Sudha and Anju aren't sisters by blood, yet in the true sense of the word, they're sisters and more. Raised in the same house by their widowed mothers, the girls grow up believing that they're cousins. To say that they cannot live without each other is an understatement and, by their actions, often prove that they love each other more than they love themselves.
The beautiful Sudha has always dreamed of having a family, but only after college and once she's established herself as a designer. Studious Anju loves the literary classics. She wants nothing more than to run the family bookstore once she's completed her degree. Love and marriage are for the beautiful people like Sudha, all Anju needs is books and enough money to remove some of the stress her mother has carried on her shoulders for so many years.
But as the saying goes, "the best laid plans of mice and men go astray," and neither Sudha nor Anju finds herself leading the life she'd planned. Misunderstandings and a lack of communication drive a wedge between the formerly inseparable sisters. Unbeknownst to them, the fracture in their symbiotic relationship affects all of their decisions, ultimately leading them to conclude that without their other half, their lives are incomplete.
Sister of My Heart is a beautiful tale of friendship. It was heartbreaking to see the two struggle for so long needlessly. Sudha spends her life trying to right wrongs she believes her father did to Anju's father. Anju spends her adult years resenting Sudha for something Sudha can't control and is unaware of. The story has so many twists and turns, you won't be able to put it down until you're done.
Globetrotting journalist Raquel Cepeda takes readers around the world from New York to the Dominican Republic to Morocco and back again in Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. If ever there was a book that meets the guidelines for the Books: Passports to the World challenge, this is it. There's a lot of information to digest within the pages, but it's well worth the read.
Born the daughter of an idealistic mother and an unaffectionate father, the young Raquel spends much of her time trying to figure out where she fits. That applies to both her home life, which is turbulent, and, later, her school life. Upon being sent to the Dominican Republic to be raised by her grandparents following her parent's divorce, her childhood happiness peaks. Her mother brings her back to the States, a puzzling decision since she seems to have no use for her, where she witnesses domestic violence on a daily basis. Eventually, Raquel is sent to her father and stepmother in New York, and they seem to have little use for her either. Verbally abused by her father, and occasionally a victim of domestic violence, Raquel merely bides her time until she can leave for college.
While most teens seek solace in her friends and classmates, the author finds little comfort there either. In America, there is a tendency to categorize people. We want people to fit into a "checkable" box. As a daughter of the diaspora, Raquel felt a kindred connection to other people of color, but for her black classmates, she was too white and for her white classmates, she was too black. So there was a separation by skin tone and even more, a separation between those Dominican students who had been in America for a while and those who had recently emigrated.
I believe that everything happens for a reason and after reading this book, I think Cepeda does too. Her childhood and young adult experiences eventually lead her on a journey to find out more about her family's ancestry. While she could go the genealogical route, she's more interested in finding out where her people originated. Yes, they ended up in the Dominican Republic, but how did they get there? What is their ethnic origin? What is the history of relations between Africa and the island? And why does she feel so drawn to una india, an Amerindian or Indigenous-American spiritual guide?
Occasionally I have a-ha moments with books, I had quite a few with Bird of Paradise. The one that stands out most is the whitening of the country. While Hitler was killing Jews in Europe, Rafael Trujillo was doing the same to Haitians, sanctioning the killing of 20,000 Haitians in what became known as the Parsley Massacre. To further whiten his nation, he encouraged Europeans, those fleeing Hitler especially, to emigrate to the Dominican Republic. Trujillo's suppression of all things African was continued by his successors up until 1996.
Another a-ha moment came as I read about the fluidity of race in the Dominican Republic. The U.S. has long practiced the one drop rule, in which one drop of African/African-American blood means you're black. In the DR, it is the opposite. One sixteenth of white blood means you're white. Darker Dominicans who have attained a higher financial or social status can be deemed white as well. Fascinating stuff indeed.
So I know I've rambled on much longer in this review than usual, but it's the perfect blend of storytelling and science. It's a fascinating read for all of my genealogical/anthropological readers, as well as my memoir readers. It should be noted that there are phrases sprinkled throughout in Spanish, but that shouldn't dissuade you from reading it. Some of them are translated, others are not. If you have a basic knowledge of any of the romance languages, you should be able to infer what is being said.
336pp
Published: March 2013 Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.
The Dominican Republic has long been viewed primarily as an exporter of sugar, coffee, and tobacco, but in recent years the service sector has overtaken agriculture as the economy's largest employer, due to growth in telecommunications, tourism, and free trade zones. The economy is highly dependent upon the US, the destination for more than half of exports. - CIA World Factbook
Location: Caribbean, eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Haiti Size: 48,670 sq km; slightly more than twice the size of New Hampshire Ethnic groups: Mixed 73%, white 16%, black 11% Languages: Spanish (official) Population: 10,088,598
If I've learned nothing else in the first few months of this challenge, it's that women and girls around the world live difficult lives. That's not to say that I didn't know that before, but it was never more obvious to me than when reading Amma Darko's Faceless.
Fourteen year old Fofo is a street child. Like many children who live in an area referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra, Ghana, she's estranged from her family. Unlike some of the children that have been put out on the streets to work, she voluntarily left home before she could be forced to. Whether she left by force or her own volition is moot, because it's likely that the outcome would have been the same.
Growing up, Fofo saw her older brothers leave, and with them, most of the household income, and her older sister. While her brothers left to pursue their own careers, Fofo's older sister, Baby T, left under cloudier circumstances. And when Baby T is found murdered, Fofo is determined to help her new found friends find out what happened to her sister.
Amma Darko uses Faceless to touch on quite a few issues. The character Fofo deals with abandonment, while Baby T deals with molestation and prostitution. Their mother, Maa Tsuru, the product of a single parent home seeks love and attention from men who use her. With the character Kabria, the middle class agency worker who tries to assist Fofo, Darko highlights the difficulties in balancing the role of mother, wife and employee in a chauvinistic society.
The one thing that threw me was the way Darko interjected the AIDS conversation into the story line. There was a missed opportunity for Kabria to have a conversation with her oldest daughter about AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases that was not fleshed out. It was obvious that she wanted to get the message out, and I applaud her for that, but the ways in which she did it did not flow well with the story and instead of being well integrated, they read as commercial-like PSAs in the middle of a skit.
236pp
Published: January 1996
Formed from the merger of the British colony of the Gold Coast and the Togoland trust territory, Ghana in 1957 became the first sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa to gain its independence. Ghana's economy has been strengthened by a quarter century of relatively sound management, a competitive business environment, and sustained reductions in poverty levels.
Location: Western Africa, bordering the Gulf of Guinea, between Cote d'Ivoire and Togo Size: 238,533 sq km; slightly smaller than Oregon Population: 24,652,402 Ethnic groups: Akan 47.5%, Mole-Dagbon 16.6%, Ewe 13.9%, Ga-Dangme 7.4%, Gurma 5.7%, Guan 3.7%, Grusi 2.5%, Mande-Busanga 1.1%, other 1.6% Languages: Asante 14.8%, Ewe 12.7%, Fante 9.9%, Boron (Brong) 4.6%, Dagomba 4.3%, Dangme 4.3%, Dagarte (Dagaba) 3.7%, Akyem 3.4%, Ga 3.4%, Akuapem 2.9%, other (includes English (official)) 36.1%
Is there a limit on the amount of love a parent can have for their child? If you have more than one child, is it possible to have loved your other children so much that you have nothing left for the others? Or is it just possible for life to beat you down so much so that you have nothing left to give your children except a place to stay, food to eat and a determination to survive?
I can't find fault with Hattie Shepherd. Giving birth to your first children at the age of 19 in a new city can be overwhelming. To find yourself giving birth years later at the age of 46 is surprising. Then to turn around at 74 and find yourself mothering your grandchildren, is not an easy road. But how do you explain that to your children who only see you as cold and uncaring?
"Somebody always wants something from me," she said in a near whisper. "They're eating me alive."
As you read, you'll be caught up in the lives of Lloyd, the musician; Six, the wonder boy preacher; the high strung and insecure Alice, who pretends her brother Billups needs her when, in reality, she's the one that desperately needs him; Bell, who seeks revenge against Hattie when all she really wants is to know the secret joy her mother found once upon a time; and countless others. Mathis dedicates chapters to the various offspring, but their interactions as children aren't explored as much as they are as adults. She wants you to see who they've become as a result of living in the house.
I love the set up of the book. It feels like a compilation of short stories that are loosely tied together, with the only common thread being that Hattie and August have given birth to them. With the exception of Alice and Billups, we see very little interaction among the siblings once they leave home. It's as if Hattie's lack of love spread to them and there's nothing that bonds any of them together.
Part of the great migration to the north, I wonder how much of Hattie's coldness is a reflection of her surroundings. While her husband, August, longs for the Georgia he remembers, minus Jim Crow, Hattie refuses to even speak its name. Still, you have to wonder if August lamenting over leaving the south is valid. Would Hattie have been different, would the children have had different lives, had they been surrounded by paper shell pecans, sweet gum trees, gigantic peaches and neighbors whose names they could recite years later?
256pp
Published: December 2012 Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.
Would it take your mother's disappearance for you to realize how little you knew of her?
"Do you remember asking me a while ago to tell you something that only I knew about Mom? I told you I didn't know Mom. All I knew was that Mom was missing. It's the same now. I especially don't know where her strength came from." It's not until your wife goes missing that you even see her as your counterpart.
"Before you lost sight of your wife on the Seoul Station subway platform, she was merely your children's mother to you."
"Before she went missing, you spent your days without thinking about her. When you did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore her. Habit can be a frightening thing. You spoke politely with others, but your words turned sullen toward your wife. Sometimes you even cursed at her. You acted as if it had been decreed that you couldn't speak politely to your wife. That's what you did." When 69 year old Park So-nyo goes missing, her husband and her children come to understand how little they knew of her and how much they took her for granted for so long. Born into poverty, she married a man that she didn't know, or initially love, yet raised five children to become productive members of society. Yet, like many adult children, she became an afterthought as they became successful, seen as an annoyance by some.
Still, their successes were all built firmly on the foundation that she set for them. The eldest son for whom she saved and sacrificed to send to school; a younger daughter that was sent off to live with that same son to receive an even better education; the daughter who tries to manage being both a pharmacist and a mother to three, while wondering how Mom managed to raise five children and make it seem so easy and natural.
"Since she went missing, I often think: Was I a good daughter? Could I do the kind of things for my kids she did for me? I know one thing. I can't do it like she did. Even if I wanted to. When I'm feeding my kids, I often feel annoyed, burdened, as if they're holding on to my ankles. I love my kids, and I am moved - wondering, did I really give birth to them? But I can't give them my entire life like Mom did. Depending on the situation, I act as if I would give them my eyes if they need them, but I'm not Mom." Over the course of this short read, each member of the family reflects on the role Mom played in his/her life, realizing that not once did they see as anything other than their mother. And as mothers sometimes do, she downplayed any problems she had the few times that anyone asked. Ultimately, it's the inability to express her pain (and her family's willingness to overlook it) that leads to the disappearance of Park.
"So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams and, all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely.
Jinx has wrapped herself in a coat of guilt and shame since her mother's passing. Though she was only a teenager when it happened, Jinx has shouldered the blame for what took place in their house years ago. The heavy burden on her heart has caused her to push her husband and young son away. Believing that she deserves nothing, she lives in a world of solitude among the dead. And then Lemon appears on her doorstep.
Initially, it's unclear why Lemon is there and that causes the story to drag just a little. He offers no explanation, yet Jinx still welcomes him in. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that he's there to ease her load and, at the same time, unburden himself. Knowing that she has blamed herself for that tragic night, he's come to absolve her.
The adult Lemon was around to witness the deterioration of the relationship between Jinx and her mother. Their once close relationship is fractured when Joy begins to date Berris. As Berris' closest friend, Lemon is well aware of his friend's insecurities, but that doesn't stop him from baiting him occasionally. In fact, rather than calling them friends, I'd say they were frenemies. Berris' badmouthing has gotten him banned from Lemon's house and Lemon covets Berris' most prized possession, Joy.
Jealousy rears its ugly head repeatedly as Jinx begins to feel pushed aside by her mother in favor of Berris. Berris' jealousy knows no bounds and he delivers brutal blows to say with his fists what he can't say with words. Lemon's jealousy sets in motion a chain of events that ultimately lead to the demise of the woman all three love.
As I stated before, this book started off slow with a tendency to drag. I was tempted to put it down, but it picked up dramatically after a few chapters. Once it got good, I was so drawn in that I stayed up late, and would have continued reading until I finished if I hadn't had to work the next day. It was all I could do to make it to lunch so I could find out what happened next. Edwards' style is reminiscent of Zadie Smith, a beloved author by most, but one I've never been able to really get into. However, I thoroughly enjoyed A Cupboard Full of Coats.
Now let's talk about the cover. In the book, whenever Joy and Berris fight, he always buys her a gorgeous coat, hence, she ends up with a cupboard full of coats. So, in my opinion, a cover showing said coats would have been gorgeous, but I can live with the current cover. The characters are originally from, or descendants of, Montserrat, a Caribbean island. Many of the scenes are centered around food, the cooking and eating of it. So to me, the cover shows the ingredients needed to make sorrel, a Caribbean drink, which Lemon does.
@reads4pleasure I feel like stories about people of color internationally always have fruit and flowers on the cover.
— Tayari Jones (@tayari) August 31, 2012
Not everyone agrees, but I'll let you read the book and form your own opinion. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on Caribbean lit covers? Have you noticed an overabundance of fruit and flowers where their covers are concerned?
272pp
Published: July 2012 Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher as part of TLC Book Tours, opinions are my own.
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.
In this sometimes predictable and, at other times, jawdropping novel, Nakia Laushaul takes readers on an emotional rollercoaster with Running from Solace. This is one of those books I stumbled upon on Amazon one day. It's biggest selling factors were the price ($ 2.99) and the recommendation based on another book I'd purchased, which I can't remember now. For $ 2.99, I certainly got my money's worth.
As a social worker, Naomi has seen her fair share of endangered children. Growing up in less than desirable circumstances, Naomi understands what it's like to have a drug addicted mother and watch numerous men parade in and out of your house. And while others may have grown a thick skin and blocked out the past, Naomi is still haunted by her childhood. It's her past that allows her to connect with the kids she sees daily. That past also keeps her from connecting to her husband.
When Naomi is called to remove a trio of children from their mother, she makes a connection with one of them, Xavier, and promises to be there for him and his siblings. Her personal life proves to be a distraction, as she watches her churchgoing husband being seduced by the words and actions of a new female preacher, and she lets Xavier, his siblings and everyone around her down. But Naomi is a survivor and eventually, with the help of a therapist and the love of her husband, she becomes the person she was always meant to be.
Laushaul does a good job of keeping readers in suspense. Normally I can figure out the ending of a book before I get to it, but I was pleasantly surprised this time around. It's easy to tell that the subjects approached in Running from Solace are near to the author's heart and she's determined to make you care just as much about her characters and their stories as she does.
Sudha and Anju aren't sisters by blood, yet in the true sense of the word, they're sisters and more. Raised in the same house by their widowed mothers, the girls grow up believing that they're cousins. To say that they cannot live without each other is an understatement and, by their actions, often prove that they love each other more than they love themselves.
