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Their protagonists are two black NYPD detectives (whose origins can be traced to a short story Himes published (1933) in "Abbott's Monthly Magazine") — Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson — whose names suggest the nature of their police methods and reputation. Jones and Johnson generally go easy with, and even tol...
Himes's two Harlem detectives are mythic heroes of sorts—indomitable forces of nature, their status as heavy-handed enforcers for the Man elevated to Harlem legends. So pervasive is the legend that their presence isn't needed to inspire awe or fear, mention of their name is enough. They are the law, the Man, the "mens"...
The "extralegal means" frequently include physical brutality in the case of men suspected of violent crime, and psychological torture and intimidation with women who withhold information, such as when Grave Digger threatens to pistol-whip a woman "until no man will ever look at you again" ("A Rage in Harlem"), or strip...
Himes attempts to portray this brutality in such a way that the reader does not wholly lose sympathy with the detectives. For example, in the throat-cutting incident, the woman was a key witness in a case where a young girl was being held hostage and threatened with death by a street gang, and Himes says of Grave Digge...
Notwithstanding the above, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed have deep and genuine sympathy for the innocent victims of crime. They frequently intervene to protect their black brothers and sisters from the random and truly pointless brutality of the white cops (as portrayed by Himes). Finally, the detectives seem sympathetic ...
There is abundant, and very effective, use of "black" (i.e., macabre) humor to lighten the mood of the stories, and they also contain many interesting sidelights touching on subjects as diverse as political corruption, jazz, soul food, and the sexual underside of Harlem life in that era.
Three films have been made based on the characters of Coffin Ed and Grave Digger: "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970), "Come Back, Charleston Blue" (1972) and "A Rage in Harlem" (1991).
A Small Place is a work of creative nonfiction published in 1988 by Jamaica Kincaid. A book-length essay drawing on Kincaid's experiences growing up in Antigua, it can be read as an indictment of the Antiguan government, the tourist industry and Antigua's British colonial legacy.
The book, written in four sections, "combines social and cultural critique with autobiography and a history of imperialism to offer a powerful portrait of (post)colonial Antigua."
In 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first European to visit Antigua on his second voyage. He named it Antigua after the Santa Maria de la Antigua, an icon found in Seville's cathedral. Sir Thomas Warner from England was able to colonize the island in 1632 by starting plantations that included tobacco and sugarcane...
In her work, Jamaica Kincaid presents an anti-imperialist dialogue which is particularly critical of tourism and government corruption, both of which became prevalent after independence. She criticizes Antigua's dependence on tourism for its economy. Kincaid also mentions the damage caused by the 1974 earthquake, which...
In the first section of "A Small Place", Kincaid employs the perspective of the tourist in order to demonstrate the inherent escapism in creating a distance from the realities of a visited place. Nadine Dolby dissects the theme of tourism in "A Small Place" and places Kincaid's depiction of tourism in a globalized cont...
The tourist may experience the beauty on the surface of Antigua while being wholly ignorant of the actual political and social conditions that the Antiguan tourism industry epitomizes and reinforces. Corinna Mcleod points out the disenfranchising nature of the tourism industry in its reinforcement of an exploitative po...
While Kincaid expresses anger towards slavery, colonialism and the broken Antiguan identity that it has left in its wake, she avoids retreating to simple racialization in order to explain the past and present, for doing so would further "other" an already marginalized group of people. Kincaid sheds light on the oppress...
While she indeed acknowledges the justifications of oppression based on race in England's colonization of Antigua, she also attempts to transcend the notions of an inescapable racialized past. In doing so she attempts to shape readers’ view of Antigua by creating a sense of agency.
In 1988, "A Small Place" was criticized as a vitriolic attack on the government and people of Antigua. "New Yorker" editor Robert Gottlieb refused to publish it. According to "Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother" she was not only banned unofficially for five years from her home country but she v...
Jane King, in "A Small Place Writes Back", declared that "Kincaid does not like the Caribbean very much, finds it dull and boring and would rather live in Vermont. There can really be no difficulty with that, but I do not see why Caribbean people should admire her for denigrating our small place in this destructively a...
Parable of the Sower is a 1993 science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler, the first in a two-book series. It is an apocalypse science fiction novel that provides commentary on climate change and social inequality. It is the first of a series of two books. The novel follows Lauren Olamina in her quest f...
Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, "Parable of the Sower" takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager. Her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and left Lauren with "h...
Lauren's youngest brother, Keith, rebelliously runs away to live outside the walls of the community. For a time, he survives by joining a group of ruthless thieves who value him for his rare literacy, but he is eventually found dead after torture. Later, Lauren's father disappears while leaving the community for work, ...
When Lauren is eighteen in 2027, the community's security is breached in an organized attack by outsiders: most of the community is destroyed, looted, and murdered, including Lauren's family. She travels north, disguised as a man, with Henry and Zahra, two survivors from her community. Society outside the community wal...
Lauren gathers people to protect along her journey and begins to share the Earthseed religion, which is developing into a collection of texts titled "Earthseed: The Books of the Living". She believes that humankind's destiny is to travel beyond Earth and live on other planets, forcing humankind into its adulthood, and ...
Published by Four Walls Eight Windows in 1993, by Women's Press Ltd. in 1995, by Warner in 1995 and 2000, and by Seven Stories Press in 2017.
"Parable of the Sower" was adapted as "Parable of the Sower: The Concert Version", a work-in-progress opera written by American folk/blues musician Toshi Reagon in collaboration with her mother, singer and composer Bernice Johnson Reagon. The adaptation's libretto and musical score combine African-American spirituals, ...
In 2020 it was adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the team which had previously adapted Butler's novel "Kindred", and published by Abrams ComicArts. The graphic novel was named to the Black Lives Matter Reading Lists compiled by the Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table and the Black Caucus of the American Librar...
The work of hip hop/R&B duo THEESatisfaction was influenced by Octavia Butler. The third track from their 2012 album "awE NaturalE", "Earthseed", contains themes from the "Parable" series: "Change there are few words / That you can say / We all watch things morphing everyday."
In 2015, Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha co-edited "Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements", a collection of 20 short stories and essays about social justice inspired by Butler. In 2020, adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagon began collaborating on a podcast called Octavia's Par...
The Good House is a horror novel by American writer Tananarive Due, first published in 2003 by Atria Books. The story follows Angela Toussaint as she returns to her late grandmother's home in Sacajawea, Washington.
Possessing the Secret of Joy is a 1992 novel by Alice Walker.
The novel explores what it means to have one's gender culturally defined and emphasizes that, according to Walker, "Torture is not culture."
Tashi "Evelyn" Johnson- The main protagonist of the novel. She is haunted by her experiences as a child and on the run from her memories, especially the act of female circumcision that she underwent as a young adult rather than a young child like other children following the tradition of her village. The novel delves i...
Adam Johnson- The son of Celie from The Color Purple, he is Tashi's lovingly supportive husband. Adam watches Tashi's downward spiral into darkness with the miserable frustration of being incapable of helping her. His intensely powerful insecurity and fear causes him to indulge in a merely comforting affair with his lo...
Benny Johnson- Tashi and Adam's adult son; Benny has an intellectual disability as a result of his brain being damaged during his birth, which was complicated because of Tashi's infibulation. Benny's limited abilities make Tashi increasingly depressed because she blames her circumcised vulva for Benny's agonizing journ...
Lisette- Adam's lover and mother of Pierre, Adam's second son.
Dura- Tashi's older sister that bled to death in childhood due to the ritual circumcision. Tashi comes to view Dura's death as a murder, and repeatedly emphasizes that Dura has been "screaming in her ears" since her death.
M'Lissa- "Tsunga" of the tribe into which M'Lissa was born. The "tsunga" performs circumcisions (e.g. excision and infibulation) on the girls of the tribe. M'Lissa performed the circumcision on Dura that caused her to bleed to death.
Carl Gustav Jung- Jung appears as the therapist of Tashi, the novel's protagonist. He is usually called "Mzee" but is identified by Alice Walker in the afterword.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912/1927) by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional account of a young biracial man, referred to only as the "Ex-Colored Man," living in post-Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He lives through a variety of experiences, including witn...
Johnson originally published "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" anonymously in 1912, via the small Boston publisher Sherman, French, & Company. He decided to publish it anonymously because he was uncertain how the potentially controversial book would affect his diplomatic career. He wrote openly about issues of r...
Despite the title, the book is a novel. It is drawn from the lives of people Johnson knew and from events in his life. Johnson's text is an example of a roman à clef.
The novel begins with a frame tale in which the unnamed narrator describes the narrative that follows as "the great secret of my life." The narrator notes that he is taking a substantial risk by composing the narrative, but that it is one he feels compelled to record, regardless. The narrator also chooses to withhold t...
Throughout the novel, the adult narrator from the frame interjects into the text to offer reflective commentary into the events of the narrative.
Born shortly after the Civil War in a small Georgia town, the narrator's African-American mother protected him as a child and teenager. The narrator's father, a wealthy white member of the Southern aristocracy, is absent throughout the narrator's childhood but, nevertheless, continues to provide financial support for t...
While in school, the narrator also grows to admire and befriends "Shiny," an unmistakably African-American boy, who is described as one of the brightest and best-spoken children in the class.
After the narrator's mother dies, he becomes a poor orphan and subject to harsh conditions.
He adapted very well to life with lower-class black people and was able to move easily among the classes of black society. During this carefree period, he taught music and attended church, where he came in contact with upper-class black people. Living in an all black community, he discovers and describes three classes ...
The Ex-Colored Man believed the desperate class consists of lower-class black people who loathe the whites. The domestic worker class comprises black people who work as servants to whites. And the artisans, skilled workers, and black professionals class included black people who had little interaction with the whites. ...
While playing ragtime at a late night hot spot in New York, the Ex-Colored Man caught the attention of a wealthy white gentleman. The gentleman's liking for ragtime develops as liking for the Ex-Colored Man himself. The white gentleman hired him to play ragtime piano for guests at parties. Soon the Ex-Colored Man spent...
The Ex-Colored Man's devotion to the white gentleman expresses the relationship that some slaves had with their masters (slaves who showed devotion to the slave-owner). Johnson suggests that, although the Ex-Colored Man had "freedom," he was still suffering from the effects of slavery. After playing for the white gentl...
Many critics have suspected that the Rich White Gentleman may not be white but is passing, as well. His love for ragtime music and his conviction that the Ex-Colored Man not embrace his blackness to pursue a career as a definitively black composer could be used to argue that he experienced inner turmoil with his racial...
Many critics believe that Johnson wrote this scene to heighten awareness of and opposition to lynchings. The turn of the century was the peak of lynchings conducted against blacks, mostly in the South, in the period when southern states disfranchised blacks through new constitutions and practices such as poll taxes, li...
After the lynching, the Ex-Colored Man decides to "pass" as white. He gives up his dream of making music to glorify his race and thinks he does not want to be "identified with people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals," or with people who could treat other humans that way. He simply wishes to remain...
The world accepted the Ex-Colored Man as white. Our narrator has been "passing" as a white man for the remainder of his life, and titles his autobiographical narrative "Ex-Colored Man." At the same time, the narrator learns that his childhood friend, "Shiny," is now teaching as a professor at a Negro college, suggestin...
The narrator eventually begins a courtship with a white woman, causing an internal dilemma as to whether or not to reveal his African-American heritage, and he asks her to marry him. After the two have a chance meeting with Shiny, in which the narrator is "surprised at the amount of interest a refined black man could a...
His wife dies during the birth of their second child, leaving the narrator alone to raise their two children. At the end of the book, the Ex-colored Man says:
My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that...
"Passing" could be interpreted as a decision to avoid the black race. He states that he "regrets holding himself back." He may have been implying that if he had, he embraced the Negro community and let the community embrace him, that he could have made a difference.
A major shift in the plot occurs during a performance of "Faust" in Paris, when the narrator sees his wealthy white father and his legitimate family, including his biological half-sister. Throughout the novel, the narrator is locked in a continual cycle of bargaining. The final bargain is trading his aspirations and ta...
A Mercy is Toni Morrison's ninth novel. It was published in 2008. "A Mercy" reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery in early America. It is both the story of mothers and daughters and the story of a primitive America. It made the "New York Times Book Review" list of "10 Best Books of 2008" as chosen by the pap...
All these characters are bereft of their roots, struggling to survive in a new and alien environment filled with danger and disease. When smallpox threatens Rebekka's life, Florens, now 16, is sent to find a black freedman who has some knowledge of herbal medicines. Her journey is dangerous, ultimately proving to be th...
Morrison examines the roots of racism going back to slavery's earliest days, providing glimpses of the various religious practices of the time, and showing the relationship between men and women in early America that often ended in female victimization. They are "of and for men", people who "never shape the world, The ...
Silver Sparrow is the third novel by the American author Tayari Jones, which was first published in 2011. The novel follows the complicated relationship between two families, joined together by a bigamist father. Jones was inspired to write the book by her own relationship with her sisters who were over a decade older ...
Dana Lynn Yarboro's parents meet in Atlanta, Georgia when her father is buying an anniversary present for his wife. Her mother, a young divorcée named Gwen Yarboro, becomes James Witherspoon's mistress. Dana is born shortly before the birth of James's daughter Chaurisse, from his marriage to his wife Laverne. After Cha...
Dana grows up with the knowledge that her father is married to another woman and has another daughter. Dana and her mother are kept secret, however the only individual from James's other life that is aware of the situation is his childhood friend and adopted brother, Raleigh. Dana is prevented from participating in cer...
While still a teenager, Dana becomes involved with a young adult man, Marcus McCready, and while her father is displeased he does nothing to stop her as he knows McCready from his married life.
In her final year of high school Dana is introduced to her paternal grandmother, Bunny Witherspoon, as she is dying. Her grandmother bequeaths her her favourite brooch as a parting gift.
Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon grows up the protected and beloved daughter of James Witherspoon and Laverne Witherspoon. Her parents met at the age of 14 when her mother lost her virginity to her father and subsequently became pregnant and was forced to marry James and leave school. Their son was a stillborn but Laverne r...
While out shopping Chaurisse meets a young girl and saves both of them from being caught shoplifting. The girl is named Dana, and Chaurisse grows infatuated with her believing she is a "silver" girl who is beautiful and leads a charmed life. The two become friends with the shy Dana eventually meeting and befriending La...
Some fifteen years later Dana has a daughter. Though, she does not marry her daughter's father he publicly claims his daughter as his own which Dana considers progress. She is visited by Chaurisse who asks Dana if James continued to see her and her mother after reconciling with Laverne. Dana reveals that after reunitin...
"The Washington Post" described Jones's writing as "realistic and sparkling". "The Chicago Tribune" praised the novel as "an exciting read all the way through." However, "Publishers Weekly" criticized the novel as "growing increasingly histrionic and less believable" as it went on.
"A Funeral at New African" details the death and the aftermath of Sarah's father, Reverend Phillips. Sarah's major reflection around this time in her and her family's life is how her father, and his death, started to belong to everyone else but the immediate family.
Education—Sarah's education primes her to attend Harvard, live in Paris, meet European lovers, and escape the confines of her religious middle-class home life. She simultaneously seeks her parents' utter disapproval, and their unconditional worship. Boarding school, then the elite university provide her with the opport...
Privilege—Sarah is a black student at an all-white boarding school. In one scene, after an audition she feels is strong, Sarah is cast as the black housemaid in the school play. It is clear to her, in that moment, how her appearance shapes some outcomes more than her talent, determination, or character. Still, Sarah ha...
Coming of age—Although she deals with the added complications of being black in a predominantly white space, and being minimally religious in a devout household, Sarah struggles to find her identity throughout her adolescence and young adulthood like any other character. She navigates these by developing a heightened s...
Intersections of race and class: Sarah sometimes struggles to be seen as an equal among her white peers. At the same time, she sometimes exhibits similarly exclusive tendencies. For example, she initially ignores the black cook at school, thinking she is too good for him. Her church communities demonstrates some of the...
Family approval—Sarah reminisces on her friendship with Curry, the son, also studying at Harvard, of her mom's distant cousin and childhood best friend. She says they "both harbored ill-conceived ideals of leading lives that would almost geometrically contravene anything of which our parents would approve".
Intimacy—Sarah finds intimacy challenging in a number of the stories contained in "Sarah Phillips". She sometimes struggles to identify the lines between friendship and romance (with Curry Daniels), or the difference between passionate romance and abusive relationship behavior.
While Andrea Lee's first novel, "Russian Journal", was nominated for a National Book Award for Nonfiction, "Sarah Phillips" received no awards. It has, however, become the topic of academic literature, journal articles, and much classroom conversation. Both the popular reception to the novel and academic opinions vary ...
In a November 1984 review in "The New York Times", novelist Susan Richards Shreve described "Sarah Phillips" as an "unsentimental autobiography". She continued, it "is clear that Miss Lee intended her to be a child of the civil rights movement, representative of a new black woman, educated, sassy, worldly, harshly crit...
Invoking the philosophies of W.E.B. DuBois and William Faulkner, Don N. Enomoto argued, in a 1999 Journal article published by MELUS, "Sarah Phillips" is ideal material for exploring the tensions between "theory and tradition". He wrote that Sarah Phillips, the character, fights "to liberate herself from restrictive co...
In March, 1985, a student writer for "The Harvard Crimson" said "Sarah Phillips" is "really a collection of finely shaped autobiographical short stories".
Adrienne McCormick, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Winthrop University, said in a 2004 essay published by the Johns Hopkins University Press that "Sarah Phillips" "raises questions about the middle class black woman's ability to recognize, let alone resist, racism and sexism as they intersect with class pr...
In a January 1985 "Los Angeles Times" review, Lola D. Gillebaard said "Sarah is not consciously clashing with issues of history in these chapters, but author Lee has clearly made her a child of the educated, cheeky, cosmopolitan, critical and bound for achievement".
This variety in response to, and interpretation of, "Sarah Phillips", is part of what Valerie Smith discusses in her introduction to the novel, as mentioned earlier.
Devil in a Blue Dress is a 1990 hardboiled mystery novel by Walter Mosley, his first published book.
The text centers on the main character, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, and his transformation from a day laborer into a detective.
Set in 1948, the story begins in the Watts area of Los Angeles, with Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, a Houstonian — from that city's Fifth Ward — who lost his job at an aviation defense plant in Los Angeles and is unable to pay the mortgage on his LA home. Easy is sitting in a bar run by Joppy, a friend who is also from Housto...
At the bar, Easy meets two old friends, Coretta and Dupree, among many other people that he knew from his former life in Houston. Coretta says that she knows Daphne, but gives an incorrect address to Easy. He goes home with them and has sex with Coretta, while Dupree is asleep in the next room. Easy then leaves her ear...
When Easy finally does find Monet, he figures out that she has stolen a large amount of money from a man named Todd Carter, who is a local wealthy businessman. Albright wanted this money for himself. Eventually, Albright finds Monet through Easy, who is trying to shield the thieving woman.
Easy enlists the help of a friend and fellow Houstonian, Mouse, who shows up due to a half-hearted invitation from Easy, and domestic strife back home. Easy and Mouse find Monet with Albright and Joppy. They rescue her, and kill Joppy and Albright. Then Mouse reveals that Monet is actually Ruby, an African-American wom...
Easy approaches Carter and requests his help with the police. He blackmails him by saying that he will leak the information about his love for a black woman unless he is protected from the law. Carter helps him. At the conclusion, Mouse returns to Houston, Easy takes up detective work, and Ruby disappears.
The novel is an important contribution to African-American and ethnic detective fiction in that it focuses on a black protagonist who falls into the role of detective, but by the series' end, has made his own both the profession and the identity that often comes along with it. Particularly noteworthy are Easy's use of ...
First published by W.W. Norton in 1990, "Devil In a Blue Dress" won the 1991 Shamus Award in the category of "Best First P. I. Novel".
"Devil In a Blue Dress" was adapted into a 1995 film of the same name, which starred Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins, and also featured Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, Maury Chaykin, as well as Don Cheadle as the unhinged 'Mouse'.
In 1996, a 10-part abridgement by Margaret Busby, read by Paul Winfield, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, starting on April 1.
Push is the debut novel of American author Sapphire. Thirteen years after its release in 1996, the novel was made into the 2009 film "Precious", which won numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards.
Critics have gone in both directions as far as their opinions of the style in which "Push" is written. Some consider "the harrowing story line [to be] exaggerated," saying that it doesn't seem realistic to "saddle one fictional character with so many problems straight from today's headlines" (Glenn). Others have stated...
Precious begins the novel functionally illiterate. She spells words phonetically. She uses a "minimal English that defies the conventions of spelling and usage and dispenses all verbal decorum" (Mahoney). She employs variations such as "nuffin'" for "nothing", "git" for "get", "borned" for "born", "wif" for "with", and...
As the book progresses and Precious learns to read and write, there is a stark change in her voice, though the dialect remains the same.
In 2011, Sapphire published a semi-sequel, "The Kid". It follows the life of Precious' son Abdul from the age of nine to 19. Precious herself has died following complications from HIV, but was accepted to college before her death.