Seattle Reads 2009

  • Book Groups Read My Jim

    I have had the pleasure now of facilitating two book group discussions of this year’s featured work for Seattle Reads, My Jim by Nancy Rawles. What I have seen (and heard from others) about the reactions of readers to Rawles’ book is that it makes a powerful impression.  My Jim also gives readers plenty to… Continue reading

  • Want to read more African American historical fiction?

    Once you read Nancy Rawles’ My Jim, a compelling slave story about Sadie (the wife of Huck Finn’s friend Jim), who chose to remain a slave and stay with her family on the plantation, you will likely want to read other stories like it: narratives that sweep you back in time and make you think.… Continue reading

  • Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Part II

    Here is a continuation of the Writers of the Harlem Renaissance post from Tuesday:  Jessie Redmon Fauset Though she is not very well-known today, Fauset was, along with Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most prolific African America writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Two of her four novels, There is Confusion and Plum Bun: A… Continue reading

  • Writers of the Harlem Renaissance: Part 1

    The period between the 1920s and the beginning of World War II marked a blossoming of African American literature, especially in New York. Events that precipitated this period, now referred to as the Harlem Renaissance, included a widespread migration to northern cities by African Americans from the South; job and educational opportunities for African Americans;… Continue reading

  • Banned Book of the Month: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    Consistently among the most challenged books in schools and libraries, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has courted controversy since its original publication back in 1885, though not always for the same reason. It was first removed from the collection of the Concord Free Library in Massachusetts over its “rough, course and inelegant expressions.” I… Continue reading