4 Stars. This is one of the most realistic commencement addresses I’ve ever read or heard. These things are usually full of high flown language about changing the world and chasing your dreams. That’s all very inspirational. But how do you actually get to that point? You work and you work some more. Sometimes you get lucky […]
4 Stars. I really enjoyed this book, especially as a woman with a degree in biology and a background in clinical research. Ignotofsky obviously made an effort to include women from many countries and across many races, which is lovely. Considering that the entry for Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space […]
3.5 Stars. I have to admit that I’m one of those who have never heard of Humboldt; or, if he was ever mentioned in my classes, I’ve completely forgotten him. And that’s a shame because the man was so right about so very many things. He was brilliant and brought together many scientific disciplines in his theories in a time when scientists […]
4 Stars. Kwame’s passion for cooking and feeding hungry people shines through these pages. When he decides to walk away from his life on the streets, he has to work impossibly hard to put himself through culinary school but he does it. His motto seems to be “Go big or go home” and that mostly works for him. If you don’t aim […]
4 Stars. I am not a sports fan. Oh, I have some idea how the Dolphins are doing in football because my husband is a loyal, if frustrated and heartbroken, fan, but I only know the biggest of the big names in sports. Unfortunately, those names are always male. Needless to say, I had never heard of Sugar Rodgers but she’s certainly a force […]
4 Stars. I’m ashamed to admit that my knowledge of Rosa Parks was limited to her refusal to move to the back of a segregated bus in the Jim Crow south. To quote Julian Bond in this book, I more or less bought the narrative that “Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, then the white folks saw the light and saved the day.” Yes, that’s an […]
4 Stars. In The Black Friend, Frederick Joseph shares his own experiences with racism, his response in the moment, how he wishes he’d actually responded, and demonstrates ways to be anti-racist. I can’t imagine these stories were easy to share. Some of them were so egregious that my jaw dropped and I was like, “What?!? Someone said […]
4.5 Stars. I got behind on the monthly prompts for the Diversity Reading Challenge in August so I was looking for a short book about mental health or addiction when I stumbled on this title. It seemed like the perfect choice to help me catch up. But what started as a book I was reading simply to check a box quickly became a […]
5 Stars. As I read this, I periodically thought of that adage stating that to be a writer, “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed” (I’m going to attribute this to Walter “Red” Smith, citing Quote Investigator). Ms. Ward’s pain and grief comes through in these pages almost viscerally. Growing up poor […]
4 Stars. I found this book absolutely fascinating. The remarkable thing about Ada’s survival is that she knew very little about surviving Arctic conditions. She was raised in the village of Nome. She’d seen some Inuit (the preferred term now) elders hunting and employing traditional skills when she was very young but she […]
4 Stars. The framework for this graphic novel seems a bit odd at first. An artificial intelligence guides the girls through important times and places, beginning with Sumer in 3000 BCE. That framework does serve to tie everything together though. The “story” basically consists of brief biographical sketches of women from all over […]