For the first time since the publication of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts On File) in 2003, Google Books has recently added an extended preview to its listing of the title.

The preview includes a full-screen color reproduction of the cover, which features artwork by celebrated artist Jacob Lawrence, the foreword and authors’ notes, and free access to more than 100 pages of articles ranging from profiles of Chicago Defender editor Robert Abbott and the Abyssinian Baptist Church to Broadway star and social activist Sophie Tucker. Access is also available to a list of encyclopedia topics and a comprehensive appendix of maps detailing such subjects as the Great Migration, the development of black music, and the Harlem Renaissance’s influence around the world.

In addition to providing access to the generous preview itself, Google has also made available a preview widget that may be embedded in a blog or on a website. You can obtain the widget simply by clicking on the “link” icon in the upper right corner of the page for Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance and copying the code labeled “embed.” Once you’ve copied the code, paste and save it in your blog or on your website. The widget is ideal for educators and readers addressing subjects associated with the Harlem Renaissance/Jazz Age, American history in general, or examples of award-winning work by contemporary authors.

Google Books has made widgets available for the following titles as well:

ELEMENTAL the Power of Illuminated Love
The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
The American Poet Who Went Home Again
I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World

Each of these serves as great introductions to the books themselves and makes a great addition to literary and education websites. If you happen to be an author yourself, you might consider checking the availability of widgets for your own books and adding them to your author profiles.

Store window display for Official Michael Jackson Opus book.

The Michael Jackson story has arguably been the most compelling of 2009 and more than once has caused me to rearrange my own writing schedule to help clarify various aspects of the iconic entertainer and philanthropist’s legacy. Towards that effort, I have written the following blogs, articles, and poems regarding Jackson with the most recent listed first:June 25, 2009. At that point, I sat other projects aside and began to write my various memories and interpretations of his life. I also began to chronicle as a Red Room and AuthorsDen author, and as the National African-American Art Examiner, the public and media’s responses to Jackson‘s passing.

1) Work and Soul in Michael Jackson’s This Is It (Special 4-part article series)
2) Sold-Out Michael Jackson Tickets and Yearning for Something More (article)
3) The World Lets Go While Holding on to Michael Jackson (article)
4) A Moonwalking Giant Lies Down to Rest (article)
5) Michael Jackson Legacies of a Globetrotting Moonwalking Philanthropist (article)
6) Notes for an Elegy in the Key of Michael #1 and #2 (poems)
7) To Walk a Lifetime in Michael Jackson’s Moccasins (blog)

The word ‘legend’ is at the end of this blog’s title instead of the word “story” because the subject lived such a multi-faceted global life that no single set of story-lines can fully encompass or represent it. I grew up watching Michael Jackson grow up–– and so have spent a lot of days and a fair number of years both cheering him on and absorbing inspiration from his many phenomenal triumphs.

I had always appreciated his music but didn’t know how much a part of my world it had become until his death,

There is no question that it was infinitely more challenging for Michael Jackson to live his life than it has been for me to compose the fragments of it that I have. My challenge has been, and remains, to sort through an overload of information and misinformation in order to communicate as much truth and significance as possible. Jackson’s challenge was to survive for as long as possible the fickle prickly embrace of fame, the raging firestorms of controversy that all but devoured his entire being, and his own attempts to give as much of himself to the world as possible.

Hopefully, some measure of what I have written reflects the best of who and what Michael Jackson truly was as a creative artist and human being. Most of the articles listed above are on the Examiner News site at: http://www.examiner.com/x-16968-AfricanAmerican-Art-Examiner and others can be found on Red Room and AuthorsDen. I hope you enjoy them.

–by Aberjhani

Going back and forth between my operational modes as poet, literary author, and journalist, I’m much more accustomed to asking questions during interviews than answering them.However, I was particularly honored to reverse that roll when musician Nhojj generously elected to interview me for his blog at this url: http://www.myspace.com/nhojj

Anyone who has read my reviews of his first two cds on Amazon. com or checked out his rapturous performance of “Peace and Blessings” on my profile page here at MySpace know that he is an exceptionally gifted artist destined for phenomenal achievements in that great spinning galaxy we call the music industry.
Please give yourself a special treat today by checking out the man’s music and his blog interview with this humble poet and author.

Aberjhani
Author of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Before the hours of insanity and annihilation that changed world history on September 11, 2001, the month of September was noted by members of my family primarily as the birth month for at least a half dozen individuals. It remained, of course, their month after the destruction of New York City’s World Trade Center and the loss of thousands of lives, but the shadow of that event tends to lessen the glow of birthday candles and soften the volume of songs and laughter. Especially for those born on the actual day.

Two years later, the greater impact of 9/11 was just beginning to unfold as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars upgraded to levels of mega-mayhem no one could have fully anticipated. At the same time, Facts On File published my Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (with Sandra L. West). That the encyclopedia was my first major book published by a major company added––for me, personally––greater emotional balance to the month of September.

Several boxes of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance greeted me when I walked through the door on September 5, 2003. They represented years of research, writing, and sustained determination that had been much like training for a literary decathlon. This year, 2008, I feel blessed to have witnessed the encyclopedia’s impact as it went on to win a number of awards, receive a recommendation as one of ESSENCE Magazine’s recommended holiday gift items, and Black Book Reviews’ “Recommended Titles for the Home Library.” Moreover, it became a highly valued resource for students of the era at every level and helped to launch a publishing frenzy on related subjects, thus documenting the great era more thoroughly than ever before.

The sixth anniversary of 9/11 stirred within me a need to generate something that might help to generate a positive counter-balance to the event’s crippling catastrophic malice; and in an effort to do exactly that, I established Creative Thinkers International on September 10, 2007. If 9/11 had come to stand as an indelible symbol for heinous criminality and disregard for life, I hoped that CTI, for however many people, might come to stand as both a symbol for and a function of positive creativity. A year later later, this community of teachers, scientists, artists, authors, philosophers, ministers, poets, and everyday people from around the world has moved 200 members closer to achieving its goal.

Just like the dance group Chic sang some years ago, “We all want good times,” but living in the New Millennium we’ve learned they sometimes the good times have to be squeezed out of the bad.

by Aberjhani
author of Elemental The Power of Illuminated Love

Currently on a ten percent off sale for the summer at a variety of locations, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, recently joined the line-up of books featured on the G.R.I.T.S. Online Reading Club for the month of July 2008.  

A showcase of award-winning art by Luther E. Vann, whose work is currently on exhibit at the Jepson Center in Savannah, Georgia, and writings by well-known author Aberjhani, ELEMENTAL has become one of the most acclaimed gift books on the market since its release in May.  The weekly newsmagazine Connect Savannah described ELEMENTAL as, “a beautiful book…the reproductions of the paintings are outstanding. The poems were inspired by the paintings, and make perfect companions for the reproductions… a real delight and was definitely worth the wait.” Art critic, author, and collector Ja A. Jahannes called it “A wondrously amazing book.” 

In addition to ELEMENTAL, other titles featured on G.RI.T.S. include: Say You’re One of Them, by Uwem Kapan; When a Man Loves a Woman, by LaConnie Taylor Jones; Heavenly Places, by Kimberly Cash Tate; and Release Me, by Farrah Rochon. The G.R.I.T.S. Online Reading Club was established in 2008 and is now celebrating “8 Years of Reading Excellence Online!” 

Copies of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, can be picked up at the following locations: Barnes and NobleBlack Books Plus The Diaspora Market Place  (912-232-2626)       The Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum (912-231-8900)  

Vann’s ELEMENTAL exhibition at the Telfair Museum Jepson Center for the Arts is currently scheduled to run until September 14 and Vann is presently considering options for an even larger exhibition of his work to go on tour.  ––30—
 

This observation is particularly evident in April 2008 for three strong reasons. Number one: this is indeed National Poetry Month and celebrations of it are in full swing, complete with the first “Poem in Your Pocket Day” observed on April 17.

Number two: the great and mighty 92^nd Annual Pulitzer Prizes were announced this month with Junot Diaz taking the fiction prize for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Tracy Letts picking up the drama prize for August: Osage County; Robert Hass receiving the poetry prize  for Time and Materials; Saul Friedman receiving the nonfiction prize for The Years of Extermination; John Matteson getting the biography prize for Eden’s Outcasts; and David Lang receiving the music prize for The Little Match Girl Passion. Music icon Bob Dylan received a special citation “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

The third reason April is such a powerhouse month for books is because April 23 is World Book and Copyright Day. Instituted by UNESCO in 1995, the idea for World Book and Copyright Day grew out of the practice of giving one book as a gift with every book purchased on Saint George’s Day in Catalonia. April 23 itself was adopted as the symbolic date for world literature in recognition of  Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, all of whom reportedly died on this same day in the same year of 1616. In addition, it is the date of birth or death of other notable authors like Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejia, Druon, K.Laxness, and Josep Pla.

As stated on the United Nation’s website: “It was a natural choice for UNESCO’s General Conference to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity.”

 
by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of The Bridge of Silver Wings
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Mickles said his surprise best-selling novel is based on stories passed down to him by, “My grandmother, Beulah Tremble. She was born not too long after slavery ended in the United States and her parents had actually been slaves. She lived to be 100 years old and at the time when she passed on to me the stories that had been passed on to her, I really had no idea what a powerful legacy they would turn out to be.”

The novel takes place during the Civil War and tells the story of two best friends, one black and one white, who discover they are actually brothers. Torn apart by the violence and politics of the times, they nevertheless struggle to recognize and preserve their newfound kinship for their own sake as well as for their families’. The novel is the first in a projected four-part series. Part two, titled Isaiah’s Tears, has already been written and Mickles is currently working on third and fourth titles.

In his foreword for the book, Aberjhani, the award-winning author of “The Bridge of Silver Wings” and “Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance” (Facts On File), notes that Mickles demonstrates a willingness “to examine the cracks and crevices of history in order to tell a story others might not be willing––or even able for that matter––to tell. It is the story of how Blacks and Whites stumbled across the dividing lines of race and slavery only to discover that each was as flawed, needy, and human as the other.”

In addition to being an author, Mickles operates a taxi service in Savannah and often shares his stories with passengers. For more on the writer, please visit his website at http://creativethinkersintl.ning.com/profile/AuthorofBloodkin .

–end—

Previously there had been some cause for anxiety because publication plans for both books––The Bridge of Silver Wings and Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World––were changed at the last minute. Now here they were at Barnes and Noble making some very classy literary friends, in terms of the listing of titles purchased by customers also buying my books:

In the case of The Bridge of Silver Wings those currently buying it are also readers of: “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the fulfillment of Your Dreams,” by Deepak Chopra; “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith,” by Anne Lamott; and “Spiritual Connections: How to Find Spirituality Throughout All the Relationships in Your Life,” by Sylvia Brown.

Where my novel Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World is concerned, readers buying it have also purchased: “The Devil and Miss Prym,” by Paulo Coelho; “Siddhartha,” by Hermann Hesse; “The Greatest Salesman in the World,” by Og Mandino; “The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure,” by James Redfield; and, “The Hobbit and the Complete Lord of the Rings Boxed Set,” by J.R.R. Tolkien.

So back to my original question: what should one think of being included in such company? Aside from feeling really good about and grateful for it, let’s just say it’s not a bad to kick off this New Year 2008.

By Author-Poet Aberjhani