Dreams & Swords
February 2006 issue
November 2005 issue
Dreams & Swords
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
- Amy Lowell (Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds)
At times there will be a need, due to space limitation, to edit the original version of a Dreams & Swords column. The Library is archiving all the columns on its web site, so if you would like to read a full column, such as the Thanksgiving 2005 column, you can do so by going to the Library's site, looking under "Library Services" and clicking on "Gargoyle column" at the bottom of the item listing.
In recognition of February being Black History Month, we thought we'd use this month's column to highlight some resources in the Library's diverse collections:
The Rabbit's Wedding : Included in last September's Banned Books Week observation, this children's book was extremely controversial back in the 1950s when it was published. Quite a number of people felt that it was an attack on the sanctity of marriage (and you thought that was a new controversy) because they believed it advocated inter-racial marriage, which was against the law in many states. In 1967, the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 19 states (though Alabama didn't remove it's law until 2000 - the last state to do so). You see, in this story one of the rabbits is white and the other is black. Author and illustrator Garth Williams explained that he did this so his young readers could tell the two apart.
Without Sanctuary : Lynching Photography in America : A compelling example of how far we've come in this country from a social justice perspective, but also how horribly wrong we have been in treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters; this book provides exactly what it says - a collection of lynching photographs taken in America. The book isn't easy to look through, but everyone should. Imagine a time in our not-so-distant past when a son would send a postcard of a lynching to his mother with an arrow drawn showing where he could been found in the audience.
Strange Fruit : This video tells the story of the song made famous by Billie Holiday and includes footage of one of her performances
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees …
Chisholm '72 Unbought & Unbossed : This DVD provides an overview with actual footage of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 campaign for the presidency of the United States. Prior to becoming the first black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, Chisholm had a long career in education. Her presidential campaign centered on her proclamation that she was "unbought" and "unbossed."
Hattie McDaniel : Black Ambition, White Hollywood by Jill Watts (2005) and Hattie : the Life of Hattie McDaniel by Carlton Jackson (1990) : Two biographies of the first African-American performer to win an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress, 1940 for Gone With the Wind) and the last until Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for Lilies of the Field (the next African-American woman to win was Whoopi Goldberg in 1990 for Ghost). The U.S. Postal Service honors McDaniel this year with her own stamp.
Black Boy (60th Anniversary Edition - the restored text established by the Library of America) : Is Richard Wright's classic American autobiography and much banned book (from 1975 - 1978 banned in schools throughout the country for "obscenity" and "instigating hatred between the races"). Wright holds the distinction of being the first African-American to have a novel selected as a Main Selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club (Native Son).
Roots : The twelve-hour mini-series that set the bar for all television mini-series, aired on ABC in 1977, dramatizing Alex Haley's bestseller of the same title. Production was a gamble, but in the end it garnered ratings higher than any television entertainment program in history and received over thirty Emmy Awards.
The Legacy of Barbara Jordan: Four Speeches : This video provides four famous speeches by the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress from the South. Contents include her 1974 House Judiciary Committee Impeachment speech, her 1976 and 1992 Democratic Convention keynote speaker addresses, and her 1988 Democratic Convention nomination speech for Lloyd Bentson. A good companion read is A Private Woman in Public Spaces : Barbara Jordan's Speeches on Ethics, Public Religion, and Law by Barbara Ann Holmes.
Malcolm X : The 1992 film by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington in the title role received two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe nomination, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. Malcolm X : By Any Means Necessary is a children's book by Newbery Honor book author Walter Dean Myers.
On the Pulse of Morning : This small tome provides the text of Maya Angelou's poem which she read at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton (1993). Amazing Peace : a Christmas Poem is her most recent publication (2005) .
Honey, hush! : an Anthology of African American Women's Humor (edited Daryl Cumber Dance with a foreword by Nikki Giovanni) : A treasure-trove of humor from such diverse women as Moms Mabley, Ethel Waters, Lani Guinier, Rita Dove, Fannie Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, Gloria Nayor, Ruby Dee, Zora Neale Hurston and many others, famous and not-so, including those whose names are no longer known.
The Story of Little Black Sambo (2003) by Helen Bannerman with illustrations by award- winning illustrator Christopher H. Bing (Caldecott Honor Book Casey at the Bat) : Bannerman's 1899 book has weathered a lot of controversy over the more than one hundred years since its publication, being labeled and banned as racist . Sam and the Tigers : a New Telling of Little Black Sambo (1996) by Julius Lester with illustrations by Jerry Pinkney is an attempt to keep the story but avoid the controversy surrounding the name of the main character.
The Voice that Challenged a Nation : Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights by Russell Freedman : A children's book that compellingly tells the story of opera singer Marian Anderson who was thrust into the national political spotlight in 1939, when she performed an Easter concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson had been denied the opportunity to appear at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution due to fact that she was black. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her membership in the DAR in support of Anderson. My Lord, What a Morning : an Autobiography by Marian Anderson.
Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, Another Country, If Beale Street Could Talk … All by James Baldwin who has been called a quintessential twentieth-century American author (yet who lived a good part of his adult life outside the country). Baldwin's ethnicity and sexual orientation earned him his outsider's eye.
Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, The Bluest Eye, Love, Tar Baby, Lecture and Speech of Acceptance, Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Delivered in Stockholm on the Seventh of December, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Three, Conversations with Toni Morrison (edited by Danille Taylor-Guthrie), The Big Box (children's book by Toni Morrison with Slade Morrison and illustrations by Giselle Potter) … Pick one, pick any, just don't ask Dr. Trimble and Dr. Gunther which one of them is Ms. Morrison's "biggest fan."
Eric A. Kidwell
Director of the Library