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Title: BEST AFRICAN AMERICAN ESSAYS
Editor: Gerald Early (series editor), Debra Dickerson (guest editor)
Why We Chose it: It's a collection of great essays by great writers. We really don't need more reason than that. But we will say that we really enjoyed James McBride's essay about hip-hop. We've included a small snippet of it below.
Synopsis: This exciting collection introduces the first-ever annual anthology of writing solely by African Americans. Here are remarkable essays on a variety of subjects informed by--but not necessarily about--the experience of blackness as seen through the eyes of some of our finest writers.

From art, entertainment, and science, to technology, sexuality, and current events--including the battle for the Democratic nomination for the presidency--the essays in this inaugural anthology offer us the compelling perspectives of a number of well-known, distinguished writers, including Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, James McBride, and Walter Mosley, and of other writers who are just beginning to be heard.

Selected from an array of respected publications such as the New Yorker, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and National Geographic, the essays gathered here are about making history, living everyday life--and everything in between. In "Fired," author and professor Emily Bernard wrestles with the pain of a friendship inexplicably ended. Journalist Brian Palmers shares "The Last Thoughts of an Iraq War Embed." In "Jamaica Girl," author Lori Cullen illustrates the struggle of immigrant blacks to become American without losing hold of their cultural roots, and writer Hawa Allan depicts the forces of race and rivalry as two catwalk icons face off in "When Tyra met Naomi."

A venue in which African American writers can branch out from traditionally "black" subjects, The Best African American Essays features a range of gifted voices exploring the many issues andexperiences, joys and trials, that, as human beings, we all share.

From Hip-Hop Planet by James McBride:

     That is why, after 26 years, I have come to embrace this music I tried so hard to ignore. Hip-hop culture is not mine. Yet I own it. Much of it I hate. Yet I love it, the good of it. To confess a love for a music that, at least in part, embraces violence is no easy matter, but then again our national anthem talks about bombs bursting in air and I love that song, too. At its best, hip-hop lays bare the empty moral cupboard that is our generation's legacy. This music that once made visible the inner culture of America's greatest social problem, its legacy of slavery, has taken the dream deferred to a global scale. Today, 2 percent of the Earth's adult population owns more than 50 percent of its household wealth, and indigenous cultures are swallowed with the rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato chips. The music is calling. Over the years, the instruments change, but the message is the same. The drums are pounding out a warning. They are telling us something. Our children can hear it.
    The question is: Can we?