The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin

I read this in two days. Why? Because James Baldwin is so compelling. Because he has such a wonderful eye for nuance. Baldwin and I have had wildly different life experiences. He grew up in Harlem and was there during the Harlem Riot of 1943 on his 19th birthday. But his words really spoke to me, plainly and beautifully about his experience and his hopes. 

The Fire Next Time is a collection of two essays originally published in The New Yorker. The first is a letter written to Baldwin's nephew that explores race in America and how his nephew might experience it. He cautions his nephew away from anger and into a love of self and blackness. An embrace of the Black is Beautiful aspect. 

The second essay digs into Baldwin's experience of Christianity and the racist misuse of the gospel. Baldwin spent time as a teenage preacher and the experience led him to turn away from religion altogether. Having seen the inside of the pulpit, he likened it to seeing behind the curtain of a theater and thus being disenchanted with the entire show. One cannot ignore the intersection of race and sexuality and its effect on Baldwin's experience. 

The Fire Next Time later became an influence for Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me and having now read both, I can see the influence there. While it is a snapshot in time of Baldwin's experience, The Fire Next Time is also timeless in its themes. 

4/5 Stars. 

The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Daré

How do you rate a book that emotionally wrecks you with the pain caused to the main character? How can I say that I enjoyed it when Adunni is so harmed? Perhaps its Adunni's spirit, which takes so many hits but cannot be crushed or denied. That she gets up again and again and is determined to find a way to make her life better.

I am no longer surprised at the cruelty humans inflict on other humans. Our capacity to cause pain is unbounded. In The Girl with the Louding Voice, we can see how the various characters are driven to pain or compassion. How the cruelties inflicted upon them can cause irreparable harm that they then inflict on others. We can also see how the kindness of just one person can change the trajectory of another's life.

Adunni is the only daughter of her mother and father. With an older and younger brother, and living in a small Nigerian village, Adunni's mother is aware of how vitally important it is for Adunni to go to school and leave the village. She wants a better life for Adunni than she has had for herself. She sells street food in order to feed her family. Money wasted on drink by her husband. When her mother dies, Adunni is unprotected and falls victim to her family's poverty. Her husband is forced to sell her into marriage, at 15, to an older man with two wives already. Due to some tragic circumstances (yes more tragic than forced child marriage) - Adunni runs away and finds her way to Lagos, where she is sold to a family to work as a house servant.

The man who brings her to Lagos collects her pay every month and never visits. She is for all purposes, enslaved to this family. The wife of the house beats her and starves her. The father has an eye for her that is far from fatherly. And by chance she meets a neighbor who may prove her only way out. If the neighbor only has the courage to step forward and do something.

I think the portrayal of the neighbor was really honest. We all can look away from things that we don't want to get involved in. We can all suspect people who are asking for help may not have the best motives. But the neighbor here takes a chance and it literally saves Adunni's life. May we have the wisdom to see these opportunities when they come.

4/5 Stars. 

Children of Virtue and Vengeance - Tomi Adeyemi

The follow up the the stunning Children of Blood and Bone does not let up. In this sequel, we find Zelie and Amari dealing with the aftermath of bringing magic back to Orisha. During the ritual, Zelie's love for her father and her reliance on her blood to complete the ritual has created semi-magical people who are not Magi.

In Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Zelie must fight against Amari's mother who was gifted with magic during the ritual. Her racist hatred against the Magi is now fueled and channeled through her own powerful magic. She attacks the Magi relentlessly and pulls Zelie into a trap. In her fight against her mother, Amari finds that the quest for the throne and for power has corrupted her.

How will Orisha survive when all who quest for the throne are corrupted and a source of what is rotten in the kingdom? Apparently we find out in the third book because there is going to be another one! I didn't know that when I was reading this so the ending or rather, not-ending, was a complete surprise!

Once again the writing is fantastic and the story moves. You have to question the motives of even your favorite characters. No one is unscathed. I love the moral ambiguity that is thrown into every encounter. Very excited to see this transferred to the screen.

4/5 Stars. 

Our Time is Now - Stacey Abrams

If you needed more evidence of the brilliance of Stacey Abrams (I mean folks she graduated magna cum laude from Spelman, was a Truman Scholar at UT's School of Public Affairs, and THEN got a JD from Yale), then I'm not sure if this book will tip you over the edge, but it should.

Part memoir, part history of voting rights and restrictions, and part manifesto of how to fix the inequities of our voting and redistricting systems, Our Time is Now is a forcefully important book. It's infuriating to read about the many many ways the right to vote is restricted. When your plan to win elections by ensuring the already marginalized are less able to vote, then that's just wrong. In the wake of the 2020 election, we are seeing many states try to limit voting in ways that will only serve to disenfranchise Americans. 

The rub is that while these schemes disproportionally affect the poor and minorities, its effects will be felt further away. And those able bodied humans who believe wrongly in their invincibility, may find themselves on the sorry end of this deal. Unable to access the ballot box due to infirmity. It should not be a radical idea to believe that the right to vote should be widely afforded to every citizen. 

Abrams could have left the book there. Documenting the various ways that voters are disenfranchised. But that's not how she operates. Because she's here to make things better. And she lays out the steps for everyone to help participate in protecting the right to vote. She's a warrior. And she's in this fight for voting rights. And we're all (even those that disagree with her) better for it. 

4/5 Stars. 

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character - Paul Tough

It's telling that I'm struggling to write the review of this book I finished nine days ago, but I'm not sure what to say. It's good news that your IQ and "book smarts" aren't the only keys to success. In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough chronicles several programs aimed at assisting youth make it out of tough situations, and none of that is just tutoring. A lot of it is instilling certain character traits that will allow kids to rise above their situations and go on to live better lives. But the anecdotal presentation of the evidence left me feeling a little skeptical. 

We've been struggling with this a bit with our own kids. Our third grader continually says he's just "dumb at reading" after having a couple bad grades. But we're pushing him to have a growth mind set. The belief that hard work and determination can improve your situation. For anyone looking to work on this aspect I'd recommend the Big Life Journal.

It was interesting to read about the different programs being tried in Chicago. Obviously there is no easy answer to helping the kids in Chicago Public Schools succeed. Many programs have come and gone and graduation rates, teen pregnancy, and violence against and among students remain. But there are so many people trying to work on the problem. The number of shootings in Chicago may get the headlines, but the people working on the ground, in the neighborhoods never get any press. If it bleeds, it leads. Unfortunately.

So much of parenting is trying, and then failing like you're getting it right. So I was fairly surprised to read in How Children Succeed that I am, in fact, doing some things right. Trying to instill grit into my children will take a balancing act of trying to provide nurturing support, but also letting them fail, and reminding them that character counts along the way. 

3/5 Stars. 

Sword of Kings - Bernard Cornwell

What? A three star rating for a book involving my favorite boyfriend Uhtred? I know, I know. But hear me out. I know what this series is doing, where it's leading. And unfortunately to get from where it started to where it's going, Uhtred has to be like... 70 in this book. And he's fighting in a shield wall? I mean FFS. The man has swagger, but he should very well be dead by decades by now. But in Sword of Kings, here he is, just riding horses and fighting way way younger men.

And there's an odd meandering to this book that the others didn't have. Uhtred doesn't seem to know what he's doing. And that, partly, is likely because no one really knows what happened in the 5-6 weeks during which this book is set. King Edward dies. But then so does Aelfweard. But no one knows how, and eventually Aethelstan is king. But again, those bare bones of dates and events are all that history has left us. So to put Uhtred into the action, he's sailing a ship up and down England, saving women.

And then some side things happen that felt, well just sad and unnecessary. So, yeah. The book is overlong for really only covering a few weeks of time and a lot of back and forth for Uhtred. Listen, the man has swagger, but has outlived the local life expectancy by 100% at this point. I am absolutely going to read the last book in the series and I have high hopes for the events of that one because I'm pretty sure I know what is going to happen, but Uhtred always figures out a way to keep things spicy, just a little bit of a miss in this one.

3/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Fall 2020 - Edited by Ladette Randolph

It's longform prose time in Ploughshares land (Actually it was in the fall but if I'm not an edition behind in reading these what am I doing?

This edition contained ten stories and they were all lovely. Starting with The Twins by Nicholas Delbanco a strange incestual tale of two twins who stunt their lives with their strict adherence to each other.

I'd also be remiss not to mention John Elizabeth Stintzi's The Rat King Scattered. Their story of a tortured artist and his boyfriend who lean into their relationship to escape the trauma of their own lives was really moving but just a bit surreal in a really good way.

There's also a story from Holiday Reinhorn in this book whos work in fiction I'm not as familiar with as her work in advocacy for Haiti, so finding that Emmanuel was a story based in Haiti was not surprising, but the strength of the work was really touching. Emmanuel is a man who holds up so many in Haiti and is killed as if by complete happenstance which makes his death all the more tragic and defeating.

Lastly, Alice Hoffman introduces a reprint of an old Ray Bradbury story, A Sound of Thunder, which is a tale of essentially, the butterfly effect, which wouldn't become a real named theory until a decade after Bradbury wrote this story. But it's perfect and timely, or should I say timeless because written in the 50s it still resonates today.

Chef's kiss to you Ploughshares.

4/5 Stars.