Reading List So Far...

Due to the long journey here plus having NO computer for several days, I had plenty of time to finish a few of the books that I had scavenged over the summer from the Swap Shop and mailed over here last month.

Life on the Color Line

This striking memoir of Gregory Howard Williams, born to a white mother and a black father who passed for white, relates his story of being raised as white for his first ten years. His mother left in 1954 and his father moved Gregory and his younger brother from Virginia back "home" to Muncie, Indiana where he sank further into alcoholism.

"To Greg's amazement, having lived his short life as white, his fair-skinned father's relatives were black. Williams' many anecdotes are a mixture of pain, struggle and triumph: learning "hustles" from Dad, receiving guidance from a friend's mother, facing racism from teachers and classmates, beginning a clandestine romance with a white girl he eventually married. And while his scarred, grandiloquent father was never reliable, he did instill in young Greg-though not in Greg's brother-sustaining dreams of professional success. Along the way the author decided, despite his appearance, he would proudly claim the black identity that white Muncie wouldn't let him forget. Facing a lifetime of choosing whether to be black or white and, whatever his decision, opprobrium from both races, Greg opted for black. Today he is dean of a respected law school, a man who in the 1950s of his youth might have been patronizingly called 'a credit to his race.' 'A credit to the human race' is more like it."

Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood

This would have to be my favorite book by Monica.

From Booklist. "The victim of a hit-and-run accident, Lizzy Mitchell is left by the driver in the middle of the median, hurt and adrift. Later Lizzie comes to see the accident as indicative of her life up to that point. Raised by her uncle Mike, a Maine priest, Lizzy grows up surrounded by his devotion to ministry. But at age nine, her comfortable world crumbles when her uncle is accused of molestation. Lizzy, now a high-school counselor, is still trying to make sense of what happened to her uncle. Wood's characters, similar to those in Mary Lawson's Crow Lake (2002), show refreshing depth and complexity as they each grapple with the irrefutable power of the past. This emotional story is filled with crisp, rich details that linger in the memory much like the Moxie soda that Lizzy recalls from her Maine summers. Wood's stirring domestic drama is full of surprises as it explores the weighty themes of religion, perceived innocence, and the corrosive quality of best intentions."

Princess: A Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson

This is the life story of a Saudi princess the author met while living in Saudi Arabia and offers a glimpse of the appalling conditions endured by even privileged women in that country.

"One must keep in mind the context of time and place when reading this emotional and exciting book to alleviate some of the horror of the injustices endured by the women described here. [My copy was published in 2001 but the book was written in 1992. I surely hope conditions have improved.] Equality of men and women has not worked out in any society, but the status of women in Islam is more problematic in that canon law is applied according to the social climate. Consequently, countries influenced by the West, such as Egypt, are more relaxed than countries like Saudi Arabia that are ruled by strict Hanbali law, which subjects women to unwelcome marriages, execution at whim, and the boredom of purdah."

Somebody's Heart is Burning - A Woman Wanderer in Africa by Tanya Shaffer

I really enjoyed this book and tried to imagine if I could have done this when I was 27...

"Shaffer's vivid travel memoir captures scenes of Kenya, Mali and, most notably, Ghana, rarely seen by American tourists...a white 27-year-old upper-middle-class performance artist with progressive politics, she decides to travel, choosing to participate in various volunteer efforts in order to spend more time and less money in Africa. Her tales are rich in visual and cultural explication; villages and hamlets too tiny for names come to hot, vibrant, scent-laden, insect-thrumming life as Shaffer depicts the dailiness of African culture and the struggle to subsist. The unrelenting heat, ubiquitous disease and economic chaos...Shaffer is a natural storyteller and she evokes the villages she visited and the people she met masterfully."