I had Teaism with my friend Ethelbert yesterday evening. He showed me the cover art for his second memoir The 5th Inning designed by Andy Shallal (release date is in March 2009).

There’s an interesting post on the E-Notes Blog/E mag this morning: an interview with Brenda Greene, Ph.D., Professor of English and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evans College of the City University of New York.

Professor Greene talks about one of her former students Maya Soetoro-Ng, the half-sister of President-Elect Barack Obama. I hesitate to use the world half. In this case, the ties between brother and sister are strong enough to make a whole. Ms. Soetoro-Ng was named after the poet Maya Angelou, but it seems she’s the one who is making the morning call for her brother, the soon to be POTUS. Here’s what Professor Greene had to say about her enounters with Maya:

Maya had told me his name but it did not register at that time; I knew that the man whom she spoke of was doing important work and I admired that he was engaged in raising issues of pluralism and diversity. When Barack Obama spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a former student of mine called and asked me if I had remembered Maya. “Of course.” I said. “I had always wondered what had happened to her for she had such a presence and had really helped to make the class a site of intellectual inquiry.” My student replied that Barack Obama was Maya’s brother. And I thought to myself, so he is the young man whom Maya always spoke of; he is the one whom she wanted me to meet.

Read the interview in its entirety on the E Notes Blog.