Picture it. I’m in high school, late for the morning bus, desperate for something to read during my lengthy commute. On my Grandmother’s disheveled porch, I find a slightly sunfaded paperback. The book is Sweet Flypaper of Life, with text by Langston Hughes and photography by Roy DeCarava (1955). I toss it in my backpack, completely unaware that:
1. My life would never be the same… I would see the world differently from that day on.
2. That paperback was (at the time) thirty years old and worth nearly 100 bucks. I would only discover its value when I attempted in college to upgrade for a hardcover. Apparently, it’s an exceptionally rare book. And I threw it in my backpack. Did I mention it rained that day?
About the book:
Essentially, the Sweet Flypaper is written from the point of view of an older woman in Harlem who is a fixture in her community. She introduces us to each person in her world. We’re let in on their struggles as well as the hard-fought victories in their lives. The Langston Hughes’ text is accompanied by a memorable photo essay by Roy DeCarava.
How I love this book. It captures a time on the cusp of the Civil Rights Era: a time steeped in the Electrified Delta Blues, in Joe Louis Fights, in Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughn, in Miller High Life, in Dixie Peach pomade. It captures something so timeless that it stays with you…. always. I recommend you discover a copy of your own, but until you do, enjoy the pages I reproduced here for you. Jive on!
Chicago), spins disjointed dreams into tangible things through her poetry and prose. And come this month, the Chicagoan has released another book of dreams, entitled “Ruins”. “Ruins”, set to be released on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, bears echoes of Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” reset during the “special period” in Cuba. The main character is “Usnavy”, a dig on the American military’s longsuffering relationship with Cubans. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Obejas feels she will eventually leave Chicago to settle permanently into Cuba (she left with her family when she was six). She recently told Cafe Magazine, “I live in Chicago, with an ever-diminishing Cuban-American community and far from the Miami epicenter. I am much more interested in being a part of a post-revolutionary Cuba than the diasporic community, which will most likely follow historical pattern and be absorbed into the U.S. mainstream as another immigrant (no longer exile) community.”
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Blackness…Finally Forgivable?
from the Stop Smiling Blog….
A Pugilist’s Pardon, Once Unforgivable
Posted on: April 1, 2009 at 1:48 pm // MARGINALIA
Really? What’s McCain’s motivation? I remember an audio piece produced by my friend Kabuika for Vocalo.org in which an eleven year old kid asks Black Journalists if they think McCain is afraid of Black People (after McCain declined an invite to a Conference of Black Journalists in 2008).
McCain, Afraid of Black People? by Kabuika
So, what is McCain’s Motivation for pushing to pardon somebody who’s been dead sixty-0dd years? Like the classic Tootsie Pop commercial, the world may never know…
1 comment | tags: Black Journalists, boxing, jack johnson, Journalism, Kabuika Kamunga, Ken Burns, McCain, NABJ, National Association of Black Journalists, Obama, Printed Matters, Race, Stop Smiling, unforgivable blackness, vocalo, vocalo.org | posted in Book Reviews, Books, Commentary, Film and Television, Magazines, Printed Matters, Reviews