Poetry and Jazz Music have been friendly kissing cousins at least since the 1920s during the United States ’ great jazz age and the very famous worldwide Harlem Renaissance. That was when the great author Langston Hughes and others thrilled themselves and their friends by reciting and recording poetry to the beats of jazz. Many more––Jack Kerouac, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Sekou Sundiata, June Jordan, etc––later followed their example. With that in mind, it makes sense that the Academy of American Poets kicked off the first National Poetry Month in April 1996, and that the Smithsonian Institution followed suit in April 2002 with a “Jam Session” headed by famed New Orleans son Branford Marsalis. In April 2003, the Jam Session was officially recognized by the U.S. Congress as Jazz Music Appreciation Month. Some might say, “Yeah, well, that’s nice and everything but why bother to celebrate?” Excellent question. Here are some answers: Probably no other single literar...

(photo of Susan L. Taylor by Marc Brasz) When the NAACP in 2006 presented author and social activist Susan L. Taylor with its President’s Award, the organization publicly acknowledged what readers of Essence® Magazine had been experiencing for nearly four decades. Namely, that Ms. Taylor is among the most effective, dynamic, and beloved human resources on the planet. In All About Love (Urban Books) a rich of harvest of writings from Taylor ’s “In the Spirit” column, it’s easy to see why. A collection of more than 80 empowering editorials and three bonus dialogues, All About Love is all about life as we know, live, dread, treasure, and live it. Unlike too many book collections of short essays or creative nonfiction, this is not one aimed at demonstrating the intellectual profundity or virtuosity of the author. These are the observations, emotions, realizations and affirmations by which generations of women––and sometimes men––have mapped out the course of their daily lives and es...

Savannah, Ga., USA––The young adult novel, Blood Kin A Savannah Story , written by Robert T.S. Mickles and featuring a foreword by Aberjhani, debuted at number four on ESSENCE Magazine’s Best Seller Book List for paperback fiction in the March 2008 “Hollywood Issue” of the publication. A taxi driver and native of Savannah , Georgia , Mickles said his surprise best-selling novel is based on stories passed down to him by, “My grandmother, Beulah Tremble. She was born not too long after slavery ended in the United States and her parents had actually been slaves. She lived to be 100 years old and at the time when she passed on to me the stories that had been passed on to her, I really had no idea what a powerful legacy they would turn out to be.” The novel takes place during the Civil War and tells the story of two best friends, one black and one white, who d...

“All this life and love and strife and failure––is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?” –– The Wisdom of WEB Du Bois The first half of the twentieth century in the United States and much of the world was an era when racial and ethnic differences determined even the most uncontrived actions. Stepping into a restaurant, boarding a train, engaging in sexual relationships, or running or voting for a public office were all ruled by notions of differences between groups. Race remained an element that tempted society in general and historians in particular to half-truths, shortsightedness, and outright falsifications. However, as W.E.B. Du Bois noted in his many observations on the nature of history, it was important to realize that the record of human interaction was much more than an account of entanglements between people with varying shades of skin color. It was also the log of humankind’s ability or inability to rise above age-old phobi...