“One reason
that cats are happier than people
is that they have no newspapers.”
~ Gwendolyn Brooks
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I know that April is technically National Poetry Month, but February is my favorite time to read poetry. There's a natural progression of thought taking me from Valentine's Day directly to love poems, which takes me to my favorite Shel Silverstein's, which takes me to the children's poetry section; then I feel guilty for not looking at adult poetry, so I wander to those shelves and inevitably find someone new to fall in love with. It's how I found my first Billy Collins poem, my first Mary Oliver poem, and I stumbled across my first Gwendolyn Brooks poem just a few days before Ron Charles's article about her was published. (He is the author of the Washington Post Book Club Newsletter each Friday, and the only thing that hits my inbox that HAVE to read each week.) What strange synchronicities there are in this life!
One of the current exhibits at The Morgan Library and Museum in NYC is a tribute to Brooks entitled, "A Poet's Work in Community." She was the first African American to win the Pulitzer, and the first poet to write about the experience of the urban community from an African American point of view. A Chicago native, in her first book of poetry, she said of Chicago's South Side, “If you wanted a poem you only had to look out of a window. There was material always, walking or running, fighting or screaming or singing.” The trouble is that only one of Gwendolyn Brooks's books is readily available (click here to view), and the others are on back order or out of print, including Annie Allan, her Pulitzer Winner. From all accounts, Brooks was a force to be reckoned with, and had the literary chops to bring her message to the forefront of the American Poetry landscape. If you've never heard of her, here's a sample below. .....
The Bean Eaters
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
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I read it five times. Don't feel silly if you find something new in the poem each time. I've already got a feature film narrative playing in my head from only three stanzas.
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Scroll to the bottom of the newsletter, just after "Found on the Shelf," for results from last week's informal poll about writing in the margins of books, and see if you are a winner of freebies! Happy reading, and Happy Valentine's, Galentine's, and Palentine's Day to all.
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From the review in Bookreporter:
Set in 1970-90s Texas, a mesmerizing story about a fierce woman and the partner-in-crime she can’t escape.
It was 1970 when 13-year-old runaway Kit Walker was abducted by Manny Romero, a smooth-talking, low-level criminal, who first coddled her and then groomed her into his partner-in-crime. Before long, Kit and Manny were infamous for their string of gas station robberies throughout Texas, making a name for themselves as the Texaco Twosome.
Twenty years after they meet, the new and improved/fresh out of prison Manny shows up on Kit and her daughter's scraped-together doorstep amongst the pecan trees and muddy creeks of the town of Pecan Hollow.
Gritty, penetrating and unexpectedly tender. ensnares the reader in its story of resilience and bonds that define us. With its rich rural landscape, indelible characters and striking regional language, it is a hauntingly intimate and distinctly original debut about the complexity of love -both romantic and familial- and the strength and vulnerability of womanhood. Click here for full book info.
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From the STARRED review in BookPage titled:
"A dying man confronts his mistakes and makes a last-ditch attempt to reconnect with his son in this vividly told and poignant novel."
Its simple format—letters that offer decades of retrospection—makes for incredible storytelling, and readers will be invested from page one.
Jacob Swinton is dying of lung cancer. In his last few months, he decides to write to his estranged gay son, Isaac. Through these letters, Jacob not only atones for his past behavior but also chronicles the Swinton family history from the time of American slavery until the early 2000s.
Jacob confronts his mistakes head-on. He did the best he could, but that doesn’t change the fact that he rejected Isaac and destroyed his chances at having a relationship with him.
Jacob is terribly lonely, kept company only by books by authors from Malcolm X to Alice Walker, that open his mind but also sharpen his understanding of how wrong he has been.
An accomplished author of six previous novels, Black has crafted a memorable, poignant story that explores themes of regret, legacy and family—and yet remains perfectly balanced through it all. Click here for full book details.
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From the STARRED PW review:
This riveting nonfiction work, aims to reveal how “Africa has fueled the world,” through the lives of 10 individuals, including Aesop, Merneith, Terence, and Tin Hinan, and from African dynasties that are rarely mentioned in world history. Interspersed passages of context convey a rich account of innovative, oft-untold breakthroughs that took place in Africa before European colonization: forming a functioning government, exporting goods such as turquoise and copper, and creating fine literature that evolved into the comedy of manners. Readers will learn about events and figures with impressive legacies. For example, Hannibal Barca, a war tactician, outstrategized Rome for years using mobile units and the natural environment to his advantage, inspiring myriad military leaders. Each profile is accompanied by Wilson’s lush full-color art.
Concise and well researched, this robust, historically accurate timeline will serve as an invaluable resource for years to come. Recommended for ages 9 to adult. Click here for full book info.
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From the Kirkus review:
It’s 1995. Kenyatta Bernice—known as KB—is 10 years old and looking forward to turning 11. Then her father dies, her family loses their house, and KB’s mother leaves her and her older sister, Nia, with a grandfather they barely know. The summer that follows is a tumultuous one for KB. The White kids across the street are eager to play with KB when their mom isn’t around, but she soon learns that she can’t count on their friendship. A boy KB thinks she can trust hurts her. The only reassuring constant in her life is her well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables.
Her grandfather reveals that he and her mother had a falling out, but KB knows that he’s leaving out important details. Child narrators can be a challenge, but Harris has crafted a voice for her young protagonist that is both believable and engaging. Early in the narrative, when she first arrives at her grandfather’s home, KB reports, “The house is silent and smells like a mix between the old people that kiss my cheeks at church, and the tiny storage unit where all our stuff lives now.” There’s a lot of information packed into this eloquent sentence as well as a lot of pathos.
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From the Kirkus review:
A former federal prosecutor depicts a judicial system compromised by racism and ineptitude.
“The pride I felt working for the DOJ was immeasurable, but the bureaucracy was unbearable.” So writes Coates, of her early work in the federal government, investigating voting rights issues consistently hampered by lobbyists and corrupt elected officials. She enlisted for a four-year term as a litigator with a variety of cases, large and small, on the docket. In one case, a White supervisor stepped far over the line of racist caricature to mansplain to her, a Black woman, how to interrogate Black suspects. In another, an elderly Black woman, on the stand as the victim of a crime, requested that the young Black man who was on trial for committing it be given clemency. “I know young men like him,” she told the judge. “They were twenty once too…and likely as dumb as this young boy seemed to act that night.” Anecdote after anecdote builds to a moving conclusion: “Justice is an ecosystem, as complex as it is interconnected with those at its helm and at its mercy.” Coates also clearly demonstrates how our sense of justice is conditioned by who we are. A White suburbanite will likely have a different definition of it than a Black man who is sure that a random police stop could end in violence.
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From the PW review:
Tillet, surveys nearly 40 years of cultural grappling in this insightful account of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple. The novel became the first work by a Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Tillet recounts the novel’s history, covering the controversy it stirred up when published, notably for its “use of a black dialect and its celebration of lesbianism.” Walker later came under fire, as well, for allowing the movie adaptation to be put in white hands. (Steven Spielberg directed it.) In addition to the history, Tillet mixes in her own experiences: “The novel’s main black women characters—Celie, Shug, and Sofia—have endured and emerged as guides that have imprinted themselves on me to help me heal,” she writes of returning to the novel after being sexually assaulted, struggling with an eating disorder, and contemplating suicide. Along the way, Tillet interviews Oprah Winfrey, who made her big-screen debut in the adaptation, and theater producer Scott Sanders, who persuaded Waters “that he, as a white, gay man from the Gulf Coast of Florida, was the right person to produce The Color Purple on Broadway.” Tillet’s passionate insights successfully imbue a classic novel with modern relevance. Click here for full book info.
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From the PW review:
Tadjo’s resonant, unflinching latest delves into the West African ebola crisis of the mid-2010s and how it played out in a region devastated by trauma and loss. The novel follows a wide array of narrators, including a young woman sent away from her village to avoid the early ravages of the virus, a distressed NGO volunteer who is eager to help, teams of doctors attempting to contain the wider crisis while caring for individual patients, the infected fighting for their lives, and the bystanders hoping it will not happen to them. Over all of these voices looms another: that of the ancient baobab tree that has watched over people for generations and provides a vast sense of scale as it comments on the region’s history of devastation. Tadjo humanizes the crisis, and the most resonant scenes bear witness to the virus as it spreads in “silence, a thick, threatening silence, auguring even more harrowing days to come.” Brief and haunting, this makes for a timely testament to the destructive powers of pandemics. Click here for full book info.
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From the STARRED PW review:
This deep dive by Wittenstein into the speech that galvanized the 1963 March on Washington stars not only Martin Luther King Jr. but also the colleagues whose support was crucial to him. Caldecott Medalist Pinkney captures King in a huddle with nine black pastors and organizers the night before the speech. “You have to preach,” Reverend Ralph Abernathy says; Wyatt Tee Walker suggests skipping “I have a dream”; “You have used it too many times already.” A moving long view shows throngs of demonstrators—250,000 of them—converging on the Lincoln Memorial. The speech is good, but “Martin wanted more” until a shout from singer Mahalia Jackson (“Tell them about the dream, Martin!”). Wittenstein’s riveting story shows that historical moments—and movements—are not inevitable; they’re shaped and changed by many hands and voices. In emphatic phrases and art alternatingly warm and tense, the creators’ moving portrait of the civil rights leader in consultation with others is an invaluable addition to the shelf of King biographies. A wealth of resources includes notes from the makers, short biographies of King’s colleagues, a bibliography, and more. Click here for full book info.
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From the STARRED Kirkus review:
An author's powerful consideration of the Second Amendment as a deliberately constructed instrument of White supremacy.
In 1906 in Atlanta, a White mob attacked Black businesses and neighborhoods in a kind of mass lynching. “Let’s kill all the Negroes so our women will be safe,” yelled one instigator. When armed Black citizens responded, the Georgia government immediately sent in the cavalry, not to protect the neighborhoods but to suppress what was tantamount to a modern slave revolt. And it was precisely to suppress revolts, Anderson argues, that the “well-regulated militia” language of the Second was formulated. In Southern colonies where militias and slave patrols were one and the same, only Whites could enlist, meaning that only Whites were legally allowed to carry firearms. Many states specifically forbade Blacks from owning or carrying firearms, even after emancipation. The Second Amendment, writes the author, helped reinforce the Constitution’s “three-fifths” clause, a means of disempowering Blacks politically forevermore. Writing evenhandedly and with abundant examples, Anderson makes a thoroughly convincing case.
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Click the Adult or the Kids/YA links in the images and get the jump on tomorrow's releases today!
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Teachers Do The Smartest Things: |
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I was in just about every elementary school on the bay last week, and saw so many genius teaching ideas. I was in and out of Shay Elementary in under 5 minutes, but noticed this darling clock in the office. I had to snap a picture to share with those of you looking for ways to introduce telling time to your little ones. Imagine all of the other great shapes you could use now that you've seen this example! Raindrops making a cloud with short and long lightning bolts; an ice cream scoop's sprinkles on top of a cone; bubbles blown from a short and long bubble wand; and more!
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Supercharge Your Brain: How to Maintain a Healthy Brain Throughout Your Life by James Goodwin, PhD
7 minute listen:
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/03/1069837704/why-you-want-to-supercharge-your-brain
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Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Do Not Know by Adam Grant
From the PW review: “Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late,” warns psychologist Grant (The Gift Inside the Box) in this energetic guide. Learning to question one’s assumptions requires a high level of “mental fitness,” he writes, which can be learned. To that end, he urges readers to stay flexible and adapt to change by identifying and managing such emotions as defensiveness and anger. Grant offers no shortage of examples of people who have managed to change their own or others’ minds, or those who have failed: Daryl Davis, for example, is a Black man who brought KKK members out of Klan membership by engaging them in thoughtful conversation, while Mike Lazaridis of Blackberry failed to adapt when he insisted no one would want an “entire computer” on their phone. In the way of advice, Grant encourages readers to develop intellectual humility, accept criticism of their work, and have a “challenge network” to prevent tunnel vision. Grant convincingly makes a case that it’s possible to prevent “locking our life GPS onto a single target [that] can give us the right directions to the wrong destination.” His guide is reliably lively, convincing, and approachable.
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How To Be Perfect by Michael Schur
In a world full of complicated decisions, where every choice we make affects something or someone, how do we ever figure out if the decisions we make are inherently good or bad? And how the heck do we figure out if we’re actually as good (or bad) of a person as we think we are?
Along with being the co-writer behind Parks and Rec and The Office, Michael Shur is the writer behind NBC’s The Good Place – a comedy show about a woman who ends up in heaven by mistake. This book was born from the years of research that went into writing The Good Place, which explored moral and ethical dilemmas through four seasons of brilliant characters and hilarious dialogue (can you tell it’s one of my favorites?).
So obviously, when I saw this book was coming out, I absolutely had to read it. But even better – I listened to it on Libro! And along with being read by the author, the actors from the show read many of the footnotes and acted out hypothetical situations (and there were a lot of them). This just made the experience of the book so much better. But regardless of whether you have seen the show or not, I feel like this book has to be a must-read for everyone.
The reader and writer in me is just reeling at the task Shur took on: reading convoluted and complex works of moral philosophy like Aristotle and Kant, and boiling the concepts down to something everyone can understand while simultaneously calling out their faults and acknowledging biases (including his own). He recognizes that “good decisions” are often expensive or time consuming, and it’s often a privilege to even have the option to make a “good” decision. I won’t give any spoilers, but rest assured, this book taught me that “being a good person,” while intimidating, might not be so hard after all.
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How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino
I really don’t know why I was so drawn to moral philosophy books this month, but this book was another one that I knew I absolutely had to read once I heard about it. How Do You Live? is a Japanese children’s classic originally published in 1937, but the English translation was just recently released at the end of last year. Hayao Miyazaki, the brilliant animator behind Studio Ghibli films Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, and countless others is adapting this book into his next film.
Told between our main character Junichi Honda – nicknamed Copper after the famous philosopher Copernicus – and his uncle’s journaled letters to the young boy, we follow as Copper tackles big subjects like friendship and bravery, thinking for ourselves, and how to make tofu.
At first, I thought this book was just about Copper’s relationship with his uncle, as he navigates life and frequently asks his uncle for advice. But it wasn’t until I looked more into the author’s story that I really began to understand this book. Yoshino was born in 1899 and grew up in Tokyo, where the book is set, and studied literature and philosophy. During this time, Japan was becoming increasingly authoritarian, passing laws that banned people from saying or writing anything that was critical of the government. Yoshino, who had attended political meetings with progressive thinkers, was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months. After a friend helped release him from prison, he wrote How Do You Live? for young readers to teach the next generation about the importance of free thought and human progress.
In this light, the book holds so much weight for me. The lessons feel valuable even now, almost a hundred years later, when people all over the world are still being punished for thinking differently. Even though this book is meant for younger readers, sometimes I’m still surprised by how books for the littlest readers sometimes have the biggest messages.
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Last week, I asked you to choose from the following three answers to the question: Is it alright to write in the margins of books?
a) it is ok to write in the margins
b) it is never ok to write in the margins
c) it is only ok to write in the margins of SOME books
After reading some of the reasons behind the answers, you "A people" better hope you never meet a "B person" in a dark alley. Or a lit one. Or think about writing in a book when a "B person" might overhear your thoughts. The point is that although the "Bs" are small in number, they are mighty, and they have their reasons. We better all keep our margin-writing private if we know what's good for us is all I'm saying.
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Two of my favorite responses were:
"I always underline and write in the margins. My friends love to borrow my books because they are interested in what I think is important in the writing."
was immediately followed in my inbox by:
"My guideline is that if I am reading a first edition - no matter which one - I do not write in it, even to ownership or recipient of a gift. I have bought enough rare books and haunted bookstores that writing by anyone other than a celebrated person devalues the book. Plus, selfishly I don’t want someone’s bias to influence my reading until afterwards."
And I think they're BOTH right
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I did not discriminate between the A, B, or C people in the random selection of winners this week. And I DEFINITELY didn't write it down in a book that was next to my computer to take notes while I was writing this... Winners below, email me by replying back to this email to arrange pickup or shipment of your random freebies, and thank you everyone for your charming notes! |
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background image credit: Patrick Tomasso @impatrickt
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