Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY) Silver Medalist in LGBT+ Fiction The eclectic stories in this collection are bound by the threads of desire in its many forms, above all, the desire for love and a place of safety in a world where being Black and gay can thwart the fulfillment of that longing. The characters are complex, driven, difficult, and even, at times, unsympathetic, but always compelling. In other words: fully rounded human beings living complicated lives. A proud Black woman who escaped her rural, impoverished town returns after the collapse of her marriage and faces the scorn of those she left behind. A middle-aged gay man finds his loneliness temporarily relieved by the arrival of a stray cat. An unhappily married woman becomes enmeshed in her bisexual husband's attempt to create a ménage à trois with a much younger man. A 16-year-old boy discovers the power of his sexuality when he embarks upon a dangerous seduction. Two Black men, one mature and rich, the other young and struggling, are drawn into a contentious affair by their shared love of opera. The legendary blues singer Glady Bentley crashes up against the barriers of race and gender when she gets caught up in a police raid. Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck is a masterful collection of stories by a gifted writer who has fully hit his stride.
“A passionate, alive, and original novel about love, race, and jazz in 1920s Harlem and Paris—a moving story of traveling far to find oneself” (David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife). On a sweltering summer night in 1925, beauties in beaded dresses mingle with hepcats in dapper suits on the streets of Harlem. The air is thick with reefer smoke, and jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways. Ben Charles and his devoted wife are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear music and drink bootleg liquor. For aspiring poet Ben, the heady rhythms are a revelation. So is Baby Back Johnston, an ambitious trumpet player who flashes a devilish grin and blasts dynamite from his horn. Ben finds himself drawn to the trumpeter—and to Paris, where Baby Back says everything is happening. In Paris, black people are welcomed as exotic celebrities, especially those from Harlem. It’s an easy life, but it quickly leaves Ben adrift and alone, craving solace through anonymous dalliances in the city’s decadent underground scene. From chic Parisian cafés to seedy opium dens, his odyssey will bring new love, trials, and heartache, even as echoes from the past urge him to decide where true fulfillment and inspiration lie. Jazz Moon is an evocative story of emotional and artistic awakening set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age–Paris—a winner of the Edmund White Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. “Jazz Moon mashes up essences of Hurston and Hughes and Fitzgerald into a heady mixtape of a romance: driving and rhythmic as an Armstrong Hot Five record, sensuous as the small of a Cotton Club chorus girl’s back. I enjoyed it immensely.” —Larry Duplechan, author of Blackbird and Got ’til It’s Gone
Joe Okonkwo has produced a volume of poetry that is actually a mosaic of African-American and Gay issues. This riveting collection covers everything from Jazz and sex, to politics and dating; from racism within the Gay community, to black on black racism. There are poems about the journey from depression to wholeness and poems about exuberant gay men flouncing about the streets wearing only silk boxer shorts and argyle socks. This volume has a little of everything including poignant tributes to Jazz greats Ethel Waters and Billie Holiday. Joe Okonkwo fearlessly tackles taboo subjects such as what some African-Americans really think about the ghetto, who really bears the blame for slavery and how expectations the Gay media sets forth affect those who don't—or can't—comply. Milk Chocolate/Naked Moon is exactly what we've been waiting for: an unpredictable, page turning collection of poetry.
Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY) Silver Medalist in LGBT+ Fiction The eclectic stories in this collection are bound by the threads of desire in its many forms, above all, the desire for love and a place of safety in a world where being Black and gay can thwart the fulfillment of that longing. The characters are complex, driven, difficult, and even, at times, unsympathetic, but always compelling. In other words: fully rounded human beings living complicated lives. A proud Black woman who escaped her rural, impoverished town returns after the collapse of her marriage and faces the scorn of those she left behind. A middle-aged gay man finds his loneliness temporarily relieved by the arrival of a stray cat. An unhappily married woman becomes enmeshed in her bisexual husband's attempt to create a ménage à trois with a much younger man. A 16-year-old boy discovers the power of his sexuality when he embarks upon a dangerous seduction. Two Black men, one mature and rich, the other young and struggling, are drawn into a contentious affair by their shared love of opera. The legendary blues singer Glady Bentley crashes up against the barriers of race and gender when she gets caught up in a police raid. Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck is a masterful collection of stories by a gifted writer who has fully hit his stride.
“A passionate, alive, and original novel about love, race, and jazz in 1920s Harlem and Paris—a moving story of traveling far to find oneself” (David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife). On a sweltering summer night in 1925, beauties in beaded dresses mingle with hepcats in dapper suits on the streets of Harlem. The air is thick with reefer smoke, and jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways. Ben Charles and his devoted wife are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear music and drink bootleg liquor. For aspiring poet Ben, the heady rhythms are a revelation. So is Baby Back Johnston, an ambitious trumpet player who flashes a devilish grin and blasts dynamite from his horn. Ben finds himself drawn to the trumpeter—and to Paris, where Baby Back says everything is happening. In Paris, black people are welcomed as exotic celebrities, especially those from Harlem. It’s an easy life, but it quickly leaves Ben adrift and alone, craving solace through anonymous dalliances in the city’s decadent underground scene. From chic Parisian cafés to seedy opium dens, his odyssey will bring new love, trials, and heartache, even as echoes from the past urge him to decide where true fulfillment and inspiration lie. Jazz Moon is an evocative story of emotional and artistic awakening set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age–Paris—a winner of the Edmund White Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. “Jazz Moon mashes up essences of Hurston and Hughes and Fitzgerald into a heady mixtape of a romance: driving and rhythmic as an Armstrong Hot Five record, sensuous as the small of a Cotton Club chorus girl’s back. I enjoyed it immensely.” —Larry Duplechan, author of Blackbird and Got ’til It’s Gone
Joe Okonkwo has produced a volume of poetry that is actually a mosaic of African-American and Gay issues. This riveting collection covers everything from Jazz and sex, to politics and dating; from racism within the Gay community, to black on black racism. There are poems about the journey from depression to wholeness and poems about exuberant gay men flouncing about the streets wearing only silk boxer shorts and argyle socks. This volume has a little of everything including poignant tributes to Jazz greats Ethel Waters and Billie Holiday. Joe Okonkwo fearlessly tackles taboo subjects such as what some African-Americans really think about the ghetto, who really bears the blame for slavery and how expectations the Gay media sets forth affect those who don't—or can't—comply. Milk Chocolate/Naked Moon is exactly what we've been waiting for: an unpredictable, page turning collection of poetry.
A type of book we always long to read for peace and joy in any nation, Father Dr. JoeBarth Abba touched many areas amidst orgies of circles of terrorisms, Islamic insurgents with key solutions for psycho-dialogical ways on cultural ethnic tensions for conflicts resolution." --Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Mueller, Vatican, Rome ***The book presents an inquiry into the thoughts and scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, his classical philosophical synthesis, his insights, and the quest for Justice and Human Rights as a panacea or desired urgent solution to racial justice, abuse of human life, and human rights. Dissertation. (Series: Philosophy / Philosophie, Vol. 108) [Subject: African Studies, Human Rights Studies, Philosophy, Christian Studies, Thomas Aquinas]
In efforts to understand the human being, our history, and our future, the story takes the reader through three different continents, gleaning cultural well-being and malaise of different races. The book highlights the common bond between all human races, while exploring reasons for the perceived outer differences our modern world hurtles forward, driven as it is by powerful technological engines of change, characterized by an obsessive and often idolatrous worship of intelligence, ruminative men and women all around the world ponder in the silence of their soul the fate of humanity. In the West, depression, suicide, incomprehensible mass shootings and myriad psychological disorders litter our cultural landscape, while abject poverty ravage developing nations. We have become highly intelligent beings that cannot solve our problems, yet we inhabit a natural world created out of wisdom and much of that wisdom is not reflected in our thoughts and lifestyle Modern man's obsession with intelligence and the material world has left him a stranger to spiritual things and wisdom. Consequently, humanity is left vulnerable to inexplicable and undiagnosed suffering. in an attempt to diagnose what ails modern man, this book presents a convincing and thought-provoking argument that we have forgotten who we are, and in so doing, have built a world terribly out of order with our divine nature. By walking the reader through my Nigerian upbringing and subsequent arrival in the West, I reveal some timeless wisdom that I believe can serve as a cure for some of the things that trouble us today. This inimitable book lights a path directing us again to who we truly are. It is a timely and deft clarion call to all of us. Finding Your Way to Heaven Without a Smartphone is a mixture of autobiography, cultural inquiry and philosophy. Joseph Obidiegwu, an Igbo from Nigeria, has lived on three continents. He has the necessary perspective and wisdom to look at the world's masquerade from different angles. There is no romanticization of traditional African village life, nor is there blind acceptance of the hectic to and fro of modern life on planet Smartphone. Don Burness, Ph.D. Professor of Literature at Franklin Pierce College Author of Echoes of the Sunbird and Wanasema Keywords: Inimitable, Interesting, Insightful, Autobiographical, Philosophical, Spiritual, Cultural, Thought-Provoking, Inspiring, Life-Changing
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