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Review: Death, With Occasional Smiling by Dr. Tony Medina
by Alan King Growing up, my mom hammered Jesus into me and my siblings. But she didn’t know about the Jesus whose stomping grounds were “on 110th Street & Lexington Avenue/ In the crusty eyelash of El Barrio.” (from “Dame in Traguito”) This Jesus—without “an accent over the e” because he didn’t need it for…
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Nostrand Avenue: Review
Nostrand Avenue proves its basic point: racism traumatizes and belittles Black men, women and communities. By the end, arsonists have torched many of Bed-Stuy’s historical landmarks, effectively symbolizing gentrification’s insidious function.
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King Comus by William Demby: Review
King Comus by William Demby Ishmael Reed Publishing Review by Steve Kemme
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Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News: Review
Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News By Kevin Young Graywolf Review by Rochelle Spencer When a reality star becomes your president and his advisor describes the exaggerations about the size of his inauguration crowd as “alternative facts,” could there be a better time to discuss bunk?
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Hook: A Memoir by Randall Horton: Review
by Roberto Carlos Garcia In his latest book, Hook: A Memoir, poet Dr. Randall Horton demonstrates how the choices he made throughout his life made him the man he is today. Horton went from a promising college freshman at Howard University to part time drug hustler, to big time drug importer, to struggling and homeless…
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Telepathologies by Cortney Lamar Charleston: Review
Review by Roberto Carlos Garcia In his now infamous speech at the 1958 Radio Television Digital News Association Convention, revered journalist Edward R. Murrow warned his colleagues about the dangers of the television medium: For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and…
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The Underground Railroad: Review
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Reviewed by Sidik Fofana The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is caked in jargon. The gist of it is this: a slave is a slave no matter where she is. South Carolina or Massachusetts. If she has run away and is caught, she is to be returned. She is…
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The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma: Review
Review by Sidik FofanaLittle Brown & Company It easily enough can be read as a parable. Abulu, a wild homeless man makes a grim forecast of death pitting brother against brother. He could represent the white man in colonial Nigeria. The one who has divided and plundered, who has drawn colonial war lines across African…
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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: Review
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi Review by Sidik Fofana The poem “Blue Seuss” by Terrance Hayes begins “Blacks stacked in boxes stacked on boxes/ Blacks in boxes stacked on shores” and ends “Blacks in rows of houses are/ Blacks in boxes too”. It is this same kind of African-American journey from the coasts of the motherland to…
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The Sellout by Paul Beatty: Review
The Sellout by Paul Beatty Farrar Straus & Giroux Review by Sidik Fofana “He’s demanding to know how it is that in this day and age a black man can violate the hallowed principles of the Thirteenth Amendment by owning a slave.” So reads the prologue of The Sellout, Paul Beatty’s romp of a third novel:…
