How can a reader measure a book that shares a slice of someone’s life? Does he focus on the story itself or the delivery of the written word? I’d argue a successful book can’t thrive without both working together like fingers on a hand. Tara Westover’s “Education” succeeds in giving the reader a compelling story…
Why would a reader be interested in a Southern black man talking through his problems with his Mom? “Heavy: An American Memoir” by Kiese Laymon takes the reader on a journey as he unravels to her important experiences growing up that was lied about, denied, and/or omitted.
“Becoming,” by Michelle Obama, is her journey growing up in the South Side of Chicago in arguably a model black family household: married parents, an athletically inclined brother and sharp minded young Obama. As the story evolves, Obama peeled back her tough exterior to show moments of feeling “Not good enough” navigating Princeton and then…
Reading Drown has completed my trifecta of all of Junot Diaz’s published books. His Dominican perspective, flawed characters and descriptive images written in short strokes of the pen are as prevalent in Drown, his 1st published book as his other two. But in Drown, I found myself consistently asking, how much of these stories…
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun is a compelling and heartbreaking story of Biafra’s struggle for independence from Nigeria in the mid-1960s. On one hand, it is the story of discontent between Igbo and Yoruba people forced to co-exist born out of Europe’s carving up of Africa. On the other hand, the reader…
Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents was as masterfully written as Parable of the Sower. Her ability to write a plausible heart-wrenching story about an unlivable not so distant future is a rare talent. To write a story, no two book series about, “Earthseed,” a religion pushed by Lauren, a black woman and the series’…
The January Children by Safia Ehillo is a poetry collection that deals with the author’s woman, Muslim and Sudanese identity. Wait. It’s so much more than that. The title itself opens the reader to Sudanese history and culture. It represents her grandparents’ generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children…
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