An Island Life You: Stories of the Barrio by Judith Ortiz Cofer

I am very fortunate to work in a school that has a book room full of wonderful books, and quite a few of the books are written by authors of colors and have characters of color.

This school year a colleague and I thought it would be a great idea to start a book club with our colleagues in the English department to read some diverse novels from our book room in order to help in the efforts to diversity the curriculum.

This month we read An Island Like Me which is a collection of short stories that are set in Puerto Rico, and I must say that I enjoyed every last one of these stories. They told universal stories that are true of human nature, and I think that almost any student between the eighth and ninth grade would truly appreciate these stories. The clever element of these stories is that some of the same characters show up in different stories, and the reader is able to see the growth of the characters.

Here are a few ways that we thought that this books could be used in the classroom:

• Choice unit with House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• Neighborhood project: Students can reflect/create their neighborhoods in response to the book
• Use some of the stories as part of a bigger thematic unit
• Assign each student a different story and then have some sort of jigsaw conversation

If you are looking for an awesome book to be taught to diversify your curriculum, then this is the book for you!

We can and will continue the work that needs to be done so that all students can see themselves in the curriculum...

Two blogs in one day....Yay Me!!

Ruby by Cynthia Bond

So, normally I will read a book, and I will feel an urge to write about it right away, but with this book, Ruby, I needed some time to sit with my thoughts and feelings.

One of the main characters, Ruby, has had the kind of life that I hope that no one EVER has to experience, but knowing literature like I do, I believe that there is some truth in all fiction. I do believe that there are people who have and are living in some horrible conditions, and this saddens me to the core.

However, LOVE never fails.....

Ephram, never ever forgot the girl of his childhood, Ruby, and he was determined to use his love to rescue her!

Oh, The Power of LOVE.....

Cynthia Bond CAN WRITE.. I mean... Cynthia Bond can really write. You know how I love Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Well, this book reminded of that same type of memorable, heartfelt writing that is in Song of Solomon. I have thought about the town where Ruby grew up and all of it’s secret over and over again. I completely admire how Cynthia was able to pull the reader into this town in a manner that felt very familiar just like Toni does in Song of Solomon.

I appreciate this book sooooo much, and this is one of those books that I will put aside for awhile, but I will definitely go back to it over and over again.

Read. This. Book. and marvel.....

Cynthia Bond

Happy Valentine’s Day!

No Wasted Time For Me!

I haven’t been to work since last Thursday because of the snow storm, and I ain’t complaining at all.....

Now, if you know me at all, I don’t believe in wasted time. No. Not at All!

I believe in cherishing every moment, because moments are gifts, and that is one of the reason why I gave up TV. Yep, I gave up TV... There were no shows that I watched religiously, but if I had downtime, I would watch whatever was on TV. If someone asked me what I had watched maybe an hour later, I wouldn’t remember.... So, to me, that must have been wasted time. Now, I spend that TV time listening to music and inspirational talks, reading, cleaning my house, or sitting quietly with my thoughts.

So, on this God given break, I decided to cherish every single moment....

After the storm, I decided to survey my neighborhood by foot, and it felt so good to be out and about on an incredibly, sunny day. I just happened to run into one of my neighbors who was also feeling the need to move around, and so we happily walked to THE CVS. I bought a few things and left her at CVS while I continued to walk in my neighborhood. I just loved seeing so many people out and about walking and some people were digging their cars out. I finally made it back home happy and content.

I’ve done my workouts just about everyday except Monday; my body needed a break.

I read In Darkness by Nick Lake and wrote a blog about that incredible book. I started reading Ruby by Cynthia Bond, and this book is stirring so many emotions. I am only over one hundred pages in, and I don’t want to judge this book too quickly, but right now, Cynthia Bond is a master storyteller. This book reminds me so much of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; one of my all time favorite books in the entire World.

I have done things that I have been putting off like cleaning my bicycle and the inside of my refrigerator. I helped a friend work on some of his goals, I finished and submitted some work for presentations that I will be doing this summer, and I have been diligently working on my career by sending out tons of emails and reading, reading, and reading, and reaching out to people for help. I have even planned, in my mind, how I am going to end this semester with my students, and I sent emails to the students to let them know what to expect. 

My cousin, Demarus, sent me a recording of Toni Morrison’s interview on NPR, and I thought that I could not love Toni Morrison more, BUT I DO! Toni talked about the fact that she did not start writing until she was forty, and this was confirmation that it’s never too late to actualize our dreams.

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/20/400394947/i-regret-everything-toni-morrison-looks-back-on-her-personal-life

However, one of the highlights of this break was visiting a fellow Skegee friend to take her some of that Skegee love that always helps with healing:

Now, I do believe in downtime and downtime probably looks differently for every single person. Downtime to me is feeding my mind with lots of reading and thinking. So, although I have been quite busy during my God given break, I have also had quite a bit of downtime. 

There was no way that I could have all of this time off and not make the most of it. When I finally do go back to work, which will not be until Monday, which will be a teacher workday, I will go back rejuvenated, happy, and feeling accomplished. I hope the kids are ready, because the teacher will be on 100!

No Wasted Time For Me!

Happy, Happy, Happy Thursday

In Darkness by Nick Lake

So, during this blizzard, I needed something to read, and I checked my nook, and In Darkness had been downloaded. Not sure when I downloaded it, but I am happy that I did.

This fictional novel is set in Haiti, and it goes back and forth between, Shorty, a boy of fifteen who is trapped in a building after the Haitian earthquake of 2010 and Toussaint l’Ouverture, the eighteenth-century slave who led Haiti to freedom from the French. The spirit of Toussaint will not die, and it comes back as Dread Wilme, a popular community leader in Haiti who was killed by the UN, and then it comes back as Shorty.

Shorty’s life story is told from the 1st person point-of-view, and he relays his story as if he is talking to the reader. I felt like I was being let in on a secret, and this drew me in to Shorty’s story right away: “I am the voice in the dark, calling out for your help.” From Shorty, we hear a lot about his life and the life of many of the other people in his town of Site Soley.

Then, the reader is taken to the life of Toussaint, and he is shown as just a common man who acted through his fears to successfully lead ‘his people’ to freedom. I left this book wanting to know more about Toussaint, and you know I did some reading about him. And, according to my readings, Lake was quite accurate in portraying the history of Toussaint and Haiti.

Lake wrote this book for Young Adult Readers, and I think that this is a perfect book to be taught in schools to diversify the curriculum. This novel infuses lots of hip-hop that I think that children will appreciate; this book is relevant. Also, a teacher can use this text to go into the history of Haiti and what makes a hero. This book could also be a perfect springboard to talk about the Haitian earthquake of 2010, and of course, this book is full of passages that would be great for close readings. I became quite excited thinking about the writings that this book could inspire. 

If you love history and a great story, then this is the book for you....

A few more snow days off, and I will tackle Ruby by Cynthia Bond!

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

I know that there was tons of controversy surrounding the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman, BUT selfishly, I am so happy that it was released. Harper Lee is a good writer who gives her readers a lot to think about. I believe that all of our talents are connected to enhancing the lives of others, and in return our lives are enhanced. I believe that none of us should take any of our talents to the grave with us; we should deplete every last one of them before we leave this earth if possible. Not sure why she did not publish this book years ago, but I want to believe that the praise and glory that she would have gotten from this book may have given her the fuel to write tons and tons of books! Yea, there would have been haters, but haters can fuel us to greatness as well.

This book drew me right in with Scout, Harper Lee’s character from To Kill A Mockingbird, returning home to Maycomb county. There were so many things that felt familiar and made me feel warm such as the smells of the deep South, that warm, small town feeling, and the idea that at home you can drop all pretense and just REST for just a little while. However, just like Scout’s experience, sometimes home ain’t all that we romanticize it to be.

When Scout returned home not much appeared to have changed, but she quickly learned new things about her town and her father that were unsettling; they were fighting integration. However, with the way that Lee writes about this time in history in the deep South, mid 1950’s, I could clearly see both sides, and I thought a lot about Booker T. Washington and his philosophy of “Cast down your buckets where you are.”

Scout thought about her father, Atticus, and to her and her brother, Jim, Atticus was a super hero, and now she has to deal with the fact that Atticus is not a super hero, but he is definitely human. Now, isn’t that life? I remember hearing someone that I looked up to say something that I thought was completely hurtful about another person, and I had to deal with the idea that even our heroes are not perfect, and this is what Scout seems to be dealing with in this book. After I heard this person say something that showed me that she was human, I can still hear those words in my head even though its been over fifteen years. However, I try and cast down the hurt and focus on the idea that this person is human and needs grace and so do I.

The cleverness of Lee’s writing is that she makes the reader think, and I thought a lot about integration, hearing and trying to see things from a different perspective, what defines a heroes etc.

Recently, my mom and I drove through Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of Lee and inspiration for her novels, and I couldn’t help but to think about Lee’s two book, and Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson which talks about a guy who was falsely accused of a murder in Monroeville, and he was sent to death row for thirty years before he was finally released. I rode through Monroeville wondering if things have changed at all....

Now, I absolutely love Lee’s first novel To Kill A Mockingbird, and I taught it for many years with my whole heart, and I love Go Set A Watchman just as much. I can’t wait to teach it and help other teachers to teach it as well.....

Happy, Happy, Happy that this gift, Go Set A Watchman, was finally given to the world!!

My People, consider not going to the grave with your gifts still inside of you; we need them...

Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown

Claude Brown

Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land, is an incredible person.....

Any person who decides to change his life and stick to it, is an incredible person!

Manchild in the Promised Land is fictional but based on Claude’s life. According to Claude, starting at a very young age living in Harlem, NY, he almost never went to school, he was in and out of juvenile facilities, and dabbled with drugs and prostitutes. However, after encounters with a few people who told him that they believed in him, in his teens he decided to leave home, go back to school, stop doing drugs, and he learned to play the piano. REMARKABLE!!!

Now, I didn’t enjoy this book, but I did appreciate it. The entire book, over 300 pages, was all about life on the streets in Harlem and the people that Sonny, the main character, met along the way. However, I read about Claude before I started this book, and I was so sure that he would tell how he ended up going and graduating from Howard University and later attending Law school at Stanford and Rutgers. However, that did not happen.

Most of the people who highly recommended this book to me were men who read this book when they were in their early teens, and I do understand how this book would be appealing to teen boys; Sonny was a daring brother.

So, to this end, this is one of those books that sells lots and lots each year, and therefore, I think that it is one to read if you like to be in the know about African American literature. However, I think the audience that would enjoy this book the most would be early teen boys.

Not my kind of book, but I am happy that I read it!

Writers in 2015...

I intentionally met so many writers in 2015....

I totally value being in the present of writers and hearing them talk about their books and how the books came to full fruition.

Here are images of some of the writers whom I met in 2015:

 Pursue the things that bring you joy!