The New Harlem Book Club: Inaugural Book Poll Thread

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We took suggestions. Here are the results.
Suggestion period is officially closed.

Poll will remain open until Saturday.
Original thread here:

Anyone Interested In Forming a Book Club?

The lack of book reading I have been doing over the past few years is abysmal. I’m in circles where books are discussed often and I have just not been able to keep up. Would anyone be interested in a forum book club? I know this has been attempted a number of times. Although, not sure how...

www.thecoli.com

@YvrzTrvly
@Silky Johnson
@Sister Mary Clarence
@Jermaine Colington
@MrSpook
@Leasy
@Fisher
@EARFQUAKE
@5thbornpowerseed
@Mufasa Ahadi
@Arbitrage!
@Geek Nasty
@DamienWayne
@SupaVillain
@xiceman191
@Hazel Brown

 

[Hazel Brown]

We took suggestions. Here are the results.
Suggestion period is officially closed.

Poll will remain open until Saturday.

@YvrzTrvly
@Silky Johnson
@Sister Mary Clarence
@Jermaine Colington
@MrSpook
@Leasy
@Fisher
@EARFQUAKE
@5thbornpowerseed
@Mufasa Ahadi
@Arbitrage!
@Geek Nasty
@DamienWayne
@SupaVillain
@xiceman191
@Hazel Brown

 

[FrontoBama]

Autobio of Malcolm X should be required reading for every Black male on the planet.

 

[MR. SNIFLES]

I CAN GET JIGGY WITH THIS.

 

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This collection of essays is both a plea and a response to the self-assessed critical circumstances of black America today. Tavis Smiley provides the introduction, touching on the issues he explores as host and interviewer on public television and radio; Cornel West and Haki Madhubuti also provide commentary, tying together the common theme of planning how to address the circumstances faced by black Americans. Marian Wright Edelman offers the statement of purpose introducing the 10 covenants, pledging individual effort in the areas of health care, public education, criminal justice, community-centered policing, affordable neighborhoods, democracy, agriculture, economics, environmental justice, and technology. Among the contributors are Marc H. Morial, Angela Glover Blackwell, and Wade Henderson. Each section offers facts on racial disparities in the U.S.; practical suggestions on what individuals, communities, and the government can do to rectify problems; and other helpful resources. Although specifically aimed at problems and issues facing black America, this work has appeal for all readers interested in social issues that plague the nation as a whole.

 

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The astonishing personal and political autobiography of Stokely Carmichael, the legendary civil rights leader, Black Power architect, Pan-African activist, and revolutionary thinker and organizer known as Kwame Ture.

Head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. Bestselling author. Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) is an American legend, one whose work as a civil rights leader fundamentally altered the course of history—and our understanding of Pan-Africanism today. Ready for Revolution recounts the extraordinary course of Carmichael's life, from his Trinidadian youth to his consciousness-raising years in Harlem to his rise as the patriarch of the Black Power movement.

In his own words, Carmichael tells the story of his fight for social justice with candor, wit, and passion—and a cast of luminaries that includes James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, among others. Carmichael's personal testimony captures the pulse of the cultural upheavals that characterize the modern world. This landmark, posthumously published autobiography reintroduces us to a man whose love of freedom fueled his fight for revolution to the end.

 

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In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time. The Autobiography of Malcolm X stands as the definitive statement of a movement and a man whose work was never completed but whose message is timeless. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America.

 

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With a striking new introduction written by Atlantic journalist Vann R. Newkirk II and riveting artwork from printmaker Steve Prince, Restless Classics' new edition of The Souls of Black Folk is presented in all its relevancy as a crucial work of sociology that is applicable to the current political, economic and social climate more than a century later. To understand the driving force behind today s current Black liberation movement, to recognize the historic pattern and large scope of state violence against communities of color, to dissect the most recent wave of white nationalism surging through the nation is to know the duality of African-American life presented by W.E.B Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk. Hailed as the bedrock of any examination on Blackness in America from literature to front-line resistance the century-old exploration of 'the color line' stands unblemished by time, its wholeness applying fully to the era of Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump. Presented by Restless Classics, with a pointed introduction by journalist Vann R. Newkirk II, the newest edition of Du Bois work presents itself through the lens of today s political and social climate, highlighting the ugly truth that white supremacy s roots still grip America and serving as an introduction to a generation fighting a familiar battle for liberation, one that our elders have already witnessed . . . Newkirk s introduction . . . examines the immortality of what can be considered the most important piece of literature to date.

 

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When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that “if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy.” Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for “obscenity” and “instigating hatred between the races.”

Wright’s once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him—whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he headed north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.” More than seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.

One of the great American memoirs, Wright’s account is a deeply moving record of struggle and endurance—a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

 

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The classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience.

With a preface by Ishmael Reed • “As with Malcolm X, Cleaver’s book is a spiritual autobiography. An odyssey of a soul in search of itself, groping toward a personal humanism which will give meaning to life.”—The Progressive

By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, “I’m perfectly aware that I’m in prison, that I’m a Negro, that I’ve been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation.” What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.

 

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From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award

With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

 

[Geek Nasty]

Cant wait! Whatever we pick

 

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Two young people are forced to make a stand in this thought-provoking look at racism and prejudice in an alternate society.

Sephy is a Cross -- a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a Nought -- a “colourless” member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood, but that’s as far as it can go. In their world, Noughts and Crosses simply don’t mix. Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum -- a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger. Can they possibly find a way to be together?

In this gripping, stimulating and totally absorbing novel, black and white are right and wrong.

 

[xiceman191]

I think we should start off with the Autobiography of Malcolm X.

 

[Joe Budden]

For anyone worried about requiring books don’t stress.

Libgen has everything imaginable and it’s easy to use.

Spoiler

I’ll provide links if necessary.