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Posts published in “Non-Fiction”

Ballerina Misty Copeland Dances into Two-Book Deal

By goodblacknews on January 31, 2013
misty-copeland-hb

(Misty Copeland/Photo: Hello Beautiful) 

Ballet dancer Misty Copeland has a two-book deal.  Copeland, 30, is working on a memoir for Simon & Schuster‘s Touchstone imprint and picture book for G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, part of Penguin Group (USA). Copeland helped break ground as an African-American female soloist for the American Ballet Theatre. According to a release Wednesday by the two publishers, both of her books are scheduled for 2014.
In her memoir, Copeland is expected to describe the battles between her mother and her dance instructors while she was a teen over whether she should be allowed to pursue her career and who was her legal guardian.
article via blackamericaweb.com

Black Authors Thrive Through Business of Black Book Clubs

By goodblacknews on January 2, 2013

Shutterstock
Over the last 20 years, the channels for discovering new books, especially books by first-time and emerging authors, have shrunk or disappeared. Newspapers and magazines dedicate mere slivers of arts sections to book reviews — if at all. Those papers like the New York Times that do devote more space to book coverage rarely review debut authors. Likewise, bookstores prefer to invite already established, bestselling, or celebrity writers to do readings and signings. That leaves Oprah — and the Queen of Talk has endorsed only 72 books since she started her eponymous book club in 1996, including the two she has recommended since her 2.0 reboot.
It’s even more difficult for black authors — new and established — to get their books on readers’ radars. As it is, African-American interest books receive a mere fraction of the coverage noted above, and with the closing of more than 100 black-owned independent bookstores in the last 15 years, as well as the shuttering of Black Issues Book Review there are even fewer places for black authors’ work to gain visibility. Mosaic, African Voices, and the new Spook can only review so much.  “The last [issue of] Essence covered the same book Oprah covered,” observed Troy Johnson, founder of the African-American Literature Book Club better known as AALBC.com.
In this landscape, black book clubs offer authors a valuable — albeit extremely competitive —promotion and sales channel. “[Book clubs] have advanced far beyond the small get-togethers in someone’s living room,” says Carol Mackey, editor-in-chief of direct-to-consumer book club Black Expressions.

Essence Magazine Commemorates Michelle Obama’s Life in New Book

By goodblacknews on December 28, 2012

'A Tribute to Michelle Obama'

‘A Salute to Michelle Obama.’ (Image: Essence Magazine)
The editors at Essence magazine have been hard at work this fall on a new tome celebrating first lady Michelle Obama’s life and achievements. A Salute to Michelle Obama, available now in paperback, features an array of images of the first lady punctuated with essays penned by legendary black women. Yet, what makes it special are quotes from African-American female fans of Mrs. Obama interwoven through this compendium of her accomplishments.

“We reached out to women and asked, ‘What do you believe has been the impact of Michelle Obama?’” Patrik Henry Bass, Senior Editor at Essence, told theGrio. He was inundated with streams of enthusiastic praise in response from the Essence audience.  “I was surprised, in a delightful way,” he said of women’s reactions.

Author and TV Show Host Raven Magwood To Graduate Clemson at 19

By goodblacknews on December 3, 2012

Clemson senior Raven Magwood attends classes during the week and spends most of her weekends traveling the country to speak and promote her latest book, 'The 7 Practices of Exceptional Student Athletes.'

Clemson senior Raven Magwood attends classes during the week and spends most of her weekends traveling the country to speak and promote her latest book, ‘The 7 Practices of Exceptional Student Athletes.’

Three D’s, one girl and a long list of accomplishments and ambitions. Clemson senior Raven Magwood believes that dedication, determination and discipline are the sources to her success. She holds a calm and quiet demeanor in the classroom, but that just barely taps the surface of who this young woman is and what she has done in only 19 years.

This Greenville native’s notoriety began on a gymnastics mat. It took six strenuous hours of practice per day to win the 2004 USAIGC (United States Association of Independent Gymnastics Clubs, Inc.) Championship at age 11. By 12, she had published her first book and entered high school. Raven was always looking for more of a challenge, so she took college courses and graduated early.  At 16, she followed in her parents’ footsteps to Clemson University, although she had received letters from many Ivy League schools. She began pre-med, but a conversation with her mother altered that.

Book Review: “The Stone Thrower” by Jael Ealey Richardson

By goodblacknews on November 20, 2012

The Stone Thrower
By Jael Ealey Richardson
Thomas Allen Publishers
256 pp; $24.95

The American football quarterback, Chuck Ealey led his University of Toledo Rockets to three undefeated seasons in college football, but he had misfortune to do so at a time when the National Football League looked askance at black quarterbacks. Because the NFL would not draft him, Ealey — like African-American quarterbacks Bernie Custis before him, and Warren Moon after — came to play for the Canadian Football League in 1972. It was Ealey’s best season: he led the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to a Grey Cup victory and was the game’s Most Valuable Player.

Ealey’s daughter, Jael Ealey Richardson, never got to see her father play football because she was born in 1980 — two years after her father sustained a lung injury and retired from the sport. In her memoir The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lessons, a Father’s Life, Ealey Richardson could have taken the easy route by writing a praiseworthy tract meant to set her father up as a role model and hero. Ealey, the exquarterback, does come across as a devoted family man with a depth of vision and discipline that carried him far beyond the stadium lights. However, his daughter’s memoir is engaging because she situates his life in the context of the civil rights movement in the United States, and addresses issues of race in her own family as well as in homes, on the streets and in schools and campuses in the U.S. and Canada.

Ultimately, The Stone Thrower is as much a meditation on a daughter’s emerging sense of identity in Canada as it is a father-daughter memoir. The two threads are inextricably linked, one enriching the other.

Four Great Reads To Jumpstart Your Career

By goodblacknews on October 28, 2012
(Image: Thinkstock)

Are you a young job-seeker fresh out of college? Are you an office baby looking to move up in your career? Are you a college senior who is months, weeks or even days away from walking across the stage? If you answered yes to any of those questions, here are four books that can help you jump start your career post college graduation.

Have No Career Fear: A College Grad’s Guide to Snagging a Job, Trekking the Career Path, and Reaching Job Nirvana (2007) by Ben Cohen-Leadholm, Ari Gerzon Kessler and Rachel Skerritt

Written and edited by three college graduates with contributions from more than 100 graduates, this guide teaches graduates how to be more aggressive, inventive and persistent in looking for a job and how to how succeed and gain respect once they enter the workplace. Advice includes how to network, negotiate a salary and deal with difficult bosses.

“Walking Dead” Actress Danai Gurira Wins Whiting Writing Award

By goodblacknews on October 24, 2012
Danai Gurira, best known for her role of Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead, has been awarded the Whiting Writers Award.

For those who may not be familiar, Danai Gurira, who made her Broadway debut in 2010 in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, is an accomplished playwright in her own right.  She co-wrote In the Continuum with Nikkole Salter which received the Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for writing.  Gurira also received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in In The Contiuum.  Other work written by Gurira includes Eclipsed and The Convert.

Another woman of color honored was Sharifa Rhodes-Pitt a non-fiction writer.  She graduated from Harvard and was a Fulbright Scholar. 

Dylan Penningroth and Dinaw Mengestu Win 2012 MacArthur Fellowships

By lorilakinhutcherson on October 7, 2012

Dylan C. Pennigroth (left) and Dinaw Mengestu (right)

Penningroth received a B.A. (1993) from Yale University and an M.A. (1996) and a Ph.D. (2000) from Johns Hopkins University. He was affiliated with the University of Virginia (1999–2002) prior to his appointment as associate professor in the Department of History at Northwestern University in 2003. Since 2007, he has also been an American Bar Foundation research professor. Northwestern University Professor Dylan C. Penningroth and writer Dinaw Mengestu are among this year’s recipients of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”  The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award bestowed annually to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. 

Bettye LaVette Back With New CD and Autobiography

By goodblacknews on September 28, 2012

Bettye LaVette  (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)

WEST ORANGE, N.J. — Bettye LaVette makes no apologies for her life. Sitting cross-legged on an Art Deco chair in her living room here, sipping wine, she was animated and gritty as she talked about the decades she spent singing in clubs and cursing her “buzzard luck,” while her contemporaries, like Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross, became superstars.

“I thought I was going to die in obscurity,” said Ms. LaVette, 66. “I’m still going to die broke but not obscure.”
It has been 50 years since Ms. LaVette, then a teenage mother from a working-class Detroit home, recorded her first single, “My Man — He’s a Lovin’ Man,” which became a hit on Atlantic Records and seemed to foretell a bright future. But she quarreled with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records and left the label, and even though she recorded dozens of other R&B singles in the 1960s, including the minor hit “Let Me Down Easy,” her career never took off. She survived as a club performer and appeared in “Bubbling Brown Sugar” on Broadway and on tour. Her long-delayed first album in the early 1980s didn’t sell. By the late ’90s, she was popular only among European R&B enthusiasts.

Duke University Acquires Papers Of Noted Historian John Hope Franklin

By goodblacknews on September 27, 2012


Duke University has announced that it has acquired a vast archive of papers of John Hope Franklin. Professor Franklin was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University and one of the most prolific and respected historians of the twentieth century. He died of congestive heart failure on March 25, 2009 at Duke University Hospital. He was 94 years old.
The archive includes more than 300 boxes of materials that were donated to the university by his son and daughter-in-law. Included in the archive are diaries, correspondence, manuscripts, drafts of speeches, photographs, and video recordings. The collection will be housed at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke. The collection will be made available to researchers once it has been preserved and cataloged.
John Hope Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, in 1915. His grandfather had been a slave. His father was one of the first black lawyers in Oklahoma. His mother was a schoolteacher. Franklin was named after John Hope, the former president of Morehouse College and Atlanta University.
Franklin attended racially segregated schools in Oklahoma. He was valedictorian of his high school class. He wanted to attend the University of Oklahoma but at that time, and for many years later, the state’s flagship university was closed to blacks.