All posts tagged: racism

Naima Coster is back with a bold and moving tale of legacy, family, displacement, and rootedness in WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS, plus tips on writing character, developing setting, more

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By Leslie Lindsay  Extraordinary tale of gentrification, equality, race, and legacy that begs the question: what are you leaving behind? ~WRITERS INTERVIEWING WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Spotlight on family legacy, race, history Several years ago, I read and loved Naima Coster’s debut, HALSEY STREET, and fell in love with her voice and writing. Her sophomore book is so daring, so beautifully told, but also bold and passionate, exploring comforting companionship, siblings, home, parent and child, and so much more. Set in the foothills of North Carolina, WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS (Grand Central, March 2 2021) is beautifully written, in elegant and moving prose, but also rife with deep, perceptive description from a poet’s heart. There’s the “Black side” of town and the “White side,” school integration, and the resistance of residents. For Gee and Noelle, this integration sets off a chain reaction bonding the two together for at least the next twenty years. Families are split–in their desire to integrate, how they see it benefitting each family and race/culture. But there’s also mixed-race Latina individuals …

Therese Anne Fowler’s stunning new fiction, A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD, will leave you breathless, questioning everything–it’s a must read.

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By Leslie Lindsay Hugely gripping contemporary novel that examines the American dream through the lens of two families living side-by-side in an idyllic neighborhood, but that summer their lives change irrevocably. ~WeekEND Reading SPOTLIGHT!| ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Five GIANT stars to A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD by Therese Anne Fowler (St. Martin’s Press, March 10 2020). I cannot say enough about this book. It’s emotional, it’s timely, it’s affecting, it’s thought-provoking, it’s urgent. Read this book, you won’t regret it. Here’s what drew me: Neighbors, neighborhoods, trees, houses, families. Suburbia. But there’s so much more to this story. So much. Don’t take my word for it. Jodi Piccoult says this of A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD: “Therese Anne Fowler has taken the ingredients of racism, justice, and conservative religion and concocted a feast of a read: compelling, heartbreaking, and inevitable. I finished A Good Neighborhood in a single sitting. Yes, it’s that good.” And if that’s not enough, Kirkus gives it a starred review and Library Journal does, too. Many others are calling it ‘speechless,’ and ‘powerful,’ a ‘tour de force.’ …

National Book Award-winning and NYT bestselling author Jacqueline Woodson’s RED AT THE BONE, about family, history, ambition, and a teen pregnancy

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By Leslie Lindsay  Beneath the trouble, lies a very powerful and poignant tale about race and class, ambition, and more. RED AT THE BONE is destined to become a classic.  ~Wednesdays with Writers: SPOTLIGHT!~ The thing with ‘classic’ literature is that it is typically polarizing; that is, not everyone is going to love it, there will be themes that make readers squirm, that make us uncomfortable. Classic literature does that. That’s exactly what we’ll find in this bestseller from Jacqueline Woodson, RED AT THE BONE (September 17 2019). Told in a forward-and-backward momentum, Woodson tells the story of two African American families from different social classes who come together because of a teen pregnancy and the child it produces. We begin with a sixteen-year-old’s coming-of-age party in somewhat contemporary (2001) times. Melody is that baby from sixteen years ago, when her mother was an unmarried pregnant teen. Adoring relatives look on, but what we don’t know is the pain each of them has carried. “In less than 200 sparsely filled pages, this book manages to encompass issues of class, …

Kim Brooks talks about that day she left her child in the car, the repercussions, parenting while everyone is watching, and so much more in SMALL ANIMALS

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By Leslie Lindsay  More than a parenting book, more than a memoir, and way more than just a ‘rant,’ SMALL ANIMALS: Parenthood in the Age of Fear might be essential reading for any parent of any age child. On a crisp March morning, Kim Brooks made a split-second decision (or a lapse in judgement, if we’re splitting hairs) to leave her 4 year-old son unattended in a parked, locked car in a Target parking lot. She was stressed and anxious about catching a flight back home to Chicago and her son was happily playing a video game. The errand would take just minutes and she’d be right back. When she returned, a woman was video-taping her son and vehicle with a cell phone. That woman shared the video with the local authorities and hours later, Brooks was under investigation. Combining investigative journalism with interviews of other parents, experts, and interweaving research on what makes a ‘good parent,’ the author delves into American’s obsession with fear and anxiety, and also competitiveness. I was reading and nodding in agreement with much of …

Bianca Marais takes us back to post-Apartheid South Africa in her stunning new book, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE GOD LAUGH, about several strong-willed women, one abandoned baby, how we’re all connected, & more

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By Leslie Lindsay ‘ Emotional and powerful read about post-apartheid South Africa combing the lives of three very different women and one abandoned newborn.  I read HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS (Putnam, March 2018) and immediately fell in love with Robin and Beauty and also the author, Bianca Marias. In this new title, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE GOD LAUGH (July 16 2019), you’ll meet a series of three very different women–Dee (Delilah) an ex-nun with a history, her sister, Ruth (an ex-stripper with multiple ex-husbands), and Zodwa, a pregnant Zulu teen living in a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg. How these three women come together will shake you–and just may have you cheering for each one, but for different reasons. Delivered in short, alternating chapters narrated by Ruth, Zodwa, and Delilah, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE GOD LAUGH shares its characters’ divergent perspectives on class, race, and faith as it probes closely at the 1990s political and socioeconomic headlines. This narrative is complex and there are a lot things going on under the context–rape and rampant racism, stigma …

WeekEND Reading: Julie Lythcott-Haims on her new book, ‘REAL AMERICAN’

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By Leslie Lindsay ‘Where are you from? No, where are you from, from?’ Julie Lythcott-Haims tackles race, self-love, how poetry helped unleash her voice, the unique structure of REAL AMERICAN–how the formatting was intentional, and so much more Searingly honest, raw memoir about what it’s like to be biracial in 1970s-today’s America. I tore through Lythcott-Haims’s memoir, REAL AMERICAN; this is such an important read, one everyone ought to take the time to read and reflect upon. In fact, after I finished, a barrage of emotions hit me and also, I began cataloging all my interactions with those of a race other than my own. In first grade, a gangly Black* girl with a head full colorful clips that rattled and clanged as she peered at me through the cracks in the bathroom stall caused me alarm. I told my mother, who was convinced the ‘bussing program’ was a problem. She wanted to have words with my teacher, but I assured her it wasn’t a problem. Also, in first grade, I was made math partners with …