Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 108
August 21, 2010
triangular road
People think Scorpios are evil, but there's a lot of nastiness in the world that WE did not create. After being insulted yesterday, I fumed for a while and then lugged my laundry into the basement and immersed myself in Paule Marshall's memoir. If you love black women's literature then you've likely read Brown Girl, Brownstones. In Triangular Road, Marshall revisits that moment when she was an emerging author, finding her way forward with her radical 1960s peers and the sage advice of...
August 18, 2010
get ready for your close-up…
…because Amy Bodden Bowllan is asking folks to send her photos of their favorite book by an author of color. If booksellers like Borders think there's no demand, let's prove them wrong and show just how much we enjoy books with diverse perspectives. I just started Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and was thrilled to find a profile of Ms. Lin over at Color Online–check it out!
I was *not* thrilled to hear that Ellen Hopkins was disinvited from a teen lit festival in Texas; it...
August 17, 2010
merci, Mariam!
Mariam and I met in 1997 when she came from Paris to spend a year at NYU. Yesterday we sat in a cafe on campus and marveled at how much has changed—on campus, in our lives. We've both lost our fathers; we both want a transnational life; we both cherish moments of solitude. I spent last night listening to the amazing CDs Mariam gave me as a gift—Rokia Traore's Tchamantché (which means "balance") and Didi Bridgewater's Red Earth: a Malian Journey. Can't get "Dounia" out of my mind…makes me ...
August 15, 2010
stuck
If I were trying to be poetic, I would say instead that I'm enthralled. But stuck works—obsessed, fascinated, fixated. I can't get this song/video out of my head, and I can't thank Shadra enough for posting it on Facebook earlier today. Serendipity? Or a sign…
Earlier this week Jenn on the Carl Brandon Society list forwarded this trailer for an interesting afrofuturism film called The Last Angel of History. And it's very male, but visually impressive. This video for "Going on" speaks to ...
why I love librarians
One of the first things I remember seeing when I came to Brooklyn in 1993 was the stunning gold facade of the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. But the first library I actually visited was in Canarsie—it was around the corner from my stepmother's house, and since I didn't feel welcome there, I spent more and more time at that library. I was an immigrant, I had no status, but I'm pretty sure they gave me a library card. I may have used my father's card, but I'm almost positive ...
August 14, 2010
lemons
I'm not sweet. When people are asked to describe me, "sweet" is not a word that comes to mind. I know that—I own it. I'm a Scorpio; sugar just isn't part of our chemical makeup, which might explain why I crave sweets so often…
When life hands you lemons, you're supposed to make lemonade—but what if you have no sugar? The Brooklyn Book Festival is coming up in September, and while the schedule of events hasn't been posted yet, there's a list of invited authors on their website. It'll be...
August 12, 2010
fool proof
Ok, there are endless color combinations I could use for this cover, but I think this is it:
six degrees
So I'm reading Efrain's Secret right now, and realized I need to follow up with Sofia Quintero about doing an interview…then I go to Facebook and Sofia's posted two awesome links:
1. My Brown Baby ~ author/mom Denene Millner asks why she can't find books that feature black children on the shelves of her local Borders store…
…which, of course, made me think of Ari and her letter-writing campaign to get Borders to "act right." Link #2 also had Ari's name written all over it:
August 8, 2010
second chance
If you missed my interview with poet/performer/publisher DuEwa Frazier, you can listen to the entire segment here. It was a great conversation!
