"Love, Peace and Soul!" And More

Miki Turner

Miki Turner, visual journalist, former sportswriter and television and website producer, offers "Journey to the Woman I've Come to Love: Affirmations from Women Who Have Fallen in Love With Themselves" ($25, paper).

A multiracial cast of 91 women from a variety of occupations responds to the question, "At what point did you fall in love with yourself?"

"It took me six years to finally get it done," Turner writes of her coffee-table project, except that she writes everything in lower case, including her book's title. "there were many stops and starts along the way. sometimes I just got bored with it, sometimes it frightened me, and there were other times when life's distractions just got in the way — death, unemployment, love, travel, chronic laziness, you know the drill. that, too, however, was part of some divine plan."

Interviewed were such celebrities and journalists as Angelina Jolie, Linda Evans, Lisa Ling, Melanie McFarland, Mo'Nique, Naomi Judd, Nichelle Nichols, Queen Latifah, Robin Roberts, Sacheen Littlefeather, Sanaa Lathan, Sonia Sanchez, Suzanne Malveaux, Tananarive Due, Terry McMillan, Toni Braxton, Halle Berry,  Gladys Knight, Della Reese,Angela Davis, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Nikki Giovanni and Gloria Steinem.

Turner writes of Littlefeather, "like most people, my first memory of Sacheen was when she appeared at the academy awards to reject marlon brando's oscar for 'the godfather' in 1973. well, 37 years later, I ran into her in the lobby of the beverly hilton hotel and she just cracked me up. didn't get great shots of her but man, she was something else and I loved her answer to the question."

That answer was, "i found out i had a good sense of humor, i learned how to laugh at myself. i was young, which was a long time ago because i'm having senior moments! indian people do have a great sense of humor. unfortunately, the dominant society doesn't realize that but we've been laughing at them for a long time! a person of color has to learn to laugh at the ugly as well as the beautiful. if we didn't, we would not survive."

The book may be ordered through Turner for $20 at www.mikiphotola.com. She said she is publishing a new book, "tomorrow," in Paris in two weeks. It is "a collection of photographs i've taken of kids from around the world. partial proceeds will go toward educating kids in underdevoloped nations and impoverished communities," she messaged.

George Willis

George Willis, boxing columnist at the New York Post, has written "The Bite Fight: Tyson, Holyfield and the Night That Changed Boxing Forever" (Triumph Books, $24.95 hardcover, $13.99 PDF and ebook formats).

Reviewers have praised Willis' book. He even enlisted Tyson to write the foreword. "When I look back on my second fight with Evander [Holyfield], I still can't believe that I bit his ear," Tyson writes. "I mean, what was I thinking? I wasn't. I just reacted — and badly at that. The world would never look at me the same."

Here's how Thomas Gerbasi reviewed the book for SB Nation's boxingscene.com blog:

"Mike Tyson was in the jovial mood that has been his usual one these days, far removed from the time when a simple question from the media could provoke a surly outburst. So while in New York City last month for the launch of George Willis' book 'The Bite Fight,' which chronicles the second fight between Tyson and Evander Holyfield in 1997, Tyson was asked if it was difficult to go through memories of that time, which certainly weren’t good, all over again.

"'That's so awesome you said that because at the time they weren't great at all, but they are now,' he said. 'They're great moments now.'

"In a bizarre way he's right. They're not great in terms of wanting to pat 'Iron Mike' on the back for biting Holyfield's ears — not once, but twice — and earning a third round disqualification, but when you read Willis' book, it reminds you of how pivotal a moment that fight and its aftermath [were] in boxing history. For the longtime New York Post sports reporter and boxing beat writer, he couldn’t have come across a better book topic.

"'I was just looking for a good book project, and when this came out of nowhere I thought number one it was a story that everybody, at least in boxing, if not sports, remembers,' he said. 'It had national appeal, it had longevity, it had stars in Mike Tyson and Holyfield, it had some controversy, and it had never been written about. So I thought those were pretty good ingredients to at least give it a shot. And through Mike's cooperation and Evander's cooperation, and with everybody in boxing all having a story to tell about whatever they want to talk about, you get a bunch of good stories together.' . . . "

The book is not yet in paperback but is available as an ebook.

Gary Younge

Gary Younge, columnist for Britain's Guardian newspaper and for the Nation in the United States, wrote "The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream" (Haymarket Books, $19.95 hardcover,$9.99 Kindle via Amazon).

The 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and of Martin Luther King Jr.'s"I Have a Dream" speech was one of the year's most anticipated events. Drew D. Hanson wrote the definitive "The Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation" in 2003, but Younge, a black British journalist who is based in the United States, produced his own analysis of the speech's genesis and significance timed for this year's August gatherings on the National Mall.

In an interview with Lilly Workneh of the Grio, Younge was asked, "Why do you believe Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' speech is misunderstood? Do people today interpret the speech in a different way than was originally intended?"

Younge replied, "Absolutely. I think particularly conservatives like to interpret through one line the notion that he was calling for people to be colorblind and not to take the legacy of racism into account. I think also it's one of those; it's the most loved but least well-known speeches. People don't always know what's in it — as well as being patriotic, it's also an indictment of American racism. He's calling for redress and I think people don't fully grasp that. I think partly because it's not well-known and partly because some people don't want to understand it, but I think very few people understand it as it was intended actually.

Workneh also asked, "What are some key lessons you hope readers take away from this book?"

Younge replied, "That they understand that history is always more complex than it is presented as — and that the civil rights movement was about more than just one man and the speech was about more than just one address."

• Excerpt: Gary Younge on Martin Luther King: exclusive book extract from The Speech
  
  

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