Candor Continued: First Take

Where I allow someone else to do all the talking....


Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman shows how white supremacists utilize language into a weapon

Is journalism a form of activism? I pump my fist in the air and holler: 'hell yes!', but others see it differently...

There is such a thing as a "literary detective" and now I want to be one when I grow up

I'm so here for Anne With An 'E' setting the stage for a super feminist, queer-friendly season 3 and for drawing on under-discussed history to expand on the world L.M. Montgomery created.

Nicole Chung on how to write a memoir while still grieving the loss of a parent

The Hate U Give's controversy isn't in its subject matter, but a debate over cover art, colorism, and casting in the wake of its film adaptation

Just because we needed a reminder of how much of a fright fest our government is now, how 'bout we scare ourselves with seven books that imagine life without landmark Supreme Court Cases!

Hollywood needs saving, and Wattpad is the unsung hero throwing on a cape

A trio of women are bringing much needed color to the romance industry

Erik Hane on why the more resonant books written in the Trump era won't be about Trump

The hidden oral history of Zora Neale Hurston's "lost novel" Barracoon

Trees, tanks, and tunnels --- the weirdest libraries around the world

Only children (like moi) will get this hilarious table of contents


Let me know what were your favorite reads of the month!

The Quiet Madness of 'Séance on a Wet Afternoon'

I'm often drawn to the more muted mystery thrillers. The ones that star quiet, unbalanced individuals who promenade in gloomy, claustrophobic habitats that tend to close in ever so slowly with every page turn. Where the only explosions that occur are the synapses of the mind, when mental slippage is in its most sinister, and secreted form.

Written by Australian author Martin McShane in 1961, Séance on a Wet Afternoon checks all those boxes for me when it comes to psychological thrillers, as it takes an unsettling dive into the disturbed mind of Myra Savage.

Myra is a middle-aged medium who believes she possesses special sensory "gifts", "gifts" that have her foresee the future and has her in touch with spirits from other dimensions. She supports her unemployed, asthmatic husband, Bill, through this "gift" by conducting seances out of the couple's isolated Victorian dwelling.

As quaint as it all sounds, Myra isn't content. She vies to be world-renowned for her "gifts" and abandon the meager existence her and Bill share, thus, she hatches a plan to kidnap the child of a prominent businessman, and to use her "gifts" to find the "missing" child and collect the ransom, with camera bulb flashes, congratulatory headlines, and patrons lined up at the door to soon follow. Ensnaring the assistance of her hapless hen-pecked husband into the plot, Myra is convinced that the plan possesses no flaws, but it's obvious to the reader that the signs are there for a flurry of disaster to unfold.

Baldwin's Beale Street

When it was announced about a year ago that Barry Jenkins was going to direct an adaptation of James Baldwin's 1974 novel, I knew Baldwin's commentary of young love caught in the storm of systematic racism was in capable hands.

Slow-paced, "every day Black folks" stories are what I often gravitate towards, and Jenkin's 2016 Academy-Award winning film Moonlight was such a masterful quiet character study that put my faith in the Miami-bred director being a proficient teller of Black American stories for the 21st Century. With this teaser trailer, released on what would've been Baldwin's 94th birthday, I'm even more confident that one of my favorite novels from Baldwin will be taken to heart, and bring to proper vision the bittersweet love story of Fonny and Alonzo, a Harlem couple whose love is put to a test when Alonzo is falsely accused of a crime.

Baldwin's works deserve to be framed as straight-to-the-marrow character studies, that concentrate on emotion over extravagance, that are style merging with substance, and Jenkins seems to have achieved that byway of the trailer's pensive, yet poetic tone. To my knowledge, this is the first of Baldwin's books to go from page to big screen (Go Tell It On The Mountain was made into a television mini-series in the 1970s) and from the look of things, won't be the last. From a standpoint, it no doubt baits that Oscar, but truly, it's time for more diverse stories to grab that golden honor, as I'm always here for anything that shows Black people living, loving, and leaping over society's complex hurtles, especially if its coming from the pen of Baldwin.

Oh, and I'm happy to see Regina King starring in this as Fonny's mother, as if you look up "underrated" in the dictionary, her name is pretty much the freakin' definition.

If Beale Street Could Talk will be in theaters November 30th.

Bookshelf Newness: Dodsworth, Radio Girls, Nikki Giovanni

New additions (and book smells) to the family...

Dodsworth, by Sinclair Lewis

File under: seen the film, never read the book.

Prior to purchasing Dodsworth, I re-watched the film starring Walter Huston, Mary Astor, and Ruth Chatterton on FilmStruck (aka one of the best streaming channels ever), and it felt more 'now' for me than it did years ago. Possibly due to how Sam Dodsworth's retirement mirrors my father's recent induction in the club of leisure, well, minus the fact that my father isn't an uber-rich auto mogul, he is widowed instead of dealing with a conceited wife, and he's much more content catching up on his reading instead of traipsing around the world on an ocean liner. Still, the emotional impact of a drastic life change that is more than meets the smiling happy faces on the retirement brochures is on par. Lewis, known for his more satirical works, seems to arrow straight to the human condition on Dodsworth, choosing to refrain from taking jabs at middle-age grumps like Babbit, and Bible thumping charlatans like Elmer Gantry, and taking a tender realist focus on a couple in flux --- or so the movie tells me...

Most of Lewis' works I tend to not get past a few chapters (Main Street, Elmer Gantry, Babbitt) or even a few pages (It Can't Happen Here), so here's hoping that Dodsworth will be the one to break the cycle.

Radio Girls, by Sarah Jane Stratford

I'm a sucker for historical fiction that focuses on a "girl squad" ---- think Call The Midwife, Bomb Girls, The Bletchley Circle, hell even add GLOW to the list --- thus the simplistic title was a draw. Also it being based in the 1920s (just look at that art deco cover) and being about the early days of British radio through the eyes of one American expat in England, bought and sold me. The reviews for this are positive, so this has a great chance of charming me.

The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (1968 - 1998), by Nikki Giovanni

For the longest Nikki Giovanni was a just literary shout out in Teena Marie's 1981 classic "Square Biz". I knew she was a premier poet, knew of her being involved in the civil rights fight, and knew about how she challenged Bill Cosby and his grossly elitist "Poundcake" speech with the greatest of linguistic ease, but since poetry wasn't my bag I never read a word Ms. Giovanni put to paper.

Sacrilege, I know.

Flash forward to last year where I decided once and for all that I needed to give poetry a second chance and allow it to become a part of my regular reading life. 1978's Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day was my first foray into Giovanni's work, and I'm not looking back. I obtained Giovanni's 2003 collection in Kindle form, but realized that reading poetry on the Kindle feels almost...impersonal. You can't write notes in the margins, highlighting it kind of a pain, and sometimes the formatting of an e-book kills the flow of the prose --- and the rhythm of a poem is its most essential element. When I saw this nice hardback lying in a clearance section (score!) at the Half Price Books I love to frequent I couldn't resist grabbing it, knowing that I can write and highlight to heart's content, and digest Giovanni's words in the manner that they should be.

Mucking Around With Mitford

"You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty" - Jessica Mitford

I must admit that today's political climate (and the exposure of Hollywood's sexual abuse "open secrets") has reinvigorated my love for investigative journalism.

For a time, the media seemed to allow one of its cornerstone mediums to sit on a shelf and collect dust as a new form of communication sashayed its way in. That new, sexy moll was the quicksilver truth serum known as social media. As it caught on, it became the fastest, most effortless way to compartmentalize and digest news, and it gave us a gift in return as it stoked our need for instant gratification and affinity by way of shares and likes.

Not that there is anything wrong with seeing those little hearts light up or wanting to nosh on your news in bite-sized tweets, videos, and memes --- I too enjoy the zip n' zeal of Samantha Bee's half-hour, hunkering down in forums of interest, and getting my point across in less than 140 characters (or is it 280 now?) --- but with the good comes the bad, and with every push towards progress, "clickbait" and "fake news" were bred as journalism's unfortunate new reckless onuses.

Instead of safeguarding how we share and report news I hate to say that journalists slept at the wheel. It often pained me to see falsities not taken to task, opinions weren't constructive but an exercise in ignorance and assholery, where we seemed closer to an Orwellian' "doublespeak" vocabulary that backed people into corners, and bred a sense of classist and racist entitlement. With such a breakdown of ethics, a laziness towards protecting the fourth estate was inevitable, and why I shouldn't have been surprised at the media's contribution to the rise of the walking bowel movement that is currently residing in the White House.

News isn't supposed to be glamorous, but it isn't supposed to erroneous either. It's to give voice to voiceless, not turn the volume up on those who are already screaming. Now we're getting a brisk, frigid shower wake-up to why you can't have it both ways, that you can't refashion the news just because the outcome doesn't suit you. Such distraction and ill-informed tactics do in fact dumb down a sizable portion of the population, and make it easier for propaganda-driven media conglomerates and cyber warfare to slink in.

Not only that, it allowed people to forget that fact checking, interviewing, extensive research, and the exhaustive and meticulous organization of such matter are elements that are essential for journalism and its assembly, and that all these elements work to expose and bring down corruption. It's bad enough with the current Fool In Chief we are gaslighted into believing that facts, realities, and just literal common sense are figments of the imagination, but for someone who came of age during drastic shifts in media --- where the Internet pretty much changed everything --- it was obvious to me that journalism took a hit, and began to dissent into fallacy and well, fuckery.

Time will tell if we're witnessing an All The President’s Men on steroids moment, where careers will be made (and others will crash and burn) and where we stop trying to legitimize talking heads and web darlings as "journalists". American journalism at current, to me, continues to be in a state of flux. It still wants to flirt with the loudest foghorn in the room, all while not checking any balances, but if there is anything  positive that has come out of the current presidential shitshow, the fourth estate --- the art of hunting and gathering, reporting and being forceful in corralling answers to inform the masses --- got its groove back and proved it wasn't totally knocked out by emojis and snapchats.

This new era of journalism was in the back of my mind while reading Poison Penmanship last year, and reworking this review for this year. I wondered what its author, the late Jessica Mitford would've thought of the "alternative facts" clusterfuck that became American journalism. What would she have thought of the Liar In Chief?  The infiltration of the fake news she so often rallied against in her hey-day? What response she'd have if she'd heard the authoritarian bravado of former Press Secretary Sean Spicer when he said that we should "disagree with the facts"? Maybe I answered my own questions, because within the pages of this 1979 collection of Mitford's greatest hits (and misses) is an honest and fierce exploration of the world of investigative journalism, and a woman who reveled passionately in it to seek the unfiltered truth.