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Bookmarks: Back in the Day; Profiles and photos offer a rich, historical view of our people
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BOOKMARKS: Back in the Day; Profiles and photos offer a rich, historical view of our people
This issue's list of books by or about black journalists includes a history of African American journalists in the white media, a spotlight on the work of black photographers back to 1840, a biography of the late Ron Brown and a chapter-length profile of NABJ's Sheila Brooks.
Jabari Asim has "The Road to Freedom" (Jamestown Publishers, Lincolnwood, Ill., $5.95, paper). Asim, a senior editor of the Washington Post's Book World section, offers a book about Reconstruction for readers ages 9 to 12, told through the eyes of a 10-year-old North Carolina boy whose family is set free by Union soldiers. Asim says he had wondered what slavery and emancipation must have been like for a young boy.
Jonetta Rose Barras, a columnist for the Washington Times, has "Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl?: The Impact of Fatherlessness on Black Women" (One World/Ballantine, $25). This book grew out of a piece Barras wrote as associate editor of the Washington City Paper. She says of her own experiences and others': "A girl abandoned by the first man in her life forever entertains powerful feelings of being unworthy or incapable of receiving any man's love."
Lerone Bennett, Jr., executive editor of Ebony magazine, offers "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream" (Johnson, $35). Essentially a polemic arguing that Lincoln was a racist, this expands an Ebony article the respected historian wrote in 1968. However, the book is marred by distracting reference citations throughout the text.
Tananarive Due offers "The Black Rose," (One World/Ballantine, $25.95). Before his death in 1992, Alex Haley coordinated a research team for nearly a decade to prepare to write a novel based on the life of Madam C.J. Walker, America's first black female millionaire....