by Michael Janairo

Black History Month: Sonia Sanchez

ssanchez.jpg
Sonia Sanchez is one of the most influential poets of the Black Arts Movement.

Read more about her from the Voices from the Gap Web site.

She will be speaking tonight at Skidmore College’s Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall, Saratoga Springs at 7 p.m. The playwright, scholar and American Book Award-winning author (“Homegirls and Handgrenades”) gives the Black History Month keynote speech.

Hear and see her read her poem “Peace” in this YouTube video (which was uploaded in August of 2006):

From Poets.org:

Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Homegirls and Handgrenades (White Pine Press, 2007), Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems (1999); Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums: Love Poems (1998); Does your house have lions? (1995), which was nominated for both the NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle Award; Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995); Under a Soprano Sky (1987); Homegirls & Handgrenades (1984), which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1978); A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1973); Love Poems (1973); Liberation Poem (1970); We a BaddDDD People (1970); and Homecoming (1969).

Her published plays are Black Cats Back and Uneasy Landings (1995), I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t (1982), Malcolm Man/Don’t Live Here No Mo’ (1979), Uh Huh: But How Do It Free Us? (1974), Dirty Hearts ’72 (1973), The Bronx Is Next (1970),and Sister Son/ji (1969). Her books for children include A Sound Investment and Other Stories (1979), The Adventures of Fat Head, Small Head, and Square Head (1973), and It’s a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs (1971). She has also edited two anthologies: We Be Word Sorcerers: Twenty-five Stories by Black Americans (1973) and Three Hundred Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comin”at You (1971).

Among the many honors she has received are the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

The previous authors and writings featured on this blog:
“The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”
Gwendolyn Brooks
August Wilson
“Our Nig” by Harriet Wilson
“Twelve Years A Slave” by Solomon Northup
“The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. Du Bois
Langston Hughes
“Cane” by Jean Toomer
“The Great Negro Plot” by Mat Johnson
“Passing” by Nella Larsen
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
“I Have a Dream” speech”
“Sula” by Toni Morrison
“The Known World” by Edward P. Jones
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
“The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead
“Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison

by Michael Janairo

All about the NYTimes Book Review

The Elegant Variation has all the links you need about:

Everything you ever wanted to know about the New York Times Book Review but were afraid to ask.

by Michael Janairo

Professor Martin Amis

From the Guardian:

Manchester University will announce an academic coup: Amis has agreed to take up his first teaching role as its professor of creative writing, a decision that will bring the one-time enfant terrible of British literature, author of 11 novels, including Money and London Fields, firmly into the literary establishment.

And a quote from the son of Kingsley Amis:

“I may be acerbic in how I write but I’m not how I live. And I would find it very difficult to say cruel things to people in such a vulnerable position. I imagine I’ll be surprisingly sweet and gentle with them. One of the things I’ve learned about fiction – you really do lay yourself open in a way that no other so-called creative artist does. Most other art you’re just exhibiting a particular talent, even poetry up to a point, but by writing fiction you expose not only your talent but your whole being, your social, sexual and psychological being and you’re never more vulnerable than when you do that, and I’m well aware of that fact and will take it into account.”

Read the story here.

by Michael Janairo

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by Michael Janairo

Equiano’s story on film, sort of

I saw a preview of the movie Amazing Grace over the weekend and am not sure what to expect. A lot of white British guys talking about the need to end slavery, and then a black man says, “I was a prince in my country, like you,” I thought — Could this character possibly be Olaudah Equiano? Could this movie be telling his tale, but through the point of view of white people, including the guy the wrote the song Amazing Grace? Maybe the movie will be fine, after all it is directed by Michael Apted, but it does seem Equiano could use his own film.

By the way, Equiano is played by Youssou N’Dour,
 a musician the New York Times has called “West Africa’s cultural ambassador to the world,” who will be making his feature film debut.

Here’s the movie trailer:

Here’s the write up from the film’s Web site.

Amazing Grace, based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce, is directed by Michael Apted (The World is Not Enough, Coal Miner’s Daughter) from an original screenplay written by Academy Award® nominee Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things).

The film stars Ioan Gruffudd (Black Hawk Down), Albert Finney (Erin Brockovich), Romola Garai (Vanity Fair), Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking), Rufus Sewell (Legend of Zorro), Ciaran Hinds (Rome) and introduces Youssou N’Dour.

Executive Producer is Jeanney Kim, with Mark Cooper as co-producer. Producers on the film are Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) and Ed Pressman under their Sunflower Productions banner, Patricia Heaton and David Hunt for FourBoys Films, and Ken Wales.

Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, who, as a Member of Parliament, navigated the world of 18th Century backroom politics to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Albert Finney plays John Newton, a confidante of Wilberforce who inspires him to pursue a life of service to humanity. Benedict Cumberbatch is William Pitt the Younger, England’s youngest ever Prime Minister at the age of 24, who encourages his friend Wilberforce to take up the fight to outlaw slavery and supports him in his struggles in Parliament.

Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21, and on his way to a successful political career, Wilberforce, over the course of two decades, took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery.

Romola Garai plays Barbara Spooner, a beautiful and headstrong young woman who shares Wilberforce’s passion for reform, and who becomes his wife after a whirlwind courtship. Youssou N’Dour is Olaudah Equiano. Born in Africa and sent as a slave to the Colonies, Equiano bought his freedom and made his home in London, where he wrote a best-selling account of his life and became a leading figure in the fight to end the slavery of his fellow countrymen.

Here’s a video from Youssou N’Dour in concert at an Amnesty International event in 1999:

by Michael Janairo

Flights of Fantasy inventory reduction sale

Eleanor at Flights of Fantasy, the Loudonville bookstore, has sent an e-mail saying that the book store has cut prices of all used books by 25 percent.

The Web site, http://fof.net/, says:

25% Off
Inventory Reduction
Sale

Stop into the store during the month of February and get 25% off of All Used Paperbacks and minis from Warhammer Fantasy, Axis & Allies, Dream Blades, BattleTech, and GW Lord of the Rings.

by Michael Janairo

Time for a new book review publication?

There’s growing chatter online about this (which I first heard thanks to the Complete Review).

This discussion is happening at the Open University:

ENTHUSIASM FOR A NEW BOOK REVIEW:

by Jeffrey Herf

Thanks very much to Cass Sunstein, Steven Pinker, Eric Rauchway, Linda Hirshman, Richard Stern, and David Bell. I’m very glad to see their enthusiasm for the idea of a new book review. They offer a host of good practical suggestions and lessons from past efforts. The practicalities of a new publication are the most difficult issues. I hope our discussion will come to the attention of one of people with the will and the means to respond to the problem I described and that my Open University colleagues agree should be addressed.

by Michael Janairo

A look at ‘blook’ from Down Under

The Australian, one of the national newspapers of yes, you guessed it, Australia, weighs in on the claim by a dictionary to contain billions and billions of words (or at least 2.5 billion, my apologies to Carl Sagan). Among the words the dictionary has that The Australia doesn’t quite deign to recognize is our good old friend “blook.”

Here’s and excerpt:

Collins commissioned a troika of editors to cull a selection of new arrivals into ISmirt, You Stooze, They Krump, an 184-page book released this week. It is subtitled “Can you still speak English?” and for many of us the answer is obviously not. Take blook, brrreeeport, crunk, gemmelsmerch, gling, grup and sket. They resemble onomatopoeic captions from comic strips but they’re English. Allegedly. The provenance and durability of many of the new words seem dubious, but that’s not the point: how long each word survives “is another matter entirely”, the editors point out, but while these words are here, “let’s celebrate them for the miniature snapshots of modern life they are”.

The full article is here.

Here’s the link to the Collins Dictionary Word Exchange.