"Unofficial, 'I Just Want You to Read What Im Reading,' Book Club" January Round Up

Not Without Laughter by: Langston Hughes

Summary: A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale set during the Great Migration about a young boy named Sandy - on account of his sandy hair - who observes the various rhythms of Black rural and urban life. And all its component losses, conflicts, and desires.

Favorite Quote: "When you starts hatin' people, you gets uglier than they is - an' I ain't never had no time for ugliness, cause that's where devil come in."- Grandma Hager.

Key Takeaways: A complex, thoughtful, and realistic tapestry of overlapping and converging archetypal personalities. A beautifully rendered love letter to Black women and all their complexities.

Recommend? YES! 1000%

Let Us Descend by: Jesmyn Ward

Summary: Annis (whose mother calls her Arese) navigates the horrific landscape of antebellum slavery with her ancestors and spirits guiding her. Moving through - descending further - into the Louisiana swamps , she tries as best she can to maintain the warrior spirit she inherited.

Favorite Quote: "Your grandmother prayed in the dark. To her ancestors. To the spirits her mother taught her. She woke and prayed. She drank when they watered them and prayed. She went to sleep praying, her lips bleeding."

Key Takeaways: It is a devastating, poetic, and liberating portrayal. It is also the journey of someone developing their own idea of freedom separate from all the people in all the worlds that surround her.

Recommend? Tentatively, yes. Not because it isn't stunning, but because it's HEAVY. And I made the dire mistake of reading it while grieving.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by: Stephen Graham Jones

Summary: An indigenous, Pikuni, vampire seeks revenge on the white genocidal settlers responsible for the irradication of his people, their land, and their beliefs. He "confesses" this to a minister complicit in the massacre.

Favorite Quote: " This, I believe, is the story of America, told in a forgotten church, in the hinterlands, with a choir of the dead mutely witnessing."

Key Takeaways: Any story of civilization, and accompanying progress narratives, is mythological and requires that those who participate in such fictive world-building practices engage in a violent erasure where atonement is masked with hollow religiosity.

Recommend? YES! Now, it will make your stomach turn, but I promise the pay off is worth it.

ON DECK: