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Book Review: ‘Red at the Bone’ by Jacqueline Woodson

…she had to take slow breaths to calm herself. She felt red at the bone―like there was something inside of her undone and bleeding.

“Red at the Bone” by Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of three generations of two families united by an unexpected pregnancy. The poetic flow distracts the reader from the disorganization of each characters’ stories, but it’s an effortless read that creates a memorable world between the characters and their situations.

The story opens up to Melody, on her sixteenth birthday, wearing her mother’s dress at her party. Her mother, Iris, never wore it because, at that tender age, she and her boyfriend Aubrey discover they will be having baby Melody. The pages go through the growing pains of their parents—Iris’ Spelhouse-coupled mother and father and Aubrey’s single mother—stretching beyond their limits to accept the baby. Then we see how Iris and Aubrey grow apart with Aubrey raising Melody and Iris heading off to college to start over. Iris and Aubrey have to decide on how they want to live their lives after having Melody and maturing into adulthood.

The author does a great job of chopping up the story in digestible pieces with short chapters and very short paragraphs but simultaneously making the character’s mark known without starting with his/her name. The story grows yet it picks up in various places with Iris, for example, in college then the next succeeding chapter can be her back in time dealing with her pregnancy or even before Melody.

It’s a nice and succinct read that incorporates black culture like Iris’ parents graduating from Spelman College and Morehouse College and history with her great-grandmother surviving the Tulsa race massacre. The story takes place in the not-so-distant past in 2001 New York City. Overall, the book covers a lot of ground chronicling a family that comes together for a child.

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Book Review: ‘A Song For You’ by Robyn Crawford


A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“A Song For You” by Robyn Crawford is an honest memoir about the friend of pop superstar Whitney Houston who felt like she had to be quiet in the past out of respect and privacy, but she decides her side of the story is valuable.

Robyn tells her story. There has been backlash about Robyn, who became a backdropped friend of Whitney, due to the media overemphasizing their alleged romantic ties to Whitney’s family publicly showing disdain for Robyn and her relationship with Whitney. With Whitney being gone now seven years, it may seem like poor taste that Robyn wrote a book on her friendship with Whitney, but it’s more about her years working in Whitney’s camp, trying to protect her friend at every corner, but also losing herself in someone else’s dream and rediscovering her purpose.

The story starts with how Robyn meets Whitney at summer camp in New Jersey. She says Whitney introduces herself as a singer and is already a teen model. They begin to hang out a lot as Whitney soon becomes discovered as a singer, signing with Clive Davis at Arista Records. Robyn, who’s a college basketball standout, is thrust into the music industry, but the rumors of her and Whitney having a romance start early. Years go by as Robyn stays beside Whitney to make sure her business interests are met, but at home her brother and mother are diagnosed with AIDS while her sister is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Robyn describes her interactions with Whitney’s husband Bobby Brown and other family members as unpleasant. Whitney’s marriage and drug addiction soon builds a rift between Whitney and Robyn, and in 1999 Robyn leaves Arista and the music industry behind. How Robyn’s life unfolds as she tries to find what she wants to do and what makes her happy as she approaches forty is intriguing.

Overall, as a memoir of a person who is known for being in the shadow of a superstar, Robyn does a great job of focusing the story on herself and describing what she had witnessed. This is not always the case for similar memoirs like Jessica Harris’ My Soul Looks Back, where that author gets lost in focusing on the famous people instead of herself. Robyn feeling comfortable to tell her side of the story is commendable, as she says she wasn’t interested for years until she felt Whitney’s legacy was marred by drug addiction and molestation rumors despite her extraordinary talent. Robyn’s book is more to support Whitney’s legacy while the author exhibits her right to tell her own story.

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Book Review: ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson


Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

“Just Mercy” is civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s memoir on his dedication to justice through his legal nonprofit, Equal Justice Initiative or EJI. He writes about the hardship of mostly representing low-income individuals of color in punishment-heavy states who have committed low-level crimes or were wrongly accused of high-level crimes and received death or lifelong imprisonment sentences. He dives into his story but simultaneously focuses on the stories of his clients that reflect the way a legal system will move forward on injustice because of corruption and the lack of resources.

Bryan is fresh out of Harvard Law School in 1983 when he decides to head to Alabama for an internship. There, he eventually meets Walter McMillian, who is sitting on death row for a murder of a young white female clerk. He swears he did not commit the murder and even has countless people to support his alibi. Bryan works feverishly to expose the mistakes that led to Walter’s arrest and imprisonment, and while doing this, his popularity among others suffering a similar fate as Walter is building. He establishes his nonprofit and hires more lawyers and legal staff to help him in numerous cases. Throughout the book, he tells the stories of the people behind bars he helps in several states, but Walter’s story is the one that resonates the entire time.

The book is packed with easily digestible information with weaving in true-life stories that almost seem unbelievable by the way the people had been thrown in prison and even given harsh sentences over crimes they had committed as a juvenile or had not committed at all. The EJI is against the death penalty because many of its clients had been wrongfully imprisoned or had severe mental illness issues that contributed to their crimes. It believes in the notion that many others in the same predicament have yet to see justice. The topic is controversial, but Bryan justifies his point with integrating the socioeconomic and medical backgrounds of his clients on top of the nation’s history that played a role in the oversized prison community and the state and federal players at work to pack prisons for profit. He also adds the voices of some people he’s met over the years who were connected to victims and how they seldom feel satisfied with the death penalty.

Overall, the book melds autobiography with criminal justice history well and lays out a system where failures have ruined lives.

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Book Review: ‘I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying’ by Bassey Ikpi


I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I share this with people often. I give them the suggestion: Allow yourself morning. I tell them it means that today may have been a rolling ball of anxiety and trembling, a face wet and slick with tears, but if you could get to morning, if you could allow yourself a new day to encourage a change, then you can get through it. Allow yourself morning.

“I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying” by Bassey Ikpi is a poetically written collection of essays reflecting the author’s yearslong struggle with mental illness. It has an attention-keeping rhythm as it tells the story of the author’s life from childhood in Nigeria to childhood in the United States to adulthood marred by mood swings that lead to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Bassey’s journey starts in Nigeria with her family, but one of her early memories of not being able to point out her father in a room of people marks more similar moments in the book where she feels something is off but can’t place what that is. One of the moments that sticks out in her American childhood is when she’s watching the Challenger blast off then explode in 1986 with the first teacher astronaut, a well-known national tragedy. She’s shaken and remains shaken that life could be snatched immediately and, she like many other children during that time, didn’t know why she was witnessing such a catastrophe. But she also knows it bothers her more than other children. Her adulthood in New York City has moments of not wanting to deal with people and not understanding why as if she makes a living as a traveling poet. She eventually receives a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. There’s a longtime hospital visit. There’s a setback then another. There’s always the desire to be “normal,” where mental illness doesn’t subtract her from living her life the way she wants to.

How she tells her personal story is striking as other people fade in the background but play a role simultaneously. It’s an issue I’ve noticed in memoirs, where writers tell their stories by mentioning major and minor characters but emphasize the pain those characters planted onto their lives. It becomes obvious that not only forgiveness hangs in the balance but also the realization that this person you mentioned doesn’t care or even remembers you or what they did to you. In my opinion, this takes away from memoirists’ stories, but Bassey makes sure to let the reader know she’s the main character, and she takes responsibility for the journey of understanding her brain chemistry and that she will sometimes have things under control and sometimes they’ll be out of her control and that’s just how it is for her.

This book is recommended for anyone interested in learning more about mental illness or living with mental illness. I listened to the audiobook with Bassey narrating her story. Overall, the story is relatable about how to conquer the obstacles that come with life and trying to be better at seeing them for what they are and reacting the way you should.

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Book Review: ‘The Water Dancer’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates


The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The summoning of a story, the water, and the object that made memory real as brick: that was Conduction. What I might do with such a power was not my immediate concern, so much making it through that day.”

Tales of magical realism and the harsh reality of the Atlantic slave trade becomes intertwined in “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It tells the story of a man trying to recall memories of his long-lost mother and escape enslavement on a dying tobacco plantation in Virginia owned by his white father. Coates’ first novel moves slowly through the overuse of prose but emphasizes the decision of freedom and what it exactly means to the different characters.

Hiram Walker’s mother had been sold off years ago by his white father, Howell Walker, and Hiram wants to remember his mother. Other slaves in the community, called the Tasked, tell him he has this power to conjure the memory of his mother through the water.

The story really starts with Hiram riding over a bridge with his white brother, Maynard, where they fall into the water. Maynard doesn’t survive, and everyone is surprised Hiram survived in the water so long. He returns to his father’s plantation, but eventually decides to run after he’s blamed for Maynard’s death. Hiram runs with the girl he loves, Sophia, but they’re captured.

After weeks of torture, he’s returned to Corinne Quinn, a wealthy white woman who was betrothed to Maynard. It turns out Corinne is a part of the Underground aka the famous Underground Railroad. Hiram joins the effort, always wondering of Sophia’s fate and of the purpose of his powers as he figures out what it means to be really free.

Hiram seeking freedom and expecting everyone Tasked wants his version of freedom, regardless of who’s left behind, is an interesting concept that plays throughout the novel. It focuses on the division of families and how it was a fact of life, and if someone ran away, they would have to create a new life in the North and research where their loved ones had ended up. Not knowing the fate of a loved one haunts Hiram with his mother, an underdeveloped character that keeps getting mentioned yet there’s no sense of who she is. It’s reminiscent of Cora in “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead because Cora’s mother had escaped but never sent for Cora, so there is anguish toward the mother; she’s not present, but the reader feels her impact.

This book made me appreciate Whitehead’s book more because the characters are better developed there. Hiram in Coates’ book tells the story in first-person narrative, but there are personality elements missing; he’s mostly stoic. He’s one of those narrators who falls behind other characters though we follow his actions.

The freedom definition theme saved the book. The magical realism gets muddled until the end where the history of African folklore related to water comes up. Though it’s brought up a lot, the water dancing leading to what you need isn’t believable enough, like the folklore isn’t fitted correctly to this story.

Length-wise, It’s a 400-page book that could’ve been done closer to 300 pages. Slavery in the Americas will always be a fascinating topic because of the legacy of not acknowledging its profound generational impact. The history itself in many cases overshadows a fictional story.

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Book Review: ‘From Scratch’ by Tembi Locke

“From Scratch” is a beautifully written memoir showing the elements of grief when dealing with the loss of a spouse while nurturing the delicate relationships with that spouse’s homeland, culture, and family.

Tembi is studying abroad in Italy when she meets Sicilian native Saro after he tries to help her get her stolen bike back. There’s instant chemistry between them. Tembi, who returns to the U.S. to finish her studies, keeps a long-distance relationship with Saro, who’s in his 30s and ready to become a chef. They convene in New York City later where they marry as Tembi builds up her acting career on Broadway. Her career then takes her away from the stage to the silver screen in Hollywood. Saro follows and begins his culinary career in Los Angeles. They’re living an ideal life until they want children. Biologically, they are having trouble conceiving, so they soon adopt Zoela. During the adoption decision, they learn Saro has liver cancer. Though he’s in and out of remission for years, he succumbs to the disease when Zoela is 7 years old. The overwhelming loss hits Tembi as she has to deal with matters such as distributing Saro’s ashes – some interred in LA and the rest she takes to Sicily. Saro’s parents never approved of their son marrying an American black woman, so in Siciliy Tembi is also still in relationship-building mode with her in-laws with her young daughter in tow. Tembi and Zoela feel a stronger sense of family in Sicily as they bond with Saro’s aging mother and realistically make plans in time of her impending death.

The way this memoir is written is extraordinary with detail, including the details of Tembi handling her husband’s cancer treatment, their adoption process, her husband’s death, and her obsession to make sure she grieves healthily with her daughter. She talks about the moments when she misses her husband the most like picking fava beans in their garden in the Silver Lake neighborhood in LA, creating meals with Saro’s favorite utensils and pots. The memoir also shines a spotlight on how stressful a loved one’s death can be with all the checklists and how one person may bear most of the burden of crossing everything off. On audiobook, Tembi reads her story perfectly.

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Book Review: ‘The Mother of Black Hollywood’ by Jenifer Lewis

The Mother of Black Hollywood: A MemoirThe Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir by Jenifer Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Mother of Black Hollywood” by Jenifer Lewis candidly describes the underrated actress’s rise on Broadway and eventually in TV and film. On audiobook, she tells her story in her dramatic and comedic tone that brings on the entertainment and wisdom.

Born and raised in the historically Black community of Kinloch, Missouri, Jenifer starts her book when she jumps on a plane to New York City after graduating from Webster University. She books a Broadway show within a week while staying with a Dominican lover, Miguel, she met in college and navigating the city with her gay friends. Once that show ends, she keeps successfully auditioning with even helping mold the character of Effie in Dreamgirls; a role she assumed she would get after Jennifer Holliday dropped out, but that Jennifer came back. That same instance would happen years later in Hollywood, where she had already nabbed roles in “A Different World” and “Beaches,” when she works with Norman Lear in developing the wife character in the Black spin-off of “All in the Family.” By that time, she’s built a bicoastal career, and she shares her disappointment of not getting that gig. Jenifer talks about other setbacks in entertainment, showing how restricted opportunities can be for Black actors.

Despite the disappointments, she performs for years with Bette Midler and co-creates her own film, “Jackie’s Back!” a 1999 cult classic. As roles start and end, she’s slowly earning the reputation of being the mother/aunt of Black Hollywood. She’s Tupac Shakur’s character’s mom on “Poetic Justice,” Aunt Helen on “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” Tina Turner’s mom on “What’s Love Got To Do With It?,” Whitney Houston’s character’s mom on “The Preacher’s Wife,” and now most recently Anthony Anderson’s character’s mom on “Black-ish.”

Juggling Hollywood and Broadway roles isn’t easy, especially when she’s diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She details the struggles with her mental illness and how it leads her to reliving her hard-knock childhood with her mother, who raised Jenifer and her six siblings mostly alone. Jenifer depends on her therapist to reassess her behavior as she sometimes botches auditions and other opportunities because she’s not in the right state of mind. Her bipolar disorder also manifests into sex addiction, in which she talks about some of her most memorable encounters.

Overall, it’s a perfect memoir as it’s well-written, divvies up stories in a good sequence, shows the growth from the mistakes, and opens the reader to a somewhat hidden world behind the scenes of our favorite shows and movies. Jenifer reads the memoir brilliantly on audiobook without a dull moment.

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Book Review: ‘Golden Child’ by Claire Adam

Golden ChildGolden Child by Claire Adam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Golden Child” by Claire Adam follows the family of twin boys in Trinidad as money eventually rips the family apart. The story feels slow at times, but at the end when seeing the story in its entirety, it’s well-told exploring the haves and have nots within the family.

The story opens up to Clyde looking for his teen son, Paul. Clyde is trying to gather support from the neighbors to see where his son has gone. Paul has been told he’s mentally disabled because he lost oxygen during his birth. His twin brother, Peter, is the opposite, considered very bright and reasonable. Their doctor uncle, Uncle Vishnu, who was present at their birth, is the one who diagnoses these differences between Peter and Paul. As a doctor, Uncle Vishnu, invests in Peter’s education. Clyde fights to keep Paul with Peter in school though Paul is slow. Uncle Vishnu is the biological uncle of Joy, Clyde’s wife and mother to Peter and Paul. Joy also has a brother named Romesh, who has good jobs, and Philip, a famous judge. But there’s jealousy of why Uncle Vishnu financially supports Clyde and his family, the only ones who live in a very modest home, especially with Peter having the potential to leave the island for the pursuit of education and success.

With the story opening to a search for a character, the search feels longer than it should be until the story gets into the history of why Paul went missing. There are point-of-view issues with the beginning mostly belonging to Clyde then hopping to Paul to Peter to the brothers’ teacher, Father Kavanaugh. Some sentences may take a second to realize the point-of-view is not pointing to the right character. It’s just interesting how the point-of-view changes and why it changes because at times it felt like it didn’t need to change or the situation should’ve been told by another character.

The emphasis on the difference between the twin brothers is reminiscent of Abraham Verghese’s “Cutting For Stone,” especially with parallels of following a family of Indian descent in Trinidad where Verghese’s book is on a family of Indian descent in Ethiopia. The differences between the brothers are so heightened throughout the book, but the reader may pick up that there may be nothing wrong with Paul; he acts the way he does because he’s been told his whole life that something’s wrong with him. Paul’s actions propel the jealousy bubbling within the extended family that Clyde and Joy never put much attention on.

Overall, this story punctuates one of the main issues that tear families apart: money. And also shows how some are concerned with the money while others don’t see the concern, which could lead to a troubling sequence of events. It’s a good book for readers who enjoy literary fiction taking place in a country and focusing on a culture underrepresented in books.

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Book Review: ‘The Last Black Unicorn’ by Tiffany Haddish

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“The Last Black Unicorn” by Tiffany Haddish is the rising comedienne’s memoir that she tells in her playful tone on audiobook, but the simplicity in the writing and the lack of a sequence slightly diminish the lessons she wants the reader to take away from her story.

Growing up in South LA, Tiffany is the oldest of several siblings (they’re not really present in this memoir) and bounces between her grandmother’s home and foster homes after her mother suffers a traumatic brain injury that leads to mental illness. She doesn’t know where her father is most of her life until an ex-cop helps her find him. She eventually marries that ex-cop, who in her words becomes abusive and controlling with trying to take her away from her budding comedy career. She realizes that she felt safer dating an ex-cop because she never trusted her stepfather. When she was a teenager, Tiffany alleges her stepfather implied he was responsible for her mother’s brain injury that derailed Tiffany’s life and the lives of her siblings. Once she breaks ties with her ex-husband to stop the history of bad relationships, her career flourishes with her starring role in “Girls Trip” that carries her to stardom.

The chapters feel disorganized. The summary above seems more of a fleshed-out sequence than her book. There are rough periods in her life that readers can learn from, but they’re told in her comedic voice without the strong vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. The words didn’t hold as much strength as they could have. But it was interesting to see her comedic journey from being the class clown in school to copy other students’ work because she was illiterate until age 15 to becoming a nationally known bar mitzvah hype woman to performing in SoCal casinos and comedy clubs. She definitely highlights the ups and downs in the competitive world of entertainment and how she had found her calling at a young age (she attended comedy camp in high school where she met Richard Pryor) but strayed from the path due to toxic relationships. Again, these are the lessons that are glowing from the book, but they’re in pieces weaved into different chapters.

Overall, it’s nice that Tiffany voiced her own story on audiobook, but the writing and editing could’ve been better. It’s a memoir told in a very conversational tone, and some people like that and some like me don’t care for it.

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Book Review: ‘Black Girls Must Die Exhausted’ by Jayne Allen

Black Girls Must Die Exhausted by Jayne Allen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Black Girls Must Die Exhausted” by Jayne Allen centers around a 30-something professional woman who learns her fertility is on a quick decline, making her examine her romantic relationship, friendships, and family relationships to see if she’s ready to start a family.

Tabitha Walker is a 33-years-old TV reporter living in Los Angeles who finds out at the beginning of the novel that her eggs are drying up at a faster rate, and she needs to act on preservation methods such as egg freezing. After finding out the news, she’s in a tailspin with being stopped by the police as she heads to work. This situation doesn’t snowball into an important element of the story until the end where she has to report on an officer-involved shooting against a young black male. She’s up for a promotion at work but at odds with Scott, a white male reporter also vying for the same position. On her free time, she hangs out with her grandmother, Granny Tab, whom she’s named after, at the nursing home. Tabitha also hangs out with her friends, Alexis and Laila. Alexis is married to her high school sweetheart, who has a history of cheating, with two young boys while Laila, also a journalist but in the print realm, is juggling several lovers.

The story lacks depth though it contains elements that could’ve gone farther. For example, Tabitha still deals with the trauma of her father abandoning the family when she was younger for his new family with a white woman. The race of her stepmother is emphasized along with Granny Tab being white, but it’s not explored deeper like how it has affected Tabitha being black and the woman who helped raise her to be white. There is a conversation here and there, but it’s on the surface. The story also seems outdated. Tabitha doesn’t know about infertility health coverage, but it’s been advertised so much more in the past few years with companies reaching out to women in mobile clinics and upping social media ads. These fertility startups are using technology to advance knowledge yet that’s not mentioned. Other plotlines seem 10-years-old even with Tabitha approaching her man about the topic of children a year-and-a-half too late; millennial women usually ask the pertinent questions as quick as possible in the dating app world. On the author’s website, the book is compared as an updated “Waiting to Exhale” and “Girlfriends,” but it doesn’t feel like it’s that updated. Also as a journalist, Tabitha’s career doesn’t seem authentic since we barely see her working in the field—very essential as a TV reporter especially along with the partner photographer—until the end, which is weird since the entire book she’s worrying about a promotion. Again, it goes with scraping the surface of a plotline without building it.

Overall, the story sails through to the end bringing up elements that are not explored the way they could be. The first-person narrative sometimes gets too heavy, even just in the first chapter, where the setting feels misconstrued because Tabitha is going on and on about her life, including unnecessary repetitions. This book needs some reworking to emphasize the storyline and to subtract the over-mentioned details, but it’s a somewhat entertaining summer read.

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Book Review: ‘The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls’ by Anissa Gray


The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls” by Anissa Gray is being marketed as “The Mothers” x “An American Marriage” with mothering at the root of family deterioration as two members are imprisoned for a crime that has angered the community.

Respected restaurateurs Althea and Proctor Cochran are in prison over allegedly misusing donated funds for a flood in their town of St. Joseph, Michigan. As their reputation becomes tarnished, their teen twin daughters, Baby Vi and Kim, have to stay with Althea’s youngest sister Lillian. Another sister, Viola, lives in Chicago away from the family drama while a brother, Joe, lives a few towns away with his family as a church pastor. The Butler siblings – Althea the oldest, Viola, Lillian and Joe – lost their mother when they were young with their father becoming a traveling pastor barely home. Their mother’s premature death weighs like a cloud over them because of the circumstances they each dealt with living without their mother.

Althea married Proctor and found success at their restaurant. Lillian, who’s taking care of her nieces, is also taking care of her late ex-husband’s grandmother, Nai Nai, who’s Chinese and they still have interracial tension. Viola is breaking up with her wife Eva while dealing with the resurgence of the eating disorder she developed in adolescence. Joe, who’s had a strained relationship with his sisters, wants the nieces to stay with him and his family because he feels with religion he has the most stable household. Their father died years earlier, but his neglect still weighs on them. As they all battle their own demons, Kim is falling down a path of trouble until her implosion forces the family to unite to save her and Baby Vi.

Most of the book measures at three stars. The scenery doesn’t change much; the reader is either in Lillian’s home, which is the family home inhabited by their demons despite all the refurbishments, and the prison, mostly where Althea is. Incidents such as how Althea met Proctor when they were kids at her mother’s funeral are replayed often along with particular verses from her mother’s Bible. Kim is the twin who keeps finding trouble while Baby Vi’s character doesn’t seem that developed as she’s characterized as the twin who doesn’t stir any trouble. Proctor also fades in a way as the reader mostly gets the sense of his character from the letters he’s writing to Althea. The story really revolves around the Butler siblings while there’s still a focus on the twins, and since they are the children of the imprisoned parents, it would’ve been nice to see perspective chapters from them, too. All the chapters are first-person narratives from the sisters: Althea, Viola, and Lillian, while the other set of sisters, Kim and Baby Vi, need chapters. Even Joe needs a chapter to explain his feelings about his sisters compared to just his sisters’ feelings toward him.

Overall, it’s a complicated family story where ghosts from yesterday resurface amid the temporary loss of two members. The title and cover make the book stand out, but the title seems overdramatic for the story. Ravenous and hungry are synonyms and care and feeding are close in meaning in this context, so the title also gets too wordy.

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Book Review: ‘Barracoon’ by Zora Neale Hurston

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Barracoon” by Zora Neale Hurston is an interesting nonfiction piece from a voice that’s rare in our literature.

Cudjoe Lewis aka Kazoola at the time was considered the sole survivor of the slave ship Clotilda, which brought 150 people in 1860 from around Benin in Africa after the ban on ships from going to the continent. Because of the secretive act, the slaves worked on the Alabama coastline. Zora Neale Hurston interviewed Cudjoe while a graduate student of anthropology in the late 1920s. She would go to his home and discuss his life, where he vividly recalls his life in Africa.

The book is mostly his folktale-sounding true stories from his native land involving how the king interacted with the people and how his father worked for the king. He talks about how he was brought to the king with the others and corralled onto the ship. He shudders at the horrendous journey to America, a strange place where he said it took him and the others from his homeland awhile to learn how to tend to the land, especially the sugarcane. He’s a slave for five years until the Union soldiers arrive in town and tell him he’s free. He asks where does he go now, and the soldiers don’t know. The community settles in what they call Africatown, modern-day Plateau, Alabama, where most of the descendants are African-born from the Clotilda. Cudjoe talks about the family he started and how they were gone by the time he’s speaking with Zora, even mentioning how one of his sons was shot dead by a police officer and how he had to look at his son’s disfigurement to understand what had happened.

It’s a quick read that made me research more on Cudjoe – there’s not enough of his story there, yet it’s there. It’s an interesting journey from living a regular life in Africa to adjusting to a new life in America he did not ask for or want. He expresses his longing to return home, especially with the family he started in America passing before him. The way he loses his son to a gun is the way many black families still lose their sons. He talks about being criticized by other African Americans because he was African and remembered Africa and preferred his African name, a sentiment still felt for African immigrants in America. The book opens the reader to a part of history from a personal account we rarely hear from, similar to “12 Years A Slave” by Solomon Northrup though that’s a first-person account.

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Book Review: ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth

More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are by Elaine Welteroth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a divine order, a divine flow to our lives. We don’t need to have all the answers. But our job is to keep on dreaming and trusting enough to put on foot in front of the other.

“More Than Enough” by Elaine Welteroth is a perfect snapshot of a biracial woman who reached such a historic career pinnacle at a young age and is willing to share her climb on the ladder, knowing based on race and upbringing that her climb is unique.

I found myself finding a lot in common with Elaine. I’m a Black woman editor with NorCal roots who had similar dreams but mine took me elsewhere and, like her, there were signs already putting me on a path that I didn’t see then. She starts her story from her childhood, pulling out certain memories that she now knows signaled her destiny. For example, she would make her own magazines for her fake beauty salon in her backyard with her friend. Like a lemonade stand, it made her realize her entrepreneurial and creative spirit.

By the time she gets to college, she’s in a toxic relationship with the boy she followed to Sac State (being from Sacramento luckily a rep from that college told me my grades were too good and I should go to my dream school). She mentioned it on her book tour and in her book that she regretted not applying for her dream school, Stanford, because she was following a boy, a common mistake. But in college, she meets a lifelong mentor, a professor whom she connects with over their similar parentage (Black mother, White father). On a trip, she shares with the professor and another student that she wants to be a magazine editor-in-chief at Essence. They praise her confidence to follow that dream.

When she does earn the Essence internship, the Ebony editor-in-chief she idolizes finally contacts her after she bombarded the editor with messages and asks her to work with her on a photo shoot in Malibu. There, Elaine suggests the model, tennis star Serena Williams, wear a blue bathing suit. She notices her faux pas, but it turns into an assistantship in which she lets go of her dream internship to pursue the opportunity. After being on the fast track, she’s let go at Ebony and worries about being pigeonholed in Black media. But because of her networking, she finds her way into Conde Nast, first at Glamour then at Teen Vogue, with eventually taking the top editor role at the now esteemed teen publication. Once there, she realizes being the first Black woman in charge holds a lot of responsibility, and that means navigating the direction of content to include all teen girls.

What I enjoyed the most about this book is the candidness. She admits to her stumbles, goes into details over those stumbles, and lets the reader know she thought it was the end until her life took another turn. Before every chapter, one of her quotes is highlighted, and it shows how carefully she chose her words to inspire others with her story. The book is on the long side with over 300 pages (like Michelle Obama’s Becoming), but it reads smoothly as you see her growth. Since I am in the same field and from the same area, I felt a strong connection with her and felt inspired by her moves, but it’s a memoir with a positive message that can transcend to women of all ages, but particularly those who are in college and their early 20s when they’re still trying to find their way when it comes to their careers.

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Book Review: ‘We Are Never Meeting In Real Life’ by Samantha Irby

We Are Never Meeting In Real LifeWe Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” by Samantha Irby is a hilarious collection of biographical essays that tell the craziest situations in the most verbose way.

Samantha is from the Chicago area and still lives there, so the first chapter is about how she’s never leaving her hometown, with adding that she still sees an elementary school teacher when she gets coffee. The title is an ode to her telling you everything, and being comfortable with that. She goes from her childhood, including her troubled family background; college, where she dropped out; liking men then liking women; adopting a sassy cat (probably similar to the cat on the cover); her irritable bowel syndrome (it does get gross); staying in the same assistant job for 15 years. The chapters that really stand out are the ones around her cat and her father.

The cat, named Helen Keller, gives her trouble the entire time, but the dialogue she puts in the cat’s mouth is funny. It’s like they’re constantly at war, and Samantha only got stuck with the cat because of her job at a veterinarian office.

Samantha doesn’t mention her late mother as much, but she mentions her late father a lot. She talks about her father, who was an alcoholic who would go missing days at a time and when he was home would bring illegal trouble into the home. Though she goes into detail about the unstable upbringing, it’s still in this upbeat, comedic tone. That’s what shines in this book is looking at life’s moments and having a sense of humor about it by describing every situation in the most exaggerated detail.

This book is great when you’re feeling down and need a pick-me-up. It’s the great comedic memoir you might be looking for if you’re open to reading about a black woman’s journey. Plus, she reads the audiobook in her awkwardly funny tone.

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Book Review: ‘Season of the Witch’ by Sarah Rees Brennan

Season of the Witch (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, #1)Season of the Witch by Sarah Rees Brennan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

* Giveaway win from I Read YA*

“Season of the Witch” by Sarah Rees Brennan is the prequel novel to the “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” exploring what happens to Sabrina the summer before her 16th birthday when she’s supposed to assume her destiny as a witch and give up her mortal lifestyle.

If you’re familiar with the dark version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch thanks to Netflix, then you know Sabrina Spellman lives with her two aunts, Zelda and Hilda; a cousin Ambrose, and her cat Salem. Her friends, who all conveniently have witchy descendant ties in Greendale, are Roz, Susie, and Harvey, her boyfriend. As Sabrina upholds her regular life, she’s battling the satanic forces bound by her family where she’s expected to give up on her mortal best friends and Baxter High for the Academy of Unseen Arts and battle with the three witch sisters: Prudence, Dorcas, and Agatha.

In this story, Sabrina worries Harvey doesn’t love her since they’re not officially in a relationship after a year of dating. Since she’s about to come into her witching ways, she asks Ambrose to help her cast a love spell. Except Ambrose takes over the spell with Sabrina forgetting the words. Then Harvey starts to act strangely with showing his affection for Sabrina, who keeps worrying that Ambrose may have tricked her with putting the wrong spell on Harvey. As she worries, Sabrina befriends a water spirit in the woods that seems to understand what’s at stake. But Sabrina realizes more is at stake as she comes into her own magic.

My copy is an uncorrected proof, so this scene might’ve been cut out. But the scene of Ambrose’s Blackness being singled out while he’s flirting with a mail carrier stuck out to me. The carrier is surprised to see Sabrina as Ambrose’s cousin and explains the surprise since Ambrose is “African-American.” Which he’s not. He’s from Britain, but later Prudence, who’s also Black in the TV series, is just described as having a dark complexion. Race is irrelevant to the story except for Roz, who is African-American with a preacher father and genetic blindness from her slave descendants relevant to witchery. It seemed like an awkward moment yet expressed a bigger issue of how nonwhiteness has to be pointed out in a kid’s book when the character’s race is not central to the story.

Overall, the book is a fun, dark young adult read that pairs well with the Netflix series. It gets wordy in the descriptions to the point where the book felt a tad longer than it needed to be. There are black-paged chapters in the book to describe backstories to the other characters though not all backstories become a strong thread in the book but maybe will in later novels.

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Book Review: ‘Grit’ by Angela Duckworth

Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Grit” by Angela Duckworth is a great analysis on why we do what we do and what drives us to do that. Through her studies of different groups to just noticing her family and friends, she opens up your mind to how our passions define our purpose.

One point in the book that stands out is how we use certain tools like a career path to really explore our passion and how those tools itself may be misconstrued as the passion. She used the example of a journalist I admire, Jeffrey Gettleman, who was the longtime East Africa bureau chief and correspondent for The New York Times. In college, he fell in love with East Africa. It wasn’t until a professor told Jeffrey his writing talent could translate into a journalism career. That career path never crossed Jeffrey’s mind until he realized he could tell stories throughout East Africa. So Jeffrey’s passion is East Africa, not journalism, but journalism is the vessel able to carry his passion.

As a journalist myself, I realized not everyone is passionate about the field itself but more with what they’re covering. I’m a woman of color in the very white male-dominated environment of business journalism. Though I try to convince other journalists of color to join less diverse newsrooms like mine, they’re not interested. But they might just be interested in covering their own culture and using journalism as a vessel. I, on the other hand, use journalism for my love for writing, so I can write about any news stories (as long as I’m getting paid) and be fine with the content I’m producing. It’s evident in my career where I’ve reported on various topics, which tends to be unusual for a journalist of color because many decide to restrict their topics to what they’re passionate about. This book helped me piece this understanding together.

Overall, it’s a detailed analysis of passion and purpose, but with the scientific and experimental factors, you can also see how it plays out in your life. Are you following your passion? Have you abandoned projects though you thought it was for your passion? The author emphasizes how it’s OK to quit a project when the “natural stop” arrives. I ran a list of things in my mind that I thought I was passionate about, but apparently I wasn’t. It’s about finding that vessel to pursue passion. Sometimes, we’re using the wrong vessels due to our environment, e.g. a parent wanting us to play piano but we don’t practice then piano lessons are wasted. The book is an analysis that could help with your analysis on figuring out your passion and purpose and if it shows in your grit.

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Book Review: ‘The Wrong End of the Table’ by Ayser Salman

The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit inThe Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in by Ayser Salman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“The Wrong End of the Table” by Ayser Salman is a funny outlook on American life via the eyes of an Iraqi Muslim transplant. It’s very light as in mostly the reader gets a view of dating obstacles rather than visits to the mosque, but the humor is well-constructed and the story is relatable.

The author moves to Ohio from Iraq at the age of 3 with eventually relocating to Kentucky then Saudi Arabia then back to Kentucky, where she wrestles with adolescence. Some of the events chosen to be highlighted are intriguing with her stint living in Saudi Arabia and connecting with a friend through the “Xanadu” soundtrack. Or how another friend there worked to escape the restrictive country to her mother who lived in the U.S. The Saudi Arabia chapters stick out since it’s rare to hear what it was like to grow up as a girl there in the 1980s, especially one who had come from America. Another event that stuck out was when the author lived in the college dorm in Kentucky and was accused by her African-American roommate’s cousin of racism over a Prince poster. It shows the growth during that young adult period when clashing with different people from different backgrounds.

Then some of the events were questionable to be plucked out for a memoir like her preschool experience of seeing sexual touching, which didn’t really open to another storyline though emphasized how America would be very different from Iraq. It fit with the theme of the story of not understanding what was going on while trying to be in the know, but it was awkward. At the end, she dives into dating in her 40s, which highlights multiple men who don’t really make an imprint in her life yet they’re mentioned.

Overall, it’s a light and funny memoir. I waited for moments such as her experiences jumping to so many different places and finding a mosque since her Muslim identity is in the title and a part of the book’s marketing, but it’s somewhat missing. The footnotes on almost every page may sound annoying, but they’re hilarious. To sum the memoir up would be it’s a collection of essays of experiences that may not be as life-defining but can induce laughs.

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Book Review: ‘Bluebird, Bluebird’ by Attica Locke

Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59, #1)Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Bluebird Bluebird” by Attica Locke is a well-constructed racial murder mystery set in small town Texas that nicely twists and turns with an ending that opens up to a potential sequel.

The story starts with Darren, a rare Black Texas Ranger, defending himself on the stand for his response to an older Black man shooting a known White supremacist in self-defense. While on probation, he learns that a body of a Black man and a young White woman washed ashore two days apart in nearby Lark. He weasels himself into the investigation and learns the male victim had traveled from Chicago to give an ex-musician an old guitar as part of his uncle’s last wishes. Darren feels a close connection to the victim who had graduated from the law school he had once attended but didn’t finish, as his wife brings up a lot. It turns out the ex-musician, Joe Sweet, had been murdered years before in the diner owned by his 70-something wife, Geneva. It’s also the diner the female victim had been a waitress. As Darren puts together the pieces of the two victims and how their lives intertwined one night at the diner with its own controversial history, he tries to deal with what’s left of his career, his marriage, and his desire to solve the crime.

Though not a fan of racial murder mystery, I enjoyed this story because the pacing was even with flawed characters that are still likable. Also an FX drama is in the works, so it’ll be interesting to see how the characters leap off the page onto the screen.

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Book Review: ‘The Art of Gathering’ by Priya Parker

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It MattersThe Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

They want to be there. They feel lucky to be there. They might well be considering giving the gathering their all. Your next task is to fuse people, to turn a motley collection of attendees into a tribe. A talented gatherer doesn’t hope for disparate people to become a group. She makes them a group.

“The Art of Gathering” by Priya Parker goes into detail about the elements of not just coordinating an event but making sure it’s a purposeful event for attendees. It sounds basic, but with examples from the author’s real-life experiences and public experiences, you realize these elements are not taken into consideration most of the time at the events you attend or plan.

I read this book because I’m active in so many organizations and sometimes want to offer my amateur services of coordinating an event. But I’ve clashed with a women’s group I’m involved in because they didn’t want the sense of sisterhood. With seeing other women’s groups succeed in attendance with members expressing their affection for the events and the groups, I felt sisterhood is a must with a hobby organization that usually meets on the weekend. It’s the solution to luring attendees to an event who would have to navigate Los Angeles traffic to get to an event they had to be at. And I realized you don’t really need guests that would be seen as celebrities; the group can fuse into a tribe and create a purposeful atmosphere.

When reading this book, I thought to myself I’m on the right track, but many others are not. The lack of purpose and connection destroys a lot of events where attendees or members dwindle, which the author emphasizes. She discusses how to open an event, how to close an event, and what to do in the middle. There’s even a section on how an event may be dying and how to resuscitate it during a break. One section sticks out when the author was at a friend’s funeral and the priest started the service with parking logistics amid everyone’s mourning. It showed the importance of the first words to be uttered to set the tone for an event. She also mentioned how she would end dinner parties with thanking everyone for coming as a hint it was time for them to go home. To resolve this, she and her husband would move the party from the dining room when everyone finished eating into the living room as a soft close. This created a break for the attendees who had to leave, though she would emphasize it was a part of the event, and the ones who stayed would talk and drink until everyone left on their own.

The author again expertly weaves so many personal events since she’s a founder of a transformative event planning agency with professional events. She also sprinkles events she read about in the media with picking out the elements in the article that the average reader probably did not notice. This book is a must-read if you’re interested in coordinating events with care or learning how to do so. It will be a useful guide that you’ll return to when planning events with purpose.

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Book Review: ‘The Poet X’ by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet XThe Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The Poet X” by Elizabeth Acevedo is a coming-of-age novel that expertly showcases the teenage life of a girl of color who’s first-generation American scared to share her true voice due to family expectations.

Xiomara is a Dominican teenager living in New York City with the gift of poetry she feels she can’t share with the world because she has to please her strict parents. Her religious mother makes Xiomara and her twin brother Xavier aka Twin attend after-school bible lessons. Xiomara is rough around the edges while Twin is active in his religious lessons and goes to a high-performing school, so Xiomara suppresses her love for poetry, especially since Poetry Club coincides with her religious classes. Her young teacher, Ms. Galliano, inspires her to find her voice, and when she does, Xiomara is falling in love with her classmate Aman, which is another no-no under her religious household. When Xiomara begins skipping church for poetry, her world begins to crumble as she realizes she can’t be the pure Catholic Dominican girl her parents want her to be.

This is a great YA novel with the necessary elements describing the hardships of an adolescent girl of color struggling with being American and also having immigrant parents going by the stricter rules of their homeland. I read it on audio book, so the characters’ names may not be spelled correctly, but the author does a fabulous job in her poetic prose-y voice, so definitely recommend the audio book.

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