A Letter From The Editor

The Brother in the Street vs the Professors

Former film actor and president of the United States, Ronald Reagan was famously noted, among other things, for his eleven commandment: never speak ill of a fellow Republican.

African American intellectuals have also had their eleven commandment, just as famous, just as rigorously enforced, and just as far reaching: never speak ill of lower class blacks, no matter what their transgressions.

These down trodden survivors were Malcolm X’s defiant, beloved field hands, who for centuries bore the main blunt of the slave master’s angry whip; and yes, who often cried out in unspeakable pain, “God Damn America!”

In the 20th Century, the poet Langston Hughes once even suggested that they were Americas “authentic Negroes,” much to the great dismay of the great New World intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois.

The number runners were seen by starry-eyed romantics like Hughes, in their poems and novels, as mathematical geniuses; and street corner hustlers, muggers and petty thieves were imbrued with tons of “mother wit,” and revolutionary fervor.

This centuries old love fest has ended, however.

A cottage industry has recently emerged, led by such people as former San Jose State professor Shelby Steele, former UC Berkeley professor John Mc Whorter, television commentator Juan Williams and everyone’s favorite television father, the beloved Bill Cosby.

These social critics now see their major role as not to confront white racism, but to go hard upside the head of our once bold, handsome, dashing, noble hero.

Now a counter attack comes in the form of an interesting polemic, Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, by Professor Houston A. Baker, reviewed ably by Senior editor Herb Boyd in this issue. Boyd takes serious issue with some the comments made by Baker, but read the book and judge for yourself.

***

A few years ago I read book entitled February House. By Sherrill Tippinss , about a small group of now well-known poets, literary editors, novelists, memoirist, assorted hangers-on, and the fame stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, all living together during the war years in the 40’s, in a large house in Brooklyn near the docks.

Despite my admitted biases as someone from the Bronx, and who for most of my time growing up, considered Brooklyn a strange, foreign country (everyone knew that we were the true New York tough guys, and they were mere fronting, jive-assed sissies-- pretenders, posers), my undying love for the literary history of my hometown caused me to thoroughly enjoyed this book.

It brought to real life that fact that Brooklyn was a magnet for writers and artists long before Williamsburg became a lone outpost for former East Village hipsters and artists, unceremoniously exiled from Manhattan by the new money class.

So I was delighted, and immediately seduced by novelist Jan Alexander’s interesting look at the writer’s Carson McCullers stay in New York; and among other things, the time she spent in that house close to the colorful docks of wartime Brooklyn.

There is much, much more. I love this issue. To borrow as line from the television chef Emeril Lagasse, we truly “kicked it up a notch .” Thank you for picking us up.

Fred Beauford

Editor-in-Chief/publisher

Neworld Review
Vol. 1 No 4 2008

Editor-in-Chief/publisher

Fred Beauford

Art Director

Bernie Rollins

Associate Publisher/Advertising Director

Margaret Johnstone

Senior Editors

Herb Boyd

Angela Dodson

Contributing Editors

Jane M McCabe: books

James Petcoff: theater

Rona Edwards:film

Barbara Snow

Loretta Campbell

Madeleine Mysko

The Neworld Review is a publication of Morton Books, Inc. Rob Morton, President/CEO, in cooperation with Baby Mogul Productions, 78 Randolph Avenue, Jersey City, N.J. 07305, 201-761-9084. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers. Manuscripts should be accompanied by a self-stamped envelope. Online submissions ar3e accepted at pubauthor@aol.com. Neworld Review cannot be held responsible for unsolicited photographs or manuscripts.

All correspondence to:

Fred Beauford

Editor-in Chief/Publisher

78 Randolph Avenue

Jersey City, N.J. 07305

Telephone 201-761-9084

fbeauford
@hotmail.com

Archives

VOL. 1 NO. 1 2008

VOL. 1 NO. 2 2008

VOL. 1 NO. 3 2008

This Month's Articles

ESSAY

The Not so Lonely Hunting of Carson McCullers in New York

Review By Jan Alexander

Mick Kelly, Carson McCullers’ teenaged alter ego in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, is a teenaged girl who longs to get out of her unnamed Southern mill town – a town very much like McCuller’s hometown of Columbus, GA - and travel to a foreign country where there is snow, something she figures she will do when .....Read More

ESSAY

Grumpy Old Black Men

or Bill Cosby's Lament

An Essay By Fred Beauford

“ The most racist group in America is older black men.
You know pleasant Willie down at the store. Well Willie
ain’t so pleasant. He hates your guts!”
--Joke told by Chris Rock

Downtown Los Angeles is a place that is not suppose to exist. In the minds of many who live in the Los Angeles area---even some who work here, and occasionally play here, and should know.....Read More

REVIEWING

The Force of Destiny

---A History of Italy Since 1796

By Christopher Duggan

Reviewed By Jane M. McCabe

On May 13th or 14th of this year Shimon Peres, the ninth and current president of Israel, gave a speech to Israeli youth in which he said, “Forget history. It doesn’t matter.” He encouraged them to do unimaginable things and told them that they live in an altogether new age, the age of technology, in which the old paradigms are no.....Read More

REVIEWING

Seize the Irony

Can a "change" executive find true fulfillment in a quick switch to "soccer mom" mode?

Carpool Diem

By Nancy Star

Reviewed by Madeleine Mysko

I wonder why I opened Nancy Star’s Carpool Diem in the first place. It couldn’t have been the front cover (on which the protagonist of the novel is described as a “soccer mom” dealing with “Ambition, Backstabbing, Politics”), because ordinarily I wouldn’t give ten minutes to the subject of soccer moms, except....Read More

REVIEWING

Three Thousand Years to Here
With or Without a Man

Manless in Montclair
by Amy Edelman

Peony in Love
by Lisa See

Reviewed by Barbara Snow

At first glance, Manless in Montclair by Amy Edelman and Peony in Love by Lisa See are completely different types of books.

Manless in Montclair is a memoir set in current time and describes a woman's journey where she has rather extraordinary freedom and power to live independently and to openly seek relationships without stigma.

Peony in Love is a deeper and more intricate work. It is set in mid-seventeenth century China......Read More

REVIEWING

Trouble In Newark

Wesley's lady on a mission finds more than enough intrigue

Of Blood and Sorrow
By Valerie Wilson Wesley

Review by Lloretta H. Campbell

“I smelled her perfume before I saw her. It was heady and sweet, like ripe peaches left out in the sun to rot.” (page 1) says the redoubtable Tamara Hayle private investigator/ sister/heroine of this mystery. It is the most recent installment by the gifted Valerie Wilson Wesley in the Tamara Hayle series, which includes Dying in the Dark, The Devil Riding, and When Death Comes Stealing.

In her own inimitable style, Hayle immediately cherchezs la femme. The femme in question, one Lilah Love, is posing as a mother distraught over the “kidnapping” of her infant daughter, Baby Dal. The fact that.....Read More

REVIEWING

Misplaced Modifiers

A Dissection of Black Intellectuals That Bears Dissecting

BETRAYAL_How Black Intellecturals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Movement
by Houston A. Baker, Jr.

Review by Herb Boyd

....Read More

BEYOND BOOKS: Film

Rona's Reel Take

Fear To Live By
The Hollywood Dream

By Rona Edwards

Our society today is based on fear. Fear of walking down a street alone. Fear of not having enough money, of losing the one you love or worse, of never finding love at all. Fear of losing your job, having no savings to fall back on, and losing everything you have. We lock our doors at night for fear of someone creeping in and.....Read More

BEYOND BOOKS: Theater

Of Farce and Pretense
Seduction With a Touch of the Absurd

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

By Joe Orton

Review By James Petcoff

What we saw at WHAT’s production of “What The Butler Saw,” at The Julie Harris Stage this summer started a bit off kilter. It took a good ten minutes for the cast to fully inhabit their British accents and to coordinate the manic rhythm of the dialogue, but once these obstacles were overcome, the cast led us into a ripping good two hours of .....Read More