Red Dust on the Green Leaves
By John Gay

I am so pleased to hear that Red Dust will be reprinted! I have been using photocopies of the entire text for the past several years. I find that using a novel, which simulates the experience of being “thrown into” an unfamiliar culture allows students to ready come to terms with differences between Kpelle worldview and their own. My students come to care about what happens to the characters at the same time that they develop sympathy for the process of culture change. Mary Moran, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Colgate

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The Brightening Shadow
By John Gay

When I first read The Brightening Shadow in the 1970s, I did not then appreciate that the twins Koli and Sumo, thrown apart by the differences inherent in politics divided by discrimination and deprivation, described my Liberia. My illiterate father suffered forcible removal of labor in Spanish plantations, while his peers worked as unpaid porters and laborers for hinterland administrators. My father wanted his children educated, and to learn “government book,” and not only “God book,” so that they could integrate into Liberian society. Future generations need to understand the emotional and spiritual underpinning of this book and connect urban and rural lives as this book does. Dr. Byron Tarr, Liberian Economist

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The Village Boy
By Sakui Malapka

Malapka’s novel, The Village Boy, is a political and social satire that explores some very serious themes in a fictional way. Written in a reverse narrative style, the novel tells the story of Flomo Tuotaa Gadei, a sort of boy genius from the twin communities of Zie Woba and Zie Mazu. The Village Boy is a work of fiction. However, the strength of the work lie in the realism that comes through the words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters you are about to read. This novel is compelling, and is a must for those interested in fine literature. C. William Allen, Virginia State University, Petersburg

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Bach: A Fictional Memoir
By Paul Guggenheim
Includes CD of selected works of Bach with commentaries by Dr. Paul Guggenheim.

This memoir of Bach’s is hardly a complete account of his life, much less his works…not surprising, since music and not words were his natural medium of expression…though his memories, as far as they go, are reasonably accurate and reveal insights into his thought processes. The work [memoir] shows that Bach’s principal concern in writing was to record the series disheartening difficulties, which plagued him in his efforts over a lifetime to conduct a proper Musical Divine Service for the Greater Glory of God. Paul Macklis, Librarian at University of California Santa Cruz

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Growth of the Liberian State: An Analysis of Its Historiography
By Clarence E. Zamba Liberty

The Growth of the Liberian State should have a wide appeal – to scholars worldwide united in the disinterested pursuit of truth; to all who believe African scholars have an important contribution to make in relating and interpreting the African experience; to African, African-Americans, and those interested in them; and to Liberians who must develop the understanding and appreciation of themselves and their nation needed to rebuild their nation and forge ahead in the international area. This book is compelling reading. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman, Former President of the University of Liberia

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Neither Black nor White: The Saga of an American Family
By Joseph E. Holloway

Historical novel, which traces the history of the Hadnot family from Gloucester, England in 1585 to New Orleans and the birth of Lucille Catherine (Celia) Hughes Hadnot the matriarch of six families that traced their descent from her. It is the true story of a black family, who were never enslaved, but owners of slaves. A tale about a people from indentured servitude, slavery, the Colfax riots, segregation and Jim Crow to Civil Rights. It is the story of a people who did not regard themselves as “neither black nor white.” It is a story of a family –one black and the other white. Both related sharing a common ancestor by the named John Hadnot. This novel by Joseph Holloway is compelling reading that explores black culture, history, Jim Crow and issues of colorism.

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An Introduction to Classical African Civilizations
By Joseph E. Holloway

This text offers in a single volume an introduction to classical African history, primary in the period before 1800, with a focus on the great ancient African civilizations. The author draws upon the most recently available information on the history of Africa, including theories of the earliest evolution of humankind. The text then explores the beginnings of African farming when the Sahara was still an open savannah with green pastures and flowing rivers and moves the reader through the ancient kingdoms of Nubia, Meroe, Axum, the medieval Sudanic empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and on to the development and spread of Islam throughout southern Africa, east Africa, the Kongo and the forest states. It concludes with an exploration of the transatlantic slave trade.

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Africa: A Dream Deferred
By John Gay

This text can be used as a text or as supplementary reading for an introductory course in Africa south of the Sahara, or for anyone interested in contemporary African affairs. Topics covered in the book include the changed moral order, indigenous knowledge, elite domination, education and schooling, demography, religion, medicine, western exploitation, political systems, centralized command economies, and military conflict. In each section historical references support the analysis of the current situation. The book concludes with suggestion for ways in which Africans themselves can take control of their lives and their futures.

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The Native Boy
By William K. Reeves

Herewith is an invitation to you to acquire your own personal copy of “The Native Boy”. William Reeves' autobiography provides one among many Liberian voices that have been missing from African literary production in the post Colonial era. Is The Native Boy a postcolonial text? Reeves documents a life in which his earliest identification was as a Grebo village child and his subsequent 70-some years of experience lead him to call himself a Liberian, still a Grebo, and most definitely an educator. Now, when most news reports of Liberia include the soundbite that the nation was founded by freed slaves from the United States in the 1840s, William Reeves offers a point of view by someone whose ancestors preceded those freed American slaves in the geographical and cultural space that is Liberia. His story is an important challenge to international views of Liberia, to postcolonial theories, to the literary history of Africa.

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LONG DAY’S ANGER
by John Gay

Long Day’s Anger is John Gay’s most recent novel, which explores the Liberian Civil War through the eyes and the lives of the characters from his first to novels, Red Dust on the Green Leaves, and The Brightening Shadow. Long Day’s Anger is the sequel to the first two classics. It is the dramatic story of two African boys growing to manhood in Liberia. One follows the white man’s ways’ the other immerses himself in the traditions of his ethnic group, the Kpelle. The clash of the modern and traditional shakes the very foundation of their lives. John Gay’s new novel sheds much light and understanding on the Liberian Civil War that has been featured so prominently in recent news. This new novel by Dr. Gay is a must for all who wish to learn more about an African country founded by Black Americans in 1847.

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“SPACE: A JOURNALIST’S NOTEBOOK,”
is designed to appeal to a general and enlightened audience, to trekkies, space freaks, anyone with an inquisitive mind

Dr. DeWayne B. (Doc) Johnson, author of "FLYING SAUCERS: Are We There Yet?" is a retired professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge, and a retired desk editor of the Los Angeles Times. He is an award-winning journalist and a distinguished emeritus professor of journalism.

The first book, “Space for Speculation, “ deals with our expanded knowledge of the limitless universe, mankind’s increasing attempts to understand the nature of infinity, endless time, the beauties and pitfalls that await explorers in space. It is light-hearted in approach yet deadly serious in intent. The second book, “Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction” has become something of a collector’s item. The publication is in fact two books sandwiched between two covers. Two books for the price of one!

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“JELLEMOH,”
“Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman has left us a gem. In JELLEMOH a highly literate account of the life of a distinguished woman who in symbolizing Liberia (and Africa) fused in her experience native Africa and westernized Africa. This is a deeply personal account of the life and time of her mother presented with such contextual richness that a social history of Liberia during time frame is the product.

Rare is the genre of the biography on Liberia. Rarer still is its capture not of the widely publicized two separate Liberias, but the struggle towards a cultural hybrid. The study suggests powerfully what the real Liberian society would look like if somehow a critical mass of other such accounts could be produced—the human encounters and accommodations of cultures.”

D. Elwood Dunn
Sewanee – The University of the South

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The African American Experience
By Joseph E. Holloway

The purpose of this History of Black Americans is to overcome the complexity of currents text, to provide a simple basic introduction to the history of African Americans without using complex language and ideas to tell their story. The aim of this text is to be able to reach and speak to the non-specialist general reader, and to write a history of African Americans without the heavy academic language. The first chapter starts with Africa, the middle passage, slave insurrection, the origins of Black Culture, Blacks and the American War of Independence, the Black family during slavery, Blacks and the Civil War, Black Nationalisms and the Back-to-Africa Movement, B. T Washington vs. W.E.B. Dubois, the Harlem Renaissance, Blacks and the Great Depression, the New Deal, the Freedom Movement and Modern Black America, including the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

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Not Black, Not White: The Politics of Apartheid in South Africa
By Steve Farrah

Steve Farrah shows what it is to be neither nor in the bad old days of South Africa’s apartheid regime. This memoir speaks for so-called Colored, who sought to carve out their identity while the struggle raged between the majority of Black Africans and the minority with European ancestry. When I taught African history in Lesotho and South Africa, Colored students stood up boldly and asked Who am I? Who are we? Farrah give them voice. Anyone who wishes to understand today’s complex South African nation and society should read this book.

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The Borders In All Of Us
New Approaches o Global Diaspora Societies is a collection of scholarly essay funded by the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop the integration of areas studies and ethnic studies knowledge into a new curriculum model for multi-cultural studies. This volume is unique in its approach to historical Diasporas in that it explores some of the cross currents within Diasporic communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States providing new insight into America’s new ethnic majorities. In eighteen chapters the authors examined the historical/political dynamics, and the language/literary traditions and the arts and creative expressions of several ethnic and global Diasporic communities. This anthology serves as a textbook for the Introduction to Comparative Ethnic and Global Societies that would be useful as a text in African Studies, African American Studies, Asian Studies; Chicano/a Studies and Women Studies respectively.

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An Obituary for Hawa Barchue
By William Allen

An Obituary for Hawa Barchue, C. William Allen. Allen takes his readers on a roller coaster ride through life in his motherland, Liberia, during the years immediately before that country was plunged into a brutal and devastating 14-year Civil War. Thought the eyes and voice of his main character, Hawa, a young, gregarious single female, the author masterfully uses the reverse narrative style to explore the intricacies and challenges of urban life in a nation struggling with its own social, cultural and political identity. First published in 1983, this remake of Allen’s first novel is a must-read for all who want to taste a slice of life in pre-civil war Liberia. Like his second novel, The African Interior Mission (1992, 2006) this book is offered to help fill the dearth that characterizes the state of creative fiction in Liberia.

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The Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple Movement
Despite the immense influences that the Noble Drew Ali had on Black Nationalism and the black nationalistic movement in North America, we know little about him because the details of his life are sketchy and incomplete at best. As a result of this lack of information, the Noble Drew Ali remains one of the most mystifying figures in all of African American history. This monograph provides information not readily available to the general public, and explores most of the available documents on this mysterious person. The Noble Drew Ali was important because he redefined blackness based on identification with the Moors. His ideas and philosophy have contributed to and made possible the rise of black Messianic figures such as Father Divine, Sweet daddy Grace and many others.

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Paul Von Blum, A Life At the Margins: Keeping the Political Vision
Paul Von Blum’s A Life at the Margins offers a compelling narrative about a man whose life has been committed to teaching and social justice.  From his reflections about the impact of the Holocaust on his family, to his motivations for a lifetime commitment to the black freedom movement and to his longstanding struggles for fair treatment as a lecturer within the halls of academia, Von Blum poignantly reveals the intricate connections between personal biography and larger social forces.  This book is an uplifting read packed with important insights.

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