BLACK PEARLS is one year's worth of daily meditations. The collection touches almost all motivational subjects. Reading it is a positive way to start the day. It's very inspirational. Written for African Americans, but good for anybody.

This black pearl appreciates Eric's ability to caputure the true essence of black love. The selection of poems was superb. I laughed, I cried but most of all I reflected, on what love meant to me. With Valentine's Day around the corner, this book was right on time. Thank you Eric...

This is a great book to read at the start of everyday. It can be read by anyone of any heritage or ethnic background, it applies to anyone and everyone. Its one of those books that "makes you go hmmmm."

"Seraph on the Suwanee" provides interesting dialog details into the lives of the "Florida crackers" (i.e. poor southern whites) in the early 20th century, but at times, it's difficult to follow where this story is going.

The novel follows the marriage of Jim and Arvay Meserve. The novel paints Jim Meserve as an ambitious and resourceful, yet also chauvanistic and sometimes violent man. The central character is the wife, Arvay, who is timid, uneducated, and (overly) sensitive. Told from Arvay's point of view, the problem with the story is that it is essentially one-sided and is more like the story of her life from her point of view. Only toward the later 1/3 of the book is she given a challenge and a mild conflict emerges when she is challenged to prove herself worthy of her husband. Here is where I think the novel fails-we never really see any growth, development, or maturity in Arvay throughout the novel. It is only in the last couple of chapters that she has a "self-awakening" experience caused by the death of her mother. This "self-discovery" and the following reconciliation with Jim is weak and disappointing in my opinion. I enjoyed the book, Hurston is simply a great story teller-- she paced it appropriately, injected lively dialog, believable characters and situations, and provided colorful imagery. However, I think I would have enjoyed this story if it were two-sided; I found myself wanting to know more about Jim, his background, his thoughts and motivation.

I love Seraph on the Suwanee. Hurston captures the struggles of accepting oneself and accepting love like no other author I have read. It's a great story about, in my opinion, a woman's struggle to find strength in herself and through that, be able to accept and give love to others. It's not quite as entertaining as Their Eyes Were Watching God, but is still incredibly interesting and inspirational.

This is my all time favorite novel. Although I already have several copies of this book, I'm buying another copy today.

The stories in this book cover just about everything from tales of alligator men to torrid love affairs. They provide a lot of insight into African American culture and history, and are even written in dialect. The forward included in this edition really helped me understand what I was reading when I started the book. Some of the stories are a little confusing though, because they are printed in two different versions in this book. There's a glossary of slang which is also really helpful. I'd reccomend it for anyone who's a fan of folklore or African American history or literature.

These legends, folk tales, poems, and short stories, spendidly told, created and rewritten by Hurston, beautifully illustrate the pathos, passion and pleasure of the African American existence.

Zora Neal Hurston was an iconoclast. In her time her career suffered because she wasn't interested in writing the kind of stuff Langston Hughes and Richard Wright were churning out. The editors of this collection of excerpts of her major works are a lot like her critics. They try mightily to portray Zora as something she was not and are puzzled by Zora's statements that seem pretty straightforward to me. Read Zora's stories, folklore and especially the excerpt from her biography and skip the commentary.

This is a story about a little girl how overcame obstacles by following her dreams and the advice of her mother.

While this volume of publisher GK Hall's series "African American Women Writers, 1910-1940" seemingly does justice to those writers of drama in the first half of the 20th Century, the book is flawed. Yes, having all of these wonderful and valuable plays in one place is brilliant, but there are textual, bibliographical, and factual errors throughout, making this look more like a Master's thesis than a scholarly book. Had the editors taken more time in revising and proofreading their book, they might have noticed that they did not properly credit all copyright holders, nor did they appropriately express thanks to CRISIS, OPPORTUNITY, or LIBERATOR (among others) for originally publishing these plays and bringing to prominence the authors the editors so shamelessly flaunt...