Black Bird Press Books

Black Bird Press Book Special

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Black Bird Press Books
2 for 1 Special.
Buy one get one free,
limited copies available. Don't delay
order these classics today!
Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way,
Berkeley CA 94702
Send $19.95, plus $5.00 for p and h.


 
Wish I Could tell you the truth, essays, 2005, $19.95


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In the Crazy House Called America,
essays, 2002, $19.95
 







Review of In the Crazy House Called America

Rarely is a brother secure and honest enough with himself to reveal his innermost thoughts, emotions or his most hellacious life experiences. For most men it would be a monumental feat just to share/bare his soul with his closest friends but to do so to perfect strangers would be unthinkable, unless he had gone through the fires of life and emerged free of the dross that tarnishes his soul. Marvin X, poet, playwright, author and essayist does just that in a self-published book entitled In The Crazy House Called America .

This latest piece from Marvin X offers a peek into his soul and his psyche. He lets the reader know he is hip to the rabid oppression the West heaps upon people of color especially North American Africans while at the same time revealing the knowledge gleaned from his days as a student radical, black nationalist revolutionary forger of the Black Arts Movement, husband, father lover, a dogger of women did not spare him the degradation and agony of descending into the abyss of crack addiction, abusive and toxic relationships and family tragedy.

Perhaps because of the knowledge gained as a member of the Nation of Islam, and his experiences as one of the prime movers of the cultural revolution of the '60, the insights he shares In The Crazy House Called America are all the keener. Marvin writes candidly of his pain, bewilderment and depression of losing his son to suicide. He shares in a very powerful way, his own out of body helplessness as he wallowed in the dregs of an addiction that threatened to destroy his soul and the mess his addictions made of his life and relationships with those he loved.

But he is not preachy and this is not an autobiography. He has already been there and done that. In sharing his story and the wisdom he has gleaned from his life experiences and looking at the world through the eyes of an artist/healer.—Junious Ricardo Stanton

Other Comments

Marvin X has always been in the forefront of pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing. In the Crazy House is solid writing!
--Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones), Newark, New Jersey

In terms of being modernist and innovative, he's centuries ahead of anybody I know.
--Dennis Leroy Moore, filmmaker, Brecht Forum, New York

Courageous and outrageous! He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal.
--from the foreword by James W. Sweeney, Oakland, CA

In the Crazy House Called America is for brothers especially. It is a book all black men should grab hold of and digest, if for no other reason than to experience just how redemptively healing and liberating being honest can be.
--Junious Ricardo Stanton, New York

Marvin X is doing the kind of thing we should be doing, bringing "psychodrama" into didactic nonfiction. Beyond that, it's good literature.
--Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank, San Francisco

The stories are heartfelt, theoretical, insightful, passionate and private, with psychosocial, political recommendations and commentary on what black folks need to do to get reparations, our "40 Acres and a Mule."
--from the Introduction by Suzette Celeste, MPA, MSW, Richmond California

"The Maid, The Ho', The Cook" was one of the most beautiful pieces about real love I've ever read. The image of "crack-heads" as scandalous and without human dignity is destroyed by Marvin's recollection of this sister with whom he fell in love.
--Lil Joe, Los Angeles, CA

One of the things that makes this book a great joy is the range of subjects vital to all types of Black folks from richest to poorest.
--John Woodford, Editor, Michigan Today, University of Michigan

When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.
--James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer
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