This Month's Articles
PROFILE
Amiri Baraka—The Last Beat Standing
by Herb BoydThere is a sign outside Amiri and Amina Baraka’s home in Newark. “9/11 was an inside job,” the sign proclaims, and the reaction it has stirred from various city agencies is in stark and disturbing contrast.....Read More
REVIEWING
Travels with Herodotus
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Reviewed by Jane M. McCabe
What a pleasure it is to review a book by one of my favorite writers, Ryszard Kapuscinski. Travels with Herodotus is the last book Kapuscinski wrote. After a long career as Poland’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, when he died in 2007, he had spent four decades reporting from Asia, Latin America and Africa and had written other six books, all worth.....Read More
A MEMOIR
Who I Am
An Excerpt from a Memoir
By Fred Beauford
Prologue
....And Mistakes Made Along the Way
Most people hate to admit to mistakes, especially the personal kind which could call into question the very essence of who they are, and how their personhood measures up to others. They have learned the hard lesson that others are just waiting to pounce, with unforgivable ferocity, when they point out a personal lapse in good judgment on their part: “Oh no, I must say, with no disrespect intended, but even you must admit that that was pretty dumb. That wouldn’t.....Read More
REVIEWING
Fanon: A Novel
By John Edgar Wideman
Reviewed by Brenda M. Greene
As we enter the world of Fanon: A Novel, John Edgar Wideman the reader is informed that in the Igbo tradition, a person doesn’t die until the living stop telling their stories. And so Wideman, in deciding to tell the imagined story of Fanon’s life ensures that Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, activist, writer and philosopher, will continue to live so that the world will know him, and will be able to read and study his views on postcolonialism and the nature of revolution in postcolonial societies.
Wideman, in expressing his admiration for Fanon, states ....Read More
REVIEWING
Beware of Geeks Baring Rifts
Life After Genius
by M. Ann Jacoby.
Review by Jan Alexander
I don’t know much about zeta zeroes, but I do know there’s something courageous about a first-time novelist who makes her hero a nerdy teenaged boy seeking his own brand of alpha-manhood. Theodore Mead Fegley’s rites of passage have nothing to do with sex, drugs, or revolution, but instead revolve around a 150-year old equation called the Riemann Hypothesis. Mead gets stoned on math. And as the title suggests,he’s a genius. He is 15 when he enters a great institution with the thinly disguised name of Chicago University. The Riemann Hypothesis, on the other hand, .....Read More
REVIEWING
From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books
By Arie Kaplan
Reviewed by Tim Lasiuta
Once upon a time, I read comic books for enjoyment. I used to buy Howard the Duck, Spiderman, Batman, Nova, and the 1970's Marvel westerns. That was then, this is now.
At the tender age of 40 plus, I have finally learned that the creators of my favorite books were Jewish! Not that it made a difference to my enjoyment that Bob Kane, Stanley Lieber, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and so many others had a Judaic background, but now that I know that, some pieces .....Read More
REVIEWING
Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting
by Terrie M. Williams
Reviewed By Loretta H. Campbell
“As a people we can’t keep getting beat in the head by poverty, racism, broken homes, drugs, police, brutality, suspicion of character, unemployment, cheating husbands and wives, incest, homelessness and not freak the hell out sometimes.” —Jim Glover, Creative Director, Carol H. Williams Advertising (from the book, Black Pain)
What is it called when Black people, or for that matter, any people, “freak out” and either inflict pain on....Read More
REVIEWING
The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing
Edited by Marc Smirnoff, Foreword by Van Dyke Parks
The University of Arkansas Press
October 2008, $34.95
Reviewed by Stephen Weil
Marc Smirnoff started The Oxford American in the early 90’s. The magazine is devoted to good writing of the South, and a regular feature has been an annual music issue devoted to the South’s music. The music issue, with its sampler CD, is something of an event for music fans. This new volume—which the University of Arkansas Press is publishing to coincide with the tenth OA music issue—collects some of the best pieces from Oxford American music issues past.
The book is divided loosely by musical genre. These pieces.....Read More