Don’t Cry For Me By Daniel Black (A Book Review)

Jacob Swinton’s life is coming to a close. He is met with a sense of urgency to write to his son Isaac. He shares his life’s story through a series of letters. The letters; part revelation, part remorse, detail Jacob’s upbringing, his marriage, his divorce, and his beliefs on manhood, etc.

Jacob’s view on life and manhood is challenged when his son Isaac is born. Isaac, an expressive child bubbling over with feelings, did not enter the world in typical male fashion. This serves as the catalyst for the complexities that make up he and his father’s relationship.

Jacob’s letters shed light into the intergenerational divide of societal norms that is so deep between father and son. Although vestiges of growth is apparent in the letters, it struggles against his innate inability to have a demonstrative love towards his son. He is a flawed man ridden with inner conflict that is true to men of a particular generation. 

What I appreciated most about Don’t Cry For Me is the authenticity. It shed light on the less than ideal reality of some family relationships.

*****Some insightful and poignant quotes from the book:

November 27th, 2003 chapter
“If you still don’t understand why I’m telling you all this, just keep reading. A man’s history is all he has. It says more than his mouth ever will. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. ” ~Jacob

November 28th, 2003 chapter
“I stood there wondering how this had happened to me, thinking of all the things I’d do differently  if I could live again. It was useless thinking,  if course. Nothing was about to change. Not for me. There are no do-overs in this life. Either you get it right or wish you had.”~ Jacob

December 24th, 2003 chapter
I always called you boy. When a father calls a boy son, he’s declaring his pride in him. I didn’t feel this way about you, even when you got grown.~Jacob

January 17th, 2004 chapter
The more I read, the more I saw myself. Knowledge is a funny thing, Isaac. It informs by exposing. It shows you precisely how much you don’t know.~Jacob

January 26th, 2003 chapter
Silence isn’t always quiet though. It troubles a man’s soul, forcing him to admit what he’d rather forget.~ Jacob

February 5th, 2004 chapter
Reading taught me that a man’s own life is his own responsibility, his own creation. Blaming others is a waste of time. No one can make you happy if you’re determined to be miserable.

All I wanted was to look you in the face and tell you I’m sorry. I had wounded you beyond my capacity to heal you.

Love doesn’t make us perfect; it makes us, want to be. By the time you discover this, your imperfections have done their damage.

February 8th, 2004 chapter
A man’s son is his truth unadorned. When he can look at him and be proud, his fatherhood is complete.

February 10th, 2004
You must learn to uproot unwanted seeds without destroying the entire harvest.

Rating 10/10

I Am Debra Lee: a Memoir By Debra Lee (A Book Review)

Debra Lee sends the following message in the beginning of her memoir: “To all the shy girls, the introverts. Believe in yourself, work hard, use your voice, and you can be anything you want to be.” As a shy young girl herself, she started on a straight trajectory to college and then law school. The strong love for Black culture that she held fiercely throughout her young life came full circle when she started her tenure at BET.

Starting as general counsel and ending as CEO, she was a trailblazer who walked through the murky and sharky waters of office politics to carve out her own path. A path carved by fortitude and forged by fire that resulted in her becoming a force to be reckoned with in the business. She developed her skills by absorbing, observing, and working tirelessly in the trenches.

As a female executive among many male colleagues, she was oftentimes subjected to the patriarchal structure that sought to silence her contributions and ideas. However, she masterfully adjusted her sail and forged ahead with creative ways to use her voice. She stated: “That’s one of the many challenges of being a woman in the workplace, you always have a double consciousness.”

She used everything she experienced, good and bad, to build and cement her legacy. Debra Lee left a great blueprint to navigate through both career and life.

Debra Lee on perseverance: “I persevered not by becoming someone else but by embracing who I was (plus practice, practice, practice). 

Debra Lee on leadership: “Stepping into your flaws and all is the only way to lead.” 

Debra Lee on self-acceptance: “Whatever you do, own it. Because the consequences-good or bad- are yours and yours alone. 

Debra Lee on self-awareness: “There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be the center of attention.” 

This was an insightful read. It was written in a straightforward way that provided great advice on how to show up in the workplace and the world at large. I liked how she demonstrated with grace an alternative way to show up in the workplace that may also garner success and grant one’s greatest desires.

She also demonstrated how a shy person can walk in their purpose by simply embracing all that they are, standing firm, and forging ahead despite insecurities. She worked and led in that perspective, and it unlocked so much for her. I am happy that she shared her story with us.

Rating 10/10

Will by Will Smith (A Book Review)

This was an interesting read. Will laid his life out as honest as he could. He bared his inner struggles with what he deemed as cowardice early in his life; a trait that he appeared to carry and battle with throughout his life.

He spoke of how inadequacies in his early life fueled his personal recipe for success. He was able to carve a successful path for himself and his family at least it appeared so externally. He confessed that the success did not always transfer internally within his family.

I enjoyed reading this memoir. It had a few gems as takeaways sprinkled throughout the book. One downside was that in certain instances the book came across as preachy. I would have liked for it to remain matter of fact and/or recounting solely on his experience in those instances.

It felt as if he was giving a lecture to his readers at times instead of trusting his readers enough to get it.

Impactful quote:
Living is the journey from not knowing to knowing. From not understanding to understanding. From confusion to clarity.

Rating 8/10

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (A Book Review)

Daunis Fontaine feels like an outcast amongst her Native American community due to her mixed heritage and extremely pale skin.

She’s 18 and about to start her life’s journey by way of college. She meets an attractive young man named Jaime, who is a player on her brother Levi’s hockey team.  Two tragedies occur within her inner circle of family and friends that changes her path. She initially puts college on hold to face these personal setbacks in her life. Both tragedies brings Daunis  into an FBI investigation.

Jaime Johnson, a mysterious teenager who blows into town with his Uncle Ron, is not who he appears to be. He takes center stage in Daunis’ orbit. It’s a laborious yet delicate investigation for Daunis. She discovers so much hidden information in the investigation. This journey results in shocking discoveries that Daunis must face head on.

This book moved at an extremely slow pace for me. It did nothing to hold my interest. There were a lot of details in the book that I had difficulty understanding, like the Native American expressions. As a result I found myself lost when I came up on those in the book. This was especially disappointing because I knew the importance of that and was eager to learn.

I really wanted to connect to this story but was unable to. I do however, respect the tireless labor of love ( it took ten years) this author put in to tell this story and represent her culture. That is a huge feat and is to be appreciated. Unfortunately, it didn’t connect for me.

Rating: 6/10

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough (A Book Review)

Louise is a single mother of a young son. She lives a self-proclaimed non-eventful life. One night she goes to a local pub and meets a handsome stranger, who she flirts with to the point of a kiss. The stranger admits he’s married and they go their separate ways. When she goes to work the next morning, she discovers that the stranger, is her new boss, David. She later runs into his wife Adele. They strike up a conversation and a friendship. Adele forces Louise to keep their friendship a secret from David. As time goes on, Louise and David act on their attraction with one another and enters into an affair. Louise is caught in the middle of the husband and wife’s sadistic marriage.

I was excited to read this book. However, it became exhausting after awhile. It was very lengthy, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The story just felt like it dragged through a huge portion of the book. It took beyond the halfway mark for the mystery to unfold. The ending was a twister that I didn’t see coming; which I did enjoy. I only wished that I wasn’t dragged along for this long ride to get to the mystery of it all.

My Rating 7/10

His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie (A Book Review)

Afi is a young Ghanaian girl who marries Elikem in a marriage arranged by his family, the wealthy Ganyos. Afi, her mother, Elikem, and his family are all in agreement with the arrangement, but for very different reasons. Afi feels an obligation to restore her mother’s status in society after her father’s death contributed to their lowered status within their community and family. Afino, Afi’s mother, has agreed to this arranged marriage because she feels an obligation to the Ganyo family due to the matriarch of the Ganyo family helping her and her daughter financially in many ways after the death of her husband. Elikem Ganyo agrees to this marital arrangement because of the obligation he feels not to go against his mother and family’s wishes in public. The Ganyo family arranged this entire marriage because of their disapproval of the relationship Elikem has with a Liberian woman named, Muna. She is the mother of his young daughter, Ivy and by their accounts does not respect their traditions or their family.

After Afi marries Elikem in a traditional Ghanaian ceremony, in which he did not attend, their life as a married couple begins. Afi starts to see the comfort and status symbols of what it is like to live as a wealthy young wife. However, certain things become very apparent within her marriage to Elikem. Reality comes into focus when she makes her desires for an ordinance marriage known to Elikem. She has tough decisions to make that will carry a lot of weight no matter what she chooses.

I loved seeing different things unfold within the story. The cultural aspect of the story was very intriguing to read. As a person from another country whose culture is very different from that of the characters, I had to allow myself to sit in that reality and feel the weight of all the challenges several of the characters faced. It was a great experience reading this. It forced me to view several events within the story through a different cultural lens. I recommend reading this rich and well written account of a young woman’s decision of what she will accept and embrace in her life.

Rating: 8/10

The Antagonist by Lynn Coady (A Book Review)

Gordan Rankin Jr., affectionately known as Rank, is battling what he considers a betrayal from his friend, Adam. For most of his life, Rank has been inaccurately judged and misunderstood. His life was dictated by others since he was a kid. Large in stature at a young age, he was expected to be an enforcer against the young men that would be a nuisance at his father’s ice cream shop. An unfortunate incident happened after he addressed a situation between his father and one of the young men. This is the beginning of the way others would perceive him over the course of his life. He has a complicated relationship with his dad, Gord. He had a brief stint in a juvenile detention center. While there, he connects with Owen Findley, his social worker, who also becomes his hockey coach. Findley takes time with him and helps him navigate through the troubled waters of guilt over the incident and his teenage angst. Findley arranges for Rank to be released early. Rank goes on to start a semblance of a normal life. He enters college through a hockey scholarship. He meets a few guys, Kyle, Wade, and Adam who he hangs out with.

They settled into a shallow form of familiarity. They develop a tolerance for each other that could be disguised as friendship. Because of this, feelings of inner turmoil of the past may have been uttered by Rank and received by Adam under the guise of understanding. One fateful night, while all of them hung out at a club where Rank worked , things escalated between a bouncer and a patron. The bouncer winds up dead accidentally. This accidental death appears to be the catalyst to cement Adam’s perception of Rank. The guys go on with their lives. Rank becomes a teacher and soccer coach. Adam becomes a writer. Years later, Rank moves back home with his father, to take care of him after he takes a fall. While back home he runs into Kyle, who he hadn’t seen in years. They catch up and Kyle tells him Adam is a writer now. After they part ways, Rank looks Adam up and starts reading his book. He discovers the book is loosely based on his life. Rank is angry that Adam didn’t care enough to ask him about things in his life. Adam just took it upon himself to write about Rank through his own misconceptions about him. Rank is so livid, he starts “writing his own book” by emailing Adam. He wanted him to know that he had no right to speak on his life, and “get it wrong”. In his mind, he couldn’t let Adam’s version of him stand in the universe without him letting people know who he truly is.

It was a good book but at times it was tough to read because it jumped around a lot. Some of it was understood, like when Rank emailed Adam about how he felt. He was erratic, but his anger was palpable. The audacity of Adam not to be a true friend to Rank and use his vulnerability to be the subject of his work is a bit of a conundrum. I could see both sides. Writers do this all the time. They either based their work on a version of some events; whether it be from their personal lives or that of others. Write what you know, right? It makes the story more authentic and tangible for the reader. But on the other side of that, if things are the perception of the author’s view of a situation, is it such a bad thing? It presents a viewpoint that can help or hurt the reader, depending on what experiences the reader has within them while reading the material. Then one can also argue, there are always two sides to a story, as is the case of Rank and Adam. Adam condemned Rank without know fully who he was. He sat on the fringes of Rank’s life and judged it unfairly. Rank spent his life running from people’s misconceptions of him and fighting to be his authentic self, struggling the entire way. It was exhausting for him. So when he thought he got a reprieve by fostering a friendship and possibly finding an understanding of who he truly was through a friend, it was nice for him. But years later, when he discovered it was all a façade, it naturally angered him. I do feel like he finally broke free from it all while he channeled his anger in writing Adam about his feelings. I got that sense at the end of the book.

Rating: 6/10