Maud Newton’s blog gives a link to an interview between the two old friends that is available in audio from the New Yorker web site.
Earlier this year, the Times Union ran a Miami Herald review of “About Alice.” Click “more” for an excerpt.
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Toni Morrison’s “Sula,” first published in 1973, was chosen as an Oprah book club pick in 2002. This is how the TV show’s Web site describes the book:
Nominated for the National Book Award, this rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines—from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.
Nel Wright chooses to remain in the place of her birth, to marry, to raise a family, and to become a pillar of the tightly-knit black community. Sula Peace rejects all that Nel has accepted. She escapes to college and submerges herself in city life. When she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel, a mocker and a wanton sexual seductress. Both women must suffer the consequences of their choices; both must decide if they can afford to harbor the love they have for each other; and both combine to create an unforgettable rendering of what it means and costs to exist and survive as a black woman in America.
What that fails to mention is found in a 1996 essay by Rita A. Bergenholtz from the African American Review “Toni Morrison’s Sula: A Satire on Binary Thinking”:
Toni Morrison’s ‘Sula’ succeeds as a satire for its entertainment and thought-provoking values. Binary thinking is likewise promoted and constitutes the novel’s essence. Through ‘Sula’, Morrison examines the apparent contradictions that are inherent in the perceptions and lifestyles of blacks toward whites and vice-versa. The characters in the novel exemplify the need for the binary perspectives of both races prior to some sort of mutual understanding.
Poet and publisher Erik Sweet has written in to announce the upcoming Behind The Egg reading series, which he co-organizes with author and College of Saint Rose professor Daniel Nester. Sweet publishes Tool a Magazine.
Behind the Egg – A Reading Series in Albany, NY
Next date: February 17, 2007 at 4PM
At Point 5: 383.5 Madison Avenue, Albany, NY
Featuring Dan Wilcox and Mary Panza
The reading series Web site is here.
Other readings include:
Saturday, March 17
R.M.Englehardt, Poet Essence, and Joseph Krausman
Sunday , April 15
Kate Greenstreet, Janet Holmes
Saturday, May 5
Sparrow, Tom Devaney
From the Herald Sun (with a reference to Russell Banks):
CHAPEL HILL — UNC officials dedicated a dormitory on Monday to George Moses Horton, a Chatham County slave and poet who contributed greatly to the intellectual life of the university.
George Moses Horton Residence Hall is the first Carolina building named after a slave.
The dorm, at Manning and Bowles drives, was formerly named Hinton James North and opened in 2002.
“It is well past time for this university to honor our native son, and to help ensure that, at least within the Carolina family, he is a known and honored hero,” UNC Board of Trustees chairman Nelson Schwab said at the ceremony at the dorm.
Horton’s poetry is still taught today, and his collection “The Hope of Liberty,” was the first book published by a black person in the South.
UNC Chancellor James Moeser named Horton alongside Thomas Wolfe, Russell Banks and Jill McCorkle as one of the most distinguished authors with ties to the university and state.
The complete story is here.
A blogger reports that Japanese manga are far more popular than American comic books.
On the Millions books blog, one take on Ray:
Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough.
The blog entry is here.
Many people are familiar with Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words, especially the closing of his “I Have a Dream” speech:
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! thank God almighty, we are free at last!”
But how many people have heard or read the entire speech? Here’s the video of the complete speech.
Click “more” for the text of the speech.
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Hisham Matar’s “In the Country of Men,” which was recently released, has been getting a lot of buzz lately.
Here’s NPR on the book (with an interview):
Hisham Matar fled Libya in the 1970s as a 9-year-old boy. This week, he releases his debut novel, In the Country of Men, a story told through the eyes of a Libyan boy. Like Matar, the boy’s father is a political dissident hunted down by the Libyan government.
Here’s the Boston Globe interview.
And, even better, here’s the blog The Complete Review on it.
A bit about the Complete Review. This is how it bills itself:
A selectively comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new, trying to meet all your book review, preview, and information needs.
Another way of thinking of it is that it is utterly fascinating and a wonderful service for readers.
For “In the Country of Men,” for example, it compiles 13 reviews of the novel (so far) and gives the book a final grade of B-.
The Complete Review has covered 1,807 books so far. Give it a look.
