If we don’t have the rights over our own bodies then what is the point? While reading Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, I was preoccupied with the theme of body and how our bodies relate to the world in terms of ownership. For those of you who don’t know Chanel Miller was (is?) Emily Doe,… Continue reading Know My Name: Who owns a woman’s body?
So, I recently reread Jane Eyre with a group of friends, or at least attempted to. It was so dry! Like a Popeye’s biscuit with no butter and no drink in sight! I choked down about half of it before I gave up. As a teen, I really liked this book! It held a special… Continue reading Jane Eyre and the Canon sucks
Finishing Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile was a doozy. If you are a fan of the OWN show, I’ll let you know right now that this is not that. I enjoy the TV show as much as the next person and usually when I watch the movie or show before I read the book, it… Continue reading Queen Sugar: The real villains
I have a lot of thoughts about the book Patsy. I have been on a streak reading about mothers lately, but I notice that I have always seemed to gravitate toward books about mothers (or maybe people just use fiction to process their relationships with their mothers). I think I am noticing themes about mothers… Continue reading Patsy and reflections on motherhood
A woman’s body is a strange thing, no? A mystery that scientists and doctors don’t actually care enough to really understand. People tell us what to do with them all the time: Put on make up! Be natural! You need to loose some weight for your health! You look too skinny and sickly! Cover it!… Continue reading Loving our whole selves
Someone on #bookstagram told me that All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson is a YA memoir and I’m shook. I used to care about designations like YA, but as I get older, that label means nothing to me. I may read some books intended for children and young adults, but adults usually write… Continue reading Connections through stories of suffering
Hey y’all! It’s been a long time. I shouldn’t have left you, without a dope beat to step to. Step to, step to, step to. Step to, step to. *wicky-wicky-wah* I’m back with my thoughts about The Nickel Boys! The Nickel Boys is unlike anything I have read before. I have read books about prison,… Continue reading School’s Out
Trauma. This word is buzzing around my head after I finished Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson. So many iterations and layers of trauma. So many ways it can show up in the body of a black girl and a black woman. The trauma of a best friend who disappeared. Of lost children. Of… Continue reading Somebody sing a Black girl’s song
I have just finished Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb and I blubbered like a baby as it was finishing. Not because it was particularly sad, but because it struck a chord with me during the 5th anniversary of my grandmother passing. Bess writes about her grandmother, but in a way… Continue reading Stories Nobody Will Tell
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore was a cute light read—one of those beach reads you read in a matter of a few hours. There’s a place for these kinds of books too. Oona spent her adult life out of order, as the title suggests. Every year at midnight on her birthday, which happens… Continue reading Do you have a soul?
