Taye' Foster Bradshaw's Bookshelf

Reading 2011

2011-12-30T10:47:00.005-06:00

My soul breathes in and the air is filled with words.

I love books, love reading, and even as I marvel at the technology of my daughter's Kobo and husband's iPad (and iBooks), there is still something so magical about touching a book, turning the pages, and underlining passages that stand out to me.

2011 found me continuing my journey through black female literature.

I began this quest a few years ago, determined to read and find words more than the publisher's stereotypical hood rat or ghetto queen or urban erotic mess that clogs up the store shelves.

Fiction and non-fiction filled my time between the pages. The ones most noted will remain on my bookshelf. They are:

1. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. This is by far the most memorable book I read this year and one that I want to give to my sons. This phenomenal work brought the people of the Great Migration to life and allowed me to even find my father's Arkansas to Michigan store enshrined in the ink. I understood.

2. The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips was disturbing. I am a mother, I am a daughter, I can not forgive this excuse of a woman for her depravity. Perhaps it was the sickness of the times, as this took place at the rising Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps it was the mother's own sickness born from untreated trauma of the 30s and 40s. I loved the protagonist and applauded her courageous fight for self-determination and ownership.

3. The Air Between Us by Deborah Johnson was another Civil Rights era book set in the south that carried forward themes of acceptance, place, class, race, and love. I found myself rooting for the raceless, colorless protagonist and quietly kept her secret as she walked into the future with someone who loved her. I also could understand the slow-boil anger of the black doctor and the misguided impressions of the white doctor. Very good read.

3. Shifting Through Neutral by Bridgett M. Davis was a more contemporary piece set in the Michigan of my time. I could relate to some of the styles and culture happenings of Detroit even though I was in Missouri and downstate during the 70s. I could feel the love of the father-daughter relationship and so wanted to pick up the phone and call my own late father. This is one I will have my daughters read once they hit high school.

4. A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight took me back to antebellum Louisiana and a young woman's journey from protected daughter to enslaved object. Her color, or lack thereof, her exotic beauty, and her realization that while she was powerless against the advances of her masters, she was empowered to discover her world, her way. She remembered and through her voice, I remember.

The Air Between Us

2011-12-18T10:11:00.004-06:00

Just like a smooth cup of coffee always goes down pleasantly and settles warmth in the soul on a cool morning, such is Deborah Johnson's the air between us.

This book combined southern comfort with a deep knowing of the characters before we even read a first word. Black or white, poor or not, if you have southern roots, you have an understanding of how closely the lives really are lived down in the Delta, or in Meridian or Money or even little Revere, Mississippi, the setting of this satisfying book.

My daddy, his siblings, and my step-mother all came from a small town in Arkansas. Growing up, I could hear little phrases and knowing that resonated back to their early years in the south and up north in their transplanted town, they never left the hospitality and resonance of living below the Mason Dixon Line.

This book brought an understanding of race and class, culture, and family in a way that the sociological, political, and historical readings on my shelf miss, this novel did what a novel is supposed to do - made me feel the heart and soul of Dr. Reese Jackson and his striving and Dr. Cooper Connelly and his wanting, or the quiet pushing against convention of the not-sure-what-race-she-was Miss Melba or the light-bright-nearly-white-Northern-raised Mrs. Dr. Jackson.

I savored this breezey novel in the month of December as one of our book club selections. All of us, women over forty, experienced this novel with a bit of knowing and bit of resolution that as much as things change in this country, some things will never change.

Central to the novel were the changing events of 1966 Mississippi and the slow move of integration of the public school and the new public hospital being built. There was still this duality of living so closely, there were still black maids like those described in The Help, yet living so far apart, there was the white side of town and the black side, the colored entrance to the hospital, and the less-than-equal-but-separate-educational system. There was the unspoken rule that ten was the age of separation less there be race-mixing. And there was the deep reality of the poor, rural whites that they were even further removed from the mainstream than the educated "Negroes" that they despised, they even realized their "whiteness" was no longer the only commodity they needed for acceptance.

This book held in the background the central themes of the Civil Rights Movement and mentioned it almost as an aside during a cool afternoon sipping sweet tea and eating caramel cake on the porch. It was happening, change was going to come, but like the Mighty Mississippi, it would happen at its own pace in this town. Like many of the smaller towns in the south, they feared and loathed the federal government (the whites) and they hailed them as heroes (the blacks) of change.

I felt this book could just as easily been about 2011 and the Occupy Movements that swept across the nation in the fall. While it was just as much about race with undercurrents of love, mystery, and abuse, it was also about greed. The busting of unions or forming of unions and the faint light of equal hope that was shining among black and white poor workers - they knew it was more of them than the rich planters who were abusing and exploiting them. Yet, even, this book did not hold that as a rally cry or central theme. It was simply the events that set in motion when a little black boy walked into the front entrance of a big white hospital with a down-country, poor white, bleeding man.

This book satisfies, just like my morning coffee. There really is only air between us.

The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips

2011-10-17T10:56:00.000-05:00

The Darkest Child was a disturbing book. It made me feel a sense of rage and disgust as well as helplessness. It also made me feel hopeful for the protagonist and triumphant in the end that she would have the fullness of life she deserved.

Tangy Mae is resilient and determined to achieve something so few black people ad achieved in Jim Crow America - an education, specifically, her high school diploma. Somehow, she knew books and writing would be her escape from the unspeakable horror that was her mother.

Tangy was determined to hold onto a sense of possibility despite her innocence sold to the highest bidder of lowest character. Despite her mother being the catalyst for the evil bigot being the one to shred Tangy Mae's innocence and body, her body becoming a tool for another dress to feed her mother's depraved beauty. There was a strength of character and hope that Tangy sought to hold onto and fulfill a dream, even as she couldn't completely understand all that was happening around her.

The evil that surrounded small town Jim Crow couldn't strike a candle to the demons raging in her mother's mind, not enough cleaning could pull the bugs from her body. Tangy Mae tried desperately, through the eyes of a daughter for a mother, to see something lovable, something redeemable in a woman who was beyond decency.

Her mother's outer beauty betrayed the hideous ugliness inside her soul that made her do so many horrendous things to each of her ten children. Even the one she ranked to be most like her in outer beauty couldn't escape the tentacles of her mother's unmentionable actions.

This book disturbed me and at times made me want to throw up. I would sit in my bed or in the passenger seat of the car, enraptured in this story, unable to pull away, and unable to imagine anyone this evil. All the while I was reading it, I kept thinking, as bad as my step-mother was, this mother in this book was beyond the worse that ever happened to me. Was the mother's actions a direct result of the inhumane treatment of Jim Crow in the 30s, 40s that by the time Tangy Mae was coming of age in the 50s, there was nothing in her but to reenact the owner-slave treatment to her own children? Or was there something deeply wanting in the mother to love her children but unable to move past even the violence of her own conception?

Delores Phillips covered some deep, dark topics from Jim Crow and the debilitating events in rural Georgia at the very beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement and Brown vs. Board Education to the sadness of a mind lost to the longing of a child for a hopeful future. She covered the dark side of what happened in the rural areas that were stuck in a time warp and black people scared to speak for themselves, of how the continued use of a woman's body for personal gratification allowed even pedophiles to roam free.

This first novel has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf. It spoke of a rage threatening to engulf a young girl's will to live. Yet even in the midst of this inferno, there was a glimmer of hope, of the redeeming power of a father's love, and of the resilience of a young girl. Perhaps the Georgia-native nurse was able to pull something from all of us, a rural version of Precious, perhaps, a rendering of the still-unwon-battle of women's rights and help for child abuse victims. Just as Precious found a road to redemption, so too, does Tangy, on a bus from Georgia to where? We hope to a brighter future.

I highly recommend this book!

Shifting Through Neutral

2011-07-03T09:23:00.000-05:00

It has been a long time, a lifetime, really, that I've wanted to read a good book, pieces of literature, about people like me. Girls who grew up post Civil Rights, post slavery, modern. I wanted to feel a connection in my now two-year-quest to read black female literature.

I stumbled upon this book while at a local, annual book fair. I tucked it on my bookshelf, it patiently waiting its turn to be read, after the many literary volumes and book club reads. The cover (original, not the sexed up one) kept beckoning me, so, being the multi-tasker that I am, I decided to start reading the book at night, a few pages at a time. I was not disappointed.

Shifting Through Neutral is a beautiful coming-of-age book about a girl reconciling her placement in a not-so-nuclear family. Rae graduated from high school in 1980, that decade turning point that brought Reagan as president, big hair, and the birth of a modern time that we are still experiencing. Her growing up, however, was during the idyllic mid-to-late-seventies when children could just ride their bikes without worry about kidnappings or other evils. When someone was at home and everyone on the street knew your name.

I also shared a familiarity with her in her home state of Michigan. I spent my growing up between Jefferson City and Benton Harbor, MI. I knew about Detroit thrusting many people into the middle class and the promise of a "good job" that would take you through life. I knew about Ann Arbor and Seven Mile Road. Detroit was a big city that I never visited my entire childhood and only once as an adult.

Rae and I also shared something else, a longing for a mother who wasn't there, mine through death and hers through abandonment down South to a love more powerful than her motherhood. We also shared a mutual adoring of our fathers and an utter loss-of-self when our father's passed away (hers right after her graduation, mine when I was 35).

This book by Bridgett M. Davis was written in the first person and while fiction, felt like the knowing retelling of a life really lived, experience really had, a memoir.

The big, wide shouldered, doorway big father JD, loved his baby girl Rae and was scared back home from his true love during the 1968 riots. He endured physical illness and bitter separation from a wife who was ensconced in an upstairs attack, her heart several states away with her Creole first love and Creole daughter who only visited one wonderful summer of Rae's life. The father either didn't or couldn't move beyond that den he shared with his daughter only until his sister from down south told him that had to end, separating two souls who needed each other's physical presence to feel alive. Rae needed the comfort of her big father's wide back that was both her cradle and her slumber from the time of her birth since she was rejected by her mother. He, having given up the promise of a beautiful life and all it's possibilities, needed the nearness of the one he gave it up for, his baby girl. Together, for seven years, they formed a connection that would ultimately end by the ultimate separation.

I highly recommend this book. It is a must-keep for my bookshelf.

My Friend Joy

2011-02-01T09:06:00.000-06:00

This is a link to my friend, Joy's, new book blog. While she is not reading black female literature, per se, she is a good friend who shares a love for books and is the coordinator of a local book club that reads a lot on race and race relations in Kirkwood.

Check her out, you might find something interesting to read, Joy is a librarian!http://www.joyweesemoll.com

To Keep From Crying In The Midst Of It All

2011-01-30T09:22:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we have to laugh to keep from crying because the tears won't fix this problem.

What problem?

Several.

Our country has been overtaken to an enormous degree by multinational corporations whose only loyalty is to the bottom line. It is destroying us from within, and even more so, since it also brought our latent racism and classism to the surface with the election of President Obama. And the boogyman is hard to pinpoint now.

Right now, the people are taking to the streets in Egypt to say "enough is enough" against their 30 years-in-power leader. Bands of young men, understanding the boiling point of being fed up, have armed themselves with sticks to protect their respective neighborhoods, because when protest emotions get high, sometimes things happen, especially when those protests are because of years and years, generations of mistreatment.

As I thought about our people, for all people who want a decent middle class living, the right to live, are my people, I also thought about this country and what is happening, and wondered, where are the "huddled masses" who came to this country to escape the Lords and Ladies of the Manor in England, only to find a deeply classist, caste system in this country? That caste system grew over the years to not hold down the ethnic Europeans but to put laser focused vision on keeping black people in servant roles. This has now come to the 21st century and the same "invisible hand" that Isabel Wilkerson wrote about in The Warmth of Other Suns now trying to keep anyone of Hispanic descent in those subserviant roles, or simply, not in this country at all.

1% of the population controls 34% of the wealth in this country and the Republicans in office, masters at public relations and advertising, are demanding even more for the same corporate tycoons who destroyed this country through their endless greed.

The commission that was formed to study the crisis concluded that it was preventable, well, duh! We knew that when it happened. Some would say they knew that going back to 1980 when Reagan set out a systematic approach to destroy the great middle class, all those internal immigrants who made it North and worked, toiled even, in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, and Washington DC, only to see it dwindle away in their children's generations. I think the elders Wilkerson profiled in her book, even my late father, are turning over in their graves to see where this country is going.

No, we don't have Jim Crow, officially, but we do have the same evil spirit lurking in every part of our country. I keep saying Republicans, because they have been the banner, the carrier of this evil and only for their corporate gain, for greed, not for some precious ideal like religious freedom or the right to life, for it that was truly their aim like they snookered the sheep in the conservative religious denominations, then they would follow the teachings of Jesus Christ to help the least of these, to share, and to render unto Caesar what is Caesars (Jesus wasn't running around demanding a tax cut for the uber wealthy only to pile on the debt to the utterly destitute).

The human condition demands more from this country than just making a profit, more than just the bottom line for these new "citizens" now declared "human" by our supreme court.

I think reading and hearing more about the complicity of corporate america in this great recession and enduring evil against humanity is one of the reasons I have wanted to stay away from corporate america and seek my career in sustainable business, entrepreneurship, efforts to help people. Yes, an M.B.A. graduate like myself could have pursued a career in brand management in Minnesota or Battle Creek, to create yet another brand extension of yet another box of cereal, but is that serving humanity when people are starving in this country, when health care is seen as a privilege of the few and not the right of the many?

The realization is that this country has always been economically divided and a place for the "haves" over the "have nots" and the desire of the "haves" to suppress at all costs the "have nots" to make sure they protect their gold, much like those refined and dressed people on the Titanic still trying to carry away their furs and diamonds and gold when the ship was sinking in the freezing Atlantic, to the point of denying a seat to the less wealthy and working class on the ship because they weren't seen as worthy of life. It is all a sad testimony of this country.

It makes one sad when they look into the great horizon of the future and see the basic caring of individuals is non-existent, missing from the common lexicon, so caught up in the distractions of the Golden Globes and the Oscars, pacifiers, to keep people from emerging from their rooms and engaging in real dialogue...then taking to the streets to demand change.

Pondering The Destruction and The Hope

2011-01-23T13:42:00.000-06:00

I said it before and will say it again, we are on a rapid downhill spiral toward destruction.

This country saddens me. We claim to be the moral absolute and there are rallys for everything from saving the whales to puppy mills and stopping abortion and corporate largesse, yet in all of this, there is a lack of humanity, the simple human decency of a hello.

I guess it all came to me the other day when I was finally reaquainted with the wonders of television and the Internet (my home system was briefly indisposed and now repaired) and was flooded with all the things that happened in my week absence. I learned about Keith Olbermann's thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent commentary being silenced for the sake of corporate greed, media ratings, and new owners of MSNBC. I read that Oscar de la Renta didn't like First Lady Michelle Obama's choice of dress for the state dinner and he just had to criticize her when all she has ever tried to do is be a real woman with a real husband and real children in an esteemed role, she has brought more humanity and openness to the role of First Lady and her style, well, she is unique, individual, elegant, and a tall black woman...not exactly the one Oscar would have designed for in the first place.

My skipety-do-dah over to facebook was met with a post by an acquaintance alerting us to the DVD Violet Rose about a poor black woman in Texas who was being railroaded to prison because of the DEAs overzealous patrolling of the projects...and not for drugs, she was a waitress raising her children...but because the small town county where she lived needed money...and was rewarded with every "conviction" they got...so the small town court-appointed-attorneys were trying to force her to "cop a plea" and they all would get paid...hmmm.

I just sat down and started thinking about the last twenty eight years I have been an adult (since high school graduation) and the decline in the simple appreciation of life. My entry into adulthood was probably marred by Reagan's "war on drugs" which was actually a plot to get more arms into the hands of the Contra and fund his illegal work through flooding poor black neighborhoods with drugs and guns. Then to appease the "religious right" that was forming at the same time, they made poverty a crime but at the same time cut programs that would help people climb out of poverty.

There has been countless greed from industry after industry being deregulated and watchdogs being silenced. And I thought again, what is happening to the voices of reason and opposition? Did the one year mark of the Citizens United judgement that made a corporation a person have anything to do with this evil that is permeating through the country? Funny, an inanimate thing is a person and black men were only 3/5th of a person and black women weren't even counted. Humph.

Just when the state of our country and the downward spiral seemed endless, I smiled at the thought of the young activists who recognized the sins of the elders and are trying to make differences. They may not have the power or the finances, but they have the voice, the technology, and the connections to make socially responsible enterprise a reality, they understand that the corporate back scam on homeownership and desimation of the middle class has brought down a destructive power on this country and has to be ended. So, little by little, they are planting gardens, recycling, teaching, mentoring, discovering slow money and microloans, vowing to show local, send letters at rapid speed to their politicans, and speak out. There is some hope.

I turned around in my desk chair and looked at my two daughters and somehow felt that it would be okay, they are insightful and hopeful for their future. There is still humanity and whenever the forces of evil try to destroy the good of the people, the people do rise up, ban together, and recognize their collective humanity. That is my hope. There is possiblity and future in the that hope.

Lost In The City

2011-01-17T16:22:00.000-06:00

This was a magnificient and lyrical streetcar through the streets and lives that made up black D.C. from the early days to the Carter administration. I delighted in this collection of stories, of lives, seen in glimpses, as if I was riding a streetcar in the evening, catching snatches of their lives through lamp-lit windows.

These stories, told through the voices of young and old women, felt in the hopes of young and old men, were a delicious morsel in this start to 2011. Edward P. Jones is masterful with the language and like an artist, paints a picture that is forever etched in memory.

The writer's pen was a visual map of words that led me to feel as if I was transported "right down the middle of the street" with my heart intersecting with the wanting and needing of something right "up there."

It was hard for me to choose just one story. I like the little girl who raised pigeons with just her father as her guide through growing up and I saw years ahead of the older women who just wanted to have a chance of love, whose hearts still fluttered at the possibility of connection.

I've only visited D.C. twice, both times in a pre 9/11 world when one could just walk up on the capital steps or stroll freely through the monuments that are nowhere near Northeast, Northwest, or Southeast or any of the outer neighborhoods stretching into Maryland. Mr. Jones, however, brought these streets and neighborhoods to life for me. I could see myself in The Store as one who would have come to get my weekly wares, watching the young man given a daily, weekly chance to be somebody, eventually owning and passing on.

It was the story of neighborhoods, the things that make up those stories we tell around the holiday table, that we pass on, that add the thread to the tapestry of our connected lives. It reminded me a little of my time in Chicago, riding the "L" train from Loop out to Oak Park and wondering about the lives of the people in the homes, flats, and high rises we passed.

Mr. Jones added an important work to the black lexicon. This is truly a literary masterpiece and one that I will share with my son.

Island Beneath The Sea by Isabel Allende

2010-11-07T14:50:00.000-06:00

I have always been intrigued about the culture of New Orleans before the Civil War and Saint-Domingue before the slave revolt. Perhaps this interest is because it is the story of my family, my people, my history.

This part of history is often glossed over or completely missing in history books. History taught in school that reaches beyond the United States is often more about Europe and the feudal lords and ladies, royalty, and the explorers than it is about any people of color. Rarely, even, are the native people, customs, or languages taught.

It is with this backdrop of my curious family history - Napoleon sent one of our ancestors to the Caribbean island to "rule" it. They were the grands blancs and many of our ancestors had to flea for Cuba and New Orleans during the slave revolts and my foremother was born in Santo Domingo - the neighbor to the west - and was kidnapped by one of those trading merchant ships in the times before the revolt. She was of "exotic" beauty and I suspect a mixture of the milky white quadroon with Taino and African ancestry from Senegal or Madagascar (as family history has traced). She had hair to her bottom and a daughter, just as milky white with slight touches of African, the gen de coeulr libre as they were called in New Orleans, Creole, a different strata of the three tier system.

I brought pieces of myself to the story. Memories of learning that my family has two branches, the French white and the Creole black, united by the union of plaçage, a concept covered in the book. Jules, was the first man of color in the Guyol de Guiran family. The same family that boasted of having an artist who painted a mural that was in Saint Louis Cathedral, the same family that had "servants" who spoke Spanish, and sent their sons to France to be educated and educated their daughters at home. They were affranchise in Saint-Domingue, old school Creole families like Hortense Guzot’s, without the hatred. It all seemed like a fairy tale until I encountered Isabel Allende's carefully researched and meticulously crafted story centered on one mulatta slave and her journey against the backdrop against one of the most important revolutions of our collective history.

The protagonist is Zarité, or Tété. She enters our consciousness as a child and we see her progress to being a grandmother. She is the property of a confused and lustful master, Toulouse Valmorain, who was sent to run the family dynasty in Saint-Domingue for what was supposed to be a short period of time before returning to more civilized France. He returned for a visit, but never to live. His destiny was sealed on the plantations of that island filled with mosquitoes, humidity, and mysteries beyond understanding. She was both his ear and the place he dumped his passion, giving her children her body wasn’t ready to receive, she, relying on her beloved Erzulie, the loa to comfort and guide her.

The story opens with Zarité Sedella (was Zarite deSaint-Lazare) reflecting on her life, as women often do once they reach the age of forty. The mere fact that she reached this age is to be noted. The story that unfolds is her recounting the events of her life. The story closes with Zarité musing about the possibilities of the future and her longing to have all her descendants in one place. It is like hearing the voice of that generation of women that are often the sideline in any book written about the origins of this country, the slave trade, or the events up to Civil War.

Part One is from 1770-1793 and takes place on Saint-Domingue. The story develops slowly as Allende creates the character as living beings in the minds of the readers. She allows us to step into their lives and feel their emotions, listen in on their conversations, and get angry either at them or for them.

Part Two is from 1793-1810 and takes place in New Orleans. It is that magical period before and after Louisiana was purchased by Thomas Jefferson. It gives a glimpse into what makes New Orleans the fluid place full of culture, history, custom, and class. This was a place where the Creole people, almost all were Gens de Coeulr Libre from families that dated back to the early 1700s in this French territory. French was the primary language, it was accustomed that Creole families sent their men to France to be educated and acculturated their women to be refined and marry within their own culture. Until the period of plaçage became the norm, giving white Frenchmen the freedom to have two families and giving the Creole, quadroon free women the protection against unwanted sexual advances from American men. These women were exotic, refined, cultured, and just short of being white. It was their descendants that would be the generations of people who “passed” to live free in an increasingly confusing country.

Tété’s story intrigued me because then, like now, women are often the bearer of bad decisions by men. Her’s began when her mother, captured from Guinea, died and the child was left alone, eventually sold to the young Toulouse Valmorain and subsequently raped by him when she was only 11. She was too young to know what happened to her but knew that her soul was no longer her own and no matter how much she consulted with the Erzulia, it did not change her youth as the property and receiver of another man’s anger. Perhaps what saved her was her exotic beauty which kept her in the house and not out in the sugar cane fields that made slavery in that humid Caribbean island synonymous with excessive cruelty like the kind administered by the overseer, Cambray.

The book should be required reading for any high school history class. The author gave such a riveting account of the emotion and humanity behind the lives of each of the characters. She took us into the fear of the white people who watched their slaves, once just property to be used and brutalized at the hands of their black overseers, rose up, en masse and confronted their collective power. It was the first successful slave revolt in the history of the world. It shamed them, how dare these dark, uneducated people, rise up against the French crown? Against the aristocracy and demand their rights to humanity?

Over the years since the revolt, Haíti, as she became named, paid a heavy price for her step to freedom. When the story opens, fully one-third of France’s wealth was concentrated in that tiny island. The sugar, coffee, tobacco, indigo, and cocoa came from the island. It was ceded to the French by the Spanish at the end of 1600s, thus forming two nations from the same imported slaves and conquered indigenous peoples.

The entire Western Hemisphere and the neighboring islands in the Caribbean was the product of slave trade, of imperial rule, of colonalization. The English and the fledging place called “America” also had interests in keeping this revolt from reaching their shores. Cuba had already outlawed slavery and ironically, so had France, it was just in this hot, steaming island then lush with promise of coffee and sugar plantations, brutal work that no grand blanc or affranchi would ever dare to do, color being the thing that relegated their position, a caste system.

In more modern times, even as recent as the hurricane that destroyed the already delicate infrastructure, it is important to read about the history of this island. How is it so destroyed and destitute compared to her more lush, affluent, and Spanish sister to the west? How is that place, with the shared ancestry and shared native indigenous blood, able to be green and attractive and a tourist attraction? How did the hurricane not destroy it? Was the demand for repayment to the French more than the blacks, the only ones left after the revolution, able to bear? Is that why they destroyed the trees that were their refuge? The sugar canes were set on fire in retaliation, but in effect, left them destitute. What happened?

I felt a range of emotion as I read. I at times had to stop and think about this history, even here in Saint Louis, this city with clear French roots and a direct tie to New Orleans, as part of the shaping of this country. If it hadn’t been for the black slaves revolting, the French never would have sold that magical place called Louisiana to the Americans. The western expansion never would have happened and this country would be half its size. We would be a French territory speaking that melodic language, much like the elders in Saint Genevieve still speak today.

This is an important book, a necessary book, and Isabel Allende was the one to bring this epic story to life.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

2010-11-05T18:04:00.000-05:00

In the middle of reading one book, crafting the book review of another, I stopped to ponder womanhood.

The stopping is because Tyler Perry has produced For Colored Girls which premiers tonight. I am going with several of my girlfriends, we decided yesterday on the time. Last Saturday, at my book club, we selected the book for our December discussion. I went to Pudd N'Head Books to get my copy.

I like reading a book before I see the movie, if it is possible. This one was more breathed than read.

Back in 1985 in my College English class at Lincoln University, I read Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo. I had an assignment to then write a piece of poetry after that. It was then that someone other than my family told me I had the gift to write. It was also then that for close to two decades, I stopped writing stories and wrote prose and poetry, even performed a few pieces, gave pieces as gifts, just wrote what was inside me.

I started For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf yesterday afternoon.

Today, in the finally quiet of my house, soaking in a much-needed-tub, I finished it, I felt it.

Ntozake Shange wrote a choreopoem in 1975. One has to go back to that decade of pulsating energy, promise, and power to understand the delicate, feminine, and wanting behind the poems.

She wrote about the things that happen to women but more as a dance because we women often dance through lift, tiptoeing, two-stepping, and slow-jamming our way through the myriad of responsibilities that pull us, pulsate us, pummel us.

The movement of the poem was sweeping through adolescent loss of virginity, the indignity of acquaintance rape, the comfort of sisterhood, the jealousy of addicted and abusive men, the fragility of life, and the promise of yet another tomorrow, a universal understanding of the essence of what happens in the womb, the comfort of the breast, and the power of the vagina.

This poem was in a sense the precursor to any feminist/womanist poetry and performances including The Vagina Monologues (primarily from a white woman's perspective) and the Pocketbook Monologues (primarily from a black woman's perspective). Shange allowed me to feel emotions pent up inside and washed me with the soothing of her cadence, the way the ladies in red, blue, purple, yellow, orange, brown swayed and moved, intermoved, and outermoved through the way our lives brush past, touch, and hold each other.

Tonight, I will watch the movie with my belly full of her words, my mind's eye filled with the images of colorful cloth doing a dance in St.Louis, New Orleans, California, and New York. Filling my lungs with the sweet perfume of collective women embracing our essence without the struggles, the tugs, and the encasements.

The Girl Who Fell From The Sky

2010-08-31T20:24:00.000-05:00

The wonderful thing about the summer is that one can read a few books just because.

I've still been on my black female literature kick (currently reading Island Beneath The Sea by Isabel Allende - so guess she's not black, but the protagonist is a Mulatto/Creole woman from Saint Domingue during the time my ancestors were on that Caribbean Island. That is for another post, I digress...) so this little coming of age book by Heidi W. Durrow is an excursion.

This book was recommended by my favorite bookseller, Nikki at Pudd N' Head Books in Webster Groves. Nikki and I talked today and we both believe this book will have critical acclaim when it comes out in paperback and is discovered by more people. I highly recommend it for the YA market and the young college students who want to understand the complexities of race from a semi-autiobiographical perspective.

The protagonist journeys from being a child of multi-cultural and multi-racial heritage. Her dad is U.S. black and her mother is from Denmark. The first thing that struck me as I read the book is how the "voice" we hear in our head of ourselves talking as a little girl is the same "voice" we hear in our heads as a young woman and older.

I could feel this girls inner turmoil as she tried to figure out this new culture, she was pretty much raised in Denmark and spoke Danish until her mother thrust her in a very different America in the early 1980s.

The other thing that struck me about the story was the confusion the mother must have felt about the decidedly American obsession with race and classifications. She wrote in her many journals about how you were just "you" in Europe and that it was not unusual for Danish women to date black military men. It was just a sense of freedom from the chokehold of centuries old racial constructs that allowed the young couple to just be.

The tragedy of the book and what happened to the mother are in some ways the fault of this racial obsession in a place that had to be very confusing. I would never do what she did, but I could understand her angst and desire to protect her children.

One thing that appealed to me about the book is that the people who "spoke" did so from the first person, as if I was sitting down with them, sipping a cup of coffee, and listening to their version of the "event." It was also a reminder that the events of one's live could literally change on one decision, one moment, and there will be years spent trying to figure out what happened.

This book is a must-read for anyone of any ethnic origin, but especially for those who are mixed-race, mixed-culture, or friends of someone who shares heritage in multiple worlds.

Rhythms

2010-04-07T08:23:00.000-05:00

Can you feel it? The sway of the hips when the horn plays and the jazz soloist begins her rendition of soul stirring melodies that reach way down deep into the quiet spaces of your heart to take hold and rest there...until it cresendo's to a thumping beat and you feel as if your body is not your own, moving and stepping in ways you never imagined possible?

These are the feelings one encounters when reading Rhythms by Donna Hill.

This was the deep satisfaction and knowing that every page was worth the turn that one can compare to great organic French chocolate with is melt-in-your mouth creamy goodness, or the close-your-eyes-with-satisfaction at inhaling the citrus aroma of a perfectly pulled French press of Ethiopian Yigarchaffe, or the exhale of air and head-on-the-pillows-satisfaction of encountering love with your soul lover, these are the emotions of this book.

Set lightly against the backdrop of history from the first generation past slavery to the middle stirrings of the fight for equal rights, you will take a journey along the path of one family of women who exude strength, beauty, and character. From the Mississippi Delta to the Big Apple, you will follow dreams, cry at heartache, and smile at redemption.

If you think you know southern black women because you read The Help, think again. Come to the other side of the tracks and meet the women before, during, and after the time period of Kathryn Stockett's novel. You will travel further into Mississippi than the metropolis of Jackson, to the dusty backroads and deep cadence of a deep baritone preacher. Finding the hopes of possibility and the fortitude to stand up, you will love this book.

Pearl, Cora, Emma, and Parris held up a mirror to my soul and reminded me of my own ties and generations of strong women, Priscilla-Gladys-Aloyse-Antona-Kiden & Keziah.

Dreams never die and some take another generation to be fulfilled, all buoyed by the rhythm of the soul and the whisper of a mother's confession. Freedom and relief, forgiveness and refreshment are all part of the journey to realization that the secret you thought would destroy your life is actually the liberation you needed to free your heart!

This book has found a home on my permanent bookshelf, a treasure I found while perusing my own volumes of undiscovered literature, almost forgotten through a long-ago "bargain" purchase at one of the big stores, this novel deserves top billing of black female literary classics and is being rediscovered. Written by a promising novelist and published originally in 2001, perhaps before the world was ready for the hope. This is one worth getting to know.

I will say, however, that I was left a little hungry, a little wanting in the ending, wondering what happened, where would the next generation go and if the two living in Paris and Mississippi ever found connection and acceptance. Perhaps that is what a novel is supposed to do, leave you wanting more.

Donna Hill is a skilled wordsmith, bending and twisting the language the same way the musicians forced the notes to new heights, it was felt, really something a great novel must do. This book is being re-released with a different, more sensuous cover, but don't let that stop you from the purchase, the way I remember this book is the way the swirls of time connected the generations as featured on the cover of my copy.

Black Girl in Paris

2010-03-07T13:53:00.000-06:00

I think my favorite books are those written in the first person. It makes me feel as if I am having a conversation with the protagonist, I get to hear her voice and get inside her feelings. She invites me to experience what she is feeling and thinking. Such is the journey I recently ended with Shay Youngblood's Black Girl in Paris.

I felt just as adventurous and daring as Eden. Her hunger to write is my hunger to write. The promise of creative and artistic freedom in inspiration that Paris has afforded James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, even my brother, Thomas Pollard was the yearning that I felt as I turned pages after page. I looked at the maps and the pictures and imagined myself twenty-five years ago and if I had been brave enough to skip college in Jefferson City and purchase a ticket to France.

Eden recounts her adventures in several vignettes of her life there. She was everything from an artist's model to a poet's help to an au pair to a tour guide in her quest to find that voice that was always deep within her. The drive to meet the ailing James Baldwin is what propelled her through the streets of Paris during the times of the bombings and the suspicious treatment of Haitians. During the time of uncertainty and nationalism and wonder and hope and the simple joie de vivre that is this wonderful city.

Paris has always been a romantic notion to me every since my brother moved there over thirty years ago. The embracing of black artistic endeavors is what drew Langston Hughes in 1924 and my brother in 1974, the ability to free oneself from the shackles of race in oppressive America to don the beret of expression in a France that seemed full of gaity and possibility. They love the arts in France. The writer is seen as brave and gifted and revered in ways that do not always happen in America. I understood, as I journeyed with Eden, why Josephine Baker made this her home. I could be enveloped by this place that did not frown at a jazz playing white man loving a hopeful writer black girl. My eyes closed and I saw the many cultures gathered around the table. I would bring the espresso.

This book was a treasure find in my local library. The title was something I always wanted to be, a black girl in Paris, just once in my life. I wanted to muse and imagine myself as Eden and wonder if I would find the voice I sought as she seeks her voice.

"To be a good writer you must write often, seek out adventure, be original, and read good literature." These things I am trying to do as more gray hair pops up in my dred locs and youthful impulse is long behind.

Paris is the city of dreams come true. I felt that and like Eden, learned that the unfolding muse happens "one word at a time, story by story, mile by mile, let the sound of the voices carry you the distance, welcome."

The Help

2010-03-06T14:43:00.000-06:00

I read Kathryn Stockett's first novel, The Help, as part of my CFUH Book Club.

It was an page-turning read, set in the first person through an ensemble of characters. I felt as if I was sitting down with coffee with each of the women in the novel and hearing their personal stories. Stories that matter, that define us, that change histories. This is another novel that evoked emotions in me that sometimes shocked me, sometimes made me cry, sometimes made me shake my head, and sometimes make me smile. And that is a good thing, a book that makes me feel that I have not wasted my money.

The book is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. What a time. The nation was embroiled in the middle of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, the now aging Baby Boomers were coming of age and being the generation that was so formidable in their impact on the nation, and the regions of the country were as different as oil and water, New York and Mississippi. It was only 48 years ago, a lifetime, a year after my husband was born, two years before I was born. A time of my elder siblings, many of the people in their late 40s and 50s were the children of The Help. It really wasn't that long ago.

Set against the backdrop of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the murder of Medgar Evers, sit-ins, busing, almost eight years after Brown vs. Board of Education, a man on the moon, President Kennedy, the times of Mad Men and the marketing of everything from hair straightening mechanisms to new fangled washing machines and color televisions were setting the cultural tone for a nation that would not stay mired in the past. Closing my eyes and seeing the cotton fields of my husband's family's native Mississippi, I see the dusty haze, feel the oppressive heat, and try to catch my breath with the dark cloud of fear that strangled life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for many, black and white, who lived in a place that only knew human chattal.

This examination of The Help is not about the validity or lack of validity of the white female writer taking on the supposed black dialect of the black maids. It is not about the character analysis or strength of her writing, her contribution of to popular reading and bookclubs with her first novel. It is not even about whether this story was true or not, for it was true to anyone who had anyone who worked for a white woman in the south, this story was true. It is the examination of the feelings and choice and opportunity that I encountered in the book.

Skeeter Phelan was the young white woman, idealist writer, who entered this writing to just make a name for herself in a marketplace crowded with men. It was a time when women were just expected to go to Ole Miss to find a husband like the characters Hilly and Elizabeth. White women smoked to look sophisticated because that is what the soap opera commercials told them a modern woman behaved. They had children so they could produce that coveted male heir (like Lil' Man receiving his mother's love and devotion while Mae Mobley was just barely tolerated as the big sister). The age of the white women struck me as how young they were - only 22 and 23 -and the age of the black women struck me with how old they were - 41 and 61. It was as if the young had to hurry up and live their lives as prescribed by the power structure - white men and the black women had to hurry up and survive what was left of their lives as prescribed by the power structure - white women.

Skeeter was none of this and all of this. It was her mother's greatest disappointment that Skeeter went to Ole Miss, pledged a sorority, and actually graduated with a degree but not a husband. The value placed on just having that man and even the mother's marriage fee set aside to make a man want to marry the tall, gangly, still-waiting-to-blossom-beauty, the hair that would not do the Beatles girl dip or just a decent white girl pony tail. The sheer disdain of the mother made Skeeter a keen observer of what was wrong, woke up a questioning and hunger in her that she probably didn't realize was there until she was surrounded by the black women in the throws of the book, until she realized that there was a life outside Mississippi. Until the New York Jewish editor quietly and urgently pushed her to seek more. A mentor without Skeeter knowing she was being mentored.

The black women were also sitting on the stoop of just plain tired. I could feel their wanting something different, Aibleen who lost her son, Minny who was still having children to protect herself from her abusive husband, they wanted something different but didn't know how to voice it. It was in the sinew, the marrow, the very blood that flowed through their tired veins, wrinkles furrowing the brow, and feet that needed soaking at night, tired in their Dr. Scholl's.

Aibleen was courageous and a leader, always had been. She was tremendously wise and I have to believe that all 17 babies she raised did make some changes to the way the world would be. I have to believe that her whispered messages of you matter, you are smart, you are kind all sunk deep into their young souls, she was their mother more than their mothers, she truly ruled the world because she rocked the cradle, no one can forget the one who nurtured them, even if the convention of the time meant that someone would pull back the veil of pure love and tell them they were different. It was why Aibleen left before school and fear and the-way-things-are separated the babies from their black mother-in-fact. She was courageous and giving and her emotions from all those years and the loss of her own son were what gave her the voice to talk to Skeeter, first with the Miss Myrna letters and finally, about what it was really like. It gave her the wisdom on approaching MInny first and getting the rest of the maids later. I liked Aibleen.

This book settled down around me like the warm hazelnut latte and pound cake I enjoyed this morning. There was something knowing about the lives of these women, about opportunity and choice and forces greater than them trying to steer them in a direction opposite their truth. Even the vicious, Hilly, seemed constrained and too tightly wound up into the knot of fear, hypocrisy, and custom. I wondered if I could have the grace of Aibleen or the fortitude of Minny, even as she was brave outside but feared LeRoy at home. I wondered if parts of these women resided inside each of us.

I read this book in the same season that I read The Wednesday Sisters and The Street. I would highly recommend reading each of these books for an historical context of what was happening in Jackson. While New York and California seemed light years away from Mississippi, fear, uncertainty, choice, and social constraint was woven from sea to shining sea in that pivotal decade of change.

This book is being made into a movie, I am not sure I want to go see it, these women are so vivid in my mind's eye. It was a story that needed to be told from a voice that experienced it. Almost fifty years later, in a time of uncertainty again in our country, it had to be told and she was the one to tell it.

The Street by Ann Petry

2010-02-22T10:53:00.000-06:00

I felt more than read this book.

I had to let it immerse me like being in a warm bath on a cold day. The feeling was all encompassing and disturbing. My heart was beating fast and the palpitations could be heard across the room. I found myself inhaling and trying to catch my breath from the feeling of an elephant standing on my chest.

Ann Petry's use of language painted a vivid picture of Harlem and the lives of the people who were striving to make a living during a time of Pullman Porters, black men in a segregated war, and hate that could be cut with a knife.

The narrative prose gave the reader a rare opportunity to glimpse into the minds of the characters, beyond just the protagonist. The story unfolded during a short period of time in the burgeoning burrough replete with hope and hunger, misery and miracles. It was both a tragic time and a magical time. Ann Petry's language allowed me to step into the other side of the neighborhood beyond the renaissance of The Angel of Harlem, the story of Dr. May Chinn. The people in Ann Petry's book would have been the patients of Dr. Chinn.

One of the things that stayed with me was the pace, the constant going, the feeling that my heart was racing because I was racing through life just trying to survive being a woman and a black woman at that in a world that wanted to take, take, take.

It also gave me parallels to the strivings and wantings and urgings and disparaging lives of women trapped in a lower income situation, living where they don't want to live, fighting to maintain their dignity and sanity in an environment that was set up to destroy them. I understand Lutie's feelings of failure and hopelessness. And it something that should not be in America, then or now.

Race, sex, violence, discrimination, poverty, crime - all recurring issues in that urban setting and in many urban settings today. It seems like a cycle that never lets up on the choking the lives out of the ones caught up in it. And sometimes the only way out is to escape, even if it meant leaving behind what was trying to be saved.

Ann Petry's writing will stay with me. I can still feel this book, even as it has been almost a month since I read it. I could not write the review right away, I had to ponder the lessons. I have not lived in a tenement or been pulled into a situation where my dignity was threatened, but I have felt the overwhelming tiredness that seeps into the marrow of one's bones. I've felt the exhaustion from just trying to survive in a city when divorced from the sons' father, the constant going and striving and never relaxing. I felt that just as sure as Lutie did, and but for the grace of God go I. I was born in a different time, a different place and had more opportunities than were afforded to her.

Choice is a powerful thing. That was something missing in The Street. Or was it?

"The women work because the white folks give them jobs - washing dishes and clothes and floors and windows. The women work because for years now the white folks haven't liked to give black men jobs that paid enough for them to support their families. And finally it gets to be too late for some of them." pg. 388

Maybe it was about class and station in life. Much the same as the new book I am reading, The Help, set about twenty years after The Street. Yet I feel some of the same despair that grips when a society is consumed with thinking one class or race is better than another, when the powerful strive to destroy the less powerful, when men are denied the right to be the men of their families and when the women are forced into situations beyond their reasoning. When choice is taken away, you are left with The Street.

The Cradle

2009-10-27T10:57:00.002-05:00

Interesting little muse and character study coupled with a little mystery and chase around the Midwest.

The Cradle, a first novel by Patric Somerville, was a satisfying little morsel during a really rainy St. Louis week. The book has several little vignettes centered around a Civil War cradle that the protagonist's wife is sure will make everything complete. The completeness comes not in wood but in what life crafted for them in the end.

I read this almost in one sitting, drawn in by his use of multiple stories that interconnected. It subtly reminded me that we truly are only six degrees separated from other people. One does not experience their story without the paragraphs of this life touching the sentences of another's life.

Matt, in the end, did not bring home what sent him driving through rain and snow and meeting weird characters that populate any family. He ended up with something more and yet, I closed the book longing to know what happened to the other people who invaded my thoughts.

This little novel talked about children, in more ways than a children's novel ever could. It reminded me that every thing we do intersects and has implications for the future. We are all left wondering "why" and "what if" and "how about" at some point in our life. Decisions we make are not in a vacuum, they do affect lives and lives and lives.

The Cradle was more than a quest to find something to put a new baby to sleep, it was a quest to find the missing answers for a son put up for adoption, written during one war, given up during a previous generation's war. It was also the story of how the Boomers affected the lives of the Millennials even when they were still figuring out which way to go.

We can try to reinvent ourselves and rewrite the chapters of our story, but in the end, we are still left trying to answer the question of "why" and "what happened" and "which way to go" and "how do I do that."

I read this book thinking about choices I made in my previous years, my teenage and young twenties. Decisions that affect me now, even as I prepare to be a Me'Me' to my son's incubating children. There is a part of me that longs to have something from my infancy to pass on to this next generation, much like Matt wanted to give to his wife Marissa. Yet, what we pass on is often not concrete but fluid, living, and hopeful, just like the story left me.

Thoughts From A True Bookie

2009-10-24T10:25:00.004-05:00

I normally use this space to review books and will probably throw in thoughts on a few books I've read recently. Today, however, there is something on my mind about the whole Wal*Mart, Target, Amazon online price wars along with the whole Kindle, Nook, Alex e-reader electronic war. All the noise in the marketplace is really making me mad about the thing I love a lot - books, words, bookstores.

Now, I've talked in my blog, The Musings of a Latte Queen, before about my favorite bookseller, Pudd N'Head Books. Nikki recently celebrated the first birthday of the store. This is not an easy feat for any entrepreneur but even less easy for independent booksellers in this crowded and noisy landscape.

As an ex-marketing person, I completely understand the psychological war that the big guns are waging for the attention of fleeting readers. Most real book lovers do not look to the bestsellers list or chain stores for their literary fix. I certainly do not choose Wal*Mart first.

Yes, they, along with Target, Border's, Barnes & Noble, and even Sears (?) offer discounted books, those previously out-of-print, or new authors at reduced prices. I thoroughly enjoyed The Wednesday Sisters that I picked up at Target while shopping for toilet paper and paper towels. So I get the psychology of discounted prices for books tucked into the same cart with the Method dish soap and All laundry detergent. It is convenience for a nation that barely reads above the eighth grade level.

My angst, however, is that it will hurt the industry overall.

Wal*Mart is notorious for winning any price war (anyone remember the demise of the iconic FAO Schwartz back in 2003?) and it is bad business thinking to try to go after that behemoth on price. I almost laughed at the Huffington Post article that said once Amazon offered best sellers for $10, Wal*Mart countered with $9, then Target did $8.99 and then Wal*Mart responded with $8.98.

As if a true book lover will drive all the way over there to save a penny? It is on the heals of sharing cake with Nikki yesterday that I am just even more disgusted with the big blue box. Even if ordering online, that is just ridiculous. These stores do not value books the way I do, the way Pudd N'Head Books or Left Bank Books does. They would never ban together to bring in authors like Ron Currie, Jr. for a book reading. They would never email or call me with news of a new book in my favorite genre. They just don't get it.

I love boutiques. There is something magical that happens when I walk into Nikki's store and she greets me with her smile and a new book. She reads, actually reads books, as does her staff. She has a children's book expert that has endeared herself to my eight-year-old daughter. They know us. She knows that my daughter is only in 2nd grade but reads like a 4th and 5th grader. She smiled understandably when my daughter gave up her last $3 to help pay for the second installment of The Doll People. Only a true booklover can understand the desire to curl up under a warm blanket and be transported away to a writer's imagination.

The book wars are all about business. Capitalism gone wrong as the huffpo article suggested. It is not about me, the avid reader. It is not about finding new talent, there are millions of up and coming writers who crave for a spot on a shelf, crowded out by the war for the "best sellers". Where on this list is Angel of Harlem or Let The Lion Eat Straw or even The Cradle that I'm reading right now? Who decides what is a "best seller" and why should we care?

Care because books hold knowledge. Variety. Introduction to new lands and protagonists that capture one's heart and live in the soul. Care because if the only place to buy books was Wal*Mart, we would all be in a real literary desert. Care because some things are really worth the $25 price for a hardcover, first edition novel. Think about the independent bookseller who is part of the fiber and fabric of a neighborhood. And the author who has poured her soul into the words on paper. What about the publisher who took a chance on an unknown for the benefit of a great story?

This is the time for real book lovers to stand up, even quasi readers. There is a place for customer service and personal shopping and listening to authors read their works and even giving up one's last $3 to purchase a book when you are only eight.

There is a lifelong affinity being developed in my daughters and I do not want the big boy stores crowding them out. Just like FAO Schwartz, some places are legendary and need to exist.

This book lover can not be swayed to a cheap imitation of literary delight!

"God Forms Our Blue Songs"

2009-10-13T19:42:00.004-05:00

She rests with me, at times she is me. I am speaking of Abebe in the classic book, Let The Lion Eat Straw.

This wonderful treasure, celebrating its 30th anniversary, is by Professor Ebele Oseye. I think she came to my life at just the right time, to let me know, that tomorrow is still full of time.

Abebe lived the life of many black women of her time, and also of our time. Too often, the needs and wants of others can overshadow the needs and dreams of ones soul. Such is the life of Abebe.

She was blissfully happy in sandy,North Carolina eating boiled peanuts catching the old soul of her grandmother, not her grandmother. Her mother, up in the cold and rat infested north was hunting down a different life. Five years go by before the mother, Angela comes to get the little girl and her life with the midwife. She whisks her away to trains and dark streets, noise and indoor toilets, and her New York Daddy.

Arthur Lavoisier turned out to be the sunshine to radiate hope and promise and life to this girl. Her mother, Angela, was noticeably distant and emotionally cruel to her, despite her deep love. Perhaps her mother resented her daughter, or as often happens, the circumstances surrounding the conception of the daughter. Yet, it was not the daughter's cause.

The father showered her and protected her so his death upset her soul in ways that only came out when she named one of her future sons for this man, her father, yet, not her father. The soul love of the father protected her in her teenage years from what would be her mother's wrath. The piano followed her throughout her life, the reminder of that deep conviction and acceptance a father gives a daughter.

Angela wanted a very different life from the Brooklyn surrounding her daughter. She didn't allow her to date, kept her looking like a little girl, even in high school, and insisted that she attend the music conservatory. It was never to happen because "that country boy" took over Abebe's life with the deep and Paul Robeson-essence-of-his-voice. Their measurements found in the black and white keys, ended up entwining them for life.

Daniel Torch changed Abebe's life forever, and her mother never forgave her.

He married her and immediately she became pregnant. True to the soothsayer's message that her mother sought right after Daniel sang, Abebe did go down a very different path.

In the end, after journeying through her asthma attacks and her life as wife and mother, all along I kept hoping she would find that trace of her dream. She wrote a play that was performed, yet, circumstances never allowed her to write another one.

I could feel the longing of her heart along with the quiet acceptance of everything life brought her way. Her weariness settled on me like a blanket on this cold October day. She made me long to have the dreams that filled my young girl heart and to hear my father's strong voice again.

This book is set in a time when most black women did not have the choice of a college education. Brooklyn was still packed with blacks from the south seeking better opportunities, trying to shed any traces of their "country" roots. Wanting to don an attire replete with sophistication, absent the stifling poverty, backbreaking menial work, and crushing racism that was thick like the smoke.

Written in poetic lyrics reminiscent of Toni Morrison's later work, A Mercy, this book is a must read. I finished it in a couple days and still relish the sweet muse. This was one cherished gift from a friend.

Soothing Sisterhoods

2009-10-12T19:03:00.005-05:00

Some things just go down sweetly like the golden yummy of Black Madonna's honey. Such has been my recent morsel of fiction, The Wednesday Sisters. I really enjoyed the ensemble characters and frankly, did not expect to like it as much as I did. The story and the women have settled in my heart, much like the ensemble characters from Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees.

The setting of both books was during the tumultuous times of the 1960s. One was early in the decade and in the south, the other was later in the decade as its moonlight faded to the sunrise of the 1970s and in the far west. Each was set against the backdrop of history being made that ultimately shaped the women and in many ways, shaped my world today. Who would have known that the challenges women faced then could transcend their race? I never expected this, I entered the reading of The Wednesday Sisters as a prep for reading The Help later this fall.

I am like many black women in their mid-forties, not a feminist. I coin the phrase my elder sister and husband gave me, womanist. I am a firm believer in the possibilities of my gender, despite the continuing limitations that men attempt to place on us. My father never raised me to believe I could only fit into certain boxes, he made me take Algebra just as he made my brothers.

The women in both books developed these deep and lasting connections through the universal sorority. In The Secret Life of Bees, it was the Black Madonna and the girl, Lily, who found connection in the Boatright sisters and in The Wednesday Sisters, it was motherhood and a neighborhood park that connected these unrelated women. I found myself in all of them.

I think one thing that watered my palette for each book was that they were writers. Lily, the little girl struggling to overcome personal tragedy and find her voice. Frankie, Ally, Brett, Linda, Kath, all finding sense of their limitations through a sharing of words. Each of these women spoke to the known need of opening up our vulnerabilities for someone else, hidden from view much like Brett's scared hands, ensconced in white gloves, protecting from harsh criticism. The women all seemingly understood each's desire for more than the times would give.

August almost missed out on the love of her life through her defiant stance of not wanting to be boxed into the role marriage brought the women of Palo Alto. Brett should have been an astronaut, Linda secretly wanted to burn her bra and march with the burgeoning feminist movement, Frankie played tug-of-war with her own sense of inadequacies because she didn't have a college degree like the other women. In the 1960s, white women went to college to get a husband, black women, those who were able like August Boatright, went to college to get a future.

The five women of The Wednesday Sisters almost wanted me to shout at them for their sheltered world, their ease of life, even with husbands just beginning their careers, even despite Ally's secret Indian husband, these women did not have the life challenges of their contemporaries in The Secret Life of Bees. None of them had to worry about their sons being arrested in the movie theatre or simply shunned for the color of their skin. Yet, like them I did and do, they all feel like new friends, like women I understand.

Both books are ones I'd recommend to anyone who wanted something soothing and satisfying. Each lends itself to a book club discussion as issues of the Civil Rights Era and the Women's Movement stormed through all parts of America. The tomorrows these women could only hope for their sons and daughters was being shaped by their brave steps against conformity.

Kath probably never divorced Lee, despite her eventual successful career in publishing. Ally along with her finally-born children probably continued to get stares because of their multicultural family during a time such a thing was still illegal in the hearts, despite overturned laws. Frankie and Brett became the future shaping authors I hope to become. Linda took the veil off breast cancer and showed that a woman is more than her breasts and her hair. They will stay with me, just as the death of May hurt my heart, the strength of June as a business owner and woman who chose her freedom over a man, and the eventual understanding of August that she could both change the world and have love continue to stay with me long after the book was closed.

I love good books. Stories that I keep on my list to share with my girls when they reach each. Our lives can be shaped by the words of others, through the shared experiences of history and moments of testing. These stories are as clearly comforting as the organic white tea that warms my soul on a cold October evening.

2009-09-21T14:49:00.006-05:00

There are some stories that settle down in your soul and leave their mark on your heart. Such are the two books I recently finished. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid and Angel of Harlem by Kuwana Haulsey were both as smoothly satisfying as a perfectly frothed vanilla latte, warm and comfortable, nurturing and enveloping, complete and satisfying.

I love first person stories, perhaps because I recognize the need within myself to write my own words and to give my characters voice. I've also been drawn to the hidden treasures found in black female literature, far from the latest best selling books list but near to the soul of a reader. Each of the treasure were found in the used book section of Left Bank Books in the Central West End. Both will have permanent places on my bookshelf, each will be given to my daughter at the appropriate time for them to read and ponder.

Annie John drew me because it was a mother-daughter love story with a young girl as the central character. She was at first in awe and in joy with just being in her mother's presence. Her mother also seemed to radiate light and life on her only child, a clear present and energy beyond caring for her elderly husband, thirty-five years her senior. Her daughter received affirmation, affection, and appreciation. Annie John's privileged life was easy and adventurous, even as she grew older and knew how to put on the codes adults loved to see in well behaved children. The girl managed to throw in some adventure and knowing and learning of herself along with the inevitable tug-of-war that happens when girl becomes woman.

The mother-daughter strain seeped through like one of the Caribbean rains soaking the ground. It was strange and uncomfortable to wade through this murky relationship between the two of them, how they seemed to play on each other, at once both love and hate each other. I felt myself crying inside and longing inside because my mother died when I was only four, I wondered if I would ever hate her and not want to be her?

In the end, the mother struggling to redefine herself not as Annie JOhn's mother and the daughter venturing out in the world determined to not be her mother, realized how much they would always be inter-dependent. "It doesn't matter what you do or where you go, I'll always be your mother and this will always be your home." Even as Annie John seemed to abhor those words, they gave her and me a comforting sense of belonging, of having a space and time where we would always be accepted for who we were.

Angel of Harlem was also a story that resonated with me as the story of the amazing Dr. May Edward Chinn unfolded. She was also an only child and having come of age in Harlem during the 1920s. Easily a remarkable time in Harlem with the recounting of the riot in East St. Louis or the emerging careers of Zora Neale (a college student at the time of the book) or Paul Robeson or the handsome and young Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, names on my bookshelf now. I loved the conversation between these literary and artistic greats.

May was right along with them, a young woman during the hey day of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, a witness of the inner turmoil over skin color, emerging black middle class, and the never-ending, crushing poverty of the inner city. Dr. May was a light in the darkness for many. She had encounters with amazing men who loved her deeply and wanted to make her their wife. However, there was this inner striving in her, perhaps because her father refused to speak to her after her first sexual experience resulted in a beautiful baby boy. He wouldn't even look at her and I felt the crush in her spirit by the first man she ever loved turning his back on her. She was cushioned by the comforting robe of her mother's warm words, steady work hands, and filling of her every need.

Lulu Chinn was as much a heroine of the story as Dr. May. Her mother saw opportunity in her daughter and gave her the wind to fly even higher than the creamy colored daredevil pilot Fauntleroy Julian. Dr. May Edward Chinn was able to affect so many lives and so many people because she went against the grain of conformity. She seemed to capture the spirit of the times and the unencumbrance of singlehood to do revolutionary cancer research, rescue a young boy's leg from the El train, squirrel away young girls from a life of urban slavery, and still manage to reconcile with her father before he died, cherish her mother's final days, and release a former beau from his promise to find contentment.

I felt this woman and feel her presence even now as I muse on her words. The best of the book is summed up in her realization that a lifetime of searching often brings us to the realization that what we wanted was right in front of us. "I understood that to perform a miracle meant nothing. What mattered was having the courage to be the miracle. How many years had it taken me to have the courage to really live, to accept and embrace that one truth?"

In both these books and in both these women, I walk away with a sense that now is the time to live this life, it is a gift, and it is a promise.

Smooth and Frothy Espresso Shot Reviewed

2009-01-06T09:10:00.000-06:00

During the lazy, hazy days of Christmas break I like to read something light and fun. I like to do this reading snuggled under a cozy blanket and sipping one of my classic vanilla lattes or peppermint white mochas. I wasn't disappointed in a new mystery series (note, it is new to me) I discovered before the holidays.

The book I picked up for this occasion was Espresso Shot. It is a Coffeehouse Mystery series by internet java-diva, New Yorker, coffee lover, and writer, Cleo Coyle.

Photo of the book courtesy of her website

Currently a bestseller

As I'm not a big follower of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association or really mysteries for that matter, this author and her work is entirely new to me.

If you've read my other writing, The Musings of a Latte Queen, you will know that I absolutely love coffee. There is something magical about the aroma in the morning and seeing the crema form as this soothing brown wonder flows from my Breville. This is on the list for whenever I take my last breath, I want vanilla lattes served at my repass! It is that serious with me.

Equally serious is my love of independent coffee houses and my disdain for Starbucks and anything at all like corporate coffee shops. I love the intimacy, familiarity, and atmosphere of my local favorites like STL Java & Cafe' out in Florissant or Kaldi's here in Kirkwood. I love the stuff. That is probably the reason why I was attracted to the book in the first place. It brought my love of reading with my love of espresso drinks together, what better way to enjoy two weeks of Christmas break!

The cover intrigued me and honestly, anything fiction related to coffee piques my interest. I purchased the book at Pudd'n'Head Books in Webster Groves. It looked like it would be fun.

Cleo doesn't disappoint. It is a good and delightful book. I enjoyed meeting Clare Cosi and her dashing ex-husband, Matteo Allegro. I fell in love with the many coffee and espresso recipes and use of the lingo. I learned a thing or two about New York's underground restaurants and some dining pleasures. She included some recipes for the food served at Breanne Summour's wedding dinner parties and I may give a couple of them a try.

There were many twists and turns in this mystery novel about a fake socialite who reinvented herself as a mover and shaker in New York's competitive magazine publishing scene. She was about the marry Clare Cosi's ex-husband, a traveling coffee buyer and known ladies man. The peaks and valleys of the book included many attempts on Breanne's life and her ultra snobbish behavior. The characters were believable and Cleo even created Avitars of Clare, Matteo, and Madame on her website.

The book reminded me a little of the behind-the-scenes of the novel by Lauren Weisberger and the resulting movie, The Devil Wears Prada with Meryl Streep starring as the fashion magazine maven with the crumbling personal life. The scheming to-be-seen and move-up-by-any-means-necessary, Monica, reminded me of the uber skinny first assistant Emily in the movie. Breanne could've easily been a Miranda Priestly. I'd put this book's Clare as an adult Andrea (Andy) played by Anne Hathaway.

I would recommend this for the amusing read. It is great for book clubs and espresso lovers. I would caution that her descriptions use a lot of adjectives and can be a bit tiring after a while. She seems to be developing into a good writer since she began this series in 2005. She has well thought out and believable characters, an identifiable area in Greenwich Village, and a sure love for independent businesses.

She is commended for her deft handling the intimacy between Clare Cosi and Mike Quinn. It was as if I could visually see the couple go into the bedroom, close the door, and whatever happened in there was their business, I didn't need to know the erotic details. This is something refreshing in modern writing and frankly, is a welcome change from even the overly sexualized television programs.

Cleo has a keen understanding of high fashion labels and being a midwestern bohemian, I tired after a while of all the high fashion brands. I've been to New York and even LA's fabled Rodeo Drive and to this MBA trained ex product manager, it was all like a picture of American waste, but I digress.

This book was written in Clare's voice and this added a personal element to it, like she and I could sit down over coffee and dish on her ex-husband's pursuits, her daughter Joy's culinary education, taste her friend Janelle's pastries (I liked how Cleo included the bit about Janelle being black, she used African-American, and a New York transplant who survived Hurricane Katrina) or simply sip that can-taste-it-now Esmeralda Especial.

I've never seen the book at any bookstore other than Pudd'n'Head but I'm sure it can be found online, at some coffee shops, of course on Amazon.com, at Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Like a really smooth and creamy vanilla latte with my favorite organic milk from my favorite barista, this book was really satisfying.

If you like fun and light fiction, a chance to experience a virtual coffeeshop world, love to become familiar with characters and love a good mystery, this series is perfect. Espresso Shot was No. 7 in her work but I felt as if I knew what was going on because she added a few lines about Clare's other amateur PI work as well as as few nuances of the Matteo (Matt) and Clare relationship. I'm sure it would be great to read them in order but I'd venture to say they could stand alone, much like watching one of the old Murder She Wrote re-runs starring Angela Langsbury as writer and amateur detective, Jessica Fletcher.

Other books by Cleo Coyle in this series, in order, include:
1. On What Grounds
2. Through the Grinder
3. Latte Trouble
4. Murder Most Frothy
5. Decaffeinated Corpse
6. French Pressed
7. Espresso Shot
8. Title under secret guard coming out later in 2009

The catchy titles, great graphics, plus her interactive and virtual coffeeshop make this one I will visit often. She is one writer who does answer emails from her readers and she is fantastic at listing information on all things coffee bean! She brought together two of my great loves and I will add her to the sites I visit on my main site!

Now with the cold weather about to come on us here in St. Louis, in addition to Cleo Coyle's books, here are some other fun ones to whyle away the time until spring. Some I've read, some are waiting-their-turn on my bookshelf:

1. Sisters, Ink. I enjoy scrapbooking and so ordered this from Crossings.com. It was a refreshing, not preachy, new addition to the Christian fiction genre. This is about four multi-racial adopted sisters from a small town who scrapbook and help each other though life's challenges. The first one is about Tandy who lives in Orlando though her heart is back in Tennessee. I imagine a series brewing from this.

2. Coming Unglued is the second installment in this series. It features the black sister, Kendra, who is the quirky artist. The book promises to be a delightful experience. Again, it looks like Rebeca Seitz has developed some identifible and returning characters. The Sinclair sisters are Tandy, the red head of the first book, Kendra the bohemian artist, Meg the mommy, Joy the baby sister and fabulous cook.

3. Mim Warner's Lost Her Cool by Lynn Messina. Haven't read it yet, looks like another installment on the fashion world. Could be a fun read, the cover is fun.

4. Ditto for The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn although I picked this one up because of the funny quasi-memoir I read this past fall about the private school world here in St. Louis. They scuttlebutt that the book was entirely fictional, however, everyone recognized MICDS and the other uber-illusive and ultra-private prep school world of the West County Suburbs. And for the life of me I can't recall the book.

I am putting down my fun and chic'lit for some serious reading. I'm reading Race Rules by Dr. Michael Eric Dyson this week in time for his January 10th keynote address. Next I'm picking up To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee for the January 16-18th theatrical performance here in St. Louis as part of the collaboration between Washington University, The Big Read, and the National Endowment for the Arts to get an entire community to read a book. I'll end January with reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald for a Mocha Mom's Movie Night In. My February pick is A Mercy by Toni Morrison to tie in with my declaration of 2009 as the Year of Black Female Literature. My nose will be buried in a book and the reviews will show up here!

Happy reading and sumptuous sipping!

Happy New Year of Reading for Babies and Toddlers

2009-01-03T11:32:00.000-06:00

I declared 2009 the year of Black Female Literature. I probably should have declared it the year of family reading. This blog is dedicated to books and book reviews. What is on my bookshelf, what is on my children's bookshelf, what my daughters are reading, what my sons' request. This is the place to turn off the TV and open the book.

Beginning with the very youngest.

I am a new aunt of a precious little micro-preemie named Taylor. The baby will have a hard journey to her real due date now that she is out-of-the-womb at only 24-weeks gestation. I told her mom, Kim, that one soothing thing she can do in addition to loving and touching her is to read to her. Here are some favorites:

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle - really any of his books. The colors are engaging and the hard-back books have held up well with my two daughters. I actually read this story to my baby girls when they were nuzzled in my womb. There is something to this utero-hearing thing because they remember the story of all the food the catepillar ate to become a beautiful butterfly. This makes a perfect baby gift.

2. Goodnight Moon - a classic by Margaret Wise Brown, great for bedtime, board book version is best for babies. This makes a great ritual for daddy to read at bedtime.

3. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - by Laura Joffe Numeroff (this is the best of her books). I love the adventure of this little mouse. It is also a great one for the baby to grow up with. My children love all the If You books. The illustrations are really good.

4. All Fall Down - a great board book by Helen Oxenbury (my copy is 20 years old). This board book is barely holding together, having been loved by four of my children. The multi-cultural babies on the bed, the simple cadence, the great pictures, this is a timeless favorite.

5. Please Baby Please - this is a great book written by Spike & Tonya Lee with fantastic illustrations, it reminded me of trying to get my little girl to do anything especially go to bed

6. Hush Little Baby by Sylvia Long - this is one of the girls' favorite bedtime books, it is a less materialistic version of the classic song, make up your own cadence and baby will love it. The girls still like to snuggle up and hear this and now that the older one can read, she tries to imitate the way I sang it to them.

Get the blanket, hold the baby, and read, read, read! Happy New Year