lcl_reads's Reviews (211)

Using alternating point of view Perkins-Valdez weaves together a beautiful narrative highlighting Black power, resilience, resistance, and connection to land. As this story moves between present day and the past, the reader is taken on a journey to understand the complexity of choices made and how those choices impact future generations.

This novel has some similarities to Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and folks that like one are likely to like the other.

Overall I think this hit the mark for a memoir written by a White person on their White guilt and difficult upbringing. McMillan seemed to have put forth her most genuine effort to be introspective and thorough. I did not feel the subtitle was accurate, however, and I struggled with how what I read aligned with my expectations. It was not about five families, it was about McMillian's personal story and her family and she drew parallels to the stories of other families. It is actually kind of wild to suggest what is very clearly a memoir is about five different families. Based on the "cash value" part of the subtitle, I was also expecting a bit more economics than the book offered. Although McMillan did offer connecting research, I was expecting a more detailed  economic analysis and focus. 

While the content and premise of this book is good, I struggled to finished it due to the casual and conversational tone. Personally, I prefer when a book is making an argument that the author stand strong in their assertions, but I almost felt like Wise was trying to convince themselves of their argument. I have some background knowledge on neurodiversity and variability, so my goal in reading this book was to hear another perspective of something I already agree with, but if I didn't have that background, I am not sure I would have found this book to be compelling. This is a good introduction to the concepts of neurodiversity and variability, but I was hoping for a bit more in depth analysis.

Wise does integrate citations that could be used for further reading and I appreciated that they incorporated a diversity of perspectives through first hand accounts and quotes. I did feel like the quotes and citations were sometimes disjointed from Wise's content. Of course, this type of writing requires the author to research their topic, but there were times that I felt Wise's research was awkwardly inserted into the text without Wise's synthesis, which then causes me to wonder what is the point of me reading their book rather than just going to their source material?