Book Review: Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones adn the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men / Sandra Neil Wallace and Richard Wallace

I found a new hero today, Scipio Jones. This slim volume came to the library recently and it captured my attention. I love to fill my mind with heroes.

In October of 1919 a group of Black sharecroppers met at their church with the intent of staring a union. These men had been farming other's land and were not being given a fair share of the profits. The landowners were angry and formed a mob that shot at the sharecroppers, destroyed their church and burned it to the ground. Many were rounded up for arrest, and twelve of these men were sentenced to death for crimes they didn't commit.

Enter Scipio Africanus Jones. Though he wasn't allowed into law school, he found some lawyers who would let him apprentice with them. He stepped up and fought in court for these men, often using his own money to provide for their defense. 

This man is the definition of a hero - dedicated, persistent, caring, stubborn. 

You can read about this man in Race Against Time found on the shelves of the South Library. 

Book Review: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl / Harriet Jacobs

Happy February. Did you know that it is Black History Month? "Every month should be Black History Month", you say? I agree. But I still wanted to take the time to read something about Black history this month and selected this book. 

So what is spectacular about this book? I found it enlightening and a bit brain twisting. Wikipedia tells me that this book was originally published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Bent. Here Harriet (Linda in the story) shares her story of living in slavery. By some standards she was lucky. Jacobs reports, 

"I was never cruelly overworked; I was never lacerated with the whip from head to foot; I was never so beaten and bruised that I could not turn from one side to the other; I never had my heel-strings cut to prevent my running away; I was never chained to a log and forced to drag it about, while I toiled in the fields from morning till night; I was never branded with hot iron, or torn by bloodhounds. But though my life in slavery was comparatively devoid of hardships, God pity the woman who is compelled to lead such a life!"

BUT - she served a lecherous master who would not free her. She was afraid of what he would do with her and her children. She was afraid of what happened to slave girls at a certain age because they offered their masters value in their ability to produce more slave children. She was afraid to be around him. She was afraid that she would lose her children. She was so afraid  of remaining with her master that she escaped slavery to hide for many years. But I don't want to share more. Read this book. The light it sheds on being both slave and female is mind boggling. 

You can read this book via the Project Gutenberg site: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

 

Book and Movie Review: Hidden Figures, book by Margot Lee Shetterly

Hidden Figures tells the story of how a group of black women broke both the race and sex barrier when they acquired jobs at NACA/NASA as mathematicians. It is an important story to be told. There is also a lot here about how it felt to live in the USA as a black person during the mid twentieth century. 

However, this book was a bit hard to get through. There is a lot of information here and important information, but it was hard to get through. The telling wasn't linear and skipped from one character to another. I had the book in front of me in print, and also was listening to the audio book. (which I borrowed through SORA - I have the Nashua Public library connected to my SORA account.) I ended up speeding up the recording to 175 percent so that I could get through it. There is a pretty good index so I think it could be helpful for reports on the Space Race, Feminisim, Civil Rights, American History.

AND THEN I watched the movie. I am not sure how accurate the movie was, and it certainly didn't cover all of the information in the book, but it was enjoyable. It centered on three of the women and told their stories in a manner that could be digested. 

So lessons learned -

• Sometimes the move IS better
• Some books are better for research than for reading cover to cover
• This is not the book for me

 

Book Review: Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

 

"Roses can bloom in the hardest conditions." This is a sentiment that Mr. Wyatt shares with Maverick in this novel. 

And yes, Maverick is both a rose and living in difficult conditions. His father is in jail, presumably for gang-related activity (he was the "crown".) His mom can barely pay the bills. He is in a gang and selling drugs. AND then one day he is asked to join a girl at the hospital where a DNA test is being run on her 3 month old son. That is the day he is thrown into the life of fatherhood when the girl leaves the hospital without the baby. Maverick is thrown into a life of sleepless nights, exploding diapers, and of forehead kisses. This new responsibility brings up all kinds of questions, such as how is a 17 year old boy supposed to support a son.

No, life for Maverick doesn't get easier from here. And this is not a novel that is tidy. Maverick struggles with decisions that will impact his family for years. Sometimes there are no easy answers. 

This is a story of fatherhood, of family, and of friendship. It is a story of responsibility, and consequences for actions, and struggling to figure out what the next steps in life. This is also the prequel to The Hate You Give.

As far as I am concerned, this is a five star novel.

Find it on the shelves at South or the Nashua Public Library. NPL also has both audio and ebook copies through Libby. 

Book Review: Brown Girl Dreaming / Jacqueline Woodson

This is a memoir -- in verse -- of the evolution of an author -- who happens to live in brown skin. How can a book get any better than that?

This book is so gently written. It will take you back to the 1960s and early 1970s when Woodson was just beginning her life. She was born in Columbus, Ohio - but spent most of her early life between places, the north and the south: Brooklyn, NY and South Carolina. And while the stark different between her grandparents red stone house with a porch for sitting and a yard big enough for gardening and playing AND living in Brooklyn where there is only one tree, people are crowded together and the air smells of city - the biggest difference was how a brown person had to walk so differently through each of these places. There was a freedom in NYC to walk through the neighborhood (though not past a certain street) that was different from the back-of-the-bus life in South Carolina. The vestiges of Jim Crow still colored the world in the mid sixties.

But this is more than living and growing as a person of color. Here Woodson shares her evolution as a writer. Her love of words and her different way of learning to read. She shares her love for her family. And finally, she draws a verbal picture of growing up in the Church of the Latter-Day Saints. Here you will find a life filled with double dutch and fireflies, friends and bullies, family joys and sorrows, living between two worlds, Christianity and Islam, words, words, words. 

One of my favorite quotes: 

"If someone had taken
that [picture] book out of my hand 
said, You're too old for this 
maybe
I'd never have believed
that someone who looked like me
could be in the pages of the book
that someone who looked like me
had a story."

You can find a print copy of this book in the South library. Nashua Public Library also has print copies and you can borrow the audiobook from Overdrive.

Book Review: Front Lines / Michael Grant

 If you love stories about war or re-imagined history - this might be the book for you. Between the covers of this book you will find the story of three women fighting during WWII after it has been legalized for women to join the military (that is the re-imagined part).  You will meet: Rio who joins up after her sister is killed in the Navy and after telling a boy that she is enlisting, Rainy who is an intelligence officer with little action until there is no other choice, Frangie - a black medic. 

So much of this story is true - the experiences of soldiers in WWII - even the experiences of soldiers today. (Want to know what bootcamp is like? Here you will find out.) The fact that these soldiers are women is outside the realm of fact - but the prejudice and treatment they get are real - and still real in 2021. The treatment of black soldiers in WWII also rings of truth.