THE BERN BOOK ~

 

R EA D   M E

Dalkey Archive

     The John Day Company, 1973

FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN ~

 

R E A D     M E

In Search of a Beautiful Freedom

Norton, 2023

GAYL JONES ~

 

G A Y L     J O N E S

Beacon Press, 1976

RICHARD WRIGHT ~

 

R E A D      M E

The newly discovered Richard Wright novel The Man Who Lived Underground is a quiet and simple beauty. The novel could have been dedicated to George Floyd it’s that immediate and topical. The visionary was on top of his game 1940-1945: Native Son, The Man Who Lived Underground and Black Boy. Native Son riveted me fifty years ago, much more than Invisible Man, and this new book discovery may be the one Wright is remembered for. Started out as a short story that was later lengthened but probably too modern and basic for a publisher at the time to realize what they had. Library of America has now published the book. I read the book in one-sitting. Couldn’t help myself.

[ BA ]

______________

The Library of America

2021

RE-READING LANGSTON HUGHES ~

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

                          ( To W. E. B. DuBois )



I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

        flow of human blood in human beings.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.



I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

           went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

           bosom turn all golden in the sunset.




I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.








Cross



My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black.

If ever I cursed my white old man

I take my curses back.



If ever I cursed my black old mother

And wished she were in hell,

I'm sorry for that evil wish

And now I wish her well.



My old man died in a fine big house.

My ma died in a shack.

I wonder where I'm gonna die,

Being neither white nor black?








Epilogue



I, too, sing America,



I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well

And grow strong.



Tomorrow,

I'll sit at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.



Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed, —



I, too, am America.








Poem



We have tomorrow

Bright before us

Like a flame.



Yesterday

A night-gone thing,

A sun-down name.



And dawn-today

Broad arch above the road we came.






__________________
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Knopf 1926

These poems come from Langston Hughes

100 years ago with his first book of poem

The Weary Blues

published by Knopf, a very young press

then, only ten years old, and recently

re-issued with its original 1926 book design

by Miguel Covarrubias.

Ever since George Floyd was murdered

we have sold out every book from our

little bookshop by Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin

and Toni Morrison and George Jackson and

Martin Luther King, and the Black Panthers,

and Malcom X and Audre Lorde and

Lucille Clifton and even MOVE

from dark burned streets of

Philadelphia rose up. A friend

of ours, who worked poetry in

the prisons back in the 80s-90s

told us then she couldn't find a

bookstore that carried any books 

by James Baldwin, and she searched

high and low. No more.

CHESTER HIMES ~

Way back in the 50s, re-released by 1966

Chester Himes was years ahead on the

story line of the white policeman

killing African American men

at their life and labor.



http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/us/police-videos-race.html

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/HIMES/himes-coffingravedigger.html

C H E S T E R    H I M E S 

(1945)