This YA novel has turned into a bestseller and has generated a lot of positive buzz. Angie Thomas, with her first novel, boldly takes on racism and police shootings through the eyes of 16-year-old Starr Carter. Starr is an engaging narrator who straddles two different worlds that will collide, forcing her to make hard choices about who she is and what she ought to be doing. We meet Starr on the night “it” happens. It’s spring break and Starr is at a house party in […]
Never thought a John Grisham novel could make me cry
Becoming a parent (which my wife and I did two years ago) does some strange and unexpected things to your brain. I’ve spent the entirety of my time on this earth identifying with the kid in every parent-child relationship. I’ve always seen myself as the kid. I had no other perspective from which to peer at the world. And then…..it shifted. Given those same parent-child situations, I now see it from the other side. This is such a simple shift in perspective, but there’s a […]
Hoodies Up
Best for: Readers who want to learn more about real-life incidents of racism and gun violence. In a nutshell: Ms. Fulton and Mr. Martin, Trayvon’s parents, tell the story of the murder of their son, from the weeks leading up to it through the verdict. Line that sticks with me: “And we’re gonna win because we have no other choice. We cannot allow a legal precedent to be established in a city that tells us that it is legal for a man to kill […]
Jodi Picoult’s racism book . . . I have thoughts.
I’ve decided not to rate this book because my thoughts are so conflicted about it, but I do want to say some things. This is a book about a black nurse being prohibited from treating the newborn son of a white supremacist, and when the baby dies, he accuses her of murdering his son. I’ve never read a Jodi Picoult book before, because her books have always seemed like they were Issue Books, designed to be manipulative in a way that emphasizes the subject matter […]