imperialism, impunity and abuse of fundamental human rights among others, that many African governments are grappling with today.
Most interesting, is how emotions (love, anger, jealousy, resentment, and forgiveness) play out against backdrop of social, religious and political realms.
This truly is a must listen to.
January 2, 2009
The Ties That Bind: A Memoir of Race, Memory and Redemption
by Bertice Berry
Available 02/03/09
When novelist Bertice Berry set out to write a history of her family, she initially believed she would uncover a story of slavery and black pain, but the deeper she dug, the more surprises she found. There was heartache, yes, but also something unexpected: hope. Peeling away the layers, Berry came to learn that the history of slavery cannot be quantified in simple, black-and-white terms of “good” and “evil” but is rather a complex tapestry of roles and relations, of choices and individual responsibility.
In this poignant, reflective memoir, Berry skillfully relays the evolution of relations between the races, from slavery to Reconstruction, from the struggles of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power 1970s, and on to the present day. In doing so, she sheds light on a picture of the past that not only liberates but also unites and evokes the need to forgive and be forgiven.
