Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868
Author:  Addie Brown, Farah Jasmine Griffin (Editor)
Publisher:  Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published:  May 1999

A riveting collection of letters written at the time of the Civil War that chronicle the lives of two African American women from New England: one who went to the South to found a school, the other a domestic servant who stayed in the North, in New York and New England. Rebecca Primus, the daughter of a prominent black Hartford family, was one of the many women who traveled south after the Civil War to teach the newly freed men and women. She was sent by the Hartford Freedmen's Aid Society to Royal Oak, Maryland, where she helped to found a school later named in her honor, the Primus Institute. Addie Brown - a bright, spirited, intelligent woman - was a domestic servant who worked in various households in Connecticut and New York. The letters Rebecca Primus wrote to her family provide a rare glimpse into the life and thoughts of a dedicated nineteenth-century New England black woman; they reveal her confrontations with Southern prejudice, her struggles to educate the freedmen, the practical effects of the politics of Reconstruction, and such everyday events of life in Royal Oak as her long-running battle with the postmaster about the slow delivery of her mail, and the wedding of a seventy-two-year-old woman to an eighteen-year-old Dutchman that set the whole town talking. During this time, she received more than one hundred letters from Addie Brown - letters that reveal another side of black life. Addie writes of her struggles to make a living, of her difficult economic circumstances in New England, of her self-education, of her growing political consciousness (she refuses to sit in the colored seats at a white church and skips a town event because of a black-face minstrel performer), and of her love for Rebecca, which is complicated by the courtship of various men whom she feels compelled to consider for reasons of economic security.

Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors
Author:  Marian Wright Edelman
Publisher:  Beacon Press
Date Published:  October 1999

"Marian Wright Edelman, "the most influential children's advocate in the country" (The Washington Post), shares stories from her life at the center of this century's most dramatic civil rights struggles. She pays tribute to the extraordinary personal mentors who helped light her way: Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Fannie Lou Hamer, William Sloane Coffin, Ella Baker, Mae Bertha Carter, and many others."--BOOK JACKET. "Lanterns takes us to Mississippi in the 1960s, where Edelman was the first and only Black woman lawyer. And we follow Edelman as she leads Bobby Kennedy on his fateful trip to see Mississippi poverty and hunger for himself, a powerful personal experience for the young RFK that helped awaken a nation's conscience to child hunger and poverty."--BOOK JACKET.

MANDELA: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY
Author: Anthony Sampson 
Format: Hardcover, 1st ed., 672pp.
Pub. Date: August  1999
Edition Desc: 1 AMER ED

"The Life of Nelson Mandela is one of the most extraordinary epics of the twentieth century. An almost-forgotten prisoner on Robben Island twenty years ago, apparently doomed to a helpless existence as a victim of apartheid, he not only survived but almost single-handedly saved South Africa from potential chaos, to become one of the most widely admired leaders in the world. Mandela's myth is dazzling; in this biography Anthony Sampson penetrates it to show us the man himself."--BOOK JACKET. "Mandela is filled with new insights and information. We see how prison, which he and his fellow inmates turned into a kind of unofficial university, gradually transformed Mandela from a headstrong activist into a reflective and consummately skilled statesman. We learn how British and American diplomats cold-shouldered him when support was desperately needed, and about the political infighting, sometimes vicious, that went on between anti-apartheid factions. Particularly fascinating is Sampson's narrative of the incredible negotiations leading to Mandela's release from prison and the eventual collapse of the white regime, when his colleagues feared that he was selling out to the government."--BOOK JACKET.

WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD
Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ; Lynn Davis (Photographer) 
Format: Hardcover, 1st ed., 288pp.
Pub. Date: September  1999
Edition Desc: 1 AMER ED

"Traveling by camel, by dhow, by Land Cruiser, and on foot, the renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us to twelve countries in search of Africa's magnificent past, the now neglected civilizations that in their day were as grand and sophisticated as any on the face of the earth. From Nubia's ancient empire, which for a time ruled Egypt and centuries before had established the earliest known African city, to the fabled town of Timbuktu, where during the medieval period there thrived a center of scholars that rivaled any in Europe and where books were as prized as gold, to Ethiopia's Christian kingdom, where the Lost Ark of the Covenant is said to reside under perpetual vigil, Gates reveals an Africa little known to Westerners. And as he shows us the achievements that exploiters of the continent have ignored or denied for centuries, he introduces us as well to the fascinating variety of modern-day Africans, many of whom are descended from the great peoples who built Africa's most formidable cultures - including the Asante, the Swahili, the Tuareg, and the Shona."--BOOK JACKET.

Yesterday, I Cried: Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving
Author: Iyanla Vanzant
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Trade
Date Published:  March 1999
Format:  Trade Cloth

Vanzant is a motivational speaker, spiritual counselor, ordained minister, and Yoruba priestess (minister of the ancient Nigerian religion). A frequent guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, this prolific author also makes regular appearances on best sellers lists. Yesterday, I Cried is chiefly an autobiographical account of how Vanzant triumphed over her troubled past to achieve success. Losing her mother at age three, she was a childhood victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. A single mother at 16, Vanzant rushed into an abusive marriage at 19 and was soon raising three children alone on welfare. Despite this, she earned both undergraduate and law degrees and now counsels others on overcoming difficult circumstances to achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment. In One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, Vanzant speaks of pursuing spiritual and personal growth. Unfortunately, her advice is often redundant and sprinkled with vague platitudes, e.g., "You can only have what is for you to have" and "Love will heal anything that is not an expression of love." Though Vanzant's rich, sonorous voice is certainly an asset to these abridged productions, it cannot compensate for their meager content. Her many fans will probably expect to find these at public libraries, but purchase only to cover demand.- Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., OH Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information

 2000 Award Winner
Outstanding Literary work, Non fiction
"Yesterday, I Cried"
by Iyanla Vanzant
(Simon & Schuster)