The Davenports

 

My Thoughts:

This escapist historical fiction takes place in 1910 Chicago and is inspired by the real daughters of automobile magnate C.R. Patterson. C.R. Patterson and Sons was a black owned American automotive company active from 1893 to 1939, primarily in Ohio. Like the Davenports, the Pattersons started as a carriage company. 

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth in a changing America. The patriarch of the family, William,  was a former slave that used his freedom as a catalyst to build his company from the ground up. He still carries the scars from his youth as a slave. The Davenport children are still stared at grudgingly by the  white Chicagoans, but their extreme wealth is a buffer for their children. The scene starts off in a department store, where older sister Olivia is being talked down to by a white salesgirl who balks at Olivia's taste in expensive items. In anger Olivia buys several items that probably cost more than the sales girl makes. One of the other saleswomen who recognizes Olivia as a Davenport quickly dismisses the sales girl and help Olivia. This is just the hin that although this is an escapist novel, the history of attitudes towards black families in America have not disappeared. 

As a way to shield their young adult children, the Davenports have created a black culture that mirrors the elite white culture with balls, servants, coming out seasons for marital matches and escorted courtship dates. This is very much like Bridgerton where the parents are looking for equal social status matches and the young adults are looking for love. 

The buzz worthy element of this first novel is definitely the romance, but I like the secrets. If you love Bridgerton, or even Jane Austen, you will love this. Besides the secrets, the complexity of a changing America set on creating laws and policies to continue to enslave black people (Jim Crow laws) create the kind of tension that contrasts with the parties, new dresses and picnics at the park. The next book will come out in November of 2024.

What I love about this book most, though, is that Ms. Marquis started this draft during a NaNoWriMo Challenge. If nothing else, find out about NaNoWriMo and see how you can incorporate this into your classroom. 

From the Publisher:

In 1910, the Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love—even where they're not supposed to.

There is Olivia, the beautiful elder Davenport daughter, ready to do her duty by getting married. . . until she meets the charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight and sparks fly. The younger daughter, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love—unless it's with her sister's suitor. Amy-Rose, the childhood friend turned maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business—and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest . . . until family pressure has her scheming to win his heart, just as someone else wins hers.

The first book in a breathless new series, The Davenports offers a glimpse into a period of African American history often overlooked, while delivering a totally escapist, swoon-worthy read. Inspired by the real-life story of C.R. Patterson and his family, it's the tale of four determined and passionate young Black women discovering the courage to steer their own path in life—and love

Publication Information:

Author: Krystal Marquis

Publisher: Dial Books (January 31, 2023)

Print length: 384 pages

Amari and the Night Brothers

 

My Thoughts:

Amari and the Night Brothers is touted as Artemis Fowl meets Men in Black, but my memory of books for YA is much longer than Artemis Fowl so I see Amari as early Harry Potter. Amari is teased, picked on, misunderstood, but she has the ultimate faith that her brother Quinton is somewhere, still alive, and not dead like others think.  She is determined to find him and a strange messenger comes to deliver a "package" for her and this starts her wild adventure into the supernatural world. When she finds out that she is a born magician/illusionist she is once again ostracized in this new community. Will she find her brother? Will she ever fit in? Will she have a friend she can trust? This is the newest #blackgirlmagic series and Amariʻs star fills the night sky.

From the Publisher:

Amari Peters has never stopped believing her missing brother, Quinton, is alive. Not even when the police told her otherwise, or when she got in trouble for standing up to bullies who said he was gone for good.

So when she finds a ticking briefcase in his closet, containing a nomination for a summer tryout at the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, she’s certain the secretive organization holds the key to locating Quinton—if only she can wrap her head around the idea of magicians, fairies, aliens, and other supernatural creatures all being real.

Now she must compete for a spot against kids who’ve known about magic their whole lives. No matter how hard she tries, Amari can’t seem to escape their intense doubt and scrutiny—especially once her supernaturally enhanced talent is deemed “illegal.” With an evil magician threatening the supernatural world, and her own classmates thinking she’s an enemy, Amari has never felt more alone. But if she doesn’t stick it out and pass the tryouts, she may never find out what happened to Quinton

Publication Information:

Author: B.B. Alston

Publisher: Balzer & Bray (January 19, 2021)

Ain't Burned All the Bright

 

My Thoughts:

This is a long disjointed poem, but it is not a novel in verse. It is just one long story where the art and the placement of words on the page are just as important as the pages with no words. 

"In through the nose. . .out through the mouth" That is how this book needs to be read, in through the nose, out through the mouth. The way certain lines and words repeat is so effective in the rhythm of this that as a reader it's hard to not also be an orator. It's difficult to not end up reading this out loud. Even when I wanted to stop reading out loud, I couldn't. 

This is an immersive experience of one black family's experience during this 2020 pandemic from the eyes of one of the kids/teens. The inside jacket calls this a heartbreaking-heartmaking manifesto and perhaps the double page spread image that most exemplifies that is the one with a male standing on the bottom corner of the left page facing the upper corner of the right page with his right hand up in a fist and a long shadow in front of him. Perhaps because I just read the memoir Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice about the Olympic protest on the medal platform by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, this image with the words is so powerful:

ain't nothin but a fist with a face that looks like mine

I'm definitely giving this book away. I just have to figure out who will be able to find the student that needs this book. This book is profound. The art and words remind me of the picture book illustration styling of Harlem by Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers. It is a heavy book and a heavy subject. This is definitely a book you need to buy and own and come back to.

From the Publisher:

Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop, in about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW.

And so for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is. 

Author: Jason Reynolds

Illustrator: Jason Griffin

Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Diouhy Books

Publication date: January 11, 2022

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: a novel

 

My Thoughts:

This sweeping story about family, history, love, disappointment, dreams deferred and hopes rekindled is as much a story of African American families as The Joy Luck Club was a story of Chinese American families. In other words, this is an American story. Jeffers' is a brilliant storyteller that is able to weave an intimate portrait of this family that becomes an allegory about race in America.

I savored this novel. I took much too long to spend time with this family. I got too invested in Ailey Pearl Garfield, but her shocks and her discoveries became my discoveries. This was a sliding glass door and an open table setting into the generations of ancestors she brought into her house.  Please, please, please bring this to the screen. 

I don't read many adult fiction, but this is the one this year. This is the short list must read fiction for 2021. 

From the Publishers:

“This sweeping, brilliant and beautiful narrative is at once a love song to Black girlhood, family, history, joy, pain…and so much more. In Jeffers' deft hands, the story of race and love in America becomes the great American novel.” —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Red at the Bone and Another Brooklyn

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • An Indie Next Pick • A People 5 Best Books of the Summer • A Good Morning America 15 Summer Book Club Picks • An Essence Best Book of the Summer • A Time 11 Best Books of the Month • A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month • A CNN Best Book of the Month • A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Book Page Writer to Watch • A USA Today Hottest Summer Book • A Chicago Tribune Summer Must-Read • An Observer Best Summer Book • A Millions Most Anticipated Book • A Ms. Book of the Month • A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Literary Book of the Summer • A Deep South Best Book of the Summer • Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award

The 2020 National Book Award–nominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.

Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself. 

Recognize! An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life

 

Publication date: October 12, 2021

Editors: Wade Hudson & Cheryl Willis Hudson

My Thoughts:

This anthology is a multi genre gem that mixes generations of writers and artists  to "honor and amplify" black life. From black scholars like Frederick Douglass to contemporary YA authors like Nic Stone, the pieces all add up to the message that Black Lives Matter. 

With the combination of historical text like James Baldwin's Great Debate and the haunting poem "The Slave Mother" by Frances Ellen Harper Watkins to contemporary art, cartoons and a powerful graphic arts "essay" titled "Darnella Frazier: Eyewitness" by Carole Boston Weatherford, this anthology gives enough entry points to students whether they are in middle school or high school. I definitely could use this in the English classroom as well as the social studies classroom.  

Most valuable, perhaps, is that by using text from different time periods, although the use of the term Black Lives Matter is contemporary, the importance of black lives in American culture is timeless. The powerful statements by Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin are just as timely as the portrait of Breonna Taylor by London Ladd, which means that this anthology will hold up against the test of time because Black Lives will always Matter.

From the Publishers:

BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED.
 
Prominent Black creators lend their voice, their insight, and their talent to an inspiring anthology that celebrates Black culture and Black life. Essays, poems, short stories, and historical excerpts blend with a full-color eight-page insert of spellbinding art to capture the pride, prestige, and jubilation that is being Black in America. In these pages, find the stories of the past, the journeys of the present, and the light guiding the future.
 
BLACK LIVES WILL ALWAYS MATTER.

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky (Tristan Strong, 1)

 

From the Publisher:

Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents Kwame Mbalia's epic fantasy, a middle grade American Gods set in a richly-imagined world populated with African American folk heroes and West African gods.

Seventh grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading the month he's going to spend on his grandparents' farm in Alabama, where he's being sent to heal from the tragedy. But on his first night there, a sticky creature shows up in his bedroom and steals Eddie's notebook. Tristan chases after it--is that a doll?--and a tug-of-war ensues between them underneath a Bottle Tree. In a last attempt to wrestle the journal out of the creature's hands, Tristan punches the tree, accidentally ripping open a chasm into the MidPass, a volatile place with a burning sea, haunted bone ships, and iron monsters that are hunting the inhabitants of this world. Tristan finds himself in the middle of a battle that has left black American folk heroes John Henry and Brer Rabbit exhausted. In order to get back home, Tristan and these new allies will need to entice the god Anansi, the Weaver, to come out of hiding and seal the hole in the sky. But bartering with the trickster Anansi always comes at a price.

Can Tristan save this world before he loses more of the things he loves?

My Thoughts:

The publishers call this a middle grade American Gods (Neil Gaiman), but this is a "Rick Riordan presents" so I will sell this as a centrifugal book spinning from or returning back to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. True, Tristan is not half god, but when he enters Alke, he will find out that he brings powers with him passed down from his Nana as well as his best friend Eddie. 

Like Riordan's books, a new generation of readers are introduced or re-introduced to heroes and gods of the past, except these are African American folk heroes and West African gods. I recognized some of the characters from folk tales that are still shared with young students, like John Henry with his mighty hammer and Brer Rabbit (currently most known outside of the African American community as part of the Disney ride Splash Mountain - based on Song of the South), as well as Anansi the trickster. But what this book adds is more depth and complexity to even the familiar characters. This book will ensure that these characters stay present with this new generation and hopefully, this book will lead young readers back to the original stories to find out more about Nyame or Nyambe, the sky deity from South Gana, Gum Baby and even Maafa. 

Two of these, Alke (which is the world he lands in) and Maafa intrigued me enough to look them up. What I found was interesting in that perhaps Alke may perhaps represent Africa, but it is also interesting that there is an Alke in Greek mythology and was one of the Amazonians (like Wonder Woman?). Finally, when I looked up Maafa as the source of the malevolence in Alke, I found that Maafa refers to the Black Holocaust, a Kiswahili term for disaster, calamity, or terrible occurrence. It is the term used to describe the Trans-Atlantic slave trade/middle passage, which is why when it finally appears, it looks like a ship and also why the creatures that come from the Maafa to capture the folks in Alke are rusting fetterlings that look like slave shackles. I have more to explore based on the references in this book, but that just shows that the adventure and Tristan himself are motivation to read this, but also as an adult, this tween book gives me a great starting place to do my own research. 

Follow this book with Percy Jackson or if you want to go back to a more "canonical"/centripetal book, read or reread the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis (It starts with The Magicians's Nephew but most children have seen and are more familiar with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe book 2). There is also a second Tristan Strong book out now, Tristan Strong Destroys the World.

Glory In Their Spirit

Glory in Their Spirit is the well researched account of 4 female African American WAC (Women Army Corps) privates who defied orders and walked off the job as a way to protest what they saw as racist working conditions. These women were promised an opportunity in the Army to be trained in and receive skilled positions, but they found themselves relegated to the heavy lifting and menial scrubbing tasks of orderlies while the white WACs were given opportunities to train for the more skilled positions in the Army hospital. 

The four women, along with 50 other WACs were arrested, but these four women chose court martial over returning to the menial positions. This is 1945 and before the height of the civil rights movement, so there is no real happy ending, however, it traces the pattern of institutional racism that is still prevalent in our institutions today. 

This book is not for the classroom, except as a resource, but I think if the women's voices through correspondence home or interviews could have been included (like a multi genre piece), this story would catch the interest of the middle level reader. 

A digital copy of this book was provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review. 

The Hate U Give

My Thoughts: 

This has been on the must read list all year and for good reason. Although it starts off  like an imitation of the television show Lincoln Heights, this story is a crucial literary piece to capture the frustration, mourning and rage that we see on television as "blips" and 10 second news stories of police shootings and the Black Lives Matter reaction. 

I wish I were back in my 8th grade classroom. I would definitely work with my social studies partner to create a paired unit. 

From the Publisher:

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

A Few:

I look at the stars again. Daddy says he named me Starr because I was his light in the darkness. I need some light in my own darkness right about now.

Citizen

My Thoughts:

Citizen, by Claudia Rankine is a multi-genre examination of racial aggressions towards African Americans. Some of these essays, poems, artwork, media have to do with being invisible, slips of the tongue that are taken differently based on one's positionality or marginality, public lynching, police brutality. 

Although I have not quite come up with an answer, as I was reading this I kept trying to figure out what the author is saying about citizenship in the United States. As an Indigenous reader who believes that our nation was illegally overthrown by the United States, this question of who is  a "citizen" from the lens of marginalized, oppressed, non-white citizens is profoundly important.

Beginnings:

When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows. Usually you are nestled under blankets and the house is empty. Sometimes the moon is missing and beyond the windows the low, gray ceiling seems approachable. Its dark light dims in degrees depending on the density of clouds and you fall back into that which gets reconstructed as metaphor.

Description:

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.