Sydney Reads and Reads: February

I think it’s essential to call out that we can and should be reading books by Black authors and engaging with Black stories all year round. Twenty Eight days is not enough time to be engaging the way that we should, which is to say, at the highest level. But, as has been well documented here, I’m a mood reader, and mood readers gonna mood. So my book stack for February was very ambitious, very Black centered, and very good.

 

Since I often find them lacking, I’m not sure why I keep picking up British romances. Maybe that’s something I should examine more closely? In any case, Get a Life, Chloe Brown, by Talia Hibbert, managed to overcome all of the typical pitfalls, leaving me hooked from the first chapters. 

Chloe, our heroine, has built her entire existence around a late-in-life diagnosis of an autoimmune disease which often leaves her body wracked with pain and exhausted. But after a near-death experience, she decides she needs to let her walls down and get a life! Redford “Red” Morgan is a previously successful London artist working as a handyman while he hides out and recovers from a very public breakup. When they meet and join forces to complete Chloe’s “Get A Life” list, sparks fly, and the rest is inevitable.

The strength of Get A Life, Chloe Brown, lies in the depth of its characters. It’s rare to see a heroine with a life-altering medical condition in the first place. Let alone one depicted as coping with her disease rather than simply a victim of it. Not that there is anything simple about pre-existing medical conditions of any sort. In Chloe, however, we get to know the person beyond the disease, what makes her tick, and it was incredibly refreshing. Chloe’s sisters, Dani and Eve, who will become the features of the sequels, are equally interesting and rich in their character development. Red, too, is given more depth than I’m used to seeing in romances, especially British ones. More than just your typical hot guy on a motorcycle, we get to follow him as he unpacks his past and even goes to therapy! What?! I can’t recall ever seeing that level of vulnerability in a male lead before. 

Can you tell I loved it? Lucky for me, there are sequels, and you better believe I will be picking them up sooner rather than later. 

My audiobook palate cleanser for the month continued to be the Virgin River series by Robyn Carr. In Whispering Rock, we follow Mike Valenzuela, one of Jack’s Marine buddies, as he recovers from a gunshot wound he received on the job as an LA cop. We also get to know Jack’s sister Bri as she heals from the trauma of being assaulted by a former defendant she’d tried as a District Attorney. Yeah. Lots of trauma in this one, but I felt like Carr handled it with care. The good thing about this series is you can skip entire books and pick up with the next one, which is A Virgin River Christmas.

In book four, we meet Marcie Sullivan, a Marine widow who comes to Virgin River searching for her husband’s commanding officer and best friend, Ian Buchanan. What she finds is a shell of the man she once knew, living a reclusive life in a cabin off the grid. Books like A Virgin River Christmas are my favorite to read around the holidays because they’re wrapped in the holiday atmosphere, but the plot has nothing to do with it.

 

The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans, is 100% a book I would not have picked up were it not for The Stacks Bookclub and Bookstagram. There’s a big conversation going on right now about how publishers fail to pay Bookstagrammers, especially Black and Brown Bookstagrammers, for their labor. Sometimes that’s the posts they create on their own, which undeniably sell books. Or even worse, targeting them for promotional posting (often even dictating what they are to say about the book in question) without offering any compensation. That’s a hard NOPE for me! I’m following this conversation closely to see what publishers have to say in response, but as always, put your money where you spend your time. Contribute financially where you can, and tag Bookstagrammers in photos when you pick up a book they recommended. Tag the publishers, too, while you’re at it.

Were it not for Traci, I would not have read The Office of Historical Corrections, let alone suggested it for our Shelter and Chill Bookclub. Short stories aren’t my thing. Or so I thought. But after this collection, I get it. My perception was that the stories would feel incomplete due to their brevity, leaving me wanting more. But I could not have been more wrong. Each time I sat down to read, I met new characters and got to see a full and complete part of their story. It was so satisfying. The diversity and nuance in Evans’ storytelling were phenomenal. My personal favorite was Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want. In one way or another, we have all been that woman who’s undervalued, preyed upon, gaslit, or worse by this guy. UGH! Most of New York in my 20s, I was in an endless dance with men like this. Making the end of the story (which I won’t spoil) all the more satisfying.

Thanks, Traci and The Stacks, for helping me overcome yet another bookish prejudice and welcoming me to the world of short story collections. I have so much catching up to do! 

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family, by Bettye Kearse, is another book I wouldn’t have known about were it not for Bookstagram. This time, thanks to the curious mind of Antonia aka @BlackGirlThatReads. The Other Madison’s follows author Bettye Kearse as she unpacks what it means to be her family’s next griotte (oral historian in the African tradition) and their credo—“Always remember, you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.” The events that unfold take us everywhere, from the slave markets in Portugal to Montpelier itself—addressing head-on the violence that leads to her family’s existence. President James Madison’s Black descendants.

As a presidential history enthusiast, I’m constantly reminding myself to look beyond the great things these men (so far) have done in service of our country to get a more holistic view of the person behind the office. The idea that the same men who laid the foundation of this country also regularly and with impunity perpetrated sexual violence against Black women they owned is not comfortable to confront. Yet, it is as much a part of our history as The Bill of Rights. I am so grateful to Bettye Kearse for sharing her family history with us. I hope you will take the time to read it. 

Sometimes it takes removing yourself from a situation that’s personal and close to home to understand how good or bad it truly is. Such is the case with Cast: The Origins of our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson. As a means of understanding the deep roots of caste in America, Wilkerson holds it up next to its two closest contemporaries. The centuries-old caste system in India and that of Nazi Germany. 

The idea that the Nazis rejected the one-drop rule as too cruel to entertain, while we willingly implemented and still uphold it in the United States of America, “land of the free and home of the brave,” is just something you don’t come back from. At least I won’t.

“Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more.” - Goodreads.

The real heartthrob of Caste is Black anthropologist Allison Davis. In short, Davis, along with his wife, went undercover in the deep south to conduct his research on social caste. WHAT?! And there's so much more to the story! He’s also the relative of my friend Cassie Taylor. Hey Cassie!

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619 - 2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain is, in short, a masterpiece. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, to say so, but there’s really no other way to describe it.

“In eighty chronological chapters, the book charts the tragic and triumphant four-hundred-year history of Black American experience in a choral work of exceptional power and beauty.” - Goodreads.

The whitewashed narrative of slavery in America is that it’s a dark portion of our history but that we’re past it. We’ve moved on. There’s a distinct lack of nuance in the conversation all around, but especially surrounding the fact that we (White people) built the institution of slavery on purpose. It’s not something that showed up here fully formed with the first 20 slaves arrived here in 1619. White Americans built it—one law at a time. 

Taking history in such small chunks allowed me to maintain an idea of the broader picture while still allowing me to slow down and zoom in on intimate stories of individual people.

If you’re a White or non-Black identifying person just beginning to educate yourself on black history and anti-racism, Four Hundred Souls would be a great place to start. The format makes it easy to pick up and read a story in the spare moments you have on a busy day. Or if like me, you read ravenously over a few short days, that same structure creates a momentum that’s unputdownable.

So, tell me, what did you read during February? Anything I should add to my TBR? - xo Sydney