We decided to hear from someone behind-the-wall for their perspective on what are the 25 essential Black August books to read before you die.
California prison artist Donald “C-Note” Hooker is no stranger to Black August. His first political artwork in 2016, Black August – Los Angeles is one of the most viewed Black August artworks on Wikipedia, “Black August (commemoration).”
We interviewed the incarcerated poet, playwright, performing artists, and award winning prison artist for his take on 25 of the best Black August books to read before you die.
Before we begin these remarkable recommendations, we have to make a disclaimer. As an Amazon Associate, Black August 2024 earns from qualifying purchases, such as these book recommendations at no cost to you, the consumer. This helps support the ongoing work of promoting Black August educational and cultural awareness.
BA 2024: Hi C-Note, how are you?
C-Note: I’m fine.
BA 2024: Let’s begin by telling us the biographies or autobiographies you would recommend and why?
C-Note: While I think autobiographies are important, it is not where we should start. Just like deep thinkers who have participated in Black August have embraced the August 20th, 1619, arrival of slaves to Virginia, as part of the BA commemoration, my book recommendations would have to begin with before the Mayflower sort of speak, which is the name of a book by Lerone Bennett Jr.
This is dropping science, and you’ve only heard it from me. We all hear about past, present, and future, or knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, let’s marry those ideas.
You must have knowledge of the past, in order to understand your present condition, to be able to apply wisdom in the future.
So we have to start in the past, and my favorite book of all time is Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. by Chancellor Williams. Now another book I am going to recommend, I never read it. I know my peeps spoke highly of the book in the early 90s. But what really impressed me about the author, according to former Black Panther, father of Ta-Nehisi Coates, and owner-founder of the Black Classic Press (BCP), William Paul Coates, during an interview on Book TV, he stated Drusilla Dunjee Houston, the self-published author of Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, taught school in Oklahoma and in Tulsa during the Tulsa bombing she stated, “I think God, I thank God on this day that I do not have a son, because if I had a son, I would have sent him out to war.”
Contrast that mindset where Black women are practically bragging they have to give their Black sons “The Talk,” about being docile around whites, especially those in authority. Houston also wrote the screenplay, The Maddened Mob, written in elegiac verse in 1915 as a refutation of Birth of a Nation. Houston was the very first African American to write a blow by blow refutation of Birth of a Nation.
Houston was gangsta or a resistor. Her whole point, without anybody’s approval in publishing Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, was to push back on white folks, who criminalized book reading, or writing by slaves.
She was born during Reconstruction, and was living during the rebellious nature of the Southern white, to disenfranchise Northerner ideology in order to govern themselves, which meant running a muck over the Black population through the Black Codes, lynching, raping, and Jim Crow. Houston’s reasoning was this:
So much of the world used to justify and enslave Black people and that is you have no history you see, because you can erase history. If you can get rid of the history of Black people, then you can enslave them because they’re no longer people, they’re things, their items, they’re no more than horses, they’re no more than cattle, that sets up the whole thing of shadow enslavement.
Drusilla Dunjee Houston
I think another invaluable point to make, Houston’s work was being dismissed by her Black male contemporaries, such as W.E.B. DuBois, Alaine Locke, Carter G. Woodson and others. However, posthumously, 20th century Black historians have confirmed the accuracy of work, such as Cheikh Anta Diop, Martin Bernal, and George G.M. James. She pioneered African-centered historiography, and is considered the fore mother of Africana historical writings and research.
Other books that must be mentioned are Stolen Legacy: The Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy by George G.M. James, and The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing. My final pre-arrival of the Mayflower recommendation is not a book, but the DVD Hidden Colors: Volumes 1 – 5 by Tariq Nasheed.
- Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. by Chancellor Williams
- Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire by Drusilla Dunjee Houston
- Stolen Legacy: The Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy by George G.M. James
- The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing
- Hidden Colors: Volumes 1 – 5 by Tariq Nasheed
Autobiographies
BA 2024: Now with autobiographies, which five would you recommend?
C-Note: I can’t talk about autobiographies in that way. Only two standout in my memory, Angela Davis and Assata Shakur. Angela in particular, because of her ties to Los Angeles, where I’m from. Assata was from the East Coast, but her immense fortitude, my God. One hopes this maximum isn’t true, “They don’t make’em like that anymore.” Assata’s writings about being in custody and giving birth to her daughter Kakuya; I cannot offer words that would do that story any justice, in other words, it’s beyond words.
In Angela Davis, Afeni Shakur (Tupac’s mother), Assata Shakur and Elaine Brown, you are talking about women of high intellect, fueled by a passion for the love of their people.
In California, starting in the 2000s, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) added an R, so that it reads, the California Department of Corrections Rehabilitation (CDCR). Whether it’s pumping you full of psychotropic drugs, or having you attend mandatory rehabilitation groups that promote a culture of docileness, one way or the other, the State is going to beat the passion out of your system. You’re just living, a robot, an automaton, and that’s when they are ready to parole you. That’s why being infused by these Sistas’ passion for their people is a parole consideration non-starter by parole boards.
So, one is a memoir, the other a biography, and another letters. Elaine Brown’s A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, coupled with Angela Davis: An Autobiography, inspired me to write the essay, “THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN VOICES IN STRUGGLE: Emphasis on the Black Woman’s Voice.”
It’s about movement building, and we can’t create 21st century movements that are patriarchal. While those two Sistas were Panthers, you hear that throughout the civil rights movement of the 20th century. Gender roles is a great and prevalent debate we are having in our own times, the early 21st century. But human civilization, both in Africa and Europe tell the tale of capable and competent women successfully leading their nations, even against ruthless adversaries. Men folk cannot be dismissive of women folk in leadership positions.
Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt by Jack Olsen, is an eyeopener. Again, Geronimo “Ji Jaga” Pratt has L.A. ties, as Deputy Minister of Defense and head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party, fascinating story. If a person likes intrigue, suspense, and spy novels, that’s the one.
I’m not a person to give way to overdramatization, but when I say the California Department of Corrections is corrupt, it’s corrupt. Geronimo wrongfully spent 27 years in the California prison system. What I read they did to Geronimo, and what I witnessed what they did to Minister King X Pyeface, who was a penitentiary peacemaker, OMG. The worst person from a prison administrative point of view is someone that is uniting the prisoners, making them come together. Because it is not in the interest of the prison administration for the prisoners to be at peace and united, as they fear, they will then turn their collective attention on them.
Finally, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson. I found the karate he was doing in his cell fascinating, but the love he had for his people comes through. Passion for your people poses a threat to the State that all encompass wants that love. But that’s the importance of the political thinking of Black August. Where we are recognizing from 1619 onwards, this overbearing injustice perpetrated by the State on Black lives.
You have 246 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, which led to the Great Migration, the largest internal migration in United States history, and 50 years of mass incarceration. Lest not forget the State intentionally injected us with syphilis, denied our returning World war II vets access to the GI Bill, here in America, home ownership is the fastest way of creating generational wealth.
In the 21st century, in California during the 2000s, the State was forcefully sterilizing predominantly Black and Brown women prisoners. In the 2010s, Colorado legalized recreational use of marijuana, however, not for teens, yet it pursued an enforcement of that law predominantly on Black and Brown teenagers.
It is difficult to have love for a State that clearly does not love you, and that you are forced by default to band together collectively, as an immunization against State harm and State injustice. Therefore, love of your people, passion for your people, the State deems unacceptable.
Nothing caught my attention more with the letters is his love for Angela Davis, it was so romantic. It was all about struggle love. Blacks had struggle love in an earlier period you know, during Jim Crow, they were thriving together despite Jim Crow. In the early seventies they were thriving. How you think Assata got to Cuba? Because Blacks had and loved and romanticized struggle love between the Ebony man and Ebony woman. James Baldwin eloquently tells this story in lf Beale Street Could Talk.
- Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis
- Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
- A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story by Elaine Brown
- Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt by Jack Olsen
- Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson
Prisons
BA 2024: What is your thinking revolving around prisons, prison reform, or prison abolition.
C-Note: Clearly, Angela Davis would be at the forefront of that movement, and that would be Are Prisons Obsolete? In the early 1970s, that woman faced the death penalty, and she has never abandoned us behind-the-wall. Now it’s sexy, wanting to be seen ending mass incarceration, and to be for prison reform, or outright abolition, but she was there when it wasn’t cool, and you’d be looking like a fool.
Next would be Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Profoundly influential on the work that I do. It first made me question, How did we get here? In other words, if there is a new Jim Crow, there must have been a Jim Crow that preceded it. So now, we’re talking about history repeating itself. How does that happen? My mind says cultural records. Are there Jim Crow cultural records? Well the first place I begin my search is the Internet, and the Internet says, “No!” Now, what do I mean by cultural, I mean art and literature. I also mean contemporary to that time. There exists no digital records of Jim Crow from a cultural POV (point of view).
From this fact, I develop the following philosophy, “Historians record facts, but artists record feelings.” So what does Jim Crow feel like? What did living through Jim Crow feel like? That cannot be expressed through historians, but only through the paint brushes and ink pens of artists and writers.
So when you Google Jim Crow, or Jim Crow Art and you’re served up a bunch of buffoonery art that was not created back then or photojournalistic photos, such search results do not fit the definition “cultural record.” So the modern and contemporary Jewish philosophy, post-Holocaust is to “Never forget.” In other words, history will not repeat itself. So somebody tell me why Jim Crow is being repeated?
So to counter the New Jim Crow 2.0 in the 22nd century, I’ve tried to initiate an archival record of the drawings, writings, sound recordings, and videos of incarcerated African Americans to function as a cultural record of incarceration on the Black experience in America. This digital archival record is called Neo Jim Crow Art. At the time of its creation, I didn’t want to appear to be biting on the brand Ms. Alexander had established, but in retrospect, I would have made a different decision, as it would have been building on her work. What I mean by this, the archive originally would have been called New Jim Crow (Art), but out of respect, not trying to seem thirsty or opportunistic, and plagiaristic, I replaced the word from New to Neo.
BA 2024: So Google is taking your Neo Jim Crow Art quite seriously it seems.
C-Note: It might.
BA 2024: It has indexed your artwork Decarcerate Now!, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat’s $23.7 million, Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta.
C-Note: I am not the only one interested in creating a digital archive regarding the writings and drawings of the incarcerated. John Hopkins, and Yale University, are doing it, several people are doing it, even the US government through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), but I’m the only one who is focusing on an archive that tells the story about Black Americans. My interest, I do not want Black people in the 22nd century to be dealing with New Jim Crow 2.0; so we must create a cultural record, if such an occurrence happens they have a record to try to navigate how to approach those circumstances in those times.
In the mid-2010s, I was a part of a one of its kind prisoner book club to read the book The New Jim Crow. The Club was managed by Prisoner Express. Prisoner Express is sponsored by the Durland Alternatives Library on the campus of Cornell University. All the book club members were prisoners and were given a free copy of the book. We then had to do book reports as we progressed through reading the book based on prompts. There were a selection of prompts to choose from.
What really messed me up reading the book was the section on the police raids. How the police raided our homes, tore up our cars, and killed people when raiding the wrong home. It made me come to an overstanding of collective trauma. That is, it ain’t happening to you, but you know somebody down the block, or around the corner. Like Breonna Taylor, she’s an American citizen, but what happened to her probably cut a little differently for Black people. #BlackLivesMatter was started by a teary-eyed Black woman on the other side of the country grieving behind Trayvon Martin’s killer being acquitted. Since 1619, Black Americans have had to internalize a collective trauma. In other words, it ain’t happening to me, but it’s wrong what they are doing to them. And, and, am I next?
The next thing I am going to recommend is not a book, but a documentary, Ava DuVernay’s Netflix documentary 13th. I never saw it, but I heard it is a must see to get a true overstanding of the plight of Foundational Black Americans. Two other books I haven’t read, but heard about, one of them being on a subject near and dear to my heart, jailhouse lawyering, and the book is Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the USA by Mumia Abu-Jamal. The next book is Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
- Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
- New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- 13th (Netflix documentary) by Ava DuVernay
- Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the USA by Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
I want to close this section by telling you about my experience with Mr. Coates. Now he stated on Book TV, he left the Panthers, but wanted to still give back, so he began to send prisoners books that they requested. Now he’s probably been doing this since the 60s. Will I asked him for a book, he didn’t haven’t, but he did send me a brand new copy of a L.A. native, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn.
Prison Art
BA 2024: What are your recommendations on Prison art? We know this is something you’re very much a part of from behind-the-wall.
C-Note: This first book will be Phyllis Kornfeld’s Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America. Fascinating book. It taught me a lot, and made me conscious of the prisoner’s predilection to draw lightly so that he or she won’t be judged. I had that problem, drawing overly lightly. So now I take it to the opposite extreme.
Professor Nicole R. Fleetwood, who is African American, sent me a pre-released copy of her breakout book that was released during the start of the Covid health lockdowns. You know that’s gotta be a bummer. Because, how do you promote your book? But I think the gods worked it all out for her, it is a highly, highly, vaunted book that had gotten into the nuts and bolts of us artists trying to create art from behind the wall. It was ten years in the making, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.
Making Art in Prison: Survival and Resistance by Janie Paul, I haven’t read it, but the people behind it run the Nation’s largest prison art exhibitions in Michigan, and they’ve been doing it for over 25 years.
Another book I haven’t read, but I heard it’s a boss ass book, What If: A Historical Fiction Novel by Carlos Walker. He’s on the streets now, but when he was locked up, Carlos saw a Black federal prison guard chastising a white federal prisoner. This ignited in Carlos’s mind a retrospective look at American history in reverse. White women being auctioned off as slaves, and Black men doing the auctioning. White families praying at the dinner table over the meal to a Black Jesus, and so on, and so on. Even an image of the George Floyd incident in reverse. He created this world, these drawings while serving time in federal prison, and was only released behind Trump’s First Step Act.
The fifth book I am going to recommend is my own book BAR WORK: The Prison Experience Told Through Paint. I’ve been working on this since 2020. I am not creating any new works specifically for the book, it’s works I have already created, but I don’t know, just haven’t gotten it done. Maybe this conversation will spur me to get it done, either this year or next. Maybe I get me one of these grants I’ve been bitching about not receiving. Since 2017, over a quarter-billion USD in grant money has been made available to people creating visual or literary works around ending mass incarceration, and I haven’t seen a half a penny of this quarter-billion. Despite the Foundations promoting in their advertising that the money will be going to currently incarcerated artists.
- Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America by Phyllis Kornfeld
- Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Nicole R. Fleetwood
- Making Art in Prison: Survival and Resistance by Janie Paul
- What If: A Historical Fiction Novel by Carlos Walker
- BAR WORK: The Prison Experience Told Through Paint by Donald “C-Note” Hooker
Word on the Street
BA 2024: Let’s close out with five book recommendations from the street’s perspective.
C-Note: For me, it would be all about the Crips, where I’m from. Both Tookie and Raymond Washington were born in 53’. First generation Crips were born in the 50s, making them damn near in their 70s. They are not giving up this fraternity, they just want to see it go in a different direction, i.e., ending the gang violence. The early founders are not happy that this thing went down this direction, and are doing everything to correct it.
You see, when this thing started, the Crips, they did not have big homies in their 50s giving them directions. But these new yung’ns do. Black August is about resistance, or the recognition of State induced violence, or other abuses by people in State or corporate authority.
When I heard gangster rap records for the first time, I had a context for it that was different than maybe other people did, a lot of other writers, because I had spent some time out here and got more interactions and then realized this is not like New York. Now, I’ve been in New York, and I’ve seen a lot of things in New York. I’ve never seen people just in the middle of the street face down in the hot sun, and they said, “Yeah, man. That’s what they do here,” so I started reading up on the history of L.A. police. William Parker, who designed the postwar L.A. Police Department hired ex-military and Southerners. We’re talking about a Southern mentality in Parker. He wants racism and authoritarianism to be wed together.
Hip Hop Journalist Nelson George, “Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World?, Ep. 2, Under Siege”
The L.A. of the 80s, like today, is a Crip town. But back then, Crip on Crip violence was less prevalent. In 1946, the LAPD created The Gangster Squad, a special unit to keep the Italian Mafia, and any other East Coast Mafia or organized crime elements out of L.A. They have the Italian Mafia in neighboring Southern California Counties, but not in L.A. Because LAPD ain’t playing fair. The militarized policing that was seen during the upheaval of the 2010s behind the killing of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and others, the LAPD has been doing militarized policing since the 60s, where do you think SWAT comes from?
When the Los Angeles Police Department first deployed SWAT to quell the Watts rebellion in 1965, both Tookie and Raymond Washington were in their preteens. In 1969, the birth year of the Crips, saw the Chicago Police assassinate Black Panther member Fred Hampton who was sleeping in his bed. 3 weeks later in Los Angeles, when the LAPD tried to pull the same stunt that Chicago PD pulled, the Geronimo Pratt led Los Angeles based Black Panthers were not having none of that and were involved in a famous 5-hour shootout with the LAPD and SWAT.
The Revolutionary prison artist Joedee and a member of the Crips founding generation, lived just a few houses down from the shootout. His artistic body of work amply represents the love and respect of Panther Power. When members of the founding generation of Crips first arrived into the George Jackson influenced California prison system, many were quite impressed by the unity and structure and were impressionable enough to join those prison-based organizations. But Crip founder Raymond Washington took a different tact. He established himself as a Crip, and Crip’n inside the system and did not become a part of the so-called Black prison gangs.
By the 80s, the LAPD had created another militarized neighborhood fear weapon, the batterram. It was easy for the LAPD to terrorize the Black community in Los Angeles because of pre-1950 racial covenant laws that restricted the Black population to the South Central area of the City of Los angeles. So the Blacks in Los Angeles live in a very defined location for the police department to literally swoop into those Black communities and terrorize. At the time of the racial covenants, they were deemed progressive because there was a problem with so-called riots. These weren’t riots, but were whites attacking Blacks in their homes, similar to what happened to the Blacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, jealous whites attacking Blacks.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff Department was built up on the culture of racist white supremacy, as the LAPD. Inside of its jails, the sheriff deputies ruled with a no nonsense rapid use of excessive force. Instead of batons, they used heavy metal flashlights to mete out “flashlight therapy,” the tips and souls of their boots, along with overwhelming deputy presence to deliver gang banging style beat downs. One group of jail inmates this kind of abuse to its members did not set well with was the Crips. If a deputy or deputies tried to pull a Crip member out of a chow or court line, then all the Crips in that line would stop that line and wait until the interaction did not end in violence.
Ultimately, this challenge to authority would lead to several famous riots inside the L.A. County Sheriff Men’s Jail between the Crips and the Sheriff deputies. Round One went to the Crips, every other round after that went to the deputies. Like within the California prison system, custody responses to losses, are to seek out more sicker and sicker custodial weaponry. For example, in the California prison system regarding a cell extraction of a prisoner or prisoners, nowadays, guards first are dressed in hazmat suits prior to engaging with them. What kinds of sick chemicals are they deploying on prisoners whereby guards have to dress up in hazmat gear?
In 1985, when I first came to prison from having been kicked out of Y.A. (Youth Authority), I was housed at Soledad State Prison. The same Soledad prison made famous by George Jackson’s book, Soledad Brother. My cellmate was a dark skinned Puerto Rican whose nickname was Diplomat. Most likely he was given this name because he could navigate between different worlds as a fluent Spanish speaker. In 1985, he had been incarcerated for 18-years, was the law library clerk, and never had a write up.
He told me the Crips interjection into the California prison system was a game changer regarding the race based prison wars. The Crips weren’t having none of it, regarding taking losses. Diplomat also observed the Crips were not easily able to be eliminated by the authorities. Unlike most organizations he observed, “If you kill the head [meaning leadership], the body goes.” Because the Crips have no identifiable leaders, the tactic of getting rid of an organization’s leadership to end the organization, could not be deployed.
As I discussed my involvement with this project with the older generation of Crips regarding the accuracy and inaccuracies of my personal experiences and my personal body of knowledge of Crips in general, I was told Crips had no political aims, and the more wiser elders did not necessarily see a Black August connection. Any conscious Black person, no matter your affiliation, commemorates Black August.
I’ve already pointed out the Crips innately were resistors to attacks on Blacks by the authorities and non Black racial groups, both within and outside of custodial environments. N.W.A.’s Fuck tha Police, and Ice T’s Cop Killer, those were Crip voices. Those were the resistance voices by Crips that shook the national political establishment. For New Yorker, and Hip Hop journalist Nelson George, he got his Negro wake up call when he came to Los Angeles and witnessed first hand the terrorist in the streets known as the LAPD.
Stanley “Tookie” Williams, Crip co-founder, and first death row inmate to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, to which he was nominated four times, was denied a commutation on his death sentence on the eve of his execution by then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The five-page document Schwarzenegger issued to justify his denial of clemency rejected Tookie’s transformation from gang leader to peacemaker. Schwarzenegger’s denial, took special issue with Tookie’s dedication in his 1998 book Life in Prison.
The governor’s statement read, “The book is dedicated to ‘Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars. The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts, and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders.” The statement singles out George Jackson,
The inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems.
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger clemency denial of Stanley “Tookie” Williams
I said all this to say, “I will be recommending books written by Crips in the ”Word on the Street” section of book recommendations. First up Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s memoir Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir. Next, will be the book that got him executed for dedicating it in the memory or spirit of George Jackson, Life in Prison.
Third will be by my homies, prominent members in the criminal justice reform movement, and Tookie’s best friends, Craig A. Ross and Steve A. Champion. They had spent over twenty years on death row with Tookie until he was executed. Their book The Architect: How to transform yourself and your world expands on the work Tookie was committed to before his death. It’s a first of its kind, written directly to gang members. But if you’re serious about creating real change in your community, you need to read this book too, because ending violence takes radical responsibility from everyone, not just gangs.
A fourth book, I’ve never read it, but have always heard about it from other Crips, is Akil, and Andre Akil’s From Niggas to Gods, Part One. Again, this is about “Word from the Street.” I like the book’s description:
These writings are primarily targeted toward the Black Youth of this day, of which I am a part of. I am not a Master of these teachings, but these teachings I wish to Master. They say that my generation is not intelligent enough to read a book. I say that They are wrong. It is just that They are not writing about anything of interest that is relevant to our lives! And when They do write something, they have to write in the perfect King’s English to impress their Harvard Professors! Here we are with a book in one hand, and a dictionary in the other, trying to understand what in the hell the author is talking about! If you have got something to say, just say it! We are not impressed by your 27-letter words, or your Shakespearian style of writing. The Black Youth of today don’t give a damn about Shakespeare!!! This ain’t no damn poetry contest! We are dealing with the life, blood, and salvation of our entire Black Nation! If you want to reach the People, you have to embrace us where we are, and then take us where we need to go. So, these writings are from my generation and for my generation with respect and love. If no one will teach, love and guide us, then we will teach, love, and guide ourselves. Peace.
So what I have been pointing out with these set of recommendations, is whether it’s the Black youth of Oakland, the Crips in Los Angeles, the Gangster Disciples in Chicago, or Black youth anywhere, ain’t nobody striving to be sleep, but desire, simply for survival purposes, to become woke, to become conscious, to become Black August in spirit.
My fifth recommendation is a book I have not read, but I’m going to keep giving it up for the ladies, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall. She argues mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, such as food insecurity, access to quality education, and medical care. Furthermore, many influential White feminists often fail to fully recognize the complex ways in which race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with and influence gender experiences. “How can we stand in solidarity as a movement,” Kendall asks, “When there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?”
I write about feminist ideology, such as the inherent dangers of the feminist voice of feelings, rather than the feminist voice tied to facts, or the louder more prominent voice of the academia feminist, as opposed to the waitress. Imagine this, during this presidential political cycle both parties are in support of “No Tax on Tips,” merely because feminism from a waitress perspective was heard and acknowledged.
I like the late great Bell Hooks perspective:
Ignoring the difference of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women’s joint power. Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls facing us as women. Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down on the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying.
That was written in 1980, some 35 years before we saw all these shenanigans with these Black boys like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown that got Blacks and others to be mobilized in the streets.
- Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir by Stanley Tookie Williams
- Life in Prison by Stanley Tookie Williams
- The Architect: How to transform yourself and your world by Craig A. Ross and Steve A. Champion
- From Niggas to Gods, Part One by Akil, and Andre Akil
- Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
BA 2024: Now you only gave us 23 book recommendations, what’s two others?
C-Note: Let’s give a shout-out to Paul Coates son Ta-Nehisi, with his We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Finally, I am going to go with Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.
- We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
BA 2024: Well C-Note, thank you for your perspective and book recommendations, and good luck with future endeavors.
C-Note: Thank you, and likewise.