reviews
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Mwen damou pou Vava – a story
I could hear this young kid narrating this story. “My friends, you know me, and you know I wouldn’t tell you stories. But one day I met a girl—or maybe I just saw a girl—and I’ve not been able to remember what life was like before she existed.”
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SPEAKEASY, by Elyse Douglass
Roxie Raines is a girl out of time in 1925s New York City. So how did someone from 2019 end up in a speakeasy, anyway?
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To Be Human Again
Sometimes the arts can entertain us. Disney has surely figured out that formula. But sometimes . . . the arts can open something up to us that we didn’t ever think we needed to see and learn.
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REVIEW: Anxious to Talk About It
You will not find this to be the “answer book.” It’s not designed for that. This is a book that invites us to join in the community, in the discussion, in the journey.
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REVIEW: Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege
The book’s subtitle hints at what’s to come: we are all granted some level of privilege in life that others do have; those who have the most privilege are called to use that privilege
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REVIEW: Punch Me Up to the Gods
We learn, slowly, how to gather the people around us who will care for us and who will give us some space in their own lives.
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REVIEW: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Friend
I’ve read many books this year, some of them similar to his in that they are life stories. This is the first one that I finished where I wanted to have more.
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REVIEW: Urban Apologetics
This is a solid book and a solid resource for any Christian, but it is focused on the needs of the Black Christian in today’s America.
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THE TSAR’S LOCKET, by Ken Czech
Nations must ally themselves against external enemies, but what of enemies within?
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THE CHRISTMAS EVE PROMISE—Interview with Elyse Douglas
Do those people change history all that much as they live their little lives? We come and go like passing clouds.
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THE CHRISTMAS EVE PROMISE, by Elyse Douglas
What if you could return to the past to correct a mistake in the present?
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REVIEW: So You Want to Talk about Race
So you want to write a review . . . I was initially reluctant to read this book by Ijeoma Uluo. I had heard it was “hard” to read. But I had purchased it, and had it sitting on my desk for a few months. “I’ll get to it.” One day. Just not today. So then I was challenged by a friend to read it. I did—and found out that my fears were unfounded. This is a deep, rich, emotionally transparent book about race and even . . . how to talk about race. I need to be absolutely clear here, as absolutely clear as Oluo is in her own…
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13 BILLION TO ONE, by Randy Rush
I was given an advance reader’s copy of the book 13 Billion to One, by Randy Rush, and asked to create an honest review after reading. My thoughts are below. This is a wild and fascinating ride through the experiences of a man plucked by fate from his ordinary life into the world of fantasy–the fantasy of suddenly having enough money to do just about whatever you want to do. Go see your favorite team! Fly to Europe! Travel to Africa! Buy the car that you’ve always wanted. Two cars—or even more! But along with fantasy comes the reality of dealing with the people who surround you hoping to use…
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Interview with Jamie Lisa Forbes
I agreed to read and review Eden, by Jamie Lisa Forbes. I found the book fascinating and deep (you can read my review here), and I got to ask the author some questions about the book and about the inspiration for her creation. It’s interesting to look back at the timeframe of the authorship as well as my reading of the book—prior to COVID-19 and the current social unrest in the United States, there seemed to be little reason to believe that leaving secrets buried would become harmful in the present. The strategy has worked so well for us in the past. But here we are in a time of…
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EDEN, by Jamie Lisa Forbes
WHAT IS EDEN AND WHERE CAN WE FIND IT, we sometimes ask. A place of creation for some. A place of rest for others. And yet Eden is the garden that we lost because of the choices we made long ago. We were cast out, and we cannot return though we ever yearn to be there in the cool of the evening when the first stars appear. Rowen is there at the beginning, of course, when he first meets Eden—a young girl who must testify of extraordinary and violent crimes she witnessed that rocked the small town of White Rock, North Carolina. She’s a wisp of a thing, the kind…
- essays, Fifth Avenue Theatre, justice, Life Recovery Skills, musicals, musings, racism, reviews, reviews, Theatre, writing
Pride and Prejudice, Staged
Last week we went to see a production of the new musical AUSTEN’S PRIDE, the story of Jane Austen‘s creation of the world of Pemberley and Darcy and Lizzie and Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Wickham and … well, the entire world that lives between the covers of the book Pride and Prejudice. Precis: Miss Jane Austen has had a successful run with her book Sense and Sensibility, but her publisher wants a new work. Simultaneously, her intended fiancé decides to break with her. She’s been rejected a few times, and is living in genteel near-poverty. All she has now to her assets is an idea with no form or view.…
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I Am MLK Jr
A film from the Paramount Network. I was 13 when Dr. King was murdered. I could not comprehend what I was watching on TV from my safe, comfortable living room. The screen was too small, maybe, and my town was too far, and my community too different. I watched cities burn in April 1968, but I did not understand. I watched more since then and I understand more now of what I was seeing. This film is that moment for me, recapitulated, but now I see with the eyes of an adult who has lived through the America of the sixties and into the teens of the 21st century. I’m…
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A Review of BRIGHT STAR the Musical
This is a bluegrass musical set in the comfortable hills around Asheville, NC and outlying districts. In the 1920s in Hayes Creek, NC, a young girl, Alice, falls in love with Jimmy; in the 1940s, just after the war, Alice is in Asheville editing a southern journal, looking for new writers, Jimmy is still back home, and a young man appears with a gift for story-telling. The show switches seamlessly between the time periods until all is laid bare and forgiven. It’s an engaging arc, and based on a true story that became the inspiration for a 1900s folk song and a 2013 collaboration between Martin and Brickell. The cast…
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#WakingUpWhite Chapter 2: Family Values
“One of the things my white mother could not teach me was to honor feelings of outrage.” This chapter is a short one—about family origins. What kind of family did you grow up in? My family is like all families, I suppose, in the sense that we half-invented it and half-followed existing models. That’s how you survive. In this chapter the author talks about the long history of her own family and how that controlled her own behaviors: it was instilled at an early age. Now, of course it was an all-white environment, but there was more. There was the subtle inculcation of values that established the author as white—and…
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Goodreads Review: The Color of Compromise, by Jemar Tisby
From The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is perhaps one of the most accessible, clear, and gentle book you might read about the history of, and acceptance of, white supremacy and black abasement of the American nation and in the American church. Tisby is an historian and does not shave meaning or impact by using soft words. When you read this, you understand what he is saying, directly: racism in the American church was, and is, a deliberate choice. Nothing that has happened so far had to happen. But the good news is that our American…
