Becoming is the memoir of former United States First Lady Michelle Obama published in 2018. Described by the author as a deeply personal experience, the book talks about her roots and how she found her voice, as well as her time in the White House, her public health campaign, and her role as a mother. Wikipedia
Julie Dash's "Daughters of the Dust" is a tone poem of old memories, a family album in which all of the pictures are taken on the same day. It tells the story of a family of African-Americans who have lived for many years on a Southern offshore island, and of how they come together one day in 1902 to celebrate their ancestors before some of them leave for the North. The film is narrated by a child not yet born, and ancestors already dead also seem to be as present as the living.
The film doesn't tell a story in any conventional sense. It tells of feelings. At certain moments we are not sure exactly what is being said or signified, but by the end we understand everything that happened - not in an intellectual way, but in an emotional way. We learn of members of the Ibo people who were brought to America in chains, how they survived slavery and kept their family memories and, in their secluded offshore homes, maintained tribal practices from Africa as well. They come to say goodbye to their land and relatives before setting off to a new land, and there is the sense that all of them are going in the journey, and all of them are staying behind, because the family is seen as a single entity. For the complete review by Roger Ebert:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/daughters-of-the-dust-1992
Film viewing-March 20, 2019, 5:30 pm at the Northwest Houston Center. Free popcorn and snacks.
Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States by Su'ad Abdul Khabeer
"Muslim Cool brilliantly spotlights how Black Muslim youth construct and perform identities that embody indigenous forms of Black cultural production. Equally important, the text shows how these constructions are used to reimagine, reshape, and resist hegemonic and often anti-Black conceptions of Muslim identity. – Marc Lamont Hill, Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies, Morehouse College, author of “Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity”
Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. by Treva B. Lindsey
"An insightful book theoretically framed around ideas of 'Colored' and New Negro Womanhood. Lindsey demonstrates how Black women in Washington, D.C., labored and managed under the strains of Jim and Jane Crow, navigating structural disadvantages and persistent sexist exclusion in the nation's capital. ."--Randal Maurice Jelks, author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography
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