Clint Smith tells how the story of slavery is conveyed to the general public by describing his visits to seven historical sites. I was especially interested in the book because I knew the author had visited Monticello and described the changes that have occurred to the narrative about Thomas Jefferson to broaden the story from “author of the Declaration of Independence, Founding Father...
Having loved James McBride’s recent book Deacon King Kong, I was eager to be in his world again and this book truly does take you there. His mother grew up in Suffolk, Virginia in an Orthodox Jewish family. Her father was a rabbi who, always fired by his congregation, finally became a successful merchant in a Black community. He was nasty and unpleasant to his customers and in general was...
I took a long time reading this wonderful book so that I could savor it bit by bit. It is a history of a working woman, born in 1804 in snow country in Japan to a Buddhist priest. Japan was in a long peaceful period when the Shogun ruled from Edo (now Tokyo) and the emperor was in Kyoto (1603-1867). What is known of Tsuneno comes to us through her many letters and those that her family wrote...
It is hard work to read a biography of a liar, a person who works to create myths about themselves. My previous experience of this was with Calamity Jane, that denizen of the Wild West who is buried near Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, S.D. When I read a short academic take on her life, I found it was an unsatisfying effort to separate facts and myth with no charm. This author, by contrast, is...
A memoir by the eminent scholar who wrote so impressively about the Hemings family of Monticello is not to be missed. The importance of Juneteenth made it especially appealing to me because a beloved professor I knew organized a Juneteenth celebration every year at our local community college. Gordon-Reed admits to having felt some resentment when celebrations of Juneteenth outside Texas began to...
Rosa Brooks is the daughter of Barbara Ehrenreich, the political activist who wrote Nickled and Dimed. Brooks was unable to explain to her mother, her fellow law professors at Georgetown University, and her friends why she became a part-time volunteer police officer in Washington. If she had told them she wanted to write a book about her experience, they would have understood, but that was not...
Natasha Trethewey was the US Poet Laureate in 2012 and 2013; this book is a memoir that tells of her connection with her mother who was killed when Trethewey was 19. Gwendolyn Grimmette was killed by her second ex-husband (not Trethewey’s father). For the ten years Joel Grimmette was in their lives, he beat her mother and though he tormented Trethewey, there was no mention of physical abuse...
Dorothy mentioned this book and I am so glad she did–it’s been an exceptional book for me. I loved Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo, but have found some of his short stories to be too dark for me. This is something quite different; it is his careful reading of seven short stories by Russian writers, a 400-page recounting of a course he has taught for 20 years to MFA students...
I have listened to this audiobook twice now and will again. While I’m sure the essays are brilliant in print, hearing her voice gives them a great new dimension. I loved both of the books of her fiction that I have read. In the forward written at the end of May 2020 Smith notes that many books will be written about the pandemic; hers is an accounting of some of the thoughts and feelings it...
It was a pleasure to listen to Barack Obama review his political life in his usual measured and literate style, although the specter of the four years following his time in office hung over the narrative. And the Republicans’ stated goal of making him a one-term, failed president rather than address the 2008 financial crisis added to that pain. I plan to remember some of the fun bits. He...