Feb 19

WHAT BLACK HISTORY MONTH MEANS TO ME

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I read an article in a recent Southern Poverty Law Center1 newsletter that mentioned a survey SPLC2 conducted targeting approximately 1000 senior high schooler’s knowledge about American slavery. The SPLC survey also involved social studies teachers and reviewed the history textbooks they used. This is what the survey found. Would you believe only 8% of the high school seniors surveyed could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War? It gets worse. The Washington Post read the same survey and summarized it by saying this: • 68% of the students didn’t known slavery was formally ended by a Constitutional amendment. • 22% of the students could identify how provisions in the Constitution gave advantages to slaver holders. • 44% students knew that slavery was legal in all colonies during the American revolution. The survey also evaluated ten popular history textbooks. Even the best history textbook score was 70 points out of 100 points based on a rubric of what should be in a history book about American slavery. The remaining textbooks accumulated 46 points out of 100 points. Why am I telling you all this when Black History Month is half over? ____________________________ 1 I donate to Southern […]
Feb 12

LETTER TO MY GRANDDAUGHTER

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
The photograph on the left was taken last year on the way to my sister’s Going Home Service in Maryland in December. That’s my 100-year old mother reading a menu at a seafood restaurant. She has a cellphone in the pocket of the jacket she’s wearing. She never leaves home without it and the emergency medical alert chain around her neck. She uses her cellphone to call folks like me; her two other children; six grandchildren; her AKA sorority sisters; friends and her neighbors. The photograph on the right was also taken last in December. That’s my 3-year old granddaughter in reindeer clown makeup. We’d just returned from the main branch of the NY public library at Fifth Avenue. We had gone to NYPL’s Christmas Open House for children. There she is relaxing with her mother’s cellphone in a chair made just her. (That’s what I told her as her mother and I put the two chairs together). As she sometimes does, my granddaughter is watching one of her favorite movies. She loves Sophia, Frozen, Pound Puppies and so many more kiddie movies I can’t remember. At three, she can scroll down screens; she can enlarge or reduce objects on […]
Jan 29

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO HONOR A PROMISE? READ LEONIA’S STORY. IT WILL INSPIRE YOU

by B.L. in Latest Novels 0 comments
“TYSON, a sister’s love be limitless” is a fictional whodunit written in the voice of a 27-year-old, southern “colored” woman, Leonia Gillette. She and her big brother, Tyson, come north to escape a drunken father who tried to rape her. They settle in Harlem in 1927 during the Harlem Renaissance and just before the Great Depression. In 1932, somebody castrates, then murders Tyson in a Harlem alleyway, supposedly as revenge for his unpaid gambling debts. Leonia doesn’t believe the police report and decides to investigate her brother’s death. Along the way to uncovering Tyson’s killer, Leonia introduces us to a cast of characters–good, bad, and very bad– found only in the Harlem of the thirties. TYSON, a sister’s love be limitless is available for pre-order on 1/23/18. The release date is 2/2/18   ASIN: B0795Y11HG (Kindle Version $2.99) ISBN-13: 978-1983996634 (Print Version $13.99) ISBN-10: 1983996637 (Print Version $13.99) Amazon Kindle USA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0795Y11HG Amazon Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0795Y11HG Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/8021244 Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/782272 Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/PlGVVcusaz8 Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/FB7zA8kIeIg Ask David: http://askdavid.com/reviews/book/lesbian-murder-mystery/15796 Connect with BL Wilson at these links: Blog: http://wilsonbluez.com Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/patchworkbluezpress Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1BDmrjJ Linked-in: http://linkd.in/1ui0iRu Twitter: http://bit.ly/11fAPxR Smashwords profile page: http://bit.ly/1sUKQYP Amazon’s Author Page: http://bit.ly/1tY3e27
Jan 22

PLAYGROUND GAMES

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As a kid, if anybody asked me what my favorite elementary school class was, I’d always answer how much I loved recess. My mother would interrupt the conversation to correct me. She’d say recess wasn’t a class, but I remained steadfast. I’d mumble under my breath, “If recess isn’t a class, it oughta be.” The reason I loved recess in the wintertime so much was that I had the freedom to release the tomboy I felt screaming to be outside. That part of me wasn’t allowed be out any other time. I should explain. I came from a family and a time when young girls were expected to wear dresses to school, at home, at church, and even at play. Girls wore dresses everywhere. Of course, since girls dressed like miniature ladies, they were supposed to act like them as well. That meant no ball playing, including foot races, baseball, football, or basketball. In my elementary school, nobody knew what soccer was, so I didn’t play that game either. Girls could play dodgeball, red rover, jump rope, tag, hide ‘n’ seek, and jacks, but no marbles, a game in which I excelled, and other games that didn’t involve the running […]
Jan 17

I THOUGHT I KNEW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I thought I knew what happens when we die. After all, I was familiar with death, since I’d experienced it at a young age. I was around eleven years old when my grandmother died at seventy-nine. The medical examiner’s records said she died of a heart attack, cardiac arrest. The report didn’t say that my grandmother was the main speaker at a church sisters’ meeting. The topic was Africa. As she was speaking at the front of the church, she felt funny. The sisters told my mother how my grandmother grabbed her chest and told the closest sister she needed to rest because she felt so tired. She managed to sit down in one of the front pews, never to rise again. So yes, I thought I knew death. When I was twelve, I bought a puppy from the local dog pound with five dollars I’d found fluttering the breeze, finally landing on a dirt should of a main road. My kid brother, big sister, and I were walking home from the library. It was the best five-dollar gift I’d ever spent on me. I called the puppy Lady, named after the female dog in Disney’s movie Lady & The […]
Dec 24

WHY I WROTE THE BOOKSTORE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
In this day and age of social media, short-term relationships and instant gratification, I wondered what a long-term, lesbian relationship looked like. What would the parties involved be like? Would they be saint-like women? Once these saints were engaged or married, they never ever looked at another woman and thought. “I want me some of that!” Or would they sneak and peek, having a side woman or a back-pocket woman on the down-low. You know the type of woman I mean. The two-faced women who walks the walk of a loyal, honorable, love-only-one woman for the public. Behind the scenes, it’s oh so very different. The same supposedly honorable women are busy creeping in and out of every woman’s bedroom but their own mate’s bed. Then there’s the reformed players, who used to be two-faced scoundrels but found true love. Now, they who ignore their own passionate urges and temptations to adhere to their vows. I wondered how difficult each role was to play. I decided to examine various types of women who had long-term relationships and see what I came up with. I tried to answer all of those questions and more when I wrote The Bookstore, 15 years […]
Dec 17

PLAYGROUND GAMES

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As a kid, if anybody asked me what my favorite elementary school class was, I’d always answer how much I loved recess. My mother would interrupt the conversation to correct me. She’d say recess wasn’t a class, but I remained steadfast. I’d mumble under my breath, “If recess isn’t a class, it oughta be.” The reason I loved recess in the wintertime so much was that I had the freedom to release the tomboy I felt screaming to be outside. That part of me wasn’t allowed be out any other time. I should explain. I came from a family and a time when young girls were expected to wear dresses to school, at home, at church, and even at play. Girls wore dresses everywhere. Of course, since girls dressed like miniature ladies, they were supposed to act like them as well. That meant no ball playing, including foot races, baseball, football, or basketball. In my elementary school, nobody knew what soccer was, so I didn’t play that game either. Girls could play dodgeball, red rover, jump rope, tag, hide ‘n’ seek, and jacks, but no marbles, a game in which I excelled, and other games that didn’t involve the running […]
Dec 10

IT’S UPSIDE DOWN DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
“We better unite because this is how we stand,” Dan Rather said on AM Joy on November 11, 2017. He was speaking about Americans and how tribal and divisive they have become about major issues such as racism, sexism, the presidency, the economy, and healthcare. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant until I thought about it. Or maybe it was after Hurricane Harvey pounded the news media that brought Rather’s words to my mind again. I’m not speaking about the horrendous storm that damaged Florida and Texas and avoided Puerto Rico, which got hammered and then steamrolled by another type of malignant neglect. But that’s a story for another day. The hurricane I meant was Harvey Weinstein the accused alleged sexual predator haunting young women with dreams of would-be stardom. That hurricane led the other hurricanes: Alabama senatorial candidate Judge Roy Moore, who I’ll focus on. There are also accusers for actor Kevin Spacey, Senator Franken, media talking-heads Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin, Congressman John Conyers, and New York Times journalist Glen Thrush. Let’s not forget the man in the big house, who wasn’t punished for his role in assaulting women like Bill Cosby was, but rather he was […]
Dec 03

The Bookstore, 15 years of love and counting

by B.L. in Latest Novels, Other 0 comments
Ever wonder how the longest relationship in the Forever Woman Series happened? Read about Vivian Johnson and Pat Davis in the 6th volume of the series. The Bookstore, fifteen years of love and counting tells the tale of somewhat wild and raunchy playgirl Vivian Johnson, who is also Leah Williams’ (Forever Woman and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez) editor and good friend. Fifteen years ago, while working on one of her client’s book tours, she meets an interesting younger woman. Patricia Davis has just opened a women’s bookstore on a shoestring budget. Vivian is impressed that such a young woman from Generation X would bet her entire future on opening a woman’s bookstore and community center in the heart of a low-income neighborhood. They bump heads at first. Vivian’s client, Melba Farris (Mr. Jefferson’s Piano and Other Central Harlem Stories), asks her to set up a book signing in the bookstore, but Pat’s womanizing partner, Etta, wants more than a book signing from Vivian. The two partners argue about Vivian, causing Pat to say things to Vivian that she has to apologize for later. The book signing is exceptionally successful, but the two women decide not to see each other again. As […]
Nov 26

WHY I WROTE FERRELLI’S RESTAURANT

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
When my characters speak to me, I do try to listen. During the writing of my second and third books in a series, Two Moons Bakery and Sweet Sarah’s Bluez, I’d created secondary characters that spoke to me. I felt they deserved stories of their own. For years, actually since 1999, I felt these secondary characters deserved their own storylines, but I just never sat down and wrote backstories for them. At the time, I felt writing their stories would be going backwards in my writing. I always wanted to go forward with other newer, what I deemed more interesting, stories, so I cast these storylines aside. This fall and winter, I spent a great of time in my old home state of Ohio. It was time away from my adopted home in the Big Apple that I hadn’t anticipated spending. My mother had a medical emergency that scared the crap out of me and my three siblings and their respective partners. Since I was no longer working and I could stay with my mother through her medical crisis, that’s what I did. For the next three and half months from October of last year until January of this year, […]
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