A very good and heartbreaking book to start the year with. Lemn Sissay’s powerful memoir My Name Is Why details his time in British foster care and shows the casual cruelty of the authoritarian system he was placed in. He had to fight the government for thirty years to get access to his records and he uses the paper trail of comments by his social worker, reports on his progress, and other pieces of the puzzle to show the gaps in the record and how […]
God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no water but the fire next time.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
I’d been looking forward to reading this since I (finally) started reading Baldwin last year. When this became available at the library at the start of Black History Month it seemed serendipitous. That, unfortunately, is where the joy and happy coincidences ended. I’ve wanted to read this since I read Between the World and Me a few years ago. The Fire Next Time served as inspiration to Coates, at least in the format of crafting a letter to a child, Baldwin’s nephew and Coates’ son. […]
It’s Never Been Fair
The Color of Law- A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
After reading A Promised Land and feeling upbeat, I started The Color of Law because we don’t deserve happiness in 2021. The Color of Law, subtitled A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, sets out to prove, and I think very effectively, that segregation was and is the result of government policy. More simply, the policies are de jure not de facto. It was not the actions of people or institutions acting with prejudice but instead the laws passed, from the national to […]
A terrific middle-grade novel about systemic racism, colorism, and…fencing.
Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes
I’m a huge Jewell Parker Rhodes fan, and in middle-grade literature, she has no equal. She is uncanny at tackling major systemic issues that are not only age-appropriate but widely appealing, and also interesting to read about. I was excited to hear she had a new book out, and I quickly read it, as well. In Black Brother, Black Brother we meet Donte and Trey, two biracial brothers in an integrated family. Their dad is White, their mom is Black. Trey looks like their father, […]