Holler, Child by Latoya Watkins (A Book Review)

Eleven powerfully rich stories are the building blocks that compile this masterpiece.

In “Cutting Horse”, a story set against the backdrop of the recent police killings towards black citizens, introduces us to a former drug dealer/ horse breeder who gave up life as he knew it for his college educated wife. Although, he got a piece of the American dream for himself and his family as a homeowner in a HOA community, his free spirit is chained and stifled. When a horse breaks loose and stumbles onto his property, he and the horse connect, and he is reminded of the inner freedom he tucked away so long ago.

Highlighted quote: “Black boys need two things, a man to help form them and something they could look away to.”

In “Sweat”, a woman’s resentment of her husband’s existence grew to epic proportions one evening.

Highlighted quote: “He always choosing the wrong damn thing”.

In “Everything’s Fine”, a young pastor openly expresses his displeasure in his wife’s downward spiral. He ends his diatribe of disappointment in her by entertaining thoughts of a separation. She in turn blames him for ruining her life. She blames her biological daughter for her sudden hate of children. All this juxtaposed with the outward display of her seemingly gracious service of being a foster mother. She silently seeks retribution in the most sinister way.

Highlighted quote: “God make folks just the way he want them.”

Highlighted quote: “Makeup couldn’t cover the ruin of her life.”

This collection of stories blew me away. I often had to sit in a reflective state after reading. Judgement is turned inside out as the characters present the depths of their reality. Watkins knows how to get to the heart of a matter and arrest the reader and make us invested in what is being shared.

Watkins is a fearless writer who reached down in the crevices of the human experience to extract choices, pain, regret, sorrow, and trauma and fine-tuned it to create literary gold.

I am in awe of her stories and looking forward to reading more from her. She is a force to be reckoned with in the literary world for sure. Now, I must back track and check out her debut novel, Perish.

Rating: 10/10

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (A Book Review)

Janie Crawford was a young girl born with a freedom in her spirit. That freedom was stifled by her grandmother”s  fear for her future.  Janie’s grandmother knew she was all she had in her world, and wanted to ensure security for Janie when she was no longer here.

Janie fought against  it initially. Though she didn’t lean into it, she did resign herself to her grandmother’s suggestion that she marry an elder gentleman named Logan Killicks. Janie settled into her marriage with Logan. Janie’s  restlessness bubbling beneath the surface, created conflict almost immediately. The union appeared shaky from the onset.

When Joe Starks passes through town, Janie takes her chance to escape from what she perceives as a life of gloom. Joe Starks was distinguished and self assured, a man going places. They married and hopped on a train to a town in Florida where he became the mayor. Janie became a woman expected to stifle her own ideas. As the mayor’s  wife, she was not allowed to mingle too closely with the common townsfolk.

Once Joe Starks is no longer in her world, she emerges as freedom personified. She looses her hair and takes to wearing overalls, and embraces her innate carefree spirit.

A young and carefree man named Tea Cake crosses Janie’s path. From the  beginning of their encounter, Tea Cake was Janie’s home. Wild, beautiful, and free best describes their love and union.They celebrate each other with joyful abandon. Janie is encouraged to come forth fully as herself,  which was discouraged prior to Teacake’s presence in her life.

A storm appears in their town and changes things;  bringing with it loss and uncertainty. It changes the course of Janie’s life profusely. Janie’s journey of walking in the freedom she always had within was  fascinating to experience as a reader. I read this book years ago as a high school student and loved it. It was a joy to read it all these years later as an adult. The story is part cautionary tale, part deliberate allowance. Their Eyes Were Watching God is truly a classic work art .

** Impactful Words From The Book**

It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there.

Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”

Rating 10/10

Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor (A Book Review)

Jay Gatsby, an alluring young man with promise, was shot to death at his West Egg, NY home. For all intents and purposes, this is a clear cut case of murder-suicide between local mechanic George Wilson and Jay Gatsby.

Not everyone believes this solid and neatly crafted conclusion to this unfortunate ordeal. Enter Detective Frank Charles, who is called in to find out what really happened. Detective Charles is relentless and is determined to do just that once he finds a diamond hairpin near the murder scene.

During his investigation, three women become persons of interest. Daisy Buchanan, a woman from Gatsby’s past who is currently married to Tom Buchanan, a philandering millionaire. Jordan Baker, an excellent golf player who plays on the national circuit, is Daisy”s best friend and knows Gatsby from earlier years as well. Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, passionate about women rights, whose sister Myrtle Wilson, is in an abusive marriage, is also a familiar acquaintance of Gatsby.

All three women are entangled in an intricate web of deception and obsession, carefully orchestrated by Gatsby himself. Will Detective Charles uncover the truth of who really led Gatsby to his demise?

A brilliant remix on the classic, The Great Gatsby, Beautiful Little Fools, offers a strongly crafted possibility of what happened to J. Gatsby. It is told from the perspectives of the women in Gatsby’s world.

I absolutely loved the reworking of The Great Gatsby. In Beautiful Little Fools, Cantor with much care and respect for the original story, beautifully offered a nuanced retelling of the timeless classic. It brought into focus the women of the Great Gatsby in an interesting way. I thoroughly enjoyed every drop.

Rating 9/10

The Two Lives of Sara by Catherine Adel West (A Book Review)

Sara King, an expectant mother, appears in Memphis under the cloak of hidden truths to start life anew. She arrives at a boarding house ran by a fiesty but warm matriarch named Mama Sugar. Shortly after Sara arrives, she gives birth to a son she names Lebanon.

They’re embraced as family by Mama Sugar, her husband Mr. Vanellys, their grandson William, the boarders and some of the people in community. Sara’s hard exterior starts to soften. It all but vanishes when she starts a romance with William’s teacher, Jonas.

Sara’s embraces her newfound joy. But when the past collides with the present, it brings with it the possibility of forever altering the future for Sara and the people in her life both now and in the future.

There were so many profound moments in this story. The writing was impeccable and poignant. This story will stay with me always. Some of the quotes that both moved me and gave me pause were as follows:

“Well, what’s done is done but I found out when people go through hard places, they don’t need tough’ an they don’t need coddling. They need mercy.” ~Mr. Vanellys

“Friendships are strange evolving collections of laughter and fights and secrets, this rarified brew of humanity you choose to share with another person. And I want that again. To feel close to someone. To share with someone.” ~Sara

“So if you struggle or see someone struggling, seek understanding. You don’t know the wars people fight on the inside. No one save the Lord knows about those inside battles.” ~ Sara’s mother.

“No one likes to own the harm they did to others, it makes them hurt in a forever kind of way.” ~ Sara

“Everything we go through reshapes us, makes us new.”~ Cora

Rating: 10/10

So We Can Glow by Leesa Cross-Smith (A Book Review)

This is a great collection of stories covering the nuances and idiosyncrasies of womanhood. It explores their emotions, loves, memories, and reasons of why some women choose some things that govern their lives. Below are some of the stories that I liked most.

We Moons: I loved the sheer honesty of womanhood. It was beautifully written. It reached deeply into intricate parts of being a woman.

Pink Bubblegum and Flowers: Is about the awareness of the harshness of life’s circumstances layered right beneath the innocence of youth. The sweet smell of bubblegum and flowers provided a calming balm for the less than ideal situation at hand. It cemented the mutual love in the midst of chaos.

Knock Out The Heart So We Can Glow: This story represented the deep longing of a woman wanting love in her very specific way.

Some lines that were poignant were: “She was drawn to the dusty items no one else seemed to love.”

“She asked her husband if he remembered when she was eating pineapple and started to cry because she was alive and some people weren’t. Reminded him of that morning after church when her hair was baptism-wet. How she sat at the kitchen table, born again, drowning in the sunlight.”

“Her husband was a good man and she loved him, but he didn’t know how to be special, how to glow. She said it was pretty simple and she’d teach him. There was no big secret. You just had to let the things in your heart get real dark first.”

Two Cherries Under A Lavender Moon: This was about the sweetness of fantasy love and the heady, fast, and swelling feeling of which that love provides.

Boy Smoke: This story was about a wife discovering her husband’s affair and kicking him out of the house, while his students were driving pass their home. Some memorable lines from this story were: “Her face looks like a country song: smudged black eyeliner, red wine teeth.” “He’s Max and I’m Nina,” Coach’s wife says, snapping to normal in the way that only women can when they’re holding up the Earth. Nina says thanks to us and smokes at the front of the car, standing there like a crownless queen in streetlamp light.”

Dandelion Light: This is a sweet account of acquaintances slow dancing towards reconnection.

I absolutely loved the lyrical and poetic flow of how these stories were written. It captured the essence of each subject of each story. It was a beautiful collection of stories. This is the second body of work I read from this author and it was another great reading experience.

Rating: 9/10

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (A Book Review)

Belle de Costa Greene is a formidable collector in the art world. As the personal librarian to Mr. J.P. Morgan, she is entrusted to secure art for one of the most powerful financiers in America. However, there is more to Belle than meets the eye. She is not all she appears to be.

Belle was born Belle Marion Greener, the daughter of a prominent Black professor and civil rights activist. With growing racial tensions developing in the nation, her mother made a fateful decision that the entire family was to pass for white. This destroyed the family as Belle knew it. Belle’s father leaves the family because he did not agree with his wife’s decision. He continued to live the rest of his days as a Black man, while Belle, her mother, and her siblings passes for white.

Belle hides in plain sight by being somewhat of a socialite while acquiring art for Mr. Morgan. While researching and mingling in social circles to acquire art for the library, she is unapologetic in her approach. She accepts the advances of a fellow art enthusiast, Bernard Berenson. Berenson is in an unconventional marriage with his wife, and due to his accepted dalliances outside of his marriage, he and Belle engage in an affair. She falls in love with him. However, as time moves forward, Belle discovers many things that alters her view of him in a tainted way. She reluctantly accepts the truth and is forever changed in matters of the heart.

When Mr. Morgan dies, Belle briefly struggles to see her purpose in the world. The family chooses to keep her on as the personal librarian for the library. She continues building on Mr. Morgan’s legacy by acquiring art for the library. She uses the skill she honed in her profession to also govern other areas of her life and lives her life on her own terms. The story flowed at a natural pace, which kept me interested. I enjoyed the various layers unfolding in Belle’s life. The authors fleshed Belle out nicely.

Rating 7/10

The Power of A Good Story

The year 2020 is nearing a close. It has been a very interesting and intense year. With the ever present inundation of constant bad news, I’d sucumbed to a dull numbing of sorts. To break out of this crazy mess I found myself in, I intentionally sought out books that forced me to feel and be present. It felt very freeing to be so invested in these characters and what they had going on. The gift of these authors’ voices snapped me out of the abyss of 2020. The power of a good story is a beautiful and meaningful thing. I’m most grateful for that.

As a reader, are you a book snob?

What are your thoughts on listening to audiobooks? Do you turn your nose up at it? Or do you embrace it? I have a confession to make. I used to be a book snob. I felt like listening to an audiobook did not constitute as reading. I was converted years ago after joining a book club. I cannot remember the book selection where I first started listening to an audiobook. I do remember some books not being readily available in the written format when I needed them to be. On several occasions, when I tried to check out a book at my local library, it was already checked out. To avoid waiting, I swallowed my pride and downloaded the audiobook to “get started”. I was immediately hooked. I loved being able to get immersed in the stories immediately. Another bonus was being able to wash dishes, wash my car or do numerous other things where it would have been difficult to do so with a physical book.

With that said, I still prefer a physical book. It’s a beautiful feeling to sit in solitude reading with either a cup of tea, glass of wine, or just the book itself. The feel of the book or sometimes even the smell is amazing. But reading in any form, is always a magical thing. And I’ll take it any way I can.

Book Overload

I did it again. I grabbed more books to read while already reading one. I keep telling myself that the next time I won’t check out or purchase another book until I finish reading the current one. It did not work again this time. Once I started reading another book blurb, I was like a kid in a candy store. I kept grabbing and now I have five books on standby. But they all looked so good. It’s a wild ride but oh so much fun. Do any of you experience this? Leave a comment.

Are You A Reader?

Do you like to read? If you do, what kind of a reader are you? Are you a surface reader? You know, the kind of reader that reads enough to get by. Or do you absolutely hate reading? Yes, I actually asked this preposterous question. For a book lover like me that statement is an awful thing to hear. Who hates reading? The horror!!!!

Yeah, I got over the inital shock of hearing that statement, but I have to admit I was taken aback, seriously. Different strokes for different folks. But I have seen the sweetest reversal of this. Years ago, I volunteered with a literacy agency. Some of the most beautiful testimonies were the ones where some adults who could not previously read became avid readers once they learned how to. Their entire world opened up with endless possibilities. They traveled, learned new skills, and walked into wonderful seasons in their lives. They accomplished all of those things by reading books.

All of us have things that we don’t like. For me it’s coffee. I know coffee drinkers who need it to start their day have the same sentiments about me that I had about non-readers (The horror!!!). Lol. But I actually gave coffee a try several times. I could take it or leave it. But I’m not opposed to drinking it occasionally nowadays. I encourage non-readers to step into the reading waters slowly. Just try it. Speak with a person who absolutely loves to read. Let them know your interests and ask them for a good book recommendation based on your interests. Test the waters. That’s all.