Odie Hawkins

Valonga Price takes a three-year sabbatical from the grime of owning her own company to try to discover her true self. Armed with questions that have been whirling around in her head, she travels to places like Brazil, San Salvador, Bahia, Nigeria, Cuba, and Japan.

Snake Doctor is a modern, African-American Faustian epic. The story is of a man who made a supernatural deal with a wizard in the Equatorial Rain Forest of Northern Ghana. The deal that was made guaranteed this man that he would receive the money he needed to make the break out film he yearned to make. The proper sacrifices were made, the money poured in and the filmmaker became an international success. But all does not remain sweetness n light....

Portrait of Simone is the poignant story of a young soldier stationed in the Deep South, in the recent past, and his romance with a woman nearly twice his age. Simone is mysterious, alluring, charming, complex.   The author brings us the story of true love, love that grows deeper with the passage of time, and pays tribute to the woman known as Simone.

Odie Hawkins utilizes the same thrust, power, and creativity that made Ghetto Sketches his first bestseller. He has moved the focus from Chicago to Los Angeles; and once again, he has populated his stories with unforgettable characters-the telephone freak, the tenants of Mrs. Solomon's apartment building, and a few surrealistic types.   The Secret Music we all hear is echoed within these stories . . .

The deeply personal story of Odie Hawkins's journey, from "the poorest of the poor" childhood in Chicago to Hollywood screenwriter-and the people who deeply mattered. A tough, touching autobiography.

An enchanting intro to a collection of unforgettable characters-Elizabeth, "Queen of the Projects"; the girl "Billie" who sings like Lady Day; young Randolph who, to his family's embarrassment, grows a second head for a while; Dean Dale Jackson, talented writer, sculptor, auto mechanic, and dedicated to the underbelly of a bottle; the Vernon family upwardly mobile but required by a will to grow cotton in their suburban backyard; and Marlene and James,...

Palm Wine Junction has several stories reflecting the Pan-African Occult genre. I invite the perceptive reader to determine which stories come from that genre. I would also suggest that the prospective reader should not be led into thinking that the children, beautifully detailed by artist Suchin Lin, on the cover of Palm Wine Junction represent the unusual stories in Palm Wine Junction. The children were chosen, symbolically, to represent ideal readers...

Chester L. Simmons, nicknamed "The Great Lawd Buddha" by his hip constituents because of his almond shaped eyes and his generous tummy, is one of those delightfully free spirits that life gives the world now and then. With his storytelling he sometimes fuses reality and creativity into a seamless possibility; or seamless possibilities. He has been known to bend the truth, if the truth was not creating the right kind of life-vibe for him.

An enchanting intro to a collection of unforgettable characters. Bobo, Burks, Leo (sometimes, when into imaginative self-hatred, alias Tony De Medrow), Billy Woods, Herb Cross, Bruce, Mooney, Johnny Fox, Bernard Kelly, and a few others who lived in the same neighborhood and hung out on the same corners. Some of the less informed thought we were a "gang" because we spent a lot of time together, but that was the result of them being unable to penetrate...

Chicago, the center of America's heartland, from its founding in the late 1700s by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a French-educated black man, to the modern day Gypsies who live on Maxwell Street. It's a city steeped in Black History. This is the story of a city where a unique African American history has grown, a center for the emergence of jazz, blues, dance, art, and the DuSable Museum of African American History.