I‘m posting one book a day from my massive collection. No description, no reason for why I want to read it (some I‘ve had so long I don‘t even remember why!). Feel free to join in!
#ABookADay2023
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Wench: A Novel | 
I‘m posting one book a day from my massive collection. No description, no reason for why I want to read it (some I‘ve had so long I don‘t even remember why!). Feel free to join in!
#ABookADay2023
pickAn absolutely heart shattering novel. A story of enslaved Black women, and the sacrifices they make in hopes of finding freedom. This novel takes you into the South, onto the plantation and further North when abolition was beginning. At times suffocating, always powerful. With a deep look into what life was like for enslaved women, this story also serves as a reminder of the meaning of Reproductive Justice, and Abolition. Highly recommended.
I would want my college African American Studies teacher Mrs. Pam Chapman to find the tagged book on my table. It‘s intriguing, informative and incites deep conversation.
#SundayFunday @ozma.of.oz
pickI had no idea that southern slave owners would sometimes take their slave mistresses on vacation with them to a resort in free territory Ohio... I love a book that gets me googling.
This book was incredible: sad, infuriating, hopeful, and beautiful. Gorgeously written story with unforgettable characters—I finished this a week ago and I‘m still thinking about Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet, and Mawu. So painful, but so good.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
1. Having to cook almost daily since restaurants were closed.
2. Health
#ThankfulThursday
@Cosmos_Moon
🌹My friend recommended the book to because she knows that I‘m an avid reader. It was a hook that she thoroughly enjoyed and she knew that I would like it too. It was an excellent book. 🌹 I‘m grateful for good friends. #ThankfulThursday @Cosmos_Moon
pickOne of the most important books I have read. It was sad, empowering, and happy. I didn't expect the ending but it was great. Please go find this book and read it!
"One of them was hoping to give up what the other cherished and the third longed for." ❤️
pickIt is the 1850‘s and 4 slave owners take their slave mistresses to a resort in the free state of Ohio. We meet Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet, and Mawu, as they form a friendship across 4 summers and what ideas being so close to “being free” gives them. I loved this book. It broke my heart, made me angry. It‘s about how the wants of your heart can make you blind to the realities in front of you. I was horrified at what better looks like when your life👇🏼
#PiratesLife #WhatAWayToLive #wenches
I thought about poor Kyra from the Song of Ice and Fire series first, but then I realized I have this perfectly-named choice in my tbr. Snatched up in my quest to read all things historical fiction, and still sitting there. 😳
pickSuch a heartbreaking read, but it did feel like it ended on a hopeful note.
Back from the grocery store and getting ready to par-tay. #litsypartyofone
pickAccidentally finished this book tonight instead of tomorrow like I planned. It's heartbreakingly good. It's played with my head a bit and I've been eyeing people suspiciously all day. It's not "just" a book about slavery, but a book about despair and hope. And I loved the surprise nod to my mom's alma mater! Wasn't expecting that at all!
At night, before she went to sleep in her cabin down in the quarters, she remembered Mawu‘s story and told herself that she was a god, a powerful god. Each and every day, she reminded herself of this so that she wouldn‘t fall backward. She was more than eyes, ears, lips, and thigh. She was a heart. She was a mind.
pickThe heartbreak in this book combined with the heartbreak in the America of today is making me sick to my stomach. So emotional.
Yesterday, I accompanied a friend to a used bookstore so she could buy Ulysses. They didn't have a copy & I ended up spending $72 so the day did not go as planned. (I need an intervention.)
"...perhaps whites did not understand how it felt not to be able to go where one wanted to go, dress how one wanted to dress. They took simple things like movement for granted." - Lizzie
pickI put off reading this book for a long time. I just didn't want to read another slave story. But this is more than the life of slave women in the 1800's. This story reveals the power, strength & courage of four women, the safe haven found in true friendships & the ties that bind the afflicted.
Perkins-Valdez subtly and cleverly sparks the imagination by leaving things unsaid. Her implied word engages the reader to interpret the idea in his own frame of reference. Dialect was natural and not forced -- as I've seen in some attempts at fictionalizing the concept of slavery.
"Six slaves sat in a triangle, three women, three men, the men half nestled in the sticky heat of thighs, straining their heads away from the pain of the tightly woven ropes."
pickThe story covers three summers during the middle of the 19th century at an Ohio resort which was later named Wilberforce University. It opens in media res during the summer of 1852. Having found slaveholders in my family's history, I still couldn't believe the slave/husband-figure arrangements.
