Haki Madhubuti should be thrilled. Last month his Third World Press released The Covenant With Black America, a collection of essays conceived of and edited by commentator and public radio host Tavis Smiley. The book, which offers a detailed prescription for addressing the concerns of African-Americans, has already sold more than 100,000 copies and is in its second printing. Discussions about it are filling auditoriums across the country, and on March 26 it hit the New York Times paperback best-seller list at number six. According to Smiley’s Web site it’s the first time a book published by a black press has ever appeared on the list.
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But if Madhubuti, who started Third World Press 39 years ago, is excited, he doesn’t show it. He sits behind a large wood desk in the press’s south-side offices in what was once a dark-paneled Catholic seminary. On one side, flanked by medieval-looking sconces, is a portrait of Madhubuti in his 20s. He has an Afro and an ankh dangles from his neck. On the other side are photos of progressive black figures like fellow activist poet Amiri Baraka and writer and photographer Gordon Parks. His speech is measured as he explains that the success of the Covenant means that, for better or worse, some of the commercial forces that its founder has sheltered the press from may finally be coming to bear.
Over the years, Madhubuti says, he has resisted signing with a distributor to get his titles onto the shelves of chain bookstores, preferring to develop direct relationships with independents like Afrocentric Bookstore and Women and Children First. Then Tavis Smiley called.
The reason he wanted to publish the Covenant, says Madhubuti, is the reason he went into publishing. “We want to be the publisher of record for serious black literature. We don’t publish booty-call books. Our mission is to lay the information out and to figure out how we can continue to work as a people.”
