SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN AMERICAN AUTHOR DONALD GOINES

Posted by John F. Allen Author on February 19, 2014

African American author, Donald Goines was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 15, 1936. He came from a middle-class background, where his parents ran a laundry business. According to stories told to him by his mother—Myrtle Goines—the family was descended from a sexual encounter between Jefferson Davis and a slave. At age 15, Goines lied about his age in order to join the Air Force, where he fought in the Korean War. During his service, Goines developed a heroin addiction which he continued after his being honorably discharged from the military during the mid-1950’s. In order to support his addiction Goines committed multiple crimes, including pimping and theft, and was sent to prison several times. While serving time in Michigan’s Jackson Penitentiary, he began writing. He initially attempted to write westerns, but decided to write urban fiction after reading Iceberg Slim’s autobiography “Pimp: The Story of My Life”.

Goines continued to write novels at a fast-tracked pace to support his drug addictions, with some books taking only a month to complete. His sister Joan Goines Coney later stated that Goines wrote at such an accelerated pace in order to avoid committing more crimes and based many of the characters in his books on people he knew in real life.
In 1974 Goines published Crime Partners, the first book in the Kenyatta series under the pseudonym, “Al C. Clark”. Holloway House’s chief executive Bentley Morriss requested that Goines publish the book under a pseudonym in order to avoid having the sales of Goines’ work suffer due to too many books releasing at once. The book dealt with an anti-hero character named after Jomo Kenyatta that ran a Black Panther-esque organization to clear the ghetto of crime. In his book The Low Road, Eddie B. Allen remarked that the series was a departure from some of Goines’ other works, with the character of Kenyatta symbolizing a sense of liberation for Goines.

“Inner City Hoodlum”, which Goines had finished before his death, was published posthumously in 1975. The story, set in Los Angeles, was about “smack”, money and murder.
On October 21, 1974 Goines and his common-law wife were discovered dead in their Detroit apartment. The police had received an anonymous phone call earlier that evening and responded, discovering Goines in the living room of the apartment and his common-law wife Shirley Sailor’s body in the kitchen. Both Goines and Sailor had sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and head. The identity of the killer or killers is unknown, as is the reason behind the murders. Popular theories involve Goines being murdered due to his basing several of his characters on real life criminals as well as the theory that Goines was killed due to his being in debt over drugs.
Goines was later buried with his mother placing several of his books in his coffin.

PERSONAL NOTE:

The highest selling genre among African Americans is Urban Fiction or Urban Lit. As a fan of Goines’ work, he was the first author in this genre I read. His work(s) have helped to shape and influence many of today’s Urban Fiction authors. It is my shared opinion that Donald Goines’ is the quintessential “Father” of Urban Fiction/Urban Lit.

BIBLIIOGRAPHY

Kenyatta series
• Crime Partners (1974) [as Al C. Clark]
• Death List (1974) [as Al C. Clark]
• Kenyatta’s Escape (1974) [as Al C. Clark]
• Kenyatta’s Last Hit (1975) [as Al C. Clark]

STANDALONE NOVELS

Dopefiend (1971)
Whoreson (1972)
Black Gangster (1972)
Street Players (1973)
White Man’s Justice, Black Man’s Grief (1973)
Black Girl Lost (1974)
Eldorado Red (1974)
Swamp Man (1974)
Never Die Alone (1974)
Cry Revenge (1974) [as Al C. Clark]
Daddy Cool (1974)
Inner City Hoodlum (1975)

MUSICAL INFLUENCES
Goines’ writing has had an impact upon several people, with several rappers inserting mentions of Goines and his writing into their lyrics. In his 1996 song “Tradin’ War Stories”, rapper 2Pac writes “Machiavelli was my tutor, Donald Goines my father figure”. Ludacris mentions Goines in his 2006 song “Eyebrows Down”. AZ compares himself to Donald Goines’ work in “Rather Unique,” with the line, “Your mind’s boggled but I’m as deep as Donald Goines’ novels.” Nas also named the song “Black Girl Lost” on his sophomore album It Was Written after the book by Goines. Goines’ books are also utilized in several prison literacy programs and his novel “Dopefiend” has been taught in a Rutgers University class.

FILMS
Some of Goines’ works have been adapted into film. His book “Crime Partners” was turned into a 2001 film starring Ice-T, Snoop Dogg, and Ja Rule, and in 2004 his book “Never Die Alone” was also released as a film starring DMX.

GRAPHIC NOVEL
In 2006, a graphic novel adaptation of the book “Daddy Cool” was released by Holloway House.

THE HISTORY OF BLACK WRITERS IN POETRY, LITERARY FICTION & ROMANCE (PART TWO)

Posted by John F. Allen Author on February 18, 2013

In this week’s blog post, I’m celebrating the rich history and influential accomplishments of black writers of poetry, literary fiction and romance.

This is Part Two of a two-part post.

Black writers continued to flourish even beyond The Harlem Renaissance and on into the Civil Right Era.

During a time known as The Great Migration—which began after World War I and continued through 1970—many blacks moved from the South and headed North in search of greater opportunities and equal treatment.

Many ventured to large northern cities like Chicago and Northern Indiana, where they found work in factories and other industries.

The migration from the south gave rise to a new sense of independence within the Black community and contributed to the growth of black urban culture developed during the Harlem Renaissance. It also sparked the growing Civil Rights movement which had a powerful impact upon the voice of that era, ranging from the 1940’s through the 1960’s.

The activists of the Civil Rights movement in their efforts gave the writers of the time a platform in which to address issues such as ending segregation, racism and to develop a new sense of Black Nationalism.

A profound writer of this period was James Baldwin, whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality. He is perhaps best known for his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. He wrote stories and essays which were personal reflections that examined the nature of being both black and homosexual when neither was accepted in American society and culture.

Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, which included Another Country and The Fire Next Time.

Another writer of that era was Richard Wright. He and Baldwin were friends and he called Wright “the greatest Black writer in the world for me”. Wright is perhaps best known for his novel Native Son (1940), which told the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man who struggled for acceptance in Chicago.

Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays Notes of a Native Son, in reference to Wright’s novel. However, their friendship fell apart due to one of the book’s essays, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” which criticized Native Son for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity. Among Wright’s other books are the autobiographical novel Black Boy (1945), The Outsider (1953), and White Man, Listen! (1957).

Another novelist of this period was Ralph Ellison, best known for his novel Invisible Man (1952), which won the National Book Award in 1953. Even though he did not complete another novel during his lifetime, Invisible Man was so influential that it secured his place in literary history. After Ellison’s death in 1994, a second novel, Juneteenth (1999), was pieced together from the 2,000-plus pages he had written over 40 years. A fuller version of the manuscript will be published as Three Days Before the Shooting (2008). Jones, Edward, The Known World, 2003 Carter Stephen, New England White 2007 Wright W.D. Crisis of the Black Intellectual, 2007.

During the Civil Right Era, there was a rise in the number of black female poets, one of the most notable being Gwendolyn Brooks, who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. It was awarded to her for her 1949 book of poetry, Annie Allen. Along with Brooks, other female poets who reached a level of notoriety during the 1950s and ’60s are Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.

Also during this time, a number of playwrights came to attain national attention, most notably Lorraine Hansberry, whose famous play A Raisin in the Sun focuses on a poor Black Chicago family living and went on to win the 1959 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

Another noteworthy playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka. She was known for writing controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka has become known for his poetry and music criticism.

A number of important books and essays dealing with human rights were penned by the Civil Rights leaders. Martin Luther King, Jr‘s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a leading example.

In the 1970s, black literature began to reach the mainstream as works by black writers continually reached best-selling and award-winning status. This was also during this time that the work of African-American writers finally came to be recognized by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature.

As part of the larger Black Arts Movement, which was inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, African American literature began to be defined and analyzed. A number of scholars and writers are generally credited with helping to promote and define African-American literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel to name a few.

Other black writers of note are:

A recent explosion of black romance writers has occured in before unprecedented rates. While the genre is not highly represented by blacks, there are several of note.

Gwen Forster, Brenda Jackson, Carmen Green, Beverly Clark, Celeste O. Norfleet, Kayla Perrin, Donna Hill and Marcia King-Gamble to name a few.

A resurgence of the Urban Lit genre has become popular amongst black writers and readers alike. Some of the most prominent names are:

The undisputed title “Queen of black erotica,” goes to Zane. Her novels have been best sellers and also garnered her a cable series based upon her popular Sex Chronicles series.

Black/African-American literature has enjoyed additional attention due largely to the efforts of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. She has continually leveraged her fame to promote literature through Oprah’s Book Club. Oprah has brought African-American writers a far larger audience than they might otherwise have received.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH BOOK REVIEW #2

Posted by John F. Allen Author on February 15, 2013

The Man in 3B
by Carl Weber
Review by John F. Allen

What do you get when you combine popular 80’s sitcom, 227, Desperate Housewives and Boyz ‘n the Hood, with a splash of Clue? You get more than what you bargained for, which is more than your average Urban Lit novel. That’s what you’ll find in Carl Weber’s The Man in 3B!

When Daryl Graham aka The Man in 3B moves into a Jamaica Queens apartment building, all the females lose their minds and the men become jealous lunatics. Apparently this brother is finer than wine, all that and a bag of chips and the cat’s meow, with all the women—from eighteen to eighty, married and single—wanting to claim the title of Pussy Galore. He’s also everything every brother wants to be with a charisma that they will never possess.

Many of the female residents are in dysfunctional and broken relationships and see Daryl Graham as Doctor Feel Good/Mister Big Stuff, the cure for what ails them and just the right prescription to fill their empty lives with HOT SEX!

The front stoop of this New York walkup is gossip central, where mostly all of the building’s female residents congregate to chinwag about the latest, greatest dirt going on in and around the building. They also stake out the entrance for any chance to catch a glimpse of Daryl, whom they all have professed a burning desire to sleep with. Because of this, he is quickly welcomed into the building with much more than friendly neighbor affection, weaving his way into each of the tenants’ lives.

Enter Connie, the overweight and sexually frustrated wife of Avery Mack, a down on his luck former mortgage broker whose disgust in Connie’s appearance is readily apparent and quite mean-spirited. A chance encounter leads to Daryl offering to help Connie in her mission to lose weight and possibly save her disintegrating marriage. However, Daryl’s charisma is not lost on Connie and his flirtations begin to make her feel attractive, appreciated and more confident than she’s felt in years.

Enter Avery, whose disgust and lack of sensitivity to his wife leads him to ask for a divorce. He is plunged into a further downward spiral when he gets in over his head with a bad element. Avery’s only concern is to reclaim the luxurious lifestyle he once had and he’s determined to achieve that goal by any means necessary. Despite his contempt for Connie, he becomes jealous of Daryl for showing interest in her and for how she’s decided to take control of her life and move on without him.

Enter Benny, a smart, shy and sheltered young man who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Daryl and begins to look up to him as a role model, much to the dismay of Benny’s father, Ben—a local firefighter and resident “Histress,” to the ladies of the building. When their time together becomes more frequent and Benny approaches his twenty-first birthday, he begins to reevaluate his life and his identity as an adult.

Enter Krystal, Daryl’s first love, who calls him back into her life for sexual escapades after years apart. While Daryl wants to be in a serious relationship, Krystal only wants to have fun. What she doesn’t tell Daryl is that she’s involved with another man who she has no intentions of leaving. Krystal abruptly leaves Daryl hanging when her current boyfriend proposes and unwittingly ends up moving into the same building where Daryl lives. She tries to use this situation to her advantage as she wants Daryl to continue ringing her bell, yet also make things work with her fiancé, but Daryl’s not having any of that and sends her packing.

Everything is hunky dory until someone is murdered…

Everyone becomes a prime suspect as many of the residents have means, opportunity and motive. This throws everyone into a tizzy and deepens the mystery that surrounds exactly who Daryl Graham really is and what about him brings out such passionate emotions in those who encounter him.

The plot of this novel is tightly wound and while Daryl serves as the nexus to the other characters, Weber is able to give each and every one a unique and distinctive voice. The transition from Urban lit to Whodunit is masterful and I applaud Weber’s ability as a writer to pull it off. I was so invested in the discovery of what happened next, I almost forgot at times it wasn’t a Walter Mosley mystery novel I was reading. Where’s Socrates Fortlow when you need him?

The mystery surrounding Daryl Graham and how his presence and influence has affected everyone in the building are just some of the reasons you’ll want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next.

The Man in 3B is filled with interesting, dysfunctional characters with plenty enough personality to keep the reader intrigued and invested from start to finish.

I’ve been a fan of Carl’s work from his first novel, “Lookin’ for Luv.” He has failed to disappoint me with his writing and I encourage you to take a look at each and every one of his novels.

But if you want to know all the juicy details and the fate of these well-developed characters in The Man in 3B, you’ll have to read the book!

STAY TUNED! Next week I review “The Warmth of Other Suns,” by Isabel Wilkerson!!!