Sanaa Lathan will star in and executive produce the movie adaptation of Omar Tyree’s “Flyy Girl” book trilogy for Lionsgate’s Codeblack Films. Lathan will portray the film’s protagonist, Tracy Ellison — a successful businesswoman and workaholic who believes that money is always the key to happiness.
Lathan will also star in Lionsgate’s “Now You See Me 2″ and the upcoming production of “The Best Man Wedding.” “So many people have grown up on this series and I’m looking forward to bringing Tracy Ellison’s story to life through film,” Lathan said. “It’s my hope to continue to help bring diverse stories to the big screen.” Geoffrey Fletcher (“Precious”) will write the script.
“Lathan’s star power paired with Fletcher’s nuanced script work — we’re confident that ‘Flyy Girl’ will prove to be a classic,” Codeblack Films President Jeff Clanagan said.
Lathan’s credits iclude “Brown Sugar,” “Best Man’s Holiday” and “Love and Basketball.” article by Dave McNary via Variety.com
Royal Touch Barbershop owner Reggie Ross gives a touch-up to a young customer while he reads in Palm Beach County, Fla. (WPTV SCREENSHOT) An article published in The Root last year about a Florida barbershop that promotes literacy sparked a movement miles away in the cities of Prichard and Mobile, Ala.
Freddie Stokes launched Books for Boys about three weeks ago. He initially intended to establish small libraries, of about 75 books each, in two or three barbershops, but the response to his initiative was so overwhelming that Stokes says he’s now able to establish libraries in at least six barbershops. The first one will open in mid-June.
“We don’t want to stop until all the barbershops in this community have libraries,” he says, with an air of reserved confidence that it will be done.
Stokes is supplying books with which black boys can identify. “When our boys say they don’t like to read, a lot of that is coming from not being interested in reading about characters that don’t look like them,” he explains. His growing stockpile includes biographies, such as Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X, 12 Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope.
In addition to promoting literacy, Books for Boys aims to raise self-esteem. Stokes grew up in public housing and struggled early in school, having to repeat the third grade. A teacher inspired him to read books, including those about successful African Americans, which allowed him to dream big and ultimately achieve his goals.
Books for Boys’ Freddie Stokes (photo: Rodney R. Clifton)
Stokes worked in classrooms for two years through Teach for America, an organization that places recent college graduates and professionals in underserved classrooms. He introduced his students to books with positive black characters and watched their self-esteem grow.
“When I went from the classroom to the courtroom, I was able to connect the violence to a lack of reading and self-esteem,” says Stokes, who is also a criminal defense attorney in private practice.
“After reading the article in The Root, I asked myself, why isn’t this [barbershop libraries] in every community?” he recalls. “Then one day I got an epiphany: Just get up and do the work. We can’t wait on the government to do it for us.”
Stokes admits that he didn’t expect the overwhelming response that he received. Barbershop owners said that they are expecting scores of boys to come in over the summer and would gladly offer them books. Parents, sometimes groups of them, are donating with a request that Stokes open a library where they take their sons. And local professionals are opening their wallets to sponsor barbershops, sometimes with a request that Stokes purchase books that emphasize math and science.
In a few short weeks, Stokes’ grassroots effort raised more than $1,500 on GoFundMe. Folks in the community have also given about $800 in cash donations toward the purchase of books. Stokes hopes that this small effort ignites a larger movement that reaches well beyond the Mobile area. article by Nigel Roberts via theroot.com
“Roots” is returning to TV next year as a big-ticket event series production to air across History, A&E Network and Lifetime next year.
Producer Will Packer and LeVar Burton, an original “Roots” cast member, are shepherding the project with Mark Wolper, son of the original producer of the 1977 ABC miniseries, David L. Wolper. Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal, Alison McDonald and Charles Murray are on board to write the new rendition of the saga of Kunta Kinte, which follows his capture in Africa as a young man through his enslavement in colonial America. “Roots” is based on Alex Haley’s landmark novel of the same name. Actor/Producer LeVar Burton
“My career began with ‘Roots’ and I am proud to be a part of this new adaptation,” said Burton. “There is a huge audience of contemporary young Americans who do not know the story of ‘Roots’ or its importance. I believe now is the right time to tell this story so that we can all be reminded of its impact on our culture and identity.”
The original eight-part miniseries was a sleeper megahit for ABC that aired over consecutive nights in January 1977. There’s no word yet on how many hours the new “Roots” will run.
A&E Networks execs said producers will work closely with historians and other experts to incorporate new information about the historical period uncovered since the original book and mini were released.
“Kunta Kinte began telling his story over 200 years ago and that story went through his family lineage, to Alex Haley, to my father, and now the mantle rests with me,” said Wolper. “Like Kunta Kinte fought to tell his story over and over again, so must we.”
Said Packer: “The opportunity to present one of America’s most powerful stories to a generation that hasn’t seen it is tremendously exciting. Contemporary society needs this story and I’m proud to be a part of it.” article by Cynthia Littleton via Variety.com
Memoirs, graphic novels and stories in verse were the big winners of this year’s American Library Association’s awards for young adult and children’s literature. The awards, which are among the most prestigious literary prizes for children’s book authors, were announced Monday at the association’s midwinter conference in Chicago.
Kwame Alexander’s novel in verse, “The Crossover,” about 13-year-old twin brothers who are basketball stars, won the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature. Mr. Alexander also received a Coretta Scott King honor recognizing African-American authors and illustrators. It was the first A.L.A. award for Mr. Alexander, a poet and novelist who has published 17 books.
Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir in verse, “Brown Girl Dreaming” (which has already won a National Book Award), along with Cece Bell’s illustrated memoir, “El Deafo” (which chronicles her hearing loss at an early age from spinal meningitis and her struggle to fit in at school), were named as Newbery Honor books.
Ms. Woodson, whose memoir describes her childhood and coming of age in South Carolina and New York in the 1960s and 1970s, also won the Coretta Scott King Award recognizing outstanding African-American children’s book authors and illustrators, and the Robert F. Sibert honor for the most distinguished informational book for children.
Other winners include Dan Santat’s “The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend,” a whimsical story for 3- to 6-year-olds, which earned the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book.
“I’ll Give You the Sun,” Jandy Nelson’s novel about teenage fraternal twins who compete over everything, won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults.
The awards come at a moment when children’s literature is holding steady as a fast-growing and profitable category for publishers. Sales of children’s and young adult books grew nearly 22 percent in the first 10 months of 2014, compared with the previous year, while sales of adult books fell slightly, according to the latest figures from the Association of American Publishers.
Oprah Winfrey and “Selma” filmmaker Ava DuVernay are creating an original series for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, with Winfrey set to appear in a recurring role.
DuVernay will write, direct and exec produce the drama, adapted from the novel “Queen Sugar” by Natalie Baszile, which will follow a spirited woman, along with her teenage daughter, who leaves behind her upscale L.A. lifestyle for her Southern roots by way of an 800-acre Louisiana sugar cane farm she inherited from her recently departed father.
The project marks DuVernay’s first television series and Winfrey’s acting debut on OWN.
“I loved this book and immediately saw it as a series for OWN,” said Winfrey. “The story’s themes of reinventing your life, parenting alone, family connections and conflicts, and building new relationships are what I believe will connect our viewers to this show.”
DuVernay commented, “From the moment I was introduced to the book, I was captivated by the idea of a modern woman wrestling with identity, family, culture and the echoes of history. To bring this kind of storytelling to life alongside Oprah for her network is wildly wonderful. I’m excited about what’s in store.”
Winfrey and DuVernay worked together on “Selma,” which is nominated for best picture at the upcoming 2015 Oscars.
Production is scheduled to begin later this year. article by Elizabeth Wagmeister via Variety.com
Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison has an eleventh novel coming out late April titled God Help the Child.
Morrison’s previous novels include The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, for which she received an American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish…Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother…Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she’s suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother… and Sweetness, Bride’s mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) — The papers of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison are now part of the permanent library collection of Princeton University. Princeton made the announcement Friday, shortly before the 83-year-old Morrison took part in a forum at the school where she served on the faculty for 17 years.
The renowned author’s papers contain about 180 linear feet of research materials documenting her life, work and writing methods. They include manuscripts, drafts and proofs of many of Morrison’s novels. Materials for her children’s literature, lyrics, lectures, correspondence and more are also part of the collection.
Additional manuscripts and papers will be added over time, beginning with the manuscript of Morrison’s next novel, which is expected to be published in the spring.
Morrison, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Beloved” in 1988, came to Princeton in 1989 and was a member of the university’s creative writing program until she retired in 2006. In 1994, she founded the Princeton Atelier, bringing together undergraduate students in interdisciplinary collaborations with acclaimed artists and performers.
“Toni Morrison’s place among the giants of American literature is firmly entrenched, and I am overjoyed that we are adding her papers to the Princeton University Library’s collections,” Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said. “We at Princeton are fortunate that (Morrison) brought her brilliant talents as a writer and teacher to our campus 25 years ago, and we are deeply honored to house her papers and to help preserve her inspiring legacy.”
Morrison received an honorary doctorate during the school’s 2013 commencement. article by via blackamericaweb.com
Marlon James on a visit to the Bronx, where “A Brief History of Seven Killings” concludes. (Credit: Bryan Derballa for The New York Times)
The novelist Marlon James grew up in Jamaica in the 1970s, which means he has a child’s memories of that politically turbulent and culturally fertile period. But as an adult, he keeps circling around that time and place in his mind, trying to make sense of what he could perceive only dimly then.
Out of that quest comes his third novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” which begins as the optimistic glow of independence is giving way to the harsh realities of Cold War politics and the rise of gangs connected to the country’s two main political parties. From there, things get only worse: Crack cocaine appears and the gangs go international, setting up operations in Miami and New York.
“The idea for this book is the very first I had, even before the other two novels, because I always was interested in writing about the Jamaica I grew up in,” Mr. James said. “I thought it was going to be a short novel, that it was one person’s story. But I was wrong, because history is always shaping everything.”
Publishers Weekly declared that “no book this fall is more impressive than ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings,’ ” which comes out Thursday from Riverhead Books. In a review in The New York Times last week, Michiko Kakutani described Mr. James as a “prodigious talent” who has produced a novel that is “epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over the top, colossal and dizzyingly complex.”
At 43, Mr. James is part of a new generation of Caribbean writers whose main cultural reference, aside from their home countries, is the United States rather than their former colonial power (in Jamaica’s case, Britain). These writers share some of the concerns of American peers like Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat and view the questions of identity and authenticity, which preoccupy older writers like George Lamming and the Nobel laureates Derek Walcott and V. S. Naipaul, as largely settled.
During a recent interview in the Bronx, where “Seven Killings” concludes, Mr. James called himself a “post-postcolonial writer” with a hybrid intellectual background. So while he read Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Henry Fielding in school, he noted, he also listened to Michael Jackson and Grandmaster Flash; a section of the new novel makes repeated references to Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing.”
The plot of “Seven Killings” revolves around the assassination attempt on Bob Marley a few days before he was to give a free concert in Kingston in December 1976, and required the novelist to dig deep into his creative toolbox. Marley, called simply the Singer in the novel, so dominated that period, Mr. James said, that his persona risked overwhelming the novel, which clocks in at just under 700 pages.
“I needed him more to hover over the book, as opposed to being in the middle of it,” he explained. He said he found a solution when he read Gay Talese’s Esquire magazine article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” which focuses on the circle around that singer. Another help was Roberto Bolaño’s novel“The Savage Detectives,” which Mr. James described as “a very conscious template.”
Characters based on real-life people, including Cuban exiles and their C.I.A. handlers, play central roles in the novel. Jamaican politicians like the rival former prime ministers Michael Manley and Edward Seaga are very much present, too, along with leaders of the “garrisons,” the communities and criminal militias that their parties controlled.
Mr. James warns, though, that “if you are going to read this as history, you’re bound to be disappointed and confounded.” A lot of the novel, he said, is “just me being a trickster.”
But he does remember overhearing as a child some of the stories he incorporates into the novel. His mother was a police detective and his father a police officer who became a lawyer, “so the world of crime and politics and disturbances was always around,” he said, discussed in hushed and coded adult conversations.
A few years ago, Mr. James said, a European interviewer began a question to him with “as someone who escaped the ghetto….” He remembers objecting: “I grew up in the suburbs, like every other kid in every other part of the world. We had two cars, and we argued about things like ‘Is “T. J. Hooker” better than “Starsky & Hutch?” ’ ”
After studying at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Mr. James spent more than a decade in advertising as a copywriter, graphic designer and art director. His clients included the dancehall star Sean Paul, for whom he designed several CD covers, and The New York Times’s T Magazine. During much of that time, he said, “I made a big point of not writing seriously and even stopped reading for a while, too.”
But he was drawn back to literature by what he described as the “lack of a sense of possibility” he felt in Jamaica. Publishers and agents in New York showed no interest in a draft of what became “John Crow’s Devil,” his first novel. But when he took a chapter to a writing workshop in Kingston taught by a visiting American, Kaylie Jones, she was immediately taken by Mr. James’s writing and choice of subject.
“What leaped out at me right away was that he was a phenomenally visual writer with a lyrical, magical voice,” said Ms. Jones, who teaches writing at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. “I was shocked that nobody had picked up this guy.”
A stint in the writing program at Wilkes enabled Mr. James to work on a second novel, “The Book of Night Women,” set on a sugar plantation in colonial times. He now teaches literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul.
Chunks of Mr. James’s novels, especially “Seven Killings,” are written in Jamaican patois. He describes himself as “bilingual,” fond of using dialect in speech and also to discuss serious questions of race, class and politics in the novel, but equally comfortable employing standard speech in interviews and the classroom, with an accent that is beginning to incorporate the flat tones of the American Midwest.
“When we are taking our business out in the public, that’s not how you are supposed to speak,” he said of patois. “It’s an embarrassment” to older and middle-class Jamaicans, he added, “especially if they hear I’m an English teacher. ‘Why are you speaking broken English?’ As if this is something that needs to be fixed.”
J. California Cooper in 1987. (Credit: Ellen Banner)
J. California Cooper, an award-winning writer whose black female characters confront a world of indifference and betrayal, but find kinship there in unexpected places, died on September 20th in Seattle. She was 82. A spokesman for Random House, her publisher, confirmed her death. She had had several heart attacks in recent years.
Ms. Cooper won an American Book Award in 1989 for the second of her six story collections, “Homemade Love.” Her short story “Funny Valentines,” about a woman in a troubled marriage who repairs an old rift with a cousin when she moves back home, was turned into a 1999 television movie starring Alfre Woodard and Loretta Devine.
Writing in a vernacular first-person style, Ms. Cooper set her stories in an indeterminate rural past permeated with violence and the ghost of slavery. The African-American women she depicts endure abandonment, betrayal, rape and social invisibility, but they survive.
“Some Soul to Keep” (1987), her third collection, includes over-the-back-fence tales. One story tells of two women who become close friends after one woman’s husband dies and the other’s leaves. They learn that long-lived rumors of their dislike for each other had been fabricated by their husbands. Another story is about a blind girl who is raped by her minister, gives birth to his son and raises him alone because, she explains, he makes her forget she is blind.
Ms. Cooper’s 1991 novel, “Family,” one of five she wrote, is narrated by the ghost of a slave woman who committed suicide before the Civil War and who follows the lives of her descendants as they mingle and procreate in a new interracial world, marveling at how “from one woman all these different colors and nationalities could come into being.”
Ms. Cooper was clear about the religious values that informed her stories. “I’m a Christian,” she told The Washington Post in 2000. “That’s all I am. If it came down to Christianity and writing, I’d let the writing go. God is bigger than a book.”
In an interview on NPR in 2006, she said, “What I’m basically trying to do is help somebody make some right choices.”
It was first a novel, then a film and now it’s headed to Broadway. “Devil in a Blue Dress” will be getting the theater treatment. The popular film that starred Denzel Washington and Don Cheadlein 1995 — based on one of Walter Mosley‘s most popular works — is coming to the Great White Way.
“Devil in a Blue Dress” is a noir novel and film about a man in 1948 Los Angeles who loses his aerospace manufacturing job and turns to private detective work.
Mosley revealed the Broadway news when he was promoting his new book, “Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore.” He has partnered with Jazz musician and composer Branford Marsalisto bring the work to the stage. There’s no word on if Washington or Cheadle will reprise their roles from the film, but the production should begin within the next year. article by Deron Dalton via eurweb.com
“Roots” is returning to TV next year as a big-ticket event series production to air across History, A&E Network and Lifetime next year.
Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir in verse, “Brown Girl Dreaming” (which has already won a National Book Award), along with Cece Bell’s illustrated memoir, “El Deafo” (which chronicles her hearing loss at an early age from spinal meningitis and her struggle to fit in at school), were named as Newbery Honor books.
Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison has an eleventh novel coming out late April titled God Help the Child.
