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In my twenties, not long out of college, I was approached by a middle-aged black woman about joining the National Council of Negro Women. Proud of myself as a young black woman, I wasn’t interested in joining a group of middle-aged Negro women. I’d forgotten that particular bit of callowness until I read Jesus, Jobs, [...]

Back in December, in Booklist‘s Spotlight on Sci-Tech, we featured Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life  of Henrietta Lacks, a powerful chronicle of the life of the woman who, unbeknownst to her, gave the world  HeLa cells, the first “immortal” human cells grown in a lab, cells that have made countless medical advances possible for the last five [...]

In celebration of Black History Month, last week the University of Illinois at Chicago sponsored a seminar on the topic: “Post Racial Society.” The question: in the wake of the election of President Barack Obama, have we in the United States entered a post-racial society? Absolutely not, came the resounding answer from the panel, nearly [...]

Messages began to accumulate like snow online over the weekend as the chilling news of poet Lucille Clifton’s death began to travel from one poetry lover to another. I feel bereft as so many others do because Clifton was the sort of poet who spoke to everyone about everything that matters with unfailing clarity, conviction, and [...]

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot chronicles the amazing story of the medical breakthroughs gained from a black woman’s cell line. I heard Skloot last week on NPR’s Fresh Air where she told host Terry Gross that in 1951 Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. A doctor at Johns Hopkins [...]

I was thrilled to read the review of This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson and see how the image of librarians may be shifting into cool. Anybody who loves books and libraries doesn’t need to be convinced that librarians are cool. I particularly hope the news [...]

I wouldn’t even attempt to parse the political motives behind the flap over whether Senator Harry Reid (D, NV) should resign his seat because of his alleged comment that Barack Obama was a strong candidate to be the nation’s first black president because he is fair-skinned and speaks well, all reported in Game Change, by [...]