Black History Month

Black History Month: Literary & Bookish African American Firsts

Lucy Terry is the first known African American poet. Her poem “Bars fight,” was written in 1746 to commemorate the Deerfield Massacre in Massachusetts. It was unpublished in her lifetime, and is her only surviving poem.

Jupiter-Hammon, An Evening Thought broadsideThe first published Black writer in America,
Jupiter Hammon wrote his first poem “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries” on Christmas Day, 1760. It was published early in January, 1761.

Phillis Wheatley is the best-known African American poet of the colonial period, and had a popular following in her day. Unfortunately, many of her white readers refused to believe her poems had been written by an African slave, which led to Wheatley having the dubious distinction of being the first Black American writer to defend her authorship in court. Successful, she included the attestation in the preface to her book of collected works, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in London in 1773 (Boston publishers declined to publish it).

The first autobiography of a free black American, John Marrant’s A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black was published in England in 1785.

Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative was the first published slave autobiography to describe the horrors of the Middle Passage. It was published in London in 1789 and in the U.S. in 1791.

Freedom's Journal front page

The first African American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States was Freedom’s Journal, edited by Black abolitionists John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish. It was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829, when it was superseded by The Rights of All, published by Cornish. All 103 issues of Freedom’s Journal are digitized and online at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The first slave narrative published in the U.S. by a black woman was Mary Prince’s narrative, published in 1831 as The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, with a Supplement by the Editor, to Which Is Added the Narrative of Asa-Asa, a Captured African.

David Ruggles was an early African American writer, printer, editor, and publisher. He was an abolitionist and one of the most visible conductors on the Underground Railroad; one of the slaves he helped to freedom was Frederick Douglass. His self-published pamphlet The Extinguister, a satire of the American Colonization Society, which
aimed to ship all Blacks back to Africa, was the first imprint by a Black
author/publisher. His bookstore (half of a grocery store) was the first African American bookstore. It was destroyed by a mob in 1833.

Frederick Douglass’s classic text, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, was published in 1845, the first slave narrative to be written entirely by a black author, rather than transcribed and edited by a white abolitionist. Douglass published other autobiographies, including My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and two separate editions of The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892).

In 1854, Afro-Creole poet and educator Armand Lanusse published Les Cenelles (The Holly Berries), a French-language anthology of poetry by Louisiana Creoles, the first anthology of verse by black Americans.

A prominent abolitionist, lecturer and writer, William Wells Brown is responsible for three Black American “firsts.” In 1852, he published Three Years in Europe, the first travel book written by an African American. His Novel Clotel, or the President’s Daughter, was published in 1853 and is thought to be the first African American novel. The novel is based on the story (confirmed by DNA tests) that Thomas Jefferson had fathered a child with his slave Sally Hemmings. In 1858, his play The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858) was the first published play by an African American.

The first woman African American novelist was Harriet Wilson, whose Our Nig was published in 1859. It was the first novel by a Black author to be published in the United States (William Wells Brown’s Clotel was first published in England.) It was lost for more than a century, until rediscovered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1982.

In 1882, African American historian George Washington Williams published his History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, the first comprehensive history of African Americans.

Malinda Russell, Domestic Cookbook

A Domestic Cook Book by Malinda Russell, published in Michigan in 1866, is thought to be the first cookbook written by a black American. The Clements Library at the University of Michigan holds the only known original copy. A limited, color facsimile edition was published by the Clements Library in 2007.

Historian and author Dr. Carter G. Woodson is the father of Black History Month. He began campaigning for a “Negro History Week” in February 1926, to be observed near the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and Frederick Douglass on February 14. It was a successful yearly celebration of African American achievement, and in 1976 was expanded to a month, to coincide with the U.S. Bicentennial

A prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance as a scholar and bibliophile, Arthur Schomburg amassed the largest collection of African American literature, scholarship and art in the world. By the mid-1920s, he had over 5,000 books, pamphlets, prints, manuscripts, artworks. His collection formed the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, at the New York Public Library in Harlem.

Chester Himes is credited with being the first black mystery writer in the U.S. He wrote a series of hard-boiled mysteries set in Harlem, featuring two hardbitten detectives named Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. The titles of the series include A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill, All Shot Up,The Big Gold Dream, The Heat’s On, Cotton Comes to Harlem, and Blind Man With A Pistol; all published from 1957 to1969. Cotton Comes to Harlem was made into a movie in 1970

Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She won the prize in 1950, for her 1949 book Annie Allen.

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun became the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

The first African American science fiction author, Samuel R. Delany is also the first openly gay science fiction writer. He has won both Hugo and Nebula awards for his fiction, (the first black author to do so), and is a respected critic in the field. His first book, The Jewels of Aptor, was published as part of an Ace Double in 1962.

Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first nonfiction work by an African American to make the New York Times best-seller list, where it remained for two years.

Charles Gordone was the first African American Pulitzer Prize winner in drama, for his 1970 play No Place To Be Somebody.

Wayne Howard was the first African-American comic-book artist to receive a “created by” cover-credit, for Midnight Tales #1.

In 1976, Robert Hayden was named the first African American Poet Laureate of the United States.

Alan Bell was the first African American publisher of a mainstream gay publication. Gaysweek, founded in New York City in 1977, was the city’s first mainstream lesbian and gay newspaper. During its run from 1977 to 1979, it was one of only three gay weeklies in the world.

Elsie Bernice Washington was a journalist and nonfiction author, but her one fictional work, a genre romance novel, won her the title “mother of African American Romance.” Entwined Destinies was the first romance novel written by a black author featuring black characters. The novel was written under the pen name Rosalind Welles and published in 1980.

In 1982, Charles Fuller was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for A Soldier’s Play.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 was awarded to Toni Morrison, “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” She was the first African American receive the award.

The same year, Rita Dove was the first African-American woman named Poet Laureate of the United States. She was also the youngest person named to that position.

Barak Obama, the first African American President of the United States, is also an author — and if you happened to have picked up his first book, Dreams From My Father, when it was published in 1995, you’re in luck. Since Obama wasn’t the first black U.S. President at the time of the book’s publication, the first edition had a relatively low print run and sales, so copies are scarce. Now that Obama is the first black U.S. President, the book is now the first book by the first black U.S. President, and the scarce, first edition is much sought after by collectors. Signed copies are for sale for $9,000 or more. (Of course, if you just want to read it, you can buy a later printing of the book at our shop for a whole lot less!)


Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Holiday Author Book Signing

Sunday, December 11, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Christmas is coming, and you know what? Books make grrreat gifts. And if there’s a history buff on your list, well, we have just the thing! We’ll have the authors of three popular local history books on hand to sign copies of their eminently giftworthy books.

Mount Diablo: The Extraordinary Life and Landscapes
of a California Treasure

Photography by Stephen Joseph
Written by Linda Rimac Colberg

A beautiful new addition to the history and literature of Contra Costa’s most prominent and beloved landmark. Stephen Joseph has been photographing its natural beauty and remarkable diversity for 25 years. Selecting from the thousands of photos he’s taken over the years, he presents a selection of 181 photos, from close-in images that make you feel as if you’re sitting among the branches of oak trees to breathtaking panoramas that open out both visually and literally – some of the pages fold open to three times the length of the book! The text adds background on the natural and cultural history of Mount Diablo.

Mountain Lore:
History and Place Names of Mount Diablo

By Rich McDrew and Rachel Haislet

The pages of Mountain Lore hold the stories of small treasures tucked throughout Mount Diablo. An estimated 250 creeks, canyons, trails, springs, and locations exist within the over 20,000 acres of Mount Diablo State Park. Most of these locations are identified by a place name, which depicts common fauna, flora, topography, or local historical significance.

Mountain Lore concentrates on 101 of these obscure place names. Among the place names are a few unusual words, but most originate from people who have had a historic presence on Mount Diablo. Some of these place names originated before the establishment of the Park (1921) and were designated by settlers in the mid-to late 1800s and early 1900s. Many decades have passed since the creation of many of these names, causing them to become esoteric or lost. Mountain Lore endeavors to revitalize the origins and significance of these place names.

Concord: A History

Images of America: Concord
By Joel A. Harris

Located in the shadow of Mount Diablo, the land that includes Concord was originally a Mexican land grant to Don Salvio Pacheco in 1834. The original Mexican land grant families of Concord were quickly supplanted by American settlers during the Gold Rush. The original Spanish name for the town, Todos Santos, was changed to Concord by the American settlers and their local newspaper, against the wishes of the Pacheco family. The name stuck, and the town became Concord in 1869. Concord’s development is a true American story of Native Americans, Spanish explorers, Mexican Californios, and settlers from across the country and around the world.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

One thousand, six hundred sixty seven words a day!

Greetings from Nanowrimo

That’s not too many! November is National Novel Writing Month. The time of year when thousands of enthusiastic writers pick up their pencils, their laptops, their typewriters or some other weird writing implement of their choice and pound out a novel in 30 days. Or rather, a hastily scribbled but hopefully salvageable first draft of a novel. Participants begin writing November 1 and by midnight, November 30 they have a 50,000-word novel.
Berkshire Books co-owner Cheryl will be participating again — for the seventh year in a row. (And someday I might even finish one of these things…)

We’ll be hosting NaNoWriMo write-ins at
Berkshire Books Every Sunday afternoon in November
Noon – 3:00

(Note: Normally we are closed Sundays, but will be open every Sunday in November for the write-ins. If you’re not participating in NaNoWriMo, come on by anyway!)

Berkshire Books
3480 Clayton Road, Concord

Call (925) 685-9999 if you have questions

(Yes, we have a place to plug in your laptop. No, we don’t have WiFi)

Refreshments will be on hand (caffeine, sugar, chocolate)

For more information on this crazy program, go to nanowrimo.org

Posted in NaNoWriMo | Leave a comment

New Book about Mount Diablo


Mount Diablo: The Extraordinary Life and Landscapes of a California Treasure is a beautiful new addition to the history and literature of Contra Costa’s most prominent and beloved landmark. Local photographer Stephen Joseph has been photographing its natural beauty and remarkable diversity for 25 years. Selecting from the thousands of photos he’s taken over the years, he presents a selection of 181 photos, from close-in images that make you feel as if you’re sitting among the branches of oak trees to breathtaking panoramas that open out both visually and literally — some of the pages fold open to three times the length of the 13″x13″ book.

The accompanying text, written by local writing coach and editor Linda Rimac Colberg, adds background on the natural and cultural history of Mount Diablo. The book is published by the Mount Diablo Interpretive Association, known for its many guidebooks that promote public awareness and appreciation of the park.

For those of us who’ve lived for so many years with Mount Diablo in the corner of our eye, the photos in this book are both familiar and inspire a fresh sense of wonder. Mount Diablo truly is a California treasure, and Stephen Joseph has created a treasure of a book. An affordable treasure! For a fine art book of landscape photography, Mount Diablo is a steal at $40.00. (Yes, we have copies!)


Mount Diablo, The Extraordinary Life and Landscapes of a California Treasure. Featuring the Art of Stephen Joseph. Written by Linda Rimac Colberg. Mount Diablo Interpretive Association, 2010. 13” x 13” hardcover; 266 pages. $40.00.

From Mount Diablo

Posted in Local History | Tagged | Leave a comment

Pulp Fiction

 

Dressed to Kill, by Milton OzakiBoy meets body…!

The car was hot, and so was the blonde who drove it. A smart shamus like Rusty Forbes should have known better than to hole up with her in a tourist cabin. By the time that little picnic was over, he found himself custodian of a corpse–and on the trail of enough loot to stock a department store.

 Too bad for Rusty that some of Chicago’s rougher citizens viewed the situation with alarm. It wasn’t enough that the corpse brought the cops down on him. He also had to battle a horde of hoodlums.

 Fortunately, the hot blonde had a cool friend–even bigger and blonder.  She gave Rusty, among other nice things, a tip on how to come out of the deal with a buck or two. Whereupon he quit being a fugitive from justice and dished it out instead–with the aid of his pet .38 equalizer!

 ——

 Milton K. Ozaki was an early Asian-American crime fiction writer who published over twenty novels between 1946 and 1959, under his own name and under the pseudonym Robert O. Saber.

He was only a fair-to-middling pulp writer, but he did have what Bill Pronzini, in Son of Gun in Cheek, calls Ozaki’s “uncanny ability to manufacture similes and metaphors of rare exuberance ingenuity.” That ability pulls his books out of the category of so-so pulp detective fiction and into the ranks of cracked-prose genius.

 My favorite Ozaki line is from The Deadly Pick-Up (quoted in Son of Gun in Cheek):

 ”The back of my head jumped spastically like a caterpillar on a hot stove and my cranial cavity seethed with thick volatile chili juice.”

 But Dressed to Kill has some good lines too:

 ”The blonde strolled to the cabin and unlocked the door. She went in, leaving the door invitingly open. I looked at it and my red corpuscles began to get redder.”

 ”The hours crawled like invalid eels.”

 ”I tried to signal him for a refill, but his eyes were devoted to the girl, who wore a sweater which bulged in a way which shouldn’t happen to pure virgin wool. The fellow with her had the lip of a bugler and the hair of a bowling ball.”

 And what book-lover could resist this one?

 ”Musicians, actors, dancers, singers, con men and jeweled ladies—in short, guys and dolls of talent—all flocked to the Frolics as regularly as book-lovers to Kroch’s.”

Dressed to Kill, by Milton Ozaki. Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey: Graphic Books, 1954. Original price: 25 cents. Paperback first. $15.00.

Posted in Pulp Fiction, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

November is NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo logoNovember is National Novel Writing Month! The time of year when thousands of enthusiastic writers pick up their pencils, their laptops, their typewriters or some other weird writing implement of their choice and pound out a novel in 30 days. Or rather, a hastily scribbled but hopefully salvageable first draft of a novel. Participants begin writing November 1 and by midnight, November 30 they have a 175-page, or 50,000-word novel. That’s just One thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words a day!

Berkshire Books co-owner Cheryl will be participating again — for the sixth year in a row. A true glutton for punishment.

We’ll be hosting NaNoWriMo write-ins at
Berkshire Books Every Sunday afternoon in November
1:00 – 4:00


(Note: Normally we are closed Sundays, but will be open just for the write-ins. If you’re not participating in NaNoWriMo, come on in anyway!)

Berkshire Books
3480 Clayton Road, Concord

Call (925) 685-9999 if you have questions

(Yes, we have a place to plug in your laptop. No, we don’t have WiFi)

Refreshments will be on hand

For more information on this crazy program, go to nanowrimo.org

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Department of Pretty Books

Or, they don’t make them like this anymore!

Pope's Poetical Works

Pope's Poetical Works


(For sale. Enquire within. #659. Pope, Alexander. The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope with Life. London: Gall & Inglis, [No date]. No Edition Stated. Gilt decorated cloth. Very Good/Sans DJ as issued. Gaudy Victorian decorated edition of Pope’s poetry. Terra cotta cover boards are beveled with gilt and color titles and embellishments. Inset illustration of a vase of flowers framed on front cover. Four steel engravings inside with most other pages decoratively bordered. All edges gilt. Some edge-wear to head and heel of spine and corner tips. Period ownership label on first paste-down. Internally, hinges just beginning to crack. Gilt and illustrations still bright and attractive. Overall a lovely example of the sort of over-the-top decoration the Victorians adored. $85.00.)

Posted in Pretty books | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Happy Labor Day!

We will be CLOSED on Labor Day.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New Store Hours

Attention, Shoppers! We’ve changed our store hours. The new hours are:

Monday through Saturday
10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Sunday: CLOSED

Since you’re here, feast your squinties on this gem:

Rumble, by Harlan Ellison

Rusty felt the sweat that had come to live on his spine trickle down like a small bug. He was free of the gang. He’d split with them once and for all.

Now he was no longer Prez of the Cougars. He’d be able to walk past the corner and not have the bluecoat stare at him like he was hot or something.

The streets were silent. It was too quiet. He came around the corner, and there they were, waiting.

Because: “NOBODY BUGS OUT ON THE COUGARS!”

Rumble. Harlan Ellison. NY: Pyramid Books, 1958. Paperback original, 1st. VG. Signed. $200.


Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Crossover Time!

The latest Sherlock Holmes movie has got people talking about the Great Detective and his faithful Watson. But personally I think the movie was lacking a little something. Action? No, no, it had enough of that. Evil villain? Check. Mysterious woman? Check. Oh, I know what was missing!

Tarzan! Of course!


[Click for larger image]

Someone could make a movie out of this book and make a BILLION DOLLARS!!

Either that or it would go straight to DVD and show on SyFy every other late night Thursday for the rest of eternity.

I haven’t read the book — are you serious? But the back cover gives an adequate synopsis:


[Click for larger image]

Yeah, you might feel like a monkey after reading this book.

The front cover blurb poses a small mystery. If Philip Jose Farmer is the “true” author of Venus on the Half Shell, who is the fake author? What is Venus on the Half Shell?

The mystery solved:


[Click for larger image]

You’re welcome!

Peerless Peer: $30; Venus on the Half Shell: $20.


Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Comments