February 18-21, 2020: Black History Month

I mentioned back in December that The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates was next on my to-read list, and wow. Coates’ first novel after nonfiction works like Between the World and Me, The Water Dancer tells the story of the extraordinary Hiram Walker, a slave in Virginia. Hiram’s mother was sold away from him when he was very young, and while robbed of all memories of her, he mysteriously develops an incredible gift for memory. Years later, in a brush with death, that power saves him, and opens up a new, magnificent ability which will in turn free him and shackle him in new ways. Hiram finds a way out of slavery, but can’t forget the family he left behind. Reminiscent of Colson Whitehead, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler, The Water Dancer is a riveting, transcendent book about humanity, separation, and what it means to be truly free.

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones is a riveting memoir about growing up Black and gay in the south. Jones, a writer who has won the Pushcart Prize for his poetry, uses the same style of visceral poetic imagery as he recounts being raised by a single mom and their complex relationship, a series of romantic flings, and how all of these episodes - no matter how unsettling or difficult -- are crucial to becoming the person he is now. And as Jones details his mother’s sudden passing, the reader mourns with him over this tragic loss. How We Fight For Our Lives is not only a vivid coming of age story, but a glowing homage to a mother who parented with tenacity and determination.

Instead of suggesting one particular book, I’m recommending author and poet Carole Boston Weatherford’s entire catalog. You can read about Harriet Tubman in Moses, or the Greensboro sit-ins in Freedom on the Menu. You can learn about lesser-known figures in black history, like photographer Gordon Parks, explorer Matthew Henson, or Henry Brown, who escaped slavery by shipping himself north in a box. And since Weatherford mainly writes picture books, you can do all of it before the end of the month, and look at fabulous illustrations by artists like Bryan Collier and Kadir Nelson at the same time. You can’t go wrong.