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January 4, 2021

Year-end Reading Round-up

A collection of books read this year

When I look back at all the disappointments, annoyances, and struggles of 2020, I have to recognize it worked wonders for my bookshelf. All the chaos and social distance made for an outstanding reading year. I decided to do a 2020 Year-end Reading Round-Up to inspire your reading in the new year.

This year, I read about 16 books. That’s a little low for bookstagramers and book bloggers but blows my previous years out of the water. I picked up my first book right around St. Patrick’s day when I realized how few Irish authors I’ve read. Then the country shut down. Then racial, civil turmoil hit a boiling point and chased me to write into the literary embrace of James Baldwin.  My favorite writers of the year are Brit Bennet, Elizabeth Acevedo, and James Baldwin, who wrote their tails off and gave us something phenomenal to stick with us.

With no further ado, here’s my GloBelle Affairs recommended reading List for 2020. 

A collection of books I read this year to inspire . I decided to do a 2020 Year-end Reading Round-Up to inspire your reading in the new year.
I decided to do a 2020 Year-end Reading Round-Up to inspire your reading in the new year.
Dubliners

This is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my roommate was reading the same book in Spanish. All the stories take place around Dublin and have a kind of melancholy, hopelessness to them. Joyce wrote the book leading up to the 1919 War of Independence. Two years after Joyce wrote the collection of stories, the Irish launched an uprising against British Rule. The stories reflect the Irish nationalism and limitations Irish people felt their lives had at the time.   

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

This1988 novel provided the burst of optimism I needed after reading the Dubliners. It’s not particularly a work of literature with a magical use of words and literary devices. It is, however, more encouraging and light-hearted. Santiago wants more for his life than watching sheep and starts having dreams telling him to go to Egypt. 

Everything starts pointing him toward Egypt, so he just does it. He sells his flock (aka all his wealth and security) and leaves Spain for Egypt. Like an alchemist, the journey, like all travel, is transformative. The book encourages everyone to just do it. Seek your calling. I needed to hear this story in 2020—a world’s bestseller.

The Fire Next Time 

The thoughts that flow through James Baldwin’s mind are incredible to witness. This book gives us so many discussion-provoking gems that you can sit at a coffee shop with your most intellectual friends to debate or discuss. Most notable is the opening essay, a letter to his nephew, in which he discusses survival in America. In the letter, he summarizes the bottom-line of survival in America, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.”  

So long as you don’t adopt the white perspective, you can survive. Maintain the “Double-Consciousness” that W.E.B. Du Bois coins. He also urges survival, “And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children’s children.”

Baldwin also describes what it is like to be a black military service member in America on page 53, which still remains relevant in 2020. He discusses religion – both Islam and Christianity – which replicates some of the same conversations that Frederick Douglas in the 19th century and what Americans are still talking about in the 2020s. 

Some books are best read in pairs.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin 

I started reading this to find quotes to challenge this new P.R. attempt to cast or re-brand the character, Uncle Tom, as a hero and the term “Uncle Tom” as a compliment. He wasn’t, and it isn’t. When I read this book, what ended up happening was being reminded how little things had changed in America since Beecher Stowe published the epic in 1852. I found myself nodding and thinking, “I’ve experienced this. Oh, this is just like the passage from James Baldwin’s Fire Next Time written a century and a decade later. I’ve seen this happen, and I’ve heard Kentuckians have this exact, ironic conversation concerning their faith in God and the lives of black people in 2020.” It’s still relevant. Get the audiobook if reading 500 pages is too overwhelming. 

The Fire This Time 

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote, “God gave Noah the Rainbow sign, no more water – fire next time.” Baldwin hinted at a sign of promise for America in 1963, but he warned about the fire that would come to America if the nation did not take heed. In 2020, America is in the fire this time. Inspired by James Baldwin, The Fire This Time was released in 2017 as a collection of essays and poems from multiple black perspectives.  

In one essay, Garnette Cadogan discusses the differences between walking while black in Kingston, New Orleans, and New York City and the double consciousness black people must employ while living in America. In his native Kingston, walking as a form of therapy to clear his mind, get exercise, and sunshine. But when he moves to America, walking…with his skin color… walking becomes fraught with dangers. “I recognized that the way I would treat dangerous people when I was growing up in Jamaica was the way people began treating me,” he says. It is a reminder of how simple, everyday actions like walking are shaped by a white person’s perception of one’s blackness. Exercise should not be a death risk, but, as we all know, in 2020, it is. And it’s relatable. All the essays are relatable.

All About Love

One of my favorite media gurus is a YouTube channel called For Harriett, and the creator, Kim, had a “Read More Bell Hooks” campaign. So, amid the chaos that was the Summer of 2020, I picked up her “All about Love Book.” Bell Hooks is an African-American Stanford Alum who hails from Western Kentucky and is a leading voice in Black feminist thought. Since we share some of the same identities, I was already interested in what she has to say. 

Hooks starts by discussing how everyone thinks they know love. Based on the teachings of love in our American society, most of us have no idea. We have a lot of unlearning to do. The book’s motivation was that America moved so far from love that it may never find it again. American society just doesn’t model the best definition of love. America’s foundation is characterized by violence, hate, and lack of respect. Each generation continued to hand down those teachings. Love is an action, never a feeling. It is not centered on romance and sexual attraction. Love starts on a strong foundation of respect. Key quotes that I found best captures the author’s thesis: 

“An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as (we) were taught to believe that we were loved.”

“When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights – that we respect and uphold their rights.”

“As one man bragged about the aggressive beatings he had received from his mother, sharing that ‘they had been good for him,’ I interrupted and suggested that he might not be the misogynist woman-hater he is today had he not been so brutally beaten by a woman as a child.” 

ABUSE is NOT LOVE!!

I think this is a must-read for people who want to learn to love their children, partners, friends, and humankind, in general, better. The book is also beneficial in helping audiences recognize the often blurry difference between love or abuse. That way audiences can put up healthy boundaries.

Clap When You Land  

This was my favorite book of 2020. Elizabeth Acevedo knocked Louisa May Alcott off her throne and became my favorite author after this book. By page 12, I was ugly crying. I continued crying until the very end when I was still crying but cheering on women’s strength when they unit. 

In November of 2001, there was a plane crash that most Americans vaguely remember. Some 200 people from the sky and five on the ground, headed to the Dominican Republic died. Once investigators confirmed that it wasn’t another terrorist attack like the one in September, it faded out of memory. But American Airlines flight 587 rocked the New York Dominican community. Everyone within the New York DR community knew someone personally affected by this tragedy. The author, a poet by trade and part of that community, imagined this story and wrote this prose- in-verse fiction about what could have been. Oh, and there are mentions of LGBTQ experiences. People like knowing that ahead of time for whatever reason. It’s not a big part of the book. 

This book had beautiful depictions of Caribbean culture, New York Dominican culture, African- Diaspora culture, delicious food, class strife, themes of secrets, forgiveness, family, belonging, and using chess as the symbolism of life and family. I look forward to this story being picked up and turned into a movie. It was so good!

I heard Acevedo perform her poem, “Hair” years ago. I didn’t realize she was the same author I’d fallen in love with until I did some post-novel author exploration.  Based on our shared relationship to hair politics and her uncanny way to express it, I already loved Elizabeth Azevedo’s expression before I picked up her novel. To learn more about why Ms. Acevedo appears twice on this Year-End Reading Round-up, check out her talk at Summit on Inequality and Opportunity.

The surface of the novel-in-verse, clap when you land sits on an brightly curated shelf with plants and other books. The other books have their spins facing away from teh view as to not overshadow the featured book.
Clap When You Land is hands-down, the best thing I read all year.
Lead from The Outside Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change

Stacy Abrams distinguished herself as the Belle the 2020 election. She turned Georgia Blue and predicted that Georgia was a swing state several years ago. After the election, I realized that I had never read a single leadership book by a black woman. This is astounding considering all of the formal military leadership education I’ve had. All the leaderships by white men were informative but never took racism or sexism into consideration as obstacles to navigate. Even white women’s leadership books (i.e., Lean In) were tone-deaf to the idea that not all people would get the same results doing the prescribed methods based on how they look. Ms. Abrams addresses those obstacles and how to use them as pathways rather than stumbling blocks. This is a book I’ll continue to reference. I read this for Non-fiction November and think

The leadership book, "Lead From The Outside: by stace Adems sits atop pages ripped out from other books. arraged with a coffee cup filled half with cream and half with coffee and reading glasses
Leaning leadership lessons from leaders with the same leadership challenges as you is a win!
The Vanishing Half

My Junior League’s book club featured this book to read and discuss in Decemeber. After slavery, this mullato guy built a society for beige-colored mullatos on his daddy’s plantation. For generations, no one married or procreated with dark-skinned people. The story tells the divergent lives of twin sisters. They vanish from town. One passes into white society and lives a privileged life. The other twin returns to the hometown with a very dark child. This child is so dark no one in the beige village has ever seen such a person, and her presence creates a spectacle.

With all else being the same, the proximity to whiteness that the twins chose during Jim crow is used to represent privilege, inter-generational trauma, and intersectional identities. The dynamics of the LGBTQ community layered with bi-racial identities come into play as well as, yet again, the double consciousness between how a person identifies oneself and how that person is identified by society.

The author knows how to weave magic out of words. I found myself captivated all the way through. . Her use of literary devices to set scenes is phenomenal. This is one of the best reads of the year and sets a gold bar for writing. This was a fascinating read that will make a great movie. 

The Vanishing Half novel sits on a pashmina scarf marks this years reading rbook eview.
This novel will make a great film. A highly discussed novel for any 2020 end of year reading round up.
To Build a Better World

After the election and discussions of American Democracy being threatened by the media spin doctor and fear-mongers, I decided to buy this book. That’s when I realized how non-diverse the leadership and International Affairs section of my personal library was. I also wanted more academic substance to determine if American democracy was at peril. I didn’t get that out of this book by leading scholar-diplomats, Condeleeza Rice and Philip Zelikow. The pair focuses their framework centering Germany and the Soviet Union during the Cold War with a lot of historical analysis but minimal modern reflection (the book was initially published in Sept 2019). It speaks of our divided world in the late 1980s but not much on how divided international politics are now. Overall, it’s a good read, just not what I was hunting for at the moment. It’s graduate-level, international affairs required reading worthy. 

Two of Condoleezza Rice's academic texts sit on a well curated book shelf next to sweaters. These books round out the end of year reading round up.
I wondered why this wasn’t part of my International Studies Cannon, but it wasn’t written while I was in grad school. It’s a worthy read for all future IR/GA/Policy students.
Democracy

 by Condoleezza Rice- Optimistic stance that authoritarian regimes are not more potent than the natural human desire for freedom. She touches on historical examples of fights for democratic principles across the globe. Using her experience as a diplomat and the 66th Sec State, she references the democratic struggles of Russia, Columbia, Kenya, Ukraine, and countries in South West Asia, as well as her experiences growing up in Birmingham during Jim Crow. She even discusses potential outcomes of competing interests and ideas of freedom clash. One can argue that the structures of democracy and the “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” that cause democracies to crumble have been shaken since Rice published this text. I wonder if she maintains her position that considering democracy threatened is alarmist and premature. This text should be part of the Global Affairs/ National Security Studies cannon.  

Three Books on Democracy rest face up on a hounds tooth fabric hight light the end of year reading round up.
Multiple perspective on democracy need make their way on graduate school reading lists. These books were not planned, but due to current events made their way on the end of year reading round up.
The Poet X

After reading Elizabeth Acevedo’s Clap When You Land, I became obsessed and had to read everything I could by the author. This book comes off as auto-biographical and coming of age. It’s about an Afro-Latino spoken-word poet from Harlem. Some of the themes are sexuality, religion, adjusting to developing bodies. The stories through poems discuss the challenges little girls transforming into womanhood have while navigating this gross society we’ve built for them and the well-intended, poorly executed ways parents call themselves protecting these children. As I said, I stan for Elizabeth Acevedo, so I loved this work. 

Key Quotes: “I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.”

“Just because your father’s present, doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.”

“When your body takes up more room than your voice, you are always the target of well-aimed rumors.”

Check Elizabeth’s phenomenal spoken word poem, “Rat Ode” that she dedicated to a professor who told her rats were not noble enough for a poem.

The Black Kids 

This Young Adult fiction by Christina Hammonds Reed captures the 1992 Rodney King Riots in L.A. through the eyes of a wealthy black girl named Ashley. As in so many of the books I’ve read this year, this book explores themes of identity and double consciousness. Ashley realizes her community no longer sees her as “one of the girls,” but as “one of the black kids.” That comes with a whole host of implications. No matter the best attempts made by black parents to protect their children from the inescapable trauma that stems from systemic racism, eventually, some event is bound to happen to knock the rose-colored glasses off. There’s a lot I can relate to in this book. It even has a character with my sister’s name – something I’ve never seen in literature considered classics in academia.

“We have to walk around being perfect all the time just to be seen as human. Don’t you ever get tired of being a symbol? Don’t you ever just want to be human?” 

The moment a black person in America gets categorized or documented as flawed is the moment abuse and even death becomes justified. And that expectation of perfection is the level of pressure and anxiety black Americans live with daily.  That’s what the young protagonist realizes in this book.

Three Books Stacked on top of cowboy boots
My to-Be Red Next Boot Bookstack. Some didn’t make the End of Year Reading round up for 2020 but will definitely be there for 2021.
A Promised Land 

The most anticipated release of the year (and pretty pricy) President Obama’s memoir takes 600 pages to cover his presidency up to Bin Laden’s Execution. I have not completed this work. But it needs to be on your bookshelf. I must brag, I got mine for $23 at T.J. Max. I think there was a fold in the book jacket that made it unfit to sell full price. I have to brag on that deal because it’s selling for $30+ at other major retailers. 

A mono-chromatic picture of Barrack Obama's memoire on a hound's-tooth background
The most awaited memoire of the past 4 year should be on everyone’s end of year reading round up for 2020.
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

 Written by Princeton professor, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., is the harsh critique of American Democracy I was somewhat hoping for, but knowing otherwise, when I read the perspectives of Condoleezza Rice. The main idea of the book centers around the “value gap” that is so interwoven in our ‘democratic’ system, as well as the ‘racial habits’ that America does to sustain this gap. It discusses the state-sanctioned terror on Black Americans while providing systemic, unearned value to white Americans. It suggests Black Americans aren’t actually experiencing democracy – at least not in the same way white Americans are. The value gap informs all decisions and actions, including academic major, schools, career-fields, the concept of justice, housing, and policy. The author pinpoints the black political classes as “accomplices in the demise of black America. To the author, it’s the same ol’ democracy, just in black. 

I think the professor’s intended primary audience is the politically educated, black academic class. The average reader would need some pre-requisites on history taught from the black perspective, which doesn’t gloss over or whitewash historical events before grasping some concepts or buying off on them. The book takes for granted readers have a baseline understanding. 

Three Books on Democracy rest face up on a hounds tooth fabric for the end of year reading round up.
Multiple perspective on democracy need make their way on graduate school reading lists.
Mexican Gothic 

Not my typical genre. It’s mystery, horror, and suspense set in 1950s Mexico. I can’t say I connected or identified with it in the same way I did other books. I have a lot of questions about most of the creative choices the author made. Mostly, during a time of pandemic and thwarted travel, I just didn’t get enough of a sense of place and setting that I was craving. But the cover is stunning, and I get to fit in with all the book nerdy cool kids ’cause this was the most anticipated book drops of the year and on all the influencer’s nightstands. Perhaps it will make a better movie. I just wasn’t moved. Maybe I’ll try to reread it. Idk.

The novel, Mexican Gothic, displayed on stone tiles in 4 cool hues
If we’re judging books by the cover, the cover was all this book had going for it.

I think what made me love this reading list was that I found so much of me reflected in the pages. My 2020 reading experience spoke to my experiences in a way that Dickens and Hemmingway never could. That’s why I found them all so engrossing.  I haven’t really found the words to describe the novelty of seeing myself written in novels for the first time. Perhaps that word doesn’t exist in English yet.

Alright! That’s all I have. That’s my Year-End Reading Round-up. What books would you recommend? Let me know in the comments or on my Insta (@globelleaffairs) so I can start my 2021 based on your recommendations.

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In Assignments, GloBelle Kitchen on
June 13, 2019

Watermelon’s History as a Symbol of Freedom

A savory water melon recipe served in a bowl with onions, peanuts, cilantro and lime

The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI promotes a scholarly examination of the collection of anti-black strategic propaganda produced in the United States. One hateful image repeatedly displayed is the racist stereotype of black people with watermelon. Watermelon has historical significance as a symbol of freedom and economic independence for Americans. What I took away was the power of images and the deranged mental state that would allow a people to become so obsessed with creating them.


The stereotype emerged post-Civil War with a specific political purpose. Some newly liberated Africans chose to grow and sell watermelons as an avenue to economic independence. They “picked themselves up by the bootstraps” following emancipation. Watermelons became a symbol of African liberation.


As a result, whites, threatened by this hard-earned freedom, responded by racializing the fruit. They pathologized the new African-Americans as having an insatiable appetite for watermelon. Instead of a mark of independence, watermelon became the pictogram of uncleanliness, laziness, childishness, and simple-mindedness.


America witnessed resentful former enslavers upset that their livelihoods crashed. The cause of that crash was picking up the pieces and doing something productive with their lives. Of course, The South structured its entire economic system around the institution of slavery. Even if one wasn’t an enslaver, careers like overseers, auctioneers, deliverers, bounty hunters, steamboat industry, construction industry, banking industry, the fashion industry, and railway industry depended on enslavement. Even doctors and lawyers lost work due to abolition. Misery loves company, and if former enslavers we hurting finically, they wanted to ensure the former enslaved were too. The disgrace associated with the produce intended to shame black people from their business enterprises. As a result, it hurt business sales and prevent financial success.

A savory water melon recipe served in a bowl with onions, peanuts, cilantro and lime
Check out the recipe for this savory, Nigerian-Inspired watermelon dish. Link at the bottom of this history lesson.


In recognizing the historical context of the racist stereotype, we better understand what the trope says about its intended target and those who created the hateful image. We document that liberated Africans farmed and sold crops as honest work to sustain themselves and provide for their families. They continued their hard-working, industrious, resilient character with an entrepreneurial spirit into freedom.


By mocking honest work, resentful former enslavers mocked financial independence. They scorned the very foundation that America claims—freedom. They ridiculed hard work, initiative, and business enterprises.

We can take a scholarly approach in examining the phycology of the creators of the image. The caricature created illustrates how they view people hard at work. The amount of time focused on going out of one’s way to create such a hateful image indicates something peculiar, irrational, obsessive, and debased about their psychological condition.

While these images began during Reconstruction, they continue to propagate a century and a half later. All during President Obama’s presidency, the fruit was used to harass and undermined his qualification. Most notably were the images made in 2014 by the Boston Harald, Kentucky’s Obama and watermelon statue, and a related image circulated by Dean Grose, the Mayor of Los Alamitos, California. Just a few weeks ago in May, a staff member at the Boston Fine Arts Museum told a group of 7th-grade students from Dorchester (code for mostly black with some Latinos sprinkled in) “No food, no drinks, and no watermelon.”


The Destructive properties of the imagery extend beyond insult. Even today, black people are underrepresented watermelon consumers representing only 11% of watermelon consumers (13% would be right on target). I’ve also made a point not to eat watermelon because of the stereotypical depictions. Can you believe that? Something some hateful people began in the 1800s, who are long dead, has influenced the choices of a millennial in the 2000s. I’m not alone. Both Malcolm X and James Baldwin refused to eat watermelon in a mixed company.


Disassociation from watermelon continues to give power and influence to those, now dead enslavers who sought to dehumanize. There is no shame in any symbol of freedom. Freedom is something worth celebrating. By remembering the history and tradition of the entrepreneurship of liberated black farmers and black business owners during Reconstruction, we celebrate the achievement of resilience and hard work. We also draw a spotlight to how the racist depictions began in the first place—from actual lazy, salty, jealous haters.

Celebrate Juneteenth with watermelon dishes served three ways:

Savory watermelon with Nigerian-Inspired Groundnuts (aka peanuts)

Boozy Rum Watermelon slices

Watermelon Salad

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In Assignments, Destinations, United States on
February 4, 2019

Make Charleston Your Black History Month Destination

Charneice stands between two iron gates and a stately home, smartly dressed, welcoming visitors.

Come feel the omnipresent spirit of African Ancestors in Charleston.

When I planned my weekend getaway to Charleston, I fully intended on basking in all the southern-ness I’d been yearning for while living in Boston. I’d chat with gracious southerners with incomparable etiquette. I’d dine on delectable southern cuisine.  Most of all, I intended on giving my ears a break from the harshness of the Bostonian accent to capture the sweetest of twang.  Charleston is, after all, the crown jewel of the south. Its timeless allure is immortalized in American folklore and literature. It is where you go when you need a super does of southern charm.  Although I went to Charleston for its southern-ness, I never expected that I’d be surrounded by its African-ness as well. All-the-while the city is touted as the epicenter of quintessential southern gentry, I’ve rarely heard it positioned as a starting point of Africans in American. Yet, when I visited, I was constantly surrounded by the works and stories that drew a bridge to my own past.

This history and culture of Charleston is the history of the African majority who built and developed the city from the colonial era onward.  It is impossible to separate the history of Charleston from the history of the Africans that populated the city for over 300 years. You don’t have to go looking for the history of Black Americans in South Carolina — it hits you right in the face. The African people of Charleston are not an aside to the city, or a footnote. Charleston was not influenced by Africans, but built by Africans in every way. They were and still are the heart of the city.  

All this southern charm captured by Lindsay Pennell @taylor.grace.photography

My first stop of the weekend was Fort Sumter. Etched into memory from history class, it’s always been on my list of places to see. Being the hyper planner that I am, I arrived as their first customer of the morning. I purchased my ticket for the ferry across the bay but it didn’t leave until another two hours at 11.   That gave me time to check out the Old Slave Mart Museum.

While touring the Old Slave Mart, or Ryan’s Mart as it was called in the days of slavery, I learned an estimated 80 percent of African Americans today had at least one ancestor who was kidnapped from the Senegambia region then quarantined at Sullivan Island, often for over a month, before being brought into the city.  While I can’t know for sure, it is reasonable to believe, that I have some ancestor, from some branch of the family tree that came through this seaport. Considering that probability, the city became more personalized. This wasn’t just a trendy southern city. I was no longer just a history tourist on the outside looking in at a foreign history.  This city provides clues to my family’s potential first steps in America.    

Old slave mart museum - stone building with the words "Mart" inscribed. Three arched doorways on the first floor show symetry to the same archways over doors on the second floor.
The museum is reading intensive and emotional. It’s not recommended for children…especially rambunctious ones.

Initially, Charleston didn’t have a designated spot for the sale of Africans. It was customary for Europeans to buy and sell African people randomly on sidewalks all over town. These spontaneous sales drew inconvenient crowds for pedestrians and carts trying to make their way around town. Ryan’s Mart was built in 1856 to alleviate the sidewalk congestion. Now, Charleston had undergone series of legislation banning the public sale of humans in 1839 as a way of being discrete. That law was overturned a decade later by anti-abolitionists as a way of doubling down on their shamelessness of the institution.  

Looking at the cobble stone roads, I wondered if any of my family members, or people who knew my family were creepily inspected on the side of the roads to be bought and sold like a used futon prior to the mart’s construction.  Or perhaps someone who cross paths with my ancestors survived time spent in the barracoon of the slave mart.  Could all the trauma and heartbreak contained in this concrete cell be part of my family’s initial experience in this country?  Through these walls, mamas, most certainly clinging to their little girls knowing the fate of adolescent girls being considered the property of ruthless men.  Young sweethearts, crazy in love, waited for the impeding separation, never to see each other again. Mothers never knew what became of their toddlers and children never knew if they had other brothers and sisters out there.  

According to displays in the museum, Ryan’s Mart was advertised in newspapers across the south. Even enslavers in Mobile, AL would know when an auction was scheduled and pay a dealer to purchase and deliver people who were enslaved. Those people would be marched in shackles from Charleston to Mobile while the white deliverer would ride alongside of them.  If you could imagine…that’s a 9-hour drive on the highway today but walking back then would take weeks. This job illustrates that even individuals that might not have “owned” African people as property, their livelihood still depended on the propagation of the slave industry. Being in the Old Slave Mart connected dots on possible stories of my family’s history. My family has lived an hour’s drive north of Mobile since the end of the Civil War. While Mobile Bay was a significant slave port, most of those enslaved African people had been brought over after being “seasoned” for slave life in the Caribbean.  I pondered if my people were part of that crew or the Charleston set? Or both?

   After an hour and a half, the museum stimulated my curiosity and provided more data to use for research. I dashed back to my rental parked in two-hour parking right outside the museum then headed back to Fort Sumter National Monument.

The National Parks Department curated a small but impactful museum in the ferry waiting area that doesn’t gloss over some of the less touted realities of antebellum life that history books often omit. Founded in 1663, Charleston became predominantly black by the first decade of the 1700s.  By 1770, the Charleston harbor was the nation’s fourth largest port after Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.  At the end of the century, Charleston distinguished itself as the wealthiest city in British North America (including the Caribbean). All of its wealth was made possible by its slave industry. Of America’s major cities, Charleston was the only one with a history of having the majority of its residents enslaved.  In fact, the majority of all South Carolina residents were enslaved. The irony… South Carolina, a state in America — the bastion of freedom, enslaved most of its residents. The city stayed predominately African until the great migration during the industrial revolution of the early 20th century.

Charneice stands on the fort's island in front of "Fort Sumter National Monument" welcome sign. Grass and the bay is in the background.
The Fort is free but the 30-minute ferry ride is a small fee. You’re welcome to visit on your own boat if you’d like. Keep your eyes out for dolphins!

Once out on the island fort, the park ranger gave a spill on the history of Ft Sumter. He was a high energy, charismatic, retired Marine Colonel who implored the visitors to use our imaginations to put ourselves in the shoes of the people of Charleston at the start of the Civil War.  Empathy, he contended, was vital to the study of history and human understanding. Just like current events of today, that time period had so many perspectives to consider.  With that in mind, I considered what I’d be thinking if I was a young, enlisted soldier doing my daily duties while gearing up for the impending battle. I measured my priorities if I was the commander of the fort, knowing supplies were low and the confederates were getting hostile. I imagined being one of the aristocrats watching the battle from the porch of my ocean-side home. But what I pondered most was the perspective I’d have if I were one of the enslaved people who laid the bricks to build the fortress. I wondered if the hands of one of my ancestors built the bricks that now surrounded me. I ran my hands across as many as I could just in case.

Back shot of a 19th century cannon looking out porthole.
Use from the Ft Sumter National Monument website.

The prevailing viewpoint is the realization that all the grandeur of the city of Charleston depended on the wealth made possible by forced, African labor. With the federal government placing bans on the peculiar institution, the source of income of southerners would be gone (…with the wind).  That meant no more fashionable gowns imported from Europe. No more life of leisure, porch sitting. Cultural developments such as America’s first theater building, Dock Street Theater (1736), was made possible by the wealth of the slave economy.  The city’s first libraries came from slave money. Every nicety enjoyed by the Charleston elite life came from the work of the kidnapped and enslaved African majority.  So it’s understandable that people, reluctant to change, would hold on to the last of their livelihood as long as possible. It’s not unlike folks of today holding on to fleeting or dangerous economies (Coal. Guns. etc).

              Two and half hours later I was back in the city and starving.  At the recommendation of a friend, a South Carolina native, I ate my fill of mac & cheese and dirty grits (In Charleston they called the dish shrimp ‘n grits…but once you add the sausage and gravy…they qualify as dirty grits) at Poogin’s Porch.  The two sites I’d just visited framed my point of reference and my approach to absorbing historical Charleston. The cityscape captured my imagination of what used to be. Roaming the streets, I envisioned some distant relative once traveled the same path as me. I reckoned they probably looked at the same exchange building or churches I passed.  Gadsden Wharf was the busiest port for the nation’s slave trade capitol. But on this day, I watched an energetic fitness influencer pose for a photoshoot.  

As I wandered the streets, words from Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography came to mind, “We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets,” he wrote.  The beautiful, ornamental wrought iron work featured prominently around the city were designed and created by talented African blacksmiths.  The sweet grass baskets that Charleston is famous for (and charges a small fortune), are the handicrafts of West Africa.  The bricks that line the streets, make up the stately antebellum homes, and hold up Fort Sumter were all made by enslaved Africans.  The food culture of Charleston was made famous by African cooks, chefs, and caterers like Nat Fuller and Sally Seymour.  The beautiful gowns seen painted in portraits likely designed and stitched by African seamstresses, made out of African cultivated cotton, and all financed through African labor.   Any building, church, home, artifact of the period in the town, was either created by the wealth of enslaved African labor or physically built by the Africans themselves.  Even modern buildings were likely built from local revenue which continues to profit off of the antebellum history tourism (i.e. plantation weddings and tours). Equiano’s words were omnipresent as I wandered the painstakingly preserved French quarter streets.  This nation too, was full of talented African artisans and craftsmen. Every street I turned down I was surrounded by the works of my ancestors.

Charneice, with her back to the camera, leaps streight up on a cobblestone street and an ally of spanish moss draped live oak, and iron gates ahead.
At this moment, I was carefree, walking in my ancestor’s footsteps

The last stop of my Saturday was the ancestral plantations of the Drayton family at Magnolia Plantation.  Just six years ago, the plantation started to acknowledge the overlooked narrative of all the people who lived on this plantation. It offers a “From Slavery to Freedom” tour. I was suspicious of the how the plantation would approach this narrative when I bought my ticket. But my suspicions were alleviated by the tactful docent who led the tour with the dignity and respect the stories deserved.  The original slave shacks remaining on the plantation tell the stories of five different time periods.  The descendants of enslaved people lived in these cabins and took care of the grounds until the late 1990s when the last passed away.  I had been under the impression enslavers didn’t document where the people that they enslaved came from. But they did. In fact, in Charleston, they were very particular about where they seized people. Africans from the Senegambia region were specifically targeted for their rice cultivation skills. Before cotton became king in the south, rice was the cash crop of coastal South Carolina.  Charleston enslavers had been primarily familiar with rice farmers until they took hold of Angolan warriors. The warriors were transported over, said, “Oh hell nah,” then killed everybody at Stono Rebellion (also called Cato’s Conspiracy) just a little way outside of Charleston.  At the time, 40 percent of Africans in Charleston were kidnapped from the region now recognized as Angola.  After the revolt, a decade-long hiatus in abductions from Angola, among other preventative measures, took effect.

An original small, one room slave shack with one door, one window, and a chimny sits around vegitation
These confined shelters that once housed over 10 people per night humbled me.  

              The Year 2019 marks the 400th year that the ship, White Lion, docked in Virginia carrying the first people who were enslaved in America.  Ghana has declared 2019 as “The Year of Return” and invites all people of African descent to visit the West African nation.  If visiting your ancestral lands in Africa isn’t an option, Charleston makes a more accessible option. Even if your ancestors didn’t arrive in America this way, Charleston is steeped in the details that you can’t learn from textbooks and still worth the visit. Even after majoring in history, this weekend tourist trip to Charleston willed in so many gaps in the lessons I learned in school. If you’re looking for something more international, but closer than Africa, The Bahamas, Barbados, St. Kitts, Haiti, and Jamaica are other, closer options for a Black History Month getaway with deeply rooted African history that connects the stories of America’s African history as well.

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October 3, 2018

Africans-American Never Stopped Being African

I was scrolling through Pinterest while sitting in a salon chair on a Wednesday trying to find the perfect hairstyle for my friend’s upcoming Texas wedding.  It’s unheard of to move to a new city and discover a salon home on the first try, but thanks to the help of Yelp, I found a professionally ran salon with multiple stylists who can do my natural hair. I remember giving the heads up, like I do every time I make an appointment at a new salon over the phone, that I need a stylist with experience with black hair. When I lived in Germany, the stylists gathered around in shock to hear me tell the challenges of getting a simple blow-out at just any American salon because competency with textured hair is a novelty that most salons do not have.  Even when this salon confirmed they could, I was still skeptical. I’d heard that claim before. But with multiple visits with multiple stylists, they have never disappointed. Here, I don’t need a separate salon for braids, extensions, curls, processed, cutting, or my straight hair, I have it all in one here. This just doesn’t happen. In spite of Back Bay prices, the search is over.

I need these gowns in my closet!

When a gorgeous formal, European-cut gown in West African fabric popped up among the different natural hair options, my stylist and I both gasp in delight. Perhaps I should track down a dress like that to wear to the
wedding. That would be a show-stopper for sure.

Can you believe the girl to the right was told by her teacher than African dresses were too tacky for prom!?

“You know, there are Africans that don’t like us wearing their fabric,” I told my hairdresser, an immigrant from Haiti. I recalled a blog of a British Nigerian woman accusing African-Americans of cultural appropriation of Africans. My hairdresser paused in near disgust before responding in her sweet, girlie accent, “Well, that is their opinion. We can have ours.”

A discussion continued between me, her, and a Brazilian hairstylist who also does a great job with my hair but most would not visually identify as being part of the African diaspora.  Who are “they” to exclude “us” from “our” heritage, we all agreed.

After my hairdresser had me looking like a chic it-girl, I attended a monthly Black Young Professionals mixer. This is the one time a month that I get to interact with other black people in Boston.  In five months the only times that I’ve actually seen other black people is if I intentionally coordinate to meet up with a friend I met via social media (we had too many friends in common not to meet) or take an intentional cruise through Roxbury.  I spent two years in SoCal with minimal black interaction. Outside of the hair salon or a deliberate visit to Englewood, I went two years without face-to-face interaction with black peers. I committed to not going another two.

I drop my car off with the parking garage attendant— a man with an accent. I ask where he hailed. “Africa — the original land,” he responds with a smile.

In Boston, there’s a significant Caribbean and African population. Out of curiosity, I asked him to specify where in Africa.  He indicated Ethiopia.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

I wrestled with this.  I always wrestle with this. What answer should I provide? Often I claim to be from the Air Force which explains my nomadic lifestyle. Most often I proudly claim Kentucky with Alabama roots even though I wasn’t born in either. I sometimes claim “The South” as a whole.  But in this instance, I wondered if he was asking me to identify an African country, and I can’t. He sees the bewilderment on my face.

“You are also from Africa” he answers for me. He claimed me as part of him. And I was content.

Inside, a spread of young professionals with a beautiful array of skin hues still in their work clothes filled the space. I join a circle of women and make small talk about our careers, the upcoming cuffing season, and travel. You’ve got Harvard engineering graduate students, STEM professionals, accountants, classically trained musicians, and performers–all networking, discussing current events, and planning bougie black people activities like apple picking, weekends at the cape, going away parties for week-long vacations in Thailand, and upcoming NSBE galas. In this space, no one needs to ask what NSBE is, regardless of their discipline.  The mixer is a refreshing space free of micro-aggressions, having our hair touched, being petted, conversation topic avoidance, explanations of who we are, and all the various other forms of small talk often used to “other” us from the in-group. It’s a place where all the young women have melodic names printed on their name tags. My own doesn’t stand out as unique, and people confidently pronounce it correctly on the first try.

A guy joins the circle and takes a look at our name tags and asks if we’re all from Africa. Everyone except me nods their head. I would never have guessed, even after talking with them for a half-hour. Most of the girls initially identified different hometowns but when explicitly asked if they were African, they each surprised me when they dropped a different country.

This dude is one of my favorite people to talk to.

Later, in the evening I get asked where I’m from, and I proudly proclaim Kentucky.
That response elicits blank stares before the guy responds, “Ok, so regular black.”
Wait, What?  There is nothing regular about a Kentuckian I think to myself. I’d never been labeled such a thing as “regular.”  I understand the distinction he is making.  Since then, “regular black” and “just black” has become the Boston norm in identifying Black Americans who could not identify what country they come from.  The only other time I had heard of “regular black” was when I asked a friend if he considered himself light skin. He responded, “No. Regular black.”  At the time, I took it as a color
reference rather than a cultural reference. I also thought it was funny.
In the span of one evening, I had been called “African,” “Just Black,” a member of the “African diaspora,” “Regular black,” and called “of African descent but not African.”
So naturally, that evening, along with the blog opinion by the British Nigerian rejecting my American African-ness, got me reflecting on associations and identity.  At what point did we stop being African? Is African-ness something that can be lost, stolen, or stopped?

In 1787, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Philadelphia after white Methodists physically pulled the black Christians up from their praying knees. Even though the founders were born in Delaware Colony, they still identified as Africans. At the time of the Civil War, American colonies hosted 10 generations (over 200 years) of people born in America but originating from Africa, and yet they were still called Africans.  The Articles of Secession from both Georgia and Texas discussed the servitude of Africans even though the document had been 53 years since the last legal arrival of imported Africans.
In 1868 Africans were granted citizenship by the 14th amendment but
without the benefits of citizenship and not the identification of Americans.  This was the time frame that Africans shifted from being logged as taxable property items to being counted on the U.S. census. Mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon were labels forced upon black people in relation to their relative whiteness before utilizing “colored” as an all-encompassing catch-all (although I had classmates in Kentucky still using all of these dated terms in the 2000s).
Ida B. Wells (1861-1931) used the term Negro before switching to Afro-America as a conscious effort to connect to her ancestors.  Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) wavered in the usage of Negro and Afro-American.  MLK, Jr used the term “Negro,” and Malcolm X used, “so-called Negro” during the 1960s. It wasn’t until 2000 that the U.S. Census had “African-American” as an option; however, Jesse Jackson highly encouraged the use of the term back in 1988.  Then there’s the widely popular, more inclusive “Black” which includes everyone of a certain skin hue range (although there are those with the same skin color who identify as brown) and the more segmented “Black-American.”
Perhaps more beneficial to the quest to understand when we stopped being African, is to discover why we ended being African.

In the past, I’ve identified as Black-American to make a distinction from African-Americans who had direct ties to a specific country in Africa. My grandmother, who has navigated life as a white-presenting black woman always scratches out the “African” in “African-American” when identifying her ethnicity. She is adamant about identifying as just as American as anyone else…no qualifier needed. Sometimes, people at doctor’s offices don’t even ask and mark her as white.

I have to go abroad to be an American. Rarely am I treated as “just American” while I’m in America.  In subtle ways, like Almay calling Carrie Underwood’s look the, “true spirit of American beauty” to the not so subtle demands to, “go back to Africa” when someone disagrees with me, or a US representative warning the American president to, “Watch out, Real America is coming,” I am too often reminded I am an outsider in the land I claim.

I’m realizing now that my grandmother was identifying as “just American” and me recognizing as Black-American erases our connection to Africa. And perhaps that’s by colonial design. I think it may be instinctual to disassociate with Africa because Colonizers crafted a negative perception of Africa.  For those who have not visited, Africa brings the connotation of poverty, disease, “jungle savages, cannibals, and nothing civilized.”

We both identify as black, but we aren’t always recognized by others the same way.

Likewise, for first-generation Africans and Caribbeans, Black-Americana holds the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow characterizations of blackness and various other unsafe, negative stereotypes.  And thus, we disassociate from each other.  Perhaps Black Americans claim the American label tighter in an unconscious effort to prove our American identity…something denied to us for centuries. Maybe we more closely identify with America since we’ve never lived in or perhaps even visited Africa.

Nevertheless, when a Black American and Black African travel the globe, no one sees nationality. Everyone sees the continent. I cannot count the times Europeans have told me I look like the people from some African country they visited. Or just assumed I spoke French. Or Spanish.  I’ve been pulled aside in international airports and asked if I’m coming from Kenya. Like, why, of all the countries in the world would they ask me, of all people, if I’m coming from Kenya? In America, Africans are regarded as the same as Black Americans.

Going back to Zipporah Gene’s original blog post, she states, “I’m not trying to start a war, but I would just like you all to realize the hypocrisy of seeing someone wearing a Fulani septum ring, rocking a djellaba, painted with Yoruba-like tribal marks, all the while claiming that this is meant to be respectful. It’s a hodgepodge, a juxtaposition, a right mess of regional, ethnic and cultural customs and it screams ignorance and cultural insensitivity.”

Going back to Zipporah Gene’s original blog post, she states, “I’m not trying to start a war, but I would just like you all to realize the hypocrisy of seeing someone wearing a Fulani septum ring, rocking a djellaba, painted with Yoruba-like tribal marks, all the while claiming that this is meant to be respectful. It’s a hodgepodge, a juxtaposition, a right mess of regional, ethnic and cultural customs and it screams ignorance and cultural insensitivity.”

This response does a pretty solid job at explaining why it is not possible for African Americans to appropriate African culture. So does this response.    So I’ll refrain from repeating the same sentiments but offer my perspective.

After many cries of foul play, Zipporah Gene wrote a follow-up blog post ironically titled No One Can Take My Africanness Away. In it she states,

“What people fail to understand is that unlike those from the diaspora, I can never look at the elegant wrappers/kente of Ghana and decide that I prefer their styles to my tribe and wear it. It is a near unspoken rule. We have our lines, and we don’t cross them.”

But what the author fails to understand, the thing about being part of the African Diaspora is. Those lines have been crossed. That is precisely who we are. We are a mix of Cameroon, Ghana, Angola, Senegal, Nigeria and more.

We are all of Western Africa rolled into one. Gene may only identify as Nigerian. It may very well be inappropriate for her to mix elements of cultures.  But American-Africans are that hodgepodge, juxtaposition, and “right mess of regional, ethnic and cultural” identity. Colonialism and imperialism dislocated and built arbitrary borders where there once were none.  For her not to recognize that screams of ignorance and cultural insensitivity right back.

Further, she identifies as both British and Nigerian and perhaps she’s not altogether familiar with Black American history. In what sounds like African elitism run amuck, she states, “Unlike a lot of people from the diaspora, I do know my tribe.”

 

I contend that American Africans have developed a new tribe out of many. Every tribe and every nation in Africa is different.  There is not one thing that unifies Africans but Africa itself.  If 4 million Yoruba people migrated to Norway, their attire, foods, and activities would change to adapt to the new environment alone. To survive, they will take on the language of their new land. Norwegian history will not magically become their own.  They will not magically turn into Norwegians although their citizenship may say so, they will still be ethnic, native Yorubas, doing the things Africans would do to adapt to the Norwegian climate. Likewise, American Africans live the way “African-Africans” would live had they been kidnapped and treated like livestock for half a millennium. The culture, ethnicity, and identity fused and evolved but never dissipated.

I cannot help but notice that the author, Zipporah Gene, bears the same name as the wife of the Biblical figure, Moses. Moses, although adopted, given an Egyptian name, and raised in Egyptian culture (he wasn’t even circumcised and neither were his sons), never stopped being an Israelite. When he learned of his heritage, he felt an immediate kindred spirit when he saw the mistreatment of an enslaved Israelite. Moses didn’t learn all the cultural aspects of his true identity overnight.  He had to grow and learn and fortunately he had people willing to show him the way.  The Israelites, when they lost their way by abandoning their customs and worshiping the false gods of Egypt, never stopped being Israelites.  Your location and practices may shape your experiences, but it doesn’t define who you are.

The British colonization of Africa left a similar inheritance of displacement that African-Americans experienced. The Brits relocated Sudan’s Nubian population to Kenya. When the British pulled out of Africa, they granted British citizenship to the Chinese they cajoled into fighting in their military but the Nubians who did the same lost citizenship to both Sudan and Kenya. They became stateless—belonging to no African country. This was the state of most Africans in America until late last century. It just so happened, that Nubians were dislocated within the continent of Africa that they uncontestably maintained their African-ness even without citizenship of an African nation. The examples of dislocated and relocated people who adapt yet keep their identity are endless.

Being from Kentucky, I am conscientiously southern.  It is an identity that I defend.  Perhaps because New Englanders, although never visiting the state have always assumed it was mid-West.  Perhaps because some Southerners question belonging to the group I am hyper-aware of claiming southern as my identity.

I ponder if a Southerner moves to Wisconsin, and maintains southernisms, can that person still claim the south?  If that same individual’s child grows up in the mid-west and learns ice-fishing, eats cheese curds, knows how to drive in the snow, doesn’t get gussied up to attend football games, can’t identify a grit or worse — puts sugar in them, is that descendant still a Southerner? Southernness is more than a geographical designation.  It’s deeper than the superficial eating of grits. So is African-ness. Perhaps in claiming Africa, I’m continuing the 400-year-old resistance to having my identity taken away.

No doubt, we do not have to all agree on how to identify ourselves. Identities are often fluid and based on relation to others (i.e., I never needed a term for “Just black” until I was around a diversity of other black people).  Even people within the same family identify in different ways (my mom, her sister, and their mom have different last names but all family) so expecting 41 million people self-identify the same way is fruitless.   It is pivotal to recognize that race, nationality, and ethnicity are not mutually exclusive. Instead of identifying as this or that, consider identifying as this and that.  It is possible to be Black, American, an Islander, and African. Recognizing alternative options on what fits you best be it Black-American, African-American, American African, or American And African may be beneficial and most accurate.

One of my last courses for my Master’s in International Relations required us to define our own culture. At the time I just didn’t have the resources, perspective, or time between deadlines to give the assignment justice.  The task was more fascinating than I realized at the time and a fun conversation to have (with the right people).  Perhaps I’ll devote more time to research and explore this later.



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February 6, 2017

Twenty-Eight Black History Month Books That Should Be on Your Bookshelf

An extensive home library with a reading chair
My new year’s resolution for 2016 was to STOP buying books until I read all the ones I already had. That lasted until  February. In fact, 2016 ended up being my most well-read year since fourth grade. It’s the best resolution I ever broke. During that time, I read a slew of books that made it to this Black History Month Books List.
 
Last year, I felt like I discovered a whole new world within black literature. In my first 13 years of school, only two black authors appeared on my reading list (and one was optional). Although I may be late to the black literary game, I know there are other folks like me who could benefit from knowing these titles. While reading Baldwin, I wondered how much richer and poetic American literature we’d share in our libraries today had America not missed the opportunity by outlawing literacy from 3.2 million individuals.  While Reading Frederick Douglas, I realized nothing that is being discussed today about the racial climate is unique to what Frederick Douglas discussed nearly 200 years ago.
February 21, 1965
February 21, 1965

From a historian’s perspective (as opposed to a literary scholar), I consider these books the cannon of Black American Literature with historical significance. And Just in time for Black History Month, I wanted to share and give others the resources to learn. I know you won’t have the time to conquer all 28 in 28 days, however, if this month inspires you to purchase (or the more economical option—check out) the books, you’ll have them accessible to read or reference for rest of the year.  Books not on the shelf are books that won’t get read.  Music  If you’ve missed it, I’ve already blogged a children’s reading list. 

 

1. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (an Autobiography)

Without sugar-coated sweetness, Frederick Douglas speaks frankly on the common practices of slavery that he experienced in this memoir supporting abolition.  Although hundreds of slave narratives were written prior to the start of the Civil War, Fredrick Douglas’ is one considered an American classic.  The religious hypocrisy of slave owners is a recurring theme throughout the text. As the slave son of a white slave owner, Douglas is sold and leased out around the Maryland and Virginia area before making his escape to New York and later Bedford, Mass.  His story is remarkable. He also has three others, but start with this one.

 

2.       Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington

A segment of this was assigned as required reading back in college. Nearly a whole decade later I finally got around to actually reading the whole thing (Hey, college students are very busy)… and my mind was blown! He’s a seriously sappy, gracious, bleeding-heart kind of writer. Unlike Frederick Douglas who seized and opportunity to escape, Booker T. Washington was freed at the end of the Civil War. The places he traveled, the people he met, and how he was able to manipulate the system to make it work for him as a black man during Reconstruction America and Jim Crow America are really quite remarkable.

3.       The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois

Written during a time when there was public debate on whether black people had souls, readers might conclude the purpose of the book is to humanize people who had been considered real estate just 40 years earlier. You have to read Up From Slavery first, to fully appreciate W. E. B. DuBois’ epic
takedown of all Booker T’s methodology and beliefs on education in one pointed chapter. Fortunately, there’s a book called “Three Negro Classics” that maintains both works together conveniently so you can flip back and forth as a reference.  Additionally, this is where W.E. B. DuBois introduces the concept of double consciousness, which is an important concept and theme to understand for all other African-American literature on this list. These
three books should be read independently but with the relationship of the
Authors’ and their diverse backgrounds in mind. You’ve got a fugitive, formerly enslaved man, a man freed at the end of sanctioned slavery, and a pedigreed man born in a free society, all giving their perspectives, which, of course, will be born from their experiences.

3 early history Black History Month books

4.       The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson

Carter G. Woodson is considered the Father of Black History.  He was one of the first to study the history of African-Americans, earning a degree from Berea College (in Kentucky) before attaining a PhD from Harvard. He also established Negro History Week in 1926, which evolved into Black History Month.  So, of course, he’d be on my list of Black History Month Books. The miseducation he speaks of hinges on the education system’s failure to present an authentic black history in schools. There’s a scarcity of literature and humanities, distortion of facts, and overall erasure of black presence in the curriculum. When black people do appear in the school curriculum, it is in a menial, subordinate, inhuman role.  Schooling thus becomes cultural indoctrination for white students and cultural subordination for black students rather than education.
 

5.       The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

This is a historical fiction based on real-life events of the reconstruction era. It discusses the horrific events that happened in America that led to the decision to no longer be black.  The themes of loss of black childhood innocence through racial awakening are timeless throughout American history. It also introduces the three-tier economic class system within the Black American society in which most white people didn’t recognize at the time of publication. The story also brings up the complexities and sacrifices of passing as white.
 

6.       Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs


According to historian Henry Louis Gates, before the end of the Civil War, more than one hundred former slaves published moving stories of their captivities and their escape. No group of enslaved people anywhere during any other era left such a prolific testimony to the horror of their bondage and servitude. Many slave narratives, including Fredrick Douglas, speak of the commonality of slave rapes. But Harriot speaks to the dynamic,  turmoil, and madness such actions and the potential of rape brings to all the women of the household—wives and enslaved girls.

7. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin  


Why on Earth did I wait so long to be introduced to James Baldwin? I’ve never
wanted to be part of a writer’s social circle more than when reading any essay by this literary legend. The way he writes of being young, black, and gifted in
Harlem and the impact of the church on black American lives is not only artistically talented but timeless in its themes. There’s plenty of Baldwin out there but here is a good place to start. I enjoyed the thought-provoking layers of how sex and religion are intertwined in society Baldwin displayed in the reading. We get to witness a lot culture in this book. There’s plenty of Baldwin out there but here is a good place to start.

8. Native Son by Richard Wright

This was one of two books written by an African-American that made it on my school’s reading list in 13 years (and it was an optional summer reading).  The title is a condemnation of American society. Bigger Thomas, the novel’s protagonist, is a “native son” of America—born and raised under the conditions of a black man in America, he is the product of the societal norms of the country. Local cultural and social forces shaped, created and led him to make the decisions he made. There is no nostalgia or romanticism in this direct critique of American society. This book must be read back to back with a James Baldwin work.  If Twitter was a thing during mid-20th century America, we’d be sure to see some beef between these two, just like we saw with Washington and Dubois. So it is helpful to read them with the memory of the other writer in mind.
 

9. Autobiography of Malcolm X

After reading Native Son, Malcolm will stand out as another example of America’s Native Son.  To actually know Malcolm X, is to go to the primary source and see for yourself rather than the opinions of someone who may not have even met him. Plus he had some help by Alex Haley (author of Roots and Queen).

10. Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or A  Nightmare
by James H. Cone
As far as Black History Month books are concerned, this one is pivotal. Read this book after reading Malcolm’s biography (ok, who am I kidding? Most are just going to watch the movie…but I implore you to buy the book at least for reference!).  This was required reading for my African American History course at the University of Kentucky. I re-read the book again this past Kwanzaa. After eight years of a changed perspective, I still find it relevant and a must. This book examines the legacies of two of the most influential leaders of last century.  All too often, commentators ask, “What would MLK say?” about today’s issues. You cannot know Martin without the study of Malcolm, and yet Malcolm is not studied in schools.

Key Quote: “In order to offset Malcolm’s appeal to the black community, Martin was adopted as the darling of their white liberal community and was portrayed by the media as the ideal black leader.”

11. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture (Formerly Known as Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton.

I still have the “used” Wildcat Textbooks sticker for $10.40 on my copy. It’s one of the few required readings I maintained from college. Before coming to conclusions on the Black Panther Party based on the assessment of J. Edgar Hoover, read this book to get the full picture. This Black History Month book breaks down the Black Panther Party from those most intimately involved with the organization, which is the best source of information.

 
Key Quote: “Nevertheless, some observers have labeled those who advocate black power as racists; they have said the call for self-identification SELF DETERMINATION IS “RACISM IN REVERSE” OR “BLACK SUPREMACY.” This is a deliberate and absurd lie. There is no analogy-by any stretch of definition or imagination-between the advocates of Black Power and white racists. Racism is not merely exclusion on the basis of race but exclusion for the purpose of subjecting or maintaining subjugation. The goal of the racists is to keep black people on the bottom arbitrarily and dictatorially, as they have in this country for over three hundred years. The goal of black self-determination and BLACK SELF-IDENTITY — BLACK Power — is full
participation in the decision making process affecting the lives of black
people, and recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people.” P.
47
 

12.  African-American Poetry: An Anthology 1773-1927 edited by Joan R. Sherman

This thin paperback is marked as only $1.  It’s a creative walk through American history, starting with Phillis Wheatley, who was kidnapped from Senegal or Gambia and arrived in Boston from the ship called “Phillis” in 1761 and later became America’s first published African). It also includes the Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Negro National Anthem) by James Weldon Johnson. It was coined as The Negro National Anthem in 1919, twelve years before the Federal Government adopted the Star Spangled Banner.  Never was the Negro National Anthem ever discussed in 20 years of school.  Not even in Arts and Humanities. That is just another motivation for compiling this Black History Month Books list.  To help close that gap in understanding and history.

Key Poems: 

Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson

Not A Man, And Yet A Man, by fellow Kentuckian Alberry Alston Whitman (Hart County)

I, Too by Langston Hughes

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

If We Must Die by Claude McKay

Sympathy by PLD (born of previously enslaved Parents from Kentucky)

13. The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Joanne M. Braxton
This book has been on my bookshelf since childhood. I actually think it belongs to my mom, technically…but hey, what’s her’s is mine, right?  One of my favorites, “Negro Love Song” (page 49 in my edition), is not included in the African American Poetry Anthology.  It must be recited in call-and-answer form.

 
 
14. Annie Allen by Gwendolyn BrooksI got a text message from a friend at a crazy hour while I slept (OK, so it was like 10:30p but still, I’m over 30).When I responded the next morning, “Why are you up so late?” I got the reply, “I lurk late,” accompanied by a SoundCloud audio of Ms. Brooks herself performing We Real Cool. I love that I have a friend who sends me the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poets via text.  As far as poetry is concerned, her’s is a collection that should be on your shelf.
 
      15. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
      I was out to diner in Dayton, OH with the same friend mentioned above who spotted this book haphazardly tossed the top of the garbage can beside the entry of a restaurant.
 
      “Hey, this is a black book,” He said.
      We stepped outside and noticed we were right across the street from a giant bookstore. “Someone probably stole this book from that bookstore, realized it was about black people and threw it away here,” he hypothesized. 
 
      We both recognized finding this book as a treasure. He also mentioned he had no intention of reading it. It caused a minor debate on who should get to keep it, since it wasn’t going to get read if it went home with him. It still went home with him. I got to Amazon my own copy. Invisible Man deals with social issues of black people in 1950s America and is, predictably, timeless in its exploration of individuality and personal identity.

16.       I know Why the Caged Bird Sings– Maya Angelou
This autobiographical journey depicts how Maya Angelou overcame insecurities, inferiority complexes, and youthful traumas into a self-actualized, respectable woman. Literature was her saving grace. The title was inspired by a line in a Langston Hughes poem.
 
17.       Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
This is the one and only book with black characters written by a black author who was assigned reading in school.  On the first day of AP English, we were asked what made us choose our two choices from our four options on the summer reading list.  One of my books was Richard Wright’s Native Son so, I frankly announced that it’s senior year and it’s the first time I’d been assigned a black author.
 
     It’s important to know that I’d spent all summer at the Governor’s Scholars program, where I had black peers for the first time and spent time with students from Central High School (Historically Black high school in Louisville…and National Black History Academic Team Champions to 50 years in a row…or however many). The teacher’s face gave her away.  After that, Ms. Hurston found her way in our class reading. It’s a country folk love story featuring a good-looking, spirited, black woman who doesn’t follow any of the conventions set for women at the time. First published in 1937, it was out of print for nearly 30 years when the University of Illinois Press reissued it in 1978, at which time it was instantly embraced by the literary establishment as one of the greatest works in the canon of American fiction.
 
18. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
     This is the first novel by the Noble Prize for Literature-winning author. You know you’re in for a good read when you have a Nobel Prize Winner on the banned books list. Written while a professor at Howard in 1970, the book takes place in 1941 rural Ohio and discusses issues such as racism, incest, and child molestation. She explores the concepts of “colonization of the mind,”  identity, classism within a race, and European standards of beauty versus black beauty standards in American society. My friend, Megan, invited me to her class in college where they were discussing this book (I think she got extra credit for bringing a friend). I think to get the most out of this book is to read and discuss with people with different perspectives so you don’t miss key points.
 

19.   Great Speeches by African Americans, edited by James Daley

 
     The collection begins with Henry Highland Garnet’s 1843, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America,” and continues with two centuries of orations on freedom in America. I think college and high school English and History classes are missing out on so much intellectual wealth by not critically examining these powerful, moving, and timeless speeches. After so many discussions in 2016 it became apparent that I wasn’t saying anything new.  I wasn’t saying anything that Frederick Douglas had not already mentioned on July 5, 1852 or Mary Church Terrell described in “What it Means to Be Colored in the Capitol of the United States” in 1906. Sojourner Truth’s Aint I A Woman did come to mind on January 21, 2017 (during the woman’s march). I do wish the book included more speeches by King and more X and at least something from Michelle Obama, but this is one book that could really do so much in closing gaps of understanding.
 

20.       Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race And Inheritance  by Barack Obama

This book follows the identity struggle of Barack Obama, the man, not the legend or political figure. His story reflects the experience of all Black Americans exploring their identity in America through the lens of double consciousness with the added hurdles of being the son of an absent African father and a white American mother who grows up as the only black person in his family and lives in Hawaii and later Indonesia. In his search for a workable meaning to his life, he travels to Africa and ends up in the  South Side of Chicago as a Black American.

 

21.     Black Feeling, Black Talk by Nikki Giovanni

      Nikki Giovanni came into prominence after unleashing her heart on paper in response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Robert Kennedy, and the pressing need she saw to raise awareness of the plight and the rights of black people. After the death of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965, Black American activists fell into two camps: Revolutionary Nationalists and Cultural Nationalists. Nikki Giovanni was a headliner in the Cultural Nationalist movement, using the arts to reflect pride in African American history, identity, and culture. Nikki is undoubtedly an intellectual. But before that, she is Black and a woman whose talent with words is merged with the universal Black experience. Her poems reflect the arts and history of the time. BTW, there’s a two-hour conversation between Nikki and James Baldwin available on YouTube. It’s profound. And again, their experiences in 1970 are the same and relatable as black experiences in America today.

22.      The Rose That Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur

Tupac Shakur’s most intimate and honest thoughts were uncovered only after his death with the instant classic The Rose That Grew from Concrete. Written in his own handwriting and with a foreword by Nikki
Giovanni, you get to close to the heart of the young lyricist before he came into the limelight.
 
23. Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored by Clifton Taulbert
     The story of a young boy growing up in Mississippi during 1950s. It’s a story of family warmth and nostalgia and youthful innocence protected from the harshness of the American reality. This book captures a snapshot of the time of our country.
 
24.   The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories by Charles W. Chestnut
      This story explores colorism and introduces the Blue Vein Society. It continues the themes of timeless struggles of identity and acceptance as a black person in America.
 
25. Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham
      Debutante cotillions, the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by a member of this hard-to-penetrate group.
 
26. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
 
 In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion,
and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals,
today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals
in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against
African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of
discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food
stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are
suddenly legal.
 
27. Roots: The Saga of An American Family  by Alex Haley
This Pulitzer Prize-winning epic was turned into a heavy miniseries that did not romanticize the reality of the slave-holding South. Although parts conflicted with genealogy work, and parts also were proved plagiarized, this work ignited a new fuel to African-American history and African-American genealogy work. Of course, due to poor documentation of African-American families, contradictions would be expected. My dear cousin read this entire work for a high school book report — significantly more pages than anyone else. And despite being encouraged to just watch the movie, of course, she got the emotion that the miniseries couldn’t capture. I encourage others to do the same.
This book was received into our family as a Kwanzaa gift to my dad from a family friend. In the inscription, she wrote:
 
“I am overwhelmed by all the life lessons you have taught me over the years. You epitomize the motto: It takes a village to raise a child.” 
 
She went on to speak of her days being the only black student at the same high school I attended (although she graduated several years before I enrolled) on the same all-white dance team as me, attending the same predominantly white university, and even working in tech in California like me and how it framed her expedition on The African Continent. She visited the village of Alex Haley’s legacy and felt compelled to share the enlightening experience with those closest to her.  The book has accompanied me through 5 different homes before I read it just last year.
 
This American story begins with 33 chapters of self-determination and autonomy in The Gambia, followed by seven chapters of horrors of on board a slave ship, then dedicated to 79 chapters documenting the American experience of an African family.
 
Key Quote: “Kunta wondered if he had gone mad. Naked, chained, shackled, he awoke on his back between two other men in a pitch darkness full of steamy heat and sickening stink and a nightmarish bedlam of shrieking, weeping, praying and vomiting.  He could feel and smell his own vomit on his chest and belly. His whole body was one spasm of pain from the beatings he had received in the four days since his capture. But the place where the hot iron had been put between his shoulders hurt the worst.”


28. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in he U.S. by Geneva Smitherman and H. Samy Alim
This reading is a study of linguistic studies. It makes the theisis that Obama owes his election success largly in his abilities to successfully coat-switch from a Washington insider to culturally Black modes of conversation. In addition to breaking down the necessity of linguistic code-switching, it goes into an unsugar-coated synopsis of American history.

Optional Reading

 
These last Black History Month Books are significant in American race-relations and historic literature. They capture the Black American experience from a white perspective. In some cases, like “To Kill A Mocking Bird” the entire book centers around the fate of a black man but his voice and autonomy is silenced throughout the entire novel.  In most cases, you’ve probably already read them in school.
1.   To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
2.   Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriot Beecher Stowe
3.   Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
4. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

What other books do you think should be on the Black History Month Books list? Comment below so I can check them out and add them to a later book list.

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