You can’t stand to watch another happily-ever-after movie again. You’re done with all those romancy novels, tender songs of love, and dreams of flowers every Valentine’s Day. Statistically speaking – and being realistic – that stuff isn’t in the cards for you, and in “Black Women, Black Love” by Dianne M. Stewart, you’ll see how this might have happened. About a decade ago, the Census Bureau released a sobering fact: nearly three out of four Black women in America were not married. More than half of those women had never even been to the altar and, says Stewart, it wasn’t…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
Save the Earth! You’d agree to that. Who doesn’t want to enjoy a bright, airy afternoon with cotton-ball clouds? Of course, you’d happily leave your grandchildren those shirt-sleeve kinds of days, thunderstorm evenings, clean air and water. That’s what you’d choose if you could –though, as you’ll see in “An Environmental History of the Civil War” by Judkin Browning & Timothy Silver, things weren’t always so sunny. In all the battles that occurred in the Civil War, just one campaign – the Mud March of January, 1863 – was named after the weather in which it happened. It was the…
“Excuse me. It’s my time to talk.” Ugh, it’s frustrating when someone doesn’t honor your voice or respect your ideas. When it’s your time to speak, they should at least be quiet, and you shouldn’t feel bad for wanting to be heard. Speak up! As in the new book “Reclaiming Her Time” by Helena Andrews-Dyer and R. Eric Thomas, one politician had no problem doing so. Born and raised in poverty, little Maxine Carr had one thing most kids in the 1930s and 40s didn’t have: she had the certainty that if she didn’t open her mouth to speak up,…
Things could always be worse. You didn’t sleep well last night, your day started earlier than usual, and traffic, ugh; then you forgot your lunch and lost a bag of chips in a vending machine, and you never did catch up. You had a rotten day but look on the bright side: you’re above ground and breathing and, as in “We’re Better Than This” by Elijah Cummings with James Dale, someone had your back. Throughout most of his life, Elijah Cummings’ parents were his guidelights. “Neither had much education,” he wrote; they were sharecroppers who moved north so that…
Did you see that? Sure you did. You couldn’t miss it, actually, because you can spot hatred, discrimination, and bad trouble a mile away. You know when something’s wrong and you saw it; saw it coming, in fact, and you weren’t alone. In “Begin Again” by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., you’ll know that a warning was sounded decades ago. Every day, it seems like you catch the news and you cringe. “It is exhausting,” says Glaude, “to find oneself… navigating a world rife with deadly assumptions about you and those who look like you… for no other reason” than the…
It starts early-on. At first, it seems spontaneous: parents who enjoy their interests naturally display those passions to small children who are dragged along for the ride. The child observes and absorbs until one day, parental interest becomes child’s obsession. And in “The Truths We Hold” by Kamala Harris, that’s how a politician is made. Supporters can almost see the trajectory in the history: Kamala Harris’s parents, both highly educated immigrants, instilled a sense of independence in their daughter and both remained supportive of her choices, even as they divorced. Harris’s mother, especially, gave Harris lessons in strength and activism…
A brand-new, shiny box of crayons. That’s just one of the things you’re looking forward to when you finally start school. Mom says you can’t have them yet, though, you have to be patient. So why not read “I Got the School Spirit” by Connie Schofield-Morrison, illustrated by Frank Morrison in the meantime? Fall arrived, summer was done, and that meant that it was finally here. It was time for her and all the kids in her city to “start the new school year!” As soon as she got out of bed, she brushed her teeth and fixed her hair. …
Sometimes, things change in a minute. You look, and it’s one way. You look again, it’s different, and you didn’t even see the change happening. You might not like it but that never matters. As in the new picture book “The Shared Room” by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrations by Xee Reiter, that’s when it’s best just to take a deep breath, roll your shoulders, and move on. If it were any other winter day in Minnesota, it might’ve been nice. It was warm enough for the snow to melt and you could almost see that spring was coming. But inside…
Sundays just don’t seem to last. You get up, attend church, attend fellowship, rush home for dinner, maybe more church in the evening. And before you know it, Sunday’s over and you’re left trying to remember what you learned, to get you through the week. But maybe, says Robert P. Jones in “White Too Long,” it’s time to examine what you learned that you don’t remember. Nearly 180 years ago, at a convention of members of the Baptist church, the issue was raised about whether there was room in Christianity for slaveholding. In the days following the gathering, Reverend Basil…
The checkmarks marched down the columns like hand-holding toddlers on a daycare outing. You cast your vote for this candidate. You liked what that guy had to say, and this woman thinks like you. You hope this person wins, and that one, and your civic duty is done. In the new book “Thank You for Voting” by Erin Geiger Smith, you’ll see how you got here, and how you maybe almost didn’t. In the earliest days of this nation, the rules for voting were easy: if you were a white male landowner over age 21, you could vote. That rule,…