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| i am not sidney poitier analysis: I Am Not Sidney Poitier Percival Everett, 2011-08-02 I Am Not Sidney Poitier is an irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier. Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett's hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: What's your name? a kid would ask. Not Sidney, I would say. Okay, then what is it? |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Erasure Percival Everett, 2011-10-25 Thelonius Monk Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called ghetto prose that would make him a commercial success. He finally succumbs to temptation after seeing the Oberlin-educated author of We's Lives in da Ghetto during her appearance on a talk show, firing back with a parody called My Pafology, which he submits to his startled agent under the gangsta pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh. Ellison quickly finds himself with a six-figure advance from a major house, a multimillion-dollar offer for the movie rights and a monster bestseller on his hands. The money helps with a family crisis, allowing Ellison to care for his widowed mother as she drifts into the fog of Alzheimer's, but it doesn't ease the pain after his sister, a physician, is shot by right-wing fanatics for performing abortions. The dark side of wealth surfaces when both the movie mogul and talk-show host demand to meet the nonexistent Leigh, forcing Ellison to don a disguise and invent a sullen, enigmatic character to meet the demands of the market. The final indignity occurs when Ellison becomes a judge for a major book award and My Pafology (title changed to Fuck) gets nominated, forcing the author to come to terms with his perverse literary joke.--Publisher's description. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Assumption Percival Everett, 2011-10-25 A baffling triptych of murder mysteries by the author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old woman's murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. Something is amiss, and even his mother knows it. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase, pursuing flimsy leads for even flimsier reasons. His hunt leads him from the seamier side of Denver to a hippie commune as he seeks the puzzling solution. In Assumption, his follow-up to the wickedly funny I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett is in top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning. A wild ride to the heart of a baffling mystery, Assumption is a literary thriller like no other. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Telephone Percival Everett, 2023-09-28 '[Percival Everett's] books always feel like an encounter with substantive, playful thinking . . . sad, affecting and marvelous' New York Times A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Telephone is an astonishing story of love, loss and grief from Percival Everett, author of The Trees, Dr No and Erasure (now an Oscar-nominated film). Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologist-slash-paleobiologist. Expert in an incredibly niche field, he spends his days playing chess with his daughter, trading puns with his wife as she does yoga, and dodging committee work at the college where he teaches. After his daughter is diagnosed with a fatal illness, Wells finds a cryptic plea for help tucked into a secondhand jacket bought online. Desperately seeking a way avoid his newfound sense of powerlessness, he embarks for New Mexico on a quixotic rescue mission. Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature. Read Percival's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel James in paperback now. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Pictures at a Revolution Mark Harris, 2008 Documents the cultural revolution behind the making of 1967's five Best Picture-nominated films, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, Doctor Doolittle, In the Heat of the Night, and Bonnie and Clyde, in an account that discusses how the movies reflected period beliefs about race, violence, and identity. 40,000 first printing. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: The Measure of a Man Sidney Poitier, 2007-01-26 I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the answers to all life's questions. Quite that contrary, I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I've done at measuring up to the values I myself have set. —Sidney Poitier In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure—as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor. Poitier credits his parents and his childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that he has never surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. In the kind of place where I grew up, recalls Poitier, what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and momma's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters...and that's it. Without television, radio, and material distractions to obscure what matters most, he could enjoy the simple things, endure the long commitments, and find true meaning in his life. Poitier was uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life that would honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Poitier broke racial barrier after racial barrier to launch a pioneering acting career. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living articulates to who one is, Poitier played only forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition. Here is Poitier's own introspective look at what has informed his performances and his life. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man in the face of limits—his own and the world's. A triumph of the spirit, The Measure of a Man captures the essential Poitier. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: My Song (Enhanced Edition) Harry Belafonte, Michael Shnayerson, 2011-10-11 This deluxe eBook edition of Harry Belafonte's remarkable memoir includes nearly eighteen minutes of original video—Mr. Belafonte talking about his first meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . his friendship with Sidney Poitier . . . the making of “We Are the World” . . . and much more—the bonus song “Jump in the Line” from the companion album Harry Belafonte—Sing Your Song: The Music; and the book's photographs compiled as a slide show. Harry Belafonte is not just one of the greatest entertainers of our time; he has led one of the great American lives of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Now, at last, this extraordinary icon tells us about it all—his poverty-ridden childhood in Harlem and Jamaica; his meteoric rise to become one of the world’s most popular singers, breaking down racial barriers that no one had broken before, achieving equal popularity with white and black audiences; his lifelong, passionate involvement at the heart of the civil rights movement and countless other political and social causes. Along the way he’s befriended many beloved and important figures in both entertainment and politics—Paul Robeson; Eleanor Roosevelt; Sidney Poitier; John F. Kennedy; Marlon Brando; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Robert Kennedy; Nelson Mandela; Fidel Castro—and writes about them with the same exceptional candor and insight with which he reveals himself on every page. As both an artist and an activist, Belafonte has touched the lives of countless men and women. With My Song, he has found yet another way to entertain and inspire us. It is an electrifying memoir from a remarkable man. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond , 2013-12-20 “A truly funny sendup of the corrupt politics of academe, the publishing industry and politics, as well as a subtle but biting critique of racial ideology.” —Publishers Weekly This “hilarious high-concept satire” (Publishers Weekly), by the PEN/Faulkner finalist and acclaimed author of Telephone and Erasure, is a fictitious and satirical chronicle of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond’s desire to pen a history of African-Americans—his and his aides’ belief being that he has done as much, or more, than any American to shape that history. An epistolary novel, The History follows the letters of loose cannon Congressional office workers, insane interns at a large New York publishing house and disturbed publishing executives, along with homicidal rival editors, kindly family friends, and an aspiring author named Septic. Strom Thurmond appears charming and open, mad and sure of his place in American history. “Outrageously funny . . . it could become a cult classic.” —Library Journal “I think Percival Everett is a genius. I’ve been a fan since his first novel . . . He’s a brilliant writer and so damn smart I envy him.” —Terry McMillan, New York Times-bestselling author of It’s Not All Downhill from Here “God bless Percival Everett, whose dozens of idiosyncratic books demonstrate a majestic indifference to literary trends, the market or his critics.”?The Wall Street Journal |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Half an Inch of Water Percival Everett, 2015-09-15 A new collection of stories set in the West from one of the most gifted and versatile of contemporary writers (NPR) Percival Everett's long-awaited new collection of stories, his first since 2004's Damned If I Do, finds him traversing the West with characteristic restlessness. A deaf Native American girl wanders off into the desert and is found untouched in a den of rattlesnakes. A young boy copes with the death of his sister by angling for an unnaturally large trout in the creek where she drowned. An old woman rides her horse into a mountain snowstorm and sees a long-dead beloved dog. For the plainspoken men and women of these stories—fathers and daughters, sheriffs and veterinarians—small events trigger sudden shifts in which the ordinary becomes unfamiliar. A harmless comment about how to ride a horse changes the course of a relationship, a snakebite gives rise to hallucinations, and the hunt for a missing man reveals his uncanny resemblance to an actor. Half an Inch of Water tears through the fabric of the everyday to examine what lies beneath the surface of these lives. In the hands of master storyteller Everett, the act of questioning leads to vistas more strange and unsettling than could ever have been expected. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: The Lincoln Highway Amor Towles, 2023-03-21 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Readers’ Choice Best Book of the Century, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: A Particular Kind of Black Man Tope Folarin, 2020-08-11 **One of Time’s 32 Books You Need to Read This Summer** An NPR Best Book of 2019 An “electrifying” (Publishers Weekly) debut novel from Rhodes Scholar and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing about a Nigerian family living in Utah and their uneasy assimilation to American life. Living in small-town Utah has always been an uncomfortable fit for Tunde Akinola’s family, especially for his Nigeria-born parents. Though Tunde speaks English with a Midwestern accent, he can’t escape the children who rub his skin and ask why the black won’t come off. As he struggles to fit in, he finds little solace from his parents who are grappling with their own issues. Tunde’s father, ever the optimist, works tirelessly chasing his American dream while his wife, lonely in Utah without family and friends, sinks deeper into schizophrenia. Then one otherwise-ordinary morning, Tunde’s mother wakes him with a hug, bundles him and his baby brother into the car, and takes them away from the only home they’ve ever known. But running away doesn’t bring her, or her children, any relief; once Tunde’s father tracks them down, she flees to Nigeria, and Tunde never feels at home again. He spends the rest of his childhood and young adulthood searching for connection—to the wary stepmother and stepbrothers he gains when his father remarries; to the Utah residents who mock his father’s accent; to evangelical religion; to his Texas middle school’s crowd of African-Americans; to the fraternity brothers of his historically black college. In so doing, he discovers something that sends him on a journey away from everything he has known. Sweeping, stirring, and perspective-shifting, A Particular Kind of Black Man is “wild, vulnerable, lived…A study of the particulate self, the self as a constellation of moving parts” (The New York Times Book Review). |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Glyph Percival Everett, 2004 With this wildly inventive and funny novel, Percival Everett has created his unlikeliest hero to date. Mute by choice but able to read complex philosophical treatises and ponder the worth (not much) of Derrida and Barthes, baby Ralph is considered mentally 'challenged' by his father. On discovery of his unusual talents, however, there is soon a whole host of people eager for a stake in this child prodigy. Among the most fiendish are Dr Steimell, the psychiatrist; Dr Davis and her illegal chimps; and Nana, the secret agent. All have plans for baby Ralph who misses his mother terribly and doesn't warm to his role as 'Defence Stealth Operative 1369'. As the pursuit of Ralph across America gathers pace we are treated to intellectual conundrums and words of wisdom that perhaps only a baby could dream up. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Pym: A Novel Mat Johnson, 2012-09-04 “THE SHARPEST AND MOST UNUSUAL STORY I READ LAST YEAR . . . [Mat] Johnson’s satirical vision roves as freely as Kurt Vonnegut’s and is colored with the same sort of passionate humanitarianism.”—Maud Newton, New York Times Magazine NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Vanity Fair • Houston Chronicle • The Seattle Times • Salon • National Post • The A.V. Club Recently canned professor of American literature Chris Jaynes has just made a startling discovery: the manuscript of a crude slave narrative that confirms the reality of Edgar Allan Poe’s strange and only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Determined to seek out Tsalal, the remote island of pure and utter blackness that Poe describes, Jaynes convenes an all-black crew of six to follow Pym’s trail to the South Pole, armed with little but the firsthand account from which Poe derived his seafaring tale, a bag of bones, and a stash of Little Debbie snack cakes. Thus begins an epic journey by an unlikely band of adventurers under the permafrost of Antarctica, beneath the surface of American history, and behind one of literature’s great mysteries. “Outrageously entertaining, [Pym] brilliantly re-imagines and extends Edgar Allan Poe’s enigmatic and unsettling Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. . . . Part social satire, part meditation on race in America, part metafiction and, just as important, a rollicking fantasy adventure . . . reminiscent of Philip Roth in its seemingly effortless blend of the serious, comic and fantastic.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Blisteringly funny.”—Laura Miller, Salon “Relentlessly entertaining.”—The New York Times Book Review “Imagine Kurt Vonnegut having a beer with Ralph Ellison and Jules Verne.”—Vanity Fair “Screamingly funny . . . Reading Pym is like opening a big can of whoop-ass and then marveling—gleefully—at all the mayhem that ensues.”—Houston Chronicle |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Lamb Bonnie Nadzam, 2011-09-13 Winner of the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest. But when Lamb decides to abduct a willing Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness, they are both shaken in ways neither of them expects. Lamb is a masterful exploration of the dynamics of love and dependency that challenges the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, confronts preconceived notions about conventional morality, and exposes mankind’s eroded relationship with nature. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Understanding Blackness through Performance Anne Cremieux, 2013-10-31 How does the performance of blackness reframe issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality? Here, the contributors look into representational practices in film, literature, fashion, and theatre and explore how they have fleshed out political struggles, while recognizing that they have sometimes maintained the mechanisms of violence against blacks. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Calvin Martine Leavitt, 2015-11-17 Born on the day the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published, seventeen-year-old Calvin, a schizophrenic, sees and has conversations with the tiger, Hobbes, and believes that if he can persuade the strip's creator, Bill Watterson, to do one more strip, he will make Calvin well. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Dr. No Percival Everett, 2023 |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Don't Let Me Be Lonely Claudia Rankine, 2024-07-09 A brilliant and unsparing examination of America in the early twenty-first century, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely invents a new genre to confront the particular loneliness and rapacious assault on selfhood that our media have inflicted upon our lives. Fusing the lyric, the essay, and the visual, Rankine negotiates the enduring anxieties of medicated depression, race riots, divisive elections, terrorist attacks, and ongoing wars—doom scrolling through the daily news feeds that keep us glued to our screens and that have come to define our age. First published in 2004, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is a hauntingly prescient work, one that has secured a permanent place in American literature. This new edition is presented in full color with updated visuals and text, including a new preface by the author, and matches the composition of Rankine’s best-selling and award-winning Citizen and Just Us as the first book in her acclaimed American trilogy. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is a crucial guide to surviving a fractured and fracturing American consciousness—a book of rare and vital honesty, complexity, and presence. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: For Her Dark Skin Percival Everett, 1990 |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: The Perseverance Raymond Antrobus, 2021-03-30 Featured on NPR's Morning Edition A Best Book of the Year at The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Poetry School, New York Public Library, and Entropy Magazine Winner of the Ted Hughes Award, Rathbones Folio Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award; finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and Reading the West Book Award In the wake of his father’s death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus’ The Perseverance travels to Barcelona. In Gaudi’s Cathedral, he meditates on the idea of silence and sound, wondering whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. Receiving information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea. “Even though,” he says, “I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer.” The Perseverance is a collection of poems examining a d/Deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education, and language, both spoken and signed. It is a book about communication and connection, about cultural inheritance, about identity in a hearing world that takes everything for granted, about the dangers we may find (both individually and as a society) if we fail to understand each other. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Furious Cool David Henry, Joe Henry, 2014-01-01 Provides a rare glimpse into the life of an outrageously human, fearlessly black, openly angry and profanely outspoken comedic genius whose humble beginnings as the child of a prostitute helped shaped him into one of the most influential and outstanding performers of our time. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Unseen Dana Canedy, Darcy Eveleigh, Damien Cave, Rachel L. Swarns, 2017-10-17 Hundreds of stunning images from Black history have been buried in the New York Times photo archives for decades. Four Times staff members unearth these overlooked photographs and investigate the stories behind them in this remarkable collection. New York Times photo editor Darcy Eveleigh made an unwitting discovery when she found dozens of never-before-published photographs from Black history in the crowded bins of the Times archives in 2016. She and three colleagues, Dana Canedy, Damien Cave, and Rachel L. Swarns, began exploring the often untold stories behind the images and chronicling them in a series entitled “Unpublished Black History” that was later published by the newspaper. Unseen showcases those photographs and digs even deeper into the Times’s archives to include 175 photographs and the stories behind them in this extraordinary collection. Among the entries is a 27-year-old Jesse Jackson leading an anti-discrimination rally in Chicago; Rosa Parks arriving at a Montgomery courthouse in Alabama; a candid shot of Aretha Franklin backstage at the Apollo Theater; Ralph Ellison on the streets of his Manhattan neighborhood; the firebombed home of Malcolm X; and a series by Don Hogan Charles, the first black photographer hired by the Times, capturing life in Harlem in the 1960s. Why were these striking photographs not published? Did the images not arrive in time to make the deadline? Were they pushed aside by the biases of editors, whether intentional or unintentional? Unseen dives deep into the Times’s archives to showcase this rare collection of photographs and stories for the very first time. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: If Beale Street Could Talk (Movie Tie-In) James Baldwin, 2018-10-30 A stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime—a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless (The New York Times Book Review). • Also a major motion picture from Barry Jenkins. One of the best books Baldwin has ever written—perhaps the best of all. —The Philadelphia Inquirer Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions—affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: No Name in the Street James Baldwin, 2007-01-09 From one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century—an extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies that powerfully speaks to contemporary conversations around racism. “It contains truth that cannot be denied.” —The Atlantic Monthly In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness and the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Will Will Smith, 2021-11-09 The instant #1 New York Times bestseller! “It's the best memoir I've ever read.” —Oprah Winfrey “Will Smith isn't holding back in his bravely inspiring new memoir . . . An ultimately heartwarming read, Will provides a humane glimpse of the man behind the actor, producer and musician, as he bares all his insecurities and trauma.” —USA Today Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had. Will Smith’s transformation from a West Philadelphia kid to one of the biggest rap stars of his era, and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, is an epic tale—but it’s only half the story. Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over. This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Self-portrait Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz, 1979 'I had no trouble playing any kind of a role, ' Gene Tierney writes. 'My problems began when I had to be myself.' In Hollywood's golden age, everyone knew the starring roles Miss Tierney played in her 36 films: the unwashed Ellie May in 'Tobacco Road, ' the demure Martha in 'Heaven can Wait;' her appearances opposite Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Rex Harrison, Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, and, best remmebered of all, as the haunting -- murdered? --beauty of the portrait painting in 'Laura, ' one of the most televised films ever. Her rollercoaster marriage to fashion designer Oleg Cassini and her globe-trotting affair with Prince Aly Khan were public property. Word of her dates with billionaire Howard huges and a lighthearted ex - naval officer named Jack Kennedy circulated over the years. But the inside story of her greatest, most heart-wrenching role -- herself -- has never been told until right now. Outwardly living every woman's fantasies, she became an emotional invalid. Her marriage collapsed. Her romances failed. Her father became a cruel disappointment. Her first daughter was born deaf, blind, hopelessly retarded, At the crest of her career, Gene Tierny attempted suicide, suffered a nervous breakdown, and spent the next seven years in and out of sanatoriums. With candor, humor, and sometimes with anger, but never with self-pity or self-indulgence, she tells of her meteoric career, her long, slow, uneven recovery from 'the black tunnel of mental illness'; the struggles with her doctors, her treatments, her escape from confinement, her depressions, her mad impulses, herself, always herself ... and finally on to a happy remarriage and tranquillity. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Wade in the Water Tracy K. Smith, 2018-04-03 SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2018 A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else Are they so buffered against, if not love's blade Sizing up the heart's familiar meat? In Wade in the Water, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith's signature voice - inquisitive, lyrical and wry - turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men and violence. The various connotations of the title, taken from a spiritual once sung on the Underground Railroad which smuggled slaves to safety in 19th-century America, resurface throughout the book, binding past and present together. Collaged voices and documents recreate both the correspondence between slave owners and the letters sent home by African Americans enlisted in the US Civil War. Survivors' reports attest to the experiences of recent immigrants and refugees. Accounts of near-death experiences intertwine with the modern-day fallout of a corporation's illegal pollution of a major river and the surrounding land; and, in a series of beautiful lyrical pieces, the poet's everyday world and the growth and flourishing of her daughter are observed with a tender and witty eye. Marrying the contemporary and the historical to a sense of the transcendent, haunted and holy, this is a luminous book by one of America's essential poets. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Defining Moments in Black History Dick Gregory, 2018-09-18 NAACP 2017 Image Award Winner With his trademark acerbic wit, incisive humor, and infectious paranoia, one of our foremost comedians and most politically engaged civil rights activists looks back at 100 key events from the complicated history of black America. A friend of luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers, and the forebear of today’s popular black comics, including Larry Wilmore, W. Kamau Bell, Damon Young, and Trevor Noah, Dick Gregory was a provocative and incisive cultural force for more than fifty years. As an entertainer, he always kept it indisputably real about race issues in America, fearlessly lacing laughter with hard truths. As a leading activist against injustice, he marched at Selma during the Civil Rights movement, organized student rallies to protest the Vietnam War; sat in at rallies for Native American and feminist rights; fought apartheid in South Africa; and participated in hunger strikes in support of Black Lives Matter. In this collection of thoughtful, provocative essays, Gregory charts the complex and often obscured history of the African American experience. In his unapologetically candid voice, he moves from African ancestry and surviving the Middle Passage to the enjoyment of bacon and everything pig, the headline-making shootings of black men, and the Black Lives Matter movement. A captivating journey through time, Defining Moments in Black History explores historical movements such as The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as cultural touchstones such as Sidney Poitier winning the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies in the Field and Billie Holiday releasing Strange Fruit. An engaging look at black life that offers insightful commentary on the intricate history of the African American people, Defining Moments in Black History is an essential, no-holds-bar history lesson that will provoke, enlighten, and entertain. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Loitering With Intent Peter O'Toole, 1993-04-05 The popular actor describes his youth in northern England, his father, his mother, the difficulty of a wartime childhood, the impression of the war, his education, and his introduction to drama. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Blacklands Belinda Bauer, 2010-01-26 FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SNAP 'Extraordinarily powerful and evocative . . . will leave you breathless.' Daily Mirror VOTED CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR when it was first released, and still the most gripping, powerful thriller debut you will read this year. ___ Steven Lamb is 12 when he writes his first letter . . . to a serial killer Every day after school, whilst his classmates swap football stickers, twelve-year-old Steven digs holes on Exmoor, hoping to find a body. His uncle disappeared aged eleven and is assumed to have fallen victim to the notorious serial killer Arnold Avery - but his body has never been found. Steven's Nan does not believe her son is dead. She still waits for him to come home, standing bitter guard at the front window while her family fragments around her. Steven is determined to heal the widening cracks between them before it's too late - even if that means presenting his grandmother with the bones of her murdered son. But when Steven realises this is an impossible task, he crafts a careful letter to Arnold Avery in prison. And there begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a desperate child and a bored psychopath . . . Readers love Blacklands: 'A dark, gripping story . . . full of tension' ***** 'A truly chilling and disturbing read' ***** 'An intelligent crime thriller that seeps with atmosphere' ***** *Belinda Bauer's pulse-pounding new thriller, EXIT, is out now* |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Disney's Most Notorious Film Jason Sperb, 2012-12-01 Looks at the racial issues surrounding Disney's Song of the South, as well as how the public's reception of the film has changed over the years, and why, while not releasing the film in its entirety in nearly two decades, Disney has chosen to continue to repackage and repurpose bits and pieces of the film. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: The Butler Wil Haygood, 2013-07-30 This mesmerizing companion book to the award-winning film, The Butler traces the Civil Rights Movement and explores crucial moments of twentieth century American history through the eyes of Eugene Allen—a White House butler who served eight presidents over the course of thirty-four years. During the presidencies of Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, Eugene Allen was a butler in the most famous of residences: the White House. An African American who came of age during the era of Jim Crow, Allen served tea and supervised buffets while also witnessing some of the most momentous decisions made during the second half of the twentieth century, including Lyndon B. Johnson’s work during the Civil Rights Movement and Ronald Reagan getting tough on apartheid. But even as Allen witnessed the Civil Rights legislation develop, his family, friends, and neighbors were still contending with Jim Crow America. Timely, “poignant and powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) The Butler also explores Eugene Allen and his family’s background along with the history of African Americans in Hollywood and also features a foreword by the film’s director Lee Daniels. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Last Night at the Viper Room Gavin Edwards, 2013-10-22 A biography elucidating the Academy Award–nominee’s meteoric rise, his tragic end, and his legacy. At the dawn of the 1990s, a new crew of leading men—Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and Brad Pitt—was rocketing toward stardom. River Phoenix, however, stood in front of the pack. But behind Phoenix’s talent and beautiful public face was a young man who had been raised in a cult by nonconformist parents, who was burdened with supporting his family from a young age, and who eventually succumbed to addiction, dying of an overdose in front of the Viper Room, West Hollywood’s storied club, at twenty-three. Last Night at the Viper Room is part biography, part cultural history of the 1990s, and part celebration of a Hollywood icon gone too soon. Full of interviews from his fellow actors, directors, friends, and family, this book shows the role River Phoenix played in creating the place of the actor in our modern culture and the impact his work still makes today. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Damned If I Do Percival Everett, 2023-09-28 Damned If I Do is a set of brilliantly postmodern short stories from Percival Everett, author of The Trees, Dr No and Erasure, now an Oscar-nominated film. An artist, a cop, a cowboy, several fly fishermen and even a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets and a sexual identity problem. Everett skewers race, class, identity, surrealism and much more in this masterful short story collection from one of America's most inventive living writers. Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Walk Me to the Distance Percival Everett, 2025-03-27 ‘Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knock out comedy’ – The New York Times David Larson can never go home. His parents are dead. His sister and her hippie husband, staunchly anti-war, won't even have the newly returned Vietnam veteran in the house. So Larson takes his chances on the road, travelling west from Georgia until he breaks down in the nowhere town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming. There he finds lodging with Chloë Sixbury, a one-legged sexagenarian widow, and her disabled son. Their ersatz family is complete when Larson takes in Butch, a Vietnamese girl abandoned at the highway rest stop where he works, but at the edge of this tableau lingers the unmistakable spectre of violence. Blending the grotesquerie of the Southern Gothic with the Western's codes of frontier justice, in Walk Me to the Distance Percival Everett renders a vivid and haunting landscape of the American badlands, where cruelty is the lingua franca. Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature. Read Percival's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel James in paperback now. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Yes I Can Sammy Davis (Jr.), Jane Boyar, Burt Boyar, 1965 |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth, 1992 #1 New York Times bestselling author Frederick Forsyth's unforgettable novel of a conspiracy, a killer, and the one man who can stop him... He is known only as The Jackal--a cold, calculating assassin without emotion, or loyalty, or equal. He's just received a contract from an enigmatic employer to eliminate one of the most heavily guarded men in the world--Charles De Gaulle, president of France. It is only a twist of fate that allows the authorities to discover the plot. They know next to nothing--only that the assassin is on the move. To track him, they dispatch their finest detective, Claude Lebel, on a manhunt that will push him to his limit, in a race to stop an assassin's bullet from reaching its target. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Running the Dusk Christian Campbell, 2010 Running the Dusk gives us a new voice for Caribbean arts and letters, and Christian Campbell is one of the few perfectly suited to accept this mantle...If you're holding Running the Dusk in your hands, you are lucky to be facing the gutsy work of a long-distance runner who possesses the wit and endurance, the staying power of authentic genius.---Yusef Komunyakaa -- |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Norman Jewison Ira Wells, 2021-05-04 Norman Jewison directed some of the most iconic and beloved films of an era, from In the Heat of the Night and The Thomas Crown Affair to Jesus Christ Superstar and Moonstruck. But despite being what his friend William Goldman called a giant of the industry, Jewison could also walk the streets of any city in the world and go unrecognized. Jewison was a man of contradictions: he cared more about telling great stories than gaining fame and fortune by showcasing movie stars, but generations of Hollywood's marquee actors - Judy Garland, Sidney Poitier, Faye Dunaway, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Burt Reynolds, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington - trusted him at crucial moments in their careers. Yet, for all his talent and the passionate support of his actors, Jewison suffered heartbreaking rejection from the executives who refused to believe in his dreams. Norman Jewison: A Director's Life is a story of artistic survival and reinvention, and about the fate of original cinematic ideas in an industry increasingly captive to corporate greed. Drawing upon exhaustive archival research and dozens of interviews, Ira Wells provides a soulful portrait of an idealist who had to fight for every frame of his legacy. Here are Norman's legendary collaborators--Hal Ashby, William Rose, Steve McQueen, and more--brought to vivid life in original letters, telegrams, and revealing, unpublished interviews. A clear-eyed reassessment of Hollywood's final golden age, Norman Jewison: A Director's Life is both the intimate portrait of an artist and a rallying cry for anyone who has had to fight for their creative vision. |
| i am not sidney poitier analysis: Perspectives on Percival Everett Keith B. Mitchell, Robin G. Vander, 2013 Percival Everett writes novels, short stories, poetry, and essays, and is one of the most prolific, acclaimed, yet under-examined African American writers working today. Although to date Everett has published eighteen novels, three collections of short fiction, three poetry collections, and one children's book, his work has not garnered the critical attention that it deserves. Perhaps one of the most vexing problems black and white scholars have had in trying to situate Everett's work is that they have found it difficult to place him and his work within a prescribed African American literary tradition. Because he happens to be African American, critics have expectations of so-called authentic African American fiction; however, his work often thwarts these expectations. In Perspectives on Percival Everett, scholars engage all of his creative production. On the one hand, Everett is an African American novelist. On the other hand, he pursues subject matters that seemingly have little to do with African American culture. The operative word here is seemingly; for as these essays demonstrate, Everett's works falls well within as well as outside of what most critics would deem the African American literary tradition. These essays examine issues of identity, authenticity, and semiotics, in addition to postmodernism and African American and American literary traditions--issues essential to understanding his aesthetic and political concerns. |
AM and PM: What Do They Mean? - timeanddate.com
Ante meridiem is commonly denoted as AM, am, a.m., or A.M.; post meridiem is usually abbreviated PM, pm, p.m., or P.M. Like many other sources, timeanddate.com uses “am” and …
Time Zones in California, United States - timeanddate.com
6 days ago · 3:08 56 am. Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Time Zone News. 5/28/2025 – Texas Moves Toward Permanent DST;
如何使用am，pm表示时间？ - 知乎
你的朋友可以让你在4月13日凌晨00:01（12:01 am）到达机场，或者，如果要在下一个午夜到达，那就在4月13日晚上11:59（11:59 pm ）到达。或者，24小时格式也可以使用。这里0:00是指 …
Current Local Time in Boise, Idaho, USA - timeanddate.com
Current local time in USA – Idaho – Boise. Get Boise's weather and area codes, time zone and DST. Explore Boise's sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset.
Current Local Time in Texas, United States - timeanddate.com
Mon 4:50 am * Adjusted for Daylight Saving Time. Popup Window Fullscreen Exit. Texas. 4:50 46 am. Monday ...
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The Duration Calculator calculates the number of days, months and years between two dates.
Current Local Time in the United States - timeanddate.com
United States time now. USA time zones and time zone map with current time in each state.
Current Local Time in London, England, United Kingdom
Jun 6, 2011 · Current local time in United Kingdom – England – London. Get London's weather and area codes, time zone and DST.
Current Local Time in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA - timeanddate.com
Current local time in USA – Oregon – Hillsboro. Get Hillsboro's weather and area codes, time zone and DST
AM and PM: What Do They Mean? - timeanddate.com
Ante meridiem is commonly denoted as AM, am, a.m., or A.M.; post meridiem is usually abbreviated PM, pm, p.m., or P.M. Like many other sources, timeanddate.com uses “am” and …
Time Zones in California, United States - timeanddate.com
6 days ago · 3:08 56 am. Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Time Zone News. 5/28/2025 – Texas Moves Toward Permanent DST;
如何使用am，pm表示时间？ - 知乎
你的朋友可以让你在4月13日凌晨00:01（12:01 am）到达机场，或者，如果要在下一个午夜到达，那就在4月13日晚上11:59（11:59 pm ）到达。或者，24小时格式也可以使用。这里0:00是 …
Current Local Time in Boise, Idaho, USA - timeanddate.com
Current local time in USA – Idaho – Boise. Get Boise's weather and area codes, time zone and DST. Explore Boise's sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset.
Current Local Time in Texas, United States - timeanddate.com
Mon 4:50 am * Adjusted for Daylight Saving Time. Popup Window Fullscreen Exit. Texas. 4:50 46 am. Monday ...
Calculator: Add to or subtract from a date and time
Clock Calculator: Add Time or Subtract Time. Enter a date and time, then add or subtract any number of months, days, hours, or seconds.
Date Duration Calculator: Days Between Dates - timeanddate.com
The Duration Calculator calculates the number of days, months and years between two dates.
Current Local Time in the United States - timeanddate.com
United States time now. USA time zones and time zone map with current time in each state.
Current Local Time in London, England, United Kingdom
Jun 6, 2011 · Current local time in United Kingdom – England – London. Get London's weather and area codes, time zone and DST.
Current Local Time in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA - timeanddate.com
Current local time in USA – Oregon – Hillsboro. Get Hillsboro's weather and area codes, time zone and DST
