(Akiit.com) Shocked?! You should be. I know I am. Before any of you say anything, I admit that I am somewhat surprised to be reading T. Styles latest novel, Black and Ugly. I began reading the book with a few preconceived notions, which after reading the novel were not disproved. What caught me unaware was that I actually liked the book…and would publicly say it. While I still have issues with aspects of the novel, I can not deny that I enjoyed Black and Ugly.

Black and Ugly features the friendship of four people who grew up in the same housing project: Parade Knight, Miss Wayne, Sky Taylor and Daffany Stans. Parade, who’s been told by her mother and her best friend Sky that she’s black and ugly, has a major inferiority complex going. Parade is not afraid to go hands up with anyone, mainly because she does not know how attractive she is. Miss Wayne, the circle’s only male member is gay, and could be considered the comedy relief of the novel, sells stolen designer clothes for a living. Daffany is a ho, literally. She’s makes ends meet by turning tricks. Daffany has a secret that could destroy her friends’ lives if it ever got out, because it almost destroyed hers.

Sky is the bitch in the group. Sky is beautiful, catty, and jealous. This skank has no redeeming quality whatsoever. Since Sky believes that she is all that and a bag of chips, she is at her wits ends when she begins to suspect that Parade is sleeping with her boyfriend, Jay Hernandez. Well, how can that be, her fine boyfriend sleeping with Parade, with her black and ugly self? One night Sky’s selfish and catty nature comes out and starts a chain of events that will end in murder.
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(Akiit.com) “African-American history, to be clear, is so much more than a handful of extraordinary individuals or practices like slavery, Jim Crow, and civil rights.

A lot of it is painful, but it’s also inspiring and triumphant… It took the Civil War, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and a lot of struggle in between to secure African-Americans the basic right to citizenship that white Americans took for granted.

[This book] isn’t a big sermon on the struggle; instead, it’s a straightforward, interesting (I hope!), and honest overview of African-American history from Africa through the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the 1960s civil rights movement until now. Along the way, that history birthed a culture that includes the black church and education as well as sports, music, literature, television, and film.
—Excerpted from the Introduction

I majored in black studies in college way back when the new field of study was still generally being dismissed as a joke or, at best, as undeserving of being the focus of extensive scholarly research. So, my interest was particularly piqued by the publication of this book for a few of reasons.
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(Akiit.com) Being About the Lord’s Business

Every so often, a self-published book beats the odds and grabs the attention of enough readers to draw an offer from a traditional publisher. I sure hope that this happens for this book. Dr. Linda Beed, an emerging Christian author and veteran educator has recently released her debut novel. Business Unusual is an inspirational contemporary romance that is Christian fiction in it’s purest form.

Bernadette Lewis is a very accomplished young businesswoman. She is the owner and President of B. L. Lewis Enterprises, a privately held consulting, software development and personal training service. Her company has been very successful in just a short period of time. Many wonder what her secret to success is. Hers is a success story grounded in faith and obedience.

As a young, single Christian woman; Bernadette has values and attributes not always understood by the secular world, but that still does not deter her from being who she was raised to be. The daughter of parents in the ministry, she and her sisters have built their careers on service to God and mankind. Their personal lives mirror that Christian upbringing and it is no surprise that as adults, they find themselves dealing with unlike personalities in the people that come into their professional lives. How Bernadette deals with these individuals is the core of this story.
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(Akiit.com) Domestic Abuse: A Generational Curse?

This book spans a 60 year period in the lives of a family of strong African American women who survived domestic abuse one generation after another. Very well written and easy to follow this book is a classic literary gem. Told by the very eloquent third generational daughter, Lydia; it is a tale that will keep the reader turning the pages late into the night touching the heart and giving rise to hope for victims of domestic abuse and admiration for these amazing women. This is a story of mothers and daughters, a story you may never forget.

Set in Philadelphia where the family settled after leaving South Carolina; we meet Eloise and her husband Issac Bingham. With their three young children, they have set up home in North Philadelphia expecting a better life but circumstances prevail that they never expected or even knew how to handle. Filled with unconditional love and Southern family values; Eloise had faith that she and her children would survive the most horrid abuse and pain that Issac wreaked upon his family.

Alcoholism, racism and depression played a major role in the demons that plagued Issac over the years. These demons continued to control him as he struggled to provide for a family that grew to include eight children and a dedicated stay-at-home wife. The harder he worked, the less he was able to prosper until he no longer cared that he was no longer the man he started out as. Both his children and his wife lived in constant fear of him. As he beat and degraded his wife and offspring the reader often wondered if this family would survive. But survive they did with their faith in God and the determination to turn tragedy into hope.
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(Akitt.com) “While the Constitution declares that all men are born free and equal, the wise corporation of the city of Washington… see proper to proscribe the rights of a certain portion of the community… Ought such laws to exist? Ought Congress to allow Washington, the spot which alone of all others should be sacred to the rights of man… to be polluted by the footsteps of a slave?

… Many who there plead for the equal rights of man, are the very men who… buy and sell their brethren like beasts of burden.”

—Excerpted from an 1827 editorial by John B. Russwurm (page 88)

Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American newspaper ever published in the United States, debuted on March 16, 1827. The short-lived periodical was the brainchild of two black men, Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm. The former was a Presbyterian minister who had been born free in Delaware, while the latter was a mulatto, the college-educated son of a white Jamaican plantation owner and one of his servants.

Although the pair printed the paper in New York City, their ambitious mission, as stated in the inaugural edition, was to reach the “five hundred thousand free people of color” spread across the country. And while Freedom’s Journal would fall far short of that goal and fold in 1829, it nevertheless must be credited with making a seminal contribution to the abolitionist movement by kick starting a dialogue about the evils of slavery which would survive its unfortunate demise.
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