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…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
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…
See one, do one, teach one. They say that that’s a good way to gain a new skill: observe, try the action yourself, and then share what you did with someone else. You can learn a lot from another’s experiences, as you’ll see in these great memoirs by women writers… We all like to think we had a normal growing-up, but what is “normal”? In “Nowhere Girl” by Cheryl Diamond (Algonquin, $27.95), the author recounts a childhood of seeming adventure, spent in a number of countries and continents. By the time she was a teen, she’d done things that most…
Start small, plan big. You don’t have to have much for the former, just a little love and a place to launch. The latter, though, that takes some work. You have to see the goal, hold your confidence tight, and know yourself well. And then, as in the new book “Where You Are is Not Who You Are” by Ursula M. Burns, you step up and fly. When she was a child growing up in a New York tenement, Ursula Burns never thought about how much her mother sacrificed for her and her siblings. The family had food, shelter, a…
Your legs felt as though they were made of rubber. It was like walking on a bed of marbles, like wearing rollerskates on a waterbed. Your arms flailed for something steady but whether this was an inner event or something outside, you wonder if you’ll ever feel stable again. As in the new book “The Ground Breaking” by Scott Ellsworth, you’re rattled. In their last season without responsibility, twelve-year-old Scott Ellsworth and his buddies spent the summer of 1966 exploring their hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and visiting the library. There, Ellsworth discovered hints that the whispers he’d overheard his entire…