Carole V. Bell

Feb 14, 2025 | cltampa.com | Carole V. Bell

By Carole Bell on Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 10:45 am While book bans continue to cause concern, Tampa Bay’s bookworms and hopeful romantics have reason to celebrate. Tampa’s hottest new book store “Steamy Lit” is a romance-centric startup on MacDill Avenue that is more than holding its own in turbulent times.

Dec 17, 2024 | theemancipator.org | Carole V. Bell

In these fraught times, rife with disinformation and grift, one thing we can do is turn to radical books to deliver perspective, catharsis, and strength for the fight ahead. We’ve selected six of the year’s best to help us (and you) think more critically about how race works (and doesn’t work) in America. by Kellie Carter JacksonSome of us still believe that slavery lasted as long as it did because our ancestors lacked the spirit or courage to rebel.

Nov 27, 2024 | theemancipator.org | Carole V. Bell

More than two decades after its publication, “The Emperor of Ocean Park” — Stephen L. Carter’s iconic 2002 political thriller about the death of a controversial Black judge — came to the small screen. Starring Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker, the MGM+adaptation Emperor of Ocean Park debuted earlier this year.

Oct 26, 2024 | latimes.com | Carole V. Bell

Loosely based on Jane Austen’s most explicitly political and critically controversial novel, “Mansfield Park,” Nikki May’s “This Motherless Land” explores clashes of custom and class in a contentious Nigerian and English family. Organized around four pivotal moments in the lives of two cousins — one Nigerian-born and biracial, the other English-born and white — this drama from May, who also wrote “Wahala,” exposes how family ties both bind and divide.

Oct 2, 2024 | theemancipator.org | Carole V. Bell

Is democracy for White people? Looking back on the spring of 2020, when the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor were fresh in our minds, author Theodore R. Johnson understands why folks might think so. He recalls the troubling, familiar dynamic around the political expression that sprung up in reaction to these deaths: “As the protests continued across the country, we risked getting tripped up, once again, on arguments about how people protest rather than why.