Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes - REVIEW

by Langston Hughes, Edited by Danez Smith

From Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a stunning collection of early works written from 1921-1927 curated by award winning poet and National Book Award finalist, Danez Smith. Hanif Abdurraqib calls the collection of polished poems and raw, unfinished, works-in-progress, “a gift to any poet working at any stage of their life and career.”

Before Langston Hughes and his literary prowess became synonymous with American poetry, he was an eighteen-year-old on a train to Mexico City, seeking funds to pursue his passion. Beloved verses like “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” were written without formal training, often on the back of napkins and envelopes, and were inspired by the sights and sounds of Black working-class people he encountered in his early life. Blues in Stereo is a collection of select early works, all written before the age of twenty-five, in which we see Langston Hughes with fresh eyes. 

From the intimate pages of his handwritten journals, you will travel with Hughes outside of Harlem as he travels the world, celebrate love as a tool of liberation, and enjoy his musical verse poetry, including a play he cowrote with Duke Ellington with a full score. Blues in Stereo foreshadows a master poet that will go on to define literature for centuries to come. And by keeping his original, handwritten notations found in archival material, we get to witness a genius’s earliest thought process in real time. National Book Award-nominated poet Danez Smith offers their insight and notes on themes, challenges, and obsessions contained in Hughes’s early work.

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1901. Often called 'The People’s Poet,' he authored and edited over thirty works poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children’s books. He was a poetic innovator and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and his writing promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and helped shape American literature and politics. He died on May 22, 1967, in New York City. 

Danez Smith (Curator) is the author of four poetry collections including Bluff, Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead. Danez was won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and has been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez lives in Minneapolis with their people.

Legacy Lit
ISBN-13 ‏ 978-1538768914

Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History - REVIEW

Edited by Toyin Falola

An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe's novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework.

Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe's literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa's present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer's works – novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays – as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa.

The raw creativity found in Achebe's stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story – precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial – have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer's works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.

Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He is an Extraordinary Professor of Political Science, University of Pretoria. He has received over 30 lifetime career awards and 24 honorary doctorates.

Abimbola Adelakun is Assistant Professor in the Department of African/African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. She is co-editor, with Toyin Falola, of Art, Creativity, and Politics in Africa and the Diaspora (2018). She is also the author of Under the Brown Rusted Roofs (2008) and writes a weekly column for PUNCH Newspapers.

Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN-13 979-8765118474

Half American: The Heroic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad - REVIEW

by Matthew F. Delmont

More than one million Black soldiers served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units while waging a dual battle against inequality in the very country for which they were laying down their lives. The stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” And yet without their sacrifices, the United States could not have won the war.

Half American is World War II history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black military heroes and civil rights icons such as Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the leader of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, who fought to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; and James G. Thompson, the twenty-six-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. An essential and meticulously researched retelling of the war, Half American honors the men and women who dared to fight not just for democracy abroad but for their dreams of a freer and more equal America.

Matthew F. Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Guggenheim Fellow and expert on African American history and the history of civil rights, he is the author of four books: Black Quotidian, Why Busing Failed, Making Roots, and The Nicest Kids in Town. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and several academic journals, and on NPR. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Delmont earned his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD from Brown University.

Viking
ISBN-13 978-1984880390

Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book - REVIEW

by Kate Atkinson

Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.

As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building.

Doubleday
ISBN-13 978-0385547994