Breaking away
Kristin Lattany

Author: Lattany, Kristin Hunter, 1931-

When four African-American female students fall victim to an incident involving name calling and garbage throwing on the part of some white male students, the young women decide to charge their tormenters with assault and racial insensitivity for violating their university's harassment code and enlist the aid of African-American faculty member Dr. Bethesda Barnes to act as their advisor in the case.

New York: Ballantine Books, 2003, 289 p.

Publishers Weekly Review: An African-American professor at an Ivy League university becomes immersed in a race controversy in this politically charged novel by Lattany (Do Unto Others). For seven years, Dr. Bethesda Barnes has been a popular literature professor at the unnamed university where she herself was an undergraduate in the 1970s. Her courses on black literature are always overflowing but, though she's a favorite with students, Beth has kept herself apart from the faculty. She hesitates to form relationships with white professors on a campus where she still feels somewhat alienated, yet she doesn't fully acknowledge her own discomfort, preferring not to make waves. When a group of black sorority sisters is harassed by white male students, the women ask Beth to be their faculty sponsor in a lawsuit challenging the university's harassment code. Beth agrees, even though she's not entirely sympathetic to their cause, and suddenly finds herself all too visible: students drop out of her classes; she receives violent threats; her job is on the line; and both blacks and whites find reasons to berate her. The controversy, along with the deaths of two of her relatives, force her to examine her ideas about justice and her own deep-seated attitudes about race, nurtured by her protective parents. Lattany's provocative narrative plunges spirited characters into explosive social situations, posing timely questions about the state of race relations on campus. (Apr.)
— Staff (Reviewed March 3, 2003) (Publishers Weekly, vol 250, issue 9, p51)

Kirkus Reviews Racism redux, from the National Book Award–nominated author of Do Unto Others (2000), etc.

Born in the 1950s, Dr. Bethesda Barnes hasn't been held back by discrimination, though it has cast a shadow over her life, however slight. When she first started teaching at the state college, she wouldn't ask a white woman where the bathroom was, for fear of looking ignorant. But those days are over and, seven years later, she's a popular instructor, happy to share the riches of African-American literature and music with all her students, black and white. Then four sorority sisters ask her to be their faculty advisor after they become the target of campus racists, and Beth finds that supporting them is a tough assignment. Harriet is a wild-eyed, rhetoric-spouting radical; Rhonda a walking advertisement for upscale designers. Cynthia Forrest is a rich, spoiled brat who had the nerve to ask Beth for a letter of recommendation before she even took her class. But Dana Marshall was actually injured, and Beth is outraged. Still, why were the girls hanging out so late at night, dancing and singing, instead of studying? Apparently they woke up the boys, who then taunted them with racial slurs, threw a urine-filled balloon and a Coke bottle that left an ugly gash in Dana's leg. Nonetheless, the college has a zero-tolerance policy on incidents of this sort, and it must be investigated. Looks like skinheads, neo-Nazis, even the Klan have student followers, and trouble is brewing. Some in the administration make boys-will-be-boys excuses, claiming that "water buffalo" is a commonplace insult and not a racial epithet, while editorials tag the affair as a freedom-of-speech issue. Then an African student is attacked and beaten, the girls are threatened with academic expulsion—and Beth turns angrily to her mother, demanding to know why she wasn't told that life was like this.

Lattany's desultory, somewhat trivial fictionalization of a real-life campus hate incident lacks passion—and a point.
(Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2003)



ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0345442490


Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20040220
• TID: 122144

Do unto others

Author: Lattany, Kristin Hunter, 1931-

The arrival of a young African woman in the household of African Americans Zena and Lucious challenges their sacrosanct notions of race, culture, and political correctness

New York: One World, 2000, 272 p.

Publishers Weekly Review: "Be careful what you wish for" is the lesson learned by a proud, hard-working, beautician in Lattany's (Kinfolk) latest novel. Zenobia Lawson, 49, owns her own hair salon, specializing in African-American women's styles, cuts and colors; she is happily married to Lucius and is a kind of mother figure in her group of women friends, called "The Divas." Zena and her husband, Lucius, are Christians, and believe in the moral imperative to "do unto others," so when a 20-year-old African woman, Ifa Olongo, needs a home for three weeks while she's applying for a visa extension, the Lawsons are happy to take her in. Childless Zena is also excited to have "a daughter" and is thrilled by Ifa's regal beauty, innocence and charm. Quickly, though, complications arise: Zena gets sweet-talked into buying Ifa pricey designer clothes and ends up with an astronomical phone bill. Despite all her support of Ifa, Zena displays little understanding of cultural differences: she forces the offended Ifa to wear deodorant, and recoils when she sees that Ifa has transformed the pretty guest bedroom into a "voodoo hut," decorated with a python skin and "what appear to be a small pile of human bones." Tensions rise, and when Ifa gives Lucius a massage and does a sexy python dance, Zena is suspicious of her guest's proclaimed Christianity. But Lucius defends Ifa ( "It's not her fault her family taught her pagan beliefs"), and exhorts Zena to convert Ifa. Lucius and Ifa predictably end up sleeping together and Zena freaks out, demanding HIV tests for everybody. Lattany writes in a chatty first-person voice, but when Zena attempts to describe the complex differences between African immigrants and American blacks, only a superficial exploration ensues. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal Review: Winner of the Moonstone Black Writing Celebration Lifetime Achievement Award, Lattany explores the conflict between an African American couple and the young African woman they try to help. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.



ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0345407083
034543837X : Paperback


Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 039784

Kinfolks: a novel

Author: Lattany, Kristin Hunter, 1931-

Profiles two African American women who, during the heyday of civil rights and the sexual revolution, choose to have children out of wedlock

New York: Ballantine Books, copyright 1996, 276 p.

School Library Journal Review: YA--A delightfully engaging story. Cherry Hopkins and Patrice Barber, two middle-aged African-American women, discover they share more than their youthful experiences during their Freedom Riding days of activism and Black Power rallies. Single mothers by choice, they realize while preparing for the wedding of their very traditional offspring, that these young people share the same father. This shock of discovery sets Cherry and Patrice off on a mission to locate the rest of the kinfolk that may exist and the man, Gene Green, who started it all. Meanwhile, the youthful lovers, now turned brother and sister, find their father, blind and alcoholic, living on the streets. Humor and pathos mingle throughout the everyday trials of living for these likable, creative, determined, middle-class females and their equally talented and resourceful children. The coming together of the generations, the merging together of contrasting values, and the richness of African-American culture and traditions make this story an excellent addition to YA collections.--Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA

Publishers Weekly Review: Two African American women whose premeditated single motherhood was a political statement 20 years ago animate Lattany's funny and poignant third novel. Patrice Barber and Cherry Hopkins, both in their late 40s, share a friendship dating back to the 1960s, when they participated in the civil rights movement. Patrice's son, Toussaint, and Cherry's daughter, Aisha, have been inseparable since childhood, and no one is surprised when they become engaged. In a contrived plot device, Patrice tumbles to the coincidence that Toussaint and Aisha share an allergy and an identical pattern of moles. Neither Cherry nor Patrice has ever admitted the identity of the men who sired her child. Confession time on both sides: the father of both turns out to be poet and revolutionary Eugene Dessalines Green, whose current whereabouts are unknown. The young people adjust to half-sibling status with what is almost a sense of relief, but Patrice determines to locate Green's other offspring to prevent other instances of inadvertent sibling romance. Enlisting Cherry's aid, Patrice ferrets out Green's other lovers, women like themselves--independent, proud, intelligent and without regrets. Green's reappearance is yet another coincidence, but Lattany handles it well. Patrice and Cherry, their worldly-wise children and the magic man who reenters their lives are some of Lattany's (Guests in the Promised Land) most mature creations, and she uses them to demonstrate that true kinship resides in the heart rather than in the bloodline. Author tour. (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews The author of five previous (and much praised) novels, including The Landlord (first published in 1966, but made into a movie in 1993), Lattany here portrays the changing lives and times of two feisty African-American women in their 50s--former 1960s political radicals, currently straggling to make ends meet and launch their two convention-hugging offspring into the world. As the story opens, the kids, Aisha and Toussaint--daughter and son, respectively, of old friends and single-mothers-by-choice Cherry Hopkins and Patrice Barber--are engaged to be married to each other. But Patrice, a queen-sized earth mother with a shrewd streak, senses a serious problem: The kids, who have always looked alike and been weirdly similar in disposition and tastes, also, it turns out, share an allergy to strawberries and a mole beneath their left ear. Could they possibly share the same father, Patrice wonders--a dashing, debauched, highly educated black poet named Eugene Green, whom all the "brilliant, achieving, liberated young sisters" of the '60s coveted? Yes, it turns out, after Patrice and Cherry compare notes on the subject; and immediately they decide to take to the road and hunt up Eugene's presumed other progeny--their kids' presumptive brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, Toussaint and Aisha, furious with Patrice and Cherry for screwing up their lives yet again, take up with a homeless drunk named Gene, a channing, mordantly funny ex-professor who teaches them that joy can be found beyond rigid social conventions. Of course, Gene is Eugene, their father--as they all learn when Cherry and Patrice return home with a passel of women and children who have also been touched by Gene. Heartwarming, with vivid characters (especially among the children), but marred by a plot that's silly and full of holes.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 1996)



Other titles associated with this book:
Kin folks


ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0345438051
0345407067
0345417208 : Paperback
0613218612 : Glued Binding


Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 004302

New York: Scribner, c1981, 296 p.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0684168804


Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Added to NoveList: 20020720
• TID: 076677

Soul Brothers and Sister Lou, The

Author: Lattany, Kristin Hunter, 1931-

A fourteen-year-old girl tries to reconcile her dreams and hopes for the future with the harsh and often unpleasant realities of life in the Negro section of town.

New York,: Scribner, 1968, 241 p.