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The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates #Book Review — 1 Comment

  1. You may want to take a look at Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015), an excellent book on race relations. When I wrote about it on my blog, I provided a link to an article in the Guardian, about how his letter to his son became a bestseller. https://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2015/09/two-ways-to-get-books-on-twosday.html

    Another very good book is White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo (2018), that I discussed with a group last fall.
    https://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2019/09/taking-another-look-at-racism.html

    I’ve put Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (1976) on reserve at my library. It won the Newbery Medal in 1977. Description: “Young Cassie Logan endures humiliation and witnesses the racism of the KKK as they embark on a cross-burning rampage, before she finally understands the importance her family attributes to having land of their own. This story highlights racism, segregation, and childhood in rural Mississippi in 1933, through the eyes of a nine-year-old African American girl.”

    Unfortunately, the library has already sent me All the Days Past, All the Days to Come (2020) in which “Mildred Taylor completes her sweeping saga about the Logan family of Mississippi, which is also the story of the civil rights movement in America of the 20th century. Cassie Logan, first met in Song of the Trees and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, is a young woman now, searching for her place in the world, a journey that takes her from Toledo to California, to law school in Boston, and, ultimately, in the 60s, home to Mississippi to participate in voter registration. She is witness to the now-historic events of the century: the Great Migration north, the rise of the civil rights movement, preceded and precipitated by the racist society of America, and the often violent confrontations that brought about change.” I guess I’ll have to keep renewing this one until I read Taylor’s earlier book.

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