bahareads's Reviews (1.09k)

"I'm not homeless. I have multiple homes in all kinds of places. I am so blessed."

Cafe Con Leche is Yoe Apolinario's honest experience of her awareness of her blackness. Have you ever heard the phrase "I'm not black, I'm ____." Well, that describes most of Yoe's early life to a T. Yoe covers topics like casual racism, colourism, and homophobia among the Latinx community. Yoe describes her struggle being raised by a white Latina mother, who did the best job she could while her black Latin father bounced around her life. The difficulty of being a diaspora child comes into play in the narrative. Yoe is part Puerto Rican and Colombian, yet she hasn't grown up in either place. She feels connected to these places and wants to install a connection to these places for her children as well. Being a Queer woman of colour adds another layer to Yoe's story, adding more judgement to the mix.

The layout of the book is somewhat all over the place. Yoe repeats many sentiments again and again. There's no plot. The chapters have labels, but that does not mean anything for the contents within them. The book was very readable, and the readers get the main points. The book feels like Yoe is having a conversation with the reader.

I was given a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

“—You different, Lilith. You have more darkness ’bout you now. You turning into woman, Homer say to her.”

I've heard much about Marlon James before reading The Book of Night Women . I can confidently say now that I am a fan of his.

Lilith is not a likeable character. She is colourful; as a reader, you can feel the depth of her rage to the brief feelings of happiness she experiences. None of the characters are likeable, but they are real and raw. As a reader, you can feel Lilith being squeezed on all sides by enslaved people working in the field, the white people in the house, and the maroons who live free. There is no escape from the bondage that she was born in. Readers can see the psychological strain of enslavement through the characters. Lusting after whiteness is something readers see in Lilith again and again. Finding comfort in white men and the 'protection' they can provide. It's easy to fault Lilith for this, but it also causes the reader to think about what drives enslaved people to the security a white person could provide. Being the white man's whore could be worth all of that.

The historical detail and study that went into this had me GEEKING. I appreciated everything James did to bring us into the time and present. He presented us with background information that made the plot come to life. The plot of revolt for The Book of Night Women is weaved into former historical plots. The end of the book hit me extremely hard. I knew where James was going, but I still had to see it through. The pain and brutality of the stark reality of enslavement is worth the read.

I see people had problems with the language in here - the dialect and how the conversation was written. I can understand the dialect complaint if you are used to reading 'standard' English all the time. (I think this is still a poor excuse for lazy reading). However, I cannot look over people complaining about how the conversation was written. Are you a child who needs to be handheld? Must quotation marks accompany every utterance leaving a character's mouth for you to recognize that a character is speaking? The short answer is no. If you were paying attention to what you were reading, it was not hard to keep track of what was happening.

People complained about this book being trauma porn; I would hardily disagree. I want a raw description of what was experienced by enslaved people during this time. Now it felt like everything compounded on each other, but my awareness of time for the plot made it feel that way. I'm going to expand on this in another IG post.

My guilty pleasures are mafia romances. I love them. I didn't realize this was part of a series, and honestly, that was my bad. I wanted to wrap this up with one book, and now I might see another one. I was so frustrated with the main characters! I hate romances where the main problems are miscommunication and misunderstanding.

We love a grumpy love interest! It was a great little romance with a daring heroine. I might be tempted to continue the series. I wanted the romance to be a bit spicier, but still we move.

I loved the slow build of romance. I wanted the Elf King to have a harder shell. We see his soft side almost immediately. The plot itself was annoying, I wasn't impressed with the problem, from beginning to end, Kova was throwing the solution into our faces. Soft Boi Elf King with Festy Human Girl is the best way to sum up this book.

The characters were extremely loveable but finding Lord Fentworth secrets so easy was annoying. The ending of the book was obvious once the characters travelled to the other country. The romance was nice and fluffy. The world was intriguing. I wanted to see more about the other creatures who live in it. I wanted the romance to be spicier.

Eliza Gayle had such a nice premise! The execution was generally very poor, though. The romance was too insta-love. The world-building sucked. The ending threw me and was sloppy. It was confusing, and while it connected to what should be a second book, I was annoyed.

A longer review will come with a second reading.

The Common Wind covers the phenomena of the growing Atlantic World and the belief in the connections between countries and people in this region. Scott adds the growing histography (and honestly, if this had been published earlier, he would have been THE trailblazer) of the interconnectedness of the Atlantic world. Looking at the movement of information from mariners and other common folk to enslaved and other stationary people. A work of intellectual history, The Common Wind sets itself in the age of the Haitian Revolution. Stemming for Scotts' dissertation, the book has short chapters packed with a lot of information.

Second Reading:
The Common Wind examines mobile figures and the largely invisible runaway railroad which shows how news, ideas and social excitement travelled around the Atlantic in the late 18th century. Scott shows readers how mobile people used webs of commerce and their own autonomous mobility to form subversive networks that the ruling class might not have been aware of. He shows that the towns were network centers and places where masterless people dwelled. Caribbean port cities specifically were magnets for people seeking personal independence. Shows and seafaring skills allowed for long rand communication and access. Sailors and Blacks generally had amiable relationships and confidence in each other. Many runaways had sea experience and would go to ships. Multilingual Blacks were a threat, as they were able to transmit ideas of freedom across language barriers.

Julius Scott was ahead of his time in the 1980s, I wonder how much father the historiography would have been if it had been published then instead of over 30 years later. I'd say Scott focuses his argument on the Angl-Caribbean and brings in the Spanish and French Caribbean to help with his arguments. He does focus on how the Haitian revolution affected the Atlantic World but he does not focus on the people in Haiti, but rather those who interacted with or ran to Haiti. I think his first chapters are his strongest and the later chapters have weaker arguments and conclusions. Reading through the work, one can tell it probably needed more polishing but it is good nonetheless that it was published at all. To sum it up - Scott shows readers how rulers tried to deny Black rebels access to the sea to limit the spread of revolution, masterless people still showed up everywhere despite the restrictions, and free Blacks migrated to Haiti during the revolution and long afterwards.

This Addy mystery is a great way to introduce different historical phenomena that most people may not know. I enjoyed this mystery and the storyline so much. A great read for young people.

A classic American Girl book, the mystery should be enough to keep any young person on the edge of her toes. I even was kept guessing for a bit of the book. Kaya is a girl worth getting to know through her works though I wonder how accurate all of the description is of indigenous life.