The well of creativity.While readers of serious black literature might fear for its future with competition from other leisure activities and the general decline in time spent reading, many signs point to a long and secure reign for its influence in the world of ideas. One of them is the increasing frequency with which literary and popular black novels are being optioned for film, stage and even opera. The film of Leaving Cecil Street Cecil John Charles Street, MC, OBE, (1884 - January 1965) was a prolific English writer of detective novels. He produced two long series; one under the name of John Rhode featuring the forensic scientist Dr Priestley, and another under the name of Miles Burton by Diane McKinney-Whetstone that our cover subject, S. Epatha Merkerson, is developing is but one example. (See "Off the Page" page 12.) In this season alone, we've seen the musical of Alice Walker's The Color Purple making a go of it on Broadway; and Toni Morrison's Beloved has taken on a new life in a major opera, Margaret Garner (the real name of the historical figure on which the book was based), co-commissioned and staged by three city opera companies. Other upcoming projects include the film of Martha Southgate's new novel Third Girl From the Left. (See BETWEEN THE LINES Between the lines can refer to:
Anna Deavere Smith (born September 18, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland) is an African American actress, playwright, and professor in the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. writing. Even the nonfiction book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell ("In the Twinkling of an Eye" BIBR BIBR Bay Islands Beach Resort (Roatan, Honduras) BIBR Backward Indicator Bit Received , July-August 2005) has been optioned to Universal Studios for a film. All this follows in a rich tradition in which movie producers have looked to African American African American Multiculture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. See Race. legends like Richard Wright (Native Son), Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree), Ernest ]. Gaines (A Lesson Before Dying), Chester Himes (Cotton Comes to Harlem), Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress Devil in a Blue Dress is a 1990 hardboiled mystery novel by Walter Mosley, the first of his mystery novels featuring Easy Rawlins, a black private detective in post-World War II Southern California. ), Terry McMillan (Waiting to Exhale exhale /ex·hale/ (eks´hal) to breathe out. ex·hale v. 1. To breathe out. 2. To emit a gas, vapor, or odor. ) and Dorothy West (The Wedding) for outstanding dramatic material. What is new today, as Merkerson underscores, is that black actors, producers and directors are often the dealmakers who are buying rights to literature they want to see on screen. White producers are not blind either to the crossover commercial and artistic potential in these novels that make them worth billions in spin-off products. For those of us who love books of all kinds, it is an interesting exercise to think about what black books we would like to see on film but haven't yet. Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills comes to mind. So does Morrison's Song of Solomon Song of Solomon, Song of Songs, or Canticles, book of the Bible, 22d in the order of the Authorized Version. Although traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, many scholars date it as late as the 3d cent. B.C. or Love, along with newer novels like Kalisha Buckhanon's Upstate and Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl. No matter which ones you would pick, let's celebrate together the reach and longevity of black literature. Angela P. Dodson BIBR Executive Editor |
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