In Proverb Masters: Shaping the Civil Rights Movement, author Raymond Summerville explores how proverbs and proverbial language played a significant role in the long civil rights era. Proverbs have been used throughout history to share and disseminate brief, powerful statements of truth and philosophical insight. Oftentimes, these sayings have helped unite people in struggles for social justice, serving as rallying cries for just causes. During the civil rights era, proverbs allowed leaders to craft powerful and evocative messages. These statements needed to be made implicitly, as explicit messages were often met with retaliation and even violence. Looking at the autobiographies, biographies, speeches, diaries, letters, and critical texts of Charles W. Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Bob Dylan, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, and Septima Clark, the volume analyzes how these figures employed proverbs in support of social justice causes and in civil rights struggles. Summerville argues that these individuals generated enough print material embedded with proverbs and proverbial language that they should be considered proverb masters. With chapters dedicated to each figure, Summerville reveals their adept uses of this powerful linguistic tool.

"The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire." --Auguste Rodin, French sculptor Who better to speak about the creative process than the greatest artists in history? From Georgia O'Keeffe and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Pablo Picasso and Isak Dinesen, Words of Art is a celebration of the craft and the artists who have changed the way we see the world--and influenced how we create. You can't ask Michelangelo how he felt when he first took a step back to look at the statue of David, or what Leonardo da Vinci felt when he began painting the Mona Lisa, but you can read their words and imagine for a moment how these stunning works came to be.

Such sayings as "Hard times make a monkey eat red pepper when he don't care for black", "The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice", and "Nothing ruins a duck but its bill" convey not only axiomatic impact but also profound contextual meanings. This study of African-American proverbs is the first to probe deeply into these meanings and contexts. Sw. Anand Prahlad's interest in proverbs dates back to his own childhood in rural Virginia when he listened to his great-grandmother's stories. Very early he began collecting "sayings". In researching this book, he spent five years listening for proverbs spoken in bars, clubs, churches, and retirement homes; on street corners, basketball courts, and public buses; at PTA meetings and bingo games. To discover the full context of a proverb, Prahlad considers four levels of meanings - grammatical, cultural, situational, and symbolic. All these operate simultaneously when a proverb is spoken. Part of the artistry in using proverbs comes from the complex interplay of the dimensions of their meanings. From WPA interviews with former slaves, from the lyrics of blues songs, from extensive field research, and from expressions of protest and cultural affirmation, the author reveals the myriad ways African-American proverbs thrive today.

In "Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music" Swami Anand Prahlad looks at the contexts and origins of these proverbs, using them as a cultural sheet music toward understanding the history of Jamaican culture, Rastafari religion, and the music that isthat culture's worldwide voice.

Lists the meaning and origin of more than 1,700 traditional and contemporary English proverbs.