Description
Book SynopsisKarla FC Holloway examines booklists, along with the trends of selection in Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, raising the questions: What does it mean for prominent African Americans to associate themselves with European learning and culture? How do books by black authors fare in the inevitable hierarchy of a booklist?
Trade ReviewErudite and emotional in turns, it is full of truths that appeal to the head and the heart. Its primary strength is its poignancy. There is a kind of mystery that holds the book together, one that commands our interest from start to finish. Little by little we learn that Holloway has suffered a terrible loss -- the death of her young son. She reveals the details slowly, impressionistically, working through her grief by turning again and again to the subject she knows best: books. * American Academy of Religion Program *
Part memoir, part historical research on the reading habit of writers, Karla Holloway provides the reader with a rare opportunity to reflect upon his/her own reading experience: What have you read? How did you learn to read? Where were your 'protected and isolated spaces' for reading? How has that early experience shaped your current reading? A unique contribution to our understanding of the importance of reading in shaping our culture. -- David S. Ferriero * Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries, New Yor *
BookMarks is a moving and revelatory memoir, as Holloway contemplates her own reading history as well as that of her family...this is a work of fiercely intelligent scholarship. -- Susan Larson * New Orleans Times-Picayune *
Table of ContentsReading and desire in a room of their own / The booklists of Jessie Fauset and Marita Golden
A negro library / The booklists of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright
On censorship and Tarzan / The booklists of John Hope Franklin, Sonia Sanchez, and Audre Lorde
A prison library / The booklists of Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Eldridge Cleaver
The anchor bar / The booklists of Maya Angelou and James Baldwin
A proud chestnut / The booklists of James Weldon Johnson and Nikki Giovanni
The children's room / The booklists of Langston Hughes and Pauli Murray
My mother's singing / The booklists of C. Eric Lincoln and Leon Forrest
Reading race / The booklists of Henry Louis Gates and Michael Eric Dyson
The card catalog / The booklists of Zora Neale Hurston, J. Saunders Redding, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, and Oprah Winfrey
