Welcome to Litsy!

Happy International Women's Day! I don't think I can recommend a better book for the occasion this year. Dr. Mona is a badass crucial whistle-blower in the Flint water crisis. She's a pediatrician who started to notice patterns only months after the city switched its water source, and worked with only one other woman to prove that Flint's water was essentially hazardous waste and the residents were being poisoned so politicians could make money.

This is the only acceptable amount of whipped cream to put on pumpkin pie, end of discussion. 🥧

Sad events of a misguided youth in urban Detroit around 1960. Alex lives with his alcoholic dad who works 2nd shift at a car factory. I enjoyed the ups and downs of the book, cheering for Alex, hoping he would make it through his hardships to lead a good life. He is a complex character with a complicated history. The story takes place over the course of about a school year, but has many flashbacks giving the characters tangible depth.

“What we ingest or experience or inhale will make a difference to our health —literally the number of minutes allotted us to live.” Page 90.

“ The eyes don‘t see what the mind doesn‘t know.“ Page 22.

Resilience is the key, the deciding factor between a child, who overcomes adversity and thrives and a child, who never makes it to a healthy adulthood. Page 14.

“Resilience isn‘t something you were born with. It isn‘t a trait that you have or don‘t have. It‘s learned. This means that for every child raised in a toxic environment or an unraveling community - both of which take a terrible toll on childhood development and can have lasting effects-there is hope. Page 14.

“It is a story about what happens when the very people responsible for keeping us safe, care more about money and power, than they care about us, or our children.” - P. 13

#FirstLineFridays