Sometimes, you just gotta say what you’re going to say. Sometimes, you can’t keep quiet. You simply just have to speak up, especially when you can make a situation better or fix what’s wrong. Those are the times when it’s right to state your opinion and be firm, and in the new book “Speak Up, Speak Out! The Extraordinary Life of ‘Fighting Shirley Chisholm’” by Tonya Bolden, you’ll have good, strong shoulders to stand on while you’re doing it. Charles Christopher St. Hill had guts and determination. He needed it. In early 1923, at age twenty-two, he boarded a ship…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
You’re a problem-solver. You see something that you can make better and so you do. You’ve never met something that can’t be improved, fixed, or altered in some way, and the solutions always come easy. It’s a gift, really, one that you’re happy to share with people, so why not take a page from “Idea Makers” by Lowey Bundy Sichol and make it a career? “I coulda thought of that!” You’ve probably said that a lot, especially after you’ve seen something that’s making somebody a lot of money. You could have created that. You could improve on that idea right…
That song. It always makes you want to dance with somebody. It gets your feet shuffling and your behind bouncing and the lyrics pour out of your mouth. And that singer who first sang it to you…? You know what happened to her, but in “Didn’t We Almost Have It All?” by Gerrick Kennedy, you’ll get a few more pieces of the puzzle. She died two days after he met her “in a room inside the Beverly Hilton…” Gerrick Kennedy fell in love with Whitney Houston in a movie theater when he was just five years old. He purchased her…
The stories you love best are filled with excitement and power. Sometimes, they make you laugh; other times, they make you think. You like funny stories and silly ones, tales that make your eyes pop and tales that make your hands sweat. You like the old fables, too, the ones that teach you something. So come meet warriors, rulers, writers, and schemers in “African Icons” by Tracey Baptiste. When she was just a little girl, Baptiste’s father told her a story. Years later, she learned that what he told her was “one of the most popular stories throughout the continent…
Something inside isn’t working quite right. Your stomach hurts, your lungs are on fire, you gurgle where you shouldn’t, and there’s a sharp pain where there wasn’t one yesterday. You’ve tried every home remedy there is, but something inside you isn’t right. So, as in the new book “Sickening” by Anne Pollock, will the inside of you be treated based on the color of your outside? On October 21, 2001, Washington D.C. postal workers Thomas Morris and Joseph Curseen died from inhaled anthrax, a poison which authorities presumed had leaked from a package that was sent to a member of…
The cover promised greatness. Just a whisper over twelve inches square, you knew there was magic inside; even its title and artwork were enticing. Oh, the anticipation, as you flipped it over to read the contents before carefully running a fingernail along one side to slice the clear wrapping and finally touch the vinyl. There was something truly delicious about the first minutes with an old-school record album, but in “Prince” by Paul Sexton, it was nothing compared 2 the music. Andrê Anderson didn’t know a soul. He was a teenager then, and his mother had just moved him to…
Scout’s honor. It’s a pledge, hope to die, and pinky swear. Someone’s offered their word and now you have expectations. They’ve made a solemn vow and you’ll hold them responsible but remember: as in the new book “Make Good the Promises,” edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Paul Gardullo, some pacts don’t last long. Three years before he was inaugurated, Abraham Lincoln was concerned “about the deepening crisis between the Northern free states and Southern slave states.” He “thought hard” and often about “the institution of slavery” but, though he was against it, he believed that decisions on slavery should…
You used to like to skip. Filled with delight, you danced down the sidewalk, not minding at all who was watching. Back then, your body moved with exuberance, your legs took you everywhere fast, you jumped and rolled and reached and it was joyful. So what happened between then and now that keeps you from that happiness? As in the new book “Carefree Black Girls” by Zeba Blay, you became a Black woman. Over the course of the last few years, Zeba Blay says she’s felt as though she was “spiraling,” emotionally. Outside forces, politics, racial issues, violence, misogyny affected…
Go left or go right? It seems that at every point in life, you need a decision: take a familiar street, or a route you rarely travel? A restaurant you frequent, or something new for dinner? Sometimes, the choices won’t matter next week or in a year, but – as in the new book “Three Girls from Bronzeville” by Dawn Turner – other decisions are more consequential. One of her earliest memories involves her newborn sister. Dawn Turner was no more than a toddler herself then, living in a hotel room with her mother because her father was gone again.…
By Terri Schlichenmeyer This morning, your head hurt something terrible. Is it anything to worry about? Your grandfather had heart problems and died after a stroke. Your grandmother suffered from diabetes and you know there’s got to be a way to avoid their fates. Does your headache have anything to do with that? Do you need “Black Health Matters” by Richard W. Walker, Jr., MD to calm your fears? While growing up in Spanish Harlem years ago, Walker noticed how much diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and kidney failure affected the people in his neighborhood. It made hiim “angry,” he…