Tag: racial issues

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin

StephanieLeave a comment

The 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge directed me to read a book from a celebrity book club list, and I was like a deer in the headlights for a moment. I’m not much of a celebrity watcher at all, and honestly, the only time I hear about celebrity book clubs are when other people bring them up, so I had to go digging. I’ve read some of Oprah’s selections in the past, and I’ve heard people talking about Reese Witherspoon’s book club, but that’s still really all I know. The lists I looked at, nothing really jumped out at me, until… I spotted The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin (St. Martin’s Press, 2018). This was an Oprah selection, and I immediately knew that this was something I had to read. This is one of the most incredible, painful books I’ve ever read about the American “justice” system.

Anthony Ray Hinton was a Black man in Alabama who signed in at work in a warehouse, plenty of people around him. That mattered nothing to the police, who accused him of three murders (one of which was committed during this time Mr. Hinton was at work, the others just tacked on because they were similar), and a jury, who convicted him. Failed over and over again by his court-appointed lawyer and the experts who weren’t as expert as they should’ve been, Ray, as he’s known, is sentenced to death by electric chair. 

Appeal after appeal falls through, and at first, Ray’s anger nearly eats him alive. But then he begins to apply the life lessons his beloved mother taught him to living in such terrible isolation on Death Row, and this change in attitude helps him survive. And then his case was taken up by Bryan Stevenson, of Just Mercy, himself…

Despite Mr. Stevenson, whom I’m convinced has been sent here to do God’s work on earth, finding experts (actual ones, three of them!) to prove that the gun the police pulled out of Ray’s mother’s house couldn’t possibly have been used in the murders Ray was convicted of, it still takes twelve years for Ray to be set free. In all, he spends nearly THIRTY YEARS waiting to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, listening to his friends make their final walk down the hallway to be murdered by the guards in charge of the men’s everyday lives, smelling their burning flesh wafting on the air for hours after they’re put to death. If that doesn’t enrage you, I’m not sure what will.

This is an absolutely incredible, deeply enraging book. What the state of Alabama did to Mr. Hinton, how it destroyed his life and his family, with what seems like zero remorse, disgusts me to the very depths of my soul. That this is how poor Black men are treated in this country, even when their innocence is able to be proven, PROVEN, is utterly horrifying. Mr. Hinton’s experiences are shocking, but they’re not uncommon: one in every ten people sentenced to death in the United States is innocent. 

I’ll say that again.

One-tenth of the people murdered by the United States government are innocent of the crimes they were accused of.

That is a shocking statistic. If I weren’t already vehemently opposed to the death penalty before reading this, I would definitely be now. The fact that the state of Alabama stole thirty years of Mr. Hinton’s life without so much as an, “Oops, my bad,” and only doubled down, desperate to murder him even when stronger evidence from more qualified experts was presented that he couldn’t possibly have committed these murders, fills me with such rage that I desperately wish I were intelligent enough to become a lawyer and join Bryan Stevenson’s team. They deserve all the help they can get to do the noble work of saving lives from government-sanctioned murder.

This is an utterly incredible book, and I don’t think there was a single page I read that I didn’t want to scream or rage-vomit. I read books to learn about the world, to experience it through other people’s eyes, to feel. This book checks all three categories in spades. Five stars, and I truly hope Mr. Hinton is able to live a calm, quiet life of peace in the wake of such trauma.

Read more about Anthony Ray Hinton’s case at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative.

Visit Lara Love Hardin’s website here.

memoir · nonfiction · YA

Book Review: All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto by George M. Johnson

StephanieLeave a comment

Okay, so a few weeks ago, I attended a virtual talk on all the garbage book banners out there and the mess they’re making and the stupid things they’re doing. Seriously, what a bunch of whiny toddlers throwing super gross adult-sized tantrums. Mind your own business, skunkbags. At one point in the presentation, one of the people presenting mentioned the book All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2020). I was aware of the book, had seen it around, and knew what it was about, but it wasn’t on my TBR…until the presenter mentioned that whiny Texas governor and human sack of lawn cuttings Greg Abbott had thrown a fit over this book. Knowing what I know about that crapweasel with no taste who is grossly lacking in humanity AND leadership skills, I knew this was likely to be a good read, so onto my list it went. And hey! I was right and Greg Abbott is wrong. Shocker, I know.

George Johnson, who has also gone by Matt (story explained in the book) is a queer Black man who grew up with more feminine traits, who took some time getting comfortable with his queer identity, and was fortunate to grow up in a family who accepted him and loved him for who he was.  All Boys Aren’t Blue is the story of his life: his childhood, spending time with his beloved grandmother, called Nanny, who worked so hard to make him feel loved and accepted; his adolescence, where he began to understand some things about himself and worked to hide other parts; his college years, where it all began to come together. Through it all, George learns and grows, and begins to accept himself for who he is: a delightful, intelligent human being who lives at the intersection of Black and queer.

He has so many good lessons for the reader, lessons about self-acceptance, love, courage, confidence, safety, and more. I deeply appreciated how he related stories from his childhood and adolescence to show how he learned about himself, what he learned, and how he applied this to his life as a whole. I enjoyed particularly the stories he told about how he got into sports and how that surprised everyone around him: an effeminate boy who could play football and run like the wind? Don’t box yourself in. We all contain multitudes. 🙂

George M. Johnson has always lived outside the box, but he’s also always found ways to thrive, and he’s sharing everything he’s learned with the YA set. This is an important book; queer kids, and queer Black kids, deserve to see themselves in books, they deserve to have books that speak to and about them. And people outside the LGBTQ+ crowd need to read these books to get a fuller picture of what life is like for their queer friends and family.

And Greg Abbott and people like him are welcome to fuck off into the sun if they don’t have the humanity to recognize that. : )

Great book. I’d love to hang out with Mr. Johnson sometime, because he seems like a great guy and tells some fascinating stories.

Visit George M. Johnson’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America by Peter Edelman

StephanieLeave a comment

Poverty is a subject I’ve read a lot about, in vain attempts to understand our societal reaction to it. People are struggling and suffering, and we just…do nothing? And sometimes, we actively make the situation worse, because in the US (and I’m sure in other countries around the world), we see not having money as a moral issue. It was because of this inability to understand the way we view poverty that Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America by Peter Edelman (New Press, 2017) ended up on my TBR. It’s a gut-punch of a book, but if you’re looking to understand exactly how difficult it is to be poor in the US, it’s a sock to the stomach that you need.

In a book reminiscent in tone and in the intellectual heft of Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, Peter Edelman chronicles how poverty is systemic the US: the pointless fees and charges that are meant to keep poor people poor; the next-to-impossible roads necessary to make to climb out of poverty; the punishment that we inflict upon those who are already struggling in an attempt to discipline the poverty out of them. We fill our coffers and profit off the backs of people barely managing, or not managing at all; we see them struggling; we enact more laws and regulations meant to drain their accounts. And the cycle continues.

This isn’t history. What Peter Edelman writes about is here and now: court systems enacting hefty fees and fines, prisons charging for anything and everything they can, law enforcement writing tickets, which come with a heavy price tag, to homeless people. In every way we can, we make it harder to be poor. It’s not all without hope; plenty of people are fighting back, and fighting back hard. But this is a systemic issue; it’s baked in deeply to our laws, our law enforcement, our court systems. But in order to make things better, first, you need to understand just how bad it is, and that’s why you need to read this book.

This is an information-dense book; it’s not something you’re going to want to kick back with after a long day at work when you’re looking for relaxation. Not a Crime to Be Poor is a book you open because you want to understand what’s going on, and because you want to challenge yourself and your preconceived notions. After you turn the final page, you’ll close the book with a righteous sense of anger, a healthy dose of empathy for those who are set up to fail in this wretched system, and hopefully, a strong desire to be part of the solution. Read this book in small chunks if that’s what it takes: a chapter at a time, a few pages a day. This is information that all Americans should be aware of, an understanding we should all have.

Not a Crime to Be Poor throws the curtains open on a reality that far too many of us find it convenient to ignore.

nonfiction

Book Review: White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

Stephanie3 Comments

It’s been another busy week around here, so I haven’t gotten a ton of reading time, but I’m immensely glad I made some time to finish reading White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad (Catapult, 2020). If you are lucky enough to have Black and brown friends who use their time, energy, and voice to share with you their experiences and their knowledge, listen and take to heart what they say. I have several of those women in my life and I’m deeply grateful for their presence and the way they teach in the hopes that things will get better. It was one of those friends who recommended this book (thanks, Jo!); I put it on my list immediately, because no matter how much work I’ve done to free myself from the racist messages I’ve absorbed simply by growing up and living in a culture as racist as ours, the work is never done. We can always do better. And white friends, we have to do better.

Ruby Hamad has written an incredible book about how white feminism leaves women of color behind, how white women continue to marginalize women of color. It’s not just our words and actions; it’s the way we cry, as though we’re the victims, when called out on our behavior. Instead of listening, considering, and realizing that what we said or did was wrong, we break down in tears (and not tears of regret, tears of anger) and lob “How can you SAY that? How can you be so mean?” at the woman or women who had pointed out our harmful behavior. And that’s the problem- unfortunately, we don’t always know our behavior is hurtful (again, living in a racist culture, we absorb messages and behaviors we don’t necessarily think of as racist, but they still are, and they’re still hurtful. It doesn’t matter that our intent wasn’t hurtful if it still harmed someone), and we react with anger, vitriol, and accusations, turning the person who was trying to prevent further harm into the aggressor.

Example by example, using history to back up her narrative, Ruby Hamad illustrates exactly how poorly white women handle matters of race, and the harm it inflicts on women of color. There can be no true sisterhood of women until white women understand the gravity of their harmful attitudes, and it’s up to white women to unlearn these attitudes, to listen and change their ways.

This is an incredibly necessary book. Women of color may benefit from it as well, having their experiences validated and feeling not so alone when they read that other women have gone through these things as well. But if your heritage is primarily from a European background and you check the box marked as ‘Caucasian’ on forms, you need to read this book. Because we HAVE to do better. We HAVE to be better friends, better allies. We need to stop the white woman tears, call out racism and bad behavior when we see it (even if that upsets other people- sorry, but it’s the right thing to do. The right thing isn’t always the easy thing, and really, if someone is hurting people and refuses to recognize that, you need to reexamine how much you want someone like that in your life). Tell your racist uncle to shove it at Thanksgiving dinner; cut off your best friend mid-sentence; and more than anything, when a Black or brown friend tells you something you said hurt her, SHUT UP AND LISTEN, AND THEN DO BETTER.

The future of our world depends on this.

While I don’t *think* I’ve white woman tear’ed (as the book refers to it) anyone, I am aware of several times in my life I didn’t speak up when family and friends, both in person and on social media, were saying racist things. Three specific incidents came to mind as I was reading this book, incidents that I didn’t think of at the time but that I now recognize I should have stepped in and said something. I’m saying this here because I’m guilty as well; so often as women, we’re taught that we need to keep the peace, we need to not rock the boat. But there are already people rocking the boat so hard that Black and brown women are being thrown overboard with reckless abandon. Perhaps by speaking up when we see other white women engaging in racist behavior and white woman tears, we’ll not be so much as rocking the boat but steadying it, making it a safer place for everyone.

This is one book I’m begging everyone to read. Read it, learn it, live it. Recognize your own shortcomings and racist attitudes. Be honest with yourself about when and how you’ve been wrong. Listen to your Black and brown friends, take their words to heart, and be the kind of friend and feminist they need you to be. Because we may all be in this together, but the stakes are a lot higher if your skin isn’t white, and for too long, white women have been okay with grasping for even miniscule scraps of power while throwing darker-skinned women under the bus in order to do so. No more.

Follow Ruby Hamad on Instagram.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Stephanie1 Comment

The United States may call itself a country of immigrants, but it’s not a country that’s known to be kind to immigrants. Not in the past, and not now; not by our government, nor by our citizens. Obviously there are major exceptions; there are a ton of organizations out there fighting really hard to make this country a safe and welcoming place for our newcomers (I’ve volunteered teaching English as a second or other language in the past with one of these great organizations!), and I don’t want to discount their hard work and amazing contributions. But as a whole, the crazies tend to shout incredibly loud and drown out the voices of the helpers; we make it as difficult as possible to come here legally (unless you’ve got plenty of money, and then the rules don’t count); and it’s difficult to start a new life here when you have nothing, because we offer so little in terms of help. One of the people speaking up about how difficult it is for immigrants is Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, an undocumented writer (she’s on DACA) of undocumented parents. Her book, The Undocumented Americans (One World, 2020), is an eye-opening gut-punch that examines the difficulties of living in the United States without legal status.

How much do you know about undocumented immigrants? You’ve probably read the stories of people smuggled in on trucks or making dangerous journeys across the desert with coyotes (people paid to smuggle others into the US), and seen the tragic photos of families drowned in the Rio Grande. What happens to the people who make it here? They pick your fruits and vegetables. They clean your office buildings. They build your houses. They package your food. They cook the food you eat in restaurants, they clean up after natural disasters, they rushed in after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001 to sift through the debris that gave them cancer in order to get New York up and running again. They serve and give. They do all of this without health care, often at massive personal expense, with zero protection- if their boss doesn’t pay them that week, there’s nothing they can do. And so they suffer. And Karla Cornejo Villavicencio wants you to understand exactly how much, and what that does to not only them, but to their families. Their children. Their communities.

There are other books that will illuminate the reasons people come here illegally- desperate for safety after their lives have been threatened, searching for a way to make more than $50 per week at a full-time job, etc.- but Ms. Cornejo Villavicencio is more interested in explaining the emotional and physical damage her people have suffered. Are suffering. Will suffer. She’s angry- rightfully so, because for all that a large faction of our country likes to talk about respecting life, we certainly have no problem using the lives of these people- taking what we need when we want restaurant food, clean offices, help after natural disasters- and then throwing them away once they’ve served their purpose. Their pain is fresh and raw, and what they suffer is passed down the line to their children. The Undocumented Americans is heavy proof that we as a society are shirking our responsibilities to humanity.

This is a sad, heavy book about a group of people who have suffered a lot even before arriving here, and who continue to suffer after they arrive. Ms. Cornejo Villavicencio floods each page with raw emotion, anger, desperation. She’s a Harvard graduate and a current PhD candidate at Yale, but she makes the case that so often, when we hear of undocumented immigrants, we hear of stories like hers, the brilliant kid who climbed higher than anyone could have possibly imagined, and don’t they deserve citizenship for their brilliance? But what about the other people- the ones who came here out of desperation, seeking safety, the opportunity for their kids to simply go to school, who work two or three jobs (or more) at a time in order to make sure their children would have paper and pencils and whose services and lives and abilities we Americans take advantage of every day of our lives? Are people only worth it to us when they contribute massively to capitalism? Are human lives only worth as much as their financial potential?

We’re so willing to dismiss this group of people, and this book will show you exactly what we’re looking past every day. I can hear the arguments now- “Well, they came here illegally, so it’s their own fault that-” and I want to scream. They’re human beings. They’re people. Why are we so hell-bent on making people suffer for such stupid, arbitrary rules? Why can’t we take care of people in a way that makes them more able to participate in society? Why are we so willing to throw so many people away, simply because they had the audacity to be born somewhere else?

This is a book that will make you cry, if you’re at all a decent person. I’ll continue to vote for people who want to be part of a compassionate solution, and to do what I can so that the people Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes about have better, safer, healthier lives and more opportunities than just breaking their bodies down piece by piece and dying young because of it. Because they’re people, and they deserve so much better than the cast-off scraps we deign enough for them. This book was truly amazing and heartfelt.

nonfiction

Book Review: Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin

Stephanie1 Comment

I wanted to read Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin (Legacy Lit, 2020) from the moment I first heard about it. Homegrown terrorism, nationalism, and white supremacy has been a huge and growing problem in recent years, as witnessed by constant news reports of attacks, bomb threats, shootings, mass shootings, synagogue and mosque threats and attacks, and plots against various political organizations. It’s been terrible watching all of this, and I knew I needed to learn more about who these people are.

Talia Lavin is an outspoken feminist Jewish journalist. All that would have made her a target online as it is, but she began investigating the far right and its online activities, and that made her even more of a target (to the point where she’s had to hire security to protect her family, because these people are so disgusting). Her investigations led her to visit some incredibly dark places on the web, where alt-right reading materials are passed around, groups develop new slurs for the people they hate (if you’re not straight, white, Christian, male, and deeply conservative in your political beliefs, they hate you and would rather see you dead), and plots to murder are planned out. These aren’t just people living in tin-can shacks far out in the woods. These are your neighbors, the people you pass by in the city every day. Biotech employees, working professionals, educated people. People who appear to be normal, but who are hellbent on the destruction of everyone not like them.

This disturbing exposé is tempered by Ms. Lavin’s self-deprecating humor and bolstered by her strong writing skills and quick-witted intellect. Oftentimes, I reread a particularly well-crafted sentence twice, just to admire it. But the content is difficult to consume; she’s reporting on the true dregs of society here, dregs that span the globe and show up in multiple countries and on multiple continents. The hatred of the people she writes about runs deep: Muslims and Jews feature heavily (being Jewish herself, Ms. Lavin brings personal history and expertise to the narrative), but women are also a major target, especially when she delves into the incel movement (short for involuntary celibate, this is an internet movement of men that has turned their inability to develop a decent and attractive personality into a rage-filled hatefest of women, because of course they’re owed women’s time and attention simply because they exist. *eyeroll* Men affiliated with this movement have engaged in assault, murder, and mass shootings).

Culture Warlords is an emotionally taxing book to read, but it’s an important one. If you’ve never heard of any of the content Ms. Lavin covers here, you’ve likely been in a coma for a very long time, or you’re not one of the groups targeted by the people she infiltrated (and in that case, you very much need to read this book and understand what life is like when you become a target). White supremacist groups are a major problem; I truly hope that this book shines some light on the danger they present and help us as a society take the necessary steps to stamp out such disgusting hatred.

Jewish Women’s Archive hosted a great talk with Talia Lavin about this book in February of 2020; you can view that video here. It’s worth the watch.

Follow Talia Lavin on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Equal America by Carol Anderson

Stephanie1 Comment

This review will look a little different than my usual reviews.

A few years ago, I read White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson. It’s American history with a spotlight on how deeply and violently racist this country has always been to Black people, and while I knew of many of the stories Ms. Anderson recounted, the details she included and the stories I hadn’t known about were shocking. I was appalled, and this has since become one of the books I recommend the most, because it’s history that everyone needs to know about and understand. Because of that well-written, beautifully researched, and eye-opening book, everything Carol Anderson has ever written is on my TBR- though I’m spacing them out; they’re a lot to handle, but they’re such important books- and next up was The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).

The Second Amendment, which gives Americans the right to bear arms, has never been applied equally. We’ve seen that play out time and time again, when Black people (usually men, though not always) who are legally in possession of a weapon and are acting in a responsible manner with it are shot and killed (whereas white men who have murdered people as part of an active shooter situation are taken into custody alive and unharmed). Think of Philando Castile or Tamir Rice, both now dead- one had a legally registered gun, which he had informed the police about; the other had a toy gun. Both are now dead. Compare that with all the perpetrators of mass shootings we’ve seen in the US that have been taken into custody alive, even after murdering people. There is a history to all of this, unfair rules that were harshly applied to the Black community, who were never allowed to defend themselves against anything or anyone, and Ms. Anderson meticulously documents it all in the pages of this book.

The Second isn’t a long book (there are a lot of footnotes; her research is meticulous, and I ended up flipping to the back quite often out of curiosity as to what sources she was using, and also because I wrote down a few quotes and wanted the original sources), but there’s a lot to digest here, a lot to wrap your brain around, and I had to keep stopping and rereading passages to make sure I understood them. American history as we’re taught in school is usually about brave patriots who stood up to tyrants; they leave out how often we were the tyrants ourselves. We leave out how racist our founding fathers were; we leave out most of the laws and court rulings that told Black people in no uncertain terms that they weren’t human beings, that their lives were worthless, that they weren’t entitled to self-defense or the rights of citizenship. Carol Anderson doesn’t leave these things out; she’s the education you should have gotten before, but likely didn’t. I was actually lucky and had a few grade school teachers that didn’t hold back when it came to speaking truth about American history; even so, there have still been many things I missed, and I’m grateful to Ms. Anderson and other writers like her to help fill in the gaps and help me understand exactly how deep the injustice in this country runs.

This review is more to make readers aware that this book exists- I’m not a historian and can’t review it as such, but the history she relates is heartbreaking and infuriating- and that Ms. Anderson’s writings are important and deserve your attention and consideration. The US has a lot of work to do to clean up the messes it’s made. To be honest, I’m not sure we have the willpower to do it; there are a frightening number of people out there who seem to revel in being as cruel as possible to as many groups as possible. But the decent people among us know that it’s a fight worth fighting, no matter what the odds, and the first step is being aware of exactly how much work there is to be done. Books like The Second and White Rage are excellent places to start.

Visit Carol Anderson’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: This Side of Home by Renée Watson

Stephanie3 Comments

I don’t often read the same author’s books too close together- I’m more of a space-them-out-to-make-an-author’s-works-last kind of gal- but it just so happened that not too long after I read Renée Watson’s Piecing Me Together, her This Side of Home (Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2015) came up on my TBR and was in (still working through a bunch of ebooks), so onto my kindle it went. I spent a lovely Saturday on my backyard patio swing, chilling and swinging and enjoying this book, which has given me a lot to think about.

Maya and her twin sister Nikki are identical and have always done everything together, including sharing a best friend and making plans together for the future. But things are changing. Best friend Essence is moving 45 minutes away, thanks to her landlord selling the house she lives in. Their new neighbors are a white family Maya’s not so sure of, but Nikki becomes fast friends with Kate, and Tony…seems okay (and he’s super cute). The neighborhood is gentrifying, and although Maya’s glad it’s safer, the racial tension is hard to deal with and she’s got a lot of justified resentment about the hows and whys of it, and the feelings like all the changes in her neighborhood aren’t meant for its longtime residents.

School is changing too. The new principal seems hellbent on making sure the school isn’t focused on Black history. Inclusion is great, but it doesn’t mean erasure, and Maya’s going to fight like hell to ensure that doesn’t happen. When things get serious between her and Tony, Maya’s not sure how to tell everyone about their new relationship- and not just because Tony’s dad is fluent in microaggression. Senior year is a year of changes, and Maya engages in a lot of self-examination in order to come to terms with who she is and wants to be in this new world.

This is a quick read, but it’s one that makes you think, like really think. About identity, about racial and cultural expectations, about microaggression and racism, about gentrification and the costs and benefits of it, and who it’s really for. It was really interesting to read the perspective of a narrator (especially a teenage narrator) who lived in the neighborhood both before and after gentrification, and to feel her ambivalence about what happened to the place she’s always called home. There’s a lot to be angry and frustrated and resentful about, and Maya is- her best friend was pushed out of her home because of this, and she never feels welcome in most of the white-owned businesses that have taken up residence down the street- but there end up being some good parts to it all as well, as she learns. Does the good outweigh the bad? It’s not an easy question to answer, but hopefully you’ll read deeply enough to come away with an understanding of what our responsibilities are to our fellow human beings and the work it takes to make sure everyone knows we’re truly all in this together.

Maya grows a lot throughout the novel. She comes to understand that things change, and she has to be able to give a little as she fights for what she wants and needs. She’s easy to empathize with: change is hard, especially big changes, especially when they upend the way things have been your whole life. But she has excellent role models in her life- her father, teachers, people in her neighborhood- to give her an idea of what the work looks like to create a true community and to be a responsible adult (being a teenager and learning these lessons is hard; I wouldn’t go back to that age for anything!), and her growth is truly admirable.

I live in a fairly diverse neighborhood, which I love. But it’s still majority white, and I fully admit I don’t know all that much about gentrification, so I’m very glad I read this nuanced take on it, that showed the many sides of it and what it could be like (at one part near the end, a very positive part where the neighborhood comes together after an unfortunate chaotic incident). One of the reasons I read so much is to understand the world, to understand the perspectives of people whose lives aren’t like mine, who have lived in different places and in different ways and who have different takes on issues. Seeing the gentrification of Maya’s neighborhood through her eyes clued me into an angle that I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to consider on my own, simply because her life and my life are different. The best books do that, and This Side of Home showed me what a neighborhood looks like when it doesn’t quite work for everyone, and what it takes to make it work for everyone. This has given me a LOT to think about, and Ms. Watson’s book is something I’m going to be carrying with me forever.

This is an excellent, timely novel. Highly recommended.

Visit Renée Watson’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson

Stephanie6 Comments

I don’t remember how Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson (Bloomsbury, 2017) ended up on my TBR. Likely, it was from another book blogger (thanks, whoever you are!), because I had three of her books on there- one down, two to go! The other two are available at my library; I’m pretty sure at least one of them is available only in ebook form- which is totally fine, but I just don’t get to the ebooks as quickly as I do the paper copies. Which is odd; I love ebooks and reading on my kindle, but I guess I enjoy the trip to the library and being able to see that new stack of books even more. 😉

Jade is a Black student at a nearly-all-white private school, a situation that has provided her with a great education, but which has made for some uncomfortable situations, and about which she often feels guilty when she’s hanging out with her neighborhood friends. So often, the opportunities she’s offered at this school feel…demeaning. Like they’re not seeing Jade for who she is, but just someone to help so that someone else can feel good about themselves. It’s not great.

The new program Jade’s been invited to be part of, Woman to Woman, fits into this category. Her new mentor, Maxine, is Black, but she’s privileged in ways that Jade has never been, and that makes it hard to relate to her. The program, if completed, comes with a promise of a college scholarship, but at times, Jade’s not sure it’s worth suffering the microaggressions, the assertions that girls like her need to be different, that who they are isn’t enough already. But Jade comes to understand that there are lessons to be learned in every situation, that her voice is powerful and ready to be used, and that by using it, she can make changes for herself and for other girls that stretch far into the future.

I really enjoyed this. Jade knows herself well, which is always great in a YA character (I sure didn’t have that kind of confidence when I was young, but I was also wracked with anxiety and depression, sooooooo). She just needs a gentle nudge here and there and to be pointed in the right direction. A little encouragement goes a long, long way, and this story is a good reminder not only of that, but of what teenagers are capable of. I really wish our society weren’t so willing to write them off as ridiculous and unformed, because honestly, teenagers are pretty darn awesome.

Something I really enjoyed about this book was Jade as an artist. Her medium is collage, something I’ve come to enjoy after noticing how often it pops up in the children’s books I’ve read with my daughter (Victoria Kann of the Pinkalicious books and Eric Carle, may his memory be a blessing, are some popular ones, but I even noticed it in a nonfiction book we read yesterday). Jade used items like newspapers, with their painful headlines, and turned ugly things into beauty. This kept my brain working, trying to figure out what her pieces might look like. I draw from time to time, but collage is beyond my ability, but I really like the idea of a teenager viewing the world like this and expressing herself through this medium. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the local high school’s art shows when those start happening again, because I’d really enjoy seeing more of how kids like Jade see the world.

This is a quick read, but it leaves the reader with a lot to consider: how are you treating the disadvantaged kids in your life? As full people who have their own ideas and connections to the world, or as empty vessels to pour your own points of view into? What kind of microaggressions have you been responsible for, and how will you work to remedy that? I’m looking forward to reading the other books from Ms. Watson on my list, because, as always, I know I have a lot to learn, and she’s an excellent teacher.

Visit Renée Watson’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz

Stephanie2 Comments

What do you know about Chicago? The Sears Tower (it’ll never be the Willis Tower, dammit!), the Magnificent Mile, Lake Shore Drive, our sports teams, corrupt politicians…and violence. Maybe Chicago’s violence was the first thing to come to your mind. But whatever you think you know, the story most likely goes deeper, and one of the very best people out there telling the story of the devastation suffered by Chicago’s Black and brown communities is journalist and author Alex Kotlowitz. He’s probably best know for There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (if you haven’t read that, I highly recommend it). I’ve admired him for years, and I was excited to read his latest, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago (Nan A. Talese, 2019). There aren’t a whole lot of people out there writing books about Chicago, but Alex Kotlowitz’s masterful writing and storytelling is the equivalent of a thousand lesser authors.

An American Summer begins with Pharoah (not a misspelling), one of the boys profiled in There Are No Children Here, giving an update on his tumultuous life. Mr. Kotlowitz then delves deeply into Chicago’s most violent communities, expanding upon the stories that make headlines, the ones people blow off because they read ‘gang member’ and immediately dismiss the victim/s as unworthy of sympathy. The story, as always, goes far deeper than that. These are real people, loved by their family, friends, and community; they’re parents, friends, employees, students. They’re people who have spent the vast majority of their lives being traumatized over and over again by the violent deaths of their loved ones and community members, and being dismissed by the world around them as not worth caring about. The phrase ‘hurt people hurt people’ comes to mind often when reading their stories, and while it’s difficult to grasp this level of violence, this book illuminates what daily life looks like for the people who live it.

Alex Kotlowitz paints pictures of bleak, isolated neighborhoods full of run-down homes, often abandoned, full of bullet holes and grieving families. These communities aren’t without hope, though it’s occasionally difficult to find. There are high schoolers who have witnessed multiple deaths by gunshot- of friends, of family members, of strangers, often right in front of them. These are entire neighborhoods of people with the worst forms of PTSD and no hope for treatment, because unemployment- and thus lack of health insurance and an income high enough to pay for regular therapy and medicine- is so high that comprehensive treatment is often out of reach.

An American Summer is nonfiction that reads like a heartbreaking novel, but this is all tragically real. I could get into my car and be in some of these neighborhoods in less than half an hour. The massive difference between their lives, their neighborhoods, and mine is unfathomable, and it should never, ever have become like this. These people deserve so much better than what racist America has afforded them. They need jobs, fully funded education, healthcare (including comprehensive medical care)- the same thing the rest of America needs, but the situation is desperate here, and no one makes this clearer than Alex Kotlowitz.

If you think you know Chicago, read Alex Kotlowitz’s work. He’ll show you another side, the people behind the headlines, the trauma lived there every day. It’ll break your heart in a thousand different ways.

Visit Alex Kotlowitz’s website here.