Category Archives: AfricanAmericanLiterature

Taming The Sweet Tooth

These Avocado Peanut Butter Brownies are low, low sugar, high fiber and oh, so delicious.

Don’t deny your sweet tooth, hoodwink it!

Few of us can remain healthy if we indulge in the abundant sweet temptations of Valentine’s Day. This recipe could become your favorite.

1 cup of natural, creamy peanut butter
1 12oz. bag of dark chocolate chips (baking chocolate)
1 cup of *Truvia baking blend
1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and mashed
1/2 cup of soy milk (for vegan) OR 1/2 cup of fat-free milk
1/2 cup of canola oil
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 teas. baking powder
1 teas. of salt
Preheat oven to 350 (175 degrees C) Lubricate 9X13 inch baking pan with canola oil spray. Melt peanut butter,  chocolate chip, and Truvia together in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until mixture is melted together. Then cook together at medium to low heat until slight bubbling at the edges. Blend avocado, milk and canola oil until smooth. Stir avocado mixture into the chocolate until thoroughly combined. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in large bowl and add the chocolate avocado mixture. Stir until just blended. Pour batter into baking pan and cook for 20-25 mins, until beginning to crisp at the edges. Cool completely before cutting and serving.
* is made from the stevia plant and has a small amount of granulated sugar for baking.
Celebrate February Black History Month with the historical novels of Breena Clarke

For more information, go to www.BreenaClarke.com

WAKE UP, EVERYBODY! IT’S 2020

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Habari Gani?

The final principle of Kwanzaa is Imani (faith) to believe in our people, parents, teachers, and leaders. It’s a simple principle, the easiest . . . most dangerous. Eyes wide open! Don’t put faith in celebrities. Don’t put power in the hands of charlatans.

Disavow the anti-semite, the racist, the misogynist. Believe, Have Faith, Imani  – in a better future, a better world, a more equitable world.

Wake Up Everybody!

Beginnings: LeBron James

 

free-vector-kwanzaa-icon_101867_Kwanzaa_Icon        MLK

Let’s ruminate on the plausible (?) utopia  Martin Luther King delineated so specifically in a speech that is instantly google-able. In anticipation of the official holiday commemorating MLK, here is a well-known portion:

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

———– Dr. Martin Luther King

for the   entire text of the speech   

IS THIS DREAM STILL POSSIBLE?

Baked this way, cranberries give up a beautiful, juicy flavor
Women’s March in NYC January 21

for more about Breena Clarke’s books, Breena Clarke.com

River, Cross My Heart, an Oprah book club selection and a classic of African American fiction is now available for your e-reader. River, Cross My Heart, kindle edition

“The acclaimed bestseller–a selection of Oprah’s Book Club–that brings vividly to life the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, circa 1925, a community reeling from a young girl’s tragic death.”  Amazon.com

 

 

Creative Community

Kwanza     Habari Gani?

Kuumba.  Creativity — to make the community more beautiful and beneficial for the future, is observed on the sixth night of Kwanzaa. Let’s celebrate creative work in the arts.  Founded in 2013, by Cheryl Clarke, Breena Clarke, and Barbara Balliet, the Hobart Festival of Women Writers will produce its tenth anniversary weekend on June 16, 17 & 18, 2023 celebrating the work of literary women. The Festival takes place in the small village of Hobart, New York, home of seven independent bookstores and a children’s lending library. Hobart is officially designated as The Reading Capital of New York State.

more information at Hobart Book Village.

Check out HFWW’s Holiday Gift Guide. Our writers have published some of the most exciting books of the season.

For information and updates on Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2023, go to http://www.hobartfestivalofwomenwriters.com

In September, 2020 HFWW returned to an in-person Festival after two years of virtual programming. It was a delight to renew friendships and to meet new Participating Writers and attendees.

River, Cross My Heart, an Oprah book club selection and a classic of African American fiction, is now available for your e-reader.

“The acclaimed bestseller–a selection of Oprah’s Book Club–that brings vividly to life the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, circa 1925, a community reeling from a young girl’s tragic death.”  Amazon.com

more information at BreenaClarke.com

The Subject is Sugar

I’m returning to the subject of Sugar, as in Sugar Diabetes, as in Diabetes.

candy-chalet gingerbread house

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Habari Gani?

The Fifth night of Kwanzaa is Nia, purpose, to build and develop goals to benefit the people of the community. I’m adopting the goal of disseminating information about one of the most dangerous opponents that POC confront: Diabetes.

How does Food Access affect Diabetes Rates in Communities of Color?

“The American Diabetes Association recently reported that the average diabetic incurs about $9,601 in diabetes-related medical expenses per year. Insulin prices have skyrocketed. According to CBS News, the cost of insulin from two manufacturers rose almost 8 percent last year, to more than $275, and some patients’ costs have jumped from $300 to almost $1,000 in the last year.” 

Many people with diabetes forgo their medicines because they cannot afford to take them.  U.S. News and consider this article,

Food Access and Diabetes Rates in Communities of Color: Connecting the Dots

by Lindsey Haynes-Maslow at Union of Concerned Scientists.org   READ THIS:

“Race and income are highly correlated with healthy food access—and according to our new study—diabetes rates.” Connecting The Dots 

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Personal Apple Cobblers

A low sugar dessert

Peel and slice 5-6 apples of whatever kind you like.  Choose a crisp, sweet type like Honey Crisp or Gala or Fuji or Empire 

The juice of one lemon – approximately 1/4 cup

3/4 cup of Truvia baking blend

2 tablespoonfuls of cornstarch 

2 tablespoons of butter

1 frozen pie crust defrosted. I suggest the rolled kind that can be rolled thinner and flatter.  

6-8 small ramekins.   Much depends on how large your apples are. I suggest using medium sized ones. Fruit will “cook down” and may bubble over. Both of these things are tasty. 

Combine apple slices, lemon juice, sweetener, and cornstarch.  Roll out the softened pie crust. Cut out large circles with a biscuit cutter.  Cut strips of remaining dough into pieces.  Put filling in ramekins to half mark. Put dough in filling. Add more fruit.  Cut one tablespoon of butter into four pieces. Dot the top of each pie with butter. Cover the tops of each with crust rounds and fill in the sides with remaining dough pieces.   Brush the crusts with a tablespoon of melted butter. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes until crust is lightly browned and filling is bubbling.  

These are nicely portioned for a guilt-free dessert. Less chance that you’ll over-indulge. 

Dossie Smoot

THE PEOPLE CATCHER: MR. WOOLFOLK’S BOUNTY

An original story by Breena Clarke published in Kweli, an online literary journal featuring diverse voices.

The People Catcher   

for more information on Breena Clarke’s books: www.BreenaClarke.com

River, Cross My Heart, an Oprah book club selection and a classic of African American fiction, is now available for your e-reader.

“The acclaimed bestseller–a selection of Oprah’s Book Club–that brings vividly to life the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, circa 1925, a community reeling from a young girl’s tragic death.”  Amazon.com

Self-Determination

Habari Gani?

Kujichagulia (self-determination) to be responsible for the community and to speak for oneself.

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I was so excited this past year to have been included in the anthology, IDOL TALK: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations That Changed Their Lives edited by Elizabeth Searle and Tamra Wilson, a collection of forty-four essays on the women and men who influenced the mature selves of women writers. These are the figures who guided our growing up, who helped to determine who we became. In these delightful essays, we authors are at times lighthearted, but we are also frank and revealing and aware and descriptive of the zeitgeist of the teen idol era, that time between the end of the World War II up to and including the modern Civil Rights Era. Our idols were, by and large, rebels, visionaries, geniuses, innovators, and damn good lookers. And their looks were important as they were served up to us on magazine covers and on TV, the medium through which we came to know a great deal about our American culture. I write about the sweet, dreamy, velvet-voiced Sam Cooke.

I write also of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in September of 1963. I was twelve then and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson were fourteen years old and Carol Denise McNair was eleven. The four girls who died that day were casualties of the horrors of white resistance to civil rights and their lives are, for me, touchstones. The opportunity for self-determination was taken from them. More information at BlackPast.org

16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing_girls    sam-cooke-9256129-2-402

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I’m in great company in this anthology. The essays are written by Elizabeth Searle, Tamra Wilson, Darlene R. Taylor, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Kate Kastelein, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Lee J. Kahrs, Judy Goldman, Nancy Swan, B.A. Shapiro, Michelle Soucy, Amy Rogers, Ann Harleman, Linda K. Sienkiewicz, Janice Eidus, Katharine Davis, Jill McCorkle, Marianne Leone, Susan Lilly, Ann Hood, Lise Haines, Marianne Gingher, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Susan Shapiro, Marjorie Hudson, Morgan Callan Rogers, Leslea Newman, Leslie Lawrence, Katie Hafner, Lisa Williams Kline, Mary Granfield, Leslie Pietrzyk, Susan Woodring, Caitlin McCarthy, Stephanie Powell Watts, Ann Rosenquist Fee, Shara McCallum, Heather Duerre Humann, Lisa Borders, Mary Sullivan, Diana Goetsch, Emlyn Meredith Dornemann and Susan Straight. Wow! We cover a lot of ground,

For more information about IDOL TALK at this link:   https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/idol-talk/

Bonus materials in IDOL TALK are the “then and now” photos of the writers including glasses, braces and goofy hairdos, the fond, familiar glimpses of our youths.

Listen to the irresistible Sam Cooke.

Let’s celebrate Kwanzaa by being determined to recognize the needs of our communities and by being willing to stand for justice and dignity and against racism.  For more information about Kwanzaa, go to: What is Kwanzaa

 

 

more information about Breena Clarke’s books at www.BreenaClarke.com

River, Cross My Heart, an Oprah book club selection and a classic of African American fiction is now available for your e-reader.

“The acclaimed bestseller–a selection of Oprah’s Book Club–that brings vividly to life the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, circa 1925, a community reeling from a young girl’s tragic death.”  Amazon.com

River, Cross My Heart, kindle edition

 

Winter Wonders

Winter wonders are not all about men in red suits and loud celebration. I have watched in wonder as birds have come to my small backyard bird feeder. Too awe-struck to photograph them or records their songs, I’ve just watched them.

The Downey Woodpecker
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Mourning Dove
The Tufted Titmouse

I filled a small bird feeder and put it in my beloved dogwood tree. The dogwood has repeatedly complained that throughout the winter months when we abandon the backyard, she is without company. The feeder has brought many visitors including

(top to bottom) the beautiful Downey Woodpecker, Red-Breasted Nuthatch, The Mourning Dove, and the Tufted Titmouse.

Listen to my audio recording of Back Along The Octoraro, a story of avian enchantment. This audio includes some bird sounds recorded near my house last spring.

Back Along The Octoraro read by Breena Clarke

for more information www.BreenaClarke.com

Joy For The World

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2018

 

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The Gleeful Goddess

at the crux of fear and flame ’tis the season of joy.

 

I’m happy to be celebrating the sixth consecutive year of platforming and presenting the work of women writers at the annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers co-founded with Cheryl Clarke and Barbara Balliet. We had a great weekend of rejuvenation and inspiration in the beautiful Catskills this past September 7, 8 &9th.

View more photo highlights here:

Festival of Women Writers 2018 photo highlights

A ROOM OF HER OWN FOUNDATION, a global organization of creative women with which I’ve been associated since its first writer’s retreat in 2003 has rolled out a wave of treasure this December, Gifts of Fellowship which include unique opportunities for the givers. You can donate to support this great consortium of creative women AND have a chance to win an expert book doctor consultation with Esther Cohen, OR secure a winter artist’s/writer’s residency in Santa Fe at a charming casita OR you can experience an empowering ONE-ON-ONE session designed to build your skills and confidence in reading your own creative writing with Breena Clarke.

Are you ready to read your work for an audience?  Do you shake in your boots at the thought of performing your own writing? Consider donating to A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Edna Payne Clarke Gift of Fellowship and you could win an opportunity to work with me. Find out the full details and donate-to-win a Gift of Fellowship at A Room of Her Own Foundation:

 Winning fellows will be announced January 4th.

In this one on one class with me which is named in honor of my mother, Edna Payne Clarke,  you’ll get email and video-conferencing interaction. I’ll help you select the right material to read and I’ll share my tips on preparation and some techniques for a smooth and exciting reading.

EdnaPayneClarke_GoF

Check out Hobart Festival of Women Writers Holiday Gift Guide. A book is always the right size.

Gift books

for more about Breena Clarke’s books, go to BreenaClarke.com

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Give a gift of truth and beauty. Purchase a Hobart Festival of Women Writers Calendar

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Get your calendar at hobartfestivalofwomenwriters.com

 

 

 

 

 

Twisting The Night Away

 

 

 

 

 

“We used to dream about Sam Cooke. We imagined we might be his girlfriend one day. I always think “we” because of my childhood BFF, CeeCee. She was my partner in Sam Cooke workship”    – from an essay by Breena Clarke in IDOL TALK

IDOL TALK: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations That Changed Their Lives edited by Elizabeth Searle and Tamra Wilson is a collection of forty-four essays on the women and men who influenced the mature selves of women writers. These are the figures who guided our growing up. In these delightful essays, we authors are at times lighthearted, but we are also frank and revealing and aware and descriptive of the zeitgeist of the teen idol era, that time between the end of the World War II up to and including the modern Civil Rights Era. And our idols were, by and large, rebels, visionaries, geniuses, innovators, and damn good lookers. And their looks were integral as they were served up to us on magazine covers and TV, the medium through which we came to know a great deal about our American culture. We know them as well as we know ourselves because we became ourselves, in some measure, because of them. I write about the sweet, dreamy, velvet-voiced Sam Cooke. Sam Cooke on YouTube  I still have a palpable reaction to his singing. I’m convinced there is no other voice like his or ever will be.

 

16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing_girls

The victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

I also write about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in September of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. I was twelve then, and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson were fourteen years old and Carol Denise McNair was eleven. The four girls who died that day were casualties of the horrors of white resistance to civil rights. And the next year the Beatles came into my life in February 1964 and a little later Sam Cooke died in troubling circumstances in December 1964.

Young Breena

Breena Clarke

There’s Bonus material in IDOL TALk, too. The “then and now” photos of the writers including glasses, braces and goofy hairdos are fond, familiar glimpses of our youths.

I’m in great company in this anthology. The essays are written by Elizabeth Searle, Tamra Wilson, Darlene R. Taylor, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Kate Kastelein, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Lee J. Kahrs, Judy Goldman, Nancy Swan, B.A. Shapiro, Michelle Soucy, Amy Rogers, Ann Harleman, Linda K. Sienkiewicz, Janice Eidus, Katharine Davis, Jill McCorkle, Marianne Leone, Susan Lilly, Ann Hood, Lise Haines, Marianne Gingher, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Susan Shapiro, Marjorie Hudson, Morgan Callan Rogers, Leslea Newman, Leslie Lawrence, Katie Hafner, Lisa Williams Kline, Mary Granfield, Leslie Pietrzyk, Susan Woodring, Caitlin McCarthy, Stephanie Powell Watts, Ann Rosenquist Fee, Shara McCallum, Heather Duerre Humann, Lisa Borders, Mary Sullivan, Diana Goetsch, Emlyn Meredith Dornemann and Susan Straight. Wow! We cover a lot of ground.

Peter Noone, the former lead singer of Herman’s Hermits and a certified Teen Idol, wrote the foreword to IDOL TALK: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations That Changed Their Lives and he and his group are on our cover. I still remember my excitement the hot afternoon that I saw him perform on The Steel Pier at Atlantic City

For more information, this link: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/idol-talk/

find an independent bookseller at Indiebound.org

 

 

link here for a flash of fiction by Breena Clarke Bess

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visit my website at www.BreenaClarke.com

Are you in NYC in August?  Come out to KGB Bar  for a reading from
IDOL TALK: Women Writers on their Teen Idols
Wednesday, August 8, 2018, 8:00 PM
85 East 4th Street, New York, NY
link for the reading lineup: kgbbar.com

Motherhood

Motherhood in the time of slavery

Dossie Smoot

read this sensual yet troubling story of a pregnancy in bondage

The Summer Lolly

Also by Breena Clarke

Stand The Storm    purchase Stand The Storm at  Word Books in Jersey City or ask for it at your local bookstore.

From the beginning, Annie refused to pull back caring for her boy though. As well as she knew that she toyed with sorrow, she clung to the child. Hope was a feature on his face. She had put it there and she resolved to be clever and keep him. And if he were lost, then it would be her portion to swallow, for she was committed to love him. She later pledged in her heart to Ellen, too, but she was less ardent with her. She had got used to the hurly-burly exercise of love when Ellen came and could easily choose between the two. Annie guided Gabriel—nay, she had cut him if the truth be told. Here was a man she had shaped. She had trained him to be clever and she guided him to the clever path. The woman helping her bring Gabriel had been short with her, impatient of Annie’s writhing and bucking labor. The woman handled the baby roughly when he emerged and let him squall long minutes before bringing him to Annie. “Don’t give him the tit too quick! He’s got to learn right off that he’ll wait for his vittles like everybody else. He ain’t no king on a throne,” she growled. But Annie took him up and clutched him, and he latched to her breast and sucked and would not be loosed until his head fell back sleeping and a trickle of milk came from his mouth. “Ah, you’ll cry,” the irritable helpmeet pronounced as she left with her bandages and slop pans.

from Stand The Storm by Breena Clarke

read an essay on motherhood and loss Fifteen on MOM/EGG Review                   fullsizeoutput_32d1

Parenting in the time of slavery is necessarily fraught with peril. In Breena Clarke’s novel, ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE, young Dossie’s parents do the most difficult thing imaginable. They send their child off to uncertainty rather than have her suffer as an enslaved person on the Kenworthy plantation. They embrace a hope that, with the help of others, she can become free and live a better life (even if they don’t actually know what that better life would be). For them, the knowable horror of Kenworthy plantation is worth risking this child’s life and separating from her forever.

http://latenightlibrary.org/breena-clarke/#wrap. Breena Clarke discusses

ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE and its depictions mothers, fathers, patriarchy vs. matrilineal constructs and parenting in the time of slavery.

. . . the most damaging aspect of the institution of slavery is the destruction of familial relationships through separation and the inability of enslaved parents to protect their children. It is in the interest of preserving families that the people of Russell’s Knob built a community, preferring to live apart from the mainstream in order to stay together with loved ones.

for more information on Breena Clarke’s books: www.BreenaClarke.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Swimming

 

 

I learned to swim later in life. I learned well after I wrote a book about a girl who swims against great odds and in the face of personal tragedy, a fictionalized account of my mother’s young life. Read a synopsis of RIVER, CROSS MY HEART I learned to swim well after the death of my only child in an accidental fall. He’d been a swimmer. It means a lot to me to have learned this skill at age 49. It’s the linchpin of my health and fitness routine. I was brought to tears recently by the story of a young man who rescued seventeen people and a dog because he could swim because he was determined because he was courageous because his heart was strong. Most of all because he knew how to swim and was unafraid of the water. Virgil’s story  He was unafraid to act and I’m glad he’s getting a Civilian Medal of Honor. Check out the surprise his community gave him.  https://youtu.be/7y8HjalvoaM

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Virgil Smith (l) with his friend, Keyshaun whose life he saved

And then there were the two sisters, one of whom competed in the Rio Olympics on the refugee team, who swam for three hours in the Aegean Sea to prevent a boatload of refugees from sinking to their deaths. They were the only swimmers aboard and they saved eighteen people and themselves.  The two women leaped out of the boat, into cold waters and pushed the boat for three hours in open water to prevent it from capsizing — eventually making land.  Young Syrian woman saves a boatload of refugees   

 

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Yusra Mardini

 

As summer approaches let’s make sure each child has the opportunity to learn to swim. In many cities, access to pools and swimming lessons is sparse. Be sure your municipality offers swimming instruction and access to safe pool environments for all young people. Encourage your youngsters to learn this valuable life skill. They may save a life, their own or others. They will acquire a lifelong practice that will help maintain fitness, promote confidence, and create a healthy mental state.  Check here for swimming classes in Jersey City Swimming classes for children and adults

Google your town for places offering swimming instruction and access. You may be nurturing someone who has the courage and intelligence to save others. They just need the skills. Make sure your child learns to swim.

For more about Breena Clarke’s books, go to  www.BreenaClarke.com