May 2000

The Man Who Cried I Am
(Click title or book to purchase on-line from AALBC.com)

Author: John A. Williams
(Click name to learn more about author)

403 pages paperback
$20.00 autographed copy directly from AALBC.com

Novelist, poet, and journalist John Alfred Williams has created in Max Reddick an unforgettable character: irascible, fiercely intelligent, irredeemable, and honorable. The Man Who Cried I Am is a stunning chronicle of not only Williams's life but the lives of all black people who have refused to be victims: blacks who have had to leave their country to claim their individuality, intellectual independence, and rightful recognition, and who have always yearned to be "home" but struggled to find such a place.
~ Excerpted from Sacred Fire

Title: The Seventh Octave: The Early Writings of Saul Stacey Williams
(Click title to Purchase Online and Learn more about this Book and Poet)

ALL TIME AALBC BEST SELLING BOOK for 1998 & 1999
(out of almost 1,000 different titles sold)!

Author: Saul Stacey Williams, Jessica C. Moore (Editor)
(Click name to learn more about author and editor)

Publisher: Moore Black Press
Date Published: February 1998
Format: Trade Paper

Hailed as "a dreadlocked dervish of words...the Bob Marley of American poets" (Esquire), Saul Williams is a gifted young poet who is opening up this literary art form to a new generation of readers. Like his writing -- a fearless mix of connecting rhythms and vibrant images -- Saul Williams is unstoppable. He received raves for his performance as an imprisoned street poet in the Trimark Pictures release Slam, winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the Grand Jury prize at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. The consummate spoken-word performance artist, Williams has also been signed by producer Rick Rubin to record a CD of his poetry.

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#3

Title: She
(Click title or book to purchase on-line)

Author: Saul Stacey Williams
(Click name to learn more about author)

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Inc.
Date Published: June 1999
Format: Paperback And CD - $9.60 (plus shipping and tax)

"Who says poetry does not sell?" -- Troy Johnson AALBC.com

AALBC top 10 bestseller every month this year! She is a fascinating and unique collection of interconnected poems by this multi-talented star -- and marks the beginning of an incredible and totally original artistic career.

She is a fascinating and unique collection of interconnected poems by this multi-talented star -- and marks the beginning of an incredible and totally original artistic career.

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#4

Son of Darkness, Sons of Light

Author: John A. Williams
(Click name to learn more about author)

Autographed copies from AALBC.com have sold out.

Unautographed copies still available via Barnesandnoble.com

This novel by one of the most significant African American writers of the twentieth century reflects the author's apocalyptic vision of black revolutionary impulses and reactionary white conspiracies in the late 1960s. Originally published in 1969, this parable of racial intrigue centers on the killing of an unarmed black youth by Sergeant Carrigan, a white policeman. The murder prompts Eugene Browning, second in command at the Institute for Racial Justice, a civil rights organization, to seek revenge by hiring a professional killer to assassinate Carrigan. Browning enlists the help of an aging Mafia don, who passes the hit to a former terrorist from Israel. This single act of retribution sets in motion a crisis of unprecedented proportions as a band of black militants proceeds to launch a violent plan of its own. As the dramatic events unfold, Browning struggles to put his troubled personal and professional life in order.

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#5

Rosie's Curl and Weave
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Author: Rochelle Alers
Donna Hill and Felicia Mason
(Click name to learn more about author)

Whether you want a cut, weave or braid; a facial, manicure, or massage; there's always a helping hand-and a sympathetic ear-at Rosie's Curl and Weave on 125th Street in Harlem. And sometimes, when you least expect it, love walks in the door. So sit back, relax, put your feet up, and enjoy, as four talented writers render four magical stories about the love of beauty and the beauty of love.

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#6

Eargasms: Urban Hip Hop, Vol. 1
(Click (Click to buy CD on-line)
Format: CD
Release Date: Feb 1 2000
Label: OZONE [CAROLINE]

CD includes the work of Jessica Care Moore and Saul Williams

Track List

1.	Invocation - Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets	10.	Deeper Love
2.	My Pen	11.	Gut-Bucket Blues
3.	Underneath the Metal	12.	Gunsmoke
4.	Twice the First Time	13.	Company Flow Freestyle
5.	Interview with Tony Medina	14.	Who's to Blame?
6.	Spok in the House	15.	Last Days
7.	My Caged Bird Don't Sing	16.	Gravity Bouts [Interlude]
8.	Diaspora	17.	Let's Discuss Disgusting
9.	Dysfunktional Family Freestyle	18.	Poet's Psalm

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#7

Pictures of a Dying Man
(Click title or book to order online)

Author: Agymah Kamau
(Click name to learn more about author)

Hardcover, 227pp.
Coffee House Press
September 1999

AALBC.com's "Coffee Will Make You Black" reading group selection May 2000

Fiction. Is a human life merely the sum of other people's perceptions of it, a compilation of rumors and hearsay? What happens if those views are erroneous? Continuing in the vein of his critically acclaimed novel FLICKERING SHADOWS, Agymah Kamau weaves a colorful story, full of deception, love, and loss, around a community's rememberances of Gladstone Belle. In addition to presenting scenes of contemporary urban life in America, the novel unpacks the intricacies of living in a small Caribbean community by portraying the world through an array of vivid characters.

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#8

The Bluest Eye (Oprah Edition)

Author: Toni Morrison
(Click name to learn more about author)

Oprah Book Club Selection May 2000

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove - a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others - who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

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#9

Title: Words Don't Fit In My Mouth
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Author: Jessica C. Moore
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Format: Trade Paper, 125 pages
Published April 1997, Moore Black Press

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#10

Not a Day Goes By
(Click title or book to purchase on-line)

Author: E. Lynn Harris
(Click name to learn more about author)

Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: June 2000
Format: Trade Cloth

Welcome to the irresistible world of E. Lynn Harris--

He is a devilish and handsome ex-football player, now a rising sports agent at one of the hottest firms in the country. Irrepressible and dangerously alluring, John "Basil" Henderson has a history with women (and a few men). He's a commitment-phobe gadfly who's known for a double-edged magnetism that has the ability to thrill-- and wound.

She is the uncompromising Yancey Harrington Braxton, an up-and-coming Broadway star who oozes charm and bleeds ambition. Young, beautiful and dangerously crafty, Yancey is prepared to do whatever she must to get what she wants. A femme fatale who has left more than a few broken--hearted men in her wake, Yancey is intrigued by Basil. Both believe that in each other they've finally met their match.

A lavish wedding is planned, and the ultimate power couple plans to spend their lives in holy matrimony. But just before the nuptials, fate, and a little comeuppance from the past threaten the happy couple's future.

Masterful storyteller E. Lynn Harris takes listeners on a delicious little ride into the mischievous lives of two very unforgettable characters in this fun and satisfying cautionary tale.

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