Collected from Africa and the Americas, these proverbs remain as relevant nowas they were generations ago.

This trio of plays explores the use of drama as a support in healing, training, and entertaining all. Using the healing and accessible art of theater, timely interestsaddiction, HIV, mental illness, racial injustice, sexual harassment, and moreare brought to life in a trio of contemporary scripts. In the title play, The Stakes, an idealistic African American social workerthe target of workplace racism, sexual harassment, and political machinationsis encouraged by a coworker who shares with her his enthusiasm for African proverbs. A young woman strives to overcome her dual afflictions of mental illness and substance dependence in Abiona. With the help of health-care professionals, plus her own insights related to her African heritage, she learns to find hope again. In an addiction-recovery center, one man struggles in his quest for sobriety. He finds solace in learning that the origins of the groups holiday celebration can be found in African traditions. GumBO won the 2000 Script Writing Award given by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago.

Another book of quotations? Indeed there are numerous excellent extant anthologies of quotations, but these tend to be very broad, with a bias toward classical and well-known authors; those works which document the contributions of Black authors have tended to focus on African-Americans, considerable as their output is. Undeniable recognition of this prevalence is reflected in the title of the present volume which pays homage to W. E. B. Du Bois? classic work and in the preponderance of entries from American sources. Nevertheless, effort has been made to cast a wider net to capture under-represented and unfamiliar voices. Khemetic texts preserved in papyri and stelae are the earliest literature to have survived, followed by the writings of North African Romans and Ethiopian philosophers and clerics, and the lately recovered Timbuktu manuscripts from their repositories in the desert sands of Mali. The Transatlantic slave experience gave rise to the slave narratives and abolitionist literature from both sides of the Atlantic, which remained predominant right up to the 20th century. Post-Emancipation under colonial rule and white domination, Black poetry and prose emerged, adhering to prevailing standards, evidenced typically in the work of Phillis Wheatley and the sonnets of Claude McKay. With the Civil Rights and Black Power movements would come iconoclastic expressions of protest and identity. There is a sizeable body of literature by Black authors from Africa and the diaspora who speak to universal values and eternal verities. This anthology of their work focuses on the inner life, on personal development and self-actualization. 3000 quotations have been selected to inspire, enlightenand encourage; they have been arranged in 200 psycho-spiritual categories and in chronological order. The resulting timeline of thought in itself is useful and instructive as it demonstrates very clearly the evolution of consciousness evident in the contemporary thinking on particular subjects. Like its predecessor, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, this volume contains a full biographical index and bibliographical references. Much of the material is anthologized here for the first time.

A world list of books in the English language.

A celebration of African American life and culture brings together four hundred years of folklore, traditional tales, recipes, proverbs, legends, folk songs, and folk art.