Early this morning I finished reading Ladies-in-Waiting by Linda Hudson-Smith. . .2 THUMBS UP. . .

Meet Marlene, Keisha, Rosalinda, and Alexis. Discover the power of prayer, forgiveness, and 4 women coming together at a prison.

This book is about 4 women with men in prison. One woman isa minister's wife and she brings the other women together along with hundreds of other women who have men in prison.

The book is spiritual fiction that towards the end got a little too preachy IMO but it had such a good plot. This will make a wonderful movie as well, if they do it right.


I also finished Baby Mama Drama. Jerry Springer in its printed form but it has its redeeming moments as well. I enjoyed it for what it was.

Everything In Its Place by Evelyn Palfrey -- Another story of forgiveness but it deals with middle aged folks and the elderly. 2 Thumbs Up as well.

Re: Books:)
 

"Leslie" scared me - LOL I also had other problems with the book that I wrote on an earlier post.

I just finished Mirrored Life. It started our good but then I hit a block with it and had a hard time finishing it. I think it became a little too predictable and unbelievable for me. CT4 what did you think?

Re: Re: Books:)
 

I skipped it. I was on the part where she became old girl's stylist with an AIRTIGHT contract and hooked up with limo driver. I will get back to it once my grades are done but I just was not feeling it as much as I hoped.

I probably keep Booksamillion.com in business
 

Baby Mama Drama was very funny and deep (read drama).:D

A Man Most Worthy...it was ok

Acting Out...I liked this a lot. Same "type" of plot as The Itch

Ladies in Waiting....Better than I thought it would be.

On the Shelf waiting to be read...

Journey to the Well (Actually waiting for one of my church members to finish her class so that we can "work" on this together.)

A Taste of Reality

Vernon Can Read

Six Easy Pieces

Kimberla Lawson Roby is coming to Charlotte
 

I will be IN THE #. :D

http://www.kimroby.com/home.htm?tour.htm~mainFrame

Her tour schedule

A THUMBS UP to A Taste of Reality by Kimberla Lawson Roby.
I cannot wait to meet her now. I have all of her books so she will sign ALL 5 of them.

For those who have read it, I really wanted to kick Frank's azz at the end. Oh and Miss Lorna -- A TRIP!!!

I just came from Soror Kimberla's book talk. EXCELLENT. Her husband was there too -- QTTTTT :D for an older man.

Anywho, if you get the chance to see her please do. We were in a smaller more intimate setting so we asked questions and just chatted. She is very personable. Kudos to her.

A Taste of Reality is Kimberla's experience with corporate America but NOT her husband. :D

Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, bestselling author of Trying To Sleep in the Bed You Made, have a new book coming out in February or March -- Better Than I Know Myself.

Oh and I will meet Carl Weber on Sunday in Charlotte. :cool: I looked for his tour schedule online but to no avail.:(


OH yeah I 4got,
Casting the First Stone sequel in 2004
Sequel to A Taste of Reality in 2005.:D

Reaching Back by Nea Anna Simone
 

I just finished reading a fabulous book, Reaching Back by Nea Anna Simone. This book combines INTRAracial prejudice, passing, family secrets, spirituality, quest for love from self and others and so much more.


This was a book that needs to be read and needed to be written. I can tell that this book is autobiographical in so many ways. It was such a compelling story that made it hard for me to put down as I read it in one day. :D It is on sale for $15 in the special paperback so go buy or check out but you can get it at Amazon like I did for $10.50. :D

I am now reading Baby Mama Drama as well. So far looks funny LOL!

Sphinxpoet

http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/9...ws/1773880.jpg
Long-lived sisters
are subject of new children’s book

Delany sisters’ story lives on

NEW YORK, Jan. 31 — Sadie and Bessie Delany were just girls when segregation forced them to sit in the back of a bus and drink water from “colored” ladles. But from this racism, the sisters forged an exceptional determination. And from their father, a minister and ex-slave, they developed an unwavering social conscience.

AMY HILL HEARTH tells their story for youngsters in her new book, “The Delany Sisters Reach High.” The richly illustrated nonfiction children’s book traces the sisters’ childhood in the South during the Jim Crow era.
The sisters, who died in their 100s in the late 1990s, first shared their remarkable lives with the world in 1993 in “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years,” a memoir co-authored with Hearth. The book inspired a Broadway play and a Peabody Award-winning television movie.
Many of the anecdotes from the original 299-page memoir are retold for children ages 6-12 in the 31-page “Reach High,” published by Abingdon Press.
“I always thought the sisters’ story would make a great story for children,” Hearth says. “I’m only sorry they didn’t live to see it.”
Bessie died in 1995 at age 104; Sadie in 1999 at age 109.

LIFE LESSONS
The 44-year-old author says she has received numerous requests over the years from parents and educators to write a book for children about the sisters; the more detailed “Having Our Say” is already widely used as a high school and college text.
David Smith, who teaches fifth grade reading at the Finley Middle School in Glen Cove, N.Y., says the sisters’ story is ideal for classes in history and life lessons.
“The Delany sisters handled adversity from a young age,” he said. “That’s an important lesson for young people to learn and embrace ... that being happy is not having a problem-free life but finding how to deal with adversity and finding support from those who care for you.”
At a time when most blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma, the Delanys had some advantages. Their father became vice principal of St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, N.C., and America’s first elected black Episcopal bishop. Their mother helped run the school while raising 10 children, all of whom went on to get college educations.
The sisters eventually moved to New York City, where Sadie became a public school domestic-science teacher and Bessie opened a dentist’s office in Harlem. The sisters never married.
In 1957, they broke another racial barrier by moving to a white suburban neighborhood, in Mount Vernon, N.Y.
“What comes through, although they were an elite family, is they were very socially conscious,” Hearth said.
In the book, she describes how “Bessie and Sadie shared their desks and textbooks with former slaves ... who had not been allowed to learn to read and write.”
The sisters, Smith added, “had the courage to step outside their comfort zone, to help those less fortune.”
The book recounts numerous episodes in their young lives — strongly defined by family, community, religion, education and discipline — in a crisp narrative style.
“After breakfast, all of the Delany children lined up for Papa’s inspection before they left the house,” Hearth writes. “’Papa wanted to make sure we looked proper,’ Sadie said.”
But family life also was fun: “Sometimes in the evening ... the family got together in the living room for music. Every one of the children played an instrument and as a family they formed a band. ... In the morning people would walk past the house and say, ’Y’all had a party last night.’ It wasn’t a party, it was just the family having fun.”

RACISM TOUCHED UPON
Bessie, the more fearless of the two, spotted signs for ‘white’ and ‘colored’ water ladles at the public well and drank from the ‘white’ dipper.

Unlike “Having Our Say” — which described Bessie’s near lynching — “Reach High” omits the ugliest instances of racism the girls faced.
But Hearth does tell of the first time the girls — 10 and 8 — encountered Jim Crow. Bessie, the more fearless of the two, spotted signs for “white” and “colored” water ladles at the public well and drank from the “white” dipper.
“Sadie was scared Bessie would get in trouble, but she admired her little sister’s courage,” Hearth writes. “Several white people nearby looked angry, but Bessie didn’t care.”
The book’s colorful illustrations by Tim Ladwig are faithful renditions of the events in the sisters’ lives.
Ladwig worked closely with Hearth, poring over Delany family photos. To capture the skin tones and movements of the sisters, Ladwig used friends as models — two young girls and their interracial parents — for his drawings. The Delany sisters had a racially mixed heritage.
“I got period dresses and I would explain the scene and situation to them. Then I took some pictures and worked from the pictures,” Ladwig said. For consistency, he used his friends’ faces to represent the Delanys.
Hearth said she signed with Abingdon Press, the nation’s oldest theological publisher, to honor the sisters’ father. Profits from the book will go to the health care and pension funds for retired ministers and their widows.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Berneice L. McFadden's newest
 

I am a big fan of her writing. I loved the Sugar series. :)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/05...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

This bittersweet fourth novel by McFadden (Sugar) traces the lives of two damaged but resolute people destined for an ill-fated love affair. The reader meets protagonist Campbell as a sensitive eight-year-old living in a Brooklyn housing project. As she watches her mother weep and rant at her feckless, philandering father, Campbell promises herself that "ain't no man ever going to break my heart." At age 15, however, that promise is broken when she gets pregnant by a high school boyfriend who skips town. Donovan, meanwhile, also grows up listening to his parents' violent quarrels. When he's nine years old, he is assaulted by a pedophile in his building, an experience that impairs his future relationships with women. As an adult, he takes a city transit job and becomes a workaholic. The two meet when Campbell is a single mother in her 30s and a talented fledgling artist. She bumps into Donovan at an art show and promptly falls in love. But Donovan is threatened by Campbell's money and success. He brutally rejects her, leaving her to play out the scenes of bitter anguish she observed so often while growing up. McFadden's latest is heartfelt and competently written, with her usual flair for dialogue and well-paced narrative. Yet Campbell and Donovan respond predictably to their traumas, and Campbell is not as vivid as some of McFadden's earlier heroines. In spite of her worldly success, Campbell is an archetypal female victim, too thinly drawn to carry the melodramatic scenes of despair that cap the book.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

I know I'm late but...
 

I just finished "BeBe's By Golly Wow" by Soror Yolanda Joe. She is going to be my chapter's Literary Luncheon speaker, so I thought I should at least read one of her books. I liked her writing style--short chapters, multiple perspectives.

Now on:
Francis Ray's "I Know Who Holds Tomorrow"--so far, so good.

In the queue:
"Gonna Lay Down My Burdens" by Mary Monroe (yeah I know I bought it a month ago -lol)
"A Man Finds His Way" by Freddie Lee Johnson III

Veronica Chambers
 

I'm starting "Having it All?" and I like what I'm reading so far. The Aunt Jemima chapter is pretty interesting. It also explains a tough family situation I'm going through right now.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG H!


Has anyone read Neva Hafta by Edwardo Jackson???? I just finished it. It was an excellent read, but the ending has me doing one of those angry abbreviations that you all do...

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Born in Sin by Evelyn Coleman
 

I purchased this book back in January and finally finished it yesterday. This is actually a BLACK TEEN FICTION ;) book that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND to anyone, adult or teen.

Here is the summary:
From Publishers Weekly
Keisha, a 14-year-old growing up in Georgia, narrates the events of a pivotal summer in Coleman's (White Socks Only) inspiring novel. When her high school guidance counselor thwarts her efforts to get into Avery's fast-track pre-med program and instead places Keisha in a summer program for at-risk kids, Keisha erupts in a rage (" `You know what, Ms. Hill. Ain't the hospital just a few blocks away? I ain't the one at risk. You are.' And I leaped over the desk to get to her"). The author carefully finesses Keisha's complex emotions as she attempts to be true to herself and to navigate the obstructions in her path. It is Keisha's strong narrative voice, combined with some striking characters and relationships, that keeps her story afloat, despite some far-fetched and serpentine plot developments. Through this summer at-risk program, Keisha learns to deal with her own racial prejudice, makes her first real friends and discovers that she has a natural talent for swimming. Readers may find that Keisha's acceleration from non-swimmer to Olympic hopeful stretches credibility. And the two-dimensional portrayal of the white leaders of the at-risk program (they speak in sports metaphors, for instance) detracts from the more penetrating, insidious examples of racism (such as the conversation between Miss Troutman, the head of the program, and Keisha's mother) elsewhere in the novel. But the authentic interactions here far outweigh the missteps. The relationships among the women form the core of the novel: tender bedtime conversations between Keisha and her older sister, many touching scenes between Keisha and her mother, and the heroine's recollections of her grandmother ("As long as there's stars in the sky we gonna be all right. My grandma taught me that before she died and I believe her"). Keisha's rise to the top will keep readers enthralled. Ages 14-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.