My succulent

I potted it and took it home almost a month ago. Miracle of miracles, it is still alive and even seems to be thriving. Tobago hasn't devoured it. And I'm not watering it too much or too little. 

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Reading light

This is the reading light I took home from Clean Sweep clean up. It was Emma's idea. She thought it would be purrrfect for my before bed reading. She was right. 

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My door yard

These flowers from last year are doing a great job self propagating. Now I've gotta get a ride to buy some flowers 💐 to plant before the weeds totally take over my actual garden. 

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Clean Sweep

Here's a member of the Clean Sweep crew trying on a dress. I told him I was so going to post the picture. 

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Backtalker (adult memoir)

     Kimberle (there's a punctuation mark over the second e. I have no clue how to create it on my smartphone.) Williams Crenshaw's Backtalker is the perfect follow up to the review I posted yesterday. Although Few Blue Skies is fiction and Backtalker is anything but, both deal explicitly with racism. When Crenshaw discusses how urban renewal targeted vibrant Black communities for razing, with eminent domain as the weapon of choice, and the people whose properties were stolen were paid unconscionably low amounts my mind jumped right to the placement of the noxious warehouses in the part of town where the people of color lived in Few Blue Skies. 

     For those of you who have never heard of Crenshaw or have been exposed to the totally off the wall misinterpretation of her critical race theory propagated by Ron DeSantis, she is a highly esteemed and accomplished law professor, scholar, and writer whose work has appeared in really prestigious publications. She is also the creator of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality which are basically two of the most important theories of recent history. 

     I met Crenshaw's works in the theories course in my higher education student services masters program. I loved that class. While my classmates saw theories as set in stone, wisdom to follow in professional practice and information to memorize for the dreaded final, I saw them as living and evolving, a body of knowledge we could aspire to contribute to. When we got to intersectionality it was love at first read. Basically it says that a person is not oppressed or privileged because of one identity but a combination of identities. Like a Black woman at a pregnancy doctor's appointment can be treated with both biases on the doctor's part, not just one. It made total sense. Crenshaw became my favorite theorist.

     So when I read that her memoir had dropped and was in the process of being acquired by several libraries in the Minerva network I was like a three-year-old who was told that on Christmas Santa would leave presents under the tree. Then when it reached me via inter library loan it was even better than I imagined. 

     Backtalker in itself is beautifully intersectional. Throughout the book, from readers' introduction to Crenshaw as a kindergartener heartbroken because she was never allowed to play the coveted role of Thorn Rosa through her current role as distinguished law professor and scholar, three strands are braided together: her personal and family life, the events and beliefs (and biases) of the nation, and the way both strands lead inexorably to her creating theories out of necessity.  

     Her voice is an eminently readable and engaging one. Even when she covers topics that many people make confusing through jargon and abstraction she makes them come to life for those of us without PhDs. She's vulnerable and authentic. She knows what details to include to create engagement and empathy. She had me in tears when I read about the deaths of her father and older brother when she was quite young.

     And if you want drama Backtalker is the book to pick up. My textbook made it look like Crenshaw came up with the idea of intersectionality and it was a done deal. I had  no clue of the level of opposition she encountered from very powerful people and groups. 

     If you want to understand the things that are seriously problematic in this country or want an awesome shero to believe in or maybe want to nurture the hidden backtalker in yourself this story of the little girl from Ohio who grew up to be one of the most brilliant and bad ass intellectuals of our time is a most excellent investment. 

On a purrrsonal note, I too was a backtalker from an early age. In church I was banned from asking questions in Sunday school after my first grade teacher ran out of the room in tears and quit. My principal didn't appreciate my informing my classmates that the duck and cover drill she'd just taught us wouldn't save us because an atom bomb would pulverize the whole school. The year I had American history I asked so many inconvenient questions we ran out of school days before I served all my detentions. So now I have a new ambition to add to my list: getting a job at UMaine, getting my stroke narrative published, continually adding to my impressive cat tattoo collection, climbing a mountain, flying to Ghana to visit a friend, finding more venues for performing in drag shows, and meeting Crenshaw in person. 

A great big shout out goes out to Crenshaw for her lifelong backtalking and fighting for justice and for the precious gift of her memoir. 

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Few Blue Skies (YA fiction)

     Carolina Ixta's Few Blue Skies is targeted to the YA crowd. I, however, would recommend it for its target demographic and way beyond. It combines a truly engaging, at times heartbreaking, narrative with highly believable characters with an expose of an evil more privileged people can remain blissfully ignorant of: environmental racism. This fine book has the potential to do a whole lot of eye opening and hopefully to enrage.

     There used to be a whole lot of farming going on in San Fermin. Now the few remaining green spaces are endangered. Silva, a huge conglomerate, is putting up warehouses frequently in very targeted locations: the side of the town where primarily people of color live. The air pollution has become so bad the high school is frequently canceled, replacing in class instruction with packets students pick up and complete at home. The mayor, who lives in the unaffected side of town, the white side, is basically a shill for Silva, rubber stamping all warehouse proposals despite growing opposition, even potentially green lighting one that would be right next to the high school.

     Narrator, Paloma, is seeing her family break up. Her father, a Silva worker, is a leader of an ongoing strike. He's determined to get decent working conditions for himself and his fellow workers. Her mother, feeling that nothing is going to change for the better, just wants to get the Hell out and move back to the town she grew up in. San Fermin is Paloma's home town. She desperately wants her mom to not give up and leave. She's worried about her father though. His asthma has become a lot worse.

     Julio has lost his father to Silva. His beloved dad, a Silva worker, died of lung cancer. His grief stricken mother became unable to work, leaving it to his sister to support the family. 

     Paloma and Julio become partners in a research competition. The choose as their subject the harm Silva is doing to the health of the people on the wrong side of town. They are desperate to win. It's the only way Julio can afford to go to college and gain the knowledge and skill set to change things. They both want to expose the great harm Silva is doing. 

     But when they do win accepting the prize would involve a terrible moral compromise. 

     In college Ixta took a class called Urban Education. She learned that in Oakland where she grew up the school water fountains werae contaminated with lead. She processed this information differently than her classmates did. "For many of them, it was a reality only to be theorized, a solemnity to be imagined. For me, it was a spiral of panic--a realization that I had been exposed to poison, that my family had been exposed to poison, that children today were being exposed to poison."

     Ixta wondered what the impact of environmental racism would be on the future of the child victims. "If students are constantly surrounded by factories, distribution facilities, and warehouses, how would this inevitably affect their psyches? How are they not to believe that this is an inescapable facet of their futures? And how could people in power be okay with this?"

     Maybe because they benefit from it all the way up to the White House?

    Few Blue Skies would be a most excellent acquisition for public, school, and home libraries and a great selection for book clubs. 

On a purrrsonal note, Friday night on her birthday Amber participated in a most excellent panel discussion event. Seven horror book authors responded candidly and enthusiastically to questions posed by the moderator and audience. Very worth attending!!!

A great big shout out goes out to the panel of talented writers and most especially to the one I personally gave birth to.

Jules Hathaway 

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The clothes area was very popular. 

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