Love Is Loud

Juvenile Nonfiction 

     "Cheeks BURNING from the heat of HUMILIATION, now you feel the sting of segregation.

     Your friends tell you it's always been this way.

     They say to go along to get along.

     But you won't follow rules if the rules are wrong."

     Diane Neil Wallace's words and Bryan Collier's vibrant illustrations introduce young readers to a shero of the Civil Rights Era in a poetic style they will find quite appealing in Love Is Loud.

     Diane Nash was born in Chicago in 1938 to parents determined not to raise her in the South where they had grown up.  In her early years segregation was not a major factor in her life.

     All that changed when she moved to Tennessee to attend Fisk University.  At a fair she saw signs for white and "colored" bathrooms.  Her friends felt that this evil wasn't going to change.  It would be best to not rock the boat.  But she hadn't been brought up to acquiesce to evil.

     Complicating her life, racism wasn't the only challenge Nash faced.  The Black males who led the Civil Rights Movement kept girl and women activists behind the scenes, not allowing them to speak publicly.

     But Nash found ways to lead resistance and fight wrongs.  And this well crafted volume brings her work and legacy to life for younger readers.  It's a great acquisition for school and public libraries.

On a purrrsonal note, this morning the people who had slept 😴 💤 over at Wilson Center sat around talking and eating Sonja's good pancakes.  I had an epiphany.  I'd toyed for quite awhile with the idea of reading my short first chapter of my memoir/manifesto to a group who would answer one question:  would this want you to read 📚 more?  I'm specifically targeting it to a younger adult demographic, the people more willing to rock the boat rather than settle for tepid incrementalism.  I'd actually chosen representative groups and then chickened out.  But this group made me feel safe enough to be vulnerable this way.  They listened and loved it.  At the end of Imogen, Obviously Albertalli had shared this thought:  What does it mean to belong to a community, or several?  It means you have a real treasure.  I could tell that I already belong in that community which gave me the security to take that leap of faith.  (Jules)

I was waiting for her and now she is home.  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to Sonja for cooking for a hungry crowd and to the group for validating my writing.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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