Tag: Racism

A Return to Arms aka An Inside View of Intersections and How All Black Lives Matter

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I rated this book:  * * * * *

A Return to Arms is the story of Toya a black lesbian activist trying to navigate her way through both life and the passages of the Black Lives Matter movement. Her life is a daily struggle of a young person trying to convince the rest of America that Black Lives Matter while attempting to convince the Organization, Rise Up of which she is an active member, that ALL Black Lives Matter. That women, queer people, children, men, single, straight, asexual, all of the intersections of Black Lives must Matter.

As Toya navigates her way through the rising tension and societal that arises after the killing of an unarmed teen by a police officer and the subsequent unrest she deals with the uncertainty of her relationship with another activist who believes that the cause must come before anything else, even her love life.

I hate spoilers so I hope you can get the gyst of the story from what I’ve written above but in two sentences: A Return To Arms is a love story, Love of self, love of community. And a story about the measures so many under represented activists go through to demand equality both in their communities and in the world.

I’m a Sheree L Greer stan. I LOVE everything she writes. I’m sharing that with full disclosure mostly because during a conversation with Sheree about why I don’t really like to review books by people I love, I worry that that love will interfere with me giving an honest unbiased review and she advised me to do the review as authentically as I could, “You call yourself Authentically Adrien be authentic.” Or something like that. Anyways,  This book is phenomenal. It is her best work. It is the work that I sit back and wait patiently to be dissected by  major blogs. It is the book that should land her on the New York Times Bestsellers List. (If it doesn’t you hating)

From the opening paragraph through the last sentence THE LAST SENTENCE I was hooked. I followed Toya’s story like my life depended on it possibly because I am Toya, Black, Queer, Woman, Activist. But also because Toya is so well written. I read somewhere once that an author’s job is to make you feel something and OH did we Feel something. We felt ALL the things. Including the music. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the words to the soundtrack of this book but I could feel the rhythm in the center of my back. I could sense the tempo under my palms as I inhaled this novel from tense movement to sexual moment to heartbreaking earth shattering moment.

I lived through these characters. I understood every single one of them and I even empathized for the characters that I hated. Sheree’s writing makes sure that you understand and relate to both antagonists and protagonists alike. It took me to the different settings and left me with vivid guttural images of the protest scenes. If you have never been to a rally you can officially make that claim after you read this book and I hope that it will help you to understand the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement if you don’t already.

Be prepared to have some interesting dialogue after you read this book and if you know Sheree personally and you text her in the middle of the night to say things like “Seriously? I hate that dude.” or “OH MY GOD.” Let her know that you didn’t get the idea to do so from me.

 

Purchase A Return to Arms Here.

Read more by/about Sheree L Greer Here.

I received this book to review in exchange for an advanced copy of the book. (Ya’ll know I like books!)

Don’t Let Me Go- Yay For Diverse Books

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Mrs. Hyde crafted a remarkably realistic novel. 

The characters were well developed and relatable. I cared about every single character and all of their nuisances and I could barely stand to be away from their apartment building until the story was over. 

The diversity of the cast was so realistic. I get really tired of reading books where the characters don’t reflect the community that they live in. This is not the case with this book. I can’t recall another book with such a diverse cast of characters who were so thoroughly researched and represented. 

The plot line kept me interested and invested from beginning to end. 
 She handled such sensitive subjects as suicide, drug abuse, racism, and advanced age with such grace. 

I’d recommend this book to anyone who feels alone. There is always a community waiting to accept you. 

To The People Who Came For Sandra Bullock In Regards to Her Fear For Her Son: No.

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When you write a whole blog post to a white mother of a black child and try to minimize her fear for her child because she’s white you’re starting to hop over the fence into the territory of those you so desperately proclaim to be better than.

Sandra Bullock has every right to fear for her child as much as any black mother does. As much as any mother does. That’s what mothers do best, Fear. For which they then try to protect.

In fact isn’t it fair to say that the two fears aren’t really comparable? Her fear is not the same as ours, it’s a different type of fear because she only knows what the media says. What she’s seen in movies, watched on TV, heard on the radio. All of which serve as strong forces of silencing the voices of black people and their plight. So she can’t possibly know what all she has to fear. Or at least that’s the assumption that I make when I try to put myself in her shoes.

You seek to minimize the importance of her fear by saying oh she wasn’t raised with this fear, hasn’t watched this trauma and abuse first hand in her community, to her brothers, cousins, uncles, etc. As if that doesn’t add a different element that is in fact still; Fear.

Do you ever stop to think what it must be like to know that the world is setup against your child yet have no experience in it? No preparation?

Do we (this collective voice of people sitting behind screens spewing out 650 words anytime anyone else has something to say) not have any empathy?

Some of these posts only serve as more fodder to further skew the focus.

Aren’t we yelling and screaming saying that Black Lives Matter, in hopes that other people will understand that they do? Isn’t this child black?

253611FF00000578-0-image-a-61_1422710821731Does the fact that his mother is white cover him in the blood of White Jesus so that now he does not need to be covered in the blood of hashtags?

Roxane Gay says in Bad Feminist “We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through our difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have the truth stand without a hundred voices clamoring, shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot co-exist.”

Today I urge you to think before you fix your pen to say that someone can’t express their fear because their fear doesn’t look like yours.

How Many Times Can One Soul Cry? My Reaction to the Sam Dubose Video.

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I said I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t watch one more video of a black person being murdered by the police, but today while I was reading an article the video was embedded in the article and of course I clicked on it. I watched it to the end and then I cried from my soul.

Sam Dubose's Mother being consoled.

Sam Dubose’s Mother being consoled.

Soul cries are reserved for the very best and the absolute worst of situations. Lately I’ve had more of the worst kind than I’ve ever had in life. I didn’t live during slavery, or segregation. Didn’t have to worry about protecting myself during the civil war. The worst racial experience I ever had to witness up until these last couple of years, was when Rodney King was brutally beaten in Los Angeles in 1992. I was born in 1984 so when that happened I was eight years old. How badly did that really effect me? Honestly not much I was a kid, I didn’t really comprehend what happened. Or maybe it was when Amadou Diallo was murdered in cold blood in 1999. Again if you subtract 1984 from 1999 you will find out that I was fifteen years old. I remember feeling that his death was horrible but I didn’t soul cry I seriously doubt that I cried at all.

As with most millennials if you’d asked me a few years ago I would have told you that while we were nowhere near a post racial society we were doing much better than we’d ever done before, hell our President is black. His election had to count for something. Right? Wrong. Everyday when I turn on my television or log onto the Internet I have a hard time figuring out if we are in 1958 or 2015. It’s 2015 and white men hiding behind badges are still using fear as a justification for shooting black people in broad daylight. Wouldn’t it seem that if you were too fearful of a population that you were not properly suited to protect and or to serve that population?

Being forced to witness or hear about these deaths on a daily basis  is absolutely horrible. I’ve suffered every stage of grief in what seems like a consistent pattern for the last couple of months. I can’t catch a break. Black people can’t catch a break. It doesn’t matter if we speak properly, face the officer, address him with respect, or pull our pants up and skirts down. It doesn’t matter if we know our rights, demand that the officer tell us why we’re being pulled over, nor if we question their judgement or knowledge of the laws. Whether  you are a respectability politic preacher or a militant minded, fuck the police they’re going to respect me, advocate there are enough videos online of black people doing both and ending up dead faster than you can blink. And most of the time the murderous officers are walking away acquitted. They’re murders justified in one way or another. Even if they do lose their jobs they’re getting book deals and being paid millions of dollars.

So what then? What must happen in order to stop this massive onslaught of police brutality? Every idea I have on this topic doesn’t seem good enough or quick enough. Legislation takes years and has to be decided upon by a system that has shown time after time that black people are not its favored people. Trying to humanize ourselves to people who don’t understand why we pay so much attention to the murders of “thugs” and “angry black women” isn’t the answer. I’ve stated more times than I can count recently that I’m not here for educating people who don’t want to be educated about how #BlackLivesMatter when #AllLivesMatter. In my humble opinion those people will never get it. I don’t know what to do but I’m tired of protesting, and blacking out my profile, and stating their names. I’m tired of crying, of being on edge, of praying that this doesn’t happen to me. Of hoping that I don’t get pulled over so strongly that I’ve slowed down significantly and placed all of my proper legal car papers in a place where reaching for them won’t seem hostile. I’m a black woman and I need to make it home to my child so I’ll continue to do these things and more but I’m really starting to wonder if America will ever get to the point where black people and other people of color won’t need to do these things.