jaduhluhdabooks's Reviews (333)

I think I could talk about this graphic novel forever. I was laughing out loud in public, because it's literally my life vibrantly and so beautifully depicted through four beautiful Black women who are doing this thing called life together. The textures that are so intricately drawn, the colors, the expressions, I just felt so insanely KNOWN through each of these sketches. Also the story telling is so powerful. Like when Kim pulls the "curtain" back on the flashback to signal interrupting which happens in a group chat rant and rave, whew - I laughed and felt that really - so creative!

Davene's character and colors and expressions and just the reality of missing your hair appointment and what it may signal in terms of how you have to show up, just all of it. The depth was so wildly accurate and real. This is a graphic novel about sisterhood and crowns. Owning your truth and loving yourself and your girls for them and for the better. Solidarity and camaraderie. I just. I'm gonna read it again and laugh and cry. Because this is the real shit.

The ride or die.

Ugh, Kennedy Ryan doesn’t miss fr !!! Like I love these characters and the cutienesssss between them and the light shown on Indigenous populations and their struggles in the US. All of it. Lovveee.  

A powerful depiction of Darrin Bell’s life through the medium at which he found his voice, drawings. It’s an eclectic form of story telling that demonstrates the atrocious realities of growing up Black in America. It’s about discovering wealth in your identity and beauty in your experience and value in your speech. It’s about exploration and expression of the self, to exhibit confidence and bodily admonish one’s ability to stand. It’s about the depth of racism institutionally and relationally, gripping the roots of our nation. It’s about the brutality of law enforcement and the criminalization of the “other”. It’s about seeing each other as human, for fighting for equity and equality. It’s about safety. It’s about love. It’s about life. 

Darrin Bell is the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for a cartoon editorial. He made history and it’s a history worth remembering and celebrating. But in order to do it properly you must know ALL of Bell’s story. I am honored to have gotten to sit and reflect with Bell’s experiences, as well as on my own.

Theirs is beauty in acknowledging and celebrating the journey. But theirs is something solidifying about ensuring a safer and more fulfilling journey for those who come after us. May their “talks” be one of history and remembrance. Not of survival and self preservation. 

Civil Townsend is a Black nurse who committed to healing her community, particularly the community of Black women in Montgomery, Alabama. Taking place in the early 1970s, this novel takes us on Civil’s journey with two of her patients, Erica and India - sisters who are recipient care from the clinic located in their part of town. Civil discovers that this clinic is doing much more than the prevention care it is aimed to do. After a horrific event, Civil vows to support the families in need who are victims of this injustice.

This a story about conquering. Conquering fears - whether it’s the fear of man or society, or the fear of self. This is a book about unconditioned love. What does it mean to love someone so deeply you would go to ends of the earth for them? Even if they’re not your blood, you would still give them everything to watch them know just how loved they are. This is a story about the realities of healthcare and Black maternal health, shining a light on the inequalities and inequities that existed then and continue to exist now when it comes to reproductive care and justice for Black women. It was heart wrenching and informative and a reminder that we still have so much work left to do.

In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, this is a powerful and critical book to read. I am grateful to have listened to this story. For the healthcare providers who are fighting for Black women’s healthcare rights and the justice that is indeed pertinent to the cause of safety and care when it comes to Black women. 

Brooklyn is a confident, upbeat young girl who’s entranced by the high life and the harming city of New York. Having grown up under the intensely close and persecuted eyes of her religious parents, she vowed to leave and make something of herself. 

This novel walks with Brooklyn from the ripe age of 17 and so on. It is about familial drama and the weight of the choices that we make that ultimately make or break the life we’re building. Haunted by the choices that she makes early on, Brooklyn discover that the high life may not be the best life, but is seeking the best life worth the sacrifice? 

Ugh, I cried at some parts of this book because I resonate with Brooklyn and also I was sad for her. Sad for the deep pain and reality of not knowing love and how loved you are and what it looks like to fight for reconciliation. This book is heavy and real and raw. 

I think I gave it 3 stars, because I really struggled with the explicitly of the sexual relationships showcased in this book. I am not one to glorify underaged sexual encounters regardless of consent and I recognize the time period and how real that presentation is, I just think there’s a fine line between awareness and glorification and it comes with the language that we choose to describe such things. 

Octavia E. Butler is known for the extensive ways in which she views the present and future, blending the realms using tonal depth and perception that requires the mind to pause and redirect how it knows dreaming and futurism. Instead, her characters and her worlds sit within the tension of what is, but isn’t as is. Where the concept of Blackness as power and whiteness as other is within itself an Afrofuristic concept.

In this short essay, she impacts the why behind predictions of the future and how her books are tellings of such things that well…have come to pass once her publication dates. I think it’s an in depth question that I would’ve wanted more context around and maybe that’s the point of the brevity…there is no answer and just the attempt alone is a signature of hope that maybe the future might look different, just maybe.

The artistry is spectacular and Manzel Bowman does a wonderful job depicting an ethereal feel to the text and the wonder behind the questions. Overall, it was a good quick read of essays about futurism and the why it remains such an important genre to write from within the Afro/Black perspective.

So many thoughts … but I wanted to share a reflection I wrote for class because it sums up where my head stands with this pedagogical work…

“[Freire’s] concept of dialogue, having and connecting to so many elements made me wonder about the intent of dialogue. Is dialogue, the way the Freire describes it, related to similar elements of what a healthy relationship looks like? I think this is a foundational piece to Freire's other concepts, and his  goals of "[generating]...acts of freedom" and "abolishing the situation(s) of oppression" (Freire, pp. 90). Encompassed in this act of dialogue is love, humility, humanity, and trust. Trust, is the one that I would argue unhinges all the others if not honored. Freire even expresses how "trust is contingent on the evidence" that "one party provides the other", and how truth is built on the action of follow up (Freire, pp. 91). The presentation of honesty is just as important as the act of speaking it. It relates back to Freire's initial idea of liberation being a spoken and active transformative experience (Freire, pp. 87). Trust is what nationhood is built on and thinking back to Fanon's ideas of nationality and culture, it's the similar notion of comfort or knowing. Knowing a culture allows for someone to be more comfortable submitting to, or fighting for the nation in which their culture resides, the trust that builds between a person and the dialogue that exist in a culture, within and among a people. The reverse of this notion, is the lack of trust...like how Black Americans have built culture, dialogue, personhood as a response against the nation in which they reside, or even in alignment with building the liberatory nation in which it initially set out to be. Yet, there is a division of what is and what is not, and trust is the missing link between what is being spoken and what is being done, or lack thereof.”

… “I would argue that activism is a response of failed dialogue... of one side doing what they can to verbalize their needs, followed up with false remission and empty promises, or lackluster action. Freire says that activism is the loss of the reflection and amplifying the pursuit of action, but I think that activism is the result of exhausted reflection. The oppressed don't have the ability to reflect for as long as the oppressors... that is a privilege. To be able to think about your actions and how they affect those around you, is a privilege. The oppressed survive on the making the right decision the first time, it or cost them the ability to choose again...I think about activism as an exhaustive measure, the law straw...when dialogue is not the answer anymore and communication has to endure in another capacity, one that speaks louder volumes...

 

I think about the George Floyd protests and how the activism prompted the dialogue and reflection....and how for decades, Black and Brown marginalized voices had been dialoguing, reflecting, researching, analyzing and dialoging, only to have the same and similar oppressive events continuously  happen upon the oppressed population. Reflection is exhausting...reflection is a privilege... and heavy work of reflection should not weight the heaviest and most burdensome on the shoulders of the oppressed...”


So many thoughts …

A beautifully haunting memoir about people and addiction and the truth behind the reality of strongholds like alcoholism and drug usage. The deep reality of mental illness and the journey of life with it is not an easy story to tell and I think the organization of the book speaks to the vulnerability of that truth and maybe that’s an unpopular opinion, but I think it symbolic. 

I also listened to Matthew read his story a part from reading it and that allowed me to grasp the full affect of the organization of the book and intently listen to Matthew’s story. Memoirs are powerful and this one was no different. I always feel so honored after reading someone’s story, to be invited in is a gift alone.

It was so beautiful and dreamy and made my heart flutter OUT of its chest. 

The reality of duty and expectations of how that duty is to show up in your personhood regardless of your feelings and desires, the reality of defying odds and the risk of your future - ITS ALL THERE. add in the history of two countries who are built on genocide, racism, and hold fiercely to “tradition” wrapped in heteronormative and patriarchal supremacy and you’ve just got a master piece that rips apart the constructs of society and the language that many people hide behind to support their bigot ideals and homophobic dealings. 

You also just have the sweetest little love story and I simply LOVED every minute. Nora. June. Alex. And Henry. You’re all ICONS.

I read this back in my sociology colloquium and it a relatively interesting book, with isolated incidents / narratives that are not diverse enough to generalize to the population of twenty somethings that exist in the US. 

These particular cases felt cherry picked and as a Black woman who feels like she is facing extremely different things in her twenty’s in comparison to her peers of differing race and class, this book was not as insightful or helpful, it left me more wondering if I’m worrying about the right things as a twenty something / why do I worry about my things more in depth and critically in this time in my life and not about some of the things demonstrated in this study? 

The wondering also lead me to identify what dictates belonging for some cannot be universally adapted to fit the idea of belonging for all in this life stage. Belonging looks different culturally, socioeconomically, and characteristically. 
It just felt like a superficially targeted, and maybe even poorly demonstrative piece of some twenty somethings … not all 🤷🏽‍♀️