Pacific Raven Press Releases New Book by African American Historian and Scholar Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara: FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS THE FIRE AND THE PHOENIX (A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) February 11, 2012 -- Frank Marshall Davis: The Fire and the Phoenix (A Critical Biography) is a compelling historical biography about Frank Marshall Davis (1907-1987), journalist, editor, poet, labor activist, and Renaissance man of the Black Chicago Renaissance. He wrote expansively about social relations of his times and the failures of democracy, recorded his observations on race relations, African American culture and community, and critiqued economic disparities in the USA and imperialism in Hawai`i.

Kathryn Waddell Takara writes with an uncanny ability to dissect the humanity of Frank Marshall Davis and to explore the myths and legacy that Davis left to the world, applicable to the 21st century. Waddell Takara met, visited, befriended, and interviewed Davis in Hawai`i during the last 15 years of his life. She felt a special affinity for and understanding of Davis due to certain shared situations: the Jim Crow South, poetry and politics, activism, and interracial marriage and life as an African American in Hawai`i.

ISBN 978-0-9841228-7-5
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Between the pages of this critical biography, Waddell Takara reveals Davis’s (efforts to establish) established connective marginalities between the black and white worlds in the first half of the 20th century. His personal aim to acquire power, status, and dignity like any white citizen and the methods he utilized were often unusual, unconventional, and challenging: journalism, editorials, poetry, music, American and African history, politics, and activism.

Davis’s aesthetic perceptions, sociopolitical analysis, and rigorous interpretive thought are valuable today in understanding (current issues). He wrote of the racial climate, the black psyche, identity issues, migrations of blacks to urban areas, struggles with poverty, lack of education and training, tattered dreams, sexual politics, and conflicts based on stereotypes alternately using lyricism and satire to educate, empower and push for social reform. His writings, especially his editorials, show how the black intellectual’s voice has been forged in response to political and cultural movements as a confrontational force connecting the black and white worlds. Davis documents the geopolitics of race and class from Kansas to Hawai`i.

The Fire and the Phoenix highlights Davis’s journey from where he was born, raised, and educated in Kansas to his professional work as a journalist and poet in Chicago, Gary, Atlanta, and finally the territory of Hawai`i in 1948. Throughout his long life, Davis wrote about social, political and economic events and served as a witness and critic of racism, economic disparities, imperialism, and colonialism long before those concepts were part of the social science jargon and studies. Davis remained in Hawai`i until he died in 1987.

Kathryn Waddell Takara, PhD is a 2010 winner of the American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation). She is a performance poet and writer, recently retired from the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Dr. Takara was a professor of ethnic, interdisciplinary, and cultural studies for thirty-six years (1968-2007). Waddell Takara’s primary research has been on Blacks in Hawai`i. She has conducted many oral history interviews throughout the islands and continues to publish her work. Waddell Takara holds a PhD in Political Science and a MA in French, and has traveled, lectured, and read her poetry extensively throughout the Hawaiian Islands, the USA mainland, and in Northeast China. Waddell Takara is a two time Fulbright recipient and a public scholar. Born and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, Waddell Takara is the daughter of a pioneer veterinarian, William H. Waddell, VMD, author, and world-famous Buffalo Soldier. Waddell Takara’s mother, Professor Lottie Younge Waddell, taught French and German. Kathryn Waddell Takara makes her home in Hawai`i.

African American Woman Scholor     biography     Black Authors in Hawaii     black history month     Black Women Authors     Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara     Frank Marshall Davis     Pacific Raven Press