nomadreader

The backstory:   Longtime readers know Pearl Cleage is my absolute favorite author. See my raves about her novels: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day , I Wish I Had a Red Dress ,  Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do ,  Babylon Sisters ,  Baby Brother's Blues ,   Seen It All and Done the Rest ,  and  Til You Hear From Me . Any new writing from Pearl is a cause for celebration. The basics: Things I Should Have Told My Daughter  is a curated collection of diary entries from the 1970's and 1980's Cleage includes an introduction and a brief final commentary, but this memoir is essentially twenty years of diary entries. My thoughts: It's incredibly intimate to read diary entries, particularly from someone I have admired for nearly twenty years. At times, reading these entries broke my heart. While Cleage is now incredibly successful, these entries go back before she was famous, and reading her self-doubt was haunting. I couldn't help but wonder...

The backstory: Just Wanna Testify  is the sixth novel in Pearl Cleage's West End series (my reviews of  Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do ,  Babylon Sisters ,  Baby Brother's Blues ,   Seen It All and Done the Rest , and Til You Hear From Me .) The basics: As always, Cleage combines a mix of familiar West End faces with new characters. In this case, the Too Fine Five, a group of tall, skinny supermodels seek Blue Hamilton's blessing to do business in the West End neighborhood this week. Note: this review contains spoilers of the plot and the ending. Proceed at your own risk. My thoughts: When I sat down to read the last West End novel, I was filled with happiness and sadness. I've re-read and read all of Pearl Cleage's novels in 2012. I sought the comfort of the familiar: characters, social justice, and people working to change the world. I got that, but I also got something I absolutely didn't expect: vampires. I appreciated Regina's pondering...

The backstory: Til You Hear From Me  is the fifth novel in Pearl Cleage's West End series (my reviews of  Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do ,  Babylon Sisters ,  Baby Brother's Blues , and Seen It All and Done the Rest .) The basics: Fresh off working on Obama's 2008 campaign, Ida B. Wells Dunbar is losing hope she'll be offered a job in the administration. Meanwhile, her father, Rev. Dunbar, a famous African-American preacher and civil rights icon is still irked with Obama about the Rev. Wright fallout, is making headlines with his some unfortunate statements. At the pleading of familiar West End face Miss Iona, Ida B. comes to Atlanta to check on her father. My thoughts: I adore Pearl Cleage and her work, but I'll be honest: Til You Hear From Me  started a little rough. The story felt rushed, the writing felt either too flat or too flowery, and one character, Wes, felt flat: "Wes liked women. He didn’t consider them his equals, although like most...

The backstory: Seen It All and Done the Rest  is the fourth novel in Pearl Cleage's West End series (my reviews of Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do , Babylon Sisters , and Baby Brother's Blues .) The basics: Like all the books in this series, Atlanta's West End neighborhood is the main character. The people who live, work, and love in this neighborhood appear in major and minor roles throughout these novels. In Seen It All and Done the Rest , actress Josephine Evans returns to Atlanta after thirty years in Amsterdam to visit her granddaughter, Zora, a pivotal character in Baby Brother's Blues , and check on the duplex she inherited. ( note: Zora's story contains major spoilers from Baby Brother's Blues .) My thoughts:   It's no secret Pearl Cleage is among my favorite authors, and this novel has many of her trademarks: themes of social justice, community empowerment, and the nature of home. What's new about Seen It All and Done the Rest , how...

The backstory: Baby Brother's Blues  is the third title in Pearl Cleage's West End series (my reviews of Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do  and Babylon Sisters .) The series takes place in the West End neighborhood in Atlanta and features recurring characters, but it isn't a series you necessarily need to read in order. The basics: Blue and Regina Hamilton shift to main characters again in Baby Brother's Blues . Regina is pregnant and growing concerned with the number of women seeking haven in West End. Regina's friend Aretha is considering her husband Kwame's pleas to leave West End for Midtown to strengthen their marriage. Meanwhile, Baby Brother, a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq who has a brief bereavement leave, arrives in Atlanta angry at the world and with no intentions of going back to Iraq. My thoughts: While Regina and Blue return to the spotlight in Baby Brother's Blues , Cleage works wonders with a large number of narrators. These seeming...

The backstory: Babylon Sisters  is the second novel in Pearl Cleage's West End series. Although this book isn't a sequel to Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do  ( my review ), the main characters from Some Things  do pop up a few times here, which will delight readers who enjoyed the first novel. I first read Babylon Sisters  soon after it came out, and I'm re-reading and reading all of her novels this year. As I re-read it, I was amazed how many of the details I recalled. The basics: Babylon Sisters  focuses on Catherine, who describes her work perfectly in this passage: "What I do is coordinate and integrate services for programs assisting female refugees and immigrants. Atlanta is a magnet for people trying to make a new start in a new country, and even though the town’s natives still think in terms of black and white, in reality we’re looking more and more like the Rainbow Coalition." She's also a single mother to a smart, confident seventeen-year-...

The backstory: Pearl Cleage is one of my favorite authors , and this year, I'm re-reading (and then reading) all of her novels. Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do  is her third novel and the first in the West End series. My reviews of her first two novels: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day  and I Wish I Had a Red Dress . The basics: Regina Burns has turned her life back around. She's out of rehab, but her poor decisions have left her home, the home her mother and grandmother grew up in, in danger of being taken by the bank. She sets off for Atlanta to work for her former boss, inspirational speaker Beth Davis, to organize the paper's of her late son, Son Davis, to whom Regina was engaged. My thoughts: I remember reading Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do  shortly after it came out nearly ten years ago. As I re-read it, I was surprised how much of the story I remembered, even the little details. It's a unique novel. Still present are Pearl Cleage'...

The backstory: Pearl Cleage is one of my favorite authors, and this year I'm reading and re-reading all of her novels is the order they were published. I Wish I Had a Red Dress  is her second novel, and it features the same setting and some of the same characters from her first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day  ( my review ). I read this novel when it was first published in 2001, but I remembered little about it. The basics: I Wish I Had a Red Dress  is the story of Joyce, the older sister of Ava, who was the narrator of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day . Joyce is a former social worker who now runs the Circus, a gathering place for young, black women in Idlewild, Michigan. These women are almost all teen moms. My thoughts: If you begin to read I Wish I Had a Red Dress  and have not read What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day , the first ten pages might do you in. Joyce rolls through her tragic back story with such speed, you might wond...

Happy Monday morning! Things have been mighty quiet around here lately, and I confess: I have lost my reading (and blogging) mojo. I hope to be back to normal soon, but in the meantime here's why I haven't been reading much lately: Allergies. I'm not sure what it is I'm allergic to, but it is much more prevalent in Iowa than it was in New York. Even after taking Friday off work last week, I slept twelve hours a day all weekend. It's been cutting into my reading time pretty severely. I used to get up to read for an hour in the morning. Now I just aim to make it out of bed in time to get to work. I used to read for 2-3 hours after work. Now those hours are going to sleep. The gym . I'm not blaming the gym, but I am making it a priority. I'm going every single day, no matter what. I've made it sixteen days in a row, and for now I'm focusing on getting in the routine of every day. I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying it, but it does cut into m...

The backstory: I first read Pearl Cleage's debut novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day , in 1997. I remember the day I picked it up at the library, filled with excitement that my favorite playwright had written a novel. I had ridiculously high expectations, and Pearl exceeded them all. She's my favorite author, yet I haven't read any of her work in the past three years. This year, I'm going back to the beginning to re-read (and then read) her novels in the order they were published. The basics: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day  is the story of Ava, an HIV-positive black woman who sold her hair salon in Atlanta to get a somewhat fresh start in San Francisco, away from the string of men she's slept with. She decides to spend the summer with her sister Joyce in Idlewild, Michigan. My thoughts: Although I read What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day  almost fifteen years ago, I still remember the last line of the novel. It's my favorite last l...

Last week, I reviewed Emma Donoghue's mind-blowing novel Room  and named it my new favorite book ever. Since then, I've been pondering and trying to articulate what makes a book a favorite. I've been remembering my personal favorite books over the years, and what stands out most to me is how tethered to a particular time and place most of them are. When I think of the book, I think of when and where I read it. I've been blogging for three and a half years, and only two books have become my favorites in that time. You all know how much I love both American Wife  and Room . Today I'm sharing my pre-blogging favorite books with you too. (Book covers go to Amazon and links go to websites of interest, including reviews on this blog.) In  chronological order: High school: The Awakening by Kate Chopin As a teenage reader, I stuck to contemporary, realistic fiction. In those days, reading provided me with immense comfort knowing someone, even fictional someones, under...

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight an upcoming you can't wait to read. My pick this week is the latest novel by my absolute favorite author, Pearl Cleage. I couldn't locate a description for Till You Hear From Me, and I'm not sure I want to. I first fell in love with Pearl Cleage when I saw Blues for an Alabama Sky  at the Alliance Theater in the mid-1990's. I was absolutely blown away. When her first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, came out, she became not only my favorite playwright but my favorite novelist. When Oprah chose it for her book club, I was thrilled. I will read anything--plays, prose, nonfiction--Ms. Cleage writes. When she would come dine at the restaurant I worked at in Atlanta, I could never find the words to tell her how much her work means to me. Random House will release  Till You Hear From Me  on April 20, 2010. You can pre-order it from Amazon now.