Black History Month Reads
So far this year I've mostly been focusing on reading books that I plan to pass on to other people during Black History Month. The books I've read so far for this challenge are:
1. The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith (children's book)
2. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Young Adult)
3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (non-fiction)
4. The Heartbeats of Wing Jones by Katherine Webber (young adult)
5. Precious by Sapphire (fiction)
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (fiction)
7. Zora & Nicky: A Novel in Black and White by Claudia Mair Burney (Christian Fiction/Romance)
I read The Hate U Give and Between the World and Me back-to-back. I was able to finish the first book quickly, but the latter took me a while to get through. I kept putting it down and going back to it. Reading it, I felt a real lack of education in my background. The author talks with such knowledge about African-American history, black activists, and other inspirational figures and events that have impacted black Americans for decades (centuries!) that I, at most, have just passing knowledge of. It makes me wish that Black Studies 101 was a requirement at every university in the country. The author attended an historically black university. Similar to how students at Smith or Sarah Lawrence are much more knowledgable than the average person about feminism and the history of women in our country, students at HBCUs seem to possess this knowledge, self-awareness, and pride that differentiates them from students at other schools. I could feel this knowledge and shared understanding pouring off every page, but many of the references went over my head. The events in this book, filling the letter the author is writing to his son directly relate to the fictional events of The Hate U Give. I highly recommend both of these books as insight into how modern African-Americans live and the outside pressures they contend with on a daily basis.
The Heartbeats of Wing Jones also fit into this world, but in a way is more of an internal look of someone coming-of-age. There is racism in this book, for sure, and violence, and struggle, but even though the race of the protagonist is important, the story wouldn't have changed much if she were another race. It's more about her coming into herself and, through her successes, changing how other people see her. It's also a look at family dynamics and the love that can exist inside a family in different ways and sometimes provide a buffer to the outside world.
Next, I read Push by Sapphire in one night. It's fantastic. The protagonist is an illiterate teenage girl from an abusive family, twice pregnant by her own father, and about to be kicked out of school.
She transfers to an alternative school where the other kids in her class have also suffered abuse and also have low levels of literacy. Here, she finds, she doesn't have to hide. Her life isn't incomprehensible to the other kids and the teachers here. They aren't afraid of her. They don't think she's worthless.
It's the first time in her life anyone has told her that a life like hers, a body like hers, a mind like hers has any value at all. Her teacher encourages her to keep a journal, even though she barely knows her letters. This takes her on a journey of self-acceptance and growth as she learns to read and begins processing the trauma she has endured. The writing style was very compelling. The first-person, real-time, stream of consciousness style lent a lot to this story. In the book, Precious reads The Color Purple by Alice Walker and is very moved by it. I decided to read that book next. I read The Color Purple in one day. From the first few paragraphs, I could see the similarities to Push and to Precious's story, even though one takes place in 1980s Harlem and the other in 1930s Georgia. Precious and Celie live almost identical lives, separated by only the changes of modernity. It was a really interesting look to read these two books side-by-side, and I recommend that to anyone who hasn't read these before. The writing style is similar and the protagonists' lives of trauma and recovery are also similar. Very moving, and well worth the reads. Both were made into movies that received Academy Awards in multiple categories.