Terry McMillan's new book: It's Not All Downhill From Here

I know many of you are stuck in the house during this Covid-19 pandemic. I also know that many of you love to read and so I'm highlighting Terry McMillan (waiting to Exhale) newest book, It's Not All Downhill From Here: A Novel

Loretha Curry’s life is full. A little crowded sometimes, but full indeed. On the eve of her sixty-eighth birthday, she has a booming beauty-supply empire, a gaggle of lifelong friends, and a husband whose moves still surprise. True, she’s carrying a few more pounds than she should be, but Loretha is not one of those women who think her best days are behind her—and she’s determined to prove wrong her mother, her twin sister, and everyone else with that outdated view of aging wrong. It’s not all downhill from here.

But when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down, Loretha will have to summon all her strength, resourcefulness, and determination to keep on thriving, pursue joy, heal old wounds, and chart new paths. With a little help from her friends, of course.

Check out It's Not All Downhill From Here: A Novel

13-year-old founder of Books N Bros wants to inspire black boys to read

A 13-year-old has started a youth-led book club program to help empower boys through African-American literacy.

Sidney Keys III told "Good Morning America" that his idea to create Books N Bros was born from his own setbacks and struggles.

Morris Day book: On Time A Princely Life In Funk

A memoir by Morris Day of The Time centering around his lifelong relationship and association with Prince.

Brilliant composer, smooth soul singer, killer drummer, and charismatic band leader, Morris Day, has been a force in American music for the past four decades. In On Time, the renowned funkster looks back on a life of turbulence and triumph. He chronicles his creative process with an explosive prose that mirrors his intoxicating music. Morris' story is a fast-paced page-turner replete with unexpected twists and shocking surprises.

A major and fascinating theme is his lifelong friendship and years of musical partnership with Prince, from their early days on the Minneapolis scene to selling out stadiums and duking it out as rivals in Purple Rain. Eventually, Morris went on to release four albums with a new band of his very own, the legendary Time. He battled his addictions and came out victorious. But not before increasing tensions and embittered rivalry between Prince and the Revolution and Morris Day and the Time led the two performers towards separate paths. Through the years, the fierce brotherly love between Morris and Prince kept bringing them back together, over and over again-until pride, ego, and circumstance interfered. Two months before Prince's untimely death, the two finally reconnected and started to make amends. But Morris could've never imagined it would be the last time he'd ever see his friend again.

This is Morris Day's singular story in which the magic of music is the ultimate healer. On Time is also a deep meditation on friendship, Morris' poetic method of reconciling the loss of his close friend and longtime collaborator, and a way to commemorate an incendiary life cut short. But this book is more than just a walk down memory lane-it's a metaphorical means to bring Prince back to life. Throughout the narrative, Morris allows Prince's "voice" to protect his own legacy, to counter Morris's interpretations of events, and to essentially breathe new life into a tale as old as time-of two brothers, two bands, and a musical culture that even today pulsates with fresh energy.

BUY THE BOOK

Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison dies at 88

Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is gone. But her unique voice – earthy, poetic, powerful, elliptical – endures in novels like "Beloved, "Song of Solomon," "Sula" and "The Bluest Eye."

She died Monday at age 88 in New York following a short illness, according to her family and publisher.

The Morrison family issued this statement via Morrison's publisher: “It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life."

The family continued: "While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family. We will share information in the near future about how we will celebrate Toni’s incredible life.”

Morrison won a Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Read more: Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize winner, author of 'Beloved,' dies at 88

Tayari Jones wins the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction

American author Tayari Jones has won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her fourth novel An American Marriage.

At an awards ceremony hosted in Bedford Square Gardens, central London – hosted by novelist and Women’s Prize Founder Director, Kate Mosse – the 2019 Chair of Judges, Kate Williams presented the author with the £30,000 ($38,000) prize and the ‘Bessie’, a limited edition bronze figurine. Both are anonymously endowed.

Professor Kate Williams,Chair of Judges, said: “This is an exquisitely intimate portrait of a marriage shattered by racial injustice. It is a story of love, loss and loyalty, the resilience of the human spirit painted on a big political canvas – that shines a light on today’s America. We all loved this brilliant book.”

The Women’s Prize for Fiction – one of the biggest international celebrations of women’s creativity – is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction celebrating excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.

Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, and Leaving Atlanta. Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. She serves on the MFA faculty at Rutgers and writes regular posts at www.tayarijones.com. She lives in Brooklyn.

An American Marriage

Celestial and Roy are a newlywed couple with a bright future; the embodiment of the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into a routine, their lives are derailed by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love she’s built her life around until now. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This is a powerful story about love and family, injustice and strength. Through An American Marriage Tayari Jones proves she is not just a masterful storyteller, but also a visionary writer, unafraid to address important issues about race, class and society head-on.

Michelle Obama's "Becoming" has sold nearly 10 million copies

Former first lady Michelle Obama's best-selling memoir, "Becoming," has sold nearly 10 million copies, the parent company of publisher Penguin Random House announced Tuesday.

The candid memoir, released in November, quickly became a best-seller and is one of the most popular books of the decade.

"We believe this could be the most successful memoir in history," said Thomas Rabe, the chief executive of Bertelsmann, a parent company of Penguin Random House.

The book had the longest streak at No. 1 for any book since "Fifty Shades of Grey" came out in 2012, according to Amazon.

[SOURCE: CNN]

Kamala Harris's new book 'The Truths We Hold'

From one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country.

Senator Kamala Harris's commitment to speaking truth is informed by her upbringing. The daughter of immigrants, she was raised in an Oakland, California community that cared deeply about social justice; her parents--an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India--met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley. Growing up, Harris herself never hid her passion for justice, and when she became a prosecutor out of law school, a deputy district attorney, she quickly established herself as one of the most innovative change agents in American law enforcement. She progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer of the state of California as a whole. Known for bringing a voice to the voiceless, she took on the big banks during the foreclosure crisis, winning a historic settlement for California's working families. Her hallmarks were applying a holistic, data-driven approach to many of California's thorniest issues, always eschewing stale "tough on crime" rhetoric as presenting a series of false choices. Neither "tough" nor "soft" but smart on crime became her mantra. Being smart means learning the truths that can make us better as a community, and supporting those truths with all our might. That has been the pole star that guided Harris to a transformational career as the top law enforcement official in California, and it is guiding her now as a transformational United States Senator, grappling with an array of complex issues that affect her state, our country, and the world, from health care and the new economy to immigration, national security, the opioid crisis, and accelerating inequality.

By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in THE TRUTHS WE HOLD a master class in problem solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come.

BUY THE BOOK

HARDCOVER     PAPERBACK     KINDLE

Michelle Obama's "Becoming" is best selling book of 2018

Michelle Obama's memoir "Becoming" has become the best selling book of the year in the United States, surpassing Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" and others.

Wolff's "Fire" was a publishing world sensation when it came out in January. To date it has sold 1,008,088 hardcover copies, according to NDP BookScan data.

All year long, it was the year's No. 1 political book. Its closest competitor was "Fear," by Bob Woodward, which came out in September and has sold 872,567 hardcover copies to date.

But "Becoming" outpaced them both in just a couple of weeks. BookScan shows 1,122,618 hardcover copies of Obama's uplifting memoir have sold since its November 13 release date.

That makes it No. 1 for the year. The year's No. 2 book in terms of hardcover sales is "Magnolia Table," a cookbook by TV star Joanna Gaines. "Fire and Fury" now ranks No. 3, followed by Rachel Hollis' self help book "Girl, Wash Your Face" at No. 4 and "Fear" at No. 5.

Obama's publisher, Penguin Random House, said Friday that "Becoming" "sold more than 2 million units in all formats and editions in the U.S. and Canada during the first 15 days of its publication."

The hardcover edition of "Becoming" is now up to six printings, meaning the publisher has had to order more and more copies to keep up with demand. By the end of the sixth printing, there will be 3.4 million copies in print in the U.S. and Canada, well-timed for the holiday book-buying season.

[SOURCE: CNN]

See the movie, read the book Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime

Spike Lee's Black Klansman is being released this weekend. The movie tells the incredible story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer that infiltrated the KKK in the 1970's. Stallworth has written a book about his investigation so that you can read the amazing story as told by the man himself, check it out. Links to the book are after the synopsis. George L. Cook III African American Reports

When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community.

A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Its Grand Wizard, David Duke, has made a name for himself, appearing on talk shows, and major magazine interviews preaching a “kinder” Klan that wants nothing more than to preserve a heritage, and to restore a nation to its former glory.

Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the "white" Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself conducts all subsequent phone conversations. During the months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even befriends David Duke himself.

Black Klansman is an amazing true story that reads like a crime thriller, and a searing portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back.

Kindle------ Paperback --- Hardcover

Wesley Snipes new book: TALON OF GOD A Novel about the Battle to Prevent Hell on Earth

The acclaimed actor makes his fiction debut with this enthralling urban fantasy in which a holy warrior must convince a doctor with no faith to help stop a powerful demon and his minions from succeeding in creating hell on earth—a thrilling adventure of science and faith, good and evil, damnation and salvation.

Imagine that everyone you have ever known or loved was forced against their will into a state of demonic possession and spiritual slavery. Imagine an unholy cabal of the world’s richest and most powerful men directing this sinister plan in order to cement their unbridled control of the planet.

Imagine two heroes emerging from that darkness to do battle with the forces of evil.

Set in the mean streets of Chicago, Talon of God is the action-packed adventure centered around the Lauryn Jefferson, a beautiful young doctor who is dragged into a seemingly impossible battle against the invisible forces of Satan’s army and their human agents that are bent on enslaving humanity in a mission to establish the kingdom of hell on Earth.

But Lauryn is a skeptic, and it’s only as she sees a diabolical drug sweep her city and begins to train in the ways of a spirit warrior by the legendary man of God, Talon Hunter, that she discovers her true nature and inner strength. Facing dangerous trials and tests, it’s a true baptism by fire. And if they fail, millions could die. And rivers of blood would flow throughout the land.

Imagine such horror. Such pain. And imagine what it would take to fight against it. For only the strongest and most faithful will survive?

Get ready. Armageddon approaches quickly.

KINDLE---- PAPERBACK----- HARDCOVER

Book of the week: The Origin of Others (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) by Toni Morrison

America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?

Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin of Others. In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison’s fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books―Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy.

If we learn racism by example, then literature plays an important part in the history of race in America, both negatively and positively. Morrison writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative. Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalization and the mass movement of peoples in this century. National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.

Check out the book.

HARDCOVER-------- KINDLE

Must Read: We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

Check Out The Book

Hardcover---------- Paperback---------- Kindle

AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN: AMERICA'S MOST FORGOTTEN ASSET by AMIA P. WRIGHT

Within this book, the author aimed to restore, rehabilitate, and mend African American Women and the community. The entire world has acknowledged issues African Americans face as a culture, however, no one has advanced towards assimilating relationships within the culture. As resilient of a people as African Americans are the culture still need a leader, still need guidance, and still need reassurance. It is believed that African American Women is the key to turning everything around and remodeling the foundation that was once laid. The potency of African American Women is so prodigious that it has the power of an atomic bomb. Today’s leaders for African Americans are outnumbered and rejected because in the community today, stupidity reigns over knowledge and foolishness is the new cute. There are many problems within the culture, however, this book has the influence to generate the opportunity for revolution.

--------

--------

--------

CHECK OUT THE BOOK

PAPERBACK--------KINDLE

Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America

New book, Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America by Stacey Patton

A challenge to the cultural tradition of corporal punishment in Black homes and its connections to racial violence in America

Why do so many African Americans have such a special attachment to whupping children? Studies show that nearly 80 percent of black parents see spanking, popping, pinching, and beating as reasonable, effective ways to teach respect and to protect black children from the streets, incarceration, encounters with racism, or worse. However, the consequences of this widely accepted approach to child-rearing are far-reaching and seldom discussed. Dr. Stacey Patton’s extensive research suggests that corporal punishment is a crucial factor in explaining why black folks are subject to disproportionately higher rates of school suspensions and expulsions, criminal prosecutions, improper mental health diagnoses, child abuse cases, and foster care placements, which too often funnel abused and traumatized children into the prison system.

Weaving together race, religion, history, popular culture, science, policing, psychology, and personal testimonies, Dr. Patton connects what happens at home to what happens in the streets in a way that is thought-provoking, unforgettable, and deeply sobering. Spare the Kids is not just a book. It is part of a growing national movement to provide positive, nonviolent discipline practices to those rearing, teaching, and caring for children of color.

CHECK OUT THE BOOK

PAPERBACK------ KINDLE VERSION

Colson Whitehead wins Pulitzer Prize for 'Underground Railroad'

The Underground Railroad, an inventive and searing take on slavery in 1850s Georgia, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Monday, adding to author Colson Whitehead’s list of accolades and bolstering the case for the book to be included in the pantheon of Great American Novels.The novel mixes harsh reality — slavery in the antebellum South — with a vividly imagined alternative world, one in which the Underground Railroad is a literal subterranean network of tracks and stations.

Whitehead’s heroine is a headstrong teenage runaway slave named Cora, who escapes a brutal cotton plantation and tries to find her way to freedom.

The Pulitzer committee lauded Railroad "for a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America."
In an interview with USA TODAY after learning he'd won the Pulitzer, Whitehead said: "My baseline happiness level has been pretty high the last 10 months."

He said when he wrote the first 100 pages of The Underground Railroad, he felt he was "firing on all cylinders." But he had no idea the novel would "have this kind of reception. I try to do the same old thing and hope it works out. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. This time it really did."
[SOURCE: USATODAY.]

CHECK OUT THE BOOK

President Obama to write another book after leaving office

During a recent sit-down on CNN with his former campaign manager David Axelrod, POTUS confirmed he'll release a book following the official end of his second presidential term.

"I'm gonna start thinking about the first book I want to write," he told Axelrod while speaking on his plans once he's no longer president. Although the current Commander-In-Chief will for sure be looking to get a head-start on his upcoming literary venture, he has something else in mind to focus on for the immediate future.

President Obama's upcoming book will be the latest of several he's penned in recent years, including 2004's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, which was released in 2006.

[SOURCE: ESSENCE.COM]

Book of the Day: Black Hollywood Unchained

In Black Hollywood Unchained, Ishmael Reed gathers an impressive group of scholars, critics, intellectuals, and artist to examine and respond to the contemporary portrayals of Blacks in films. Using the 2012 release of the film Django Unchained as the focal point of much of the discussion, these essays and reviews provide a critical perspective on the challenges facing filmmakers and actors when confronted with issues on race and the historical portrayal of African American characters. Reed also addresses the black community's perceptiveness as discerning and responsible consumers of film, theatre, art, and music. Contributors to this collection are: Jill Nelson, Amiri Baraka, Cecil Brown, Halifu Osumare, Houston A. Baker Jr., Tony Medina, Herb Boyd, Jerry W. Ward Jr., Ruth Elizabeth Burks, Art Burton, Justin Desmangles, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor, Jack Foley, Joyce A. Joyce, C. Leigh McInnis, Heather Russell, Hariette Surovell, Kathryn Takara, and Al Young.

Ishmael Reed is the winner of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (genius award), the renowned L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer and finalist for two National Book Awards and is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley; and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes multicultural American writing. The American Book Awards, sponsored by the foundation has been called The American League to the National Book Awards’ National League. He also founded PEN Oakland which issues the Josephine Miles Literary Awards. PEN Oakland has been called “The Blue Collar PEN” by The New York Times. Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty titles including the acclaimed novel Mumbo Jumbo, as well as essays, plays and poetry. Titles include: The Freelance Pallbearers; The Terrible Threes; The Last Days Of Louisiana Red; Yellow Back Radio Broke Down; Reckless Eyeballing; Flight To Canada; Japanese By Spring.

BUY THE BOOK

The Covenant with Black America - Ten Years Later

In 2006, Tavis Smiley—along with a team of esteemed contributors—laid out a national plan of action to address the ten most crucial issues facing African Americans. The Covenant, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller, ran the gamut from health care to criminal justice, affordable housing to education, voting rights to racial divides. But a decade later, Black men still fall to police bullets and brutality, Black women still die from preventable diseases, Black children still struggle to get a high quality education, the digital divide and environmental inequality persist, and American cities from Ferguson to Baltimore burn with frustration. In short, the last decade has seen the evaporation of Black wealth, with Black fel­low citizens having lost ground in nearly every leading economic category.

And so in these pages Smiley calls for a renewal of The Covenant, presenting the original action plan alongside new data from the Indiana University School of Public & Environmental Affairs (SPEA) to underscore missed opportunities and the work that remains to be done. While life for far too many African Americans remains a struggle, the great freedom fighter Frederick Douglass was right: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Now is the time to finally convert the trials and tribulations of Black America into the progress that all of America yearns for.

BUY YHE BOOK

Mother of Michael Brown releases book about son's death and its aftermath

Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown

The revelatory memoir of Lezley McSpadden—the mother of Michael Brown, the African-American teenager killed by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014—sheds light on one of the landmark events in recent history.

“I wasn’t there when Mike Mike was shot. I didn’t see him fall or take his last breath, but as his mother, I do know one thing better than anyone, and that’s how to tell my son’s story, and the journey we shared together as mother and son." —Lezley McSpadden

When Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown was born, he was adored and doted on by his aunts, uncles, grandparents, his father, and most of all by his sixteen-year-old mother, who nicknamed him Mike Mike. McSpadden never imagined that her son’s name would inspire the resounding chants of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, and ignite the global conversation about the disparities in the American policing system. In Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil, McSpadden picks up the pieces of the tragedy that shook her life and the country to their core and reveals the unforgettable story of her life, her son, and their truth.

Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil is a riveting family memoir about the journey of a young woman, triumphing over insurmountable obstacles, and learning to become a good mother. With brutal honesty, McSpadden brings us inside her experiences being raised by a hardworking, single mother; her pregnancy at age fifteen and the painful subsequent decision to drop out of school to support her son; how she survived domestic abuse; and her unwavering commitment to raising four strong and healthy children, even if it meant doing so on her own. McSpadden writes passionately about the hours, days, and months after her son was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson, recounting her time on the ground with peaceful protestors, how she was treated by police and city officials, and how she felt in the gut-wrenching moment when the grand jury announced it would not indict the man who had killed her son.

After the system failed to deliver justice to Michael Brown, McSpadden and thousands of others across America took it upon themselves to carry on his legacy in the fight against injustice and racism. Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil is a portrait of our time, an urgent call to action, and a moving testament to the undying bond between mothers and sons.

BUY THE BOOK

HARDCOVER_______KINDLE

New Book: Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

National Book Award winner James McBride goes in search of the “real” James Brown after receiving a tip that promises to uncover the man behind the myth. His surprising journey illuminates not only our understanding of this immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown’s legacy.

Kill ’Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown’s rough-and-tumble life, through McBride’s lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBride’s travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown’s never-before-revealed history: the country town where Brown’s family and thousands of others were displaced by America’s largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a fuller history of Brown’s sharecropping childhood, which until now has been a mystery. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for forty-one years, and interviews Brown’s most influential nonmusical creation, his “adopted son,” the Reverend Al Sharpton. He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Brown’s first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown’s estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown’s estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown’s body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina.

James McBride is one of the most distinctive and electric literary voices in America today, and part of the pleasure of his narrative is being in his presence, coming to understand Brown through McBride’s own insights as a black musician with Southern roots. Kill ’Em and Leave is a song unearthing and celebrating James Brown’s great legacy: the cultural landscape of America today.

BUY THE BOOK