First line of "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday Southern [California] trees bear a strange fruit... What happened to Malcolm Harsch on May 31, and Robert Fuller on June 10, 2020? There is a long, documented history of domestic terrorism in the United States. It started with the exploitation, subjugation, and annihilation of indigenous North Americans by invading missionaries and colonists who committed to a belief in their Manifest Destiny with violent dedication. The Trail of Tears, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Schools, reservations, bombing Black Wall Street in Oklahoma; the internment of those survivors, lynchings, Rosewood in Florida, the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, the Klu Klux Klan (and other Aryan Superiority Societies), unleashing police dogs and pressurized water hoses on American children of African descent during the Civil Rights Movement… These and other similar events are points along a continuum sour...

Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi Translated from the Arabic by Osman Nusairi literary fiction Saqi  July 2020 First published in 1985 during waves of Egyptian political upheaval with friction between nationalist and opposition factions and an economic depression, then reissued in 2005 in the swell of contentious elections and their aftermath, and now being published again in the wake of the worldwide #MeToo movement and the recent global expansion of Black Lives Matter, Two Women in One taps into the continuum of generations of the anatomy of systemic oppression in a narrative voice with present-day resonance. Following a dedication that warns readers about the under-reported martial facets of love, the foreword by musician and singer Deeyah Khan refers to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and that author's rational laments regarding the gendered indoctrination of women into femininity as a restrictive force that smothers individuality, condemning each of them to...

UPDATE:  We're going virtual!  Monday, September 21 - Saturday, September 26, 2020  A mix of live and prerecorded activities for a variety of interests, plus 100 free swag bags filled with T-shirts, books, and other bookish items for curbside pickup from Marietta House in Glenn Dale, Maryland on Saturday 9/26 to preselected and notified recipients. Distribution is on a first come, first served basis. Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mY7DW96y6IbEYRXCG2SMmUoYE3yC2F4ZwlZ_2d0lS64/viewform?edit_requested=true While BEA successfully took their annual celebratory publishing industry extravaganza online last month, and the National Book Fest plans to do the same this September, a modified version of the second annual The Write Women Book Fest is still on for Saturday, September 26, 2020 at lovely historic Marietta House in Glenn Dale, Maryland. [6/23/2020 update] Prince George's County Parks and Planning has decided to suspend on-site activities until ...

Today's post is a departure from my often light-hearted tone and brief word count. Monday starts the month of June, in which fathers are acknowledged for their value to their families, their communities, and society. My love and appreciation for my dad, my grandfathers, uncles, male cousins, and other black men who are important to me have been at the forefront of my mind. Whether still living like my dad, two of my uncles, and my cousins or dead like my grandfathers and my dad's brother, all of their lives beat the odds that were, and still are, stacked against their existence. My dad grew up in the Jim Crow South. As a very young child he developed a heart condition, which doctors told his parents would likely kill him by his tenth birthday. My dad was ten years old when Emmett Till was murdered on August 28, 1955, a fact that makes me wonder if other potential external threats to his life ascended to the top of my grandparents' list of concerns for his health tha...

Greetings to all from the odd and challenging new world of isolation and social distancing—or as innate recluses call it, everyday life. Seriously though… Gratitude, support, and prayers for all of the essential workers from medical professionals to cleaning staff, people in the food supply chain, store clerks, mass transit and postal workers, truckers, mail carriers, and everyone who is obligated to leave their homes and families each day while the rest of us stay safe at home. Your sacrifices and suffering in service to the greater good of humanity is appreciated. On an entirely frivolous note, following the Maryland stay-at-home order has provided me with the opportunity to indulge in gluttonous consumption of my favorite brain candy—books. First, the 20+ borrowed from the public library. (Truthfully, at the time that quantity seemed excessive in the context of what was supposed to be a two-week shutdown.) Second, e-books from OverDrive and NetGalley (because the anticipat...

Resistant by Rachael Sparks Spark Press 2018 Sci-fi surrealism Is this author clairvoyant? Or as a scientist has she extrapolated a possible future based on current facts? In Resistant, it's 2041 and fifteen percent of the human population is dead from being infected by an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Sound eerily relevant? Sure, COVID-19 is a virus, but the template for this imaginary manmade catastrophe bears striking similarities to the world's present-day reality. Die-off survivor and microbiology student Aurora “Rory" Stevigson lives with her climatologist father Byron Stevigson on an apple farm in Massachusetts. Their grief over the loss of Dr. Persephone Tyler-Stevigson shadows their playful father-daughter rapport as they struggle to heal themselves while also helping others in their isolated community. When a mysterious man who introduces himself as Navy appears, everything Rory believed about her life becomes questionable, which puts her in danger. Her ...

Reviewer’s note: The two books by Reyna Grande were read in anticipation of attending her panel discussion with American Dirt author Jeanine Cummins at the #GaithersburgREADS event on March 31, which is cancelled for now with the intention of rescheduling. The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande memoir Washington Square Press, 2012 A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande memoir Atria Books, 2018 The Distance Between Us begins with a map showing the border of the lower forty-eight United States and the northern Mexican states. It appears deceptively benign. For this author the more than two thousand miles separating Iguala, Guerrero from Los Angeles, California represent generational divides overflowing with dreams deferred and associated through spiraling cycles of economic oppression, despair, and cruelty. Alienation of affection from self and others builds momentum in the family’s psyche and manifests in their daily lives in ways that are subtle and explosive. Unpredictable...