AALBC.com's Best Selling Books December 2000

#1

A Day Late and a Dollar Short
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Much-heralded and long awaited, Terry McMillan's tour-de-force novel introduces the Price family-matriarch Viola, her sometimes-husband Cecil, and their four adult kids, each of whom sees life-and one another-through thick and thin, and entirely on their own terms. With her hallmark exuberance and cast of characters so sassy, resilient, and full of life that they breathe, dream, and shout right off the page, the author of the phenomenal best-sellers Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back has given us a novel that takes us ever-further into the hearts, minds, and souls of America-and gives us six more friends we never want to leave. ~Viking Penguin

#2

Blues Dancing: A Novel

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Format: Hardcover, 320pp.
ISBN: 0688149952
Publisher: Morrow,William & Co
Pub. Date: November 1999
Edition Desc: 1 ED

About this Book
In the early seventies, Verdi, a pampered, cloistered daughter of a southern preacher, heads to Philadelphia to enroll at the university. There she meets Johnson, a city boy. Their differences draw them together—he loves her gentility, she is seduced by his charisma. Their relationship is pure sweetness until Johnson teaches her the one thing that will change her life irrevocably—how to love heroin. 

#3

The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspapers
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by Aaron McGruder

Format: Paperback, 128pp.
ISBN: 0740706098
Publisher: Andrews & McMeel
Pub. Date: August  2000

The Boondocks information Excerpted from an interview of Aaron McGruder by Keith Phipps for The Onion
Since the mid-'90s discontinuation of The Far Side, Outland, and Calvin And Hobbes (themselves holdovers from the '80s), the world of comic strips has seemed pretty dull. One person changing that is Aaron McGruder, whose strip The Boondocks made its debut last spring in more than 150 papers, a nearly unprecedented number for a launch. 

Set in the suburbs, The Boondocks follows the lives of several children, primarily two brothers transplanted from South Chicago to live with their grandfather. One, Huey Freeman, is a deeply opinionated Afrocentrist; the other, Riley "Escobar" Freeman, is a posturing would-be gangsta. 

#4

The Isis [Yssis] Papers: The Keys to the Colors
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by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, M.D.

Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 302pp.
ISBN: 0883781042
Publisher: Third World Press
Pub. Date: November  1990

"This work is dedicated to the victims of the global system of white supremacy (racism), all non-white people worldwide, past and present, who have resolved to end this great travesty and bring justice, then peace to planet Earth."

#5

Satin Doll
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Author: Karen E. Quinones
Format: Paperback, 279pp.
Publisher: Oshun Publishing Company Inc.
Pub. Date: November 1999

Set in Harlem and Philadelphia, Satin Doll tells the story of a woman living in two worlds, and feeling comfortable in neither. The lovely Regina sips cocktails in Greenwich Village with the literary elite one night, and goes barhopping with her Harlem homegirls the next. There’s Yvonne, who discovers the lawyer she is dating is married, but decides to steal him away from his wife. Tamika, who finds out the prison inmate she’s been loyal to for three years has married a white woman while behind bars. And Puddin’, a cocaine sniffing good-time girl who will snatch off her wig to fight at the drop of a hat.

#6

Their Eyes Were Watching God
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This novel about a proud, independent black woman was first published in 1937 and generally dismissed by reviewers. It was out of print for nearly 30 years when the University of Illinois Press reissued it in 1978, at which time it was instantly embraced by the literary establishment as one of the greatest works in the canon of African-American fiction.

Mesmerizing in its immediacy and haunting in its subtlety, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford—fair-skinned, long-haired, dreamy woman—who comes of age expecting better treatment than what she gets from her three husbands and community. Then she meets Tea Cake, a younger man who captivates Janie's heart and spirit, and offers her the chance to relish life without being one man's mule or another man's adornment.

#7

Selected Poems
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This new volume by a distinguished modern poet, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1950, brings together the best of her work from three earlier books now out of print (A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, The Bean Eaters) and includes a section of new poems which have not appeared before in book form. Selected Poems reaffirms impressively Miss Brooks's rich and varied gifts - her technical mastery, her compassionate, illuminating response to a world that is both special and universal, her warm humanity.

In "A Critical Reassessment," which appeared in The Nation in 1962, Harvey Curtis Webster, of the University of Louisville, wrote in part:

"Gwendolyn Brooks has never denied her engagement in the contemporary situation or been over-obsessed by it. In her engagement she resembles Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Margaret Walker. In her ability to see through the temporal she equals Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Writers of fiction who accept Negro-ness as prizeable differentiation and a dilemma , include it to transcend it....Like all good writers she acknowledges Now by vivifying it accepts herself and the distinguishing background that is part of her distinction. but she refuses to let Negro-ness limit her humanity....

"She is a very good poet, the only superlative I dare use in our time of misusage; compared not to other Negro poets or other women poets but to the best of modern poets, she ranks high."

#8

Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
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Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.

In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.

#9

A Year on the Avenue: A Collection of Poems
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What happens when poets from all over the world gather online to write poetry? In the case of the Athens Avenue Poetry Circle: magic. Featuring the works of David Hunter Sutherland, Doug Tanoury, Karen Dowell, Linda Leavitt, Mike Timonin, Paul Kloppenborg and Tessa Gonzalez, this engaging collection of poetry celebrates the new age of Internet-based bards and offers helpful suggestions for poets starting their own online writing workshops. According to E.A. Fichtl, managing editor of Anthem, "A Year on the Avenue is the zenith of web-published poetry." C.K. Tower of Conspire Poetry Journal proclaims it "a grand trip through the human experience." Other reviewers have remarked that this beautiful book is a pleasure to hold and to read. It's rare to find a book of this quality at this price.  

#10

Just Us: Poems and Counterpoems 1986-1995
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Kwame Alexander is the founder and CEO of BlackWords, Inc, a book publishing and multi-media firm dedicated to providing publishing opportunities for the many talented literary voices of the Hip Hop Generation. He is the author of Just Us: poems and counterpoems; and editor of 360 Degrees: A Revolution of Black Poets and Tough Love: Cultural Criticism and Familial Observations on the Life and Death of Tupac Shakur. He also executive produced the 360 Black Poetry Festival.

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