A Review of 'From Somalia, With Love' by Na'ima B. Robert

"My name is Safia Dirie.  My family has always been my mum, Hoyo, and my two older brothers, Ahmed and Abdullahi.  I don't really remember Somalia-- I'm an East London girl, through and through.  But now Abo, my father, is coming from Somalia to live with us, after 12 long years.   How am I going to cope?  Safia knows that there will be changes ahead but nothing has prepared her for the reality of dealing with Abo's cultural expectations, her favorite brother Ahmed's wild ways, and the temptation of her cousin Firdous's party-girl lifestyle.  Safia must come to terms with who she is-- as a Muslim, as a teenager, as a poet, as a friend, but most of all as a daughter to a father she has never known.  Safia must find her own place in the world, so both father and daughter can start to build the relationship they both long for.  From Somalia, With Love is one girl's quest to discover who she is-- a story that, while rooted in Somali and Muslim life, strikes a chord with young people everywhere."

When I was in the middle of student teaching, this book was one that sat on the book shelf.  I made eye contact with it a few times, but I never picked up this book at the time.  When I learned that my mentor teacher was leaving that school to pursue her Ph.D. and she was going through her things and giving things away, I went back to get this book, but it was already gone.  So I found this book a different way and read it on my Kindle.

I think I started reading this book after I was offered a job at the school where I currently work and I was looking for books I could use for a unit on identity.  I think I will use this book for literature circles rather than teaching this book on its own.

Growing up in the schools that I went to and where I student taught, I knew a lot of Somalian people, but I really didn't know a thing about their culture.  This book was helpful in that it started me on that path to learning more about Somalia and Somalian people (although of course everyone is different, no matter what country you come from).  And besides that, it helped me understand a bit more about what it's like when you arrive from your home country in a new one... what adjustments need to be made and more importantly, the changes that one typically goes through when you move somewhere entirely different.  You can't be one person in one place and be that same person when you move permanently to another place.  That's what I've experienced in the short time I lived abroad and what I have been learning the more I read about experiences like this.  While I didn't know it at the time, this has really started my reading journey about immigration.

This book is, I would say, good for younger readers-- between 6th and 8th grade, I would say.  But it would also work for high school students.  I would like to use this book in my classroom, so I'll have to let you know how this book goes over with them.

Overall, I give 'From Somalia, With Love':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir' by Carrie Brownstein

"From a leader of feminist punk music at the dawn of the riot-grrrl era, a candid and deeply personal look at life in rock and roll.

Before Carrie Brownstein co-developed and starred in the wildly popular TV comedy Portlandia, she was already an icon to young women for her role as a musician in the feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney.  The band was a key part of the early riot-grrrl and indie rock scenes in the Pacific Northwest, known for their prodigious guitar shredding and their leftist lyrics against war, traditionalism, and gender roles.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is the deeply personal and revealing narrative of Brownstein's life in music, from ardent fan to pioneering female guitarist to comedic performer and luminary in the independent rock world.  Though Brownstein struggled against the music industry's sexist double standards, by 2006 she was the only woman to earn a spot on Rolling Stone readers' list of the '23 Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time.'  This book intimately captures what it feels like to be a young woman in a rock-and-roll band, from her days at the dawn of the underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s through today."

This book was not what I expected it was going to be.  The first time I saw Carrie Brownstein at work was when the show Portlandia was just starting to pick up.  I was not even remotely aware of Carrie's past in the music industry.  It was fascinating to read about, especially because I don't have experience in creating a band and rising to any amount of success.

One big takeaway I have from this book is how life can be so different for women who create rock music over the men who create it.  I feel like I should have known this, but rock music is very male-centered.  I didn't realize that Carrie Brownstein and the rest of Sleater-Kinney and other all-female rock bands really had to carve their place in the world.  I guess I'm in a position where I can take this for granted because I can benefit from their music now and dabble.  So I appreciated Carrie's honesty in the real struggles that she went to to make this dream happen for herself.

I think one more important take-away was talked about closer to the end of her memoir.  After Carrie had been part of Sleater-Kinney for a while, she had more and more health complications come up and that made it hard for her to continue with Sleater-Kinney.  As hard as this was to read that something so important to her was coming to an end (largely by necessity), it was still a hopeful ending because she was able to find her next sort of life project, or professional project.  It's nice to know that when your big goal is accomplished or when it's no longer possible to continue with that dream, there can be something else that comes after.  Life is not over.

I think this is a read meant for those who are really into this feminist rock scene (I was very much an outsider while reading this), but nevertheless, I feel like I got a few gold nuggets out of this read.

I give 'Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl':

1/2

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'Life On Mars' by Tracy K. Smith

"You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself
To lift you past the rungs of your crib.  What
Would your life say if it could talk?

--from "No Fly Zone"

With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence.  In these new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like 'love' and 'illness' now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence.  These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope."

Okay, I'll admit, I read this book partially because I wanted to increase the number of books that I had read this year... poetry is a really good way to do this.  But my husband also read this book the first year of his undergrad and I think this book of poetry surprised him.  So I wanted to read something that he seemed to like.

But... I just couldn't get into it.  I didn't catch on from the beginning so by the time I reached the end, I hadn't bought in and I hadn't gotten what I wanted to out of this book of poetry.  Too many references I didn't understand, maybe.  

I'll leave this review disappointing and short, I suppose.  I don't think this book was meant for me to read.  And sometimes that's okay.  I recognize that.  I won't denounce this book as a bad read or anything like that, just simply 'not for me.'

I give 'Life On Mars':

Thanks for Reading.

--Jude

A Review of 'Exit West' by Mohsin Hamid

"In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet-- sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed.  They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.  When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors-- doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price.  As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice.  Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.

Exit West follows these characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are.  Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time."

When I was in a book club, this was one of the books we read together.  We had heard really good things about this book, and so we were really excited to read it an dig in.

What we found was that we were left wanting more... and not in a positive way either.  We thought that since Nadia had such a strong start as a character... she had this fierce independence and was feisty from the beginning and then... I don't know what happened.  We were hoping that she would continue this trend because Nadia was such a great character to start.  But it turns out a lot of the attention was focused on Saeed.  I wonder if it would be better if each character had their own chapters, each written from their perspective.  I think that would have given each character, especially Nadia, more agency as characters.

It was an interesting concept of having people escape from their home countries through a series of magical doors.  I wonder if, from the perspective of someone who has needed to escape their home country, this is a wish that they have.  That they could just arrive at their final destination.  To just start settling and figuring out what their new normal is going to be.  I'd be interesting in hearing others' thoughts on this.

Overall, this was not as engaging of a book as I hoped it would be... I likely won't be rereading this.

I give 'Exit West':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year' by Esme Raji Codell

"A must-read for parents, new teachers, and classroom veterans, Educating Esme is the exuberant diary of Esme Raji Codell's first year teaching in a Chicago public school.  Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esme-- as she prefers to be called-- does the cha-cha during multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library.  Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher's perspective.  While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher.

Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esme now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running.  As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esme is a classic, as is Madame Esme herself."

When I got my job teaching in East St. Paul, my 9th grade English teacher was so excited and brought all of her old things that she used to teach us (lots of Romeo and Juliet materials, but lots of other things too).  One of the things that she kindly gave me was this book.  On a weekend right before I was to receive my first ever set of students, I blazed through this book.

It was a really nice reminder why I wanted to be a teacher.  It was very affirming.  She came into her classroom and assumed the best of her students.  She believed in her students so fiercely that there was very little chance they wouldn't do well.  I truly believe that believing in students and supporting them until they have no choice but to succeed is an important piece to making sure that the people we're meant to be preparing for the future are ready to take on this challenge.  Especially because they've had success with other challenging things in their lives.

This book it partially responsible for pumping me up and making me remember why I wanted to be a teacher and more importantly, thinking about the kind of teacher I wanted to become.

I recommend this book for any new teacher, even if you're not teaching elementary school like Madame Esme is.  I will be interested in reading this again down the line after I have more experience under my belt.

I give 'Educating Esme':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'All That She Can See' by Carrie Hope Fletcher

"Feelings are part of life-- feelings are life.  If you take away what people feel, you take away anything meaningful.  Wanting to diminish the evil in this world is a good cause, one I have fought for the majority of my life, but not like this...

Cherry has a hidden talent.  She can see things other people can't and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others.  As far as the rest of the town is concerned she's simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful the townspeople start to feel better about their lives.  They don't know why they're drawn to Cherry's bakery-- they just know that they're safe there and that's how Cherry likes it.  She can help them in secret and no one will ever need to know the truth behind her gift.

And then Chase arrives in town and threatens to undo all the good Cherry has done.  Because it turns out she's not the only one who can see what she sees...

A story of love, food, and a little bit of magic All That She Can See is an enchanting and beautiful novel that's guaranteed to be the most magical story you'll read all year."

I follow Carrie on YouTube, so when she announced that she was releasing her second fiction book, I was excited.  It's not that I loved her last book On the Other Side, but I saw potential in it, so I preordered this one.

This is another book that had mixed reviews.  I thought that this book showed improvement over her last novel.  The name combinations kind of drive me nuts, but I thought overall this story had an interesting concept behind it.  Cherry is a talented baker and she uses this odd bit of magic to infuse different foods with positive feelings in order to help people feel better.  Not to make everyone happy all the time, but cheer people up, balance their emotions.  So she spends a few months to a few years in different towns depending on how downtrodden to residents of the new place she's living in feel.  The more downtrodden, the longer she stays because there's a lot more work to do.  I thought this was a lovely thought.

Knowing the conditions that Carrie was writing this book in-- between rehearsals and performances, as she's an actress and has lately been in a few touring shows that keep her away from home-- several parts of this book felt rushed or incomplete.  And Carrie's books have a tendency to become kind of preachy... like, her characters feel so artificial at times.  They say things and it doesn't feel like they're delivering a genuine message like when she says something similar in her videos.

One part that I thought had potential but was missing something was the part about the Guild.  There is an organization that keeps tabs on people that can see emotions and especially if those people are messing with emotions using their abilities.  Cherry is caught by this group.  I feel like this group would have been better to read about if we were given some kind of clue earlier in the story, or if they showed up a bit more often.  Right now, it felt like it was tacked on at the end, like she needed a good way to end her story.

Overall, there is a definite improvement to this story over her last story and I did get some enjoyment out of it.  Carrie has another book coming out in... I believe July.  It's called When The Curtain Falls and I have preordered it, so I'm looking forward to reading it.  I'm a little worried that there will be similar issues that Carrie is being pulled in too many different directions to really pay this book the attention it deserves to make it a really great read.

I give 'All That She Can See':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max' by Noelle Stevenson

"What a mystery!

Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley are not your average campers and Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady-Types is not your average summer camp.  Between the river monsters, magic, and the art of friendship bracelets, this summer is only just beginning.  Join the Lumberjanes as they take on raptors and a sibling rivalry that only myths are made of.

This New York Times bestseller and Eisner Award-nominated series is written by awesome all-star Noelle Stevenson and brilliant newcomer Grace Ellis, and illustrated by the tremendously talented Brooke Allen."

Once I finished the first installment of Lumberjanes, I was so excited to keep reading this series!  The fun continues in this whirlwind of a graphic novel.

I'll keep things short here, because I really do believe that these books need to be enjoyed with as few spoilers as possible from start to finish.  I enjoyed how funny it is and how fearlessly themselves all of the characters are.  I love this about the entire series (or at least what I've had the privilege to read so far).  The other piece that I thought was absolutely fascinating was the inclusion of a mythology piece.  It was unexpected, but it worked, so it was very believable with the rest of the story.  And since these are stories that I had heard of before, even just in passing, it sort of lent credibility to help the rest of the story along.

I can't say enough positive things about this series.  I think they're best enjoyed in volumes so that you can settle in with this story, so if you can get ahold of a full volume, definitely do!

Overall, I give 'Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max':

Thanks for Reading!

--Judes

A Review of 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

 "Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage.  The play will receive its world premiere in London's West End on July 30, 2016.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-aged children.

While Harry Potter grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted.  As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places."

I bought this almost as soon as I heard about it and since that point, it's just been sitting on my shelf staring at me.  I don't know why it took me so long to read this.

This book comes with mixed reviews.  From what I could tell, people either really, really liked it or had extreme beef with it.  I'm... somewhere in the middle, but leaning towards having beef with it.

Overall, I thought the story was engaging.  Time travel is definitely overused and it's misunderstood enough where you can bend the logic behind it.  I thought that this play assumed too much about time travel, both that extreme things can happen if you change even one small detail from the past and that you can change things back to how they were "meant" to happen.  I think that when you include time travel in your story, you're demanding a lot of buy-in from your audience, just because time travel tends to work differently across different stories that we have access to.

As I was reading and watching reviews prior to reading this play, one major complaint was about how Harry was portrayed.  At one point as things have gotten more complicated between Harry and his son Albus, he essentially says that he wishes he [his son] had never been born.  He admits that he said this in a moment of weakness, but because of his past and because of his experience of family (a very fragile experience to say the least), it's very unlikely that he would have actually said and even momentarily meant to say something like this to his son, of all people.  Not after experiencing abuse his whole life from a variety of adults in his life.

A lot of the dialogue was just awkward... like, I would read some of the lines and I couldn't even imagine what they would sound like as part of an actual show.

One thing I did appreciate was the friendship between Scorpius and Albus.  It was nice to see the products of good and evil, so to speak, come together.  Something I'm still wondering though is... why does Gryffindor and Slytherin continue to be mortal enemies of each other?  Obviously Voldemort is dead and there has been several years of healing... you'd think there would be more of an opening for inter-house friendships... I guess it just felt like so much hadn't changed even though the cast of characters passing through Hogwarts was very different from when Harry went to school.  Hogwarts should be a totally different place.  That's been my experience of schools whenever students come through.

Overall, I'm glad I read this, but I won't be reading it again.  It was nice to be brought back into Harry's world in a way that I won't be able to ever again with the original series.  I'll never be able to read the books for the first time again.  But it felt like the writers of this play only had a passing knowledge of Harry's world, so I likely won't be making a return trip.

I give 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

5 Things I'm Thankful For In 2017

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year has been incredible, filled with a lot of really great ups that I'm excited to celebrate.  As per tradition here on my blog, I've created a list of things that I'm grateful for this year.

1. Community of Peace.  I got my first job this year and formally started with students in August.  Technically, at the time this post is published, I'm in the middle of week 14 with students.  Working at this school, out of all the schools I applied for, has been the greatest gift to me.  I'm grateful that I work at a school that generously gives first-time teachers a chance to learn and grow in their craft.  I'm grateful for an infinitely supportive staff that's more like a great big family.  I'm grateful for the kids I work with and how they make me smile every single day and keep me on my toes in a way that no other job has enabled me to do.  They show me my strengths and they show me where I need to grow so I can do better by them.  I'm not even scratching the surface on how amazing this place is and how wonderful it is to be part of this team.

2. My Husband.  We celebrated our first year of marriage this year and soon it'll be nine whole years of being together.  I am grateful to have my Jack by my side no matter where we go, grateful to have adventures with him, I'm grateful for his infinite understanding and how he helps me become a better person.

3. The Means to Travel.  I'm grateful that while we aren't swimming in oceans of cash, surfing on the waves of extra time, that we're still able to make time to travel and explore and are able to set aside enough to make adventures happen.  I'm thankful for that flexibility and that freedom.

4. The Company of Smart People.  I'm grateful for experienced individuals I have had the privilege of speaking to and growing with because I've had the opportunity to have conversations about hard-hitting issues with them.  When I write this, I'm thinking of the book club I was with briefly, but this happens for me in so many contexts, so I appreciate being in contact with people like this.

5. Experiences That Inspire Me To Grow.  Not everything this year has been all sunshine and rainbows.  But even the experiences that caused me the most stress, made me cry, and were just plain hard, have helped to make me a better person.  They've helped me figure out the ways I need to grow and have made me a stronger person in many ways.  As hard as things like substitute teaching were, I wouldn't take those back.  So instead of being resentful of the kids that were absolute jerks and the staff people who were unsupportive and every other negative thing, I want to be thankful that they happened.  As one door closes, another one opens somewhere.  That's what I like to think.

There's still a month and a half left in 2017, but so far, this has been a great year with a lot of growing moments and a lot of times to be grateful for.  Thank you for being part of it for me.

--Jude

A Review of 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer

"Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian.  But on the brink of fatherhood-- facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf-- his casual questioning took on an urgency.  His quest for answers ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.  Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-- from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-- and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.  Marked by Foer's profound moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the vibrant style and creativity that made his previous books Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Eating Animals is a celebration and a reckoning, a story about the stories we've told-- and the stories we now need to tell."

I'll admit, this book took a while for me to sift through, but I sincerely believe that this is a book that needs to be digested at a pace you're comfortable with (pun intended, I guess).

Vegetarianism is something I have considered for years, but it's something I've recently taken more concrete steps to act on.  I would not consider myself vegetarian now, but there are a couple of months where I have had a vegetarian diet just to see if I was capable of it.  I was hung up on foods that I would miss eating and other things that made me uncomfortable about the thought of going completely vegetarian.  After interviewing some individuals and now after reading this book, I realized you have to adopt a different mindset about eating only vegetarian.

This book goes into the health benefits of being vegetarian, but a big chunk of the book delves into the humanitarian reasons we should adopt a vegetarian diet.  That was both hard to read and also very enlightening.  I think some of the most worthy causes to work towards are the most difficult for us to accomplish in some ways.

I'll keep this review short.  It's so worth the read even if it takes you a while to sift through the whole things.  It's valuable to identify why you do the things you do even if you don't end up changing your ways.  This is a great book because it's very fact-based and yet Jonathan Safran Foer poses just the right philosophical questions to make you consider and reconsider your dietary choices.

I give 'Eating Animals':

Thanks for Reading!

A Review of 'No House To Call My Home: Love, Family, and Other Transgressions' by Ryan Berg

"Underemployed and directionless, Ryan Berg took a job in a group home for disowned and homeless LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) teenagers.  His job was to help these teens discover their self-worth, get them back on their feet, earn high school degrees, and find jobs.  But he had no idea how difficult it would be, and the complexities that were involved with coaxing them away from dangerous sex work and cycles of drug and alcohol abuse, and helping them heal from years of abandonment and abuse.

In No House to Call My Home, Ryan Berg tells profoundly moving, intimate, and raw stories from the frontlines of LGBTQ homelessness and foster care.  In the United States, 43% of homeless youth were forced out by their parents because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  Berg faced young people who have battled extreme poverty, experienced unbalanced opportunities, structural racism, and homophobia.  He found himself ill-equipped to help, in part because they are working within a system that paints in broad strokes, focused on warehousing young people, rather than helping them build healthy relationships with adults that could lead to a successful life once they age out of foster care.

By digging deep and asking the hard questions, and by haltingly opening himself up to his charges, Berg gained their trust.  Focusing on a handful of memorable characters and their entourage, he illustrates the key issues and recurring patterns in the suffering, psychology, and recovery of these neglected teens.

No House to Call My Home will provoke readers into thinking in new ways about how we define privilege, identity, love, and family.  Because beyond the tears and abuse, the bluster and bravado, what emerges here is a love song to that irrepressible life force of youth: hope."

Over the summer, I got a couple of friends together and we started a book club so we could talk about books together!  This was one of the first books we read.  One of the women in my group happens to know the author of this book (and I think was roommates with him at one point) and so we got a little bit of an extra insight into this book.

I think in this day and age, and especially if you live in the part of the world I do or others like it, it's easy to feel complacent about LGBTQ+ issues.  Things are looking up for many people in the community as they gain more rights and are becoming more widely accepted by more families.  But the work is far from done, especially if you're a transgender individual and especially if you're in one of those families that just can't accept you for who you are and/or who you love.  So even though this is set in New York at a slightly different time, it still serves as a good illustration that we shouldn't be complacent and that there are still hundreds of thousands of individuals in need of support and change.

One of the women in my group graduated with a degree in social work, so it was really interesting to speak with her about this book.  One thing we both noticed is that Ryan Berg generally left out his experience from this story.  He mentioned that he was a gay white man who came from a family who accepted this part of him and that's where it ended.  He told us where he positioned himself but this book is very much about the people he served.  Upon further discussion of this book, we figured out that it was because (and I'm very much paraphrasing here) Ryan Berg has a voice.  He has the ability to meet his day to day needs and focus time and energy to write and talk about his own story.  The youth he served (and I believe continues to serve, although not in New York, but Minneapolis) don't have that luxury.  If your focus is on surviving and meeting your day-to-day needs... even if writing down your story is helpful and a good healing exercise, it's not necessarily going to be your first priority.  Not only that, but if you experienced trauma around this part of your life, if you haven't unpacked what happened to you, that's very difficult to ask someone to share their whole story without having some kind of a support network to help them process what happened to them in a healthy way and work toward recovery.  So Ryan choosing to remain quiet about his thoughts on the youth he served was strategic because he could give them a voice, even if they couldn't talk about their experiences on their own just yet.

This was a hard read, but it's another important one that everyone should take time to read-- LGBTQ+ allies and those who struggle to muster support.

I give 'No House to Call My Home':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'The Hate U Give' by Angie Thomas

"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends.  The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.  Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline.  Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and gangbanger.  Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name.  Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family.  What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night?  And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community.  It could also endanger her life."

I read this book over the summer when reading lists from the library for teens and other young readers are out.  I saw this book on those lists for several weeks and then I started hearing the great reviews and I knew I had to read this book for myself, especially in the light of the court decision of former Officer Yanez and Philando Castille.  There's so much around this decision that is confusing and angering.  This book was published in February 2017 and it couldn't have come at a better time as we're all trying to understand and sort out what exactly is going on in our criminal justice system (or perhaps more accurately: how to fix it, because I think the problem is quite clear).

I've been trying to read more books about race and police brutality and all of the nonfiction texts I've tried reading (I'm still trying to work my way through them) just don't have a certain power that fiction possesses.  Even though Starr is not a real person and her childhood friend Khalil is not a real person who was actually killed, fiction has a way of letting us see what exactly it's like in a situation where you fear for your life because of someone in power with a deadly weapon and because of the color of skin you happen to have been born with.  You're put in the middle of a situation where you can begin to understand what it's like to be affected by trauma such as this and you can see how a community genuinely feels and handles a situation like this.  At the very least, fiction gives you experiences that you might not have otherwise.  Experience brings a certain level of understanding and certainly empathy if nothing else.

As well as giving the reader the experience they might be lacking in a real situation like this, this book also gives you an insight into how POC code switch in different areas of their lives.  One of the most fascinating college courses I ever took was a class called "Language as Power" which is just another way we can wield privilege over others.  Due to the fact that I speak and write in more or less "proper" grammar (at least the more accepted way of speaking), I am more likely to be taken seriously by others in official situations, I am more likely to be accepted when I apply for housing and for a job than other people who don't speak the way I do.  Therefore, for those who don't speak the way I do at home, codeswitching is a necessary evil.  Starr talks about how there are almost two of her: the Starr she presents at her majority white school and the Starr that she is at home.  She not only speaks differently, but she acts differently in some ways too.  I think it really puts this in focus of just how we tend to stifle people of color (not just those who identify as black or African American, but all POC) in our society.

I could go on and on about this book, but for the sake of clarity, I will pause things here.  If anyone is interested in continuing this conversation, we can talk about this in the comments below (or in person if you already know me).  This is such an important read.  Now that I'm a teacher, I made sure I got two copies for my students.  They need more characters like Starr speaking to their experience or the experiences of their communities.  Do whatever you need to do to get your hands on this book.

I give 'The Hate U Give':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Review of 'We Were Liars' by E. Lockhart

NOTE: This blog post contains spoilers.  If you want to keep this book a surprise (and I highly recommend that you do the first time you read it), please return to this post after you finish reading it for yourself.  Thank you!

"A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends-- the Liars-- whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution.  An accident.  A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.

And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE."

Please note that even though the description for the book says "Just Lie" about the ending, this will be an honest review that will contain spoilers.  You have been warned.

I finished this book on my flight home from New York.  I was shocked by how the book ends and I was drawn in the entire time I was reading.  At first, I didn't get what was going on.  Cadence suffers a traumatic brain injury of some kind, but the doctors can't really figure out where the trauma originated.  There really aren't any marks or anything to indicate that she hit her head.  She doesn't seem to remember what happened and no one is telling her what happened.  She can just tell that everything is different somehow.

After some time away from the family property where she spends her summers, she returns after hitting her head.  She sees her friends and cousins once again but feels this pull between the people her age in the family and the older people in her family (grandfather, mother, aunts).  Cadence spends a lot of time in the house furthest away from the main house with her cousins and friends, but everyone wants to keep her away from the house.

This is a story about a huge mistake.  Not a story like, "Oops, I screwed up, but it's okay, I can fix it."  No, instead, this mistake is one you make that changes the lives of everyone you know (and then some) and there's no taking it back.

Towards the end of the story, we find out that Cadence and her cousins and friends were caught in the middle of family drama over money that was really putting the grandfather in power, his daughters in a flurry of desperation, and their kids were being used as pawns in this whole game.  And they were sick of it.  So they decided to do something about it.  It's amazing how even in a situation that doesn't entirely involve them, these kids can have such a strong and visceral reaction.

Reading the ending where Cadence and her cousins go and burn down one of the houses was both exhilarating to read and then it quickly turned horrifying.  It was like I was watching what was happening in the house as a movie, right before my eyes.  I think that's a sign of a really great read.

I don't want to go into too much detail because a big part of this book is that you get that initial reaction and you try and piece together the story.  So I'll leave this here.

Overall, I give We Were Liars:

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude