Your seat has been reserved. You’re excited about this trip, but also nervous; you’ve never been where you’re going and you hope this is a one-and-done trip. Still, going there is necessary for you and for the future so grab your bags. Author Charles Person says “The Buses Are A Comin’” and you’re on-board. He didn’t know it then, but Charles Person grew up in poverty. His family was rich in love, wealthy at mealtimes, affluent when it came to lessons, they had an abundance of fun, but he was in tenth grade before he realized that his extended family…
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son. That’s what’s said, that a son pay for his father’s misdeeds, but maybe the old man didn’t intend to leave a negative legacy. Maybe he tried his best, but something went wrong. Maybe, as in the new novel “The Son of Mr. Suleman” by Eric Jerome Dickey, Pops meant well. Adjunct Professor Pi Suleman didn’t want to be at his employer’s event. He had better things to do, better places to be than a room at UAN, but his boss, the white woman who hired him, the wife of…
One little hole in the ground. That’s all it takes, as big around as your little finger, a pencil eraser, a coffee stirrer. A tiny fissure in the Earth, that’s what you need to grow dinner next week or next winter, flowers for your table, sustenance for your animals or, as in the new book “We Are Each Other’s Harvest” by Natalie Baszile, a tie to your past. Years ago, while taking weekly provisions to an elderly relative, Natalie Baszile learned that the presence of food in a neighborhood (or its lack) could be a racial issue. Shortly afterward, she…
Your teeth got a good workout. Yep, as a kid, you wanted those certain hard-to-find, favorite-player baseball cards but you didn’t want to be wasteful. Because you’d do anything to get the cards, you spent your change, hoped you’d be lucky, and you chewed a lot of gum. In the new book “Comeback Season” by Cam Perron (with Nick Chiles), though, the best things don’t come in a pack. It all started with coins. When Cam Perron was a little boy, his grandfather introduced him to coin collecting by taking young Perron to a local Massachusetts flea market, where the…
This really makes your blood boil. This. The racism gone amok, discrimination, the protests that don’t seem to work, nobody’s listening. You’re hot under the collar over it all, totally inflamed, ready for real action, and in “This Is the Fire” by Don Lemon, you’ll find some sometimes-warm, sometimes-scorching thoughts to sit with first. Coincidentally or not, as a trial begins soon in Minnesota, this book opens with a poignant letter from Lemon to his young nephew on the evening of George Floyd’s death. Lemon writes of the legacy he got from his parents, his grandmother, and his beloved older…
Keep your eyes open. Don’t blink. Sometimes, that fraction of a second is all you need to miss something. Blink, and you may wonder if it really happened, or if you just think it did. Blink again, and you just don’t know. So keep them peepers open because, as in the new novel “Blood Grove” by Walter Mosley, bad things can happen in a… From the hollow look in his eyes, it was obvious that the skinny, nervous white man standing before Easy Rawlins was a veteran. The guy, Craig Kilian, sported a bruise on his left temple and a…
A couple weeks ago, you really needed to wrap up in some extra blankets. One layer, two layers, covered face and a cold nose. Extra blankets, extra sweaters, coats, socks, gloves, it took awhile to thaw yourself out and in “The Fabric of Civilization” by Virginia Postrel, you’ll see where those snuggly wraps started. Many thousand years ago – long before your need for insulated gloves and a knitted hat – the tale of textiles began when early humans invented string. But string, as Postrel points out, “is not cloth.” Nope, and it takes a lot of gathering to obtain…
Who are you? That’s a question some people never ask themselves: seemingly intuitively, they know the answer at birth and they don’t think about it again. Then there are those who struggle with knowing until their last breath. Still One big secret-not-secret lies at the heart of “Raceless” by Georgina Lawton. Born after a long labor in a London hospital in 1989, Lawton was the child of a (white) British father and a (white) Irish mother, and with her black hair and deep brown eyes, she “was not the baby they had been expecting.” To save face, her conception, the…
Man, you’re picky. That’s not always a bad thing, either. You know what you want so you choose deliberately, carefully, with plenty of thought behind it. What’s right for you is right for you and you won’t take anything less. As in the new memoir “Just As I Am” by Cicely Tyson (with Michelle Burford), folks’ll just have to deal with it. Born in New York City a few days before Christmas 1924, Cicely Tyson’s first real memory was of a place, one where her parents fought, physically and verbally, over her father’s infidelities. She was sensitive to everything she…
When you’re a kid, there are so many things to learn. Someone has to teach you your A-B-Cs, and to count to a hundred. You have to learn to tie a knot and set the table and stay safe. And this month, you should learn more about Black History, and that can be fun with these great books… For the littlest reader ages 3 to 5, “The ABCs of Black History” by Rio Cortez, illustrated by Lauren Semmer is a great way to start the lesson. This most fundamental book includes holidays, cities, people, and music that forms the base…