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Nina Crews (r), with her father, Donald Crews, standing in front of a sign depicting her book, Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

Author Sighting: Nina Crews: Seeing Into Tomorrow

BOOK PARTY LAUNCH at City College Center for the Arts for Seeing into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright, by Nina Crews

Celebrated author, Richard Wright, wrote 4,000+ haiku? Yes. And, what's more: He wrote them in the final 18 months of his life! Turns out, the man who is among the world's most celebrated 20th-century writers, the man we know for BLACK BOY and NATIVE SON, was also a poet. And, it took a children's book illustrator and writer -- Nina Crews -- to introduce me to Wright, the poet, in her latest book SEEING INTO TOMORROW: HAIKU BY RICHARD WRIGHT. 

As you know, I've always believed that children's books are books for adults, as well. Last month, I witnessed the joy of many people, exploring SEEING INTO TOMORROW and Richard Wright's haiku at the book party launch, held at City College Center for the Arts, in Aaron Davis Hall. Gregory Shanck, who heads CCCA and hosted the book launch, agrees. He has stated that, “It's not just a children's book. It can be enjoyed by the entire family.”

Nina Crews Nina looks on as children create collages 600x450 IMG 9133 Photo Credit Luvon RobersonChildren enjoying making collages at the book launch event at City College for Seeing Into Tomorrow by Nina Crews. Photo Credit: Luvon Roberson

Indeed, at a fun-filled event, children, adults, and families created haiku and collages – working at tables stocked with tools to experiment with and to create. Young children, their parents, and other caregivers danced together, learning the rhythms and history of African drumming. And, Nina Crews read her book, whose memorable photo-collage illustrations were projected on a large screen. Each page seems to break out from the book, as if leaping into reality featuring the images of 12 young black and brown boys in nature and in-conversation, or so it seemed, with 12 haiku written by Richard Wright. My favorite:

“A spring sky so clear
That you feel you are seeing
Into tomorrow”

With SEEING INTO TOMORROW, her 14th book, Nina Crews has created a gorgeous, powerful, affirming book for all of us. My only regret? That my son is no longer a little boy who can see his image in a book that celebrates Richard Wright and haiku. Or, in reality, a book that celebrates creation, the act of creation in ordinary realities of life, which we can see every day in nature, in our world, all around us. Helping us, perhaps, to see little brown and black boys in our world, too.

CLOSING LINES

 When my son was a child, he loved books about transportation. FREIGHT TRAIN, by Donald Crews, was a favorite. I was able to meet award-winning children's book author and illustrator Donald Crews at the book party launch. He is Nina Crews's father. Her mother, Ann Jonas, also was a children’s book illustrator and writer. For more on FREIGHT TRAIN, visit Amazon for more details.
 Check out Amazon for more details about SEEING INTO TOMORROW, 
 Of the 4,000+ haiku Wright wrote, 817 are published in HAIKU: THIS OTHER WORLD (1998).

Hartford J. Hough with is Maltese Terrier, Ginger, and his cat

AUTHOR SIGHTING: Hartford J. Hough, Author of The Fur Beneath My Wings

A book signing in Brooklyn with Hartford J. Hough for his book, The Fur Beneath My Wings: Our Relationship With Animals & The Valuable Lessons They Teach Us

Hartford J. Hough, an award-winning chef, baker, and cake designer based in California, makes it clear in his inspirational debut book, titled The Fur Beneath My Wings, that the community of his faith tradition, family, and friends are the foundation of his life journey. Indeed, he chose to come home to Brooklyn to host the New York City launch of his book at an event held last month at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in the Fort Greene section of the borough.

Hough’s family members and many friends from elementary school, Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, and Howard University packed the room, in a large show of support. Indeed, it was more like a family reunion than any book signing event I’ve attended. Several individuals, who also contributed their stories about their pets, eagerly pointed me to one of the 23 chapters of the 156-page book that show how animals can teach us humans valuable lessons about how to live. Each chapter concludes with a “Reflective Thought,” written by Hough.

Hartford J. Hough author The Fur Beneath My Wings and woman who purchased 10 copies at 3.17.18 book signing in Brooklyn 700x525 2 photo credit Luvon RobersonGloria Green, a book lover and supporter of author Hartford J. Hough, purchased 10 books of “Fur Beneath My Wings” for her pet lover friends.

Hough dedicates the book to Guffington and Mr. Belvedere, two cats he cared for, the latter a tabby and rescue animal with health problems. Both cats died in 2011.

From the first chapter on “Why Worry?” to other chapters on “Patience,” “Learning to Say Goodbye,” “The Power of Knowing,” “The Pathway That Finds Love,” and to the final chapter on “We Have to Get Along,” Hough and the seven contributors to his book guide us to see the unique and powerful bond that humans and animals can create. Each chapter begins with an inspirational quote and then shares a first-person story about how the individual developed a relationship with his or her pet. As each story unfolds we come to see how the relationship with a pet helps that person learn to navigate life’s joys and its many challenges.

At the book launch event, Hough shared his own story and relationship with Ginger, his Maltese Terrier. First, he lets us know that Ginger is 6-years-old and although tiny in size “is bodacious, something out of South Central, ‘Boyz N the Hood.’ Ginger can step to a pit bull with her ‘try me’ attitude.” Then, Hough tells us a memorable story about his frightening, potentially life-threatening experience and Ginger’s role:

“I had just finished walking Ginger, who I’d tried to hurry along, but who’d kept resisting my rushing. That was when I felt a pain on the right side, along my arm. Then, I just fell. I fell on my neighbor’s porch. Ginger was in-tune with her owner; that’s how I ultimately got the lesson I needed. I know that my stroke was caused by stress. The constant stress of my job. So, we have to learn how to read animals and their body language. Ginger was saying to me, ‘Slow down, my human friend.’ She wasn’t being obstinate. She was teaching me a lesson: Slow down and smell the roses.”

In the book’s final chapter, Hough tells us another story about how Ginger helps him control his feelings of frustration and increasing ire in the face of repeated security checks he was forced to withstand at the hands of TSA agents at JFK Airport. Readers will find the story a beautiful window into how Hough’s relationship with Ginger, whom he calls “the smallest of creatures,” plays a major role in his life.

Only after reading the book did I learn that Ginger is Hough’s registered Emotional Support Animal (ESA). And, only in hearing Hough’s stories that he shared at the book event and that he and his contributing storytellers share in The Fur Beneath My Wings did it occur to me that maybe every one of us humans needs an ESA. I, for one, am now a believer.

About Hartford J. Hough

A proud member of the Humane Society and the ASPCA, Hartford Hough is also a member of International Association of Culinary Professionals. He has been baking over thirty years -- for clients that include Sotheby's International Realty, Morgan Stanley, Universal Studios, and RealD Entertainment. He is as passionate about the care of animals as he is about baking and the culinary arts. Hough supports organizations and other resources responsible for finding "forever" homes for lost, abandoned and displaced animals. He is an advocate who is determined to raise awareness for animal welfare, to end animal cruelty, and to help ensure animal foster care.

For more about Hartford J. Hough and The Fur Beneath My Wings, visit: https://www.thefurbeneathmywings.com

Award-winning author, Nina Crews, talking with What's The 411's book correspondent, Luvon Roberson about her new book, Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

Nina Crews Talks Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

Award-winning author, Nina Crews, gives insight into Haiku poetry through her new book, Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

Award-winning author Nina Crews in her first television interview sits down with What's The 411's book correspondent, Luvon Roberson, to talk about her book, Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright.

Many know the award-winning writer, Richard Wright as a novelist, through his books, Native Son and Black Boy, but few know that Richard Wright also wrote poetry, and fewer knew about Richard Wright's work with Haiku.

Book cover for SEA CREATURES FROM THE SKY by #1 New York Times best-illustrator Ricardo Cortes

BOOK REVIEW: SEA CREATURES FROM THE SKY

SEA CREATURES FROM THE SKY, by Ricardo Cortes, New York Times #1 best-selling illustrator, isn't just another children's book. The story begins with a shark posing an existential question and it challenges readers of all ages to honor the voices of others and their lived experiences.

Yet, despite its cerebral themes, SCFTS is distinctly a children's book. The cadence of its rhyming and its luminous illustrations of ocean depths, as well as an expansive sky-to-universe stretching palette, will render a child's wonderment for learning about a world that is brand-new.

For parents and other adults, Cortes, the author, and illustrator of SCFTS, has created a book that is likely to spark new ways of knowing and seeing such wonder.

And, while the shark storyteller's "I " may not always be reliable, the shark "eye" helps us to see beyond, perhaps to a far greater truth. Cortes merely wants us to suspend logic and simply delight in the playfulness of words.

Published by Akashic Books
Publication date: 4.3.2018
Children's picture book/fiction (pre-school - Grade 2)
SEA CREATURES FROM THE SKY is available for purchase on Amazon

Gracie Book Club Season Two - audience waiting for the start of the meeting to discuss Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN

Gracie Book Club Season Two: Framing Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN

Framing Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN in Today’s “Black Panther” Visibility & #BlackLivesMatter

“You Have Been Selected to Attend Gracie Book Club!” That’s the email subject line that announces I’ve finally won the equivalent of the New York mega-million lottery – from a bookish point of view, that is. Armed with my winning lottery ticket, aka invitation, I arrive at Gracie Mansion a few weeks later to find a line of other bookish folk waiting at check-in. We are scanned by security, before we’re guided to the front entrance of Gracie Mansion, up its magnificent staircase, and to our seats.

Gabrielle Fialkoff, Senior Advisor to Mayor Bill de Blasio, welcomes us to Season Two of Gracie Book Club, for a discussion on Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN, published in 1952. I’m reminded that First Lady Chirlane McCray launched the Club in 2016, as a place for readers, writers, and publishers across the five boroughs to be connected by their love of books. I look around the well-appointed room, with its high ceiling and its windows offering expansive views on to the lawn, which stretches through Carl Schulz Park. I admit to myself that more than ever before, even in its grandeur, Gracie Mansion might become The People’s House as it is often touted – at least in this gathering of book lovers this evening.

First Lady McCray welcomes us via taped video. She frames the evening’s discussion by juxtaposing Ralph Ellison’s invisibility of black people with the visibility of blacks in Black Panther, the movie.

“Little black boys and girls, and adults, too, across the country are seeing themselves as superheroes. They are seeing themselves! Period. That’s a victory for visibility!”

In coming together to discuss INVISIBLE MAN, she also notes: “…we will explore what it means for people to be systematically unseen, unheard, unrepresented… that kind of invisibility is what Ralph Ellison evinces with his masterpiece INVISIBLE MAN, and in doing so he tells a story that still resonates deeply today.”

I’m caught unawares by First Lady McCray’s linking of Ralph Ellison’s novel to the Marvel comic book. I am thrilled by this sudden charge of seeing, this instant flash of knowing, which only broadens as the two panelists are introduced. Alondra Nelson, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, is also a scholar of science, technology, and social inequality. She is the author most recently of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. Clinton Smith, a PhD candidate at Harvard University, is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion, author of a published collection of poems entitled Counting Descent, and has delivered popular TED Talks, including How to Raise a Black Son in America.

I’m already on the edge of my seat. I’ve always found INVISIBLE MAN to be as difficult to unravel as its author. The two panelists make reference to the tension between Ellison and writers in the Black Arts Movement, such as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, and many other luminous writers and artists associated with it such as Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed. I recall my politically aware mother saying Ellison was not viewed as being an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, unlike James Baldwin and other writers. Even decades after my first reading of the book in college, I am disturbed by its imagery, its haunting lyricism, and its many fantastical renderings. The battle royal, the funeral speech, and the question posed to the reader about “lower frequencies” in the novel’s final sentence still fill me with something like terror. Both the novel and the author trouble the waters for me.

It turns out; I’m in the right place this evening. Smith reads the funeral speech, which the unnamed narrator/protagonist (“invisible man”) delivers to the crowd after the young man Tod Clifton is killed by police. I’ve always seen the funeral speech as one of the most trouble-the-water passages in INVISIBLE MAN:

Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He fell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; *red* as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and the birds and the trees, or your face if you'd look into its dulling mirror--and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after a while, became dull then dusty, then dried. That's the story and that's how it ended. It's an old story and there's been too much blood to excite you. Besides, it's only important when it fills the veins of a living man. Aren't you tired of such stories? Aren't you sick of the blood? Then why listen, why don't you go? It's hot out here. There's the odor of embalming fluid. The beer is cold in the taverns, the saxophones will be mellow at the Savoy; plenty good-laughing-lies will be told in the barber shops and beauty parlors; and there'll be sermons in two hundred churches in the cool of the evening, and plenty of laughs at the movies. Go listen to ‘Amos and Andy’ and forget it. Here you have only the same old story. There's not even a young wife up here in red to mourn him. There's nothing to give you that good old frightened feeling. The story's too short and too simple. His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton, and he was unarmed, and his death was as senseless as his life was futile. He had struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners and he thought it would make him more human, but he died like any dog in a road."[Excerpt only. From Chapter 21]

Smith notes that while there has been some progress in dismantling racism and violence against African-Americans, we can see in Black Lives Matter that police brutality against black bodies persists – even 65 years after the publication of INVISIBLE MAN. He shows me the novel’s ties to today’s #BlackLivesMatter movement – and protests in historical context, eschewing dichotomies between “literature” and “protest.”

Nelson offers me a way of thinking about speculative fiction by her reading of the narrator’s lobotomy, in Chapter 11. Her intentional selection of this passage jars my memory of a telephone call last year from my son, who’d just seen the movie Get Out. Earlier, this week the movie’s writer, Jordan Peele, was awarded the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. A first for an African-American. The Oscar Awards is 90 years old.

During the Q & A, a man in the book club audience asks about the following question posed in the Epilogue:

"Ah," I can hear you say, "so it was all a build-up to bore us with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave!" But only partially true: Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? [Excerpt only.]

In response, another man in the book club audience leafs through his copy of INVISIBLE MAN and begins to read the Epilogue. I’m delighted by such connecting with one another. I’ll think a good deal about these two passages that the panelists and people in the book club chose so as to be in conversation with each other – and with us.

The book club conversation also led me, for the first time, to consider Ellison’s “frequencies” as being related to the metal vibranium in Wakanda, the fictional African nation of the Black Panther movie and Marvel comic book. Vibranium absorbs sound waves and other vibrations and kinetic energy making it stronger. Compared to higher frequencies, lower frequencies better penetrate walls and other obstacles. How serendipitous that First Lady McCray led me to consider Black Panther and that Smith and Nelson selected passages that helped me grow in understanding of protest and black speculative fiction!

Indeed, I was offered an evening in which I could sit in Gracie Mansion and in the company of other New Yorkers who love reading, simply talking with them about what we’ve read. It also showed all of us gathered that evening that we make up a book club, simply because we’re in the room together, centered on engaging together to explore and share. Several times throughout the evening, Nelson reminded us of our “being in-community.” All of us New Yorkers are invited to join the Gracie Book Club community – and in my book, that’s a good thing, a hopeful thing for my beloved, fractured New York City.

Watch: Live from Gracie Mansion -- Gracie Book Club discussion on Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN

Minnette Coleman (3rd from left) with members of the Harlem Writers Guild at the book launch for Coleman’s book, THE TREE: A Journey to Freedom

Q & A with Minnette Coleman, author of THE TREE: A Journey to Freedom

“BOOKish blog” – a blog about authors and books: When a Tree Stands Tall for Freedom

“The Tulip Poplar tree dates back to before 1800 and was present during the documented operation of the Underground Railroad in Guilford County between 1819-1852. The tree serves as a silent witness to the lives and actions of African Americans (enslaved and free) and their white allies which included many Quakers from New Garden,” North Carolina. The tree is in Guilford College Woods, NC. -- Guilford College Underground Railroad website.

Luvon Roberson: Why did you write THE TREE: A Journey to Freedom?

Minnette Coleman: It all started with the Tree and my desire to create a myth or legend surrounding it. The Tree -- the real tree in Guilford College Woods -- is on land that was never part of a plantation. Therefore, my story couldn't be based or focused on the enslaved blacks imprisoned on a farm. Instead, the story is based on a hero – in this case, a female character named Epsie—who escapes that prison and on what Epsie must endure and then encounter to escape and to be free. Most stories that touch on slavery do not focus on the fear that enslaved Africans faced when it came to leaving their prison. The stories focus on their trials and tribulations and leave it at “this was wrong.” They don't focus enough on the real history that went behind the movement to free those suffering. Therefore, I had to step outside the comfort zone of just talking about slavery and let my character show the other side.

By that, I mean the other side of the story about our country’s history that contained communities of free blacks and abolitionists, especially Quakers, who are also called Friends.

The Tree represented in Minnette Coleman book visited by Guilford College 2017 Freshmen students to learn about Quaker history www.Guilford.edu 700x525

Guilford College freshmen students visiting Tulip Poplar trees that inspired Minnette Coleman's book, The Tree: A Journey to Freedom

Typically, the abolitionists are usually the heroes of these stories, but that is far from the truth. The heroes were those who shared the story of the Tree, who tried to get to Freedom, and who got to the Tree. It is a story of people across racial, religious, or other lines, who came together against injustice, and for freedom. Epsie is that kind of hero. Epsie shares the story of the Tree from one generation to the next.

LR: What do you see is the role of "myth" or "legend" in THE TREE?

MC: I must share that I believe that truth begets legends. "When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend." That is a quote from the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring Jimmy Stewart. So the myth goes a long way to getting someone out of a bad situation into a good one. And even though we know that this Tree physically exists, there is no proof of its saving powers except that some people have gotten there and survived to live in freedom.

But because it is just a Tree, there are probably those who got there and got caught. But myth, which some might say is the basis for religion, is built on faith and belief. So you have to believe that there is such a Tree with saving powers. You have to believe there were white people out there that may help get you to freedom. You have to believe in something you have yet to see. Therefore, you take the legend and run with it and give those in need something to hope for. Epsie never would have gotten to freedom if she hadn't believed.

VIDEO DISCUSSION WITH MINNETTE COLEMAN

Watch my interview with Minnette Coleman, author of THE TREE: A Journey to Freedom. 

LISTEN:

Listen to my interview with Minnette Coleman, author of THE TREE: A Journey to Freedom on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and Tune-In.

“Following the Trail to a Living Monument: Underground Railroad Tree,” David Ford’s interview with James Shields, Director of Community Learning, Guilford College.

 DISCOVER:

Quakers and The Abolition Project

You can also see the Underground Railroad Tree, when you visit The Underground Railroad’s Network to Freedom, a National Park Service site, in Guilford College Woods, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

 

About the Author: Minnette Coleman

Minnette Coleman is the author of The Blacksmith’s Daughter and No Death by Unknown Hands, both historical novels. An active member of the Harlem Writers Guild, Coleman also wrote Hand-Me-Downs, a one-woman show that she toured across the United States.

Minnette Coleman author THE TREE A Journey to Freedom 12282017 Photo Credit Luvon Roberson 700x933

Minnette Coleman, author of the book, THE TREE: A Journey to Freedom. Photo Credit: Luvon Roberson

Coleman’s research for The Tree began after she graduated from Guilford College, on whose campus grows a centuries-old tree that is part of the Underground Railroad tour and history. As historian for the Black Alumni Advisory Board of Guilford College, Coleman researched how this tree served as a focal point for the “running aways” and the Quakers who helped them.

Coleman’s father was the city editor of the Atlanta Daily World, and her grandfather was one of the city’s last blacksmiths. A wife, mother, and grandmother, Coleman lives in New York.

Contact: @MinnetteColeman or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Visit Amazon’s online bookstore to purchase The Tree: A Journey to Freedom

 

 

Dakota Johnson (left) and Jamie Dornan in marriage scene in Fifty Shades Freed

Fifty Shades Freed Entertains [MOVIE REVIEW]

Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) and Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) return in the third and final film series based on the bestselling Fifty Shades novels.

The film opens with Christian and Ana trading marriage vows, looking to a new life of shared love and luxury.

Of course, there’s a lot of sex, but Fifty Shades Freed, more than anything else entertains and it gets a See It! rating.

The story does strain credibility in an effort to bolster the story. In the scenes after the couple gets married, Anastasia behaves more like someone who just met Christian than someone who knows and agreed to marry him: She didn’t know he had a domestic staff at his apartment, he had his own plane, and that she will have a security detail following her around. Apparently, after the long and extensive history of sexual gymnastics, they don’t know each other’s viewpoint on having children.

However, the characters are fuller and richer than in Fifty Shades of Grey where they both seem empty and vacuous. In this edition, they are more interesting and more balanced characters. While sex can be a draw to a movie, there has to be more to a film for it to succeed. Here there’s drama and amusing dialogue.

Fifty Shades Freed gets a B+ for cast diversity. Set in Seattle, a city in which people of color make up about a third of the population, the film has a diverse group of people of color in supporting and background roles.

Fifty Shades Freed is rated “R” for strong sexual content, nudity, and language and it is approximately 105 minutes in length. Fifty Shades Freed will be worth your time and money.

T.A. Moreland

T A MorelandA film critic for over 20 years, T. A. Moreland, also produced and hosted a film review television program in New York City for four years.

Moreland wrote for The New York Amsterdam News, The Harlem World Magazine and a Harlem Critic Blog on World Press. His reviews have appeared in USAtoday.com and international publications: interceder.net and www.newstin.com. Similarly, he provided commentary on the entertainment industry for Essence magazine and BET.

Moreover, T.A. Moreland’s description of the 2008 film “Valkyrie” as a “True Life Mission Impossible” was prominently featured and was the lead quote in the nationwide and international ad campaign for the film starring Tom Cruise.

A prolific writer, T.A. Moreland has written three screenplays and numerous television treatments.

T.A. Moreland resides in Harlem and is an attorney who specializes in energy and economic development issues. He holds a B.A. from Indiana University in Bloomington, Juris Doctorate from the University of Dayton, and Masters from the University of Pennsylvania.

Actor Chadwick Boseman, who has played iconic characters in movies such as Jackie Robinson and James Brown in 42 and Get on Up respectively, is now starring as T’Challa in Black Panther

Black Panther actor, Chadwick Boseman, says he’s incredibly blessed

Boseman, an actor who has played several iconic characters, is breaking down barriers and making Hollywood screen history

Are you going to see the movie, Black Panther?

What’s The 411Sports correspondent, Crystal Lynn, caught up with the Black Panther star, actor Chadwick Boseman, after the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game held at Madison Square Garden.

Boseman, one of the players representing the East, says he is incredibly blessed and lucky to have played iconic characters in movies.

Boseman said that he is enjoying every moment of his acting career and hopes that whatever he does is enlightening to people. The Get on Up actor wants to do something different with each role; that’s all you can do is to “enjoy it and be thankful for it.”

Boseman’s role as T’Challa in Black Panther is certainly different and the movie is inspiring and we are all thankful for it.

If you haven’t seen Black Panther, run, don’t walk, and don’t wait for it to come to your video streaming service, catch Black Panther in theaters now!

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