article by MaryAnn Yin via adweek.com
Zero Gravity Management has optioned A’Lelia Bundles’ 2001 nonfiction book, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. Bundles is actually the great great granddaughter of Walker.
According to Deadline, Octavia Spencer intends to star and produce a limited series based on Bundles’ biography. Nicole Asher will write the script. Kasi Lemmons has agreed to serve as the director.
Here’s more from The New York Times: “Acutely aware of the lack of diversity in Hollywood on both sides of the camera, Ms. Spencer is determined to make a correction. She has begun optioning books, including one about Madam C. J. Walker, considered the first self-made African-American female millionaire.” (via Shadow and Act)
Posts published in “Books”
article by Alexandra Alter via nytimes.com
Paul Beatty’s novel “The Sellout,” a blistering satire about race in America, won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday, marking the first time an American writer has won the award.
The five Booker judges, who were unanimous in their decision, cited the novel’s inventive comic approach to the thorny issues of racial identity and injustice.
With its outrageous premise and unabashed skewering of racial stereotypes, “The Sellout” is an audacious choice for the judges, who oversee one of the most prestigious awards in literature.
“The truth is rarely pretty, and this is a book that nails the reader to the cross with cheerful abandon,” Amanda Foreman, the head of the judging panel, said at a press briefing in London before the winner was announced. “It plunges into the heart of contemporary American society.”
At a ceremony in London, Mr. Beatty said that writing “The Sellout” had taken an emotional toll.
“It was a hard book for me to write; I know it’s hard to read,” he said. “I’m just trying to create space for myself. And hopefully that can create space for others.”
A raucous tragicomedy that explores the legacy of slavery and racial and economic inequality in America, the novel felt deeply resonant at a moment when police violence against African-Americans has incited protests around the country and forced Americans to confront the country’s history of racism.
In a review in The New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote that the novel’s first 100 pages read like “the most concussive monologues and interviews of Chris Rock, Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle wrapped in a satirical yet surprisingly delicate literary and historical sensibility.”
To read full article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/media/paul-beatty-wins-man-booker-prize-with-the-sellout.html?_r=0
article by Sameer Rao via colorlines.com
Ariell Johnson, the founder of Philadelphia’s Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse, is the only Black woman to own a comics shop on the East Coast. Johnson opened Amalgam Comics to tremendous fanfare in January. Now, her important contributions to geek culture and entrepreneurship for women of color has been immortalized in the most appropriate way possible.
Johnson appears on a store-specific variant cover for Marvel’s “Invincible Iron Man #1,” enjoying a meal with another Black woman trailblazer: RiRi Williams, the new Iron Man. The comic goes on sale next month, with this alternate cover being available only at Amalgam.
Johnson told ABC News that her colleague Randy Green spearheaded the project. “When the email went out about potential variants for stores, he was really excited and took it upon himself to work out the [details],” she said. “I knew what it was supposed to look like, but having the actual art in front of you is so much different. It’s really exciting.”
“When you are a person of color, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to find someone you can identify with. I always felt like I was watching other people’s adventures,” she said to ABC News. Had she not been introduced to X-Men character Storm, she said, “I might have grown out of my love for [comics].”
To read full article, go to: This Pioneering Comic Shop Owner Gets Her Own Marvel Cover | Colorlines
article via jbhe.com
Jamillah R. Gabriel, librarian at Purdue University’s Black Cultural Center, has launched a new start-up subscription box venture that each month will send a newly released book written by a Black author to subscribers of the service. Subscribers also will receive four or five book-themed items with their new book that mirror prominent themes in the featured book as well as catalog cards and spine labels. The Call Number service, scheduled to debut in November, will start at $35 per month. Gabriel told JBHE that “I have selected the first book but I’m keeping that under wraps at the moment.”
Gabriel states that “These days there is a subscription box service for just about anything: fitness products, beauty products, even razors. However, after reviewing many literary subscription box sites I realized there were no book subscription boxes that highlighted Black literature. The lack of diversity in the publishing industry also spurred my decision to test the waters of entrepreneurship in an endeavor that would promote diverse literature in an easily accessible way.”
To read more, go to: https://www.jbhe.com/2016/10/purdue-university-librarian-starting-a-subscription-box-service-for-black-literature/
article via bossip.com
New York Jets player Jarvis Jenkins hung up his cleats to pick up a book in order to show a group of Harlem kids the importance of reading.
The defensive end was at the International Barbershop on Malcolm X Boulevard in New York City’s uptown neighborhood Sept. 27, where he read the children’s book “The Adventures of Captain Underpants,” to students from nearby Alain L. Locke Magnet School For Environmental Stewardship. The Clemson alumni also donated a mini library of children’s books to the shop.
“The main thing I want to do is tackle literacy,” the athlete turned reading advocate told BOSSIP. “There’s more to life than just Instagram. There’s more to life than just Facebook. I wanted to give them a platform where they can learn, and still have fun.”
Jenkins, who has been in the NFL for six years, said he wanted the kids to see that reading outside of school was fun, and that they should take advantage of their idle time waiting to get their hair cut by reading for pleasure.
“When I used to go to barbershops with my dad, I used to bring a toy,” Jenkins said. “I used to bring a Game Boy and sit there. When you’re sitting there with this free time, why not pick up a book?”
Nonprofit Barbershop Books helps kids – especially young boys – become more active readers by creating reading spaces inside local barbershops, said founder Alvin Irby. “We’re increasing boys’ access to engaging books, and we’re increasing the amount of time boys are reading outside school,” Irby, who has his own children’s book Gross Greg coming out next month, said.
Following the read aloud, Jenkins also gave the kids a few life lessons, but not before lacing the budding readers with some Jets swag. “It took my dad to stay on me to understand education is important,” the South Carolina native, 28, told the children. “You can go far in life, but make sure you get your education. Education is key.”
To read more, go to: http://bossip.com/1359074/a-lil-positivity-ny-jets-jarvis-jenkins-sponsors-reading-center-for-kids-at-harlem-barbershop/
article by jbhe.com
Natasha Trethewey, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and the former poet laureate of the United States, received the 2016 Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement from the Academy of American Poets. The award comes with a $25,000 prize.
In announcing the award, Marilyn Nelson, chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, stated that “Natasha Trethewey’s poems plumb personal and national history to meditate on the conundrum of American racial identities. Whether writing of her complex family torn by tragic loss, or in diverse imagined voices from the more distant past, Trethewey encourages us to reflect, learn and experience delight. The wide scope of her interests and her adept handling of form have created an opus of classics both elegant and necessary.”
Professor Trethewey is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and three other poetry collections. She is also the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press, 2010).
To read more, go to: https://www.jbhe.com/2016/09/natasha-trethewey-awarded-the-2016-fellowship-for-distinguished-poetic-achievement/
article via jbhe.com
Michelle Alexander, a visiting professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation, has been chosen to receive the Heinz Award in the public policy category. The awards were established by Teresa Heinz in 1993 to honor the memory of her late husband, U.S. Senator John Heinz from Pennsylvania, an heir to the Heinz Ketchup fortune. The Heinz Award comes with a $250,000 prize.
According to the award committee, Professor Alexander is being honored “for her work in drawing national attention to the issues of mass incarceration of African American youth and men in the United States, and for igniting a movement that is inspiring organizations and individuals to take constructive action on criminal justice reform.” She is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, 2010).
To read more, go to: https://www.jbhe.com/2016/09/legal-scholar-michelle-alexander-selected-to-receive-a-250000-heinz-award/
article by Ashley Poag via matermea.com
Tamara McNeil loves reading to her son, and she’s not alone. It’s a daily activity that creates a bond between parents and infants as they learn the rhythm of language. Both parent and child find comfort in the cuddles shared while reading.Reading time can also come with its own set of challenges, like restlessness and a desire to find out what a book’s pages taste like. But for African-American children like McNeil’s baby boy, there’s an additional challenge—the lack of representation.
The Black community is bombarded with images of people who look like them experiencing extreme violence, sadness, and despair on an almost daily basis. The need for positive representations of African Americans in media, especially in early childhood literature, is increasingly important.
It’s why movements like #WeNeedDiverseBooks started in 2014—and it’s why McNeil decided to launch Just Like Me!, a subscription box service that sends families two to three books a month based on your child’s age. For $25 a month your child will receive African-American focused literature from award-winning authors, as well as up-and-coming writers. From Black history to finding the magic in our ordinary lives, the service seeks to bring the very best of African-American children’s literature to those who need it most.
To read full article, go to: A Book Subscription Box Created For Black Children — mater mea
To visit McNeil’s website, go to: justlikemebox.com
article via shadowandact.com
According to DC Comics Universe lore, Black Lightning (real name Jefferson Pierce) – created by Tony Isabella and Trevor von Eeden, first appearing in “Black Lightning #1” (1977) – is a super-hero with the ability to generate and control lightning. Originally he was a high school principal and Olympic-level athlete who became a vigilante to take down organized crime in Metropolis’ Suicide Slum.
Eventually he would become a member of Batman’s team of Outsiders for many years, although he retired briefly to become secretary of education underneath president Lex Luthor. Returning to crime-fighting, he has also been a member of the Justice League. His two daughters operate as the super-heroes Thunder and Lightning.
And now a live-action series based on the superhero is set to come to your TV screens – The CW specifically – in a collaboration between Mara Brock and Salim Akil and Greg Berlanti, the man behind all of the CW’s DC universe series.
Salim Akil and Mara Brock Akil will write and executive produce the series with Berlanti Prods.’ Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, for Warner Bros. TV (recall the Akils inked a 3-year deal with Warner Bros. after exiting BET last year; “Black Lightning” will be their second project under the new deal; the first, announced a week ago, will be a comedy series titled “Documenting Love” which will center on a modern-day power couple navigating life, love and family.
To read full article, go to: Mara Brock & Salim Akil Team Up With Greg Berlanti for ‘Black Lightning’ Superhero Series – Shadow and Act
article via jbhe.com
Natalie Graham, assistant professor of African American studies at California State University, Fullerton, has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Cave Canem Poetry Prize from the Brooklyn, New York-based Cave Canem Foundation. The nonprofit organization was founded by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady in 1996 to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African American poets in the literary landscape.
Dr. Graham will receive a cash prize and have her manuscript – Begin With a Failed Body – published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2017. She joined the faculty at California State University, Fullerton in 2013.
In describing her award-winning poetry collection, Dr. Graham said “the collection contains poems that are often dark — reimagining iconic religious, literary, and historical figures. They imagine a haunted Southern landscape where history is inescapable. When they speak of nation, religion or family, they often ruminate on the individual body’s frailty in the face of these larger, sturdier structures.”
Dr. Graham holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in American studies from Michigan State University.