In Search of the Color That Seduced the World
For almost five millennia, in every culture and in every major religion, indigo—a blue pigment obtained from the small green leaf of a parasitic shrub through a complex process that even scientists still regard as mysterious—has been at the center of turbulent human encounters.
Indigo is the story of this precious dye and its ancient heritage: its relationship to slavery as the “hidden half” of the transatlantic slave trade, its profound influence on fashion, and its spiritual significance, which is little recognized but no less alive today. It is an untold story, brimming with rich, electrifying tales of those who shaped the course of colonial history and a world economy.
But Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan as their virile armor; the kin of several generations of Jewish “rag traders”; the maternal granddaughter of a Massachusetts textile factory owner; and the paternal granddaughter of African slaves—her ancestors were traded along the same Saharan routes as indigo, where a length of blue cotton could purchase human life. McKinley’s journey in search of beauty and her own history ultimately leads her to a new and satisfying path, to finally “taste life.” With its four-color photo insert and sumptuous design, Indigo will be as irresistible to look at as it is to read.
Author Bio
Catherine McKinley is the author of The Book of Sarahs. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she has taught Creative Nonfiction, and a former Fulbright Scholar in Ghana, West Africa, where she began her research on indigo. She lives in New York City.
List Price: $27.00 - Price: $16.56 - You Save: $10.44 (39%)
Review
"[McKinley] introduces the reader to a wide cast of characters who slip in and out of the narrative unobtrusively."—Kirkus Reviews"The sections in which [McKinley] focuses on the history of indigo are fascinating, and some of her vivid descriptions shimmer with an almost cinematic quality." —Ingrid Levin, Library Journal"Call it blue gold, the devil’s dye, or the cloth of history; indigo is the color that launched the ships and caravans of worldwide commerce. It encompasses the slave trade, the factories of European industry, and the woman-dominated markets of Africa. It binds the blue sails of Columbus’s ships to denim jeans and the exquisite hand-woven fabrics collectors crave. Catherine McKinley follows her passion, her ‘insatiable, desire’ for this beauty and history to Africa. There she enters a complex world—ancient, post-modern, stable and volatile. It demands that she be student, adventurer, aesthete and journalist: she meets these demands with restless intelligence, scrupulous honesty, a love of paradox and a generous exuberance. Indigo haunted her; now it will haunt you."—Margo Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson"A charming book: ethereal, wise, personal, as well as an imaginative exploration of what this color really might be, when you go under the surface of its just being about blue."—Victoria Finlay, author of Color: A Natural History of the Palette"Indigo is a journey in every sense of the word, and one undertaken with an engaging passion. It is also, in the words of Miles Davis, Kind of Blue."—Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt"Catherine McKinley’s Indigo is a moving and lyrical journey through several continents and through the writer’s own internal landscapes. This beautiful and unforgettable book, like indigo itself, reaches deeply into all our lives."—Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying
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New Edition of
Aleida March’s
“Evocación: Mi vida
al lado del Che”
Posted by: ivetteromero | June 13, 2011
Evocación: Mi vida al lado del Che (2008, 2011) [Evocaction: My Life next to Che] is a memoir by Aleida March, Che Guevara’s companion in life and in the struggle. Through her memories of life close to this larger-than-life hero, she reveals him in all his humanity and multi-faceted life as father, husband, leader, and as a man in whose qualities tenderness and love were reconciled with his political responsibilities in the Cuban Revolution.
In her account, March weaves together the experiences shared with the Che, a figure that, unintentionally, was imbued with a symbolic dimension through history. Both of them constitute “two wills that decided to join one another” and that she traces through their spiritual growth, revealing to the readers “the discovery and deployment of two beings that extended their project into four lives that emerged from the love and poetry.”
Aleida March (Manicaragua, 1936) studied pedagogy at the University of Santa Clara. In 1956 she joined the July of 26 Movement. A year later she became the messenger for the head of the rebel organization in the province of Las Villas, with a reputation for her boldness and courage. Shortly after the revolutionary triumph in 1959, she married Ernesto Che Guevara. She currently chairs the Che Guevara Studies Center.
For purchasing information, seehttp://www.oceansur.com/catalogo/titulos/evocacion/ andhttp://www.amazon.com/Evocacion-Vida-Lado-del-Spanish/dp/8467027339
>via: http://repeatingislands.com/2011/06/13/new-edition-of-aleida-march’s-“evocacion-mi-vida-al-lado-del-che”/
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New Open Lens Imprint
Launched with Industry Veterans.
Akashic to Launch
Open Lens Imprint
Jun 13, 2011
Open Lens is a co-venture between Akashic Books and literary agents Marie Brown and Regina Brooks along with Hue-Man Bookstore owner Marva Allen and initial guest editor, former Random House executive editor Janet Hill Talbert. Akashic Books has long focused on the African-American market with a list of titles focused on African-American, African, and Caribbean authors.
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| The journey to Makeda has been inspiring and hopeful. As publishing professionals we owe you the right of choice and great literature...I am proud to be a part of this stellar team that brought Makeda to light... |
| Johnny Temple has been getting it right for a long time...and now we join him to support those readers who want to discover the world in technicolor...The book will be released in September but we'd love you to pre-order now and once you've read it, we hope you, our customers, will tell us how we did. We know you'll love it! |
| Marie, Marva and Regina. |
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"Makeda is a soaring, wrenching, and ultimately revealing glimpse into the roles within a powerful matriarchal family. . . . A must read for anyone who wants to appreciate history, the role of women, and the significance of transferring ideas, goals, and ambitions from one generation to the next." -Charles J. Ogletree Jr., author of The Presumption of Guilt
"Makeda is brilliant and path-breaking, filled with passion and compassion. It took hold in my heart and wouldn't let go. A scholar and a poet uncompromisingly committed to justice, Randall Robinson is a rare and exquisite writer. This novel will burn into your brain long after you've left its haunting pages." -Susan L. Taylor, former Editor in chief Essence magazine.
"In Robinson's majestic prose and sweeping historical vision, the tongues of Virginia Woolf, Gabriel García Márquez, and Toni Morrison blend to remind us that we can renew our souls in the eyes of ancestors who return to us in whatever way our lives demand."- -Michael Eric Dyson, author of Know What I Mean?
"Makeda teases, provokes, challenges, and illuminates the complex, painful, and joyous personal and collective journeys in search of family, identity, love, and a place that define us. Like the protagonist Makeda's many incarnations, this haunting novel of return reminds us that we are all part of something far greater than ourselves, or this moment. -Jill Nelson, author of the New York Times best seller, Volunteer Slavery.
Makeda Gee Florida Harris March is a proud matriarch, the anchor and emotional bellwether who holds together a hard-working African American family living in 1950s Richmond, Virginia. Lost in shadow is Makeda's grandson Gray, who begins escaping into the magical world of Makeda's tiny parlor. Makeda, a woman blind since birth but who has always dreamed in color, begins to confide in Gray the things she "sees" and remembers from her dream state, and a story emerges that is layered with historical accuracy beyond the scope of Makeda's limited education. Gradually, Gray begins to make a connection between his grandmother's dreams and the epic life of an African queen described in the Bible.
Part coming-of-age story, part spiritual journey, and part love story, Makeda is a universal tale of family, heritage, and the ties that bind. Randall Robinson plumbs the hearts of Makeda and Gray and summons our collective blood memories, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey of the soul that will linger long after the last page has been turned.
About the Author
Randall Robinson is the author of An Unbroken Agony and the national best sellers The Debt, The Reckoning, and Defending the Spirit. He is also founder and past president of TransAfrica, the African-American organization he established to promote enlightened, constructive U.S. policies toward Africa and the Caribbean. In 1984, Robinson established the Free South Africa Movement, which pushed successfully for the imposition of sanctions against apartheid South Africa; and in 1994, his public advocacy, including a 27-day hunger strike, led to the UN multinational operation that restored Haiti's first democratically elected government to power. Mr. Robinson lives with his wife and daughter in St. Kitts.
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>via: http://myemail.constantcontact.com/New-Imprint-From-Industry-Titans.html?soid...
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New Issue of
the Journal of French
and Francophone Philosophy
The new issue of the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Vol 19, No 1 (2011), features an extensive forum on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, entitled “Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Fifty Years Later.” It also includes a memorial piece about and essay on the late Édouard Glissant. The material included in the journal is open access courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The forum includes seven essays on Fanon’s work and philosophical legacy by Anthony C. Alessandrini, Nigel C. Gibson, Jane Anna Gordon, Matthieu Renault, Anjali Prabhu, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, and Lewis R. Gordon. Other articles related to Caribbean thought include Bernadette Cailler’s “Totality and Infinity, Alterity, and Relation: From Levinas to Glissant.”
In his beautiful tribute for Glissant, “Shorelines: In Memory of Édouard Glissant,” John Drabinski writes: “As a person and thinker, Glissant lived through, then reflected with meditative patience and profundity upon some of the most critical years in the black Atlantic: the aesthetics and politics of anti-colonial struggle, the civil rights movement in the United States, postcolonial cultural anxiety and explosion, the vicissitudes of an emerging cultural globalism, and all of the accompanying intellectual movements from surrealism to negritude to existentialism to those varieties of high modernism and postmodernism for which Glissant himself is such a generative, founding resource. His life bears witness to those years, events, and movements with a poet’s word and a philosopher’s eye. And so Glissant, like all important thinkers, leaves for us an enormous gift – in his case, a new, enigmatic vocabulary of and for the Americas.”
The Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy is an electronic, open access, peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of French and Francophone thought. Though rooted in the discipline of philosophy, the journal invites interdisciplinary extensions and explorations in a theoretical register. The journal is coedited by John E. Drabinski and Scott Davidson. [Forthcoming issues will focus on Albert Memmi and Patrice Lumumba.]
For current issue, see http://jffp.org/ojs/index.php/jffp/issue/current