Book Review

Inventing Latinos

2021-01-11T14:37:29+00:00January 11th, 2021|

INVENTING LATINOS: A New Story of American Racism by Laura E. Gómez fascinated me until I got to the part about the history of multiracial people in America. Gómez outlines how Latinos came to be a demographic force in America. I believed when Gómez told me about how Latinos went through a struggle to become important Americans with relevant histories that we all should know. But then, did she give me the correct information about multiracial history? No. The author of this book is hung up on the racial term [...]

Book Review: Caste

2020-11-24T18:14:08+00:00November 24th, 2020|

Book Review: Caste: The Origins of our Discontent Isabel Wilkerson is a formidable and distinguished writer. I wish I could stop right there, but I cannot. I finally got to read Caste: The Origins of our Discontent and I’m still not sure if I can recommend it or not. It is part of my job to read about race and ethnicity, but I was not sure how caste came into it. It is an excellent read when Wilkerson sticks to the subject. When academic writers plug their pages with quotations from [...]

Book Review

2020-10-03T18:38:19+00:00October 3rd, 2020|

Book Review of Betty: A Novel By Tiffany McDaniel Betty is a book I almost put down several times and I am so glad I didn’t. This is the beautifully written story of Betty Carpenter, a biracial (White and Cherokee) girl growing up in the foothills of the Appalachians. Betty looks like her father and is called all the hostile names for a Black and Cherokee person. But she is resilient. I almost put it down because it seemed like nothing was happening and then BOOM! Another tragedy or story [...]

Book Review

2018-07-08T11:52:33+00:00July 8th, 2018|

Enemies in Love: A German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance By Alexis Clark Book Review by Susan Graham Enemies in Love, published by The New Press, is hardly a typical romance novel. It’s the story of Elinor Powell, an Army nurse and Frederick Albert, a German prisoner of war in the 1940s. The first part reads like an academic book and the second half you might think is fiction, but it is very real. The first surprise is that German POWs were held in camps in remote [...]

New People – Book Review

2017-09-02T15:07:15+00:00September 2nd, 2017|

Book Review New People by Danzy Senna New People is about a multiracial woman named Maria. These are some of the terms she uses for multiracial people: Miscellaneous People Mulatto (her favorite word, which means little mule) and Mulatta Multiracial Biracial The “N” Word Odd, twisted girls Racially nebulous Quadroon Negro Born again black people Butterscotch Mestizo Abandoner Mixed “Everything” and my least favorite, “Mutt.” She also says things like, “Being black and looking white was enough of a freak show” and “He was embracing his black identity.” Apparently, biracial [...]

Famous Friday

2017-03-10T06:45:30+00:00March 10th, 2017|

Ginger McKnight-Chavers   Ginger McKnight-Chavers is a multiracial woman who writes about multiracial topics and characters. Her debut novel, In the Heart of Texas, was  released in October of 2015 and is the winner of the 2016 USA Best Book Award for African American Fiction. In the Heart of Texas is reviewed as "a wry, humorous commentary on the complexities of race, class, relationships, politics, popular culture, and celebrity in our current society."  Ginger also currently blogs for the Huffington Post and The TexPatch. Ginger is a graduate of Georgetown’s School [...]

BOOK REVIEW: The Kitchen House

2016-07-26T09:47:58+00:00July 26th, 2016|

written by Kathleen Grissom Publisher: Touchstone 385 Pages                  Take everything you think you know about plantations in Virginia before the Civil War, slavery, color hierarchy, masters, mistresses, children, racial codes, and open your mind to a new and different story. Lavinia McCarten is seven-years-old when she is orphaned during passage from Ireland making her way to America. Lavinia McCarten is white and becomes an indentured servant at the kitchen house of the grand tobacco plantation. She is to live with the other slaves, black and mulatto, under the watchful [...]

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