Literary Talk

Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

This is a story about poverty, child abuse and rape, about a little girl starting her life as a bastard on her birth certificate and living a continuingly troubled life with a broken family. Ruth Anne Boatwright, also known as Bones, has a story that is universal to so many children and reoccurs in many households. Themes embedded throughout the novel include the class and gender. The story was riddled with racism, mental and physical abuse, molestation along with sexism. Allison’s ability to express the emotion of her child self was strong and compelling. This story brings insightful into the ways poverty and abuse can affect families.

Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary by Jasmine Guy

In this biography, the readers learns that Alice Faye Williams was born a poor Black girl in the South, like any other young girl until her family moved to New York City during the sixties at a time racial tensions were rising and Blacks were fighting back. Alice became notably passionate with the uprising to help further the plight of Blacks—after joining the Black Panther Party she was no longer Alice but now Afeni Shakur. In today’s world, she’s most famous for being the mother of Tupac Shakur: rapper, actor, poet, and a political fighter himself. Before becoming the mother of Tupac, she was a fighter for justice, social and economic change for Black people and accused of being one of the notorious Panther 21.

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesymn Ward

This book is about life, death and the struggles of moving forward after substantial lost due to death. Jesymn Ward, experiences death over a five-year span. She lost a total of five young men that were extremely important in her life due to suicide, accidents, and the ruins that follow some young black men living in poverty stricken communities. This book is important today with the wave of suicides among our Black youth, car accidents among the young people driving and texting, and most importantly the violence in the inner cities such as Chicago and the wave of police brutality occurring frequently with our black men.

One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life- A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard

This book is about secrets, deception, but most importantly, trying to find redemption for her father. After 23 years, Bliss Broyard, discovers her father, Anatole Broyard, is a Black man, “passing as a white man”. She found to be quite entertaining. I believe the book is lacking character. Broyard didn’t tell her father’s story in a fascinating manner. The author, was looking to discover just how Black, she was. She wanted to know if she had any family members that’d been slaves, to prove how Black she was. It came off a bit racist and closed minded to me. I put the book down several times and it took much out of me to pick it back up to continue reading it. Living a shelter life for so long, I don’t think the Broyard had any concept on anything other than living in her whiteness.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

This novel is about a religious American missionary family, that packed up and moved to the Congo of Africa to do missionary work. This story is narrated by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, an Evangelical Baptist preacher. I read the “Poisonwood Bible” for one reason and one reason only: it was required by my mentor for my writing group. I am not a huge fan of this Kingsolver book. It started off as a very slow read, that never seemed to pick up speed or my interest.

I would at almost every turn, put it down and walk away from it. After reading this book I felt like I just finished running a grueling marathon. I was emotional drained, annoyed, unconvinced, at times felt aggravated, troubled, and amazingly awkwardly happy. I will admit, I am not by any means fascinated by interpretations on Christianity in present-day literatures.

I must admit, Kingsolver created amazing characters. Despite not being all in with the book, I was truly fascinated by her creative genius. Her concept of writing this book is nothing short of pure brilliance. It was an intriguing concept to allow the wife and daughters to share the story from their own personal point of view.

The writing structure of the story was strong and powerful. Walking away from this novel, I would copy Kingsolver’s style and vision to writing a novel such as this. She gave strong voices to each character.

The voices are compelling. Although, I would have loved to hear Nathan’s voice instead of his voice being heard through his wife and daughter’s POV. Seeing him through their eyes is what captivated me and had me amazed despite being displeased with the novel at times.

By all accounts this story is alarmingly, informative and tragic. There is a certain kind of genius to it with a deep injustice to Nathan’s voice being heard. This book will shatter your heart, make you furious and have one pondering of ways to become a character in the book just to shake each character. This is an excellent written prose. Despite not being on my best books I have ever read list; however, I do recommend this book.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

This is a scientific tale about the late Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who lives an immortal existence due to cell research with her cancerous cells. This tall tale is full of interesting scientific fragments filled with alarming findings, including bits about race, history and sociology. Ms. Lacks cancerous cells were magnified and disseminated throughout the world making the possibilities for a new order of research and advancing medical treatments.

The miraculously strain of cells, is named HeLa short for Henrietta Lacks, has mind-blowingly helped with the advancements of medical treatments, science throughout the world: space travel, pharmaceutical treatments, genome research and polio vaccination. Henrietta Lacks story maybe scientifically mind-bogglingly but it is also a horrific story about the social and financial injustice done to Ms. Lack and her family committed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Rebecca Skloot book is a web intertwined with gender, class, medicine and race. Her story is a tale of scientific disbelief of pharmaceutical companies not abiding by ethics, faith and reason. Instead, they continuously violated and deprived the Lack family out of having financial wealth and allowing Henrietta Lack the recognition of leaving a legacy behind for her family. I enjoyed the fact her book wasn’t just about pharmaceutical giants and science. She completely detailed the history and injustice demonstrated towards the Lack family, most importantly, the lack of respect given towards Henrietta because she never gave consent for the usage of her cells.

By all accounts this story is alarmingly, informative and tragic. There is a certain kind of genius to it with a deep injustice. Henrietta Lacks name is world widely unknown but her cells have been used world-wide in scientific experiments for many decades. The saddest part of this story is that Henrietta’s children all had illnesses and none of the doctor’s that poked and probed them made any effect to use her cells to cure them.