Read About it!

Read About It!

Have you heard the joke... "To hide something from a Black man, just put it in a book" Well it may bring forth a slight laugh but remember most truth is said in jest. So with that being said, we at Talk About It Be About It have compiled a book listing to help educate and promote the simple joy and need to read. Whether current events, educational, motivational or fiction, reading will broaden your mind and vocabulary. So please browse through our carefully chosen list and pick a winner.

Talk About It Be About It encourages reading. Start a Book Club at School, Work, Neighborhood, Barber Shop, Hair Dressers, Home, Church, etc.

Stop Being Niggardly

If you don’t know the definition of the word, you might assume it to be a derogatory insult, a racial slur. You might be personally offended and deeply outraged. You might write an angry editorial or organize a march. You might even find yourself making national headlines. In other words, you’d better know what the word means before you pour your energy into overreacting to it. That’s the jumping-off point for this powerful directive from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Karen Hunter. It’s time for the black community to stop marching, quit complaining, roll up their collective sleeves, channel their anger constructively, and start fixing their own problems, she boldly asserts. And while her straight-talking, often politically incorrect narrative is electrifyingly fresh and utterly relevant to today’s hot-button issues surrounding race, Hunter harks back to the wisdom of a respected elder—Nannie Helen Burroughs, who was ahead of her time penning Twelve Things the Negro Must Do for Himself more than a century ago...

The New Jim Crow

Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today... than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration—but her carefully researched,deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Invisible Man

We rely, in this world, on the visual aspects of humanity as a means of learning who we are. This, Ralph Ellison argues convincingly, is a dangerous habit. A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue. "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." But this is hard-won self-knowledge, earned over the course of many years.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

In 1987, Dr. Benjamin Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head. Carson pioneered again in a rare procedure known as a hemispherectomy, giving children without hope a second chance at life through a daring operation in which he literally removes one half of their brain. Such breakthroughs aren't unusual for Ben Carson. He's been beating the odds since he was a child. Raised in inner-city Detroit by a mother with a third grade education, Ben lacked motivation. He had terrible grades. And a pathological temper threatened to put him in jail. But Sonya Carson convinced her son he could make something of his life, even though everything around him said otherwise. Trust in God, a relentless belief in his own capabilities, and sheer determination catapulted Ben from failing grades to the directorship of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Gifted Hands takes you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world---and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others.

24 Reasons Why African Americans Suffer

A Critical Analysis of an African American Teenage Subculture
Author: Jimmy Dumas
Publisher: African American Images
This book investigates the effects of prejudice on blacks in American culture and spells out strategies that can be implemented to close the gap between the races. Acknowledging that racism is a root cause, the book offers strategies to get beyond today's state of affairs. Each reason is explained in relationship to the economic, political, and academic condition of the African American community. 24 Reasons Why African Americans Suffer goes beyond articulating problems such as poor money management, lack of unity, and poor family relationships- it offers solutions such as spending more money patronizing African American businesses (or starting new ones), a renewed focus on accentuating the similarities within the race instead of the differences, and an improved perspective on marriage as an important, permanent commitment.

GhettoNation

With Ghettonation, acclaimed journalist and author, Cora Daniels, takes on one of the most explosive issues in our country today in this thoughtful critique of America's embrace of a ghetto persona that is demeaning to women, devalues education, celebrates the worst African American stereotypes, and contributes to the destruction of civil peace. Her investigation exposes the central role of corporate America in exploiting the idea of ghettoness as a hip cultural idiom, despite its disturbing ramifications, as a means of making money. She showcases Black rappers raised in privileged families who have taken on the ghetto persona and sold millions of albums, and not so Black celebrities such as Paris Hilton, who have adopted ghetto attitudes and styles in pursuit of attention and notoriety. She also gets personal, exploring her own relationship to ghetto and the ways in which she is both part and outside the Ghettonation.
Daniels infuses this serious look at the degradation of American society with the honesty, found in her debut book Black Power Inc., as well as humor - including lists of events and people that deserve placement in the Ghetto Hall of Fame and a short section written entirely in ghetto slang. The result is not only a timely engrossing expose, that will surely trigger much needed
debate, but also Ghettonation is a poignant call for action.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

The book incorporates her research in both America and Africa, as well as her twenty years of experience as a social work practitioner and consultant to public and private organizations. Dr. DeGruy first exposes the reader to the conditions that led to the Atlantic slave trade and allowed the pursuant racism and efforts at repression to continue through present day. She then looks at the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that African Americans faced as the result of the slave trade. Next she discusses the adaptive behaviors they developed—both positive and negative—that allowed them to survive and often even thrive. Dr. DeGruy concludes by reevaluating those adaptive behaviors that have been passed down through generations and where appropriate. She explores replacing behaviors which are today maladaptive with ones that will promote, and sustain the healing and ensure the advancement of African American culture.

What's Love Got to Do With It?

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BLACK MEN AND WOMEN IN AMERICA ARE IN CRISIS. IT'S TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GONE WRONG AND START THE HEALING PROCESS.
The current divorce rates for black couples has quadrupled since 1960 and is now double that of the general population, rates of domestic violence in black marriages are skyrocketing, and nearly half of married black men admit to having been unfaithful. In What's Love Got to Do with It? Donna Franklin, one of the country's leading African-American sociologists, speaks out on these painful, complex issues, providing an incisive and riveting analysis of the gender tensions that are the legacy of slavery and its aftermath.

Franklin breaks new ground in explaining why black men and women have trouble relating to each other and examines their
profoundly different starting points, which are influenced by generations of racism and injustice. She shows how black women's
                                 strength and self-sufficiency can be used to nurture relationships. Likewise, she teaches black men how to support one another and
                                 their relationships with women without excluding women, as has happened with the Million Man March.

                                The challenge of mending the rift between black men and women is formidable, but can be made easier. Understanding is the
                                 first step on the path to healing.