I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness - Austin Channing Brown

I requested this one as an ebook from my library a few months ago, and when I finally got my copy I nearly ended up forgetting to read it! I’m so glad I didn’t, it’s not a long read but it packs an important, and hard, punch. I understand why I have seen many activists recommend this book as required reading for white people, especially white feminists. It most definitely is required reading.

Austin Channing Brown cuts to the chase from the first page - if you are like me and just added the book to your TBR without reading more than the title, then your first prejudicial thought will be pulled to the surface: Austin Channing Brown is a woman, not a man. (I had assumed she was a black man from the name and the subject matter and from those who recommended the book, but you know, I assumed). The author’s parents named her Austin for a very specific reason, so that people would assume and that she would therefore get an equal chance. If this doesn’t start a tunnel of questions and possibly even revelations in your mind, then the rest of the book will.

This will be a hard read for many, because hard truths are never easy to hear. White supremacy is a putrid soul-sucking poisonous legacy that this country refuses to get rid of, and instead of doing the work we should be doing, we white people keep pushing it off to others. Austin Channing Brown evokes her story of being a black woman in spaces that are historically, and still today, considered to be white spaces, and while her experience is a personal memoir, it’s an experience that every single black person in the US relates to. If we don’t listen and act when we read and hear these stories we are not doing the work we should be doing. I was going to add the word “react” but that is usually what happens, but reactions tend to be full of white guilt, innocence, centering, and admonishment. Those are better kept to our personal journals, because these reactions do more harm than good. Austin Channing Brown explains that a lot more eloquently than I am doing right now.

Just read it. And then, as the author states so clearly, ask yourself what you are going to do about it. If there is no action following words, then the words don’t count.

There is so much work to do. I’m buying a copy of this book as I need to reread and highlight entire passages. And my kids will need to read this when they are old enough.

“So I don’t accept confessions like these anymore. Nowadays, when someone confesses about their racist uncle or that time they said the n–word, I determine to offer a challenge toward transformation. For most confessions, this is as simple as asking, “So what are you going to do differently?” The question lifts the weight off my shoulders and forces the person to move forward, resisting the easy comfort of having spoken the confession. The person could, of course, dissolve into excuses, but at that point the weight of that decision belongs to them, not to me.” - Austin Channing Brown

A Dream Called Home - Reyna Grande

I’m working on my #ReadAfrica2018 reading project, but had to take a break for Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home - and I’m so glad I did! Although now I feel like I have opened a new door to a new reading challenge as she mentions so many writers and poets that I know I need to read! I have taken their names down and will keep it on the back burner for next year. Also, quite fittingly, it’s Hispanic Heritage Month here in the US, so this was a brilliantly timed memoir, both in terms of Reyna being a writer born in Mexico, and also an immigrant in the US.

A Dream Called Home is Reyna’s story of fighting for her dreams, despite her background, despite the setbacks and roadblocks, and despite the clichés and boxes people tend to stuff one another in here in the US (although that definitely doesn’t just happen here). She wrote about her story as a young Mexican girl crossing the border into the US in her memoir The Distance Between Us, and A Dream Called Home is the story of becoming an adult in a world where she never really feels at home. Each book can be read alone though.

Reyna’s parents left her and her siblings with their grandmothers in Iguala, Mexico, when they were children, and crossed the border to the US. Iguala, at the time, and most likely still today, was extremely poor, and opportunities were few and far between. Reyna’s father came back to collect them when Reyna was about 9 and they made the difficult crossing together three times (the first two times they were sent back). That itself amazes me - the crossing is so hard for an adult, I can’t even imagine how tough it would have been on a young child. Her strength and perseverance have always been there…

Anyway, in A Dream Called Home Reyna starts with her years at university, and moves on to telling the stories of how she became a teacher, a single mother, and how she continued to push herself to write and to be published. I don’t think I can express how inspiring this book was to me, and how there were some areas that I related to (but more that my partner relates to, our own stories and immigration stories meet and differ in many places). I will be buying a copy of this book for my children, so that when they are older they will understand some of the choices their parents had to make, and also know that the world is theirs, and their voices have as much weight as other voices.

Reyna’s recollections are full of many profound statements that hit me hard: that feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore, a double identity that doesn’t fit in here or there. I still carry that with me wherever I go. Reyna has inspired me to keep pushing with my own stories and my own writing, and inspired me to keep reading and talking about the stories that no one wants to talk about.

“As with the moon, there is the face that we immigrants show to the world, but our second face is the one we keep hidden in darkness so that no one can see us weeping.”

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!

Disturbed In Their Nests - Alephonsion Deng and Judy A. Bernstein

I read They Poured Fire On Us From The Sky back in 2012 (review is linked for anyone interested), and still remember how the stories of the brothers and their cousin affected me. The stories of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan still haunt me today, even more so now that I have my own children.

They Poured Fire on Us From The Sky was written by Alephonsion Deng, Benson Deng, and Benjamin Ajak, with their mentor Judy Bernstein’s help. In it each of the men recounts leaving their villages when they were still very young, fleeing from those attacking them, and the harrowing treks through Sudan to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, and finally to a refugee camp in Kenya where they remained for years before being granted refugee status in the US. Disturbed In Their Nests is written by Judy and Alepho and is a memoir of the first year of their life in the US. I love the composition of the memoir, as chapters alternate between the two voices, as if they were right back there in 2001. It allows us to see both Judy and Alepho’s perceptions of everything, which leads to some comical areas, but also to some very sad parts too, especially when a certain term we all use in the US is completely misunderstood by Alepho, which ends up causing him harm.

Benson and Benjamin’s voices are also often heard through Judy and Alepho’s narrative, as well as their other roommates James and Daniel’s experiences. Alepho also recounts some of his experiences as a young boy fleeing his home, as well as life in the refugee camp during his chapters. After finishing this book I honestly feel like I am on first name basis with all of them: their voices are so real, so heartwarming, but also so devastatingly raw. You cannot read this book without taking a serious look at your own life in order to find areas where you can really do better. These children, and now adults, survived despite the odds being stacked so hard against them, and I don’t think we can even begin to imagine what it took to continue living despite the conditions around them.

In my opinion this book, as well as many others, should be on high school curriculums. We need to understand the importance of refugee programs, and why we should be accepting people from all countries in conflict, not just picking and choosing based on country and religion. The number of resettled refugees in the US dropped by tens of thousands in 2017, and this country has more than enough space and resources to welcome many, many more people than that. No child should ever have to witness what Alepho, Benson, and Benjamin did, but there are so many children who are facing similar harrowing ordeals all over the world. 

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!

Other excellent books to read on the subjects of the “Lost Boys” and Sudan in general can be found right here. Saviors and Survivors by Mahmood Mamdani provides an in-depth analysis of Darfur which I found to be a very important read personally. You can find more general information on the extent of the refugee crisis in Sudan here, or you can watch a documentary on two of the Lost Boys here.

Butterfly - Yusra Mardini

I spontaneously burst into tears multiple times through Butterfly. It’s impossible not to have heard of Yusra Mardini before, or not to have heard about the Refugee Olympic Team, but I didn’t know that she had released a memoir this year. I’m so glad I happened upon it at the library!

Yusra was born in Syria to a relatively affluent family, and dreamed of swimming at the Olympics from a very early age. Both her sister Sara and herself trained extensively and both swam in international competitions for Syria as teens. When the war broke out Yusra continued to train, even when bombs were dropping around the pool (even IN the pool at one point).

Yusra’s life in Syria was one of a typical teen who enjoyed going out with her friends, using social media, fashion, and of course her main passion of swimming. But in 2015 she realized that she would never see her dreams come true if she stayed in Syria, and so she set out with Sara for Germany.

The trip is harrowing, and the part that has been told time and time again by journalists, where Sara, Yusra, and a few others, swim with their broken boat across the stretch of water between Turkey and Lesbos, is absolutely nerve wracking and heartbreaking. As is the part where they are stuck in Hungary and treated terribly, thrown into jail, ripped off by smugglers, treated like terrorists. I found great insight into how each of the different countries they go through treats refugees, and I think many people could benefit from reading this memoir. Out of all of the countries Yusra and Sara travel through Germany seems to have the right mindset on how to treat people who have fled their country with nothing, well, a lot better mindset than the US has to date anyway.

Yusra defies so many odds and continues to swim, and is selected by the International Olympic Committee to join the newly created ROT, and swims in Rio for the 2016 Olympics. She also becomes a spokesperson for refugees, and for humanity in general.

We need to read these stories, especially right now, because the media and governments continue to reduce refugees to something they are not. Yusra is amazing, and there are so many others like her. We need to remind our fellow human beings that refugees are people who didn’t necessarily leave their country because they wanted to, but because they had no choice.

A Better Place - Pati Navalta Poblete

Every day on average 96 people are killed by guns in the US. Today someone was killed with a gun here in Sacramento, but it most likely never made the national news. I only know because I randomly read one of my Nextdoor emails just now. Gun violence has become so normal in the US that we rarely hear about the murders, suicides, and accidental deaths that happen every single day. It’s become so commonplace that our children have to go through active shooter lockdown drills from preschool onwards. But it’s still easier for a minor to purchase an assault rifle than it is for them to buy a beer in many states! Gun violence has become our norm, but people incomprehensibly still lobby against changing laws that would bring the numbers of deaths and violence down.

Not a stranger to the ravages of gun violence, Pati Navalta Poblete suffers it firsthand when her son Robby is murdered in their hometown of Vallejo in 2014. A Better Place is Pati’s personal memoir of dealing with such a sudden and traumatic loss, losing a child who had everything to look forward to in life in such a terrible moment of violence. Pati writes so beautifully and eloquently (I’m not surprised that she has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize for her journalism), but also with brutal honesty. She doesn’t hold back on how her son’s death transformed her, and how she manages to claw her way back to life herself, step by step. Both heartbreaking and full of hope, A Better Place is the story of terrible sadness, but also redemption, forgiveness, and peace.

I’ve lost enough loved ones in sudden and tragic ways, and related to a lot of Pati’s journey in A Better Place. I must admit that I cried through a lot of this book, and had to put it aside a few times and take a breather, not because it was too much, but because I needed to think about Pati’s words and find my own meaning for them in my own experiences. By reading Pati’s personal journey through grief I also gained some clarity in mine. I specifically found her plan to undertake certain activities that her son would have done, even when they took her out of her personal comfort zone, to be so brave and so comforting at the same time – and I think this is something that I think I might do myself at some point.

I loved how Pati weaves little stories about Robby into the narrative, which helps us as readers see the person he was. I also love how she finally took her grief and pain and used it towards something that will make a change in the community. The Robby Poblete Foundation is a brilliant concept and I can’t wait to hear about the artwork that will be created from all of the guns that are collected during buybacks.

Thank you Pati Navalta Poblete and Nothing But The Truth Publishing for this heartbreaking, beautifully written, and necessary piece of work. A Better Place comes out on May 15th, and in my opinion is a must read.

“Life is not fair or unfair. It is not kind or unkind. It just is.”