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African American Book
African American Book Clubs
African American Literature Book Club AALB
Founded by Troy Johnson in 1997, AALBC.com, LLC is a widely recognized source of author profiles, book recommendations, intriguing on-line discussion boards, writer's resources, articles, and critical reviews of books written by and about African Americans.
HomePage: http://aalbc.com/
Black Expressions Book Club
Black Expressions focuses on contemporary and classic African-American fiction plus a wealth of titles in key areas such as heritage & culture, inspiration/religion, health and beauty, relationships, cooking and home, career and personal finance, self-help, kid's books and more!
Black Expressions was voted "Book Club of the Year" at the 2004 African American Literary Awards Show held in Harlem, New York.
HomePage: http://www.blackexpressions.com/doc/full_site_enrollment/fse_homepage.jhtml
The Sisters and Brothers of HotLanta Book Club
The Sisters and Brothers of HotLanta Book Club was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in May 1997. Our mission is to increase appreciation of the African American culture through its literature while forming lasting friendships among readers. Our motto is : Reading to uplift, understand, and celebrate the Black experience. The book club also focuses on empowering African American communities, businesses and people socially through community outreach programs.
The Sisters and Brothers of HotLanta Book Club believes that literary discussion is a tremendously effective vehicle for facilitating the exchange of ideas about topics that are of issue to the Black community. Literary dialogues provide neutral ground upon which we can share our frustrations, joys, triumphs, and sorrows. The Sisters and Brothers Book Club also believes that reading and discussing literature written for, by, and about us is very therapeutic, serves as an excellent networking tool, and leads us to better understanding of ourselves.
HomePage: http://www.sistersbrothers.com/
R.A.W.SISTAZ (Reading and Writing SISTAZ)
R.A.W.SISTAZ (Reading and Writing SISTAZ) focuses on reading, writing, and discussing books primarily by African-American Authors. Our groups (both online and off) are not only book clubs, but resources to readers, writers, and literary enthusiasts; thus our founder's motto of "Keeping You in the Know Regarding the African-American Literary Community."
Our main goal is to provide information to the African-American Literary Community regarding books, authors, events, and other industry news. We offer our services and our sites free of charge, as avenues to promote literacy, to encourage our authors to continue following their dreams and to facilitate the open exchange of literary information; basically connecting both readers and writers.
HomePage: http://www.rawsistaz.com/
Go On Girl! Book Club
Founded in 1990 in New York City by three office friends, the Go On Girl! Book Club is the largest African-American women's book club in the country. Today the organization has grown to more than 30 chapters and over 300 sisters nationwide and supports the literary works of authors of the Black African Diaspora.
HomePage: http://www.goongirl.org/
Maya Angelou, born in 1928, American author, poet, performer, and civil rights activist, best known for portrayals of strong African American women in her writings. Characteristically using a first-person point of view and the rhythms of folk song, she writes of the African American woman’s coming of age, of struggles with discrimination, of the African and West Indian cultural heritage, and of the acceptance of the past. In 1993 Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton.
Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. The child of divorce, she spent most of her childhood living with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, the place she calls her hometown. After graduating with honors from Lafayette County Training School in 1940, Angelou was reunited with her mother in San Francisco. At the age of 16 she graduated from high school, gave birth to her son Guy, and began a series of jobs, including cooking and waiting tables.
Angelou’s career in the arts began on the West Coast, as a calypso performer and cabaret entertainer, and as a dancer in a touring company production of Porgy and Bess. She adopted the stage name Maya Angelou in 1953. “Maya” was what her brother had called her as a child, and “Angelou” was based on the last name of Tosh Angelos, whom she had married the year before. Upon moving to New York City in the mid-1950s, she attended meetings of the Harlem Writers Guild, won parts in the off-Broadway musical Calypso Heatwave (1957) and the Jean Genet drama The Blacks (1961), and recorded an album of calypso music. In 1960 she wrote and produced a revue entitled Freedom Cabaret as a way of raising money for the civil rights movement.
Angelou began her writing career as a playwright and journalist, receiving the attention and encouragement of writer James Baldwin and cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer. In 1970 she published the first of her autobiographical books, the popular and widely acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In it she describes her rape at the age of seven and subsequent five years of self-imposed speechlessness. The series of autobiographical books continues with Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). These writings stress the themes of courage, perseverance, self-acceptance, and the realization of an individual’s full potential.
Toni Morrison, born in 1931, American writer, whose works deal with the black experience and celebrate the black community. Morrison’s work features mythic elements, sharp observation, compassion, and poetic language and is often concerned with the relationship between the individual and society. In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize in literature.
Born in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison was christened Chloe Anthony Wofford and grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s in a poor and close-knit family. In 1949 she entered Howard University, where she became interested in theater and joined a drama group, the Howard University Players. Morrison went on to earn an M.A. degree in English at Cornell University in 1955. She subsequently taught at Texas Southern University from 1955 to 1957 and then at Howard University from 1957 to 1964. While at Howard she met and married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect. The couple had two children and then divorced in 1964.
While teaching at Howard, Morrison began to write fiction. After leaving teaching she worked as an editor at Random House, first in Syracuse, New York, then in New York City. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, an expansion of an earlier short story, was published in 1970, and she attracted immediate attention as a promising writer. This was followed by the novel Sula (1973), about a woman who refuses to conform to community mores. Morrison's next novel, Song of Solomon (1977), was hailed by critics as a major literary achievement. It tells the story of a character named Milkman Dead, who in his search for his family's lost fortune discovers instead his family history. Tar Baby (1981), about a tense romance between a man and a woman, was equally well received.
Beloved (1987; Pulitzer Prize, 1988) is regarded by many as Morrison's most successful novel. It is the story of Sethe, a mother who kills her daughter Beloved rather than have her grow up as a slave. The book explores many complex themes, including black Americans' relationship to slavery. Morrison's use of multiple time frames and fantastic occurrences (such as the reappearance of Beloved) demonstrate her lyric storytelling abilities. The novels Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1998) and the nonfiction book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) were also well received. Morrison’s seventh novel, Paradise (1998), focuses on an all-black town called Ruby, and a violent attack that a group of men make on a small, all-female community at the edge of town. In Love (2003), she describes life and love in a black seaside resort during the 1940s and 1950s.
Alice Walker, born in 1944, American author and poet, most of whose writing portrays the lives of poor, oppressed African American women in the early 1900s. Born Alice Malsenior Walker in Eatonton, Georgia, she was educated at Spelman and Sarah Lawrence colleges. She wrote most of her first volume of poetry during a single week in 1964; it was published in 1968 as Once. Walker's experiences during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence, including undergoing an abortion and making a trip to Africa, provided many of the book's themes, such as love, suicide, civil rights, and Africa. She won the American Book Award (see National Book Awards) and the Pulitzer Prize for her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple (1982), which was praised for its strong characterizations and the clear, musical quality of its colloquial language. The novel was made into a motion picture in 1985, and Walker's book The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996) contains her notes and reflections on making the film.
Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) is about the emotional growth of an African American man. Meridian (1976) follows the life of an African American woman during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) explores the tradition of female circumcision still practiced in some places in Africa. By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998) portrays a Christian missionary family, focusing on the relationship between the father and the three daughters. The book also explores the relationship between Christianity and the spiritual traditions of the African community in which the family lives. Walker’s volumes of poetry include Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973) and Goodnight, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979). Her nonfiction works include the essay collections In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Living by the Word (1988), and Anything We Love Can Be Saved (1997).
James Baldwin (1924-1987), American writer, whose focus on issues of racial discrimination made him a prominent spokesperson for racial equality, especially during the civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is best known for his semiautobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and for The Fire Next Time (1963), a powerful collection of essays in which he expressed his belief that racial discrimination is a disease of white society, curable only by white society’s acknowledgement of the illness.
James Arthur Baldwin was born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City to a single mother, Emma Birdis Jones. When he was still young, his mother married a preacher, David Baldwin, who adopted James. The family was poor, and James and his adopted father had a difficult relationship. Baldwin attended the prestigious De Witt Clinton Public High School in New York. At the age of 14 he joined the Pentecostal Church and became a Pentecostal preacher.
When he was 17 years old, Baldwin turned away from religion and moved to Greenwich Village, a New York City neighborhood famous for its freethinking artists and writers. Supporting himself with odd jobs, he began to write short stories, essays, and book reviews, many of which were later collected in the volume Notes of a Native Son (1955). During this time Baldwin began to recognize his own homosexuality. In 1948, disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and homosexuals, Baldwin left the United States for Paris, France. He would live in Paris for most of his later life.
In Paris, with the support of fellowship grants and literary supporters such as American novelist Richard Wright, Baldwin wrote his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. The book describes a boy’s religious conversion, and Baldwin tells the story through a series of prayers that serve as flashbacks. He weaves the history of the boy’s family and community into the novel’s narrative. While in France, Baldwin came to accept his homosexuality and began work on Giovanni’s Room (1956), a novel about a man exploring his sexual identity. In 1957, impressed by the growing strength of the civil rights movement in the United States, Baldwin returned to the country briefly in order to participate.
