Your children never miss a thing. Nothing escapes their notice. They watch below and overhead, spotting objects you’ve passed by a dozen times but never truly saw. From birth and beyond, they’re like sponges, observant and watchful and, as in the new book, “The Trayvon Generation” by Elizabeth Alexander, you wish for them better things to see. Though it’s been a four-hundred-year struggle, the number-one problem of this century, says Alexander, is still “the color line.” Generations have done “the race work,” but it remains an issue and she “both lament[s]” and is “enraged that… our young people still have…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
There’s no one like you. For most of your life, you’ve been told how unique you are, how wonderful, how important, all true. You’re one of a kind, singular, you’re like no one else on Earth. And in the new book, “The First, The Few, The Only” by Deepa Purushothaman, that probably goes at work, too. Most workplaces were made for men. If you’re a woman, you already know this. It’s evident in the height of the counters, the number of permanent walls in the office, and the temperature of its rooms. But for Women of Color (WOC), that statement…
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…
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…