#BookReview: CRY ME A RIVER by Ernest Hill

Summary: An absentee father from a "no good" family, Tyrone Stokes was imprisoned for shooting a man in a convenience store. His wife saw her chance to end their marriage and raise their son, Marcus, on her own. Now Tyrone has returned to Brownsville, Louisiana, to discover that his boy needs help--help that Tyrone is desperate to give, if he can only figure out how.

Marcus has been convicted of the rape and murder of a young white girl. An execution date is set, and it's rumored that the Governor will refuse clemency. Tyrone is convinced Marcus is innocent, despite a stack of evidence against him--but he is also wracked by knowledge of all the ways he has failed his son. Against all odds, Tyrone sets out to keep Marcus alive--and perhaps put his family back together again.

Review: I downloaded Cry Me A River from the library on a whim and I'm glad I did. From the beginning, Hill draws the reader into the lives of Tyrone and Marcus Stokes and doesn't release them until the end. With descriptive narration of a small Southern town where everyone knows everyone and battle lines have long been drawn, it's difficult not to get caught up in the goings on of Brownsville.

Tyrone knows he wasn't a good man before he went to prison, and so does his wife's family. His love for his son and wife is palpable. Having been imprisoned, he knows and sees the defeat in Marcus' eyes and is determined to restore his innocence. Watching Tyrone struggle to prove to his wife and, more importantly, his son, that this time he's not going to let them down is heartbreaking. His wife and her family have no faith him in and neither does most of his family. But he uses the same connections that likely landed him in jail to find a way to clear his son.

The small town feel and the racial divide in a place where black people should know their place comes crashing down on the Stokes family and the reader. I could feel the hot blazing sun beating down on Tyrone as the clock to save Marcus wound down. His confrontations with white characters that were determined to put him and keep him in his place, denying his humanity, angered me. Ernest Hill gives the reader a lot to think about and opens up a few wounds lingering just beneath the surface of one's psyche. I'll definitely be working my way through his backlist in the coming months.

304 p.
Published: January 2003

#BookReview: The Autobiography of My Mother - Jamaica Kincaid #BP2W (Dominica)

Xuela Claudette Richardson is born the daughter of a Carib woman and a Scottish/African father.  Her mother died during childbirth and the reader is reminded of this, seemingly, at least once a chapter.  The lack of a mother frames all of Xuela's thoughts and she seems to use it as an excuse for how she lives her life. Choosing not to love anyone, not even her father, Xuela comes across as a bitter and lonely individual.

While I know Jamaica Kincaid's work is hailed in certain circles, this book left me exhausted.  The repeated statement about Xuela's mother's death, her disregard and dislike for everyone around her and the supernatural undercurrent wore me out.  The author dwelled entirely too long in childhood and I eagerly anticipated her growing up and maturing.  Instead, I was treated to a rude, older version of the same character.

Initially I picked this book because I thought I might learn something of Dominican culture; however, short of the story being set in Dominica, there was little to learn of the country from the words of the author.  Since I'm obligated to read a book from a different country each week, it was too late to turn back and try another book once I was 50 pages into this one.  But given the opportunity, I would have preferred a different book.







228pp
Published: January 1997

Dominica was the last of the Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia Charles, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only pre-Columbian population remaining in the eastern Caribbean. - CIA World Factbook


Location: Caribbean, island between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, about half way between Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago
Size: 751 sq km, slightly more than four times the size of Washington, DC
Population: 73,126
Ethnic groups: Black 86.8%, mixed 8.9%, Carib Amerindian 2.9%, white 0.8%, other 0.7%
Languages: English (official), French patois

Theme: Isle of Beauty  

#BookReview: The View from Delphi - Jonathon Odell

Set in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi, The View from Delphi is the story of Hazel and Vida, women on opposite ends of the spectrum. While one comes from a place of privilege and soon finds herself on the opposite end; the other comes from very humble beginnings, only to find herself surrounded by the material things she always dreamed of.  Unfortunately, she didn't dream beyond acquiring those possessions.

Vida Snow is the daughter of a preacher.  Her father is not just a preacher, he's the Fix It man for the sharecroppers in the area.  Raised with the Senator, Levi Snow has the ear of the biggest landowner in Delphi.  In return for Levi apprising the Senator of any grumblings among the workers, the Senator allows Levi the privilege of preaching, something Levi feels he was called to do.  As a preacher's daughter, Vida Snow has never worked a day in the fields.  Her job is to go to school and wear the pretty dresses her father keeps her in.

Hazel is poorer than dirt.  Worse than that, she's homely.  With her limp hair and plain features, she cries when she finally gets to see a picture of herself.  As a teen, she decided to do something about her looks and by the time she was fifteen, she'd completely transformed herself into a movie star-like creature, the likes of which folks in her part of Appalachia had never seen.  When she meets Floyd Graham and his big ideas, she's ready to ditch the farm and her family and get on with living.

By the time they meet, life has been unkind to Hazel and Vida.  Vida's father's fall from grace propels her into the fields.  Her longing to right the wrongs that have been done to her propels her into a white woman's kitchen.

Hazel is a woman without a plan.  Her immediate plan was to marry Floyd, but she didn't think far beyond that.  Being a mother overwhelms her.  The simplest tasks leave her flustered.  Her most recent episodes leave Floyd with no other choice than to bring in outside help to watch over her during the day to make sure she doesn't do anything foolish again.

Hazel and Vida's friendship is unlikely, and I begrudgingly call it a friendship.  I would be more apt to call it mutual respect.   Hazel draws strength from being around Vida and her group of fellow maids.  In return, Hazel assists the group with copying and distributing voting rights materials.  But are they the kind of friends that share secrets?  I wouldn't go that far.

Had I read this before the acclaimed The Healing, I don't know that I would have been inspired to read about Polly Shine.  The View from Delphi is about 100 pages longer than it needs to be.  It's obvious that by the time Odell got around to writing The Healing, he'd learned to trim the fat in his writing.  Still, it was a noble effort for a first novel.

510pp
Published: August 2005

 

Theme: Mississippi Goddamn by Nina Simone

#BookReview: Falling Together - Marisa de los Santos

We're all familiar with the poem that states, "People come into your life for a reason, season or a lifetime."  From the first day they meet as college freshmen, Pen, Will and Cat are sure that they're destined to be in each other's lives forever.  Within their symbiotic relationship, Pen is the caretaker, Will is the thinker and Cat is the carefree spirit that makes the friendship work.

As adults, their friendship continues until the day Cat makes the decision to leave the group, with the request that they not try to find one another in the future.  Though Will and Pen try to make their friendship work without Cat, she's the missing piece of their puzzle and so they too agree to end their friendship.  But not a day goes by that Pen doesn't think of her friends and wonder if she's left an empty space in their lives as they've left in hers.

The day an email arrives from Cat asking both Pen and Will to attend their college reunion because she needs them, both are hesitant, but it's Cat, so, of course, they'll attend.  Except Cat isn't there, at least not physically, her husband is and he's the one that needs their help.

Cat's presence is felt so strongly throughout this book, though she's mostly spoken of in third person.  As much as Will and Pen adored her, I came away from this book disliking her immensely.  Pen and Will, but especially Pen, have had so much faith in her and remembered so many good things about her.  I'd agree with them that she was a light-hearted free spirit, but she was also selfish and unfeeling.  You certainly can't expect your friends to be the same way they were years ago, but to be dismissive of them as if they never played an important role in your life is cruel.

Looking back, Cat played the child to adult-like Pen and Will when they were students.  So she expected them to take care of her until she was ready to take care of herself and when she was ready to do that, she no longer had any use for them.  Like parents that sometimes fall apart when their child leaves the nest, Will and Pen fell apart without Cat.  I think that's why I dislike her so much.  It's her departure that interrupts their lives for years until she summons them.

I didn't expect to be so drawn in to Falling Together or to become so heavily invested in the characters.  Marisa de los Santos tricks the reader into caring about the characters by making them fully developed multi-dimensional characters.  This was my first read from her and I can't wait to delve into more from her.

384pp
Published: October 2012
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.

Theme: Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye

#BookReview: South by Southeast - Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes

I'm always surprised when my Twitter followers are shocked to find out that Blair Underwood writes.  Okay, really, the man is like a fine wine that just gets better with time, but he's more than just a handsome face.  In addition to being an actor with a long career that I've been drooling over since his LA Law days, he's the co-author of the Tennyson Hardwick series.  Yes, series.  South by Southeast is the fourth in a series that started with Casanegra, In the Night of the Heat and From Cape Town with Love.

To bring those of you who haven't read the previous books up to speed, here's a quick recap.  Ten is a gigolo turned actor with a side order of private investigator.  His wheelchair bound, retired police captain father and his nurse turned girlfriend, Marcela, live with him in a house he inherited from a former client.  When he's not rescuing kidnapped babies or pining over his ex-girlfriend, but still a good friend, April, he's guardian to Chela, a fiesty 17 year old that he rescued from his former madam.

Life is finally on track for Ten.  He's been handpicked by the famous director Gustavo Escobar for a part in his next zombie flick.  Temporarily relocating the family from Los Angeles to Miami is just what the doctor ordered.  Marcela will get to see her family, the captain will get to relax and Chela will have a chance to shed her LA baggage in a city where no one knows about her past as a prostitute.  But trouble has a way of finding the Hardwick clan and it's not long before Ten is thrown back into the role of protector and private investigator.

I don't know how the three authors work out writing amongst themselves.  Perhaps one of them writes the outline, someone else does character development and the third fleshes out the meat of the project.  What I do know is they seem to work seamlessly together.  Even though the only character that we have an actual image of is Tennyson, it's not difficult to imagine what the others look like based on the descriptions we're given.  Because of that, it's easier to visualize each scene as it plays out.  It's like the books are written as a screenplay, but without the stilted directions and scene set ups that you'd see in an actual screenplay.  It was reported back in August of this year that Blair Underwood signed a major development/talent holding deal with Universal Television.  Let's all keep our fingers crossed in hopes that we see Ten, Captain Hardwick, Marcela and Chela gracing our television screens in the near future.

384pp
Published: September 2012
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.

Theme: Quimbara by Celia Cruz

#BookReview: Love Comes Later - Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

Knowing my love of colorful chick lit, @AMWLoveWideOpen brought this book to my attention and I'm so glad she did.  While I've managed to find chick lit that covers various cultures, this is the first one I've read that focuses on the Arab world, particularly Qatar.  And as an added bonus, the author throws in an Indian American point of view.

Three months into his marriage to Fatima, a marriage he initially resisted, Abdulla loses her in a fatal car accident.  Though he had resisted the idea of marriage, he'd grown accustomed to having Fatima around and had grown to love her.  Her sudden death left a void and he vowed to never marry again.  It's unfortunate, then, that part of his duty to his family is to re-marry, specifically, one of his cousins.

Abdulla's cousin, Hind, has no desire to get married either.  A bookish, yet stylish, woman, she'd like nothing more than to get her master's and work.  Whereas most Qatari wives are content with shopping, she wants more from life.  Feeling pressure from the family, Abdulla and Hind agree to marry after Hind has spent a year in London working on her degree.

I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between Hind and Sangita, her classmate turned roommate and best friend.  An American of Indian descent, Sangita was raised in a Hindu household.  While she's familiar with some of the aspects of Hind's religion, Islam, she's not aware of them all and the author does a great job of highlighting the similarities and differences.  With time running out, it's up to Sangita to help Abdulla and Hind figure out how they can, or if they want to, make the marriage work.

I had to laugh at some comments and nod in agreement with others as Rajakumar pokes fun at stereotypes and ideology.  For example,

When she arrives for orientation, bang on time, which would have been considered early in Doha, she is the last student there.  So much for trying to avoid the stereotype of being on Arab time.

Growing up in the African American community, there's always been a joke about people that consistently run late being on CP time.  CP meaning colored people.

In another instance, Abdulla is called a Paki (short for Pakistani) and Sangita is surprised to see that he doesn't react, only commenting to her that he's Arab, not Asian.  To which she responds, in reference to the West,

"They colonize the world and don't even bother to notice that we're different?"

"Brown is brown.  Sometimes brown is even black," he says.

While the author doesn't spend a lot of time dwelling on how the Asian or Arab world is perceived by Europeans or Americans, it is interesting to note that the perceptions and stereotypes of people of color can be just as damaging in Europe as they are in America.

This was a short and enjoyable read.  At only $ 2.99 (free for Prime members) in the Amazon store, you should definitely check it out if you're looking to broaden your mind.

256pp
Published: July 2012

Theme: Balle Balle from Bride and Prejudice

#BookReview: Powder Necklace - Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Sending your daughter away from London, the only home she's ever known, to your native country of Ghana, may seem extreme to some.  But that's just what Lila's mother does when she suspects her 14 year old daughter is becoming too wild and loose.  Telling her that they're going to visit her Auntie Flora, Lila's mother instead takes her to the airport and puts her on a flight to Kumasi.

Just as she's adjusted to life with Auntie Irene, for what she believes is a short visit, Lila learns that her mother intends for her to stay in Ghana for the duration of the school year.  At the Dadaba Girls' Secondary School, Lila is forced to endure water shortages, harassment because of her British accent, and finally learns the real reason her mother sent her away.  She needed time for herself.  WHAT? I almost threw this book across the room when I read that.  Lila's father lived in United States. He was perfectly willing to have Lila come live with him, but her mother sent her to Ghana because she needed time to herself AND to spite him? Ugh.

Eventually Lila's  mother brings her back to England.  In the six months that Lila has been gone, her mother has managed to get engaged to a man with a daughter Lila's age and they all live together.  Ma'am, you couldn't deal with your own child, who by all accounts was a good kid, but you're parenting someone else's child while yours is living in less than favorable conditions for months?

When her mother again decides she can't deal with Lila, she tells her she's going to visit her father for the summer in New York.  Look, I don't know why this woman wasn't just upfront with her daughter each time she shipped her off.  And I don't know why Lila kept falling for the okey doke, because by this time I already knew her mother was sending her there permanently.

Lila is much more optimistic than I am though.  Even after getting shuttled from house to house, continent to continent, she was able to find the good in the situation.  I would have been really interested in reading this story from the mother's point of view.  Without hearing her side of the story, she just comes across as extremely self-centered and uncaring.  That made it difficult to enjoy the book.  While Brew-Hammond has been compared to Edwidge Danticat and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I have to say she's not even close to being in their league.

280pp
Published: April 2010

Theme: Unconditional Love by Donna Summer & Musical Youth

#BookReview: I Do Not Come To You By Chance - Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

When Augustina meets the engineer, Paulinus, it is indeed a fortuitous occasion.  While most men of their time and place would frown on a woman attending university, including Augustina's own father, Paulinus encourages it.  With their engagement depending upon her getting a degree, Augustina applies to study clothing and textile.  Together, she and Paulinus plan to raise a brood of future engineers, doctors, lawyers and scientists.

Armed with master's degrees, Augustina and Paulinus settle into opening a tailoring shop and working for the Ministry of Works and Transport, respectively.  But, things being as they are, their plans for financial success are short lived.  Paulinus' diabetes, and wages as a civil servant, put a strain on the families already strained finances.  Though the family is not financially successful, they are successful in that they've managed to instill a love for learning in their children.

Oldest son, Kingsley, has a degree in chemical engineering, yet can't find a job in Umuahia.  Having been put on notice that he stands to lose his fiancee if he cannot find a suitable position, Kingsley asks his parent's permission to look for work in Lagos, where his Uncle Boniface owns a home.  The only problem is Paulinus detests Boniface.

Known as Cash Daddy outside of the family, rich Uncle Boniface heads up one of the largest 419 operations in Lagos. You know the email that shows up in your spam box saying you've won money and need to send a fee to collect all of it?  They tend to be in all caps with misspelled words and poorly worded sentences.  There's someone like Cash Daddy behind scams just like that.  So it's no wonder that Paulinus is disgusted by the mere thought of him.

But when Paulinus falls sick and Augustina needs money for his hospital stay, she sends Kingsley to find her brother.  What she fails to realize is that she's setting Kingsley up for a life as Cash Daddy's protege.  While Kingsley is hesitant to step into the role, he quickly becomes accustomed to the perks of being associated with Cash Daddy and the money.  Ultimately Kingsley will have to decide whether or not he is morally corrupt enough to keep scamming money from greedy foreigners or if he still has a thread of the moral fiber instilled in him by his parents buried deep inside.

I ran across this book while looking for another.  Like so many, I've received the scam email before and always wondered who was foolish enough to fall for them.  It was interesting to read about how the emails are crafted and how the 419ers reel their prey in.  This was a very quick read, even though it's a little over 400 pages, so if you're even slightly interested in knowing what goes on behind the scenes of these kinds of operations, definitely give it a read.

416pp
Published: April 2009

Theme: Look At Me Now by Chris Brown featuring Busta Rhymes & Lil Wayne

#BookReview: Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I come late to her fan club, but Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's work is truly worthy of all the accolades it receives.  In Purple Hibiscus, she skillfully combines a coming of age story with a military coup and domestic abuse.  Each of these topics could have been difficult to handle, but Adichie manages to write about each of them in a way that doesn't overwhelm the reader.

Fifteen year old Kambili and her older brother, Jaja, live a good life in Enugu, Nigeria.  Their father, Eugene, is a big man, meaning wealthy and well-connected, so they enjoy privileges that their classmates and friends do not.  But because their father is a big man, no one suspects that he rules his family with an iron fist in the name of religion.  So strict in his faith is Eugene, that has renounced his own father, who has not converted to Catholicism, and limits the children's time with him to 15 minutes during the Christmas holiday.

It's not until Kambili and Jaja get to visit their Aunt Ifeoma and cousins that they learn that everyone does not live by a daily schedule.  Every aspect of their lives, from the time they wake up until they go to bed is dictated by schedules their father has created for them. In Aunt Ifeoma's house, children are encouraged to have a voice and actually use it.  At home, speaking out of turn or acting independently without guidance from their father is a cause for immediate disciplinary action.  In Aunt Ifeoma's home, there is laughter and open emotion, things that have been stifled in Kambili and Jaja's home.

At one point, Eugene boasts that his Kambili and Jaja are “not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God;” to which Ade Coker replies: “Imagine what the standard would be if we were all quiet.”  This conversation really hit on so many things for me. The children and their mother's silence has enabled Eugene to keep them living in constant fear of his punishment, should one of them step out of line.  The voices of the students and faculty at the university where Aunty Ifeoma teaches have been raised, resulting in a military coup and the persecution of those that have spoken up.

Forced to leave Nigeria as a result of the coup, Aunty Ifeoma moves to the United States to teach.  Though her daughter, Amaka, always saw the U.S. as the promised land, she soon begins to believe that though times were sometimes hard in Nigeria, there was a freer sense of self and others there than in her new home.

 “There has never been a power outage and hot water runs from a tap, but we don’t laugh anymore . . . because we no longer have the time to laugh, because we don’t even see one another.”

By the end of this book, I was drained.  While I was hoping for a happy ending, instead I got a,, "okay, this is life, make the best of it" ending.  And I'm okay with that.  I just wanted better for characters that I became deeply invested in during the course of my listening.

I do have to point out that I didn't care for the narrator's voice, so I was tempted to stop listening and read the book instead.  The problem I had with it is the story is told from the point of view of Kambili, a fifteen year old Igbo girl from Nigeria.  The narrator was significantly older and sounded nothing like I would imagine Kambili to sound.  I was so thrown by her voice that I actually looked her up.  I understand that she's narrated several of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, but since I've never listened to them, I wasn't familiar with her voice.  Much like I like my female characters voiced by women and not men, I like my characters to sound more like the actual character than a distinctly older person.

307pp
Listening time: 11 hours
Published: October 2003

Theme: Sorrow, Tears & Blood by Fela Kuti   

#BookReview: Imperfect Bliss - Susan Fales-Hill

In what's a clear departure from 2010's One Flight Up, Imperfect Bliss falls short of what I expected from someone that once wrote for The Cosby Show, A Different World and Linc's.  Today's television networks rely heavily on reality TV and that's the world that Fales-Hill plunges us into with her latest.

The overly dramatic Forsythia and mild mannered Harold have successfully raised four daughters.  Well, successfully may be a bit of a stretch.  Oldest daughter Victoria is just this side of becoming an old maid.  Second eldest daughter Bliss, a recent divorcee, has returned home with her four year old daughter, Bella, in tow.  Third daughter Charlotte desperately seeks attention in all of the wrong places.  And youngest daughter Diana is about to turn everyone's world upside down.

Diana undoubtedly grew up watching reality TV shows like The Bachelor, so it shouldn't have come as a shock to anyone in the family when she announces that she's been picked to star in her own reality show called The Virgin.  Always ready to claim the spotlight that is rightfully hers, Forsythia is on board from day one, but the rest of the family, especially Bliss, isn't so sure they want their everyday lives broadcast across the country for eight months.  It doesn't matter.  Eventually all of the Harcourts are swept up in the madness of The Virgin, whether they want to be or not.

There are a lot of story lines going on throughout the book and, honestly, it was hard to muster up a care about any of them.  I found Forsythia to be highly annoying with her obsession with skin color and her perceived idea of perfection.  Watching her reject her grandchild and anyone else didn't meet her standards of perfection was painful.  Charlotte as the promiscuous bad girl seeking her family's attention seemed very stereotypical.  Interestingly, the daughter upon whom the reality show is based, almost gets the smallest story line.  It's interesting that Fales-Hill would choose to build the book around Bliss, given that Diana's appearing on The Virgin is the basis for so much of the family drama and interaction.

Imperfect Bliss really could have been a much more enjoyable story  had it taken away several of the distractions in the forms of Forsythia and The Virgin and spent more time focusing on Bliss' relationship with her father, daughter and the men in her life.  I would have also loved to see more attention paid to Victoria.  In my opinion, her story line was the most interesting of all.

304pp
Published: July 2012
Disclosure: Copy received from publisher, opinions are my own.

 

Theme: We Are Family by Sister Sledge

#BookReview: The Warmest December - Bernice L. McFadden

What would it take for you to go sit at the deathbed of the person that brought you the most unhappiness?  As a child, Kenzie Lowe watched her father abuse her mother physically and emotionally, all the while losing his battle with alcoholism.  But Kenzie's father wasn't just abusive when drinking, he was down right mean.  So why does she catch buses and trudge through the snow daily  to sit at his bedside as he dies?

I've said it before, but it bears repeating.  Bernice McFadden sure can tell a tale.  Sitting at her father, Hy-Lo's, bedside, Kenzie reminisces on her childhood and once she starts, there's no way you can put the book down until she finishes.  Through her flashbacks you learn that the mother that used to protect her and her brother became an alcoholic and that Kenzie, herself, is a recovering alcoholic, continuing the cycle that started with her paternal grandmother.  Hy-Lo gets his nasty spirit honestly from his mother, a woman that would turn her back on her fleeing daughter-in-law and grandchildren in their time of need.

The bright spot in Kenzie's world is her maternal grandmother.  Escaping to Mable's house is a welcome respite from the verbal and emotional abuse Kenzie deals with at home, but her mother, Delia, is never strong enough to keep Hy-Lo at bay.  In a way, it reminded me of people that commit suicide, but feel the need to take someone else with them.  Instead of Delia recognizing and putting her children's happiness ahead of Hy-Lo's and allowing them to stay with Mable, she took them back each and every time, as if to say, "If I'm going to suffer, you're going to suffer too."  It's Mable who eventually gives Kenzie the tools to escape her parents, but with an already shattered foundation, Kenzie is set up to fail and repeat the cycle herself.

One of the things I found quite interesting was that Kenzie was angry with her father, but not her mother.  Her father was the abuser, but her mother was the enabler.  Perhaps Kenzie had already made peace with her mother, but their conversations as adults seemed stunted, so it was difficult to tell.  Of all things, The Warmest December is a story of forgiveness, not necessarily out of love, but out of a need to close a bad chapter in life so that one can move on to other things.

288pp
Published: February 2001

 

Theme: Too Late by Rachelle Ferrell

#BookReview: Snitch - Booker T. Mattison

One of the codes of the streets is "no snitching."  So when bus driver Andre Bolden sees a man get shot while he's driving his route, he knows that his best bet is to keep his mouth shut.  The problem is, the killer, Clops, saw him and now, whether he snitches or not, he's become a moving target.

A former college football stand out, a run in with the law left Andre expelled from school.  Lying about his criminal conviction on a job application gets him fired.  And his displaced anger and an unwillingness to show emotion have left him without the love of his life and his son.

Snitch is really about a man who is slowly descending to rock bottom.  I wouldn't call it urban lit or Christian lit, though it seemed to have a tinge of both.  I'm not a big fan of either genre, but Mattison keeps it light enough that it doesn't interfere with the overall story telling.

One problem that I did have with the book was the nice and neat way that people were connected and the frequent near misses.  Andre and Clops traveled in different circles, but somebody's grandmother went to church with somebody's girlfriend who was friends with someone's brother, yada yada yada.  Coincidences are fine, but it was just a little too unrealistic.

I was also confused by the ending.  Even now, I'm not quite sure what happened at the end. I went back and re-read it several times and it's still unclear.  Maybe the author's goal was to create a cliffhanger, leaving the door open to a potential sequel.  Um...no.  I was confused enough this go round. I won't be jumping back on that ride any time soon.

290pp
Published: May 2011

 

Theme: Forget I Was a G by The Whitehead Brothers

#BookReview: This Burns My Heart - Samuel Park

Easily one of my favorite reads this year, This Burns My Heart is the moving story of Soo-Ja.  As a young lady in 1960 South Korea, she longed to move to Seoul and become a diplomat.  When her wealthy father forbids her to join the Foreign State Department, she plots, at her mother's suggestion, to marry an easily pliable man who will let her have her way.  But when you try to run game on someone, there's always a good chance that game is being run on you. And while Soo-Ja thinks she's using Min, she finds that she really is not the master of her fate, as she thought.

Why are we asked to make the most important decisions of our lives when we are so young, and so prone to mistakes? 

So caught up in her dreams of escaping her small town of Daegu and becoming a diplomat, Soo-Ja misses out on the warning signs that would have stopped her from making such a grave mistake. Like a weight around her neck, Soo-Ja is forced to carry the decision she makes as an early 20something with her for years.  Bound by duty to her family and tradition, Soo-Ja endures the deceit of her husband's family and disrespect of her own child.  Chance encounters with an old friend with whom she shares a special bond only make the burdens harder to bear.

“Tchamara. What is the word that comes closest to it? To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? There is no other word for it, no way to translate it. It is not a word. It is a way to console yourself. He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Tchamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she’ll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.”

The pain, the sadness, the longing of Soo-Ja all come through in the words of Samuel Park.    While this is a love story between a man and a woman, it's just as much a love story of a mother for her child.  Through it all, Soo-Ja finds her spirit down, but never broken.  I can guarantee you that you'll find yourself rooting for her happiness just as much as I was.

What did you like about this book?
Not only was it an easy read, it was a beautiful read.  Park managed to weave in the student revolutions of 1960 into the story line, providing the reader with a historical aspect.  Readers unfamiliar with Korean traditions and society were also offered a glimpse into the changes within South Korea from 1960 through the mid 70s.

What didn't you like about this book?
I can't think of a thing.

What could the author do to improve this book?
Not a thing.

320pp
Published July 2011

Theme: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart by Al Green

#BookReview: One Day It'll All Make Sense - Common

A lot of rappers write memoirs and while I've had no interest in reading most of them, I couldn't resist giving Common's One Day It'll All Make Sense a read.  He's one of my favorite rappers because unlike some that talk about how many cars they have or how many women they've slept with, he generally comes with a message.  I'll forgive him for the foolishness that was Electric Circus (I'm just going to blame that one on Erykah Badu) and Universal Mind Control (and I'll blame this one on Serena Williams).

I'm not sure why, but I fully expected Common to just break down some of his lyrics, tell us about his fancy lifestyle and throw in an occasional motivational message.  Instead, each chapter starts with a letter from him to someone important in his life, alive or dead.  Through these letters, the reader learns what the person he's writing to has meant to him and how they influenced his life.  I especially enjoyed his letters to his parents and to his daughter.

Another thing he does, that not many men are willing to do, is be open about his relationships and the roles he's played in them.  Let's go back to my reference to Electric Circus and Ms. Badu.  Why do I blame her for that horrible CD?  How do you go from Like Water for Chocolate to that?  Other than Come Close, which was written about Erykah, it was the epitome of whack.  In talking about his relationship with her, it's apparent that from day one, Erykah was in control and their relationship was all about her.

"Erykah was my first grown-up love.  Loving her was the first time I had been so caught up in a relationship that everything else seemed muffled and dimmed. ...I loved Erykah so hard that I didn't have any love left for myself."

While his family and friends watched, Common changed the way he lived, ate, communicated, etc.  It almost sounded like one of the Ms. Cleo commercials of the nineties, "I think someone put roots on me!"  Though they started as friends, Erykah decided when they became a couple and also when the relationship ended, calling him while he was on tour to tell him it was over, while her next man sat in the room and listened in on the conversation.  Who does that??? When I say Ms. Badu is stronger than battery acid?!?! I just wanted to cradle Common to my chest as a I read that...purely for unselfish reasons, of course.  And um, have a word with "E."

Common goes on to talk about his other relationships with Taraji "my eyes stay bloodshot" P. Henson and Serena Williams, but it's obvious that Ms. Badu had the most lasting effect on him and some of his biggest life lessons were learned as a result of their time together.  The message that stood out most to me was,

"No longer am I going to dim my light for anyone or anything.  I 'm going to let it shine.  This is what God gave me, so I'm going to wear this.  I'm going to wear my greatness."

And he wears it well...as long as we're not talking about his acting, but that's another story for another time.

What did you like about this book?
I loved the openness and honesty of Common.  Though he's usually portrayed as walking the straight and narrow, his stories of youth quickly dispel that myth.  It's as if he's most interested in giving people the complete picture of himself rather than the manufactured image that most artists have.

What didn't you like about this book?
I enjoyed most of the letters, but some of them were quite lengthy and didn't keep my attention.

What could the author do to improve this book?
I would suggest shortening and/or removing some of the letters.






320pp
Published September 2011
Disclosure: Copy provided by the publisher, opinions posted are my own.

Theme: The People by Common

#BookReview: Red Polka Dot in a World Full of Plaid - Varian Johnson

Had I not been desperate for something to listen to on a recent road trip, I probably would have never picked up this book.  That's not to say that anything was too terribly wrong with it, it just trended on the YA side and that's not really my thing.  But given the choice between listening to this and the same 10 songs over and over again on satellite radio, I went with this.

Red Polka Dot is the story of Maxine, a recent high school graduate, who learns that the father she always thought was dead is, in fact, alive and well and living in Oklahoma.  Determined to meet him, she sets off on her own from South Carolina, only to have car problems.  Her best friend Deke comes to her rescue and the two make their way to Oklahoma where Maxine discovers that not only is her father Jack alive, he's white.

This first effort from Varian Johnson was crammed with entirely too many messages for such a short book.  There was Maxine's discovery that she was biracial and how it affected her outlook after believing that she was black for 18 years. In addition, she had to deal with how others around her reacted to her as a result.   There was also a strong Christian lit element with Deke and Jack both talking about their beliefs repeatedly and trying to convince Maxine to come back to church.  And then there was the problem of defining her friendship with Deke.  In the midst of this, she had to find time to create and define a relationship with her newly discovered father.  And like a soap opera, the author managed to wrap all of these issues up with a nice neat bow within a week.  While this may have played out well for a younger reader, it was too idealistic for a cynical older reader like me.

What did you like about this book?
It had good messages, there were just too many of them to give any one proper attention and fleshing out.

What didn't you like about this book?
The narrator of the audio book has the same last name of the author.  While Johnson is a common last name, I couldn't help but wonder if she was related to him.  That could be the only plausible reason for using her as the narrator.  I picked up a distinct Caribbean lilt in her voice, which was distracting since the character was supposed to be from South Carolina.  Another problem was that the narrator was only capable of doing three voices even though she gave voice to every character in the book.  As a result, all of the male characters, with the exception of Deke, sounded like an old white man sitting on his porch holding a shotgun and all of the female characters, with the exception of Maxine, sounded like Florence Jean Castleberry (that's Flo for those that remember the TV show, Alice).  It may have been more economically feasible for the author to use a relative to narrate, but the voices she used were annoying and made listening to the book almost unbearable.

What could the author do to improve this book?
Pick a theme and stick with it.

199pp
Listening time: 5 hours, 50 minutes
Published November 2005

Theme: At Seventeen by Janis Ian

#BookReview: The Taste of Salt - Martha Southgate

Everybody has something that they're trying to hide or that they're ashamed of or would like to pretend never happened.  In a family where addiction is your legacy, it's a safe bet that if you don't confront the issue head on, it's guaranteed to rear its ugly head sooner or later, and probably when you least expect it.  And so it is with Josie Henderson and her family.

I love breathing underwater but still being safe, held, protected.  I love the weightlessness.  I never feel that the rest of the time.  Life weighs a ton.  That's why I love the water.  Nothing weighs anything there.

A marine biologist, Josie has always loved the water.  It's her escape from everything that ails her, anything that weighs her down.  As a child, the water was an escape from the destruction alcoholism brought to her happy family.  As an adult, it allows her to keep that same family at bay in Cleveland while she works in the Northeast.  But you can't run from your problems forever and when Josie's brother Tick sinks into the depths of alcoholism himself, she's forced to return home once again.  And just like that, the weightlessness that water gives her is taken away.  Back on dry land, life once again weighs a ton.

While Josie is quick to point out her father and brother's addiction, it takes her much longer to realize its affect on her.  She goes to great lengths to avoid anything that will weigh her down.  Though she's married, it's apparent that her husband loves her much more than she loves him.  Having kids would weigh her down, so even as she's approaching the time when her biological clock should be ticking out of control, she has no desire for them.  And when the weight of being in an interracial marriage weighs on her even slightly, she seeks something easier, something that weighs less.

Told from the perspectives of Josie, Tick and their parents, Ray and Sarah, The Taste of Salt is simply amazing.  Watching Ray's drinking spiral out of control so much so that it costs him the family that he dearly loves and to watch Tick do the same years later is scary, but makes you ask why would he follow his father's path knowing where it would end, having experienced it as a child.  What makes Sarah love so hard and for so long? And at one point does Josie realize that the water can't save her from everything.

What did you like about this book?
Martha Southgate's book always make me think. While I can easily breeze through works by other authors, I find that I have to give myself time to read, think and savor each word with her.

What didn't you like about this book?
I can't think of a thing.

What could the author do to improve this book?
Nothing.

288pp
Published September 2011

Theme: Aguas de Marco by Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina

#BookReview: PATCHES OF GREY by Roy L. Pickering, Jr.

In a story that at times reminded me of Matty Rich's Straight Out of Brooklyn, Roy L. Pickering, Jr. deftly weaves a coming of age tale of Tony Johnson in Patches of Grey.  And while Pickering could have taken the easy way out and strictly focused on one main character, he takes the time to tell not only Tony's story, but that of his siblings and parents as well, each as fascinating as Tony's.

Tony  is every inner city youth that dreams of making it out, except he doesn't plan to do it by being a rapper or athlete.  He dreams of going to college.  Normally you would expect one's parents to be supportive of that kind of dream, but his father's defeatist attitude weighs heavily upon Tony's shoulders.

Even as Tony walks the straight and narrow, his younger brother CJ is on the path to destruction.  Completely unimpressed with school and what it offers, CJ belongs to a gang.  Somewhere in the middle is their sister Tanya.  At the age of 16, she's obsessed with losing her virginity.

I was intrigued with the fact that the younger brother was the wayward one.  In most books, the older sibling's bad habits lead to the younger sibling's desire to do better.  So it was interesting to see the roles reversed.  On the other hand, it could have been that the parents had more time and were less stressed when raising Tony (and his sister Tanya) and by the time CJ came along, he was left to raise himself.

It's also interesting to note the differences between the relationships that their father shared with Tanya and the boys.  While Tony's relationship with his father is antagonistic at best, Tanya's relationship with him had me wondering if I was reading about a completely different man. No, really. It took me a minute to realize that this belligerent man who berated his oldest child was the same man that coddled his daughter and offered her words of encouragement.

Through Lionel's back story, the reader finds out why he's so hard on his son and how he came to be in the situation he's in.  Undoubtedly, his perceived failures shape the way that he treats Tony.  And while he believes that he's preparing him for the real world and teaching him life lessons, he's slowly losing his son's respect and love.

Aptly named Patches of Grey, Pickering proves that, indeed, life is rarely black or white.

What did you like about this book?
As I mentioned before, I love that everyone in the family has a story to tell and is actually allowed to tell it.

What didn't you like about this book?
Not a thing.  My biggest regret is that it took me so long to move it up on my "to be read" list.

What could the author do to improve this book?
Can't think of a thing.

Published: October 2010