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.

What Happened

What Happened, by Hillary Clinton

Of course, I listened to this one on audio so I could hear Hillary narrate What Happened. Hillary reminds me of many women I've worked with, who came of age in their careers in the '70s in a male-dominated field...she is tough, has had to make tons of sacrifices (e.g., taking Bill's last name), and is not always authentic and relaxed because she is trying to fit in and be accepted in spite of her core strength (not fitting into the classic feminine stereotype). Even though she is awkward, nerdy, and wonky, I greatly admire and respect her as a woman, diplomat, civil servant, and mother. She has great love for her country and her family.

Sometimes I find it hard to understand why she stuck with Bill, but this memoir gives more insight into that situation. She has a great fondness and affection for him, and who am I to judge her for choosing to stay with him after he embarrassed her in front of the whole world?

This book, like Michelle Obama's Becoming, brought me to tears several times...because I think of what could have been and what should have been. Hearing her describe election night from her perspective, and that incredible speech she gave the next day, brought it all back for me. The great hopes of having our first woman president, someone who has rock-solid experience internationally and diplomatically, who could swallow her pride and go work for the person who defeated her, who can work with all sorts of personalities, who has advocated for women and children for her whole career...such a huge loss.

I will read everything Hillary Clinton writes. What happened is that she got nearly three million votes more than Trump. And the Republican party, which has always been terrified of the "Red Menace," is now consorting with Russia.

What happened is that our country got shafted. If Hillary had won, we'd actually have a skillful, diplomatic, effective, team-building president instead of the terrifying president-pretender we have now.  #NaBloPoMo2019

Somewhere Inside

Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home,
by Laura Ling and Lisa Ling

This is the first book I've read since my surgery that has really compelled me. Any story about or by sisters always interests me, and this one--about Asia--did in particular.

As you might recall, Laura Ling was captured with her colleague, Euna Lee, and imprisoned in North Korea from March to August 2009. They worked for Current TV (cofounded by Al Gore) and were making a documentary about North Korean defectors who escaped into China, some of whom ended up in forced marriages or sex trafficking. They traveled into China on tourist visas instead of admitting they were journalists because they were not going to be portraying either China or North Korea in glowing terms. They hired a guide to take them to the Chinese-North Korean border, and one morning the guide encouraged them to go onto the frozen river that serves as the boundary between the countries. They followed him, and they came to regret it. Although they went back into China, guards from North Korea pursued them and captured them.

For five months, they were interrogated about their intentions and actions and kept isolated from one another. At the same time, Laura's sister Lisa (who works for Oprah and used to appear on "The View") took advantage of her media and government connections and did everything she could to get her sister out of North Korea. She was in contact with Al Gore, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Oprah Winfrey, the U.S. State Department, and media and entertainment celebrities. At one point, Michael Jackson even offered to perform for Kim Jong Il (if it would help), right before he died so suddenly.

It's clear that Laura Ling had powerful people working for her, trying to get her out. If her sister hadn't used all her connections and if she hadn't been working for Al Gore's company, who knows whether they would have been able get former president Bill Clinton to make a visit to Pyongyang to retrieve her and Euna Lee (who had left a 5-year-old daughter at home in the U.S.).

Clearly, they made an error in judgment by taking the risk to cross into North Korea...whether they were persuaded to take the risk by their guide or not. But that doesn't detract from this story.

I was touched by the very close relationship between the sisters, who are best friends. I cried several times, as I did again when watching the video of Laura Ling's speech as she got off the airplane in Burbank, California. I'm always deeply affected by stories of sisters being separated or reunited.

I also found it touching to read about the relationships she developed with some of her guards, translators, and even her primary interrogator. Even though she was being held in captivity, she was treated well for the most part. Even though the North Koreans felt angry at the United States, most of them did not treat her unkindly.

It's clear, as is mentioned in the epilogue, that many political prisoners do not have the resources Laura Ling and Euna Lee had...working incessantly to free them. But evident in the book, too, is Laura Ling's keen intelligence and political and media savvy. She handled the imprisonment professionally, wisely, and diplomatically, in spite of her own health problems and severe stress.

Here's an extensive Fresh Air interview with the Ling sisters, as well as the trailer of the book:

Ali in Wonderland

Ali in Wonderland and Other Tall Tales, by Ali Wentworth

As I joke in my house, I'm not easily amused. My nine-year-old son rented "The Three Stooges" recently, and I knew that I would not find it funny in the least. Even when watch something I do find funny (like "Downton Abbey" or "Lost in Austen"), Mike is rolling on the floor laughing while I might just smile to myself.

About the only people who regularly make me laugh are Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Ellen Degeneres, and Jane Lynch. When I've read humorous memoirs, I often start out thinking they are light and interesting, and then they grow tiresome.

That's Ali in Wonderland for me. Mike had checked it out of the library for humor research (for his writing). I picked it up because it looked interesting--Wentworth is married to George Stephanopolous. She's exactly my age, so many of her childhood and teenage memories rang true for me (like when her sister who had just had scoliosis surgery and ran away in a full body cast because she was fed up, and Ali had to follow her, but the only thing she cared about was getting home for The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, and Love American Style, and her sister said she would only return home if Ali could make her laugh, so Ali took off her clothes and rubbed mud all over herself and did some weird kind of dance, only to be seen by people driving by). Some of the anecotes were indeed funny.

But midway through I started to get bored. I think the last straw was the chapter talking about how her mother believed that the cure for anything was to go to the Four Seasons. Wentworth was raised in privilege and lives in privilege now. Another chapter was about family-friendly resorts and  how inconvenient it can be to slip on a dirty diaper by the poolside. Although I assume she's a good liberal in the Kennedy style, I just couldn't relate to her problems and complaints. She also jumped around tons in her storytelling, so it was hard to keep track of which part of her life she was describing.

I ended up scanning the second half of the book to the end when she talked about meeting and marrying George. The descriptions of her big fat Greek wedding and family were funny...but I found myself ready to move onto something else.

Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman's March to the Governorship

Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman's Guide to the Governorship, by Barbara Roberts
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A few weeks ago I heard Barbara Roberts on Oregon Public Broadcasting's morning show, Think Out Loud, talking about her new memoir. In her lively, genuine way, she spoke about the highlights of her time as governor and also discussed her upbringing. I knew I wanted to read her book, so I put it on hold at the library.

Roberts is a fascinating woman. Raised primarily in a small Oregon town (Sheridan), she grew up in a blue collar family filled with love and respect. Unlike many women of her generation, she never received the message that she was anything "less than" as a woman. However, even though she was very successful in high school, it never occurred to her (and no one encouraged her) to go on to college. She got married before she graduated from high school, and soon she found herself living and lonely in Texas (married to a soldier) and pregnant.

When her older son Mike was five or six, she began to realize something was wrong...she took him to a specialist, who pronounced him to be "extremely emotionally disturbed" and recommended that he be institutionalized (he is autistic). She refused to accept this label, but because no services were offered (much less required) for these types of kids, she ended up admitting him to a residential school, the Parry Center, where he stayed for three years. When they brought him home, she was able to get him into a special ed program in the Parkrose School District (which was being offered via a three-year grant). When the grant was going to expire, Roberts became a lobbyist to fight for the program to be extended. Oregon was the first state in the country to offer special ed services to kids who need them. A federal law was not passed until four years later. After achieving success, she joined the Parkrose School Board and eventually the Multnomah Community College Board. At the same time as her political ambitions began to grow, her young marriage began falling apart.

Frank and Barbara Roberts sailing

Soon she was a single mother raising two sons and working full-time as a bookkeeper, and working on the school boards at the same time. She got to know Oregon state senator Frank Roberts and soon married him, even though he was 21 years her senior.

She was elected as state representative, then secretary of state, and then finally governor; she was the first democratic secretary of state Oregon had seen in 100 years, and she was the first woman governor in Oregon ever. She came from behind to defeat well-known and popular candidate, Dave Frohnmayer.

What amazed me the most about this book was how much tragedy and angst was behind Roberts' cheerful exterior. Her sister lost a 2-month baby in a car accident. When Roberts became secretary of state, her husband was healthy. By the time she ended her term, he had survived two bouts with cancer and a heart attack and lost use of both legs (because of the chemo damaging a nerve in his spine). Her beloved father died just scant months before she was elected governor. Two and a half years into her governorship, her husband's cancer returned and he was given 1 year to live. He wanted to keep it a secret so he could finish out the legislative session, so they carried on as best as they could without people knowing. He died in the last year of her term. At the same time, her sister was diagnosed with cancer. Later her mother died, her son nearly died in a motorcycle accident, and her beloved best friend died of a brain tumor. Throughout it all, Roberts worked hard and showed a cheerful face to Oregonians. I don't know how she did it.

I couldn't help but think of Barack Obama while reading this book. Like Obama who has been saddled with a failing economy, Roberts was handed two huge burdens on the day she was elected: Ballot Measure 5, which was the first property tax measure to gut Oregon's economy and services, and a split legislature. As she tried to cut spending so that they could pass a budget, she took crap on every side. People blamed her for not getting more done, but she was fighting uphill battles, just like Obama. I won't go into the details of what she accomplished in office, but given the hand she was dealt with, she did many great things as governor.

Current governor John Kitzhaber does not come out very well. Kitzhaber, then the head of the Oregon senate, announced he was challenging Roberts for governor while her husband--and his colleague--was dying of cancer. In his characteristically "icy" way, he announced his decision and didn't stay to discuss it or ask how her husband was doing. He just walked off.

Two other things struck me about this book:

• Barbara Roberts is unfailingly honest, direct, and ethical. She does not shy away from admitting her mistakes or fighting for a controversial issue...whether if be the Spotted Owl, gay rights, feminism, abortion rights, AIDS, social justice, the death penalty, or any other topic. I admire her honesty and courage in standing up for what she believes in.

• She did it all without a college degree. After she retires from politics (again)--right now she's serving on the Metro council--she plans to finish her education. Clearly, she is extremely bright, articulate, and a natural leader to accomplish everything she has without a degree.

I was tempted to give the book four stars, because as a woman and a leader, Roberts is inspirational and amazing. But as a book, it is not the highest-quality memoir. Roberts' writing is a bit pedantic, and she uses the passive voice a lot. She also seemed to want to document every detail of her political life, and at times she should have left some of the details (and names) out for the sake of her (non-political junkie) readers.

But I'm glad I read this book. Roberts was a trailblazer in so many ways...from advocating for her special needs son when no one else would...to believing she could be governor and making it happen.

Infidel: Violence perpetuated on women in the name of Allah

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A friend loaned this book to me, and I'm anxious to discuss it with her. From the perspective of an open-minded, feminist Christian who tries hard to respect other people's religious beliefs, this book shook me up.

Hirsan Ali survived a horrible childhood in Somalia and Kenya and experienced a fraction of the horrors Islam can heap upon women in the name of Allah. I recognize that not all Muslims are abusive of women, and many Muslim women are happy and satisfied in their religion, but what is most distressing is the violence and abuse that is perpetuated on Muslim women and permissible, and even encouraged, in the Quran.

I find it intriguing that Hirsan Ali works for a neoconservative think tank in the U.S., and her belief that we are way too tolerant of Islam in the west is thought provoking. Perhaps as liberals we are too afraid of offending Muslims to stick up for the rights of oppressed women?

She is truly a hero and a very brave soul.



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Bleeding Kansas: Great novel about feuding priorities in modern-day Kansas

Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a Sara Paretsky fan, I knew this book would diverge from her VI Warshawski novels. The title comes from the bloodshed that occurred in Kansas before the civil war, when Kansas was a free state and neighboring Missouri was a slavery state.

It's a sprawling story of a community near Lawrence, filled with conservative farmers, right-wing fundamentalists, visiting Wiccans, and hormone-ridden teenagers. The plot centers around a farm family, in which the history-obsessed mom gets involved in the anti-war movement, embarassing her oldest son, who eventually enlists and is killed in Iraq.

Paretsky is ambitious in this novel, packing the story with tons of characters (perhaps too many) and plot elements. Some reviewers have accused her of creating one-dimensional characters, which might be true. Nevertheless, I could not put the book down.

I would have liked to have had more resolution at the end of the novel (for the "bad guys" to get their comeuppance...), but I still enjoyed the book.

If you are interested in learning more about the conflict between Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War era, I highly recommend The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, by Jane Smiley.



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The Way Home: A German Childhood, an American Life (by Bill Bradley's ex-wife)

The Way Home: A German Childhood, an American Life by Ernestine Bradley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was drawn to this book because of my own German background, and also the fact that my parents lived in Bavaria (where Bradley was from) before I was born. I've never actually been to Germany, although I studied German in high school and college.

Bradley perceptively lays out some of the differences in German and American culture, and she clearly struggled with some of the decisions her parents made during her childhood.

Bradley is haunted by her family's possible connections during the war, and decisions made by her fellow Germans. I found it interesting because I too have often wondered about myself what I would have done had I been living in Hitler's Germany. I would hope that I would have been one of those sheltering and helping Jews, but it's hard to imagine living in those desperate, dangerous times.

Bradley was a fiercely independent and strong woman in her youth (she left Germany and became a flight attendant for Pan-Am when she was 21 years old), and dedicated herself to her career and profession so that she could establish her own identity separate from her family.

She described her bout with breast cancer sensitively...the most touching scene in the book was when she was trying on a suit in a department store and explained to the store clerk that she wasn't sure how it would fit because of her prosthesis, and the clerk told her she too was a cancer survivor and had reconstructive surgery done. They went into the dressing room and showed each other their breasts for comparison. This is such a great story about the way that women can rapidly move from strangers to intimacy in a matter of moments.

I did not previously know much about Bill Bradley, but given his support of his wife during her bout with cancer, and the way he raised his daughter, I'm sure he would have been a compassionate and principled president.

WAIT!!! UPDATE!!! I take back that last paragraph. I just read about Bill Bradley on Wikipedia, and I discovered that he left Ernestine in July 2007! I can't find out much more information on the web except that later last year he was frequently seen with a blonde woman who had just divorced her husband. What a disappointment after having just finished the book! So much for being a compassionate and principled president...



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Barefootin': Inspiring story of a sharecropper turned politician

Barefootin': Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom by Unita Blackwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm giving this book five stars in honor of Unita Blackwell. Her story brought me to tears several times, and I would love to meet her and shake her hand.

She was born to poor cotton workers in Mayersville, Mississippi, and finished the 8th grade before going to work full time in the cotton fields. She picked and chopped cotton until she was in her mid-30s, when she was inspired to join the civil rights movement. She was raised by loving parents, with a good dose of "mother wit," such as:

"If you lie down with a dog, you'll get up with fleas."

"Don't lay it on the cow when the milk goes sour."

"A new broom sweeps clean, but the old one knows where the dirt is."

"Every shut eye ain't asleep, and every grinning mouth ain't happy."

"Wear life like a loose garment."

About six months after she had her son Jerry, Blackwell nearly died. In fact, she was pronounced dead but she came back to life. From that point on, she believed that she was not done on earth yet...and that she had work to do. She didn't go out looking for her life's purpose--but when it found her, she knew it was what she was meant to do.

She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and began fighting for the right of African-Americans to vote. It took Blackwell several efforts herself to register to vote. To say she was persistent and courageous is an understatement. She was arrested multiple times, beaten to a pulp (once in front of her son), assaulted and abused, and humiliated repeatedly. Blackwell makes the point that when she hears all about the torture Americans have inflicted on Iraqi prisoners, it feels strange to her because most people today--especially young people, and whites in general--"do not have any idea the price that ordinary black Missippians have paid...they don't know what kind of hell we went through...I can hardly bear, even now, 40 years later, to think about it."

In 1964, she was part of a group (with the famous and incredibly gutsy Fannie Lou Hamer) who went to the Democratic Convention. They represented the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and they fought to be seated as delegates at the convention. The "real" Mississippi Democratic delegates were planning to support Barry Goldwater instead of Lyndon Johnson. That was the year when southerners began to leave the Democratic party over race. Reading this book made me feel grossly uneducated, because I was never aware of this very important event in history. Fannie Lou Hamer made an impassioned speech to a congressional committee, appealing for their delegates to be seated. (That speech is what made her famous.) Learn about Hamer and this historical convention here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKXoXwYpzmU.

Blackwell was also heavily involved in integrating Mississippi schools. She describes her efforts to register her 8-year-old son for school (the schools for blacks did not operate on a full school year because of the cotton season), and a white woman ran over and started screaming the N-word at her repeatedly...right in front of her son. Although many improvements have been made since that time, the Mississippi delta schools have experienced white flight because of desegregation. In Blackwell's school district, 97 percent of the students are black, and 95% are eligible for the school lunch program. The high school has no advanced placement courses. They still have a long way to go.

Blackwell eventually became the mayor of Mayersville and served in that role for several years. She completed a master's degree in planning and received several doctorates. She advised and had close relationships with presidents, namely Carter and Clinton, and also met Ronald Reagan. She traveled to China in the 1970s with a group led by actress Shirley Maclaine (whom she met during the civil rights movement) and became heavily involved in China-U.S. friendship efforts. She also led efforts to get what is now known as "Head Start" programs begun in Mississippi, and she led efforts to build housing for the poor and elderly.

In spite of all the hatred and prejudice Blackwell experienced, she clung to her faith and her belief in the inherent goodness of people. She turned her anger into compassion and worked to right the wrongs she saw. She wrote that "Even at my most angry I never hated white people. I hated the way I'd been treated and the way I was always having to look out for snakes and be uncertain and afraid. But I had grown to see that people can change. My faith became more steadfast as I saw people willing to open their minds and respect each other and work together. When that happens, there's almost no limit to the good that can be accomplished for the betterment of society."

About being part of a delegation that welcomed President Jimmy Carter to Mississippi: "A cotton-chopping, cotton-picking black child from Lula, Mississippi, raised up with absolutely nothing, who hadn't been allowed to vote, couldn't even look white people in the eye, had represented the state of Mississippi in welcoming the president of the United States to MY state."

Blackwell exhorts Americans to get involved, to become community organizers (my word, not hers). "A small group of abolitionists writing and speaking eventually led to the end of slavery. A few stirred-up women brought about women's voting...It's not the president or Congress that makes change happen. It's the people. Us. We are the movers. The president and Congress follow us."

The title of the book, "Barefootin'", refers to a song they used to hear in the juke houses and on the radio--it's about dancing one's way through life. Blackwell does that and more. She helped the people around her to dance too.

This is how she ends her book: "When you're barefootin' on the road to freedom, you have to watch and fight and pray. Watch the road so when you run up on a roadblock, you can cut a new path and go around. Watch the other fellow on the road and yourself as well. Fight for the right of way. Fight for the right to stay on the road. Fight to keep yourself open to understanding. Pray for the strength to finish what you started. And don't let nobody turn you around. You can do it. Your spirit is in your feet, and your feet can run free."

Blackwell's life and work are truly inspiring. I have googled Unita Blackwell, and sadly, she appears to be in the early stages of dementia. But I found this great video of her speaking last year, speaking about the civil rights movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkQCvBBYkfY. Blackwell was a friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. But I can only imagine how amazed and delighted she must have been when Obama won the election last November. How far we have yet to go, but how far we have come.


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