Dominion: A Novel

Dominion: A Novel by Addie E. Citchens

The book begins with the correlated city and church and town in the Mississippi delta town of Dominion. Then it drifts into the lives of the characters. The current preacher is a key figure in the town. He has a number of sons, including Emanuel, commonly referred to as Wonderboy. He is the star on the football team, and seems to succeed at everything he does. The preacher's wife is often referred to as the "First Lady". She is an important figure in town, though she does occasionally have issues with alcohol. Wonderboy starts a relationship with a girl, Diamond who grew up in rougher surroundings. She lives with another family. She has not seen her brother in a while (as he hangs out on the street with the druggies.) The girl and the boy start a chaste relationship. They decide to consummate one day, and that is the beginning on the end. They decide to really have sex later. Wonderboy has violent outbursts and kills a guy and decides to leave town with Diamond. There, he is also a philanderer, including having a relationship with a white girl. He also attempts to commit suicide. Diamond still stands beside him. Wonderboy's behavior leads to the separation of his parents and to his father stepping down as preacher. She later learns that he had killed her brother and he eventually dies a violent death. The bad behavior of the gifted, but entitled son leaves a wave of destruction. It also is an opportunity for the women in the novel to assert their independence and not passively endure.

Ashes (Seeds of America Book 3)

Ashes (Seeds of America Book 3) by Laurie Halse Anderson

The historical fiction tale of the American Revolution continues with the battle of Yorktown. The former slaves all get together and set out from the south back to Rhode Island. It was not an easy task. The protagonist's sister, Ruth does not want to go with her. She does not admit to having a sister anymore. She feels she is in a good area and likes the people. We later learn that she had thought her sister pushed her away. Ruth also has a friend that is fighting on the British side.

They end up in Yorktown and participate in the end of the Revolutionary War first. The girls try to find employment, but can't do that. Later they find out that the protagonist's friend had said that she were his wife. Things are a bit awkward, but that does get them a chance to have a job.

The former slaves do have some challenging loyalty concerns. The rebels are fighting for freedom. Is this freedom for blacks too? Which side will help them the most? Rhode Island has promised freedom for those that enlist. However, in the south, people can make free papers disappear, resulting in them being enslaved again. The book ends on a happy note of freedom, but will it last? The book has historical aspects to it, but sometimes feels more "forrest gump" in that they happen to stumble in to key events.

The Book of Delights: Essays

The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay

During a year, the author records his many "delights". These include many brief experiences as well as seeds for essays. Sometimes the "delight" is a contrary experience that then serves as the basis for the ways that things happen at other times. The anecdotes can get vulgar and at times deal with racism and other types of differing experiences.

The Crossover

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Two twin boys love basketball. Their dad was a pro basketball player, but his career was cut short due to injuries. He did not want to see a doctor because his father died when he went to the hospital. One of the twin boys gets a girlfriend. This causes some jealousy at the hands of the other which he took out on the basketball court by hitting him with a bad pass. This caused him to be suspended. After a period of atonement, he started to get in a better position with his family. He was playing a game with his dad.  Alas, dad was having health problems and refused to see a doctor.  Dad collapsed and was finally rushed to the hospital. The boy was able to play a big basketball game, but dad passed away. It is a quick moving basketball book that ends with a teerjerker.

Brown Girl Dreaming

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

The author was born in Ohio, then moved to the south and lived with her grandparents for a while before the family moved up to Brooklyn. There were a few trips back to the south after that. Her grandmother was a devout Jehovah's Witness and made sure the kids studied the bible. Her grandfather was a smoker and her father was largely absent. Subtle racism was still a challenge in the late-1960s south. A black person may be able to enter an establishment, but may not be served. New York was a different experience than she expected. She had a fairly supportive family and was doing fairly well financially, though they did have some challenges of poverty at various time. There were various struggles going on, but from the optimistic view of a child it was the small bits of everyday life that were more important.

If He Hollers Let Him Go

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes

Robert Jones is an Ohio-born black man living in Los Angeles during the time of World War II. Things seem to be going pretty well for him. He has a well-to-do girlfriend, a nice car and a well-paying supervisor job at the shipyard that exempts him from military service. Then everything falls apart due to racism. It is his response to racism that causes just as much problem as the racism itself. Things start when a white Texas girl uses a racial slur. He responds with a racial slur of his own. This gets him demoted and he later gets beat up by some white guys. He plots to kill the ringleader that beats him up. He even appears a few places near him to scare him. However, sense prevails and he doesn't carry it out. Then he tries to talk with the girl. She thought nothing of the incident. Her relative then spouted off about Texas coloreds knowing how to stay in their place. He finds himself falling for her. He goes to her house and is let in. She tries to encourage him, but he ends up thinking better and leaving. He finally comes to his senses and decides to focus on his girlfriend. He has put the rage behind himself. He proposes to his girlfriend and plans for the future. He is now ready to be contrite at work and try to get his job back.

Then everything falls apart due to a fluke. As he is walking around the ship, he happens to stumble upon the very Texas girl off sleeping in a compartment. She tries to come on to him and locks the door. She later screams "rape" when she hears voices nearby. He gets beat up by the white guys. Then after waking up from his injuries, he tries to run from the law. Eventually, he is caught after a routine traffic stop in a white neighborhood. He happened to have a gun in the car and is hauled in for that. The rape charge is dropped. The judge offers to drop other charges after he serves in the military. The book ends with him enlisting.

The portrayal of war-time Los Angeles is very dark. While some periods are described as hot, it is hard not to view this as the sepia hues of detective movies. What may seem like an innocent comment by a single person ends up setting off the chain reaction that leads to the destruction of another's life. (And it came close to destroying a few other lives.) There are many steps where people could have stopped the chain reaction, but didn't. It is a challenging message for society.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Men can have a huge impact on black women. That seems to be an underlying theme of this vast epic of multigenerational black history. The novel goes back and forth in time from the civil war era to the modern day to explore a fairly well-to-do black family. Creeks also come into play as they are treated as a not-quite-white, but not black group. The modern family has Creek, African and white ancestry. There are legitimate marriages, rapes and out-of-wedlock affairs. Sex and pregnancy comes to impact the lives of women in different ways. One woman had her educational prospects cut short by an unplanned child. She made sure this didn't happen to her daughter by having her get an abortion. However, this daughter ended up getting addicted to drugs and really ruining her life. There are also various modern and "slave-era" rapes as well as standard relationships. It is all quite a mess. In general, the women are running things, while the men are fooling around. However, there are some "good" men that are helping things to move forward. There are not many whites in this novel, and those that appear tend to "not understand" the life of the main characters. The book concludes with the main character learning about history and understanding the efforts to protect an old church site from being trampled by tourists.

Black Dignity

Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination by Vincent W. Lloyd

This book feels like an enumeration of events in search of an underlying philosophy. The closest I can get from it is the the theme that Blacks will always be oppressed. Everyone else can become "white", but Blacks cannot. Slavery was just one instance of the oppression. Additional different identities of Blacks (gender, sexuality, etc.) can lead to greater oppression. While there are legitimate causes for concerns, the work seems to be much more about justifying existing behavior than finding a way forward. There was a complaint that Black intellectuals were no longer able to maintain their positions based on emotion instead of academic rigour. Then towards the end, Black intellectuals are viewed as eventually becoming necessary after a revolution. There is a desire to fight the system that enslaves. Yet, identity is driven by the experience of slavery and the fight against master system. Multiculturalism, white allies and all western institutions are all part of the problem. Even many previous Black activism is criticized. It would be interesting to see how conflict would be handled in this post-revolutionary utopia.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is well known as an anti-slavery book. However, it is also a very strong apologetic Christian work. What I did not get is how "Uncle Tom" became a pejorative. In the story Uncle Tom, the character is loyal to his race, even being killed because of his failure to bow to the white slave driver. From wikipedia, it appears that the negativity resulted from derivative works that portrayed him as a buffoon.

The novel is quite long. It has s similar nuanced view of slavery as in Frederick Douglass's autobiography.  It is in the best interest of slave-holders to be kind to their slaves. However, the institution of slavery leads to an overall degrading of the human experience. With slaves as property, it only takes one bad harvest for the benevolent owners to need to sell their "property". This could separate families and expose them to one of the bad apples.

Religion plays an important role in the society. For some slaveholders, they would use religion as a way of justifying African slavery. Others struggled with slavery. This was especially true for northerners. How could they say to follow Christ while people are not treated in a Christ-like manner due to the color of their skin? The role of Christianity among the slaves is primarily among comfort. Tom reads his bible and is comforted by the teachings. He tries to live his best life, being loyal to others and hoping for eventual deliverance. The slave holders differ in their support of religion. The cruel slave-drivers don't want slaves to waste time with religion. They treat slaves as just "bodies". The kind slave holders respect and encourage the study of religion.

At the last part of the book, Tom is killed by the cruel slave-master. Two slaves use a plan to escape - and in the process spook the cruel slave driver. The narration also describes a slave-holder who granted freedom to all his slaves. This also played into into the "benevolent slaver" mythos. The slaves wanted to remain with their master. However, the master knew that not every master would be so benevolent. Thus, he freed all of the slaves, while letting them remain with him, now as employees drawing a salary. This gave them the benefits of the benevolence with the freedom to change.

After the narration, the novel includes a bit of pontification. Africans are people. They are not machines. Christianity teaches us to love everyone else. Slavery should not exist. However, they should not be expected to just jump from slavery to a full self-governing society. Education is important. They may be given the chance to go to Africa if they desire. The should also be given the chance to live in society. Alas, these points were not followed. Instead there was a war, and a yoyoing of black empowerment giving way to heavy discrimination and various resolution attempts.

Inciting Joy: Essays

There are a number of different essays that cover the interests of a black academic. In one, he looks at the advantage of just hanging around. Do we really need to always be doing something? Can we just hang out and socialize? Sometimes that recharging can be beneficial. 

There is also an interesting take on grading and classes. What if everybody knows they will get an A when going into the class? How will this help? Will those not interested just not show up, leaving those truly interested in learning to be able to focus on learning? This can get things out of the "is it on the test?" mentality? What good is it to make A's if you don't learn?

African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals

The biggest fault with African Founders is the length. It tries to cover a vast swath of history and goes on for a very long time. It does a great job of putting together details of what it does cover and brings out the diversity of the early African populations.

Most Africans that ended up in North America were brought as servants or slaves. Some were brought directly from Africa. Others came from other places (such as the Carribean islands) They were influenced by their original homelands as well as the society where they arrived in.

The background of the colony had a significant influence in the experience of the new inhabitants. The Spaniards relied on a medieval slave code that treated slaves more as temporary state. Some of the religious English frowned on slavery. Others went through hoops to validate Africans as an inferior race that needed to have a master. The Dutch were capitalists and anything, including a slave's freedom is up for negotiation. Georgia was originally a utopia that shunned slavery before the residents chose to bring it in. The French had their own unique culture and were not very much in to racial separation. Some colonies had plantations from an early day and brought in many slaves.

There had been many free blacks in North America. Some had always been free. Others purchased their freedom, while some simply escaped to settle on their own. (Hard to access islands tend to be a good place for the latter.) African American was an old term original to define blacks that supported the American Revolution.

When living as slaves, the Africans blended their homeland norms with those of their society. There were African Christian churches. Families tended to be together within the limits of the slavery system. Different languages were developed that merged African and English grammatical constructs. Slavehood often came down the mother's line.

Today it seems baffling that the concept of race was developed to enforce a perpetual slavery of those people from Africa. This book does not attempt to explore why that happened. It does attempt to provide a detailed study of the culture that arose from the (mostly forced) early African immigrants.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Medical Apartheid was written with a few purposes in mind. Primarily it presents an anecdotal history of medical experimentation on blacks. During the time of slavery, blacks slaves were viewed as subhuman. They were the properties of their owners and had few rights of their own. They were also believed to have a high tolerance for pain. Doctors would test procedures out on the slaves. They might lose a few in the process. These early stories are truly frightening. As time progresses, the anecdotal nature fails the argument. The author describes studies where blacks were treated poorly. Some of these were due to lack of informed consent. Other cases they thought they were getting therapy, but were actually being experimented upon. The author posits that they were singled out because they were black. In most of the studies mentioned, there were a disproportionate number of black people impacted. However, since this is anecdotal, we don't know if they were just random bad studies that happened to impact blacks, or if there was something worse involved. Alas, thus actually helps the author's final argument that blacks should trust the medical establishment more. She seems to have to dig more and more to find negativity towards blacks as time progresses. (There does not seem to be grave robbing for cadavers going on like it used to.) However, there are still relaxed standards in Africa. How can we test the efficacy of new medicines without a willing audience of guinea pigs? How can we ensure everyone benefits? Who will pay? And the big one - does western medicine even make sense?

The Stars Beneath Our Feet

A boy in Harlem has his older brother murdered. He copes with it by building a giant lego city. He gradually befriends an autistic girl who also likes to build with legos. They have a contest to build a 10 foot tower. However, both of their towers fall. They end up building a big city together. Hers is a realistic model of New York buildings (including their projects). His is a fantasy world with heroes and monsters. He also makes a game with it to help people learn. In the end, they discover that the "wasted" legos that his mom's girlfriend is bringing are actually stolen. The criminal experience helps him to chose not to try to use a gun to attack thugs that have jumped him.
The story deals with coping with grief and difficulties. It also has an underlying theme of how difficult it is to take the projects out of people. They have a big fear of police and snitching and more willing to exact revenge via murder than to snitch on criminals. The projects may have a bunch of people that look "black". However, they are a mix of immigrants from other countries and multi-generational American residents. There are also the mix of various sexual orientations and desires. It may have been more interesting told from the perspective of the autistic girl, big Rose. Her mother committed suicide. She had been teased by others. However, she has a great memory, and can model the city from memory. Only in the end is she taken away for more treatment. (And the book seems to state that her time without treatment helped her.)

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God centers on the life of Janie Crawford, an African American woman who wanted to live her own life. She was raised by her grandmother Grandma, whoworked as a nanny for a white family. Janie did not realize that she herself has not white until she couldn't find herself in a picture of the kids playing. Even so, she did have some "white" features which would play a roll in her later life. Grandma had grown up as a slave and lived through the civil war. She longed to have the ability to sit on the porch and do nothing and desired that of her granddaughter. She wanted to make sure Janie was properly married off soon after she "Became a woman". Janie was soon married to her first husband. She had hoped to love him, but their relationship never grew. He wanted her to be able to work hard and help on the farm. One day while he was out another man appeared that showed ambition and wanted to treat her "right". She eventually left with him and went to a "negro city". This man would go to become the mayor and they would run the store and live the life of luxury. However, Janie missed that chance to talk with common folk. After her husband died, she met a younger man named "Teacake". They would eventually get married and spend some time living in the Everglades working as harvesting crew. This marriage was much more down to earth. They were respected working class and made friends with many people. During this phase, she encounters a "white black" lady who respects Janie because of her paler skin color and "whiter" features and talks down to the more crude darker skinned blacks like Teacake. Janie doesn't buy into this argument. One day a hurricane comes through. They ignore the warning signs, and then make a mad dash to flea the rising lake at the last minute. In the process a dog bites Teacake. This leads to him coming down with Rabies and going mad. He raises a gun to shoot Janie. She has another gun and ends up killing him. She is acquitted in the trial, with many of the black audience muttering that a black woman or a white can get away with anything.
The novel focuses on life in the black community in the post civil-war era. There is still the challenge of rising up from out of slavery. Many people were like grandma and just wanted the chance to finally sit around and be lazy on their own. There were the few with the drive to make something of their life. However, they had to fight the trap of becoming something like what they detested earlier. Janie's second husband was resented for his living the life "above" that of his fellow men. However, he did gain their sympathy when he bought an old mule and freed him to live out his last days on his own. With Teacake, Janie was able to live a life of independence. They were striving for their own goals, not necessarily to live like white men. They, did not expect anything to be given to them. They were also quick to make friends with other immigrants. While they were mostly lived in a "black" world, events would make them realize they were not truly equal. After the hurricane, Teacake was pressed into service to bury the dead. Only the whites would get proper coffins. When they were ill, they would seek a white doctor as the "best" option. Once accused of murder, Janie appeared before a white jury. Life was "separate but equal" except when it wasn't. Native Americans also make a brief appearance, only to be talked down by the population, but later proven to be right. This book does a great job in showing how people lived their lives as complicated racial relationships were evolving in the Untied States.

Invisible Man

A black boy starts out with idealistic views of society, but finds himself beat down by society. Both blacks and whites accept the status quo of society. He gets a scholarship to a black college, but finds himself in big trouble when he takes a white trustee to see how the "other side" lives. The trustee claims that the boy is his "destiny", but is visibly upset at seeing the continued conditions of squalor in the black community. He still maintains his idealism as he is sent to make his way in the big city. However this is shattered when he discovers that his letters of introduction say that he is a persona non grata at his college.

He then has numerous experiences in the city, and becomes primarily involved with "the brotherhood". Eventually, he even has a falling out there, and becomes "invisible". Eventually, he meets the trustee that caused his trouble. He introduces himself as the trustee's "destiny", yet the trustee fails to identify him.

He realizes that he is being used as a pawn by others to achieve their goals. When his goals are in sync with their's, he feels great. But problems occur when they start to diverge.

There is an obvious statement being made of race relations and unfulfilled promises. However, this is only one symptom of the underlying problem. In a large society, the "goals" of the group are often set by a few strong individuals. These goals may be shared by some people, but rarely does one person share everything. When the initial focus is on the areas of strong mutual agreement, things go well. But what happens when we move down to the areas of less consensus? And what happens when "theory" and "practice" come in to conflict? It is easy to encourage others to "suffer" in order to bring up the underprivileged. But opinions change when that suffering is inflicted upon oneself. What is one without power to do? And how do you deal with conflicting forces for the same "ideal"?

Alas, the narrator here simply gives up, leaving many of the large questions unanswered.