Felicia Denise's Blog, page 80
May 19, 2017
Happy Birthday, Lorraine Hansberry!
Image from Pinterest
Lorraine Hansberry was born at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago on May 19, 1930. She was the youngest of Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry’s four children. Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business. Her uncle was William Leo Hansberry, a scholar of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Many prominent African-American social and political leaders visited the Hansberry household during Lorraine’s childhood including sociology professor W.E.B. DuBois, poet Langston Hughes, actor and political activist Paul Robeson, musician Duke Ellington and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens.
Despite their middle-class status, the Hansberrys were subject to segregation. When she was 8 years old, Hansberry’s family deliberately attempted to move into a restricted neighborhood. Restrictive covenants, in which white property owners agreed not to sell to blacks, created a ghetto known as the “Black Belt” on Chicago’s South Side. Carl Hansberry, with the help of Harry H. Pace, president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and several white realtors, secretly bought property at 413 E. 60th Street and 6140 S. Rhodes Avenue. The Hansberrys moved into the house on Rhodes Avenue in May 1937. The family was threatened by a white mob, which threw a brick through a window, narrowly missing Lorraine. The Supreme Court of Illinois upheld the legality of the restrictive covenant and forced the family to leave the house. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision on a legal technicality. The result was the opening of 30 blocks of South Side Chicago to African Americans. Although the case did not argue that racially restrict covenants were unlawful, it marked the beginning of their end.
Image from Chicago Public Library
Lorraine graduated from Englewood High School in Chicago, where she first became interested in theater. She enrolled in the University of Wisconsin but left before completing her degree. After studying painting in Chicago and Mexico, Hansberry moved to New York in 1950 to begin her career as a writer. She wrote for Paul Robeson’s Freedom, a progressive publication, which put her in contact with other literary and political mentors such as W.E.B. DuBois and Freedom editor Louis Burnham. During a protest against racial discrimination at New York University, she met Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish writer who shared her political views. They married on June 20, 1953, at the Hansberrys’ home in Chicago.
In 1956, her husband and Burt D’Lugoff wrote the hit song, “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” Its profits allowed Hansberry to quit working and devote herself to writing. She then began a play she called The Crystal Stair, from Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son.” She later retitled it A Raisin in the Sun from Hughes’ poem, “Harlem: A Dream Deferred.”
In A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African-American to be produced on Broadway, she drew upon the lives of the working-class black people who rented from her father and who went to school with her on Chicago’s South Side. She also used members of her family as inspiration for her characters. Hansberry noted similarities between Nannie Hansberry and Mama Younger and between Carl Hansberry and Big Walter. Walter Lee, Jr. and Ruth are composites of Hansberry’s brothers, their wives, and her sister, Mamie. In an interview, Hansberry laughingly said, “Beneatha is me, eight years ago.”
Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, about a Jewish intellectual, ran on Broadway for 101 performances. It received mixed reviews. Her friends rallied to keep the play running. It closed on January 12, 1965, the day Hansberry died of cancer at age 35.
Although Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced before her death, he remained dedicated to her work. As literary executor, he edited and published her three unfinished plays: Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers? He also collected Hansberry’s unpublished writings, speeches, and journal entries and presented them in the autobiographical montage To Be Young, Gifted and Black. The title is taken from a speech given by Hansberry in May 1964 to winners of a United Negro Fund writing competition: “…though it be thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic, to be young, gifted and black!
Save
May 17, 2017
May 16, 2017
Turn the Pages w/Kindle Unlimited!
[image error]
Get 29 amazing romance novels for FREE!
To gain access – go here: https://www. thearielmarie.com/promotion
#KindleUnlimited #books #FreeBooks #romance #novels
May 15, 2017
Happy Birthday, L. Frank Baum! #WizardOfOz
[image error]
Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919), better known by his pen name L. Frank Baum, was an American author chiefly known for his children’s books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four “lost works”, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts, and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen. His works anticipated such century-later commonplaces as television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane’s Nieces at Work).
Image by George Steckel – Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library, Public Domain
Info compiled from Wikipedia and Google.
May 14, 2017
Happy Mother’s Day!
[image error]
Image from Google
May 12, 2017
“Free, a Novella” by Felicia Denise #CoverReveal
It’s been a long journey and your support and patience have been very much appreciated. What was originally intended to be a three-part short on-line story grew to ten parts and eighteen-thousand words. The revised edition comes in at just under thirty-thousand words. Most of the content posted online remains, with several new scenes added.
Here’s the first look at the cover for Free, a Novella created by the one and only Jenn Cunningham!
[image error]
“Free, a Novella”
Author: Felicia Denise
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Release Date: May 30, 2017
Lenore Porter’s life had not gone as she planned.
The marriage she put her heart and soul into failed.
The man she sacrificed so much for abandoned her.
But Lennie refused to be broken. She pushed on, running a successful business and raising her three sons alone.
Through health scares and severe family dysfunction and trauma which forever changed their lives, the Porter family clung to each other to keep from sinking into the darkness.
With her marriage over long ago and her adult sons living their own lives, Lenore Porter decides to sell the cold fortress she worked so hard to make a warm, loving home.
A short, final inspection of her former home, however, turns into a confrontation with ghosts from the past, and decisions and events Lennie felt she’d dealt with and moved on from.
Free, a Novella is a short, clean read recounting one woman’s determination to not be broken by life or lose her identity.
Save
May 11, 2017
The Journey of “Free, a Novella” by Felicia Denise
[image error]
It’s been a year since we first met Lenore Porter.
We’ve read her words, watched her struggles, and felt her pain.
As Lennie attempts to make peace with the past, she questions her own motivations, and her own heart, determined to give her three sons the best life possible. She’s sure didn’t always make the best decisions, but she made them for the right reasons.
Today’s installment is short, but it’s an insight into a side of Lennie not yet explored during this online journey – Lennie, the woman.
While it is short, it is not the end. Tomorrow, Friday, May 12th, the cover for “Free, a Novella” will be revealed. Free is coming to an ereader near you soon!
To Be Continued…
~~~~~
Free, a Novella
by Felicia Denise
Part X
The two women worked together in silence on opposite sides of the large kitchen island. Linda Kelimore stirred the peach filling, tasting and adding more sugar, while Lennie readied the dough pockets for the fried pies.
“I’m pretty sure that dough is sorry.”
Lennie paused from punching and rolling the dough and frowned.
“Huh? What?” She looked down at the pastry circles on the floured counter. “Sorry for what?”
“For whatever reason, you’re abusing it like that!” Linda smirked. “We’ve made fried pies together dozens of times, and I can’t remember you ever punching the dough down so many times. “
Lennie’s face heated hearing her mother’s words. Laying the rolling pin aside, she wiped her hands and grabbed a bottled water from the fridge. After several sips, she looked pointedly at her mother.
“Is it normal for married couples to not have sex?”
Linda continued stirring the large pan of fruit but regarded her daughter with an understanding smile.
“Yes, it is.”
Eyes widening, Lennie sat the bottle of water on the counter and leaned toward Linda Kelimore.
“Are you messing with me, Mom? How is it normal?”
Covering the pot with a lid, Linda removed it from the stove top burner and set it aside to cool.
“Marriage is between two people, honey. Two flawed, imperfect people who make mistakes, forget special dates, and can sometimes be incredible pains-in-the-ass.” Linda chuckled at her own comment. “So much goes on in life’s day-to-day routine, of course, there will times when sex isn’t even a consideration.”
Lennie’s expression blanched, her eyes wide in disbelief. “I guess… I… never really thought about it that way.”
“Of course, you didn’t. You’re a young woman. A newlywed chasing the happily-ever-after.” Her eyes flared to match the wicked grin on her face. “You’re still living in the days of your husband rushing in from work, ripping your clothes off, and taking you right in the middle of the living room floor.”
Horrified, Lennie backed away from the counter, holding her hands up in front of her. “Enough, mom! This just got awkward!”
Linda popped from around the island counter, dancing toward her daughter. “How is this awkward, sweetie? We’re just two old married ladies discussing life!” Wiggling her eyebrows, the older woman gracefully slid from side to side, dropped into a squat and bounced back up, perfectly executing the Cabbage Patch.
Brushing off her mother’s previous statement, Lennie grinned. “Wow, mom! Didn’t know you could still move like that! You got some moves!”
Still dancing to the music in her head, Linda twirled gleefully, melting away the years. “Thank you, sweetie! You know your dad and I always loved to dance. That man really has the moves on… and off the dance floor.”
Screaming, Lenore Porter clamped her hands over her ears. “Mom! TMI! TMI! This conversation is over!” She watched her mother dance in her direction and Lennie turned and fled from the kitchen in a very quick waddle.
Laughing to herself, eyes still on the door her pregnant daughter just hurried through, Linda plopped down on a counter bar stool. She was proud of her performance. She succeeded in taking Lennie’s mind off her troubles… if only for a little while.
Linda wasn’t a fan of Ranard Porter. If she were being honest, she didn’t like him and felt he was not the man her daughter needed. But it wasn’t her call. Lennie chose and married him. In a few weeks, the young couple would be new parents. No matter what her personal feelings were, Linda would never do anything to hurt her oldest child.
And Ranard had better not either.
~~~~~
Catch up of Free using the links below!
(Links open in new window.)
©Felicia Denise, 2016, 2017
May 10, 2017
#WordlessWednesday
[image error]
Image from Google.
May 9, 2017
May 8, 2017
Spring Gift Card Giveaway! #Bookbub
[image error]
12 amazing authors are giving away a $60 Amazon Gift Card! Just follow them on BookBub! That’s it! Hurry and enter now! Giveaway ends 5/31/17
https://www.thearielmarie.com/ bookbub
General Link to the RAFFLECOPTER Giveaway
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/06c3c17017/?
