Feature Articles

Song Yet Sung

by James McBride

Set in pre-Civil War Maryland, the story is centered on a runaway slave named Liz, who’s wounded during an attempt to capture her. Her wounds enable her to see into the future. These visions, along with the "code" used by slaves, allow her to escape. But she becomes the target of competing slave catchers who all have different motives for wanting to capture her. Other characters include Amber, a slave who falls in love with Liz while aiding her and a wild forest inhabitant known as Woolman. The story intricately connects the characters and historical events of the time to weave an adventurous story of love and greed. It also provides a fascinating look at a region seldom examined when discussing slavery.

Song for Night

by Christopher Abani

At one point well into Chris Abani’s haunting novella Song For Night, the story’s protagonist, a fifteen-year-old veteran soldier named My Luck fighting in an unnamed civil war in Nigeria, asks a very good question: “If we are the great innocents in this war, then where did we learn all the evil we practice?”

The issue of children fighting wars, particularly in Africa, has come to light in a big way recently thanks to Ishmael Beah’s bestselling book about his life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone and his work with UNICEF to help raise awareness of this tragedy. Now Abani, an award-winning Nigerian novelist and poet living in Los Angeles, offers this swift and gritty tale of a young soldier who has been separated from his platoon. As he desperately tries to find his way back to them—his adopted family—he recounts some of the gruesome stories from his past few war-torn years with a matter-of-fact tone that is both chilling and heart breaking. Tales of cruelty, torture, and death abound but they are gut-wrenchingly fused with stories about love, kindness, and lost-innocence. Together it creates a difficult yet compelling brew that is both painful and, quite naturally, much less cut and dry than we wish it could be. Read more

Fantasy Pioneer Continues to Build His Legacy

by Veronica Henry

We have Charles Saunders to thank for bringing color to the world of fantastical fiction. He is an African American man, writing stories based on fictious Africa. His work is full of rich imagery, exquiste scenes and heroes that before him, didn't exist in the genre. The author of the Imaro and Dossouye series, was gracious enough to grant an us interview. For those of you who have yet to delve into the world of fantasy, this is a good place, in fact, the only place you should begin the quest. Read more

Books

Transbluesency

by Amiri Baraka

The poems selected here span from Baraka's first collection, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961), to the long poem Wise, Why's, Y'z, published earlier this year. The best work here has been culled from his second and third books, The Dead Lecturer (1964) and Black Magic (1969). Despite coming out of distinct phases in Baraka's life (the former when he was a book Beat, by the latter he'd become black nationalist), these works combine the personal and political in highly charged ways. When Baraka writes of "the roaring harmonies of need" or of "stumbling over our souls in the dark, for the sake of unnatural advantage," he succeeds as both an activist and a poet. However, as revolutionary politics increasingly intrude, Baraka seems largely to abandon the craft of poetry for the the broader strokes of diatribe and rant ("dont tell me shit about the tradition of slavemasters/ & henry james... "). However disappointing much of this later work may be, it is readily argued that Baraka's influential work prefigured rap and the current vogue of spoken-word performances and poetry slams. This collection provides a useful overview of his work.

Ancestor Stones

by Aminatta Forna

Abie has followed the arc of a letter from London back to Africa, to the coffee groves of Kholifa Estates, the plantation formerly owned by her grandfather. It is a place she remembers from childhood and which now belongs to her—if she wants it. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but the 'layers of years' in between then and now are too many. So begins her gathering of the family's history through the tales of her aunts.

This is the story of four lives: Asana, Mariama, Hawa and Serah Kholifa, born to the different wives of a wealthy plantation owner in an Africa where change is just beginning to arrive. Asana, lost twin and head-wife's daughter. Hawa, motherless child and manipulator of her own misfortune. Mariama, who sees what lies beyond this world. And Serah, follower of a Western-made dream.

Stretching across generations and set against the backdrop of a country's descent into freefall, Ancestor Stones is a stunning novel about understanding the past and how stories ancient and new shape who we've become, and one which offers a different way of seeing the world we share. It is the story of a nation, a family and four women's attempts quietly to alter the course of their own destiny.

Black Inventors, Crafting Over Two Hundred Years of Success

by Keith Holmes

This book points out a number of the inventions, patents and labor saving devices developed by Black inventors. Africans before the period of enslavement developed a number of inventions: agricultural tools, building materials, medicinal herbs, cloths, and weapons are just a few examples. Though many Black people were brought to Canada, Caribbean, Central and South America and the United States in chains under the yoke of slavery, it is relatively unknown that many of them developed labor saving devices and inventions that created companies, generated money and jobs. This is one of the first books to address diversity of the Black inventors and their inventions from a global perspective.

Black inventors have from the very beginning of their involvement in the invention and patent process in Western Civilization have made important and earth shattering impact on the world. This book outlines the early Black inventors from the United States including almost all fifty-one states. It documents one of the first Black inventors to obtain a patent in the Caribbean and the United States. In the United States there are now sixteen African American men inducted in to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Two of the inventors, Jan E. Matziliger, Suriname and Elijah McCoy, Colchester, Canada were born outside the United States. Recently, Dr. Patrica Bath was nominated to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Yet, there are still no African American women who have been inducted into this prestigious organization. Mr. Holmes documents inventions by Black women inventors from Africa, Canada, Caribbean, United Kingdom and the United States.

Mr. Holmes is available for lectures and book signings. The book sells for $15.00 US dollars., for more information call 646-610-1485, or visit our website: www.globalblackinventor.com or send an email to: info@globalblackinventor.com or kcholmes50@gmail.com

E. Lynn Harris - Author of Just Too Good to be True