After maneuvering and maneuvering, I finally ran out of shelf space for books at home. Definitely wasn’t going to win that competition with the library. So to clear space for any new works, I figured I had to donate some of the old. Or so it seemed.
The very first shelf was a problem. I couldn’t let go of anything written by Du Bois. Some sort of third consciousness would have to kick in for that to happen. Besides, he has so much that I still need to consult.
Neither is Chinua Achebe a good candidate. I didn’t need the 23 percent Nigerian affirmation in my DNA results to feel a bond. A photograph of him and I shaking hands is nearby. His spot on the shelf is secure because of a pan-African sensibility and chance meeting as well as his enormous talent.
Geneva Smitherman isn’t going anywhere and is, in fact, creating new problems. I can’t do without two classics: the 1977 Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America and the 2000 Talkin that Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America. If you’re trying to get a feel for how the study of African American English has evolved over the past 50 years, these books are as good a starting point as any other. These texts put me on serious game. They’d probably bite me if I grabbed them the wrong way. And then here goes Sista G dropping a memoir, My Soul Look Back in Wonder: Memories from a Life of Study, Struggle, and Doin Battle in the Language Wars, 45 whole years after Talkin and Testifyin. It’s on order, and I can’t wait to read it, even though it won’t help with my space crunch.
Then The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010. She’s smiling confidently from the front cover, like, “sweetheart, I’m not the one.” She’s not. She has the whole package that keeps her place on the shelf—range, complexity, humor, love, rage. These are qualities noted by Toni Morrison in the foreword. Untouchable.
Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community. This book by anthropology and Africana Studies professor Steven Gregory probably isn’t a major work for many readers, but I’m from Corona. Grew up there and had family roots there for 60 years. Not surprisingly, as an insider, I had a data set that was unfamiliar to the Brooklynite academic. However, his contention that the “urban experience of African Americans is more diverse than is generally acknowledged” is a point well taken. His book should be central to the narrative of my old neighborhood and must remain on the shelf for ready reference.
Langston Hughes, who has a library named after him in Corona, one in which I spent many hours, said don’t even come in his direction, though he was next. He was right. Surely he couldn’t get voted off the island on his birthday. Ironically, I opened to the beginning of The Big Sea, “I leaned over the rail of the S.S. Malone and threw the books as far as I could out into the sea—all the books I had had at Columbia, and all the books I had lately bought to read.” He needed to open up room for experiences. I needed to open up room on my shelves.
At this juncture, there is no way around the most likely outcome. Against a vow, more shelves.
