Joe Biden

Visionary Writer Showcases Literary Works

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nationwide — Author Jeffery “J. A.” Faulkerson announced the release of his literary anthology J. A. Faulkerson Reader: The Literary Works of a Contemporary, Black Visionary.  The book is currently available for online purchase through Amazon.com. 

Faulkerson, a former Tennessee State Secondary Athletic Association (TSSAA) long jump champion who graduated from Kingsport’s Dobyns-Bennett High School and the University of Tennessee, always knew he wanted to become a published author. So, when he published his debut novel Adinkrahene: Fear of a Black Planet in 2014, he breathed a sigh of relief. One of his lifelong goals had been achieved. The very next year, Adinkrahene was selected as one of three finalists for a Phillis Wheatley Book Award (in the First Fiction category), requiring him to travel to New York City’s Columbia University for an awards ceremony. He did not claim the top prize that night, but he became more confident in his ability to produce literary works that entertain, educate and enlighten.

Faulkerson’s J. A. Faulkerson Reader contains essays, poems, short stories and books produced over an 11-year period. He shares the trials and the triumphs associated with becoming an author, poet and screenwriter. He admonishes his contemporaries to become compassionate neighbors who have unconditional love and neighborly compassion in their hearts. He gifts adolescents and young adults, i.e., the Young Achievers, with a playbook that connects prosperity to the pursuit of greatness in the areas of Nurturing, Learning, Working and Leading.  He reminisces about the five years he spent as his son’s full-time stay-at-home parent, offering fathers and father figures strategies they can use to help their children develop championship mindsets.  And his poetry celebrates his Black ancestors’ legacy of activism, community and kinship, how their unrelenting fight for freedom, justice and fairness serves as the perfect model for how citizenries create more perfect unions. 

The J. A. Faulkerson Reader was published on October 17, 2025, and is 523 pages long.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. A. Faulkerson is a Northern Virginia-based Author, Poet and Screenwriter.  Many of his writings pay homage to the Black leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, individuals he calls compassionate neighbors because they were led by the unconditional love and neighborly compassion in their hearts.  He also has a heart for youth, evidenced by his years of service as a TRIO Upward Bound and YMCA Youth director.  Through his written and spoken words, he admonishes adolescents and young adults to balance their lives on the Four Pillars of Prosperity (i.e., Nurturing, Learning, Working and Leading).  A graduate of Dobyns-Bennett High School (Kingsport, Tennessee) and the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, Tennessee), J. A. has been happily married to his wife for over 32 years and is the proud father to his 21-year-old son. 

Subscribe to J. A. Faulkerson’s Writers’ Bloc Substack newsletter at https://jafaulkerson.substack.com/.

Follow J. A. Faulkerson on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jawritesbooks/.

Slaps and Kisses: Black Voters Beware

/ J. A. Faulkerson / Leave a comment

Last week, I watched as 12 jurors in Donald J. Trump’s election fraud trial convicted him on all 34 counts. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for United States president, is now a convicted felon. But to hear him tell it, this historic trial was nothing more than a blip on the screen.

His now being a convicted felon is significant, though.

Monumental really.

It is something that has never been seen before, at least in these United States of America.

The last person who was under this type of scrutiny was former president Richard Nixon, who submitted his resignation from the post before his term ended. Nixon was ultimately pardoned by his predecessor, Gerald Ford.

But what does it say about us, the Republican Party really, when you allow a man who is also facing legal jeopardy in Georgia and Florida, to even be allowed to take a third shot at the presidency, at being the Leader of the Free World?

What does it say about us when participants in the Fake Electors Scheme (in support of Donald J. Trump’s Stop the Steal Campaign) are being indicted in states like Wisconsin and Nevada?

What does it say about us when the insurrectionists who stormed the U. S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 are serving jail sentences while the person who lit the fuse, Donald J. Trump, is taking a third shot at the presidency, at becoming the Leader of the Free World?

It says more of us need to see the writing on the wall. Donald J. Trump and his conservative Republican acolytes are trying to play the U. S. electorate for fools, make us suspend belief in what our ears are hearing, our eyes are seeing.

Trump and his conservative Republican acolytes are quick to say that we Black people should more closely identify with Trump because U. S. jurisprudence has never been on our side. Disproportionately, Black Americans have been incarcerated at higher rates than any other racial/ethnic group.

Last I checked, though, Donald J. Trump isn’t Black, he’s white. As a white man, he is the beneficiary of unmerited privilege, while Black people have been browbeaten by past slavery, ongoing oppression and micro-aggressions since our Black African ancestors arrived in captivity on that Virginia shore in 1619.

So, why is he equating his real crimes with the plights of Black Americans and Black American criminal defendants?

Because the self-proclaimed emperor is now wearing no clothes.

In short, his fraudulent behavior is now on full display, and he’s afraid.

He seemingly wants us Black people to use our votes on November 5, 2024 to save him from being convicted and incarcerated. This desire seemingly is at the forefront of his mind, even though he and his conservative Republican acolytes were the proponents of campaigns that successfully terminated Affirmative Action, eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and banned books written by Black American writers from public schools and libraries. Ultimately, Donald J. Trump and conservative Republicans are undeniably endeavoring to dictate what we Black Americans can and cannot say about white supremacy, racism, prejudice and discrimination.

If you’re Black, this is all you need to know. Donald J. Trump does not have, and has never had, our best interests at heart. This is nothing more than another one of his con jobs. Consequently, any Black person voting for him on November 5, 2024 should have their Black Card revoked.

A person should never be rewarded with a kiss on the cheek when they’re violently and repeatedly slapping you across the face.

Donald J. Trump knows winning the presidency will give him the power to make his federal charges go away. However, he will still have to answer for his state-level crimes in Georgia, where he tried to pressure state officials to find one more vote than he needed to receive the state’s Electoral College votes.

Again, we Black Americans have been about the business of saving the nation’s soul since our Black African ancestors’ 1619 arrival. We, more than any other racial/ethnic group, want the USA to live up to its creed, that all men and women are created equal, that we have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A historical analysis reveals that we have fought back against our enslavement and oppression both violently and nonviolently. At the end of the day, the unconditional love and neighborly compassion in our hearts allows us to remain nonviolently resolute in our quest to work with like-minded individuals to create a more perfect union.

On November 5, 2024, let’s use our voting power to excise the cancer that is Donald J. Trump and irresponsible, conservative Republican leaders from our body politic.

Democracy and the Rule of Law must prevail.

No human being is above man’s law…or God’s law.

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“UNCOMMITTED” | A Poem by J. A. Faulkerson

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You say you want to send a message, one that pushes the US president to demand a ceasefire along the Gaza Strip.  What you fail to realize is he’s not the one calling the shots, the Israeli president is.  And he’s on a mission to reshape the region to benefit Israel alone, not create a two-state solution.  Everyone agrees that Israel has a right to defend itself, but Palestinian citizens aren’t enemies, they’re neighbors.  Stop targeting their homes, schools and hospitals.  Target hearts, minds, souls on both sides of the ideological divide.  Righteous words and deeds signify that persons have compassion for all in their hearts.

“CHECKMATE” | A Poem by J. A. Faulkerson

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To discover more titles by J. A. Faulkerson, visit https://jafaulkerson.com/store/.

THE TIMES THAT WE LIVE IN

Require moments of reflection

Temporary pause to consider

Historical inflections

We weren’t born

To be enslaved by the naysayer, the other

We all were made in His image

To be sister, brother

THE TIMES THAT WE LIVE IN

Cause us to doubt our place

Wanting to be citizens of this country

Not members of a specific race

Don’t get me wrong

Beautiful is the color black

But when they confine us to a color

They’re suggesting we lack

THE TIMES THAT WE LIVE IN

No reason to spat

Kindness, civility

A tip of the hat

Compassion and love

Should be the basis of our interactions

Making additions to the family

Not senseless subtractions

THE TIMES THAT WE LIVE IN

A call to make it right

Neighbor helping neighbor

Overcoming our collective plight

Don’t allow the naysayers

To call Black History CRT

Unite with enlightened others

Demand racial amnesty

THE TIMES THAT WE LIVE IN

A perpetual game of chess they play

Enough of this nonsense

It’s not the bed I wish to lay

By working together,

More can be great

Proclaim to the naysayers,

“Checkmate!”

Copyright 2024, Jeffery A. Faulkerson. All rights reserved.

To discover more titles by J. A. Faulkerson, visit https://jafaulkerson.com/store/.

“March of the Compassionate Neighbor” | A Poem by J. A. Faulkerson

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To discover more titles by J. A. Faulkerson, visit https://jafaulkerson.com/store/.

Compassionate.

Neighborly.

Two words with different meanings but working toward the same goal.

The Literati say they are adjectives that modify nouns.  I say they become active verbs when they are embodied in a person, in a people.

There have been protests, there have been marches.  The one I think about most is the 1964 March on Washington, where the keynote speaker was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, King, Jr.

This march produced results, specifically passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But then there was the one in 1965, at Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge, where then Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Chairman John Lewis and other black residents were beaten with sticks wielded by white police officers.

Bloody Sunday, they call it.

Black bodies bloodied by white lawmen, white lawmakers, for wanting to participate in the franchise – local, state and federal elections.

These are the marches I think about, the ones that resonate with me the most.

No, I wasn’t there.  I arrived in 1968, 16 days before an assassin’s bullet ended Dr. King’s life. 

Nor was I there in October 1995, when Louis Farrakan invited Black American men and their non-black allies to something called the Million Man March. 

I may have not been present that day, a small speck among the sea of black men, but my spirit was.  Watching this event play out on TV, I prayed that the nation would look past Farrakan’s fiery rhetoric to hear his admonishment to black men.

Black men, you must do more to stand in the gap for your black women, your black children, your American nation.   

These marches had goals, righteous ones.

But then January 6, 2021, happened. 

The Stop the Steal Rally.

An event organized by supporters of a former United States president.

The individuals who came to Washington that day weren’t compassionate or neighborly. 

If anything, these insurrectionists were livid, driven by hatred for their fellow man, their fellow compatriots, all because their candidate had lost his bid to serve a second term as the United States president.

The question that we, members of the US electorate, must ask ourselves is what hope did these insurrectionists have in reclaiming something that had not been stolen?

Why didn’t they just stay home, accept the loss like so many others have done, support the peaceful transfer of presidential power?

That’s what the citizens of democracies are expected to do when voters duly elect a new leader to office. 

But that begs another question.

How are we supposed to act in times such as these?

Times when absolute truths, facts really, are ignored, disregarded.

Times when news of candidates’ criminality, indiscretions, don’t disqualify them from running for political office but instead allow them to lead by double digits in their party’s statewide primary elections.

Times when marches led by the descendants of enslaved Africans are wrongly contrasted with one that served the purpose of one person, the defeated former president.

The Christian Bible admonishes us to do unto others as we would have others do unto us.

These united states of America can be great, but they can never be great again.  That’s because they have never been great. 

Enshrined in the United States Constitution is the pledge to create a more perfect union.

Why?

Because our Native Americans ancestors had their land stolen from them.

Because our Black American ancestors were enslaved and oppressed.

Because our Asian American ancestors were relegated to concentration camps on US soil during World War II.

Nothing great about denying people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The fact is, I’m not better than you, and you’re not better than me. 

We’re equals.

Equals that become better individuals, better unions, when we acknowledge the gifting that has been bestowed upon the other. 

But we don’t stop there. 

We also go out of our way to embrace and comfort others when the weight of the world weighs them down.

I am your Compassionate Neighbor, the guy who lives with his family next door.

Love me.

Work with me.

Pray with me.

March with me.   

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Copyright 2024, Jeffery A. Faulkerson. All rights reserved.

To discover more titles by J. A. Faulkerson, visit https://jafaulkerson.com/store/.