Literature

This slender book, the last of twenty-nine written by Kathryn Tucker Windham over her long and productive life, will be an exquisitely bittersweet read for many fans of the late storyteller and author from Selma, Alabama. Windham died shortly before the publication of the volume, but only over the last eighteen months of her life did she seem constrained by her advancing years. In She, which Windham was putting the finishing touches on when she died at age 93 in June 2011, the author describes...

Spit, Scarey Ann, and Sweat Bees recalls small-town life in the 1920s and ‘30s, garnished with ruminations about folktales and superstitions. Mrs.Windham recalls how Thurza, her family cook, tucked a wooden match in her hair to cure a headache, and how her father spit in his hat when a rabbit crossed the road. She ponders the origins of old sayings and the creativity of children’s play before television and air conditioning. She affectionately recounts stories about family members, friends,...

How many friends do you have? Two, five, ten? Now think about your best friend. The friend who makes you smile the widest. What would you do if that friend suddenly moved far away and you thought you’d never see them again? That’s the problem that faced the friends in our story, Walter and Wimbly. They reacted just like you might. But there is a slight difference. Walter and Wimbly are cats.

In this elegant, simple tale of a true incident, renowned storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham reminds us of the endurance of love and the durability of the human spirit. Hiram, a poor farmer, approaches her father, a banker, for a loan of expense money for a journey. The background to Hiram’s quest encompasses love, loss, the terrible human costs of slavery, and the complex relationships between black and white Southerners. Hiram returns from his journey with a gift for his banker friend and a...

Twenty-five-year- old Lizzy thinks if she keeps her eyes closed all the way, then maybe what she is experiencing will not be real. Her mother, who has always been her rock, is about to die from cancer. As her mother takes her last breath, Lizzy, who has never truly been on her own steps into the unknown and begins a new life. After her mother’s death Lizzy’s inner strength is tested after family secrets come out revealing the imperfections of those she loves and admires. Now it’s time for...

Many documentaries, articles, museum exhibits, books, and movies have now treated subject of the Tuskegee Airmen, the only black American military pilots in World War II. Most of these works have focused on their training and their subsequent accomplishments during combat. This publication goes further, using captioned photographs to trace the Airmen through the various stages of training, deployment, and combat in North Africa, Italy, and over occupied Europe. For the first times are...

If you’ve read Mary Ward Brown’s fiction you know these deceptively bold contrasts conceal layers of subtlety. In her stories, stereotype, negative and positive, reveal their other sides, lighter, and darker, and hasty, judgmental attitudes toward people and places do not last. Change and continuity, past and present, black race and white, massive abstractions and concrete particulars, all are reflected in a real, whole word, by characters from a complete social spectrum. Like most of the...

In Ted Dunagan’s third young adult novel, boyhood friends Ted and Poudlum, a white and a black boy who live in the rural segregated South of the 1940s, are in for more adventure. On A fishing trip, they camp out in the vicinity of a Ku Klux Klan meeting and they learn the identity of key Klansmen. They used their wits to escape down the river but only to swim into the arms of more trouble, including Ted and Poudlum would even be kidnapped. Their escapades test their resourcefulness and...

Jordan Jones: 1920's Women - 12 Pack Notecards4 designs - 3 of each design in each packet

"Sometimes you need to dream a little bigger..."Eleven year old Brittany knows there has to be a better world out there. Lately, though, it sure doesn't feel like it. She and her best friend, Marisol, stick together at school, but at home Brittany's granny is sick, her cat is missing, there's never any money, and there's Jack to worry about. Brittany has a hard time picturing her future as anything but a plain white sky. But if her life is ever going to change, she needs a plan. And once she...

A collection of recipes by friends of Community Neighbor Bank in memory of Lisa Agee, William "Blue" Jones Jr, William V. Curry "Mr. Pete", and Mr. Ralph Martin Jr.

Duck hunting, deer hunting, turkey hunting, or fishing, if any of these endeavors are going on there probably a Bubba involved. South Alabama has always been a haven for Bubba types. They all have one thing in common: given the opportunity they will do some dumb stuff while pursuing their sport. Included in these pages are stories about a few of these Bubbas, both the Causeway variety like the ones on Polecat Bay, and their hillbilly counterparts from upstate a ways. The stories are all true...