 |
 |
|
Chariot in the Sky |
|
| Author: |
Arna Wendell Bontemps |
 Book Review
|
| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0195156587 |
|
| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Description
Written in 1951 by Arna Bontemps, major literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance and close friend of Langston Hughes, Chariot in the Sky tells the story of the Jubilee Singers through the life of a young slave boy, Caleb, who becomes one of their earliest members. Caleb is a teenage slave
sent to Charleston, South Carolina, to apprentice a tailor. Through careful listening and observation, Caleb diligently teaches himself to read and write. He also discovers his musical talents and develops into an accomplished singer.
When the Civil War begins, Caleb is sold to a shopkeeper who takes him to Chattanooga, where he becomes smitten with a free black girl and follows her to Fisk University, a new institution for former slaves in Nashville. Here Caleb grows into his new identity as a free man and receives the... |
|
|
|
|
|
Sleeping with the Dictionary |
|
| Author: |
Harryette Mullen |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0520231430 |
|
| Availability: |
|
From Publishers Weekly
It's been over six years since Mullen published her last book, Muse & Drudge, a series of terse, wacky quatrains which barnstormed through plangent blues to "rhime rich" rap, from Language poetry-style minimalism to "the doubles" of the playground dis. Mullen's fifth book is no less unconventional, and more diverse prose poems, exhaustive alphabetical language-salads like "Jinglejangle" ("Mingus Among Us mishmash Missy-Pissy mock croc Mod Squad mojo moldy oldie"), surrealistic odes to her erotic other, Oulipian word-replacement poems, short stories that recall the quasi-fantastic realism of John Yau and strange rewrites of classics, such as this riff on Shakespeare's famous sonnet: "My honeybunch's peepers are nothing like neon. Today's special at Red Lobster is redder than her kisser. If Liquid... |
|
|
|
|
|
Father of the Blues |
|
| Author: |
W. C. Handy |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0306804212 |
|
| Availability: |
Print-on-demand title. Ships within 5-15 days. |
Book Description
This is a look at how jazz and blues began. W.C. Handy tells us how the transition was made from marches, classical music, dance music, Stephen Foster, vaudville tunes and folk blues to the arranged and orchestrated blues and jazz of the 20th Century.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hammers of Creation: Folk Culture in Modern African-American Fiction |
|
| Author: |
Eric J. Sundquist |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0820327948 |
|
| Availability: |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
100 Years of Negro Freedom |
|
| Author: |
Arna Wendell Bontemps |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0313222185 |
|
| Availability: |
Usually ships within 3-5 weeks. We cannot guarantee availability of special order titles because publishers may run out of stock. We will notify you in 3-4 weeks if we are unable to get this title for you. |
Review
“There is a warm and wholesome quality about this book, particularly those sections devoted to the biographies of outstanding Negro leaders, that elevates it above the sorry nature of some of the historical details it relates. The cause of human equality is well served by this level-headed backward glance over an awesome and remarkable century.”–Kirkus
From the Publisher
There is a warm and wholesome quality about this book, particularly those sections devoted to the biographies of outstanding Negro leaders, that elevates it above the sorry nature of some of the historical details it relates. The cause of human equality is well served by this level-headed backward glance over an awesome and remarkable century.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Renaissance Man from Louisiana |
|
| Author: |
Kirkland C. Jones |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0313280134 |
|
| Availability: |
Usually ships within 3-5 weeks. We cannot guarantee availability of special order titles because publishers may run out of stock. We will notify you in 3-4 weeks if we are unable to get this title for you. |
Review
“A readable, appreciative portrait, highlighting Bontemps's uniqueness and stability as a family man, inspiring teacher, and cultural archivist, photographs, chapter notes, and a bibliographic essay.”–Choice
“Renaissance Man...is a great contribution to the body of literature dealing with this significant historical and literary period.”–The Antioch Review
“Jones's title is intended to make the point that Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973) deserves the epithet "Renaissance man" for his significant achievement as a writer, teacher, scholar, and administrator, as well as for his participation in the Harlem Renaissance.”–American Lit.
Book Description
Arna Wendell Bontemps was a renaissance man in the broadest sense, a... |
|
|
|
|
|
God Sends Sunday |
|
| Author: |
Arna Bontemps |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0743268911 |
|
| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Description
God Sends Sunday is the first of three groundbreaking novels by Arna Bontemps, arguably one of the most versatile black writers of the twentieth century. Bontemps inaugurated his long and remarkable career in the Harlem Renaissance era when he was awarded three poetry prizes and established lifetime kinship with such noted figures as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay.God Sends Sunday was inspired by Arna Bontemps's great-uncle Buddy, whose down-home folk spirit animates this racy story of Little Augie, an irrepressible black jockey of the romantic 1890s. As a frail, undersized youngster, Little Augie leaves his grown sister's home and with luck and charm rises to fame and fortune on the Mississippi River racetrack circuit. But sudden wealth and hopeless rivalry for a beautiful woman change Little... |
|
|
|
|
|
Black Thunder |
|
| Author: |
Arna Wendell Bontemps |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0807063371 |
|
| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
Written in 1936 and based on an actual slave revolt, this critically acclaimed novel celebrates slave Gabriel Prossier's struggle to end racial oppression. Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
'Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt allowed Bontemps to warn of the rebellion that would come of poverty and racial oppression. This metaphor of revolution is at the same time a highly pertinent representation of black masculinity that will reward students of gender, slavery and the sensibilities of the 1930s.' -Nell Irvin Painter
See all Editorial Reviews
|
|
|
|
|
|
American Negro Poetry |
|
| Author: |
Arna Wendell Bontemps |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
0808577476 |
|
| Availability: |
Usually ships within 3-5 weeks. We cannot guarantee availability of special order titles because publishers may run out of stock. We will notify you in 3-4 weeks if we are unable to get this title for you. |
Review
"[Bontemps's] most distinctive works are ringing affirmations of the human passion for freedom and the desire for social justice inherent in us all. Arnold Rampersad called him the conscience of his era and it could be fairly added that his tendency to fuse history and imagination represents his personal legacy to a collective memory."--Charles L. James, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (on the life and work of Arna Bontemps, editor of American Negro Poetry)
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
With 200,000 copies in print, this anthology has for decades been seen as a fundamental collection of African-American verse. Bontemps (1902-73), an important figure during and after the Harlem Renaissance, author of more... |
|
|
|
|
|
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man |
|
| Author: |
James Weldon Johnson |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0809000326 |
|
| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
Book Description
James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. In the 1920s and since, it has also given white readers a startling new perspective on their own culture, revealing to many the double standard of racial identity imposed on black Americans.
Narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century--from a black college... |
|
|
|
|
|
American Negro Poetry |
|
| Author: |
Arna Wendell Bontemps |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
(Paperback) - Revised Ed. |
| ISBN: |
0809015641 |
|
| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
Review
"[Bontemps's] most distinctive works are ringing affirmations of the human passion for freedom and the desire for social justice inherent in us all. Arnold Rampersad called him the conscience of his era and it could be fairly added that his tendency to fuse history and imagination represents his personal legacy to a collective memory."--Charles L. James, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (on the life and work of Arna Bontemps, editor of American Negro Poetry)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anyplace But Here |
|
| Author: |
Arna Wendell Bontemps |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
082621116X |
|
| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From Library Journal
Originally published in 1945 and updated in 1966 under the title They Seek a City, this volume follows the migration of blacks who left the South in search of a new home.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties |
|
| Author: |
Countee Cullen (Editor) |
Book Review
|
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0806513497 |
|
| Availability: |
|
From Publishers Weekly
Long out of print, this anthology--featuring work by figures such as W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes--includes poignant biographical notes written for the most part by the poets themselves. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
This selection from the work of thirty-eight poets was made by Countee Cullen in 1927. His stated purpose at the time was to bring together a miscellany of deeply appreciated but scattered verse. Beginning with the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, who, though there were black poets before him, is generally credited as the first black poet to make a deep impression on the literary world, the book includes the writings of James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Faucet, Sterling A. Brown, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes,... |
|
|
