Off The Cuff : Books: A “guide” urging submission of black women to black men is selling briskly despite its message of oppression.

Her first foray into publishing was the 1985 sub-culture opus “How Not To Eat Pork (or life without the pig).” Shahrazad Ali (no relation to the boxer but a slugger in her own right; “I pull no punches,” she says) has written and published “The Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman.” Its front cover bears the teaser “Read it before she does . . . “

The book appears to be an independent publisher’s happiest dream. Almost 200,000 copies have been sold since March at $10 a clip, claims the author, whose own Philadelphia-based Civilized Publications prints and distributes the book.

It’s difficult to independently verify her sales boast, but African-American bookstores--the primary outlets for her book--report that “the Guide” is either their No. 1 seller or among their hottest sellers.

“It’s selling as fast as romance novels do,” says bookstore owner James Fugate of Eso Won books in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. He is surprised at the book’s success and there is a pained tone to his voice as he says he can’t keep it on the shelf. There is rage in most black women’s voices when Ali’s name is mentioned.

Described by critics as rife with “self-hatred” and a “diatribe” against black women, Ali’s book has been burned, banned and boycotted across the country.

In Harlem, she had to flee through the back door of the Apollo theater to escape an angry crowd carrying weapons. And though a Philadelphia-based TV talk show banned her, she will appear on Sally Jesse Raphael next week.

In recent days, hurriedly published rejoinders to her book have hit the bookstores--among them “Confusion By Any Other Name: Essays Exploring the Negative Impact of The Blackman’s Guide to Understanding the Blackwoman,” edited by the prominent African-American author and publisher, Haki Madhubuti.

Why the hoopla?

In the book, Ali, a mother in her 40s and a Muslim belonging to no particular sect, says: “The Blackwoman is out of control . . . Rise Blackman, and take your rightful place as ruler of the universe and everything in it. Including the Blackwoman.”

Ali advises: “The Blackwoman must be taught the value of greeting her man with a smile. She is a sourpuss and takes everything so seriously that she robs herself of the pleasure and entertainment of daily living.”

“The Blackwoman is a rock like the earth and she longs to settle down, the Blackman is an exploring bird and has to soar. He’s out of there. He is not remembered as staying in the house, the hut, the tent or the tepee. It is his earth, his universe and his decision about when he wants to stay in the house at home with the Blackwoman.”

This might seem a laughing matter, but it’s not, says Elsie Washington, a senior writer for Essence magazine. The implicit and explicit message of Ali’s book is “horrific,” Washington says.

Explicitly, Ali advises black men to “soundly slap” a black woman in the mouth if she “ignores the authority and superiority of the Blackman.”

Says Washington: “People are reaching for this book thinking they are going to get some understanding about men and women getting together and helping each other. They don’t know what she is saying when they buy it. As much as I hate to see her get $10 every time somebody buys the book, people really need to know what she is saying. It’s all about the oppression of women.”

Ali’s book claims that all the problems that beset the black man and the black family in America are the fault of the black woman: teen-age pregnancy, drugs, the disproportionate number of blacks in prison and single-parent families, just to name a few.

How did she arrive at these conclusions?

She says she interviewed “1,379” blacks. Of those, “379 were black men married to white women, the others were a miscellaneous bunch of women and children in all the major cities I have been to.” She talked to people on “subways, in meetings, wherever I ran into people . . . and lots of things surface.”

Ali does not acknowledge that her book is unscientific. It’s conclusions, she insists, are “the truth.”

Asked where are her footnotes, where is her bibliography? she says, “The Bible didn’t have any bibliography or footnotes.”

Among the other conclusions in her book are that black women fare better than black men because of preferential treatment in the workplace. An interviewer challenged her on that point during her recent book tour and cited U.S. Census Bureau statistics showing that the 1985 median income of black men in full-time jobs was $19,385, while black women earned $16,211.

Ali’s response was: “I got my research not from a white-man census tract. I got mine from black men.”

And the black man is always right. He is after all, “the dethroned king. And I know I’m the dethroned queen,” says Ali.

How is it, she is asked, that all the descendants of Africans in America claim to come from royalty? How come no one is ever the descendant of the village thief?

“We didn’t have a bunch of thieves and all those kinds of things until the white people showed up in our villages and taught us how to steal and lie and cheat and rob.”

Fast-talking and jovial during a phone interview from her Philadelphia studio--”right in the middle of the ghetto”--she claims that Warner Books, part of Time Warner Inc., offered to purchase the “stateside and global rights” to her “guide.” They offered a large, undisclosed sum, she says, adding she refused it. “I could have made millions,” she states. “Now I’ll make a lot less,” but she is committed to keeping money in the black community. “My truckers are black . . . I stay in black-owned hotels whenever I can, I use black limousine services. See, I didn’t sell my people out.”

No one at Time Warner can verify that an offer was made to Ali, says Louis Slovinsky, vice president for corporate communications.

Says Madhubuti: “I was very sad when I first got her book.” It displayed an “appalling ignorance. I didn’t believe that in 1990 someone would put out something that blamed half of our race (black women) for the problems of black people. It’s just beyond belief,” says the author, whose latest book is the widely praised “Black Men,” (Third World Press). In it, the Chicago-based writer provides his assessment of African-American men and emphatically states that black women have held African-American culture together.

Blacks, says Madhubuti, are not “dominantly a literate people” because of their historically limited access to quality education. Consequently, “when they see something in print, whether in book form, newspapers or even in the electronic media, our people view it as fact.” So Ali’s book “ becomes the new bible to beat black women with.”

The one thing critics grant Ali is her marketing savvy. The book’s title is a “perfect one, and that ‘read it before she does’ around the title makes people pick it up right away. The title is the most creative thing about the book, “ says Madhubuti, whose Third World Press is the oldest continually operating black-owned publisher in the country.

Says Ali, Madhubuti is a “wimp and a punk . . . bullied by women.” It was their bullying that prompted his critical response to her book, she insists.

Further, he is “jealous,” she says that her book is outselling his “Black Men.”

Of course, if a man were to follow the logic of her guide, Ali would get it in the mouth for calling Madhubuti such names.

Instead, he says, “Ali’s book is a call for “patriarchy which, as far as I am concerned, should be dead, but periodically revives itself in most oppressed cultures.”