You gotta start somewhere. First, you crawled, then you toddled before you ran, which is exactly how most things are. There’s a foundation from which to spring, a base from which to jump, and you need to figure out how to best proceed so you can succeed. You gotta start somewhere, and in the new book “I’ll Make Me a World” by Jarvis R. Givens, it started with racism. James McCune Smith was just fourteen years old the day New York passed its Emancipation Act. Smith had been born into slavery but was officially freed that July 4 of 1827.…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
There’s a reason for everything. That doesn’t mean an excuse or a guess made of ignorance, but an explanation for what was, a kind of thought process that says if this happens, then that. A reason is a why, and in the new book, “The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery” by Brooke N. Newman, you’ll see why the story of Black America didn’t start in 1619. In late November 2021, the Caribbean nation of Barbados held a celebration to mark the fifty-fifth anniversary of the day they removed Queen Elizabeth II as head of…
For months, your brain has been full. Full of holidaying and end-of-year-ing and remembering all the things that needed done by the new month. Full of gifts and celebrations and news and weather. Now, maybe it’s time to see what else goes on inside your cranium with these great new books about mental health… If you struggle to know what’s truth these days and what’s not, then “The Gaslit Brain: Protect Your Brain from the Lies of Bullying, Gaslighting, and Institutional Complicity” by Jennifer Fraser, PhD (Prometheus Books, $34.95) might be the book you need. Using stories to show, not…
The hole you’re in is a deep one. You can see the clouds above, and they look like a storm; you sense the wind, and it’s a cold one. It’s dark down there, and lonesome, too. You feel like you were born there – but how do you get out of the deep hole you’re in? You read the new book “Let Me Be Real With You” by Arshay Cooper, you find a hand-up, and bring someone with you. In the months after his first book was published, Arshay Cooper received a lot of requests to speak to youth about…
You’re not planning on being shelfish. But seriously, you’ve been waiting months for the release of your favorite author’s newest book and it’s in stores NOW. You have your copy, you’ll be the first one to open it, your easy chair is ready, no bookmarks needed. As in the new book “Black-Owned” by Char Adams, you knew just where to find it. For many people, it’s a dream: owning a bookstore, talking about books all day, putting good reads into people’s hands. These are the kinds of stories Char Adams says she likes telling, and she was surprised when she…
Something weird is growing on your kitchen sink. It wasn’t there last night but today? Yeah, and it’s not intentional. You need to get rid of it somehow, wipe it off, kill it, eliminate it altogether or, as in the new book “Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless” by Maria Pinto, maybe study it and eat it. Junjo or duppy umbrella. When Maria Pinto was studying a mushroom species she found in a Target parking lot, her mother scoffed. In Jamaica, she said, there were just two kinds of mushrooms, which sent Pinto off on a search. The word “junjo” sounded like something…
c.2025, St. Martin’s Press $29.00 257 pages Face it: some scores can never truly be settled. You can try tit-for-tat, you can scheme and plan, but making things even? Not a chance; the other guy is probably scheming, too, so full pay-back ain’t happenin’. And besides, why let revenge live in your head? Life’s too short, you just can’t do it – and especially, as in the new book “A Thousand Ways to Die” by Trymaine Lee, you can’t do it with a gun. Eight years ago, Trymaine Lee almost died. Fortunately, the blood clot in his body, the…
Your favorite Uncle will want to hear from you in about six months, maybe sooner. He’ll want to talk about your wallet, first and foremost. He’ll be interested in your home and your workplace and he’ll check your memory and your math skills. Nice guy, he’ll probably ask after your family, too. You can’t avoid Uncle Sam’s inquisitiveness but with “The Double Tax” by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, you’ll see how to stop the “pink tax” from being worse if you’re black. When she was a young child, Anna Gifty Opoku-Ageyman noticed that when it was time to leave for church,…
School’s in session and you like that a lot. You have a nice teacher and you’re making new friends, doing things you’ve never tried before, and you’re learning, which is your job now. But sometimes, you just want something fun to read, so try these great books… Think about your grandma or grandpa. Are they quiet and calm? Or are they more like the grandparents inside “My Grandma and Grandpa ROCK!” by Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, illustrated by Tiffany Everett (Sourcebooks Jabberworky, $18.99)? Everybody’s grandparents are different. Some “wear funny clothes and have funny hair.” Most like music and…
One thousand, two hundred pounds and four legs. Put that between your knees and you’ll find out what real horsepower is. You’re five feet off the ground, moving as fast as a car on a downtown street, hooves pounding as hard as your heart. Dangerous? Maybe. But as you’ll see in “Mounted” by Bitter Kalli, your ancestors did it and so can you. When they were a young child, “around the age of six or seven,” someone gave Bitter Kalli a set of “pony books,” the kind that appeal to young girls, mostly white ones. Kalli wasn’t entirely comfortable identifying…