The Dead are Arising by Les Payne

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I'll admit, I never had a strong opinion on Malcolm X. I only thought of him what I was taught: violent and the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr. I'd never seen the Spike Lee biopic on him. I knew not a thing. But somehow, I came across this book. I thought it'd be good to add to my library because I'm at a point in my life where I really want to KNOW my Black American history as an Black woman. 

I've known the sanitized version of Black American history (i.e. what you're taught in school), but nothing in depth. This book was on my TBR list and I picked it at random from my vase of books. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY

Author and journalist Les Payne spent nearly 30 years interviewing anyone who Malcolm  X including his siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles, political figures and more.

Payne corrects the historical record of Malcolm X and unveils extraordinary revelations like the secret 1961 meeting between Malcolm X and the Ku Klux Klan.

The result of his research is this biography that gives a never-before-seen view of Malcolm from his  1925 birth in Nebraska to his 1965 assassination in Harlem. 

Nice Girls by Catherine Dang

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I saw this on Libby and thought I'd give it a try....but it didn't leave a lasting impression. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Mary used to be a nice girl. She was the quiet, chubby teen with the scholarship to an Ivy League school and the resident whiz kid of her hometown in Minnesota.

Three years after her high school graduation, she returns home as a thinner, cynical and restless failure who was kicked out of Cornell at the beginning of her senior year and won't tell anyone why. Now as she begins work at the local grocery store, Mary tries to make sense of her life's sharp downward spiral. 

But then her once best friend, Olivia goes missing. The town obsesses over her disappearance but Mary wonders if her disappearance is tied to another missing girl, DeMaria, whose case has been dismissed as a runaway.

Mary pries at the cracks of the tow missing girls and will force her to confront horrible truths. Maybe there are no nice girls, after all.

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

 

Hello my lovely readers!

OK. So I think I was a bit harsh with my last post about modern fiction by Black female authors. Honestly, I think I'm just growing out of the type of fiction I was reading by those authors (thrillers, social horrors, current events etc.) I'm known to be a tad bit overdramatic!

I think I'm still trying to figure out the type of fiction that I enjoy. It used to be thrillers, but I'm over that genre. Maybe it's realistic modern fiction? I loved novels like The Mothers and The Woman in Valencia and Adele. I think I should gear more in the direction of those kinds of novels, but I won't force it. I'm definitely a history, biography and non-fiction girl through and through.

Anyway, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls did restore my hope in modern fiction by Black female authors, but I was left kind of...meh. Let's get into it!

SUMMARY

Althea Butler-Cochran and her husband Proctor are arrested and thrown in jail for fraud.

This sends the Butler family into a tailspin as Althea's younger sisters Viola and Lillian now have to tackle life without the substitute matriarch of their family which includes taking care of her daughters and confronting their own secrets.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

 Hello my lovely readers!

Sigh. Alright, I'm making a bold declaration, but I just can't take it anymore. I'm not reading anymore modern fiction by Black female authors unless it's by Dorothy Koomson. I know, I know it's a bold statement, but it's like I'm reading the EXACT SAME THING in each book regardless of plot, regardless of genre, regardless of author. This was another failure. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY
A slave woman is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in Georgian London.

The whole city is abuzz at the loss of renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentrict French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, newspapers print lurid theories and the testimonies against servant and former slave, Frannie Langton, are damning.

Frannie can't recall what happened that fateful evening, but she does have a story to tell about her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist and a passionate and forbidden relationship.

Cherish Farrah by Beverly Morrow

Hello my lovely readers!

Oh, I had such high hopes for this book given the summary. Yet again, I was let down. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY
Seventeen-year-old Farrah Turner is one of two Black girls in her country club community. Farrah and Cherish Whitman are best friends and would do anything for each other. Farrah is raised by Black parents and Cherish was adopted by a wealthy, white family.

Cherish's family take Farrah in when her family is unexpectedly confronted with foreclosure. The longer she stays, the more he own parents suggest that something is wrong in the Whitman house. But soon, debilitating illnesses, fever dreams and a slew of other mysterious things begin to happen to Farrah. And it's anyone's guess who's really in control in the Whitman house.

Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I had a potato weekend this past weekend and did nothing but read this book (in between sleeping, eating and just relaxing with hubby). I couldn't put it down! Let's get into it.

SUMMARY
The two diaries of teenagers "Alice" and "Jay" created two separate social panics.

The 1971 anonymous diary Go Ask Alice  reinvented the young adult genre with its portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. It was the musings of a middle-class All-American teenage girl who becomes hooked on drugs, in particular LSD.

Eight years later, in 1979, another diary rattles the culture. Jay's Journal shares the life of an alleged teenage Satanist name "Jay." It sets off a firestorm of literal witch hunts, a string of adolescent suicide and shatters communities.

But both diaries came from the same dark place: a woman named Beatrice Sparks who stopped at nothing to gain fame and adulation.

We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Sigh. Another day, another Black modern fiction book explaining how to be Black to a white audience. Let's get this over with!

SUMMARY

Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they're still close and even consider themselves sisters, although their lives have taken different directions. Jen, who is white, is married and finally pregnant. Riley, who is Black, has pursued her childhood dream of becoming a TV journalist.

But their friendship is tested when Jen's husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.

House of Cotton by Monica Brashears

 

Hello my lovely readers!

This was another Libby audiobook exclusive. The plot kind of hooked me, but this was just one weird book...and not in a good way. Let's get into it!

SUMMARY

19-year-old Magnolia Brown is broke and grieving. Her grandmother, Mama Brown, just died; her mom is nowhere to be found, and Magnolia has to figure out how to make ends meet to pay rent for her predatory landlord.

She chances upon meeting Cotton, a funeral director who offers her a job modeling. Magnolia accepts and dresses up as the deceased loved one of families and friends looking for one more conversation with their dearly departed. All is well and Magnolia is bringing in the cash, but as Cotton's requests become increasingly weird, she discovers there's a lot more at stake than just her financial woes.

Author Spotlight: Dorothy Koomson

 Hello my lovely readers! 

Welcome to the first ever Author Spotlight. I have a list of authors/writers that I'll highlight every so often on this blog. Of course, we're starting with one of my favorite authors, Dorothy Koomson. Let's get into it!

Dorothy Koomson is an English novelist of Ghanaian descent born in London.

She's often referred to as the "queen of the big reveal."

Koomson loved writing and reading at an early age.

"My mum taught me-and my siblings- to read and write when I was in nursery," she said. "As I got older, I used to go to the library everyday after school to read books and I used to write short descriptive passages all the time."

When she was just 13 years old, Koomson wrote her first novel, though unpublished, "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate."

"I used to write a chapter every night in my exercise books then pass it around to my fellow convent school pupils the next morning," she said. "They seemed to love it."

Koomson attended university at Trinity and All Saints College in Leeds before returning to London to get her masters degree in journalism from Goldsmiths University. During her career as a journalist, Koomson would regularly write short stories and novels whenever she had the chance. In 2003, it all paid off when her first novel The Cupid Effect  was published.

The Presidents vs The Press by Harold Holzer

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I bought this book while on my books about journalism kick. I'm not someone who is particularly interested in politics. I vote in my local elections and the presidential election, but I don't necessarily care to talk about politics or anything like that. But it's mainly focused on the role the media plays in each U.S. president's term. Let's get into it!

SUMMARY

From George Washington to Donald Trump, presidents have attacked, manipulated, denigrated the press.

Washington groused about his treatment in the newspapers. Thomas Jefferson used a reporter to find dirt on his rival Alexander Hamilton, only for that same reporter to expose his own affair with his slave Sally Hemings. Andrew Jackson rewarded loyal newspapers with government contracts and Abraham Lincoln shuttered critical papers and imprisoned their editors without trial.

Readers are guided through the clashes between chief executives and journalists, showing who won these battles and girding us for a new fight to protect the nation's greatest institution: a free and functioning press.

A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs by Susie King Taylor

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I started this book at 10:00 a.m. today and finished by 11:45 a.m. Let's get into it!

SUMMARY

These are the memoirs of a Black woman who was born a slave, who had the good fortune to gain her freedom early in the war, with the education and ability to observe the will to recall in later years the significance of the events in which she was a vigorous participant Susie Kin Taylor's recollections are invaluable for those who wish to understand the Civil War from a Black woman's' point of view.

MY THOUGHTS

This book was an absolute treat to read. I'm not into military or war history at all (funny, because I was raised in the military), but this was an interesting read. We learned a little bit about Taylor's family history, her experiences after the war, but more importantly what she did during the war.

Her recollections are brief and to the point, but the notes after each chapter are extremely helpful in providing context to what was going on. This was published in 1902 and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of her memoir.

The Last Invitation by Darby Kane

 

Hello my lovely readers! 

HAPPY JUNE!

I sat on the waitlist at my library for this book. It was such a let down. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY
The Sophie Foundation meets on the second Tuesday of every month to vote....and then someone dies.

Call it a women's vigilante  group, if you will. Over the last few years, prominent men--a retired diplomat, beloved basketball coach, a CEO--have all died in a series of fluke accidents and shocking suicides.

Jessa Hall jumped at the chance to join this secret club, when she's in her most vulnerable state. But once you're in the group, there's not getting out. Soon she finds she's in over her head and reaches out to her frenemy Gabby, who also happens to be investigating the mysterious death of her ex-husband. The two don't trust each other, but they have to rely on each other to survive and tell the truth.