books - Blog - The Oracle Mag2024-03-28T17:14:18Zhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/booksCivil Rights Icon Ruby Bridges Releases New Children’s Book Telling Her Inspiring Storyhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/civil-rights-icon-ruby-bridges-releases-new-children-s-book-telli2022-09-09T09:28:15.000Z2022-09-09T09:28:15.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10807234263?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><div id="feedlyChrome" class="feedlyChrome--leftnav-open"> </div>
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“I Am Ruby Bridges,” is a new picture book written by Civil Rights icon Ruby Bridges and published by Scholastic, on sale Sept. 6, 2022. (Handout/Scholastic)
<p>Ruby Bridges’ <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/authors-color-speak-efforts-ban-books-race/story?id=81491208" target="_blank">new book highlights the story that made her a civil rights icon</a>: walking into school as one of the first Black students to desegregate an all-white Louisiana school in 1960.</p>
<p>“I Am Ruby Bridges” chronicles her history-making story from the eyes of her 6-year-old self, in what Bridges calls her “most personal book yet.”</p>
<p>Bridges was born in Mississippi in 1954, the year the U.S. Supreme Court made the landmark decision to integrate public schools.</p>
<p>Her family later moved to New Orleans, where she attended William Frantz Elementary School on Nov. 14, 1960, as the first to desegregate the city’s schools. She became a symbol of both racial justice and injustice. She was accompanied by guards on her way into school, faced with mobs of white protestors against integration.</p>
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Ruby Bridges attends the Glamour Women of the Year Awards, held at the Kings Theater in New York City, Nov. 13, 2017. (Dennis Van Tine//Sipa USA via AP)
<p>“It’s not just about my experience integrating schools,” Bridges said in a press release. “It’s also about the innocent ways that a child sees the world. Writing as my six-year-old self reminded me how differently kids interpret things than adults do. Children are much better at finding humor in everything, and even in times of great challenge, that’s what this book really does.”</p>
<p>A glossary in the back of the book will help readers learn keywords about Bridges’ story.</p>
<p>The book goes on sale Sept. 6. Best-selling artist Nikkolas Smith illustrates the book.</p>
<p><strong>Click <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/civil-rights-icon-ruby-bridges-releases-childrens-book/story?id=89402023" target="_blank">here</a> to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: ABC News, Kiara Alfonseca</em></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://blackchristiannews.com/2022/09/civil-rights-icon-ruby-bridges-releases-new-childrens-book-telling-her-inspiring-story/" target="_blank">Civil Rights Icon Ruby Bridges Releases New Children’s Book Telling Her Inspiring Story</a> appeared first on <a href="https://blackchristiannews.com/" target="_blank">BCNN1 - Black Christian News Network</a>.</p>
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</div></div>Book Review: ‘After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division’ by Samuel Goldmanhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/book-review-after-nationalism-being-american-in-an-age-of-divisio2021-07-02T18:56:53.000Z2021-07-02T18:56:53.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/9195235669?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><div id="floatingEntry">
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<p><em>Daniel G. Hummel is a religious historian and the director for university engagement at Upper House, a Christian study center located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations.</em></p>
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<p>Three days after polls closed on one of the most divisive elections in recent American history, Joe Biden delivered a victory speech intended to unite a fractured nation. “I’ve always believed we can define America in one word: possibilities,” Biden said. Yet more than six months later, a majority of Republicans still <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/11/politics/voting-restrictions-analysis/index.html" target="_blank">insist</a> the 2020 election was not conducted fairly, and just fewer than one-third of all Americans don’t consider Biden to be the legitimately elected president. Samuel Goldman’s new book, After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division, helps to place both Biden’s attempts at unity and national partisan polarization in a broader historical context.</p>
<p>After Nationalismis a gripping, fast-paced, and probing study into how American political leaders and thinkers—ranging from John Jay to Abraham Lincoln to Fredrick Douglass to Dwight Eisenhower—have debated the essence of American identity and what binds the nation together. Goldman, a political scientist at George Washington University, tells a history of repeated failed attempts by these American elites to sustain compelling “narratives of belonging.” He offers three symbols, or myths, of American identity that progress chronologically: covenant, crucible, and creed. Drawing inspiration from philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s <em>After Virtue</em> (1981), which identified fundamentally different conceptions of virtue “in which people mean different things by the same words,” <em>After Nationalism</em> points to a similar ambiguity surrounding the word <em>nationalism</em>.</p>
<p>Like MacIntrye, Goldman does not just describe a situation but also suggests a path forward. Instead of endorsing another attempt to define a single American nationalism, Goldman calls for embracing pluralism and strengthening the “institutions of disagreement” that can lead to compromise between communities.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/july-web-only/samuel-goldman-after-nationalism-narratives-belonging.html" target="_blank">Click here to read more.</a><br />
Source: Christianity Today</p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>INTRODUCING MY NEW STREETWEAR BRAND, Y.A.H. APPAREL</strong></span></p>
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</script></div>Book Review: ‘The World of Plymouth Plantation’ by Carla Gardina Pestanahttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/book-review-the-world-of-plymouth-plantation-by-carla-gardina-pes2020-11-27T00:48:30.000Z2020-11-27T00:48:30.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/8218761087?profile=RESIZE_180x180&width=140"></div><div><div id="feedlyPersona"> </div>
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<p><em>This review is by Robert Tracy McKenzie, who teaches history at Wheaton College. He is the author of The First Thanksgiving: What The Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History (IVP Academic) and a forthcoming book We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy, which releases next summer from InterVarsity Press.</em></p>
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<p>This December marks 400 years since the <em>Mayflower</em> dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor, and for the past 200 years the story of its passengers has loomed large in American memory. Generations of schoolchildren have learned its basic plot: how a tiny band of plain men and women, desperate for a better life, crossed the stormy Atlantic and endured unimaginable hardships in a strange land where, with the help of their Native American neighbors, they managed to endure and even to flourish.</p>
<p>But how well do we know this group that the 19th century would christen “the Pilgrims”? Not well at all, as it turns out. With her new book The World of Plymouth Plantation, UCLA historian Carla Gardina Pestana joins a long line of scholars who have tried to set the record straight over the years, seeking to challenge, complicate, and enrich our understanding of the story we think we already know. The result is a book that is generally informative and interesting but rarely edifying.</p>
<h4>A Little Bit About a Lot of Things</h4>
<p>Pestana rightly laments that we condense the history of the Pilgrim colony into a series of discrete, still-life vignettes: the signing of the Mayflower Compact, the landing at Plymouth Rock, the celebration of the first Thanksgiving. She is correct in noting that Americans have mythologized each of those historic moments. If later generations insisted that the Mayflower Compact was “an early expression of democratic striving,” the Pilgrims in reality gave “no indication of wanting to escape their status as subjects of a king.” Although more than a million tourists flock to Plymouth annually to file past a shrine erected over the Pilgrims’ supposed landing site, “those who designated a rock as the landing site … conveyed an astonishing ignorance about sailing.” And the 1621 celebration we remember as the first Thanksgiving was not what the Pilgrims would have considered a true Thanksgiving holy day but rather an English harvest festival devoid of religious overtones.</p>
<p>Pestana offers these corrections without dwelling on them. Her goal is less to debunk our understanding of these iconic moments than to draw our attention away from them—not because they are unimportant but because they “limit our insight.” By wrenching these events from their context, we not only predictably misunderstand them; we perpetuate our tendency to make the Pilgrims into two-dimensional symbols rather than complex human beings. Pestana’s objective is to reconstruct the Pilgrims’ “world”—to reintegrate “the plantation into its own time and place.”</p>
<p>Toward this end, she tells us a little bit about a lot of things. She begins with the critical contribution of women to the colony’s survival; for all the commemoration of the “Forefathers,” it was “in fact the women, as wives and mothers, who made the plantation a lasting presence in southern New England.” From there she discusses the Pilgrims’ clothing, houses, and diet; their patterns of land use and labor practices; their guns, books, livestock, trading activities, forms of governance, and religious beliefs.</p>
<p>Much of this is brief, vague, and colorless. Her favorite adjective is <em>English</em>, a descriptor that Pestana evidently thinks will convey more to her readers than it probably does. One of her main points is that the Pilgrims sought to recreate the Old World in the New, that they aspired to build a familiar home in a strange land by transplanting English rural culture to North America. And so they brought “English” foods, built “English-style houses,” wore “English clothes.” Her description of what “English” meant in these cases is thin at best, unfortunately. This is not a book that helps readers <em>see</em> its subject.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/november-web-only/carla-pestana-world-plymouth-plantation-pilgrims.html" target="_blank">Click here to read more.</a><br /> Source: Christianity Today</p>
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</div></div>#throwbackthursday Interview! Sho Baraka Rates His Top 7 In Music and Bookshttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/throwbackthursday-interview-sho-baraka-rates-his-top-7-in-music2020-11-26T20:22:43.000Z2020-11-26T20:22:43.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div>
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<p><strong>Malachi:</strong>I can tell you're a very well read person and you love books. I’m the same way, I love to collect old books too. I even have a few by W.E.B. Dubis. What are your 7 favorite books?</p>
<p><strong>Sho Baraka: Oh Wow, Umm, I would say in no particular order, I’d start off with (The) Lord of The Rings, the whole trilogy. I just call that as one book. I just believe the creativity and the imagination in that book is just like an amazing journey. And then also when you think about the morals, the social and the spiritual nuances in that book are so thick, so rich. Tolkien did an amazing job. How Should We Then Live? By Francis A. Schaeffer is just another book that I love. It gives a very healthy balance of this whole secular, sacred but then also how should a Christian live in this world and culture that’s constantly changing. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a book thats always challenged me. It’s all about leadership, it’s all about a man of sacrifice and wisdom. That book is amazing. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis is another one. That’s one of these books that you have to read like more than once because theres so much, oh my God, it’s so thick...</strong></p>
<p>Malachi: (Laughs) Like your new album?</p>
<p><strong>Sho Baraka: (Laughs) Well thank ya sir for the compliment. Umm I’ma put two books together. Umm I would say The Talented Tenth but it’s a very short book. Im’a partner that book with Souls Of Black Folk By W.E.B Du Bois. It’s just powerful man. When you think about coming out of the oppressive times that they were in and then thinking though, how do we processes this new life and this new struggle and this new world that we have as African Americans in this world thats not really accepting of us? I think a lot of this stuff is pertinent even today. Umm there’s a whole bunch of other books, I just read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography which was good. Ohhhh Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller. That book is amazing. It’s a book about idolatry. So yeah, those are the books I would say are my favorites.</strong></p>
<p>Malachi: Well you named a few that are my favorites actually. Lord Of The Rings. Anything by C.S. Lewis, I love. Soul of Black Folk is amazing. If you haven't read Dusk Of Dawn by W.E.B. Du Bois, you should check that out.</p>
<p><strong>Sho Baraka: Will do. I’m trying to read all his stuff.</strong></p>
<p>Malachi: Ok. Now moving on to emcees. Who are your 7 favorite Emcee’s?</p>
<p><strong>Sho Baraka: Awwww man. In no particular order, number one is probably Common. I always appreciated Common. He’s one of the few artist I appreciated before I became a Christian, and even after I became a Christian. He talked about things that I felt that mattered in life. He’s probably one of my top emcee’s of all time. Then I would probably go with Jay - Z. Lately he's fallen off, but when it comes to how he communicated and puts words together, Jay - Z for me was unprecedented. Lupe Fiasco for me is up there. I feel like, even now socially, I feel like the stuff he talks about I appreciate. Lyrically, his cadence, his delivery, he’s original you can’t really trace him to anybody. The Phantik from The Cross Movement. A guy who is just a beast and a wordsmith, cadence. Some of his bars are just unprecedented so he’s definitely one of my favorite dudes. I would say just over all artist and talent wise I would say Kanye West. No matter how crazy he is, as an artist and a musician you have to appreciate what he does, because he’s changed Hip Hop, some for the bad (Laughs), but as far as musically he killed it. I would probably have to go with a group, I would say Tribe Called Quest. They were one of those groups I fell in love with when I was younger And I would say Andre 3000 is up there too. And I don’t know how many I named but I would add a newcomer, Swoope.</strong></p>
<p>Malachi: You know, a lot of the artist you named, I can hear the inspiration when I listen to your new project. I hear some Common. I definitely hear some Lupe. So I see the connection.</p>
<p><strong>Sho Baraka: Yeah I think its good to be inspired by artists and then make it your own, as long as its not like, “Yo that dude just bit that”. I mean when that happens there’s a problem. Because you want to have your own identity as an artist, but everyone is inspired by somebody.</strong></p>
<p>Malachi: What are your 7 favorite album or mixtapes?</p>
<p><strong>Sho Baraka: Ok, this is even more difficult. Well I got to start with Common because One Day It'll All Make Sense is probably the one album changed my world. And it’s funny because I wasn't a Christian when I first got a hold of this album because I was a young dude and I was listening to it. But felt like as i was listening to it, this dude understood me because I wasn't a gangster but I wasn't like this choir boy. I was in the middle. I was struggling with identity, I was struggling with religion at the time. I was struggling with listening to nonsense rap, because that was a time when gangster rap was big too. So I was like I don’t want to listen to this nonsense, but I’m also like, I’m not a choir boy so I was struggling in this identity crisis. That album kind of gave me a direction of social strength where it was very conscious. That album to this day, I love. The Solus Christus by Shai Linne is one one of my favorite albums. You talk about top to bottom album that’s just amazing. One of the first Cross Movement albums was Human Emergency. That album is just amazing. That was my first introduction to Da T.R.U.T.H. Oh I forgot to name him as one of my artist. Late Registration by Kanye West is a crazy go to album, And The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is definitely one of my favorite albums of all time. Really, she’s one of my favorite artist in general. Continum By John Mayer. I can listen to that album all day long. Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder. That album is classic. But I don’t listen to much Hip Hop right now. The last real Hip Hop album that I played a whole lot was Lupe’s latest album. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jazz right now. I’m all over the place Brah.</strong></p>
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</div>Here Are A Few Bars From My Last eBook, "Regulations For Order and Discipline" [Book Download Inside]https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/here-are-a-few-bars-from-my-last-ebook-regulations-for-order-and-2020-11-26T03:41:56.000Z2020-11-26T03:41:56.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/8216111681?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><div class="fx annotationsHolder decoration-holder"> </div>
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<p><strong>You Are Not A Goon Part 1</strong></p>
<p>I know I'll get called a hata’. But the truth is, this is not hate. It’s love. I could not tell you the truth if I didn't love you! The truth is, it’s the enemy's goal to keep you dumb, blind, and in bondage. Then he can control you. So he uses B.E.T, movies, and music to make you think that if you read books and try to better yourself you’re a “lame” or you’re trying to be white. That’s a lie! The enemy wants you to think if you call yourself a nigga, and the baddest b****, you’re keeping it real. That's a lie. You are what you think you are. Keep calling yourself these terms that were created and used to disrespect you, and you will be exactly what you say you are. A b**** is a female dog, look it up. That’s a nasty filthy animal. Is that what you are? Where is the honor in that? Where is the honor in being a Goon? And you can not take words that were created to degrade you and use them to mean something good. That’s a lie from the pit and you need to send that lie back to the pit where it belongs. You need to understand you are disrespecting yourself by calling yourself out your name! When you disrespect the creation, you disrespect the creator. Know who you are and what you are. You are YAH’s masterpiece! You are the workmanship of Elohim</p>
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<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8216107876,original{{/staticFileLink}}">Regulations+For+Order+And+Discipline (1).pdf</a></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8216118479,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8216118479,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="271" height="271" alt="8216118479?profile=RESIZE_584x" /></a></p></div>Eugene Cho, Pastor and President of Bread for the World, Urges Christians to Stop Being Political Jerks in New Book “Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk”https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-2229912020-03-14T07:49:18.000Z2020-03-14T07:49:18.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="https://cdn.christianpost.com/files/cache/image/13/83/138346_w_760_428.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.christianpost.com/files/cache/image/13/83/138346_w_760_428.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="138346_w_760_428.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
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<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p>Eugene Cho wants Christians to stop being jerks, especially in today’s increasingly contentious political climate. </p>
<p>In his new book,<em> <a href="https://amzn.to/2W7sE7d" target="_blank">Thou Shall Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics</a>,</em> Cho urges readers to stop demonizing those they disagree with and instead follow Jesus and reflect His teachings.</p>
<p>Cho draws on personal stories, pastoral experience, and biblical examples to encourage Christians to vote their convictions while remembering that hope already arrived in the person of Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>“This book is meant to encourage and exhort readers with practical things, yet remind that God is still in control,” he told The Christian Post. “That’s not a license to disengage, but we need to remember that our hope rests in the good news that Jesus is Lord and Savior, and He will accomplish what He says He will do.”</p>
<p>Cho founded Quest Church in Seattle in 2001 alongside his wife, Minhee, and served there for 18 years before stepping down in 2018.</p>
<p>Passionate about the pursuit of God’s Kingdom here on this earth, the Korean-American pastor also founded One Day’s Wages, a nonprofit organization dedicated to alleviating extreme global poverty. Last week, he was <a href="https://www.bread.org/news/eugene-cho-new-president-bread-world" target="_blank">announced</a> as the new president of Bread for the World, a leading Christian anti-hunger and poverty organization.</p>
<p>Read CP’s interview with Cho below.</p>
<p><strong>CP: In your book, you say you felt “called” to write <em>Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk.</em> However, you’ve also expressed some trepidation about it. Why is that? </strong></p>
<p>EC: There’s always a little nervousness anytime you write a book, but the topic itself in today’s cultural climate seems a little more contentious. Like Paul or Jesus, you want to be mindful of the context of the world you live in. I care about people; I’m shaped by the bookends of loving God and loving people. Yet we’re called to engage politics. It’s one expression of our discipleship.</p>
<p>As a follower of Jesus, I’ve been burdened by this chaotic and confusing time. About 10 years ago, I gave a sermon on the Ten Commandments of how Christians ought to engage politics. The genesis of this book came out of that sermon back then. As I wrote this book, fear enveloped me. There were at least four occasions where I stopped writing it, thinking it was too difficult and messy and there would be too much pushback. But I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to keep going and write this book as an important resource for Christians at this time.</p>
<p><strong>CP: Your first chapter is titled “Thou Shalt Not Go to Bed with Political Parties.” This can be a counterintuitive idea for many Christians in particular. What are some dangers with blindly backing any one party?</strong></p>
<p>EC: I’m not suggesting we can’t be behind a particular candidate or give to a party, but there’s a borderline obsession that we’re seeing today. I wrote this book for three groups: those who have disengaged with politics for whatever reason, those who are engaged in politics but have become byproducts of what I would call cultural Christianity, but also for those who are obsessed with politics and allow politics to inform their theology as opposed to the other way around.</p>
<p>When we allow that to take place, it feels like we’ve gone to bed with political parties, that we’ve lost a sense of discernment and loyalty. We’re so behind a political candidate or party that it becomes idolatry. I believe politics are one of the main idolatries of our time.</p>
<p><strong>CP: You talk about how being a Christian means embracing tension. What do you mean by that?</strong></p>
<p>EC: If we’re human, if we live in this world, on this side of Heaven, we have to acknowledge that we’re resurrection people living in a broken Good Friday world. As a result, while we believe in the truth and beauty of the Gospel, we understand that the Kingdom has not yet fully arrived. The word to describe that is tension. Oftentimes, we want a black-and-white, binary perspective of everything. To be a Christian is to acknowledge we never relinquish the hope of the Gospel and resurrection, yet we’re living in this world. We need to learn what it means to be faithful in times of conflict.</p>
<p><strong>CP: How can Christians engage in politics and be informed without sliding into fear or, conversely, pride?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Click<span> </span><a href="https://www.christianpost.com/books/bread-for-the-world-president-eugene-cho-urges-christians-to-stop-being-political-jerks.html" target="_blank">here</a><span> </span>to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett</em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>New Book ‘Driving While Black’ Looks at the History of ‘African-American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights’https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-2175782020-02-28T00:56:45.000Z2020-02-28T00:56:45.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="fx annotationsHolder decoration-holder"></div>
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This cover image released by Liveright/W.W. Norton shows “Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights” by Gretchen Sorin. The book examines how the automobile opened the road to civil rights for blacks in the U.S. (Liveright/W.W. Norton via AP)
<p>“Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights,” Liveright/W.W. Norton, by Gretchen Sorin</p>
<p>Chuck Berry had his Cadillac. Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois drove his 1920s convertible. African Americans in 1950s Pittsburgh overwhelming preferred their Buicks.</p>
<p>By the mid-20th century, a travel revolution struck Black America and allowed African Americans to move freely throughout a land that had once enslaved their great grandparents. But barriers remained, from segregated hotels to sundown towns (that barred African Americans after dark) and white mob violence that endangered black families just trying to visit a National Park.</p>
<p>“Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights,” by Gretchen Sorin, is a riveting story on how the automobile opened up opportunities for blacks in the U.S. The car allowed African Americans to avoid segregated trains and buses throughout the American South and gave blacks a chance to travel across the country. Travel guides presented a modern-day Underground Railroad to show black travelers which hotels and restaurants would serve them. The free movement opened the window to migration across the land and away from Jim Crow, bring in the modern Civil Rights Movement.</p>
<p>Still, the new freedom also presented challenges. “Black drivers could venture unwittingly into the wrong neighborhoods or stop at the wrong places,” Sorin writes. “Black motorists encountered racist law-enforcement officers, racist gas-station attendants, bigoted auto repairmen, threatening road signs, and restaurants that would only serve food to black patrons through a window in the back door.”</p>
<p>The car also didn’t offer full protection. In 1946, two young African American couples were pulled from their vehicle by a white mob outside of Atlanta and lynched. Black motorists couldn’t shield their children from racist signs and announcements about the Ku Klux Klan controlling the territory they needed to pass.</p>
<p>Sorin’s book is one of many recent works examining travel by people of color despite discrimination and threats of racial violence. Candacy Taylor’s “Overground Railroad: The Green Book & Roots of Black Travel in America,” released last month, looks at how the Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans, helped black travelers navigate segregation and create a traveling network. Rahawa Haile’s upcoming memoir, “In Open Country,” uses her 2016 hike of the Appalachian Trail to explore what it means to be a black woman moving through the United States.</p>
<p>In Sorin’s work, her prose and talent for turning examples into captivating stories prevent the book from being a mere sociological study of how black travel changed the nation. Instead, she blends her own family’s history, and those who experienced the black travel revolution, to make the book enjoyable and noteworthy since it shows how the changes ushered in civil rights. Without a network of black motorists, for example, the Montgomery Bus Boycott following Rosa Park’s actions might have failed.</p>
<p>Today, black motorists still have to deal with police encounters that can turn deadly. As Sorin writes, that next chapter has yet to be written.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Russell Contreras is a member of The Associated Press’ race and ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/russcontreras">http://twitter.com/russcontreras</a></p>
<p>Source:<span> </span><a href="https://apnews.com/d13d8bc61cb70eb71a8e4d2da0bb5d05" target="_blank">Associated Press</a></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Sheila Walsh Identifies the ‘Single Most Underused Weapon in the Church’ in New Book “Praying Women: How to Pray When You Don’t Know What to Say”https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-2094322020-02-02T15:34:40.000Z2020-02-02T15:34:40.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryHeader"><a href="https://blackchristiannews.com/2020/02/sheila-walsh-identifies-the-single-most-underused-weapon-in-the-church-in-new-book-praying-women-how-to-pray-when-you-dont-know-what-to-say/" class="entryTitle title read" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://cdn.christianpost.com/files/cache/image/13/79/137938_w_760_1147.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.christianpost.com/files/cache/image/13/79/137938_w_760_1147.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="137938_w_760_1147.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a><a href="https://blackchristiannews.com/2020/02/sheila-walsh-identifies-the-single-most-underused-weapon-in-the-church-in-new-book-praying-women-how-to-pray-when-you-dont-know-what-to-say/" class="entryTitle title read" target="_blank"></a></div>
<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p>Bible teacher and best-selling author Sheila Walsh believes prayer is the “single most underused weapon in the Church.”</p>
<p>“Over the last two-and-a-half years, I’ve had this burning thing inside of me that every morning I wake up with this word ‘prayer’ on my heart,” Walsh told The Christian Post. “I’ve been a Christian for many years, but I didn’t understand the importance of prayer.”</p>
<p>“I kept recalling the words of Corrie Ten Boom: ‘Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?’ In other words, is it what guides my life, or is it a last resort? I am convinced there’s nothing the enemy would love more than for us to stop praying.”</p>
<p>Walsh knew she wasn’t alone in her struggle. She spent two years researching what God says about prayer, looking at how the early Church fathers viewed prayer, and even penned a survey asking women what they thought about prayer. The results, she said, were astonishing.</p>
<p>“So many women said they got bored, distracted, felt like they were repeating themselves when they prayed,” she recalled. “Others asked, ‘Why bother to pray when God already knows all?’ or, ‘I prayed and God didn’t answer, so why would I keep praying?’”</p>
<p>“That,” she added, “gave me a fresh passion to provide women a practical, step-by-step handbook as to how to pray through some of the toughest times of life.”</p>
<p>The Scottish-born evangelist is gearing up for the Feb. 4 release of her latest book, <a href="https://sheilawalsh.com/pray/" target="_blank"><em>Praying Women: How to Pray When You Don’t Know What to Say</em></a>. In it, she teaches women to experience the power of prayer through conversation with God by inspiring them to develop a lifestyle of prayer.</p>
<p>While researching for her book, Walsh said she discovered that for many women — herself included — the most difficult time to pray is in times of pain and suffering. Yet Walsh stressed the importance of “processing your pain in the presence of God.”</p>
<p>“I believe Satan makes us feel like we don’t want to pray; it’s a strategy of the devil,” Walsh posited. “We do have an enemy who would love to make sure that we don’t pray. I think sometimes when we’re walking through painful situations, we think, ‘God, you’re powerful enough to have changed this, but you didn’t.’ We get confused in our pain and the last thing we want to do is pray.”</p>
<p><strong>Click<span> </span><a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/sheila-walsh-identifies-most-underused-weapon-in-the-church-in-new-book.html" target="_blank">here</a><span> </span>to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett</em></p>
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<div class="tagsHolder decoration-holder"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7936074053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7936074053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7936074053?profile=original" /></a></div>
<p><a href="https://blackchristiannews.com/2020/02/sheila-walsh-identifies-the-single-most-underused-weapon-in-the-church-in-new-book-praying-women-how-to-pray-when-you-dont-know-what-to-say/" class="fx-button secondary full-width visitWebsiteButton" target="_blank"></a></p></div>Peep This Book Review: ‘A Theory of Everything (That Matters): a Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God’ by Alister McGrathhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/b-div-class-fpeep-this-book-review-a-theory-of-everything-that-ma2020-01-10T09:30:00.000Z2020-01-10T09:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div id="feedlyPersona"><div id="feedlyChrome" class="feedlyChrome--leftnav-open"><div id="feedlyFrame"><div id="feedlyPageHolderFX" class="fx"><div id="feedlyPageFX" class="container centered"><div class="board presentation-4"></div>
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A Theory of Everything (That Matters)<br />
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<p><em>Review by Greg Cootsona. Cootsona is a lecturer in comparative religion and humanities at Chico State University, a co-director of the Science for the Church ministry, and the author of <span>Negotiating Science and Religion in America: Past, Present, and Future</span> (Routledge). The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.</em></p>
<hr /><p>When I was a grad student in Germany, I remember visiting the city of Ulm. Two particular, commingled sights come to mind: first, pausing at the marker for Albert Einstein’s birth in 1879 (before his family moved to Munich six weeks later); and second, ascending the dizzying heights of the 530-foot cathedral tower. The combination strikes me as instructive: Most of us see in Einstein a mind that seemed to unlock the deepest mysteries of the universe. He sought a “theory of everything.” And many have sought to ascend with him into higher realms of insight, through many tiring steps.</p>
<p>Can Einstein bring us closer to God’s view of the world? Oxford University’s <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/alister-mcgrath-science-and-stories-declare-gods-glory.html" target="_blank">Alister McGrath</a> takes up this question in his book, <span>A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God</span>. McGrath—who holds advanced degrees in theology, intellectual history, and molecular biophysics—is a leading light in the dialogue of faith and science.</p>
<p>McGrath does a remarkable job of explaining Einstein’s rigorous and intricate theories. I was particularly struck by his elaboration of the four papers Einstein wrote as a Swiss patent clerk during the miracle year of 1905, including papers setting out the theory of special relativity and describing the “photoelectric effect,” which led both to the development of quantum theory—that light is both a wave and a particle, or, in Einstein’s words, “packets of waves” —and a 1921 Nobel Prize. McGrath, by the way, expertly explains the politics behind the Nobel committee’s decisions, shedding light on why Einstein didn’t receive a prize for his “greatest intellectual achievement—the theory of general relativity.”</p>
<p>Einstein’s theory puzzled many contemporary scientists, and it wasn’t until May 1919 that observations of an eclipse by the great English scientist Sir Arthur Eddington (and others) offered confirmation. As I write, the 100th anniversary of this event has received a tremendous amount of attention. Even then, as McGrath explains, many declared it “a ‘new scientific revolution’ that had ‘overthrown’ [Isaac] Newton.” Despite the media sensation, however, Einstein’s discoveries were more a “natural completion” of Newton’s theories than a decisive scientific break, as Einstein later noted and McGrath is careful to highlight.</p>
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<h4>The Path of Intuition</h4>
<p>What are the theological implications of the theory of general relativity? As the science writer Timothy Ferris wrote of George Lemaître, the Belgian Catholic priest and scientist who confirmed the theory mathematically, “the universe might have begun as an infinitely small pinpoint—a ‘singularity,’ in mathematical terms—at time zero, ‘a day when space was infinitely curved and all matter and all energy was concentrated into a single quantum of energy.’” This expanding cone of the universe would have a starting point, commonly known as the Big Bang.</p>
<p>But how does this match up with the Christian belief that God created the world <em>ex nihilo</em> (or “out of nothing”)? As both Lemaître and McGrath (in other places) have advised the faithful, it doesn’t make for a precise fit. Believers need to avoid making extravagant theological claims about the Big Bang, even if there are some parallels between Einstein’s physics and the doctrine of creation.</p>
<p>I found myself drawn to how Einstein brought it all together in his 1934 book <span>Mein Weltbild</span>, translated into English as <span>The World as I See It</span>. Arguing that the supreme task of the physicist is to search for general elementary laws that can be woven together to give a comprehensive “picture of the world” (<em>Weltbild</em>), Einstein notes that “there is no logical path to those laws.” Rather, they arise through the “intuition, testing on a sympathetic understanding of experience.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-web-only/alister-mcgrath-theory-everything-matters-einstein.html" target="_blank">Click here to read more.</a><br /> Source: Christianity Today</p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Black Female Authors That Should Be On Your Radar!https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/black-female-authors-that-should-be-on-your-radar2019-09-18T10:00:59.000Z2019-09-18T10:00:59.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div id="feedlyPersona"><div id="feedlyChrome" class="feedlyChrome--leftnav-open"><div id="feedlyFrame"><div id="feedlyPageHolderFX" class="fx"><div id="feedlyPageFX" class="container centered"><div class="board presentation-4"><div><div class="col-xs-6 col-md-6 p-t-2 right-col extra"><div class="actions-container"></div>
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<p>There was a time that Black female voices were not considered a vantage point worth reading. However, those times have since changed. It’s certainly not an emerging movement, but the fluidity and versatility in which they maneuver are.</p>
<p>Their stories are shaping and cultivating an advanced mental infrastructure in us that is shattering the antiquated thinking and ideologies of yesteryear. Black women are uniquely and naturally juxtapositioned to convey facts, fiction, love, fears, and achievements like no one else can.</p>
<p>They have proven, time and time again, that “being limitless” is their inherited superpower, and they feel no loss when they have to share it. The literary works they present makes them a force to be reckoned with. Using broad strokes of timeless brilliance, their contributions range across the spectrum, occupying space in romance, comedy, drama, sci-fi, and even horror. </p>
<p>Colorful newcomers to the literary scene are captivating audiences everywhere, with extraordinary additions that we won’t soon forget. We have compiled a list of African American women who are cementing their places on the pedestals of timeless literature.</p>
<p>Let’s begin with<span> </span><strong>Ampora Yazdani</strong>, the author of<span> </span><em>T.O.R.N.</em>,<em><span> </span></em>an especially riveting piece of work by this author. She’s definitely a newcomer to look out for.</p>
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<p><strong>Summary</strong></p>
<p>Dr. Asante Argueta’s life has just been shattered into a thousand unrecognizable pieces. One minute she is self-assured, highly driven, an accomplished surgeon, and the next moment, she is being tranquilized and kidnapped, only to wake up in a mental health facility. As the mysteries of her tragic childhood unfold, a hidden world of miraculous abilities, secret factions, and the power of The Now are revealed. </p>
<p>Another young lady who is taking the world by storm with “Children of Blood and Bone” is<span> </span><strong>Tomi Adeyemi.<em><span> </span></em></strong>Her story is dynamic! So much so that her relatively new release is in the process of becoming a feature film.</p>
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<p>For more<span> </span><a href="http://www.tomiadeyemi.com/books" target="_blank">click here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Summary</strong></p>
<p>Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. </p>
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<p><strong>Yvette Kendall<span> </span></strong>is a biblical futurism/sci-fi writer and the author of<span> </span><em>The GOD Maps</em>. She delivers her story with so many twists and turns that you’ll lose count.</p>
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<p>God sees everything…but who’s watching Him?</p>
<p>Five very talented and ambitious scientists asked themselves an age-old question, “Where do our souls go after we die?” The question was posed, not in the esoteric sense, but in a geographical one. They committed themselves to find out the exact physical locations of “Heaven and Hell.” Moving forward, the fringe science team of Lab-J71’s ultimate goal is to unlock the mysteries of life, death, and God’s reality on a more tangible scale. </p>
<p>We count these women among the sorority of African American female authors who are opening the doors for those who are waiting in the wings.</p>
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<p>The post<span> </span><a href="https://blackgirlnerds.com/black-female-authors-you-should-be-checking-for/" target="_blank">Black Female Authors You Should Be Checking For</a><span> </span>appeared first on<span> </span><a href="https://blackgirlnerds.com/" target="_blank">Black Girl Nerds</a>.</p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Barack Obama Envious of Wife Michelle’s Book Success and Wants His Memoir to Beat Sales of Her Memoir as He Points Out She Used a Ghostwriter While He Is Writing His Book On His Ownhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/barack-obama-envious-of-wife-michelle-s-book-success-and-wants-hi2019-05-24T17:53:48.000Z2019-05-24T17:53:48.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="https://fb11.akamaized.net/up/2018/05/GettyImages-917433500-540x397.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://fb11.akamaized.net/up/2018/05/GettyImages-917433500-540x397.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="GettyImages-917433500-540x397.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
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Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama / Getty Images
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<p>Former President Barack Obama wants to beat the book sales of his wife Michelle’s bestselling memoir when he publishes his own and even dings her for using a ghostwriter, according to a new report.</p>
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<p>Obama, who has already written two memoirs, is trying to finish his third, which will <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/2/14779892/barack-michelle-obama-65-million-book-deal-penguin-random-house" target="_blank">reportedly cover</a> his political career from 2004 to the present. Following the smashing success of Michelle Obama’s <em>Becoming</em>, which has sold more than 10 million copies and could wind up the bestselling political memoir ever, Obama is feeling pressure to beat her, <em>The Atlantic </em>reports:</p>
<blockquote><p>The writing has been going more slowly than he’d expected, and according to several people who have spoken with him, the 44th president is feeling competitive with his wife, whose own book, <em>Becoming</em>, was the biggest release of 2018 and is on track to be the best-selling memoir in history. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others in this story, these sources note he’ll occasionally point out in conversation that he’s writing this book <em>himself</em>, while Michelle used a ghostwriter.</p>
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<p>It’s not out of character for the famously competitive Obama, who in 2018 repeatedly demanded credit for the nation’s robust economy under President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>“Just say thank you, please,” he said.</p>
<p>The Obamas <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/321619-bidding-hits-60m-on-obamas-book-deal-report" target="_blank">received a collective</a> $65 million advance for their books from Penguin Random House, according to <em>Financial Times</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Click<span> </span><a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/report-obama-wants-his-memoir-to-beat-michelles-book-sales-privately-points-out-she-used-a-ghostwriter/" target="_blank">here</a><span> </span>to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon – David Rutz</em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Book Review: ‘Untangling Emotions: God’s Gift of Emotions’ by J. Alasdair Groves. How our emotions—even the unpleasant ones—point us back to a loving God.https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/book-review-untangling-emotions-god-s-gift-of-emotions-by-j-alasd2019-04-27T07:36:30.000Z2019-04-27T07:36:30.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41uaoFL8FDL._SX140.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41uaoFL8FDL._SX140.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" width="308" height="462" alt="41uaoFL8FDL._SX140.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
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<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p>Review by Elyse Fitzpatrick</p>
<p>Emojis. I love them. Thumbs up, thumbs down, cry-laughing, heart-eyes, blowing my top: They are so handy and expressive! Most of us have over 90 facial-expression emojis on our phones, all meant to communicate how we’re feeling with one tap of a button.</p>
<p>I love being able to express any emotion without actually having to verbalize it. Don’t you? After all, why take time to describe how I feel when “smiling-face-with-happy-hands” says it so perfectly and (more importantly) with such ease. Clearly, the developers of our smartphones knew something of the cauldron of emotions stirring within us. And they knew, intuitively, that we would want a simple and satisfying way of expressing them.</p>
<p>But sometimes, of course, our emotions are confusing, unsettling, or intense enough to defy easy expression. King David once asked, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?” (Ps. 42:5). In their new book, <span>Untangling Emotions</span>, J. Alasdair Groves and Winston T. Smith set out to uncover the nagging questions underneath our emotions, the ones that keep us clicking on that crying face or the angry one with symbols over the mouth. Questions like, <em>Why am I feeling like this?</em> or<em>How can I stop?</em> They want us to know why Christians struggle with understanding their emotions and engaging with them in a productive way.</p>
<h4>Good to Feel Bad</h4>
<p>Believers are often tormented by an inner voice that says, <em>If </em><em>I’m a Christian, shouldn’t I be joyful? Don’t my negative emotions prove that my faith is flawed?</em></p>
<p>Not so, say Groves and Smith, two experienced counselors affiliated with the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. Emotions—even the unpleasant ones—are a good gift from a loving God. “Our emotions,” the authors write, “are one of the most common and commonly misunderstood opportunities in our lives to grow in maturity and love.” Rather than ignoring our fear, anger, grief, guilt, or shame, we should focus on what those emotions reveal: first, about God and what he loves, and second, about us and what we love. “The way you respond to your emotions, including how you feel about how you feel,” write Groves and Smith, “is of vital importance to your relationship with God and others in your life.”</p>
<p><span>Untangling Emotions </span>contains three main sections. The first helps explain the complexity of our emotions and demonstrates how, surprisingly, it might be good to feel bad. It also addresses the confusion that arises from the fact that emotions rarely arrive alone and are tied so closely to our bodily state. The second section teaches us how to respond to our emotions—how to bring them before God and share them with friends and loved ones. In the final section, the authors offer guidance on how to engage our most common and troubling emotions. Every chapter ends with reflection questions for individuals facing their own emotional difficulties, as well as a section for those who are seeking to help others.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/april-web-only/untangling-emotions-alasdair-groves-winston-smith.html" target="_blank">Click here to read more.</a><br /> Source: Christianity Today</p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Book Review: ‘Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting From the Ancient to the Instant World’ by Jason Farmanhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-1085552019-04-11T05:38:03.000Z2019-04-11T05:38:03.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="https://lareviewofbooks-org-cgwbfgl6lklqqj3f4t3.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/delayedresponse.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://lareviewofbooks-org-cgwbfgl6lklqqj3f4t3.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/delayedresponse.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="delayedresponse.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
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<div class="floatingEntryScroller"><div class="floatingEntryContentSlide sliderWidth"><div class="slideEntryContent"><div><div class="entryholder"><div class="u100Entry"><div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p>I have been known to voice-text at stop lights, add reminders and calendar items during a 10-minute commute, and fill up silence with podcasts or at least an intentional discussion time with my children. Like so many others, I’m resourceful about turning wait times into productive times. It’s the American way.</p>
<p>Nowadays, it’s becoming something of a cliché to suggest that our society is in the throes of a technological addiction. Google, we say, is changing how we think; social media makes us lonely; there are support groups for iPhone addicts. We fumble in our pockets for our phones while we stand waiting in line at the grocery store. We catch up on news or send messages in the carpool pick-up lane. It’s become a reflex, a compulsive habit that’s rewiring not only our impulses but also our very desires. We don’t abide silence well. We may be losing the ability to wait.</p>
<p>But for media expert Jason Farman, this sort of chronic fidgetiness signals something other than a problem to be solved through technological improvements. His book, <span>Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World</span><em>,</em> argues that waiting has always been an important part of human connection. What can feel like a pointless hassle is actually something of precious value.</p>
<h4>The Value of Waiting</h4>
<p>To create and sustain human community, we’ve always had to travel a certain distance. That distance can be geographical, of course, but it can also be cultural, ideological, or emotional. Farman argues that throughout history, our varying communications tools—from the simplest to the most advanced—have shaped the relationship between sender and receiver in different ways. In other words, the time spent waiting for a message can be just as pregnant with meaning as the message itself. “Though the mythologies of the digital age continue to argue that we are eliminating waiting from daily life,” Farman writes, “we are actually putting it right at the center of how we connect with one another.”</p>
<p>The question, then and now, is: What will waiting produce in a culture? Is waiting a hurdle to overcome, in the service of maximizing our “productive” time, or does it have a value all its own?</p>
<p>Even something as small as our texting habits can offer an important window into our culture. We assign meaning to the space between sending and receiving messages. Waiting on a text can bring to the surface our social anxieties and desires for intimacy. It can reveal the tenuous fabric of digital connection. Waiting, then, isn’t simply blank space to do away with; it forms us in a deeper way than we tend to realize.</p>
<p>How so? To answer this question, Farman travels the globe, studying a variety of communications technologies, past and present—everything from Japanese youth text culture to intercepted Civil War letters, Elizabethan seals on letters, space signals, Aboriginal message sticks, and the pneumatic tubes that delivered mail under the streets of Paris and New York City. What all these modes of communicating have in common is that, in their heyday, they were cutting-edge technologies that created a new relationship to time—and specifically to waiting. They made it seem as though the world had gotten faster, which conditioned us to think of speed as an essential element of the good life.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/april-web-only/delayed-response-jason-farman-art-waiting.html" target="_blank">Click here to read more.</a><br /> Source: Christianity Today</p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>Becoming History! Michelle Obama’s Memoir Sells 10 Million Copieshttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-1033572019-03-26T23:30:00.000Z2019-03-26T23:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div id="feedlyPersona" class="light"><div id="feedlyChrome" class="leftnav-open"><div id="feedlyFrame"><div id="feedlyPageHolderFX" class="fx"><div id="feedlyPageFX" class="centered container"><div class="board presentation-4"><div class="row"><div class="col-xl-3 xlarge-only"><div class="widget widget-related-feeds"><img src="https://ionehellobeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/15271903320934.jpg?quality=85&strip=all" id="image1" title="Michelle Obama Becoming" class="pinable" name="image1" alt="15271903320934.jpg?quality=85&strip=all" /></div>
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<p><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/tag/michelle-obama/" target="_blank"><strong>Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s</strong></a><span> </span><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/playlist/black-women-on-becoming-the-woman-they-are-today/" target="_blank"><em>Becoming</em></a><span> </span>is making even more history!</p>
<p>Not only was it the<span> </span><a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/3019205/michelle-obama-memoir-becoming-2018-best-selling-book/" target="_blank">best-selling book of 2018 in the U.S</a>, but it’s very close to becoming the most successful memoir of all-time. It’s being reported that she’s sold nearly 10 million copies around the world since its November debut.</p>
<p>“We believe this could be the most successful memoir in history,” Thomas Rabe, head of one of Penguin Random House’s parent companies, said Tuesday <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/michelle-obamas-memoir-on-course-to-be-most-successful-ever-11553601931" title="(opens new window)" target="_blank">according to the <em>Wall Street Journal.</em></a></p>
<p>Penguin’s chief executive, Markus Dohle co-signed on Rabe’s sentiments.</p>
<p>“I’m not aware, in my personal experience with Penguin Random House, that we ever sold 10 million units of a memoir,” he said.</p>
<p><a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/435826-becoming-by-michelle-obama-sells-10m-copies" target="_blank">The Hill reported</a><span> </span>that a Penguin Random House spokeswoman confirmed the numbers, saying on Tuesday that, in the United States and Canada alone, “Becoming” has “sold more than 6.2 million units across print, digital, and audio formats since its publication.”(Book sales aren’t routinely tracked in other countries.)</p>
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<a href="https://hellobeautiful.com/3025091/becoming-history-michelle-obamas-memoir-sells-10-million-copies/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></div>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>6 Brilliant, Illuminating New Books That Deal With Black History, For You To Readhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/6-brilliant-illuminating-new-books-to-read-this-black-history-mon2019-03-14T07:00:00.000Z2019-03-14T07:00:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="article-header-container"><div class="title"><img class="image" src="https://p0.ipstatp.com/large/pgc-image-va/RHmVKDe9SQjGCC" alt="RHmVKDe9SQjGCC" /></div>
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>1. <em>Barracoon</em> by Zora Neale Hurston</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51RD7cKm8pL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51RD7cKm8pL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="51RD7cKm8pL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></strong></span></p>
<p>This posthumously published book by one of the great American writers is framed as a conversation with the man known as the last survivor of the Atlantic slave trade. Barracoon is heartbreaking and fascinating in equal measure, a superb addition to Hurston’s remarkable bibliography.</p>
<p>Amistad</p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>2. <em>Becoming </em>by Michelle Obama</strong></span></p>
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<p>Sure, the very nature of this enormously successful memoir is history-making — it’s the first-ever written by a black First Lady — but<span> </span><em>Becoming</em><span> </span>is bigger than that, casting a wider gaze. The book’s first third is dedicated to Obama’s upbringing on the South Side of Chicago, a portrait of a working-class family driven to see her succeed.</p>
<p>Crown</p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>3. <em>Black Is the Body </em>by Emily Bernard</strong></span></p>
<a href="https://img.evbuc.com/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.evbuc.com%2Fimages%2F53719076%2F148636964166%2F1%2Foriginal.20181208-151222?auto=compress&s=db37de824cdc3505a86b325c39bc08f7" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.left-bank.com/sites/left-bank.com/files/Emily%20Bernard%20Event.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.left-bank.com/sites/left-bank.com/files/Emily%20Bernard%20Event.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="Emily%20Bernard%20Event.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a><br /> <br />
<p>Bernard’s lyrical book details traumas and pain from decades past to interrogate the nuances of her own life: growing up black in the South, marrying a white man from the North, and surviving a violent attack which unleashed the storyteller in her.</p>
<p>Knopf</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>4. <em>Frederick Douglass </em>by David W. Blight</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/810ygjggs-L.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/810ygjggs-L.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="810ygjggs-L.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></strong></span></p>
<p>The first Douglass biography in several decades may also be the definitive one. Among 2018’s most celebrated books in any genre, Frederick Douglass tells a thorough, compelling story over nearly 800 pages, offering a complicated and rousing portrait of one of the 19th century’s most important American voices.</p>
<p>Simon & Schuster</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><em>5. The New Negro </em>by Jeffrey C. Stewart</strong></span></p>
<p><a href="https://www.lambdaliterary.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/9780195089578-2-800x533.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.lambdaliterary.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/9780195089578-2-800x533.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="9780195089578-2-800x533.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
<p>This massive, National Book Award-winning biography brings to life Alain Locke, the founder of the Harlem Renaissance in astonishing detail, paying great homage to his intellectual brilliance and his creative spirit. It’s the kind of epic nonfiction which introduces you not just to one person, but the entire world around him — and how he changed it.</p>
<p>Oxford University Press</p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>6. <em>One Person, No Vote</em> by Carol Anderson</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71yBmWVXlkL.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71yBmWVXlkL.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="71yBmWVXlkL.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></strong></span></p>
<p>All of the books on this list have present-day implications, but perhaps none moreso than this charged dive into voter suppression from the Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. One Person, No Vote looks at this history of this anti-democratic tactic, particularly its racist roots.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.topbuzz.com/a/6656758430088299013?user_id=6589396791241293829&language=en&region=us&app_id=1106&impr_id=6659427565494618374&gid=6656758430088299013&c=email" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>11 Must-Read Books As We Close Out Black History Monthhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/11-must-read-books-as-we-close-out-black-history-month2019-02-28T20:46:41.000Z2019-02-28T20:46:41.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Open-Book.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Open-Book.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="Open-Book.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p>
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<div class="xg_module_body"><div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><div class="entry-content"><p>As Black History Month commences, here are a few must-have books from Black authors, spanning time periods, themes and genres. However, one thing they have in common is critical acclaim and a strong command of tackling the Black experience with grace, courage, originality, and historical context, making them essential reads during <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/01/five-reasons-to-celebrate-black-history-month.html/">Black History Month</a> and throughout the year.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>INVISIBLE MAN </strong>BY RALPH ELLISON</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg?width=96" width="96" class="align-full" alt="invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg?width=96" /></a>Ralph Ellison’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764">masterpiece novel</a> is frequently included on the list of must-read American books by one of the most prolific Black authors. The story follows an African American man whose color renders him invisible. It’s a groundbreaking take on a racially polarized society and the struggle to find oneself through it all.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>HOME</strong> BY TONI MORRISON</h3>
<p>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Home-Toni-Morrison/dp/0307594165">2012 novel</a> by Morrison tells the story of a 20-something Korean War veteran and his journey home from an integrated army to a segregated society. The book was named one of the best novels of 2012 for its careful consideration of <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/02/stories-suicide-faith-community.html/">mental illness</a>, race relations, family, history, and the concept of home.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>HOW TO BE BLACK </strong>BY BARATUNDE THURSTON</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg?width=97" width="97" class="align-full" alt="How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg?width=97" /></a>Baratunde Thurston, a longtime writer for <a href="http://www.theonion.com/"><em>The Onion</em></a>, serves up laughs with this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Black-Baratunde-Thurston/dp/0062003224">collection of comical essays</a>, such as “How to Speak for All Black People” and “How To Celebrate Black History Month.” Thurston covers social interactions and media portrayals with an insightful and satirical perspective.</p>
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<h3><strong>GOD’S TROMBONES: SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE </strong>BY JAMES WELDON JOHNSON</h3>
<p>James Weldon Johnson, creator of the Black National Anthem<em> “<a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2013/03/lessons-from-an-anthem.html/">Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,”</a> first published <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trombones-Seven-Negro-Sermons/dp/1598878689">God’s Trombones</a></em> in 1927 as a book of poems. The poems take on the structure of a traditional sermon and tell several different parables and Bible stories, some of which specifically focus on the African American story. Dr. Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates have called this collection one of Johnson’s most notable works.</p>
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<h3><strong>THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE: A MEMOIR </strong>BY TA-NEHISI COATES</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg?width=100" width="100" class="align-full" alt="Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg?width=100" /></a>From the best-selling author comes a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Struggle-Memoir-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0385527462">poignant tale</a> of <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2016/02/racism-not-making.html/">life and race </a>in the inner city. Coates explains how his father worked for his sons to obtain a free education and escape Baltimore’s drug culture. This inspiring book tells a powerful narrative about community and honoring your history across generations.</p>
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<h3><strong>CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC </strong>BY CLAUDIA RANKINE</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-American-Lyric-Claudia-Rankine/dp/1555976905"><em>Citizen</em> </a>is an award-winning collection of literature blurring the lines between poetry and criticism. Divided into seven chapters, it provides a powerful meditation on race that creates a lyrical portrait of our current social and political climate. Hailed as “a dazzling expression of the painful double consciousness of Black life in America,” according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-in-criticism-national-book-critics-circle-award-finalists/2015/03/10/0ba90750-c2b9-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html?utm_term=.d296354f881c">Washington Post</a>. Citizen is said to feel like an “eavesdropping on America.”</p>
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<h3><strong>MALCOLM X: A LIFE OF REINVENTION </strong>BY MANNING MARABLE</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg?width=97" width="97" class="align-full" alt="malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg?width=97" /></a>You may think you know Malcolm X, but you’ve never read anything like Marable’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Malcolm-X-Reinvention-Manning-Marable/dp/0143120328">highly-regarded biography</a>, which provides new perspectives and information on the controversial leader. Marable connects Malcolm’s life with other leaders, faith, and Black Nationalism in a masterful, historical context and call for social change.</p>
<p> <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/02/11-must-read-books-black-history-month.html/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>J.R.R. Tolkien Said ‘The Silmarillion Was Always his Heart’ and Reveals the Author Considered the The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit as Side Projects to his Greatest Workhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/j-r-r-tolkien-said-the-silmarillion-was-always-his-heart-and-reve2019-01-28T21:53:57.000Z2019-01-28T21:53:57.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryHeader"><a href="http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/363/7/e/the_silmarillion_movie_poster_by_captainjaze-d8bp5av.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/363/7/e/the_silmarillion_movie_poster_by_captainjaze-d8bp5av.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" alt="the_silmarillion_movie_poster_by_captainjaze-d8bp5av.jpg?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></div>
<div class="entryBody" title=""><div class="content"><p>In a 1937 letter to an Oxford colleague, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien confessed that he didn’t much care for The Hobbit, one of his already popular works that was about to go into its second printing.</p>
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<p>He <a href="http://corsair.themorgan.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=193980" target="_blank">wrote</a>: ‘I don’t much approve of The Hobbit myself, prefering my own mythology (which is just touched on) with its consistent nomenclature … and organized history, to this rabble of Eddaic-named dwarves out of Voluspa, newfangled hobbits and gollums (invented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.’</p>
<p>That manuscript letter is on display now at The Morgan Library & Museum in <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/new_york/index.html" target="_blank">New York City</a>, where an exhibit on J.R.R. Tolkien, the author, artist and scholar opened on January 25.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/tolkien" target="_blank">Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth</a>, which will run until May 12 is split into six sections, covering Tolkien’s background, family, art and of course the writings he is most famous for: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.</p>
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The master at work: J.R.R. Tolkien is pictured in his study, around 1937, the year The Hobbit was published. In a letter from that same year, he confessed to a colleague he didn’t ‘much approve’ of the work
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Dust jacket design for The Hobbit, from April 1937, illustrated with pencil, black ink, watercolor, complete with notes about improvements and developments. Associate curator John McQuillen said: ‘The Hobbit was a side project, a story he told to his kids that was for them. It was only later that it finally was published. And The Lord of the Rings also is a publication demand. It’s not anything he actually wanted to do. But The Silmarillion was always his heart.’
<p>Just as readers enter Middle-earth through a ‘perfectly round door like a porthole’ in The Hobbit, so visitors enter the Morgan’s Tolkien exhibit through a circular entryway with an enlarged watercolor by Tolkien himself of ‘Hobbiton-across-the-water’ to greet them. The walls of the 117-item exhibit are brightly colored by section, with other magnified watercolors filling the walls, alongside their smaller, original versions, detailed maps, intricate doodles and drawings, manuscripts and family photographs.</p>
<p>Around a corner from the main portion of the exhibit, in the section dedicated to The Hobbit, is Tolkien’s letter to Geoffrey Selby where the author admits he doesn’t care much for his children’s book.</p>
<p>The Morgan Library purchased the letter in the mid-80s along with their first edition of The Hobbit, according to Associate Curator of the Printed Books and Bindings Department John McQuillen.</p>
<p>‘For him, The Silmarillion, the history of the elves, was always the most important work,’ McQuillen tells DailyMail.com. ‘The Hobbit was a side project, a story he told to his kids that was for them. It was only later that it finally was published. And The Lord of the Rings also is a publication demand. It’s not anything he actually wanted to do.</p>
<p>‘But The Silmarillion was always his heart. The creation of the elvish languages, the history of the elves, it was always a major disappointment in his life that that was never published in his lifetime, because The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were complete side projects. So he’s referring to that in this letter. He doesn’t really care much for this work. It’s not what he considered his most important thing.’</p>
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Just as readers enter Middle-earth through a ‘perfectly round door like a porthole’ in The Hobbit, so visitors enter the Morgan’s Tolkien exhibit through a circular entryway with an enlarged watercolor by Tolkien himself of ‘Hobbiton-across-the-water’ (above) to greet them. Tolkien’s illustration of August 1937 is watercolor and ink
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Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves: This July 1937, watercolor, pencil illustration is also on display at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City in what is the largest Tolkien collection assembled in the United States
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Conversation with Smaug: Tolkien was a prolific illustrator and this detailed ink and watercolor from July 1937 was the more detailed of images and sketches he created of the dragon Smaug. It did not appear in the first printing of The Hobbit because of cost constraints but it has been published extensively in later editions
<p>McQuillen curated the Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan Library, the largest Tolkien collection assembled in the United States, organized in partnership with the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University, which displayed the exhibit in a larger format, with 200 objects, in Oxford last year.</p>
<p>‘A lot of the material kind of focuses on his process of creation, how the stories sort of shifted while he was writing them,’ McQuillen says. ‘[Tolkien’s work] wasn’t ever planned out from the beginning. His process of creation and writing was not having the end-goal in mind, but as he called it, more sort of discovery. Characters would come around a corner whom he hadn’t met yet.</p>
<p>‘It’s a very different sort of authorial process than I think most… How the stories developed, how characters changed as he wrote, I think will be interesting for a lot of people to understand and learn about.’</p>
<p>Tolkien’s letter to Selby is one of two pieces specific to the Morgan’s exhibit that were not on show at the Bodleian. The other piece, from a private collection, is a seven-page letter from Tolkien to Naomi Mitchison, a children’s author who was reviewing The Lord of the Rings before writing a blurb for the dust jacket.</p>
<p>She had written to Tolkien asking him questions about the languages, history and people in The Fellowship of the Ring, so he wrote back with some of the information that would later go into the appendices of The Return of the King and the complete work.</p>
<p>‘It’s nice to sort of include that with all The Lord of the Rings material so you can see how he’s thinking about the entire three volumes as one entire story and how the whole relates to the different parts,’ McQuillen says.</p>
<p>This is also the first time his letter to Mitchison has been put on display for the public, though the words of the letter have been included in collections of Tolkien’s correspondences before.</p>
<p>Though the Morgan’s exhibit had to be made slightly smaller than the Bodleian’s because of limited space, McQuillen says he didn’t cut anything from the sections dedicated to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, because he ‘knew those would be the most popular, where most of the interest was going to be’.</p>
<p>What was more difficult was deciding how best to show the rest of who Tolkien was. McQuillen, whose background is in medieval studies, is a fan of Tolkien’s academic work in Old English literature and Medieval English literature. However, he decided it was more important to paint a picture of Tolkien’s background and familial influences instead of focusing on his academic successes.</p>
<p>‘I think it’s very important to know who he was, particularly [because] there’s always so much speculation and talk that like, oh, you know, Mordor and Sauron are kind of like pulled out of his experiences during World War I and there’s so much argued about biography in the story, even though Tolkien never really stated that it was, except that the Shire is sort of the English countryside where he grew up, that very idyllic, rural landscape.</p>
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Mapping Middle-earth: The exhibit displays Tolkien’s map he created and used for The Lord of the Rings. It is well-worn and folded, taped together in multiple places with a few spots where paper was taped over to correct something beneath. The map, the first of Lord of the Rings, was created in black, red, blue ink and pencil and colored pencil between around 1937 and 1949
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‘It’s pieces of paper that are taped together into this sort of strange geometric puzzle, but you can see how sort of Middle-earth grew as Tolkien’s story grew, as he sketches out the landscape,’ says Associate Curator of the Printed Books and Bindings Department John McQuillen. ‘He always said that he began the stories with a map because he needed to know the geography, the place of where the action was taking place. You don’t just start writing with nothing.’
<p>‘Wanting to show the roots of where he came from still gives you a little sense of who the man was, what developed his love of nature when he was young. His love for Edith Bratt whom he married inspired the tale of Beren and Luthien in The Silmarillion and their great love. So there’s so much of his personal life that’s related to the stories and not a direct antecedent.’</p>
<p>Some of the most touching items in the exhibit are in the Home and Family section, where letters and watercolors he made for his four children as Father Christmas are on display.</p>
<p>‘It shows how completely… involved he was in his children’s lives,’ McQuillen says.</p>
<p>There is also a small ink drawing of an owl Tolkien made for his son Michael, who had been having nightmares about a large owl in his bedroom. According to the exhibit, Michael later said his father was ‘both father and friend, ‘a unique adult, the only ‘grown-up’ who appeared to take my childish comments and questions with complete seriousness.’</p>
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Tolkien, pictured right in a studio photograph dated 1911, married Edith Bratt, pictured left in a studio portrait in 1906 aged 17, before she met her future husband. When they met he was 16 and she 19 and their friendship quickly grew into something more, but he was forbidden by his priest to marry her until he had at least turned 21
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Tolkien, pictured right in a studio photograph dated 1911, married Edith Bratt, pictured left in a studio portrait in 1906 aged 17, before she met her future husband. When they met he was 16 and she 19 and their friendship quickly grew into something more, but he was forbidden by his priest to marry her until he had at least turned 21
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Some of the most touching items in the exhibit are in the Home and Family section, where letters and watercolors he made for his four children as Father Christmas are on display. The above painting is one such Father Christmas drawing of ‘Me’ and ‘My House’, dated 1920
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Tolkien’s drawing ‘by Father Christmas’ of the Aurora Borealis, dated December 1926
<p>The exhibit also displays Tolkien’s map he created and used for The Lord of the Rings. It is well-worn and folded, taped together in multiple places with a few spots where paper was taped over to correct something beneath.</p>
<p>‘It’s pieces of paper that are taped together into this sort of strange geometric puzzle, but you can see how sort of Middle-earth grew as Tolkien’s story grew, as he sketches out the landscape,’ McQuillen says. ‘He always said that he began the stories with a map because he needed to know the geography, the place of where the action was taking place. You don’t just start writing with nothing.’</p>
<p>Another fascinating piece is a poem beside a watercolor from 1915, when Tolkien was an undergraduate, on display in the last section about The Silmarillion.</p>
<p>‘It’s sort of the first text about Middle-earth and drawing he really intentionally ever made. So it really is sort of the starting point for all of this… early conception of the building of The Silmarillion,’ McQuillen says. ‘I just think it’s so rare for an author and an artist – you so rarely have… [their] first thing. This is the moment of birth for all of this. And the fact that it’s in a little notebook, the poem is on the left, the drawing is on the right. It’s clear from the beginning for Tolkien that textual and visual production go hand in hand and are completely equal in the creation of Middle-earth. It’s a nice little moment to see.’</p>
<p>As the organizing curator of Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, McQuillen says he hopes people will come into the exhibit and learn more about who Tolkien was as a person and his artistic process.</p>
<p>[It’s] important to show everything, all of the work that went into his literary production and his life, being able to really showcase both sides of who he was a father, husband, author, artist, professor.’</p>
<p>‘The show is a little bit more about the man and his process. It’s not about the minutiae of plot points and what are the stories. It’s the background and the creation of the stories.’</p>
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A Tolkien Fantasy landscape watercolor from around 1915
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The Shores of Faery, a watercolor, ink and pencil illustration from May 10, 1915
<blockquote><h3>Tolkien’s life and times</h3>
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<div><blockquote><p>John Ronald Reuel <a href="https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/" target="_blank">Tolkien </a>was born on January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa. His parents, Arthur Reuel Tolkien and Mabel Suffield, moved to South Africa in the 1890s in hopes of better job opportunities for his father, who was a banker.</p>
<p>In February 1896, Arthur died, so Tolkien’s mother took Tolkien and his younger brother Hilary back to England, just outside Birmingham. Mabel died from diabetes in 1904, leaving 12-year-old Tolkien and 10-year-old Hilary orphaned and in the care of first the parish Catholic priest, then their aunt and finally the boarding house of a Mrs. Faulkner.</p>
<p>It was there that Tolkien met a young woman named Edith Bratt, also an orphan. When they met he was 16 and she 19 and their friendship quickly grew into something more, but he was forbidden by his priest to marry her until he had at least turned 21.</p>
<p>He studied at Exeter College, Oxford starting in the fall of 1911 and at first studied Classics, though switched to English Language and Literature for his knack of linguistics and philology, the study of literary texts and written records.</p>
<p>When the First World War broke out in 1914, Tolkien continued his undergraduate degree until he completed it in 1915, after which he enlisted as a second lieutenant. He was on active duty at the Somme until he developed a typus-like infection and was sent back to England.</p>
<p>After the war ended, Tolkien got a job working on the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked until he was appointed as an associate professor of English Language at the University of Leeds in 1920, where he worked on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.</p>
<p>In 1925 he applied to be a professor at Oxford and got the position. Though he didn’t have many scholarly publications, the ones he did have were influential, particularly his work on Beowulf. Tolkien retired from Oxford in 1959.</p>
<p>Tolkien and his wife Edith had four children: John Francis Reuel (1917), Michael Hilary Reuel (1920), Christopher Reuel (1924) and Priscilla (1929). Tolkien was also part of a group of friends known as ‘The Inklings’, alongside C.S. Lewis.</p>
<p>Throughout his lifetime, starting with developing his own languages as a boy and writing poems as an undergraduate, Tolkien created and built Middle-earth, where his famous works The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954 and 1955) take place, though his preferred work was his Legendarium, the history of Middle-earth.</p>
<p>Tolkien passed away in 1973, two years after his wife Edith died. The couple are buried in an Oxford suburb in the Catholic section of the Wolvercote cemetery, according to the <a href="https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/" target="_blank">Tolkien</a> Society.</p>
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<p><em>SOURCE: Daily Mail, by Ann Schmidt</em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>11 Must-Read Books for Black History Monthhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/11-must-read-books-for-black-history-month-12018-02-27T22:20:24.000Z2018-02-27T22:20:24.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="xg_headline xg_headline-img xg_headline-2l"><div class="tb"><p><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Open-Book.jpg" alt="11 Must-Read Books for Black History Month" width="1080" height="675" style="font-size:2em;" /></p>
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<div class="xg_module_body"><div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><div class="entry-content"><p>As Black History Month commences, here are a few must-have books from Black authors, spanning time periods, themes and genres. However, one thing they have in common is critical acclaim and a strong command of tackling the Black experience with grace, courage, originality, and historical context, making them essential reads during <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/01/five-reasons-to-celebrate-black-history-month.html/">Black History Month</a> and throughout the year.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>INVISIBLE MAN </strong>BY RALPH ELLISON</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg?width=96" width="96" class="align-full" alt="invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg?width=96" /></a>Ralph Ellison’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764">masterpiece novel</a> is frequently included on the list of must-read American books by one of the most prolific Black authors. The story follows an African American man whose color renders him invisible. It’s a groundbreaking take on a racially polarized society and the struggle to find oneself through it all.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>HOME</strong> BY TONI MORRISON</h3>
<p>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Home-Toni-Morrison/dp/0307594165">2012 novel</a> by Morrison tells the story of a 20-something Korean War veteran and his journey home from an integrated army to a segregated society. The book was named one of the best novels of 2012 for its careful consideration of <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/02/stories-suicide-faith-community.html/">mental illness</a>, race relations, family, history, and the concept of home.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>HOW TO BE BLACK </strong>BY BARATUNDE THURSTON</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg?width=97" width="97" class="align-full" alt="How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg?width=97" /></a>Baratunde Thurston, a longtime writer for <a href="http://www.theonion.com/"><em>The Onion</em></a>, serves up laughs with this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Black-Baratunde-Thurston/dp/0062003224">collection of comical essays</a>, such as “How to Speak for All Black People” and “How To Celebrate Black History Month.” Thurston covers social interactions and media portrayals with an insightful and satirical perspective.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>GOD’S TROMBONES: SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE </strong>BY JAMES WELDON JOHNSON</h3>
<p>James Weldon Johnson, creator of the Black National Anthem<em> “<a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2013/03/lessons-from-an-anthem.html/">Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,”</a> first published <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trombones-Seven-Negro-Sermons/dp/1598878689">God’s Trombones</a></em> in 1927 as a book of poems. The poems take on the structure of a traditional sermon and tell several different parables and Bible stories, some of which specifically focus on the African American story. Dr. Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates have called this collection one of Johnson’s most notable works.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE: A MEMOIR </strong>BY TA-NEHISI COATES</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg?width=100" width="100" class="align-full" alt="Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg?width=100" /></a>From the best-selling author comes a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Struggle-Memoir-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0385527462">poignant tale</a> of <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2016/02/racism-not-making.html/">life and race </a>in the inner city. Coates explains how his father worked for his sons to obtain a free education and escape Baltimore’s drug culture. This inspiring book tells a powerful narrative about community and honoring your history across generations.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC </strong>BY CLAUDIA RANKINE</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-American-Lyric-Claudia-Rankine/dp/1555976905"><em>Citizen</em> </a>is an award-winning collection of literature blurring the lines between poetry and criticism. Divided into seven chapters, it provides a powerful meditation on race that creates a lyrical portrait of our current social and political climate. Hailed as “a dazzling expression of the painful double consciousness of Black life in America,” according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-in-criticism-national-book-critics-circle-award-finalists/2015/03/10/0ba90750-c2b9-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html?utm_term=.d296354f881c">Washington Post</a>. Citizen is said to feel like an “eavesdropping on America.”</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>MALCOLM X: A LIFE OF REINVENTION </strong>BY MANNING MARABLE</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg?width=97" width="97" class="align-full" alt="malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg?width=97" /></a>You may think you know Malcolm X, but you’ve never read anything like Marable’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Malcolm-X-Reinvention-Manning-Marable/dp/0143120328">highly-regarded biography</a>, which provides new perspectives and information on the controversial leader. Marable connects Malcolm’s life with other leaders, faith, and Black Nationalism in a masterful, historical context and call for social change.</p>
<p> <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/02/11-must-read-books-black-history-month.html/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
<h3><strong> </strong></h3>
<p><em><strong>Are there other titles that you’d like to add to the list? Share them below.</strong></em></p>
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<div class="fb-comments"></div></div>11 Must-Read Books for Black History Monthhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/11-must-read-books-for-black-history-month2017-02-26T10:46:38.000Z2017-02-26T10:46:38.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="et_post_meta_wrapper"><h1 class="entry-title"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Open-Book.jpg" alt="11 Must-Read Books for Black History Month" width="1080" height="675" style="font-size:13px;" /></h1>
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<div class="entry-content"><p>As Black History Month commences, here are a few must-have books from Black authors, spanning time periods, themes and genres. However, one thing they have in common is critical acclaim and a strong command of tackling the Black experience with grace, courage, originality, and historical context, making them essential reads during <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/01/five-reasons-to-celebrate-black-history-month.html/">Black History Month</a> and throughout the year.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>INVISIBLE MAN </strong>BY RALPH ELLISON</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg?width=96" width="96" class="align-full" alt="invisible-man-cover-196x300.jpg?width=96" /></a>Ralph Ellison’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764">masterpiece novel</a> is frequently included on the list of must-read American books by one of the most prolific Black authors. The story follows an African American man whose color renders him invisible. It’s a groundbreaking take on a racially polarized society and the struggle to find oneself through it all.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>HOME</strong> BY TONI MORRISON</h3>
<p>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Home-Toni-Morrison/dp/0307594165">2012 novel</a> by Morrison tells the story of a 20-something Korean War veteran and his journey home from an integrated army to a segregated society. The book was named one of the best novels of 2012 for its careful consideration of <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/02/stories-suicide-faith-community.html/">mental illness</a>, race relations, family, history, and the concept of home.<br /> </p>
<h3><strong>HOW TO BE BLACK </strong>BY BARATUNDE THURSTON</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg?width=97" width="97" class="align-full" alt="How_to_Be_Black-e1486143653441.jpg?width=97" /></a>Baratunde Thurston, a longtime writer for <a href="http://www.theonion.com/"><em>The Onion</em></a>, serves up laughs with this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Black-Baratunde-Thurston/dp/0062003224">collection of comical essays</a>, such as “How to Speak for All Black People” and “How To Celebrate Black History Month.” Thurston covers social interactions and media portrayals with an insightful and satirical perspective.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>GOD’S TROMBONES: SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE </strong>BY JAMES WELDON JOHNSON</h3>
<p>James Weldon Johnson, creator of the Black National Anthem<em> “<a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2013/03/lessons-from-an-anthem.html/">Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,”</a> first published <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trombones-Seven-Negro-Sermons/dp/1598878689">God’s Trombones</a></em> in 1927 as a book of poems. The poems take on the structure of a traditional sermon and tell several different parables and Bible stories, some of which specifically focus on the African American story. Dr. Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates have called this collection one of Johnson’s most notable works.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE: A MEMOIR </strong>BY TA-NEHISI COATES</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg?width=100" width="100" class="align-full" alt="Beautiful-Struggle-Cover-e1486143706469.jpg?width=100" /></a>From the best-selling author comes a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Struggle-Memoir-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0385527462">poignant tale</a> of <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2016/02/racism-not-making.html/">life and race </a>in the inner city. Coates explains how his father worked for his sons to obtain a free education and escape Baltimore’s drug culture. This inspiring book tells a powerful narrative about community and honoring your history across generations.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC </strong>BY CLAUDIA RANKINE</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-American-Lyric-Claudia-Rankine/dp/1555976905"><em>Citizen</em> </a>is an award-winning collection of literature blurring the lines between poetry and criticism. Divided into seven chapters, it provides a powerful meditation on race that creates a lyrical portrait of our current social and political climate. Hailed as “a dazzling expression of the painful double consciousness of Black life in America,” according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-in-criticism-national-book-critics-circle-award-finalists/2015/03/10/0ba90750-c2b9-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html?utm_term=.d296354f881c">Washington Post</a>. Citizen is said to feel like an “eavesdropping on America.”</p>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>MALCOLM X: A LIFE OF REINVENTION </strong>BY MANNING MARABLE</h3>
<p><a href="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://urbanfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg?width=97" width="97" class="align-full" alt="malcolm-x-reinvention-cover-197x300.jpg?width=97" /></a>You may think you know Malcolm X, but you’ve never read anything like Marable’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Malcolm-X-Reinvention-Manning-Marable/dp/0143120328">highly-regarded biography</a>, which provides new perspectives and information on the controversial leader. Marable connects Malcolm’s life with other leaders, faith, and Black Nationalism in a masterful, historical context and call for social change.</p>
<p> <a href="https://urbanfaith.com/2017/02/11-must-read-books-black-history-month.html/" target="_blank">Read More Here</a></p>
<h3><strong> </strong></h3>
<p><em><strong>Are there other titles that you’d like to add to the list? Share them below.</strong></em></p>
</div></div>“Happy” Slavery Illustrations in Children’s Book Whitewashes Brutal Historyhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-772212016-04-03T07:30:00.000Z2016-04-03T07:30:00.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p><a href="http://wfdd-live.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/slideshow/s3/images/slideshow/The-Kids-Book-A-Fine-Dessert-Has-Award-Buzz-%E2%80%94-And-Charges-Of-Whitewashing-Slavery-452552065-1446229802.png?itok=-ROnfWdf" target="_blank" style="font-size:2em;"><img src="http://wfdd-live.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/slideshow/s3/images/slideshow/The-Kids-Book-A-Fine-Dessert-Has-Award-Buzz-%E2%80%94-And-Charges-Of-Whitewashing-Slavery-452552065-1446229802.png?itok=-ROnfWdf" class="align-center" alt="The-Kids-Book-A-Fine-Dessert-Has-Award-Buzz-%E2%80%94-And-Charges-Of-Whitewashing-Slavery-452552065-1446229802.png?itok=-ROnfWdf" /></a></p>
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<p>“A Fine Dessert”, a children’s book by Emily Jenkins, is set to be one of the favorites to win the prestigious Caldecott Award. Published in January 2015, the story tells of “four families, in four cities, over four centuries” making blackberry fool – a dessert.</p>
<p>Among the four times and locations is that of Charleston in the year 1810, when the dessert is prepared by a slave mother and daughter for their white masters.</p>
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<p>This particular part of the book has drawn criticism for “whitewashing slavery” and depicting the era as a pleasant time – as depicted by the smiling daughter’s pictures – and “erasing the tribulations of Blacks in American history.”</p>
<p>“Their minimized stories [serve] to placate White guilt,” writes Allison McGevna, the Managing Editor of HelloBeautiful.com. “These books, at best, do little to show the true, dark side of the truth. At worst, they reinforce the dangerous suggestion perpetuated by racists everywhere that Black people were, somehow, happy to be in chains.”</p>
<p>Even the saddest moments of the story are depicted as ones of joy for the mother and daughter:</p>
<p><i>After waiting table at supper – where the master and his family ate turtle soup, roast turkey, corn cakes and sweet potatoes – they spooned the blackberry fool into yellow dishes and served it. Later, the girl and her mother hid in the closet and licked the bowl clean together. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. What a fine dessert!</i></p>
<p><a href="http://yourblackeducation.com/happy-slavery-illustrations-in-childrens-book-whitewashes-brutal-history/">CLICK TO READ MORE</a></p>
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</div></div>Give These 12 Books to Your High School Graduatehttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/3153366-BlogPost-700072015-06-13T20:18:27.000Z2015-06-13T20:18:27.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><p><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-138251" src="http://i0.wp.com/blackchristiannews.com/go/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/24679-merechristianity1200.1200w.tn_.jpg?resize=550%2C301" alt="24679-merechristianity1200.1200w.tn" width="550" height="301" /></p>
<p>You have so much you want to tell your graduating senior—whether a child, grandchild, or friend. Although you’ve spent years sharing the wisdom you’ve gleaned from life, somehow that doesn’t seem to be nearly enough. There’s always something else you meant to say, some piece of advice you forgot to mention, some story from your past that could definitely help. <span id="more-138250"></span></p>
<p>Instead of loading them down with everything you think they’ll need, sometimes it’s better to supply them with solid books that can shape them over the long run. But which ones should you choose? We’d love to help. These books have made an impact on us as editors and Christians, and we believe they are essential for any graduate’s library.</p>
<p>We’re assuming here that they already have a solid Bible for study (and know a <a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/" target="_blank">good website</a> for in-depth reading on their smartphone). None of these recommendations matter if there’s no solid foundation in Scripture. But if that’s there, then here are 12 books to give your graduate to help them in their journey.</p>
<h2><em>Mere Christianity</em> by C.S. Lewis</h2>
<p><img src="http://i1.wp.com/media.salemwebnetwork.com/cms/BST/15013-mere-c.jpg?resize=100%2C151" alt="Mere Christianity" width="100" height="151" /></p>
<p>This classic explanation and defense of the Christian <a href="http://www.crosswalk.com/faith/">faith</a> has stirred up men and women for decades. The conversational style and vivid prose make chewing through even complex theological concepts enjoyable. You may not agree with Lewis on all points, but <em>Mere Christianity</em> will challenge you to examine what you believe and why you believe it. Every grad needs to take a look inside.</p>
<h2><em>Every Young Man’s/Woman’s Battle</em> by Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker, and Shannon Ethridge</h2>
<p><img src="http://i1.wp.com/media.salemwebnetwork.com/cms/BST/15014-every-ymb.jpg?resize=100%2C154" alt="Every Young Man's Battle" width="100" height="154" /><img src="http://i2.wp.com/media.salemwebnetwork.com/cms/BST/15015-eywb.jpg?resize=100%2C155" alt="Every Young Woman's Battle" width="100" height="155" /></p>
<p>Sex. Every graduate will face an onslaught from the world when it comes to sex. Porn is more common on the Internet than cat memes, smartphone apps encourage hooking up with a simple swipe, and temptations have become nearly constant. In fact, the battle they face will likely only grow more intense. They need help, and the Every Man’s Battle series gives them the weapons to overcome. Both<em>Every Young Man’s Battle</em> and <em>Every Young Woman’s Battle</em> tackle this topic in a way that will stick with them.</p>
<h2><em>The Reason for God: Belief in the Age of Skepticism</em> by Tim Keller</h2>
<p><img src="http://i1.wp.com/media.salemwebnetwork.com/cms/BST/15024-reason-for-god.jpg?resize=100%2C154" alt="Reason for God" width="100" height="154" /></p>
<p>Considered by many an instant classic, <em>The Reason for God</em> by Pastor Tim Keller often appears on lists of the best Christian books of all time. There’s a good reason for that. This well-reasoned volume has become the go-to book for answering the skeptics of our day. With his firm grasp of Scripture, Keller will provide your graduate with a new trust in God’s unfailing Word.</p>
<h2><em>Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God</em> by Francis Chan</h2>
<p><img src="http://i1.wp.com/media.salemwebnetwork.com/cms/BST/15016-crazy-love.jpg?resize=100%2C150" alt="Crazy Love" width="100" height="150" /></p>
<p>Millions of Christians have responded to the passionate appeal Francis Chan unleashed on the world in the form of <em>Crazy Love</em>. This book has become fodder for small group studies and awakened many to the need to do more in their love for God than just “trying not to cuss.” Easy to read, but impossible to put down, Chan’s short book will charge your graduate up to pursue a wild love for Jesus.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.crosswalk.com/culture/books/10-essential-books-to-give-your-graduate.html">Click here to read more</a></p>
<p>Source: Crosswalk | BibleStudyTools.com</p>
</div></div>Seattle is The Most Well-Read City in Americahttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/seattle-is-the-most-well-read-city-in-america2015-06-05T08:21:55.000Z2015-06-05T08:21:55.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="post-title"><h1 class="entry-title"></h1>
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<div class="post_content entry-content"><p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/blackchristiannews.com/go/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/seattle-most-well-read-city-2014.png?resize=550%2C309" target="_blank"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/blackchristiannews.com/go/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/seattle-most-well-read-city-2014.png?resize=550%2C309&width=550" width="550" class="align-center" alt="seattle-most-well-read-city-2014.png?resize=550%2C309&width=550" /></a></p>
<p>Take heart, America: It’s not all scandal and gridlock in Washington. The nation’s capital also leads the country in print book purchases, according to Amazon’s annual list of the most well-read cities in the country.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But Washington falls to No. 5 when the rankings take into account all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format. Under that broader scope, Seattle and Portland, Ore., hold the two top spots.</p>
<p>Here is Amazon’s list of the top 20 most well-read cities, on a per capita basis, from April 2014 to April 2015:</p>
<p>1. Seattle.<br />2. Portland.<br />3. Las Vegas.<br />4. Tucson.<br />5. Washington.<br />6. Austin.<br />7. San Francisco.<br />8. Albuquerque.<br />9. Denver.<br />10. Louisville.<br />11. Charlotte.<br />12. Baltimore.<br />13. San Diego.<br />14. Houston.<br />15. Indianapolis.<br />16. San Jose.<br />17. Jacksonville, Fla.<br />18. San Antonio<br />19. Nashville.<br />20. Chicago.</p>
<p>Only cities with more than 500,000 residents were included, but the country’s biggest cities don’t necessarily dominate. Notably, the publishing capital of the world, New York, doesn’t make the cut. Still, that 500,000 limit can have a significant impact on the composition of such lists. In 2011, Amazon considered cities of 100,000 or greater, which produced a very different list, as you can see from the top 5:</p>
<p>1. Cambridge, Mass.<br />2. Alexandria, Va.<br />3. Berkeley, Calif.<br />4. Ann Arbor, Mich.<br />5. Boulder, Colo.</p>
<p><strong>Click <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/06/02/washington-ranks-no-1-in-print-book-purchases/">here</a> to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: The Washington Post, Ron Charles</em></p>
</div></div>Five Keys to Start Writing Your First Novelhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/five-keys-to-start-writing-your-first-novel2014-08-24T09:56:41.000Z2014-08-24T09:56:41.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><p></p>
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<p>Autumn is the season when word processors develop twitches in keyboards. Writers emerge from summers abroad, agents hunger for a new voice, publishers finally release the hidden gems that will save their industry. Book reviews burst with new titles and bestseller lists change faster than television cable lineup.</p>
<p>So, where's your book? We're waiting, all of us, readers, publishers, fellow writers who have patiently stood by while you grew up, went to school, married, had kids, and found a job to keep you afloat while the book inside you burbled about until you got around to writing it. So, enough! You know how to type; sit down at your laptop and get on with it. But ... where to start?</p>
<p>Here are my five fundamentals to get you going.</p>
<p><strong>Number One:</strong> What is your story? This sounds like an easy one because you have the story in your mind, but -- what is it? Try to write your story in no more than three sentences and you soon will see that what your story involves is a much different thing than what your story is. For example, was the story of Gone with the Wind Scarlett O'Hara chasing Ashley Wilkes or was it Scarlett chasing something else that was long gone, the fairy tale Old South? Was The Lord of the Rings about Frodo finding Mordor so he could throw the ring into the fire or was it about Frodo finding Frodo?</p>
<p>Well, then, what were all those pages about Tara and Rhett Butler and Gollum? Those were story-telling, the waypoints that the authors used to support the stories but were not stories in their own right. What's the fundamental here? It is 'write your story but don't hide it beneath vignettes and your brilliant way with words.' No matter how great it looks on the page, if it doesn't move the story, leave it out.</p>
<p><strong>Number Two:</strong> Learn the conventions of fiction writing - voice, conflict, dialogue, point of view, and setting. Practice writing not only in the first person but also in the second person as a narrator and in the omniscient voice, like a fly on the wall that happens to see everything and knows what everyone is thinking. Learn to write clearly by trying when you write settings and descriptions that your story will be read to a blind person who has never seen what you're describing. Give a great deal of thought to when your conflict will explode, how your hero will resolve it, and what happens next (Hint: 'solution' is usually followed by 'disaster.' See Scarlett, above, and think 'Melanie,' and 'Civil War.') And never, ever write in the passive voice. Trust me.</p>
<p><strong>Number Three:</strong> Make your readers a part of the story by creating expectations that invest them in the outcome, no matter how impossible it might be. For example, Alexandre Dumas engineered the Count of Monte Cristo's escape from the Chateau d'If with details of the thickness of rock walls, habits of guards, and height above pounding waves so that readers believed the internal truth of the novel, that escape not only was possible but actually happened. By commencing A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian with a phone call in which widowed Dad informs grown Daughter that he is about to remarry, to a nice girl from Kiev whom he just met (and who has 'superior breasts'), Martina Lewyka hooked every reader's personal fears for their own parents' loony golden years. Write not only what you know, but what your readers know.</p>
<p><strong>Number Four:</strong> Read books written by really good authors. This sounds like a platitude, but isn't. Ideally you would study creative writing at Oxford or Harvard. Failing that, by reading authors you enjoy you will see on careful study that they have a way of writing a sentence that becomes a paragraph, then a chapter, and that there is a cadence in the structure that weaves for you, the reader, something appealing. Prop open one of their books, find a passage you like, then turn on your word processor and try to compose a sentence in the same cadence that your favorite author has done. Try to write a couple of lines of dialogue that evoke the word patterns that appeal to you -- not the words, but the patterns. (Alert: don't plagiarize, just learn). Write a paragraph, then another. Stay with it until your mind thinks, however briefly, in those patterns. By staying with this process and applying it to your story, you'll begin to develop your own unique style.</p>
<p><strong>Number Five: </strong>Be serious about your writing. Write every day. Compose a thousand words on your novel, memoir, poem, or short story. Tomorrow, edit those thousand words, revise them, and improve them. Recast the fuzzy sentences into the active voice. Make the subjects and verbs agree in number and tense and eliminate the pronouns that might refer to more than one person, place, or thing so that a reader is able to understand what you intended to say. Repeat.</p>
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<p><strong>Click <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-woodville-london/writing-your-first-novel-_b_5669907.html?utm_hp_ref=books">here</a> to read more.</strong></p>
<p><em>SOURCE: The Huffington Post</em><br /><em>Jack Woodville London</em></p>
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</div></div>Cissy Houston to Write Memoir About Daughter for HarperCollinshttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/cissy-houston-to-write-memoir-about-daughter-for-harpercollins2012-06-05T17:54:06.000Z2012-06-05T17:54:06.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryHeader"><br /><div class="topWikiWidget wikiWidget"><div><div class="wikiWidgetRecoCount noBottom viewerLabel"> </div>
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<div>Whitney Houston's triumphant, heartbreaking life is being remembered in a book by her mother, singer Cissy Houston.</div>
<div>Houston has a deal with HarperCollins for a memoir it says will reveal the "unabridged and unbelievable story" of her Grammy Award-winning daughter, who died in a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel bathtub in February at age 48. HarperCollins announced Monday that the currently untitled book is scheduled to come out next February.</div>
<div>"When I lost my daughter Nippy (Whitney Houston's nickname), the world lost one of the most beautiful voices and an extraordinarily beautiful and charitable woman," Cissy Houston said in a statement released by HarperCollins. "In sharing our story in this book, I hope to give her fans something to treasure, the way we all treasured Whitney. We are still receiving thousands of letters each day from her fans, and I hope reading this book will provide a deeper understanding into my daughter's true story.</div>
<div>Financial terms haven't been disclosed. But a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., where Whitney Houston, whose many hits included "The Greatest Love of All" and "I Will Always Love You," sang as a child and where her funeral was held. Cissy Houston had met with several publishers, and the book deal could be worth seven figures.</div>
<div>According to HarperCollins, Cissy Houston will write with "candor, honesty and respect" about her daughter's remarkable career and about her drug problems and her marriage to Bobby Brown. Cissy Houston also will reflect on her own grief.</div>
<div>"She will tell the unabridged and unbelievable story of her daughter's life as well as her own, addressing Whitney's brightest and darkest moments while helping fans around the world understand the complexities of this extraordinary star who died much too soon," the publisher announced.</div>
<div>"Ultimately, Cissy will go behind the headlines to show the true, human side of this strong, successful yet complicated musical icon, capturing the dramatic depths and soaring range of an extraordinary woman, along with the pain and heartbreak of a grieving mother as she struggles with impossible loss."</div>
<div>Cissy Houston recently released a new album of gospel tunes, her first new music in more than a decade. "Walk on By Faith" was released by Harlem Records on iTunes last month and includes songs such as "Living Shall Not Be In Vain."</div>
<div>She wrote a memoir, "How Sweet the Sound," in 1998.</div>
<div><i>SOURCE: The Associated Press</i></div>
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</div></div>'Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt' Movie, Based on Anne Rice Novel, Back on Track for 2013 Releasehttps://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/christ-the-lord-out-of-egypt-movie-based-on-anne-rice-novel-back-2012-05-25T03:03:40.000Z2012-05-25T03:03:40.000ZPrince Malachi The Firsthttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/Malachi<div><div class="entryHeader"></div>
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<div><b>The author's 'Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt' is back on track, slated for 2013.</b></div>
<div>We've all wondered what Jesus was like as a boy. All we know is that he "grew up healthy and strong" and was "filled with wisdom, and God's favor was on him" (Luke 2:40).</div>
<div>Novelist Anne Rice has wondered about it too, so she did a lot of research and wrote <i>Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt</i> (2005), imagining Jesus at the ages of 7-8. The story has "movie" written all over it, and after a number of fits and starts, it's finally coming to fruition, slated for release sometime in 2013. Rice originally had a movie deal with Good News Holdings, but that <a href="http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctentertainment/2009/11/your-lies-and-tactics-are-odio.html" target="_blank">fell apart</a> in 2009, and the project was shelved indefinitely. But after watching <i><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2009/stoningofsorayam.html" target="_blank">The Stoning of Soraya M</a></i>, Rice felt like she'd found the right person to bring her story to the silver screen: American writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh.</div>
<div>Rice, who has had other books (most notably 1994's <i>Interview with a Vampire</i>) turned into films, told CT that she thought Soraya M was "beautifully written and directed. The film was restrained and eloquent and simple. It had a profound impact." She had just written a review at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R3VF5OH9BMNCJS/" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a> when her agent called to say that Nowrasteh was interested in <i>Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt</i>. Says Rice, "I thought, Here is a fine director and someone who knows the Middle Eastern milieu. I was immediately interested."</div>
<div>Nowrasteh, who will direct, partnered with his wife, Betsy, on the script. Casting has not yet begun--Nowrasteh says finding a young boy for the lead role "is not as easy as it might seem"--and filming will likely begin later this year. The movie will be produced by 1492 Pictures, founded by Chris Columbus and the studio behind three Harry Potter films, The Help, and many more.</div>
<div>Of Rice's novel, Nowrasteh says, "I love the book. It's written with real passion and heart and belief. It's one of the most original fresh conceits at the heart of the story of Jesus. We tried to be faithful to it in the script." He adds that Rice's book is perfect for a film adaptation. "We're immersed both in a gritty ancient world and yet transported into the dreamy imaginings of a child filled with wonder, beauty and miracles," he says. "It's a beautiful and faith-affirming story."</div>
<div>Rice agrees about her novel's natural fit for the big screen: "I think the book is very visual and will make a very entertaining and gripping movie. I tend to write cinematically, telling the story through scenes both great and small, and moving from one dramatic encounter to another."</div>
<div><b>Click <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/news/2012/boyjesusbigscreen.html" target="_blank">here</a> to read more.</b></div>
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<div><i>SOURCE: <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/" target="_blank">Christianity Today</a></i></div>
<div><i>Mark Storer and Mark Moring</i></div>
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</div></div>Take me away (Far away)https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/take-me-away-far-away2012-01-12T19:29:03.000Z2012-01-12T19:29:03.000ZMontice L. Harmonhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/MonticeLHarmon<div><h2 class="subtitle" style="text-align:center;">Take me away...</h2><p><img width="250" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7936049463,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7936049463?profile=original" /></p><div class="txtd" id="txtd_9288135"><p>Take me away, so fare away from everything & every pain, worry & heart break. Take me to a place i'm free to do as i please. To a paradise unknown to man kind. so beautiful & pure. With fruits of knowledge, not self centered beings. Take me to the highest mountain, so i can give praise to my creater. Live life free of choices, not demands. Let me be free from all hate. Grow into someone special & provide such wonderful meaning to life's worth. Recreating man kind with the creater of all things. Regaining a powerful & honorable nation. Changing human race for the better, never the worst. Take me to that place, i wonna go there. DO YOU BELIEVE? i DO... So i'm asking for that freedom, to take me away. Fare away...</p></div></div>Today! (I Am)https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/today-i-am2012-01-04T14:00:00.000Z2012-01-04T14:00:00.000ZMontice L. Harmonhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/MonticeLHarmon<div><p>Today my life changes even more. Winning at what I love most, writing what makes me happy. Gaining love from other’s who share the same passion as I. god has blessed me, to the point I don’t deserve it. But he knows my heart, my soul, my purpose.</p><p>Today I’m taking on responsibilities, acknowledging my father, the head of my life, giving him praise for all he has done for me. Loving me, forgiving me and allowing me to breath another day. I’m so thankful, but sometimes I have a hard time showing it.</p><p>Today I’m living my life, for what’s right. Allowing myself to be truthful in all I do. Become a man of righteousness, living in a world full of wrong, I wont to provide hope upon life. I’ve made mistakes and still do. But each time, I learn I’m only human and perfect in no shape of form.</p><p>Today my life began with love, hope, faith, care and most importantly God.</p><p>Today!</p><p></p><p><a href="http://monticeharmonbook.hubpages.com/hub/TodayI-Am" target="_blank">Monticeharmonbook</a></p></div>If Tomorrow Never Comes.https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/if-tomorrow-never-comes2012-01-03T14:00:00.000Z2012-01-03T14:00:00.000ZMontice L. Harmonhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/MonticeLHarmon<div><p>As I sit, acknowledging life. A thought pop’s in my head, if tomorrow never comes. What have I accomplished? What have I changed, that i needed to improve the most in my life? If tomorrow never come’s, I’ve learned all there is about life. All that god allowed me to know. But have I achieved all he wanted me too?</p><p>Trials & tribulations I have bared, gaining self-control over my outrageous temper. Learning to let go of pain. Walk away & be the bigger person, never letting anyone take advantage of me, nor run over me in any way. If tomorrow never comes, I've kept my dignity. To stand strong against all life’s obstacles, all the heart aches, break downs & all the hatred I’ve endured. I’ve accomplished a dream. A dream to write & touch the hearts of reader’s, strengthen & encourage them to move forward, not backwards.</p><p>My goal to dream, has opened my eyes to many possibilities, to win & achieve. If tomorrow never comes, I’ll be alright. Because my words will live on in the minds of man kind, continuing as life processed & develop into something surreal, showing those who want understanding. The way of life, & what it’s worth. If tomorrow never comes. I pray to god my soul, he’ll take.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://monticeharmonbook.hubpages.com/hub/IfTomorrowNeverComes" target="_blank">Monticeharmonbook</a></p></div>Through My Tears (The Past)https://www.theoraclemag.com/profiles/blogs/through-my-tears-the-past2012-01-02T14:00:00.000Z2012-01-02T14:00:00.000ZMontice L. Harmonhttps://www.theoraclemag.com/members/MonticeLHarmon<div><p>Through my tears, throughout the years. Has been a journey of great trials. The pain i felt, Are strong holds to my past. (The Past) Something we refuse to let go of. The past is ways to hold on to fear, hurt & unforgiveness. It never solves anything. It only causes confusion, regret & Sorrow.</p><p> Through my tears, i've learn to hate, those who hurt me. My past has cause me to let down, those who really cared about me & loved me. </p><p> Through my tears, i've learned to love. The past & my Tears taught me to remember those who were there for me. The ones who brought me up. Taught me values of trust & respect.</p><p> Through my tears, The past has lead me to turn my back on those who betrayed my trust, used & abused my friendship. My past allowed me to shut out the ones who lied & mislead me.</p><p> Through my tears, my past has made me realize the marols of human beings. the stubbornness, lies & The lack of honesty. why must my past remind me how evil & conniving. & hot they take each other for granted. It has open my eyes to see that life isnt fair & people dont always see eye to eye.</p><p>Through my tears, i've learned to except the fact i'm only human. That i'm made of flesh, Which explains our mistakes. We all fall short of knowlege & self respect. My past has brought me along way, through mighty storms I must remind you i didnt do it alone.</p><p> Through my tears, i've decided not to let anyone bringme down, I've learned to pass them by, without giving them the satisfaction. Without worrying, stressing & denying what i believe in. My past has also taught me not to be afaid of anything or anyone.</p><p> Through my tears, i've defeated the enemy of darkness. The darkness within myself. It allowed me to open myself up to you! & smile & give thanks to those in my past who pushed me to believe in such a wonderful man by the name of christ. The life & light of my life.</p><p> Through my tears, I've heard a voice, a voice like no other i've evered heard, My past allowed me to shut out the voice within, The key to my past & present. As i seek to inprove my life, My past always finds ways to creep up on me. Breaking me down & wearing me out.</p><p> Through my tears, i've found peace. Away to express myself. Be comfortable with who i am. I've gain enough strenght to carry out the voice within. My past want hold me down anymore, not this time. I refuse to ignore the power of almighty, god almighty. My lord & savior.</p><p> Through my tears, i've found grace, hope & most of all a piece of mind. Courage to move on. live my life for what it's worth. My past, My past. Thanks for strenght, shelter & comfort.</p><p> Though my tears, i've lost the past. Left behind what hurt me the most. I let go of those who didnt care for me. But with pain comes brighter days. & for the record with time comes wisdom & knowlege....</p><p> Through my tears, i've also learned to live without my past.</p><p> </p></div>