by Sameer Rao via colorlines.com
Tarana Burke first launched the #MeToo campaign in 2007 to build solidarity and healing power among Black girls and women who survived sexual assault. Nearly 11 years later, the organizer and activist will chronicle her and the movement’s journey in a memoir.
The Associated Press (The AP) reported today (February 2) that Burke is working with writer and fellow activist asha bandele on the upcoming book, titled “Where the Light Enters.” Simon & Schuster will publish it next year through 37 Ink, its imprint that previously released books by Issa Rae and Dr. Willie Parker.
Burke told The AP that the memoir will address her own “ordinary, extraordinary journey from victim to survivor to thriver,” as well as the evolution of the movement.
“The book will also help readers understand the often overlooked historical connections of the role sexual violence plays in communities of color, specifically Black communities, even today, while exploring ways the same communities have been both complicit and resilient,” Burke added. “More than anything, this memoir will provide survivors across the spectrum of sexual abuse a road map for healing that helps them understand that the ‘me too’ movement is more about triumph than trauma, and that our wounds, though they may never fully heal, can also be the key to our survival.”
via #MeToo Founder Tarana Burke Writes Memoir, ‘Where the Light Enters’ | Colorlines
Posts tagged as “37 Ink”
article by Jennifer Schuessler via nytimes.com
MOUNT VERNON, Va. — The costumed characters at George Washington’s gracious estate here are used to handling all manner of awkward queries, whether about 18th-century privies or the first president’s teeth. So when a visitor recently asked an African-American re-enactor in a full skirt and head scarf if she knew Ona Judge, the woman didn’t miss a beat.
Judge’s escape from the presidential residence in Philadelphia in 1796 had been “a great embarrassment to General and Lady Washington,” the woman said, before offering her own view of the matter.“Ona was born free, like everybody,” she said. “It was this world that made her a slave.”
It’s always 1799 at Mount Vernon, where more than a million visitors annually see the property as it was just before Washington’s death, when his will famously freed all 123 of his slaves. That liberation did not apply to Ona Judge, one of 153 slaves held by Martha Washington.
But Judge, it turned out, evaded the Washingtons’ dogged (and sometimes illegal) efforts to recapture her, and would live quietly in New Hampshire for another 50 years. Now her story — and the challenge it offers to the notion that Washington somehow transcended the seamy reality of slaveholding — is having its fullest airing yet. Judge is among the 19 enslaved people highlighted in “Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon,” the first major exhibition at Mount Vernon dedicated to the topic (it runs through 2018, check link above for details).
She is also the subject of a book, “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,” by Erica Armstrong Dunbar.
Most scholars who have written about Judge’s escape have used it as a lens onto Washington’s evolving ideas about slavery. But “Never Caught,” published this Tuesday by 37 Ink, flips the perspective, focusing on what freedom meant to the people he kept in bondage. “We have the famous fugitives, like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass,” Ms. Dunbar, a professor of black studies and history at the University of Delaware, said in an interview in Mount Vernon’s 18th-century-style food court. “But decades before them, Ona Judge did this. I want people to know her story.”
Research on slavery has exploded in the two decades since Mount Vernon, Monticello and other founder home sites introduced slavery-themed tours and other prominent acknowledgments of the enslaved. “Lives Bound Together” was originally going to fill one 1,100-square-foot room in the museum here, but soon expanded to include six other galleries normally dedicated to the decorative and fine arts, books and manuscripts.
The exhibition makes it clear just who poured from the elegant teapots and did the backbreaking work on the 8,000-acre estate. But integrating the harsh reality of slavery into the heroic story of Washington — “a leader of character,” as the title of the permanent exhibition across from the slavery show calls him — remains unfinished work, some scholars say.
article by Isabella Biedenharn (@ISABELLA324) via ew.com
Beverly Bond, founder of the annual Black Girls Rock! awards show, which airs each year on BET, will publish a book with Atria Publishing Group imprint 37 INK, EW can announce exclusively. The book is slated for a Fall 2017 publication.
Black Girls Rock!: Celebrating the Power, Beauty and Brilliance of Black Women will, according to a release, “combine powerful photography with inspirational advice, original poetry, and affirmations to showcase the complexity, dynamism, achievements and diverse cultural traditions of Black women from around the world.”
Says Bond in a statement, “This book will affirm, elevate, and celebrate the unique narratives and rich experiences of Black women and girls around the world for generations to come.”
“Beverly is a real visionary who has created not just an award show, not just a brand but an inspirational and aspirational mantra that holistically celebrates Black Girl Magic,” says 37 INK publisher Dawn Davis. “From millennials to baby boomers and beyond, her book is going to help our communities affirm and heal. I think of it as an I Dream a World for our time.”
The most recent Black Girls Rock! award show celebrated its 10th anniversary when it aired on BET April 5, hosted by Tracee Ellis Ross of Black-ish.
Beverly Bond, founder of the annual Black Girls Rock! awards show, which airs each year on BET, will publish a book with Atria Publishing Group imprint 37 INK, EW can announce exclusively. The book is slated for a Fall 2017 publication.
Black Girls Rock!: Celebrating the Power, Beauty and Brilliance of Black Women will, according to a release, “combine powerful photography with inspirational advice, original poetry, and affirmations to showcase the complexity, dynamism, achievements and diverse cultural traditions of Black women from around the world.”
Says Bond in a statement, “This book will affirm, elevate, and celebrate the unique narratives and rich experiences of Black women and girls around the world for generations to come.”
“Beverly is a real visionary who has created not just an award show, not just a brand but an inspirational and aspirational mantra that holistically celebrates Black Girl Magic,” says 37 INK publisher Dawn Davis. “From millennials to baby boomers and beyond, her book is going to help our communities affirm and heal. I think of it as an I Dream a World for our time.”
The most recent Black Girls Rock! award show celebrated its 10th anniversary when it aired on BET April 5, hosted by Tracee Ellis Ross of Black-ish.
article by Toni Akindele via essence.com
Comedian Kevin Hart has found success both on stage and on the big screen. He recently announced that he will soon publish an inspirational memoir appropriately titled, From the Hart.
“My kids know I’m a big deal. They’re very aware,” claims the comedian. “I let them know every day, I say, ‘Look, daddy’s a big deal. Now I’ll have a book out to prove it.”
The book will explore Hart’s childhood, from his difficult upbringing in Philadelphia with a drug-addicted father, to the struggle of starting a career in stand-up, to what motivates him now. According to EW, Hart has the star power to sell 50,000 tickets for one show and gross $100 million worldwide for a comedy tour.
From the Hart is being published via 37 Ink, the Atria Publishing Group imprint that published The Butler. Dawn Davis, vice president of 37 Ink, acquired world rights to Mr. Hart’s book that is scheduled to be published on Father’s Day of 2017.
“I’ve been watching Kevin’s star rise ever since he stole the show in Think Like a Man,” Davis said in a statement. “He not only has a comedic sensibility that is perfectly–pitched for our time, he has a bounty of stories form hi life that are wise, funny, and entertaining.”
To read more, go to: http://www.essence.com/2016/03/23/kevin-hart-to-publish-memoir
article by Hope Wabuke via theroot.com
It is no secret that “African-American women are the largest group of readers in the country,” states Dawn Davis, head of Simon & Schuster’s 37 Ink imprint. It is also no secret that the publishing world is very, very white, with books by black authors published at an abysmal low, never rising above 10 percent of the industry’s output. Indeed, a recent survey by Lee & Low publishers found that “just under 80 percent of publishing staff and review journal staff are white,” with “Black/African Americans [at] 3.5 percent.”
But even with such conditions, key figures such as Chris Jackson, Dawn Davis and others have shepherded books by black authors through their fellow gatekeepers and to the public. Other organizations, like Cave Canem, the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction and the African Poetry Book Fund, support black literature by offering writing retreats, workshops and small-press publishing opportunities. Here are some of the wonderful titles by black authors that readers of all tastes can look forward to in 2016.
In fiction, Darryl Pinckney offers Black Deutschland, the story of a gay African-American man who escapes his troubles in Chicago to seek refuge in 1980s Germany. The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, from playwright and TV writer Kia Corthron, is an ambitious, brilliantly executed tale of race and family across generations. There is also the latest installment of Rachel Howzell Hall’s Los Angeles-based Elouise Norton mystery thriller series, Trail of Echoes, which comes out in May.
Literary legend Terry McMillan publishes a new book in June titled I Almost Forgot About You, the story of Dr. Georgia Young, who one day decides that there’s more to life than what she has been doing—and decides to go find it. There is also The Underground Railroad, a novel from acclaimed author Colson Whitehead, which will be published in September. And in April, Diane McKinney-Whetstone is giving us Lazaretto, her fictional account of race, lies and murder that rock the close-knit community of the island-based Lazaretto quarantine hospital. In May, from Afro-Caribbean British writer Yvette Edwards, comes the riveting novel The Mother, which explores how one mother copes with the murder of her son—and the courtroom drama of the trial that follows.
Six strong fiction debuts from black American women are a high point of 2016. In June, Los Angeles-based writer Natashia Deon gives us Grace, a tale of the love between a mother and daughter set against American slavery and emancipation. Desiree Cooper’s Know the Mother, out in March, explores race and motherhood in a series of interconnected vignettes. Jamaican-American writer Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn crafts a tale of unforgettable Jamaican women fighting for selfhood and independence in Here Comes the Sun, due out in July.
Cole Lavalais pens a tale of love, redemption and self-discovery on the campus of a historically black college in Summer of the Cicadas due in the spring. In We Love You, Charlie Freeman, out next month, Kaitlyn Greenidge has created an absurdist social commentary on race in the form of an African-American family paid to adopt a chimpanzee as a member of their family and be observed by a scientific research institute during the process. And Fabienne Josaphat’s novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, is the riveting tale of a man trying to save his brother from unjust imprisonment during the brutal regime of Haitian dictator François Duvalier in 1965.
Nonfiction is equally strong. Memoirs from literary powerhouses Roxane Gay and Kiese Laymon, both meditating on blackness and the body, arrive in June. In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Gay discusses her relationship with food, body image and self-care, a memoir couched in her usual honesty, vulnerability and depth of observation that have endeared her to so many readers. Laymon’s memoir, titled Stank: A Fat Black Memoir, is replete with his trademark wit and astute analysis. Out now is All Jokes Aside, a memoir by Raymond Lambert and Chris Bournea, which explores the rise of the African-American comedy scene centered at Lambert’s club.
To read more, go to: http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/02/books_by_black_authors_to_look_forward_to_in_2016.html