July Reading

How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

The National Book Award winning author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, this is Kendi's follow up to the history of racist ideas. Half memoir, half instructional manual, this book is the best one I have found to not only enrich my mind on how to be a better person as far as racial issues, but how to be proactive, how to engage, and what it means to be an Antiracist. If you combine this book with White Fragility, you will have given yourself a ton of great information as we fight for change in our country. Cannot recommend this book highly enough.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Another one by a favorite author, this is not an easy book to read; one cannot speed read this, nor ignore small bits of the story. Morrison brings together a cast of characters to show the beginnings of slavery in America in the 17th century: the Dutch slave owner, his wife, the indentured servants, the free blacksmith, and the slave girl, taken from her mother. The narrative skips amongst these people blithely, showing us the threads that became a blanket of destruction in the following centuries. The juxtaposition of the white experience vs. the black experience (the entry into America, their lives on the farm, their relaitonships) was stunning. I was not sure how I felt about this one...until the final two pages. And then my mind was blown. If you've never read Morrison, I would not start with this one, but if you have, it's an amazing book to add to the collection.

The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett

This was a surprisingly good audio book; I say surprising because who would have thought discussions amongst book club members would be so fascinating? An eclectic group made of varied race, gender, and sexual identity, decide to read four Morrison books (The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Song of Solomon, and A Mercy) and assign each book to a member, who then brings in history, their own life experiences, and literary analysis to open our eyes to each book. I was able to understand these books in a richer, deeper manner, as well as the current antiracist movements in a more historical context. Highly recommend if you are a Morrison fan.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins

Who didn't love the first trilogy, followed by the movies with Jennifer Lawrence? (Okay, Mockingjay was meh but the first two were fantastic!) This prequel goes back decades in time, to the 10th anniversary of the Hunger Games, when technology was in the dark ages and District populations hardly even paid attention to them, as they sacrificed to young people to the immoral competition. Enter a young Coriolanus Snow, an eighteen year old scion of a formerly wealthy, powerful family, fighting to hang onto his status. When partnered up with wild gypsy from District 12, we begin to to see all the connections with the later books, as well as where how Snow becomes the evil Machiavelli from the future. My problems with this book? Too long - yep, that simple. It could have, and should have, been broken up into two books, so that the plot line could be crisper. It's a decent story; I enjoyed it, but I also could have lived without it.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I had obviously heard of Baldwin for years, a gay black writer and activist of the 20th century, but had never read him. Shame on me. We've all heard of Ta-Nehisi Coate's book Between the World and Me, but this book was first, and quite frankly, it moved me more than Coate's. Baldwin writes two essays during the one hundred anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, and he takes on all the racial issues of his day and wraps them into a memoir of his life in Harlem. This book gave me goosebumps far too often, with the eerie similarity to the violence against black people today that occurred during Baldwin's time as well. It solidified the continuing understanding I am gaining, as I read more books by Black writers, that the anger and frustration goes deeper than I can ever imagine, that it crosses generations and history for hundreds of years. This audio was just simply brilliant.

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Written by a DACA recipient, Karla Villavicencio was brought to America by her Ecuadorian parents, after a separation of years, a separation that  runs deep into her psyche. This is a story of immigrants, of Dreamers, of the people who keep America humming, of the Latinx community that has been forgotten and shoved aside by decades of politicians and failed policies. The author travels the country, talking with illegal immigrants, detailing their lives, their homes, their medical struggles, their employment history, their heartbreaks. It is a powerful read, not to be missed if one wants to more deeply understand the issues standing in the way of compassionate reform.

Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fights Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic by Eric Eyre

If you like real-life stories of brilliant investigative reporting that brings down the bad guys, this book is for you. Based on Eyre's years-long deep dive into the distributing system in West Virginia, and how it manipulated buyers, corrupted policy makers, and destroyed people's lives for the billions of dollars they made on opioids, it is a brilliant piece of non fiction. Tightly written, the story moves along smoothly, highlighting the long talons this industry has dug into powerful brokers. If you like listening to non fiction audio, this one is a winner.