Book Bag: February 2012
Black History Month and Valentine’s Day: Marrying Knowledge and Love
What could be better than gifts of knowledge and love? And that is just what we are featuring in this dual column celebrating Black History Month and Valentine’s Day.
reviews by Sharon L. Shervington
The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy
written by Deborah Davis
We begin with a gift book that beautifully showcases one of the world’s greatest gift givers and a woman who has a history that has made her an international icon.
Of course, that would be Ms. Oprah Winfrey, and the book, The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy is powerful, like its subject in many ways. At the beginning and near the end of the book we see Oprah transformed from the regular woman she is to America’s high priestess of information television. The hair, the makeup, the clothes, and the stylists are all there in the book’s glossy pages. But that is just the packaging.
As the American media landscape has devolved over the last decade or
so, her contribution has become all the more important. The show, from
its earliest days tackled topics no one else on television would touch. I
can’t help wondering who will do the show celebrating the life of Don
Cornelius and exploring the sad and too-prevalent way he died.
Filled with gorgeous photographs throughout, including formal portraits
of stellar contributors like Maya Angelou, John Travolta, Toni
Morrison, Ellen DeGeneres, Nelson Mandela, Maria Shriver, Gloria
Steinem, and many others, the book is loosely structured around essays
that each of the celebrities have written for this celebration of 25
years of the Oprah show.
It is a glossy, and yet gritty, look at how Oprah has shaped the
culture in unprecedented ways. From her book-club picks which conferred
instant bestseller status, to Things I Like (and want you to have — and
she gave away literally hundreds of thousands of gifts), to the
heart-wrenching stories of survivors of war, domestic violence, and
cheating, the show put its competitors to shame.
She also championed psychologist Dr. Phil and artists like Alicia
Keyes, who then became cultural icons in their own right. She even
invited us into her own life, introducing us to her BFF Gayle King and
main squeeze Stedman.
This is an inspirational gift that is just right for a pal, a parent, a
child, or yourself. It’s right for anyone who wants to understand what
it can mean to be a woman, and a black woman at that, in America today.
The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy; by Deborah Davis; Abrams Books; 240 pages; $50
To the Mountaintop; My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement
written by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Another black woman who has grabbed America’s attention and
retained it for decades is Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the noted journalist
whose work has appeared in The New York Times and who has been a
fixture on CNN and on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. But her ultimate
significance may be in the sheer depth of her legacy which began when
she, along with Hamilton Holmes, became the first black students to
enroll at the University of Georgia in 1961. Her chronicle of her time
there is among the most intense content in the book.
She was also the first black woman writer at The New Yorker magazine and among the first generation of black reporters at The New York Times. Her many reports for PBS from South Africa were, for many, must-see TV.
For
decades, she has been on the front line of the search for parity
achievement in American education and in journalism. Her new book, To the Mountaintop,
is a beautiful gift to America and can be a personal keepsake, as much
for a new generation as for those who were alive in the early 1960s.
The
way she conveys her story and embeds it in the larger context of the
Civil Rights movement is elegant and unique. Throughout the book are
reproductions of full pages from The New York Times chronicling
some of the most important events of the movement; the back of the book
includes a selection of articles and a timeline.
She offers beautiful moments of courage, humor and solidarity
alongside the vicious hatred that she encountered. And always, there
were some people of all colors of good conscience. I thought about that a
few months ago when I happened to run into her at a popular New York
City restaurant, surrounded by Times editors. She is as beautiful
as ever and still at the center of things. At the heart of the book is
the power of struggle for justice and the reward and the reality of just
how far we have come.To the Mountaintop; My Journey Through the
Civil Rights Movement; by Charlayne Hunter-Gault; Roaring Brook Press;
$22.99; 198 pages
How to Read Erotic Art
written by Flavio Febbraro
Eroticism is a universal topic that has entranced humankind since
ancient times, and its representations in art tell a great deal about
places in time, about sociology, psychology, and, of course, what is
beautiful and what is forbidden. Part of a series that includes How to Read a Painting and How to Read a Photograph,
this is a truly beautiful volume that looks at some of the world’s best known
and most beloved paintings, such as Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss,” as well
as Western and Eastern sculpture and other forms of art.
Each piece is shown as a whole, and then on subsequent pages the author
looks at details that a viewer might not notice and then gives
information about what those details mean in the context of the time.
Beautifully printed and flexibound, How to Read Erotic Art is a classic that readers will turn to again and again to explore this most enticing, private, and yet political, part of life.
How to Read Erotic Art; by Flavio Febbraro; Abrams Books; $35; 400 pages
Sea Glass Hearts
written by Josie Iselin
Small and unpretentious, but a lovely little gift nonetheless is Sea Glass Hearts, a companion volume to Heart Stones.
Sea glass hearts are those delicately and beautifully colored and
shaped pieces of ancient history that one finds while roaming the
world’s beaches. Here, photographs of these tiny gems are paired with
lovely short poems and verses.
It’s the kind of book that cries out for a personal inscription and
will make both the giver and the recipient remember moments when they
found some of these simple treasures.
Sea Glass Hearts; by Josie Iselin; Abrams Books; 96 pages.
