Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde tackles views on feminism through the lens of being a black lesbian and how those two traits affect the way she navigates the world. “This is much more than a book or a collection of writings. It’s an experience more like surviving a traumatic event, seeing a deep and distressing movie or having a long and difficult talk with someone who has been oppressed from all sides. It accomplishes that which no other book I have ever read has done. Lorde defies all the labels she and others use to describe her. It stares the weaknesses we all share right in the face and finds ways to fight if not conquer them. Lorde allows the reader to get inside her skin like no other writer, and for the first time ever, made me feel the anger, terror, fear, helplessness I have sensed in many if not all black people. And yet her greatest criticisms are not of whites, but especially of her black sisters and then her brothers. She clearly does not set herself apart because she knows she has had ‘my boot on a sister’s face.’” Source: AA Dude. BuzzFeed |
NOMINATED FOR AN NAACP IMAGE AWARD Curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature. Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? In this timely anthology, Glory Edim brings together original essays by some of our best black women writers to shine a light on how important it is that we all—regardless of gender, race, religion, or ability—have the opportunity to find ourselves in literature. Whether it’s learning about the complexities of femalehood from Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, finding a new type of love in The Color Purple, or using mythology to craft an alternative black future, the subjects of each essay remind us why we turn to books in times of both struggle and relaxation. Source: Penguin Random House |
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat It’s not easy to start over in a new place,’ he said. ‘Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.” Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying When she was four, Edwidge Danticat’s mother left Haiti to join her father who had gone to New York two years earlier, leaving her and her younger brother, Bob, in the care of her father’s brother, Joseph. Edwidge came to think of her uncle Joseph as a second father because he treated her with such tenderness and because, as a minister, “he knew all the verses for love” [p. 35]. Until she was twelve, when she finally joined her parents in Brooklyn, she lived in the Bel Air section of Port-au-Prince as a member of her uncle’s family. While Edwidge struggled to integrate herself into her parents’ household (she and Bob were joining two brothers born in America), her uncle was absorbing the challenges of life in Haiti as its political situation deteriorated and violent gangs gained in power. The story Danticat tells is often disturbing as the people she loves are exposed to misfortune, injustice, and violence, but ultimately, Brother, I’m Dying is reassuring in its expression of deep familial love and enduring bonds. |