TWIB: 14th Edition

 

Palabras Bilingual Bookstore sits in an older urban neighborhood
threatened by gentrification, just north of downtown Phoenix

    PHOENIX, Ariz. -- In this desert city in the western United States, I discovered a diverse collection of bookstores.

    Although generally a conservative place, history might give a reason for this -- it was colonized by the Spaniards, became an eventual settlements for many of North America's indigenous populations who were driven from their more eastern or southern lands, and was the migration point of enslaved people after the U.S. Civil War -- by some estimates 25 percent of cowboys were Black.

    Later, as the city's population exploded with white residents, the Latino population continue to lead the pack, with the Black and Asian population also increasing. Today, the non-white population comprises 57 percent of the city's population. 

My TBR stack from Arizona

    My first stop was at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore, off downtown in a place known as Casa Caracol, which includes a small café and Andria's Tienda. It was love at first sight.

    I really had to stop myself after gathering a number of new tomes, including Old School Indian, by Aaron John Curtis, the tale of a Native American -- a Kanien'kehá:ka from Ahkwesáhsne -- who left the reservation when he turned 18 and returned 25 years later, suffering from a rare disease and a failed marriage, and persuaded to undergo a tribal remedy. I also grabbed The Body Farm, by Abby Geni, a collection of short stories about people's relationships with their bodies.

    I moved on to Grassrootz Books and Juice Bar, a Black- and worker-owned place in Eastlake Park, also near downtown, which includes shops featuring African and African-American art and clothing. It was another delight, full of books I would love to read but know I could find in few other places.

    There, I bought All Eyes are Upon Us, by Jason Sokol, a history of Black life and politics in the northeastern United States, an area often considered amenable to but also showing a hostility to civil rights. A Man Called Horse, by Glennette Tilley Turner, tells us about the life and times of John Horse, who founded and ran the Black Seminole Underground Railroad. Trees, by the superb Percival Everett, weaves a story of magical realism when he tells what could happen if Black men and woman who were brutally lynched and slaughtered throughout U.S. history somehow rose again and turned the tables on their killers.

    I moved on to the Poisoned Pen, a shop over in the wealthy suburb of Scottsdale that specialized in mysteries both cozy and dark. Here, I found tales by two Irish writers. Northern Ireland's Stuart Neville, dubbed "the king of Belfast noir," brings us The House of Ashes, about a hapless family that moves from England back to Northern Ireland into a house with an, shall we say, interesting history. And the always compelling Colum McCann pens Twist, a story that introduces us to the men who repair broken underwater cables, and winds up delving into the sum of human existence.

    My final stop was a place called Changing Hands Bookstore, at the base of Camelback Mountain. It's a bookstore and a bar. Or a bookstore with a bar. Or, perhaps a bar with an attached bookstore. I'm really not sure -- and hell, does it matter? It was a fun place to visit.

    So not only did I but a T-shirt, but I found a few books to add to the collection, inclding The Children of Jocosta, by Natalie Haynes. She is one of the best writers in the re-told Greek myths genre, and this is one of her earlier tales. She's also a scholar, broadcaster and comedienne, but, truth be told, her writings are her best work, including several non-fiction discussions about women in Greek mythology. Finally, The Possibility of Life, by Jaime Green, is a look at the search for and the possibility of finding life out there in the vast universe.

Book Review: Small Mercies

 By Dennis Lehane

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Noble, Florence, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I read about the Boston busing crisis in Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukas, so this one resonated with me

• Bookmark used: Hobart Book Village, in Hobart, N.Y., which I visited the summer of 2024   

 ********* 

    This novel, of course, takes as its theme the Boston busing crisis, in the summer of 1974, when a federal judge drew up a plan and ordered the Boston Public Schools to desegregate. 

    But it encompasses so much more: racism, the Boston Mafia, a family crisis, insular neighborhoods, drug addictions, poverty, and a hot, dry summer in a city already boiling over with racial turmoil.

    It's a rich character study of the Southie neighborhood, its denizens and its surroundings. It's moving, melancholy, sometimes funny, and a tale that reverberates today.

    It centers around Mary Patricia Fennessy, known to one and all as Mary Pat, a pillar of her South Boston community, a stout defender of her Southie heritage and all that entails. But as she gets older, having been abandoned by two husbands, seen one son fight in Vietnam and die from a drug addiction, and her only daughter in serious trouble, her rage ramps up. She begins asking questions.

    Is the Boston Mafia, led by Marty Butler and his men, a protector of Southie? Are the Black people over in Roxbury and Mattapan really just a bunch of lazy thugs? Is her Irish Catholic heritage, and its people, really something to lord over others? And most importantly: Did she raise her children right?   

    We get to know the leaders of the anti-busing brigade, some real and some fictional.  There's Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whom they call Teddy, because he was one of them. But since he defended busing, they now call him a race traitor, and we see as they assault and spit on him during the demonstrations.

    And we learn about the ugliness of the neighborhood kids who celebrate racism, and the Black folks who survive it. (Well, not all of them survive. There the mysterious death of one Black kid who was in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, and the impact it had on Black people, white people, and the cops who investigate it.)

    Lehane, born and reared in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, has written several novels exploring his hometown and its surroundings. His genres have included mysteries and crime, and topics have included violence, loyalty, and a gritty underworld. This one has them all.

Book Review: Dark Parts of the Universe

 By Samuel Miller

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction

• Where I bought this book: Barbara's Bookstore, Lombard, Ill. 

• Why I bought this book: Actually, my daughter did, and she let me read it.  

 ********

    

    A writer from a younger generation tells us this  tale of growing up in small-town America, which echoes shades of the country's past and warns it to get its act together for the future.

    Miller explores issues of race and class, of myth and reality, of violence and control. It's set in a backdrop of algorithms and apps, texts and social media, viral realities amid summer expectations.

    And it throws in a touch of family quarrels, brotherly love, high school cliques, and looming adulthood.

    Miller takes on this monster task, and he does it well. His writing is clear and concise; his pacing is solid. He exhibits strong continuity and transitions between chapters without irritating drama. 

    He just tells the story and makes you want to keep reading.

    The core cast of characters is small but powerful, teenagers you know and like, as they struggle with a world that is jumbled and confusing. There's Willie, the so-called Miracle Boy, who was dead for several minutes after being shot and losing an eye. This part is a bit overdone, but it sets the stage for his relationship with his brother, Bones, who had accidentally shot him when both were children.

    Bones see himself as his brother's protector and guardian, ensuing that Willie and his eyepatch does not incur the wrath of bullies. Willie loves his brother, but starts to see him as controlling and manipulative.

    There's Sarai, a Black girl who recently moved to town; her boyfriend, Joe Kelly, (almost always identified with both names) a scion of one of the town's founding families; Rodney, a attractive girl who is inexplicitly the brothers' best friend. There's parents and town leaders and pastors.

    There's the town of Calico Springs, a river city in southern Missouri that's a stand-in for many small towns. It's isolated and insulated. It's remarkably proud of itself, seeing itself as  charming unique and its people as a special breed of survivors. 

    Then there's The Game. Called Manifest Atlas, it's a mysterious phone app that seems to know your secrets and can bring your heart's desires. 

    Together, these all comb a mystery that threatens to break up friendships and families, and reveal the town's dark if unknown history.

    The story unwinds slowly, but once he gets to its climax, Miller shows a remarkable talent for laying bare the soul of this small town, shining a light and trying to brighten its darkness.

Book Review: Remember Us

 By Jacqueline Woodson

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Joy and Matt's Bookshop, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: I've read and enjoyed other books by the same author

 ******** 

   I didn't realize this was a Young Adult book when I bought it; I picked it up because I liked some of Woodson's other novels.

    But as I starting reading, I realized this is a wonderful story, powerfully written and told. It features Sage, an African-American girl growing up in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in the 1970s. It was a daunting time in New York, when houses and apartments across the city were in flames, both literally and figuratively.

    Sage describes living through it, fighting it, surviving it, and eventually thriving. She tells of being a kid, playing basketball, having fun, and dealing with life's myriad problems. She has good friends, acquaintances, and non-friends, staying close and drifting apart, dropping and reforming relationships.

    For Woodson, it's part memoir, if mostly fiction. It's warm and tender, and ultimately kind.

    I laughed; I cried. It became a part of me.

Book Review: Blackberries, Blackberries

 By Crystal Wilkinson

• Pub Date: 2000

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: For the cover art -- and the title

********

    Short stories comprise many a genre, providing an outlet for stylish writing, whether it be a character study, a self-narrative, a moment in time, or a profile of home.

    The writing may be descriptive or stark. The story may be complete or part of a larger whole. But at their best, short stories allow writers to explore a small slice of life, of time, or of place.

    The best ones are concise, and telling.

    This collection takes all the options, to the benefit of the reader. The tales are brief, most less than 10 pages, some just two or three. But the stories they tell.

    Wilkinson grew up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, poor and Black, surrounded by family and community. She watched and listened. She learned to read people and reflect on their nature. She did it for survival, for the times to come, and for the hereafter. She captured their words and their messages. 

      Writing in the vernacular is hard, and often writers fail miserably. But Wilkinson nails it in ways hard to express. Indeed, the English language has few words to describe dialect that aren't degrading or dismissive, an subtle acknowledgement those who make such linguistic decisions look askance at such speaking or writing.

    But Wilkinson pulls it off, and it adds texture and character to her writing. Take for example, her story, Women's Secrets, in which a grandmother, Big Mama, cautions her daughter, Mama, who is young and looking for love wherever she may find it. Mama's daughter, our narrator, pays attention when Big Mama speaks.

I seen that Adams boy sniffing 'round here at your skirts but he ain't no count. Him nor his brothers. His daddy weren't no count neither. What he gonna give a family, girl? Ain't never gonna be nothing. Ain't got no learning. Ain't gonna never have no land. Gambling and carrying like sin.

    Later, in the same story, Big Mama gets more down home, unleashing her tongue and giving Mama a big heap of learnin.

"Chile, mens these times just ain't like your daddy." Big Mama takes a big loud breath and starts in on Mama again. "Ain't nare one of 'em no more than breath and britches, specially them Adams boys. Watch my words now girl, I'm telling you. Ain't good for not a damn. God in heaven forgive me but ain't good for not a damn. Breath and britches all they are."

      The stories are personal, and depend much on the relationships between women, particularly mothers and daughters. Their stories, literally, are about life and death. One, Waiting on the Reaper shows Wilkinson at her best, telling the tale of an old woman waiting to die, which she could have learned only by listening to a old woman waiting to die. 

    "I'm ready now," she said. "Ain't got too much time. Gonna see Lonnie and my little girlfriend that drowned in a well when I was ten."

Book Review: Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

 By James Hannaham

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the optimistic title

******

    

    Carlotta Mercedes is a transwoman getting out of the joint in upstate New York after 20 years behind bars. 

    In her first couple of days of freedom, she has to return to her family's home in a changed Brooklyn, reintroduce herself to her son, Ibe -- who last knew her as his father, Dustin -- figure out the intricacies of the parole system, find a job, and stay on the straight and narrow path. All of this happens during the July 4th weekend, while her family is holding a combination holiday party and wake for a man she doesn't recall knowing.

    We hear her frustrations, her joys, her confusion, her anger, her bitterness, and her dreams as she explores Brooklyn and her old stomping grounds, the gentrified Fort Greene section.

    It's a new world for Carlotta, who last roamed the streets in the late 1990s, partying, dancing and listening to the latest music, while exploring and questioning her sexuality and gender identification. Then she got caught in her cousin's robbing of a liquor store, and wound up testifying against him but still getting a 20-year sentence because her cousin shot the clerk.

    So, in this award-winning novel, she talks about the hellhole that the state prison system is, a world of bartering, suffering, and danger. She is raped by both the inmates and the guards. She spends time in solitary, which for her is torture. She does find a lover, but wonders if he is worth it because he's unlikely to get out.

    All of this is told in flashbacks, in a long-winded, almost stream-of-consciousness style. We also hear her rambling about her current situation, wondering how she can get through the weekend, fix her problems, and still follow the parole rules. She is ill-equipped to do so.

    This is a story of transitions: Her gender transition. Her move from prison back to the streets, her youth now gone, but her mind still back in her early adulthood. The changes in her neighborhood, and her lamentations about all her friends who died too young over the years, including the rappers who helped make the neighborhood famous.

    Still, we can easily root for her, despite her flaws. She is in some ways not a good person, but she tries, and often her heart is in the right place. The book shows how the system isn't made for the likes of Carlotta, almost forcing her to break the rules that seem rigged against her.

    The book is her voice. Hannaham does a fine job of representing her, catching the cadence and rhythms of her language.

Book Review: Highway 61 Resurfaced

  By Bill Fitzhugh

• Pub Date: 2005

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I love old Dylan tunes

*****

    If you're going to call your novel "southern noir," it appears you should have the following themes or characters involved.

    * A kinda shady private investigator who performs the job as a sideline to his first love, which is in a dying profession that never was a lucrative life. 

    * A drugged out, wild-eyed killer who isn't very bright.

    * A rich, old, antebellum family that once ruled the roost in its small town, but since has fallen on hard times. If some of them are racist, all the better. 

    * A slightly pathetic, somewhat mangy, but still lovable pet. 

    * The plot must be convoluted and involve music -- particularly traditional, down-home music.

    * It must -- must. mind you -- have a racially-motivated injustice from long ago that is ripe to be avenged.

    * It should have guns. Lots of guns. And, if possible, a shootout.

    This sharp and sometimes comic mystery novel contains all of that, and more. Much, much more. 

    In short, the plot involves a 50-year-old murder, some lost tapes of a supposed blues recording from long ago, and a disc jockey-private investigator trying to make sense of it all. Rick Shannon, a radio DJ in the mode of Harry Chapin's W*O*L*D, has landed back in Vicksburg, Miss., at classic rock station WVBR-FM. To supplement his income, he opens Rockin' Vestigations to find missing personsand skulk around cheating spouses.

    That's how he gets involved in a case that includes several murders, lots of history and music, and the LeFleur family. The action takes him around the sweltering Delta of Mississippi, and Fitzhugh, Mississippi born-and-bred, describes its people and places well. 

    The writing is good and solid, moving the story along with ease. That story is complicated, but Shannon's steady, structured investigation, following one clue to the next one, pieces it together well.

    The result is a fun and easy read that could be used to train real investigators.

Book Review: The Last Barracoon

 

•  Author: Zora Neale Hurston

• Where I bought this book: National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Washington. 

• Why I bought this book: While doing research on Hurston, I found I wanted to read her books. This was a good start.

********

 

   The protagonist in this book is known by several names -- his African name and his slave name, which is the name he adopted for himself. But it is only because of Hurston's persistence that he gets to tell his story, although the books wasn't published until 2018.

    And it's a story that needed telling. 

    It's a horrific, devastating story about the last newly enslaved men, women, and children who were captured in Africa and sold in America. It's how, despite all odds, Africans have survived despite bigotry, hate, and oppression.    

    He was known as Olulae Kossula -- the English spelling is a transliteration from his native tongue -- the name his mother called him and that he used in Africa. But in America he became Cudjo Lewis -- a combination of his African name and a corruption of his father's name.

    He was born in 1841in the West Africa town of Banté, a member of the Isha group of the Yoruba people. In 1860, a group of illegal slave traders came to his area, and -- with the help of some tribal enemies called the Dahomey -- captured him and a number of his neighbors. Bear in mind that Cudjo had no idea what was happening, and when shoved into the hull of a slave ship, had no idea what was happening to him.

    Ultimately, he was taken to the United States by the Meahers, Alabama brothers who enslaved people, and he was owned by Jim Meaher. After freedom, he lived in Africatown, which the former slaves built themselves on the land of their former plantation, which they had worked and saved to purchase.

    The story is told mostly in Cudjo's voice -- with his dialect and pronunciations as close as Hurston can transcribe. It is moving and compelling. It is overall horrifying, sometimes angry, often sad, and exhibits a loneliness that he felt near the end of his life. Some of its accuracy -- particularly how much is Cudjo's words and how much is the author's -- has been questioned and defended. But the overall story is factual.

    It tells of confusion and despair. It shows how men, women, and children are ripped from the only lives they've known -- their family, their culture, their liifestyle -- and dropped into a hellhole. They are not told what's happening, are literally treated like cargo, then dropped off in a strange land and told they must now work for strangers or be beaten and tortured.

    But it shows the utter joy that Black people experienced when they learned they were free.

Know how we gittee free? Cudjo tellee you dat. Da boat I on, it in de Mobile. We all on dere to go in de Montgomery, but Cap'n Jim Meaher, he not on de boat dat day. Cudjo doan know (why). I doan forgit. It April 12, 1865. Da Yankee soldiers dey come down to de boat and eatee de mulberries off de trees close to de boat, you unnerstand me. Den dey see us on de boat and dey say, 'Y'all can't stay dere no mo'. You free, you doan b'long to nobody no mo'. Oh Lor'! I so glad. We astee do soldiers where we goin'? Dey say dey doan know. Dey told us to go where we feel lak goin', we ain' no mo' slave.

Book Review: Stories From the Tenants Downstairs

 

•  Author: Sidik Fofana

• Where I bought this book: A Room of One's Own, Madison, Wisc. 

• Why I bought this book: A collection of tales about apartment living in Harlem seemed like a good bet.

*****

      

     This is not a book of happy, spunky tales.

    Rather, the stories in this collection are tales of life, of sorrow, of making do. Of struggling to get by, of cutting corners, of doing what you must to survive.

     If that means taking something that isn't yours, then it's what you do. If it means taking advantage of someone else -- who may or may not be in a better position than you -- then the choice is yours.

    These are tales of making questionable decisions,  choosing between nothing but bad choices, knowing that you can try to fix things later.

    It's not a book of making excuses, or justifying the actions. It's simple stories, explanations perhaps, laying out a life of poverty, indifference, and toil.

    These are tales from an apartment building in Harlem, not quite rundown yet, but not one that has people clamoring to get in. It's a building where the tenants care more than the unseen landlord, but they don't care about much more than how to pay their rent. It's a building on the edge of gentrification, not that that helps those who live there.

    There is Michelle, who tells her story of struggling to find the money to pay the rent on the first of the month or else be homeless. She tells of how she find the money, in different ways each day, and how much more she needs. It's not a tale of lament or woe. It's her life. 

    There are tales of students and teachers in school, putting up with the daily misery because that's what they do. There are tales of hanging out, looking for something to do, whether it's to avenge a perceived wrong or simply to bring a bit of joy into their lives.  

    There is the sad tale of najee, a 12-year-old boy, who writes why he is leaving a dancing activity called lite feet. Written in the vernacular of a young boy with learning disabilities and a literacy problem, it tells of his inability to adapt and fit in with the other boys. It's a struggle to read, mirroring the struggle of najee's life.

    Then there is Mr. Murray, an old veteran who hangs out on the corner with his chessboard, inviting others to play. A new restaurant orders him from his corner, and he moves down the block. But his fellow tenants take up his cause and demand he get to stay. Police are called. The newspapers come. Things happen.

    But this is Mr. Murray's story, and no one asked him. He doesn't care where he sits. He just wants to play chess.

    You up for a game? He'll be in his new spot.

Book Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

• Author: Heidi W. Durrow
• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky.

• Why I bought this book: The title caught my eye; the story description caught my fancy

******

    The thing about the title is it should be taken literally.

    We first meet our heroine and protagonist, Rachel, through the eyes of Brick -- then known as Jamie -- as she falls the nine floors from the roof of her Chicago tenament to the courtyard below. Jamie thinks she's a bird.

    Maybe she is. She survived the fall.

    How she came to fall -- was she pushed? did she jump? did she slip? was she thrown off? -- is the riddle of the tale. How she survives defines the story.

    Rachel is a young, mixed race girl, the daughter of a Danish mother and a Black, military father. She is light skinned, with her mother's blue eyes and her father's features. She doesn't define herself as Black or white. She allows others to do that for her.

    Who she is changes over time. Raised by her Danish mother, with a more-or-less absent father, Rachel looks, acts, and is treated white. She doesn't seem too concerned with that.

    But once her flight from the roof takes place, which kills her mother and siblings, Rachel is shuffled off to a new city and a new family. She is put in the care of her Black grandmother and aunt. In school, she is treated as an oddity, neither Black nor white, or perhaps both.

    The Black kids treated her as an interloper. The white kids see her as exotic.

    She sees herself as full of grief for her lost mother, and what may have been. She loves and admires her strict grandmother, but bristles against some of the changes in her life.

    Durrow is a compelling story teller and writer, but much like her character, Rachel, the tale doesn't reach any conclusion. The assumption is Rachel still has a long road ahead of her.

Book Review

The Underground Railroad, by Colin Whitehead

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It is written by Colin Whitehead

**********

    Whitehead takes the Underground Railroad literally.

    

    He imagines it as a subway, with underground tracks,  cobbled together train cars, and live conductors. It has hiddens entrances, stations, and a schedule.

    Moreover, he imagines some of the stations leading to havens for escaped slaves -- a place for them to stay, work, and put together a life of normalacy, in a town where Black people can grow and succeed, and raise a family.

    But this is no feel-good fantasy. Real life intrudes, even in their free towns. White supremacists hate Black success. They hound and harass them. Slaves catchers make a career of chasing them. The escapees from slavery fear being forced back to the savagery of their previous lives or the torture that will end them.

    Make no doubt, this is a painful, fearful book to read. The descriptions of the daily humiliations, sufferings, and agonies of the enslaved are difficult to read. One is presented with the inhumanity of the enslavers and those who support and defend them. The entire callous system that brought about and sustained chattel slavery is shown for the cruel, merciless abyss is was.

    The story is told throught the eyes of Cora, an enslaved person. Because her mother successfully escaped -- or at least ran, and was never caught -- Cora's life is particularly difficult, She is an outcast even among the other enslaved. The overseer on the plantation selects her for particular harassment, and others condemn her to the hob, a portion of the slave camps for the unfavored. 

    She describes her life on the plantation, the deaths, the punishments, and the rapes and assaults. She longs for her mother, but simultaneously hates her for running off and leaving her. When Cora is offered an opportunity to flee by a fellow slave named Caesar, she takes it. 

    The book follows her on the Underground Railroad. She describes the efforts by her enslaver to recapture her, and by the slave catcher Ridgeway to kidnap and return her to her life of hell. Even the towns along the Underground Railroad, which appear to offer refuge, are an illusion that hide a insidious scheme to keep the enslaved from ultimate freedom.

    One finds it easy to root for Cora, who shows tenacity to get what she wants, and overcomes much of her suffering. Her compelling story is a testament to her character, and by extension, the character of her fellow enslaved people.

    Whitehead's writing is superb. His stories alternate from Cora's tale, to the backgrounds and motivations of the enslavers, slave catchers, and others who participated in the system. His language is profound and gripping. He draws you in to the story, and with a mesmerizing narrative, compels you to stay there. Cora's detailed account is raw, riveting, and captivating. 

    He deservedly won the Pulitzer prize for this novel.

Book Review

 New York, My Village, by Uwem Akpan

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It has a map

****

    My indelable memory of the Biafran War is the Catholic Charities "relief campaign" that used pictures of starving African children with bloated stomachs to raise money.

 

   That's it. I knew nothing about the reasons for the war, or even where in Africa Biafra was.

    So I was hoping this book would help me learn just a little bit about the war, and just as important, what happened and what is happening now. 

    It kinda did. But it also taught me the war has a long background, involves colonization and other crimes committed on the African peoples, and pretty much boils down to why any war is fought -- hatred, discrimination, jealously, and control.

    Briefly, and I hope I get this right: Biafra is a small province in the south of Nigeria. Northern Nigerian tribes, particularly the Hausa-Fulani, dominated. In 1967, representatives of the Igbo tribe in southern Nigeria, based in Biafra, claimed they controlled the south and proclaimed their independence.

    It did not go well. There's a reason you don't hear of Biafra anymore. It's no longer a country, and hasn't been since 1970.

    In this fictionalized account, Ekong Udousoro is a book editor, and he receives a fellowship to intern at a small publishing company in New York City. He is part of the Annang, who also lives in southern Nigeria, but have had little control to the dominant Igbo. Or as Ekong puts it, his group is a minority within a minoiry. 

    This book is an account of his months learning the book publishing industry, coupled with memories of the war -- which actually happened before he was born, but which has shaped his family, his village, and himself.

    But it's also about his family relationships -- which are confusing; his troubles and joys adapting to living in Hell's Kitchen -- ugh! far too much information on bedbugs and his problems with them; his relationships with his landlord, the man he is subletting his apartment from; the racism he confronts on the job and in book publishing; his difficulties getting along with his new neighbors, and much, much more.

    It's really too much. He covers too many issues, confusing us on many occassions, and spends far too much time on the damn bedbugs. (And even when you think he is done with that, they come back! I was ready to toss the book across the room at this point.)

    Still, at its heart, the book's theme is about how we complicate our lives by dividing ourselves in too many groups -- by color, ethnicity, religion, jobs, community, and so much more. In short, perhaps we are all minorities of a minority.    

Book Review

Under the Whispering Door, by TJ Klune

• Where I bought this book: The Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colo.
• Why I bought this book: I enjoyed his previous novel, The House in the Cerulean Sea

* * * * * * *

    The main transfer station in the afterlife is a tea shop. With scones and a baker who enjoys blasting punk music on the radio.

    I can live (or die) happily with that thought. And Klune's novel, while a bit long-winded in parts, truth be told, is an  uplifting story about how we can overcome what life and death may throw at us. 

    Charon's Crossing Tea and Treats is a homey, if unnerving place. You are taken there after death by a reaper to meet people whose stated purpose is to help you cross over. But to where? That they don't say.

     You're upset, scared, and disbelieving. Eventually you meet the proprietor, one Hugo Freeman, who is mellow, soothing, and gentle. He offers you a cuppa tea, and calmly explains what happens next. You may or may not believe it. You may or may not need more time to figure things out.

    For Walter Price -- a meticulous, prideful, and implacable attorney in his life -- Hugo doesn't make a good first impression. Walter demands an end to the nonsense, and insists on leaving. When he does flee, he discovery why he should listen to those who know more..

    So he returns and winds up spending time with Hugo; Nelson, Hugo's wisecracking and wise ghost of a grandfather; Apollo, grandad's ghost dog, and Mei, the reaper who found Walter at his own funeral and brought him to Charon's Crossing. She's also the punk fan and scone-maker at the shop, and the force who holds everything together.

    We learn a lot about them, their lives, their loves, and their fantasies. A potential gay romance. Other characters come in and out, and while they add to the tale, their asppearance could have been shortened and written tighter.

    Walter is in the middle of all this -- sometimes exasperated, sometimes accepting, sometimes questioning. In life, he was a lawyer focused on the prize. In death, he's trying to figure it all out.

    And that's the genius of this novel -- like Walter, you'll yawn and wish you could slip past the parts in the middle. But by the end, you'll be wanting more. 

Book Review: The Nickel Boys

 The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

    This book is grim, depressing, and infuriating. It's also extraordinary piece of writing depicting a horrific experience that seems all too common in the BIPOC community. 

    Although it's a fictional tale, the story is based in fact. Indeed it is based on facts showing that throughout the United States, Canada, and large parts of Europe, the dominant class structure always has mistreated, abused, and tortured others -- mostly women and people of color -- simply because it can, and it wants to. 

  

    Elwood Curtis is the narrator of his tale. As the book begins, he is an older Black man living in New York City who owns and runs a cleaning company. Then he see reports exposing the defunct Nickel Academy's history of  abuse and neglect, along with the discovery of dozens of bodies buried on its property.

    The story then shifts to Curtis's years as a young Black boy living in the wrong side of the tracks in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960s. Of course, because of discrimination and segregation, all Black people lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960s.

    Curtis is a smart kid, and his mother encourages him to educate himself and enrich his mind. He becomes enamored of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his words and actions, and strives to rise above the racism and bigotry surrounding him. But while hitch-hiking to his first day of college classes, he is picked up by a man driving a stolen car. Police stop them, and Curtis is charged with being a juvenile delinquent. He is sent to the Nickel Academy, a so-called reform school in small town Florida.

    Of course, the "academy," based on the Dozier School of Boys, is anything but a reform school. The boys are segregated by race -- with the exception of one Mexican boy, who is sent to either the Black side or white side, based on the whims of the "teachers." Both sides are horribly abused, subjected to random corporal punishment, having their meals withheld, and being sent out to work for local politicians or businessmen, with a small fee for the "headmaster." Some of them are sent for extra punishment, from which they seldom return.

    Whitehead explores the relationships Curtis forms with other boys in the home, along with his experiences with the headmasters. Curtis tries to accept his lot, while maintaining his dignity and fighting back against the cruel abuse the boys are subjected to. He also steps in when some of the other  boys turn on each other.

    The more he learns about the Academy and its "students," called the Nickel Boys, the angrier he becomes.

    The book reaches a high point when Curtis and Jack Turner, his cynical friend and roommate, decide to take action against the crimes of the adults. It's a scary yet compelling narrative that keeps you reading long into the night.

    The novel earned Whitehead his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The first was in 2017 for Underground Railroad. "It burns with outrageous truth,"Josephine Livingston said in The New Republic. about The Nickel Boys. The Guardian newspaper said Whitehead showed "how racism in American has long operated as a codified and sactioned activity."

Book Review: Concrete Rose

 Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas

    We already know Maverick Carter is good man. Now we know why he is a good man.

    Angie Thomas' third novel is a prequel of sorts, set 17 years before the time of her debut novel, The Hate U Give. It's a welcome, well-written dive into the backstories of her characters, particularly the father of Starr Carter. This new book shows his growing up amidst the poverty of Garden Heights. 

    It's intriguing to see Thomas focus on the lives of young Black men, such as Maverick Carter. Her previous novels have centered on Black girls and their trials of growing up, and while that's important, it's good to hear her voice focusing on the problems of boys.

    Her story centers on Maverick when he is a senior in high school, a part of his community, and tied up in the King Lords gang. He reluctantly slings drugs -- sometimes behind the backs of the gang leaders -- while his father, a former gang leader, sits in a state prison for life.

    This is Carter's story. He is the protagonist and narrator, and we are privileged to hear his thoughts and feel his frustrations, his fears, and his joys, as he goes about his teen-age life.  

    He's basically a happy kid. He wants to hang out with his friends and cousins and make a little money to help out his hard-working but poor mother. Thomas shows how he navigates the complicated lifestyle in the 'hood. While he is faulted for some of his choices, we see how some in the community recognize his potential and help and encourage him to get there.

    We already know his future, but it is nice to see it evolve.

     The novel is a fine introduction to a part of the Black community. Thomas, a Black woman from Mississippi, is a great tour guide, weaving us through the hard times, the feelings of being trapped, but also the joys and heartbreaks of home, family, and friends.

    

    

Book Review: The Hate U Give

 The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas

    When I started reading this book, I began to lament how depressing it was.

    In the first 25 pages, the novel's focus is revealed -- a young, unarmed black man is gunned down by a white cop during a questionable traffic stop. Given today's real-life versions of that very narrative, I feared it would continue along that heartbreaking path.

 

    It did. 

    But its overall tale was offset with accounts of ordinary Black life. The narrator and protaganist here is a teen-age Black girl, whose concerns include her schooling, her high school friends, boys, her family, her parents and her social life. She frets about how she and those around her have changed since middle school. She reacts with dismay, but is secretly proud, when her parents openly show affection.

    She acknowledges living in two worlds and practicing code-switching -- living a proud Black life with her family and friends in the 'hood, but playing down her Blackness when she is with her white friends at school. The two lives really interact. Her parents are unaware she has a white boyfriend at school.

    Similar to the protagonist in On The Come Up, Thomas's second novel, Starr Carter is a bright, observant, talented black girl trying to make her way through life. But unlike Bri, who rails against the inequities through her rap music, Starr plays along to make her way through both of her worlds.

    Still, Starr suffers through the discrimination, the poverty, the bullying of police, and the humiliation of being treated as less of a person at school and on the streets. She deals with the trapped violence in her neighborhood, and grapples against speaking out and risking more trouble, or staying quiet and accepting the 

    She struggles to find the common ground, working to stand up and speak out when she must, yet protecting herself and her family when she can.

    Thomas portrays her vividly, letting us in on her secrets and her fears. Thomas is a wonderful writer, bringing us into a world we don't know, taking us around, introducing us to the people and places. She shows us and lets us see a fuller picture of her world, and I for one am grateful.

This Week in Books, 10th Ed. Black Authors

Black Authors White People Should Read

In the past few years I have made a concerted effort to read more female writers and writers of color. Last year, I started counting, and half of the authors I read were women, and more than a quarter were people of color. I am improving from the days of reading almost exclusively white male authors.

So in honor of Black History Month, I am recommending several writers of colors and their books, and what I have learned from them.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan: With this novel, set in the 19th Century, Edugyan gives us an extraordinary work filled with powerful and explosive  writing, Through the title character, Edugyan shows some of the true horrors of slavery, not just in the routine dehumanization of people of color, but in the lifelong impact it has on them, She shows the depravity of its systemic brutality. She shows how it allows white people to decry its savagery while simultaneously benefiting from it.


Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson: Woodson goes a step beyond the present, and shows how history and family and ancestory affect black lives today, She shows how bigotry and hate and violence in the past impacts the present and the future for black Americans. Bonus book: Read her Another Brooklyn, about groing up black in Brooklyn.


On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas: Thomas uses Bri, the smart, hip, talented, and ambitious protagonist, to show us what it's like to grow up as a 16-year-old black girl living in black ghetto in an otherwise white world.  Bri discoves how people judge her through lenses tinged with bias and outright bigotry. Her teachers condemn her as "aggressive." White parents claim her rap lyrics causeviolence. Many -- even her fans and neighbors -- see Bri as little more than a ghetto hoodrat.

My Name is Leon, by Kit De Waal: A British writer of Irish and Kittian descent, De Waal writes about a mixed-race child in England trying to find his way. After Leon's mother falls ill, social services take him and his younger, white brother, who is adopted almost immediately. Leon stays with his white foster mother. He learns the difficulties in being a black boy in white Britain while bonding with a group of black men from the West Indies.


Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi: It tells the stories of a multi-generational family growing up in Oman at a time of massive societal change in the Middle Eastern country. It's the first book originally wriitten in Arabic to win the Man Booker prize, It's mostly about three sisters trying to adjust to the changing culture, and it also explains the village of al-Awafi where they live. It does so through many voices, which reach a cohesive whole that is sad, but compelling and illuminating.

This Year in Books: 2019 Edition

My Best Books of 2019

I like to begin the year reading a favorite story about one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Roberto Clemente died New Year's Eve 1972 when he boarded a plane to take supplies to Nicaragua, which had been recently devastated by an earthquake. The plane crashed, killing the 38-year-old Clemente, the pilot, and three others.

Fifteen years later, writer W.P. Kinsella, working off the idea that Clemente's body had never been found, wrote "Searching for January," in which a tourist sees Clemente coming ashore in 1987. In a touch of magical realism, they discuss what happened and what might have been.

Ready for breakfast and the yearly reading of Kinsella's work.

OK, that's a long intro/aside to my first Year in Review blog post, featuring the best books I have read this year. According to my Goodreads profile, I read a book a week, which, according to one estimate I have seen, means I read about 50 pages a day. Sounds about right.

Anyway, of those, I have selected eight as my books of the year. Why eight, you ask? Why not, I respond.

So here were go.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Robinson. This novel, about a WPA project that paid women to ride mules into the hollers of Eastern Kentucky, became one of my favorite of all time. The writing is extraordinary, vivid, and sensitive. Richardson reaches perfection in her use of dialect -- just the right amount to give flavor to the speech of the people, but never too much. In addition to her keen ear, Richardson has a keen heart and mind in creating and letting her characters live their lives. Full review.

The Bees, by Laline Paull. Paull gives us a hive of honeybees that are feminist, pro-labor, and loyal, and presents them to tell a story of love, hope, and commitment. It's a book not about bees, but about us. It's about how we are locked into a caste at birth and struggle mightily to escape. Full review.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan. With powerful and explosive writing, Edugyan tells the tale of George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados in the 19th Century. From that beginning, she follows Wash through the United States, Canada, and England, as he tries to escape slavery and live the life of a freeman. But melancholy and a haunted, hunted existence follows him. Full review.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. This is today's story of what happens in the years of The Handmaid's Tale and its government of Gilead. It is told in various voices, from a top aunt in the organization to members of the resistance. They include children, who only know Gilead after the revolution, as they are taught little about the previous life. It's an inspiring tale from a top-notch writer. Full review.

Elevation, by Stephen King. This is an unusually short Stephen King book, but it's also the ultimate Stephen King book. It has great characters in a great story that's well written, with a little supernatural sprinkled in. It's a short novel packed with intensity and issues. Full review.

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver melds past and present into a sentimental yet unsparing tale, exploring how our present determines our future and influences interpretations of the past. In her literate prose, with a gift for the narrative of empathy and understanding, Kingsolver touches on what moves us all -- our family, our homes, our beliefs, and our hopes for the futures. Full review

Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry. In the long, extraordinary history of great Irish writers, Barry is finding himself among the elite. Night Boat tells about  two old Irish drug dealers and wanderers, who have made it good, then lost most of it. As they wait in a Spanish port for one character's daughter, Barry tells their story in writing that is ravishingly beautiful. He makes every word count, and causes you to use your five senses to take it all in. Full review.

Music Love Drugs War, by Geraldine Quigley. Quigley introduces us to a group of young friends and acquaintances in Derry, Northern Ireland, at the start of the 1980s. Most of them are in their late teens and on the cusp of adulthood, but unsure of their futures. They live in a city where jobs are scarce, the violence can be thick, and the hope can be slim. Their pleasures lie in drugs, music, and each other. Their fears and realities lie in the violent struggle that has engulfed Ireland for 400 years. Full review.