Pots and Pages

Well folks, Fall is just about here.  Here in The Dirty Nati, evenings are getting really cool and chilly.  It's time for some heat!  Of course, you all know the Colored Man, and I am thinking about good comforting stews and soups, and some pages to turn in a book or two.

As far as the soup is concerned, I have a recipe for a Columbian soup called puchero, featuring spare ribs, beef brisket, chicken and cassava.  I have never eaten the South American and African staple cassava, but this is definitely one recipe that I will be preparing some weekend as the months get even colder.  Since we all will be spending alot of time indoors watching cable and reading, I thought that I would share with you some books that I think will keep you quite occupied during the upcoming cold season, just as they have keep me entertained in the past few months.

The first book that I am recommending is entitled, Wench, and written by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.  I recently met Mrs. Valdez at a book fair, and asked her what inspired her to write the book.  She explained that she was reading an autobiography about W.E.B. Dubois, and there was a sentence about a summer resort in Ohio, named Tawawa House, where Southern plantation owners brought there female slaves for vacation.  This sparked her interest and she began researching.  What I really like about this book is the fact that it provides new information about something that I never even imagined happened.
At times, both brutal and chilling to read, Ms.Valdez steadily delivers a powerful punch in her first book, that is soon destined for the big screen.  A Must Read.

Ms. Valdez, at the Cincinnati By the Banks Book Fair

 

My next selection, is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, written by Pulitzer-prize winning writer, Isabel Wilkerson.  I cannot praise this book enough.  Ms. Wilkerson has written a scholarly tome that focuses on the migration of African-Americans from the South to the North from 1915 to 1970.  The Colored Man finds it very engaging that Ms. Wilkerson interviewed over 1,200 subjects for the book, and narrowed her story down to three individuals - Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, who migrated to California, and became the physician to the entertainer, Ray Charles; George Swanson Starling, who migrated to New York and became disillusioned when his children became trapped in the vices of the big city, despite the hardships and sacrifices that he had endured; and finally, Ida Mae Gladney, who migrated to Chicago, and remembered meeting Barack Obama when he was running to become her district representative in the Illinois state senate.  This is a book that mixes real-life struggles and courage, along with historical documentation. Many of us can relate to the migration saga within our own families, and this book deserves your time and attention.  The Colored Man would not lead you astray.  Trust me.

If you can't tell by now, the Colored Man reads quite alot.  This is something that I have done my entire life.  I mainly read American authors, and only recently started reading books by authors of different cultures.  With that said, I am not into romance-type books, but the next book is kinda "romancy", but also has a good story.  The book is entitled, Conquistadora, and written by Esmeralda Santiago, a writer of Puerto Rican heritage.  The novel is set in the mid-1800's, and is the story of a young Spanish girl, Ana Larragoity Cubillas, who dreams of traveling to Puerto Rico and owning a sugar plantation.  She gets her wish, but you know the old saying, "be careful what you wish for."  According to the author, this is just the beginning of what will be a trilogy of books about the conquistadora, Ana.


My final recommendation to keep you toasty this winter, is entitled, Slavery by Another Name:The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, written by Douglas A. Blackmon, a prize-winning writer for the Wall Street Journal, and author of several critically-acclaimed books.  Mr. Blackmon weaves a historical tome that focuses on Black men being rounded up from the roads and settlements in the South, and being placed in modern-day concentration camps to provide labor to plantations and companies throughout the South.  This was a predicament that not only befell many men, but also quite a number of women, who were forced to work as cooks, laundresses, and sex slaves at the various camps located in the South.  This type of slave labor was used to make the bricks that were used on the streets and sidewalks of Atlanta, mined natural resources for Alcoa, and helped several insurance companies become the business giants that they are today.  Two adjectives can accurately describe this book - Enlightening and Maddening.

Well there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen, about 3,000 pages of various words put together to create a story, or share some history.  These are the books that the Colored Man is recommending for the upcoming frigid days and nights.  I have provided the entertaining, exciting reading material, now the succulent, lip-smacking stews are up to you to come up with.

Slick Rick Meets The Rock

Recently, the Colored Man had to go to Chicago for job training along with two of my co-workers, one White, and one African-American.  My white co-worker drove, which meant that he had a certain control over how fast we got there, as well as what music we listened to while on the trip.  It was a beautiful day to travel, so I got in the back seat and enjoyed the ride.  I knew that my younger colleagues musical tastes were not exactly the same as the Colored Man's, but hey, I like all types of music and figured that the entertainment would not be that bad.

One of the modern miracles in today's cars is satellite radio.  Satellite radio allows you the opportunity to listen to whatever genre or news program that you find enlightening during your travels.  I feel in deep-like with satellite when I had a rental car after some lady back into my vehicle and tore the door and side-mirror off.  I was able to begin watching my favorite morning show while getting dressed and then get into the car and continue to listen to it while driving to work.

As I stated earlier, my co-workers are younger than me and probably don't have the life experiences that I do, so it was no surprise that they chose to listen to gangsta' rap while riding along.  I listened for quite some time, until finally I had had enough of the bitches, ho's, and nigga's, and told me that it was time to change the station to something else.  They changed it, but only to more rap, but this time to old-school rap which the Colored Man can handle a little bit better.

It wasn't so much the rap music that did it in for me, it was really the fact that I just could not bear to be in a situation with a white person, and listening to words that denegrate me, my family, my friends and my neighbors.  It just didn't sit right with me, and I had to say something.  You could say that I was somewhat between a rock and a hard place, because my co-worker could have very easily have told me that it was his car and that he could listen to any type of music that he chose to. 

Rick Perry, the delusional governor of Texas has found himself between a rock and a hard place as well.  His situation concerns an actual rock that announced the name of his family's hunting lodge at the entrance to the compound.  The name of the compound is Niggerhead. 

Now at first thought the Colored Man was surprised that anyone would have this type of language so blatantly visible for all of the world to see.  But then, I began to do some research and found that there are over 750 names on geographical locations across America that use some variation of the word negro.  Some are based on the Spanish word for black, and not necessarily racist, while the majority are a derivation of Mr. Perry's rock.

In 1963 the Federal Government mandated that the offensive term be replaced with "Negro" which was the term used to identify African-Americans at that time.  The only other time that the government has stepped in was to mandate that the word "Jap" be removed and replaced with "Japanese."

America's love-affair with derogatory names and images is long-standing.  Just picture Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, The Washington Redskins, The Cleveland Browns.

Now why would Mr. Perry associate himself with someplace that brazenly flaunts its' racist intentions?  Probably because he is an unabashed fool.  He proclaims his foolery from the hallowed halls of academia, telling students at Yale, that he was proud of the dismal grades that he received while in college.  He further let them in on his foolishness by telling them he even got a D in a physical education class. 

Secondly, and probably most important in this examination of Perry's actions, is that he is a racist.  He attempts to portray himself as the enlightened tough-love governor, who is able to present himself as a home-spun local-yocal, but deep-down Mr. Perry holds the sentiments of his many tea bag followers.  The only real difference between the two is that Mr. Perry attended college, and they barely made it out of high school.  Deep down inside, Perry secretly claps and jumps for joy, whenever his friends hoist signs with deragatory images of President Obama.  He talks a good game about immigration, but he really views Hispanics only as maids and lawn company employees, and not as equals.

Unlike the Colored Man who was able to extract himself from between the rock and hard place that he found himself in, Mr. Perry has chosen to ignore his situation as if it doesn't matter.  He thinks that he is the slickest guy on the podium, and will be able to easily slide from between these two hard spots.  But that is not the case, particularly when you aspire to the most powerful position in the world, President of The United States. 

The position of President takes forethought, vision, emphathy, negotiation skills, scholarship, leadership.  Mr. Perry lacks all of these necessary skills, for if he had them he would have used them all, the moment he arrive at the hunting lodge and saw that despicable rock.   What was he thinking?  What messages has he taught his children?  Only a fool ignores the obvious, and repeats the same mistake year after year, drive-by and drive-by.

Something tells the Colored Man that this stone is gathering a lot of moss as it begins its' roll down the hill.  Don't be surprised to see pictures of Perry smiling proudly beside the rock. As we well know from watching previous fools, they always seem to have a penchant for documenting their foolery, and Perry is a first-rate, top-draw fool.