Bloodlines - Tales From The African Diaspora [Kindle Edition]

Veronica Henry (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade scattered millions of Africa's children across the globe. They are together, once again, in the pages of this short story collection.

Featuring fourteen new voices from the African diaspora, these tales span the genres of literary, mystery, romance and science fiction.

Through this collection, we weave another chapter into the fabric of our shared ancestry and we, the seeds of their struggle, pay homage to our ancestors.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 157 KB
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: DreamDeep LLC (February 19, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003980HEE
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,462 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Good idea - only so so short stories, November 30, 2011

By 

Jones "itimbuktu" (Columbia, MD United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Bloodlines - Tales From The African Diaspora (Kindle Edition)

I really wanted to like this collection of short stories and tried hard to do so. Unfortunately, I'm just not motivated to even finish reading the whole collection because many of the stories were boring and/or incomplete. It's as if the authors just threw an outline together, wrote some sketchy dialogue/narritive and then submitted the stories for publication. For instance, Skyboat Strangers was just a re-hash of a sci-fi storyline that has been done many times before in many better ways, and The Other Wife of Cranston Livingston had great potential but ended on a flat note by not really developing any of the characters.

There were only a handful of stories that were, for me, worth reading: The story Smooth Lanes brought back memories of when my grandmother used to do my hair when I was young and hints at the issue of "good hair" and how that contributes to how pretty Black girls are thought to be, and That Old Black Magic nicely weaves musicaly lyrics into a real-life struggle of a woman dealing with the realization that her boyfriend isn't all she thinks he is.

I've read several other complilations of African American and African short stories and enjoyed them greatly but just cannot recommend this one at this time. And that's a shame because many of the authors have impressive bios. In my opinion, most of the stories were just too short and too under-developed to pack any punch or leave a positive lasting impression. Maybe, if I bring myself to finish the rest of the stories (I'm halfway through), I might change my mind. If so, I'll update this review.