January 7, 2008
Hurt Village
By Katori Hall
The Memphis city government has given the residents of Hurt Village, a dilapidated housing project located on Auction Street, one week to pack up their belongings and relocate to other parts of the city.
Awarded the Hope grant by the federal government, the city must demolish the Hurt Village projects that have become a symbol of urban decay and crime; an embarrassing blight on the city’s downtown skyline. One family, led by Big Mama, is being relocated to a flourishing suburb. But when her grandson Bucky returns home from the Iraq war with a haunting secret, the
family and the entire community comes face to face with the ironies of the American Dream.
February 11, 2008
Waafrika
By Nanna Hadikwa Mwaluko
A love story set in a remote village in Kenya, east Africa. Two women fall in love: Awino, a Kenyan from the Luo tribe, and Bobby, an American Peace Corps volunteer. Despite efforts to hide their relationship, villagers accuse the women’s affair of causing deaths by famine. They wish to take action, but Awino is daughter to the Chief and therefore protected so long as she follows African tradition. The women, tribe, villagers and Bobby all pay for love.
March 3, 2008
Ride the Rustling Wheat
By Francesca Sanders
Who has the right to teach African-American studies?
Clea, a singing slave brought to Kansas in 1854 knows the answer; Steven A. Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, knows; even Lee-Von, a college student, has the answer. It’s only Laurie, a brand new teacher hired for her first job, who’s not even sure of the question. When Harvard professor, Kwalmie Kandutta shows up, steeped in credentials how is it he only seems to blur the lines, not illuminate them? Join this musical journey between time and place and you just might discover who you really are at the end of the dusty trail.
April 7, 2008
The Klucking of Hens
By Carole Lockwood
The time is 1961 in the tiny town of Celestial, as six women gather on a hot Alabama morning to welcome the new Yankee bride of one of their town’s favorite sons. It would require seven members to reinstate the Queens of the Golden Mask, their auxiliary of the KKK. Slowly Rose is drawn in with talk of picnics, charities and friendship until the
eerie hooded “blood oath” initiation. The year, 1963, brings distrust and the weighing of words. An FBI agent has been spotted parked in front of their houses and cruising the streets of Celestial seeking information on the night rides of these women’s husbands. Will there be a traitor, an informer in their midst, tipping off the FBI – and, if so, who and how will the situation be dealt with?
May 5, 2008
Living Green
By Gloria Bond Clunie
It’s 1995 – the year of the Million Man March. Angela and Frank Freeman, an affluent black couple, collide when they decide to sell their beautiful suburban home in order to fund their daughter’s
college education. Should they resettle their two children in another mostly white community, or return, as a family, to discover their roots in the “old neighborhood?”
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