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Love Cemetery
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Penguin has just released a new edition of:

Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna
with a new introduction by China Penguin, 2007.
[Order directly from Penguin]

 or from Amazon


Sally Cuneen reviews both books in the National Catholic Reporter

 


 

Penguin has just released a new edition of:

Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna
with a new introduction by China Penguin, 2007.
[Order directly from Penguin]

 

 

In The Great Debaters, scheduled for a Christmas, 2007 release, Denzil Washington, who also directs the film, plays Melvin Tolson, teacher and debate team coach at the historically black Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas. In one of Love Cemetery's several historical sections, Galland, writing about the tremendous importance of education to the African-American community, tells the story of Wiley and its unbeatable debate team whose members included James Farmer, Jr. who would go on to found CORE and lead Freedom Rides, and Reverend Hamilton Boswell, whom she interviewed shortly before his death (pp 91-95).  Rev. Boswell had served for ten years as the chaplain of the California State Assembly and, as pastor of Jones Methodist Church, had been a leader in the San Francisco community. At the time of the interview, Galland had no idea that a film about the debaters was in the works. On her book tour, in Boston, she had a conversation with Washington, who was filming a climactic debate scene at Harvard, about Rev. Boswell, whom he knew of, but had not been able to reach before he became too ill to be interviewed.  Rev. Boswell died in 2006 at age 92.  He had told China an unforgettable story of the lynching he had witnessed in 1936 while driving back to Marshall, with Tolson and Farmer,  from a debate in a small nearby town.

 

photo of Rev. Boswell: Tom Beil