AUTHOR-REVIEWER BANNED FROM AFRICAN-AMERICAN BOOKSTORE

In another bizarre twist on the complex theme of racism, 2001 National Book Award nominee Wanda Coleman (Mercurochrome), an award-winning poet-writer-journalist, was denied participation in a book signing and reading on Wednesday, May 15th. This fallout is apparently from Coleman's April 14th rip of Maya Angelou's A Song Flung Up To Heaven, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, in which Coleman concluded: "In writing that is bad to God-awful, Song is a tell-all that tells nothing in empty phrases and sweeping generalities. Dead metaphors (sobbing embrace, my heart fell in my chest) and clumsy similes (like the sound of buffaloes running into each other at rutting time) are indulged. Twice-told crises (being molested, her son's auto accident) are milked for residual drama. Extravagant statements come without explication and schmooze substitutes for action—there is too much coulda shoulda woulda.  Unfortunately, the Maya Angelou of A Song Flung Up to Heaven seems small and inauthentic, without ideas, wisdom or vision. Something is being flung up to heaven all right, but it isn't a song."

The occasion of Coleman's ban was the release of GRIOTS BENEATH THE BOABAB: Tales from Los Angeles; an anthology including a story by Coleman and featuring such noted Black authors as Donald Bakeer, Octavia Butler, and Eric Jerome Dickey. The celebration was scheduled to take place on May 22nd at Esowon Books, L.A.'s largest African American bookstore, located in South Central Los Angeles, which recently remembered the Rodney King Riots of April 29th 1992 in a series of panels and events, some of which included the outspoken Coleman. Randy Ross, President of the International Black Writers Association, which published GRIOTS, is distributing it through several of L.A.'s independent bookstores, including the immigrant-owned Esowon, reputed for its support of African American literature. That support apparently stops at Coleman, who, despite her international reputation a poet-performer, has never been invited to read or sign books at Esowon in the store's history. James Fugate, one of Esowon's owners requested that Ross "uninvite" Coleman from the GRIOTS book signing, stating that she was not welcome in his store because of her negative review of Maya Angelou's book. Following a blind vote, which included the unsuspecting Coleman, the majority of GRIOTS' authors decided the book signing should be cancelled.

Issues of free speech aside. Coleman, a native of South Central, is the author of 14 books of poetry and fiction, and the recipient of numerous awards including a John P. Guggenheim fellowship and was the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (Academy of American Poets, the Nation magazine and The New Hope Foundation) for her book Bathwater Wine.

Contacts:

Black Sparrow Press (707)-579-4011 books@blacksparrowpress.com

Randy Ross, Ph.D., President, International Black Writer Association, L.A., Randy44Ross@aol.com

James at Esowon Books jmfugate@email.msn.com