Two books by Black women: Kindred and Tough Love

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

How have I never read Octavia Butler until now, for goodness sake?!?!? My dear friend Catherine gave me this book for Mother's Day, and it was the perfect distraction for a pandemic. It had been on my "to read" list for a while, but when it landed in my lap, I had to read it.

I have always loved time travel, but this time travel is far more serious than usual. Written and set in 1976, this book finds 26-year-old Dana suddenly flung back into the antebellum south to save a drowning white boy. It turns out that he is one of her ancestors. Over the course of several years (in the time travel south) or days in the present, Dana ends up back on this plantation over and over again, each time to rescue clueless and careless Rufus.

It goes about as you might imagine. Slavery was brutal and tragic and soul-destroying...but many enslaved people found the strength to attempt escape or stay captive and endure. Apparently Butler's critics said she softened the horrors of slavery in this book, but it was horrible enough to understand that it was often far worse.

I will remember this book for a very long time to come, and I stayed up late into the evening to finish it. So worth the read!

Tough Love, by Susan Rice

While I was reading Kindred, I was listening to Tough Love by Dr. Susan Rice. Tough Love represents the life of a highly successful, highly educated Black woman, 44 years after Kindred was written by another Black woman.

Truth be told, I didn't know much about Susan Rice until I heard her interviewed on a podcast. She struck me as incredibly bright, funny, and capable, so when I saw she'd written a book I was immediately intrigued.

Most people associate her with Benghazi, because unfortunately she was tasked with being the spokesperson for the Obama administration after the Benghazi attack and then she became a scapegoat for the right wing, in spite of all investigations finding that she did nothing wrong. She continues to be vilified by Republicans to this day. She's now on the list of potential candidates for VP for Joe Biden. Her parents were both highly accomplished educators...her dad was a Cornell professor and her mom was an educational policy scholar who helped design the Pell Grant system. Rice was raised amidst the political and policy world, mentored by Madeleine Albright, headed to Stanford for her undergrad degree (to the chagrin of her parents, who wanted her to go to Harvard), studied at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned her M.Phil and Ph.D. there. She worked on the Dukakis campaign and served for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama while they were presidents.

This book is packed with stories about her childhood and young adulthood, diplomacy and policy work here and overseas, and family. She married her college sweetheart and has two children--one a diehard liberal and the other a Trump supporter. Yikes!

Susan Rice is a rock star, and I enjoyed learning about all she's accomplished in her time on earth.

A Reliable Wife

A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick

Set in cold northern Wisconsin in the early 1900s, A Reliable Wife is the story of many people from various backgrounds who share something in common: miserable childhoods lacking in love and nurturing. Wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt asks for "a reliable wife" to come join him in the far-flung north, and Catherine Land claims she fits that bill.

I don't usually read books that get less than 3.5 in Goodreads ratings, but I found this on our bookshelves. Since the library is closed right now, I've been taking this opportunity to read through some of the books we actually own...and I forgot to look up the review on Goodreads first.

Furthermore, in the past couple of years I have made a concerted effort to read mostly authors who are women and people of color. I hesitated before choosing this book, because it doesn't fit that category.

Last night I revisited my decision when I realized that ALL of the women in the book--Ralph Truitt's mother, his first wife, and then Catherine herself--were horrible and completely unredeemable. I questioned whether I should keep reading. But I then I realized that, in fact, all of the characters were unlikable...not just the women.

I couldn't sleep last night (coroninsomnia), so I stayed up and read (and finished) the book. The main characters grew on me and I became more concerned about what happened to them in the end.

Goolrick is a talented writer, but I must confess that at times I found myself scanning through the text. Something about his writing style reminded me of Hemingway, not one of my favorites. Overall, though, an interesting story about deeply unhappy, unloved people. If that sounds appealing to you, give it a try. I think I need something a bit more cheery next!

Real American: A Memoir

Real American: A Memoir, by Julie Lythcott-Haims

Real American is a book, like Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, or Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, that all white people need to read...or even better, listen to, which is how I absorbed this beautiful and heart-breaking memoir. (And of course, people of color should read it too!)

If you are white, it will make you profoundly uncomfortable (a condition we white people need to feel a whole hell of a lot more often), and it will make you think and view the world differently and more sensitively, like the other two books.

Lythcott-Haims was born to a white (British) mother and a Black American father. All her life she never felt like she fit into either race, beginning in kindergarten when her friend asked, "What are you?" In high school, her best friend described her love of "Gone With the Wind" and told Lythcott-Haims that she thought of her as "normal," but not Black. Her locker was defaced with racist slurs on her birthday. These are just a few of the racist acts she experienced.

After being raised in an academically focused, cosmopolitan family, she attended Stanford University in the 1980s before earning her law degree at Harvard and an MFA in writing from the California College of the Arts. After working as the Dean of first-years at Stanford for 10 years, she wrote How to Raise an Adult, an acclaimed treatise on how not to helicopter parent.

Much of the book is about her growing-up years, and it's a love letter to her parents, neither of whom had easy lives. Her father eventually became a prominent pediatrician and served in Jimmy Carter's administration...but he made the decision to raise his family in predominantly white circles, which had a huge impact on her throughout her life.

In the second half of the book, as she ends up marrying a white Jewish man and becomes a mother herself, she comes to grips with her low self-esteem and lack of a sense of belonging. She elaborates on the constant microaggressions she and other people of color receive every day...even (and especially?) at fundraisers for her children's school when a few people show up in costume and blackface.

I urge you to read this unforgettable book. I just happened across it when I was looking for an audio book for a car journey, and I think it needs a lot more attention!