Black Women – Reading for you

AFAR, projecting out there

Afar by Leila del Duca
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lovely colorful book, set in the distant future, in a desert community where Boetema and her brother Inotu must make their way int he world while their parents have gone off to earn some money. The only problem is, Inotu has gotten in trouble, and Boetema keeps going on spirit trips every time she falls asleep.

The places are real, and she wants to go back to the same places again, but can’t figure out why. Meanwhile, the two have to keep alive.

Good story telling. Lovely pictures, as you can see below. The brown scenes are the here and now part of the story, and the colorful ones are for when she is spirit traveling.

Good, quick read. Makes me wonder if there will be a volume 2, as this ending leaves a bit of things open. Oh, and Agama Wanwatu is caracturer from her myths, who is now a constellation which includes the North Star. (For us it would be Ursa Minor ).

Agama Wanwatu

Market scene

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Hidden Women

Hidden Women: The African-American Mathematicians of NASA Who Helped America Win the Space Race by Rebecca Rissman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nicely done middle-grade version of Hidden Figures would be the best way to describe this, though I have to say I have only seen the movie and not read the book, so that may be to simplified, although the bibliography does list that book, as well as others, as one of the author’s sources.

What is nice about this is how Rebecca brings in what was going on socially while these women were working for NASA, about the civil rights movement, and the cold war. And the story does not end with with the landing on the moon, but goes as far, in the final chapter, the epilogue as talking about where women of color are today, in the agency.

Would recommend this for middle school classrooms and libraries. Lost of positive stories of women working to advance despite obstacles. Good to get the story out for the younger readers too.

Thanks to Netgalley and Captstone for making this book available for an honest review.

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Freedom, or not

Freedom’s Just Another Word by Caroline Stellings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was a little too young in 1970 when this book takes place, so I don’t remember too well the things that were going on then and I certainly was not a young black woman living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And yet this novel felt so real so true to the time that once I got past the introduction I was hocked on her voice and her dream of becoming a blues singer

This is the story of how Louisiana meets Janis Joplin and is offered a chance to audition if she can get down to Austin Texas in time.

And you would think that would be enough to the story but this is not a simple road trip, but a journey of thoughts as well as places. The world is changing in 1970, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

I throughly enjoyed this story and felt the author got everything right including Janis Joplin. I highly recommend this book. Well done historical fiction.

Thanks to Netfalley for providing this book for an honest review.

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Amazing adoption of time travel in slave times

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Good books make you cry. Great books make you think. Fantastic books stay with you long after you read them, and haunt you with their story. This book, this book has all those factors. If the story is this good in graphic novel form, it makes me feels I should run right out and read the original.

I thought, when I got it, I would flip through a few pages, and then go back to work. Well, 200 something pages later, I had not gone back to work.

Very moving story of a young, black woman from 1976, going back in time to save an ancestor. This happens several time, each time, returning seconds, or hours after she left. She only knows it is happening when she gets dizzy. And the time she is send back to has to be one of the worse times to be black, as she finds herself on a plantation in pre-civil war Maryland. And the ancestor she has to save, is the son of the plantation owner.

Worse, then having to keep saving the white man, is that the woman who would be her great-great-great-something grandmother is black, and wants nothing to do with the son.

And in between, we see a non-whitewashed, so to speak, story of life as a slave. This graphic novel makes this book available to many more people, people who should read it. This should be offered in schools, in libraries, and anywhere people need to read this, and understand the history of the black people in the US. Very sad, very moving, and very compelling.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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Historical novel of a beauty pagent

Like Vanessa by Tami Charles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a story about Nichelle Nichols, who played Urura, in the original series of Star Trek, that she wanted to quit, after the first season. She felt she wasn’t doing anything special on the show, and felt she could do better elsewhere. But Martin Luther King Jr. told her to stay. That her being on the show as showing girls that looked like her, that they could be more.

And, in the 1983, for the first time since the Miss American contest began, a woman of color won. Vanessa Williams. Black girls, who thought they could never be Miss America now saw that they too could aspire.

Representation is important. It is important because, while we can imagine that we can be something, it is hard if we don’t have role models that show that yes, it can happen.

And while I had a feeling that some things in this book would turn out the way they did, this doens’t mean that this was all slapped together. This book made me cry at the right points, and feel for Vanessa at the right points, and all the feels were there.

And this is probably, although as the author says, she did not come from quite such a hard place as the Vanessa in this book, she too tried the beauty content route, and knows from where she speaks.

Well researched (I like that in an historical novel), and well written, and just wonderful.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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What you need to know about Black Women

Black Girls Rock!: Celebrating the Power, Beauty, and Brilliance of Black Women by Beverly Bond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is very important to have representation in literature, in books, on TV, in the movies. It is very important that children can see that there are “people like me” that have done great things.

If you don’t know that there are others like you, in life, in history, how can you know what has come before, and what you can do?

This book is a collection of essays, of speeches given, by women of color, by black women who are alive today, as well as short pieces on black women who have come before.

Yes, we all know who Sojourner Truth was, or I hope we do, and we certainly know who Harriet Tubman was, but how often are we taught about Zora Neal Hurston, when we are taught about the men of the Harlem Renaissance.

What I love about this collection is how varied the women in this volume are. We of course, begin with Michelle Obama, but we have Angela Davis, and Maxine Waters, Joy-Ann Reid, and Toshi Reagon.

This is a great collection. What a wonderful thing Beverly Bond did to create the Black Girls Rock Awards in 2006.

Highly recommended for schools and libraries as well as personal collections.

Thanks to NetGalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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