#ReadSoulLit 2017
Hoping you’re all gearing up to celebrate Black History Month 2017 through literature. This year I’m hosting a read along on Goodreads of Bedrock Faith by Eric Charles May published by Akashic Books. You can sign up here to become part of the group and take part in the discussion. All discussions will be happening over there and will be followed by a live discussion on my YouTube channel Brown Girl Reading, at the end of the month. On Instagram I’ll be co-hosting a photo challenge with Danielle from dani! dany! danie!. I’ll be doing some updates of what I post over there here in case any of you aren’t on either Goodreads or Instagram. I look forward to exchanging with you and I’m sure this is going to be great. Oh and if you’re interested in seeing how #ReadSoulLit started click here to watch the playlist of #ReadSoulLit videos that were made the first year by some of our black Booktubers. Happy reading!
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 28 – Favorite Cover
Day 28 – Favorite Cover I had to put up this beautiful cover of the Middle Grade novel about the Gaither sisters from the series of that name. I first read One Crazy Summer four years ago and loved. It’s the first novel in this trilogy and is followed by P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama. This is a great little series for children learning about
African-American issues, history, and most of all with relatable characters. I recommend this for children ages 8-12 years old. How could anyone resist that cover?! The person behind the cover is an artist named Frank Morrison. Click his name to find out more about him. Awesome stuff!
“Newbery Honor winner and New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of the Gaither sisters, who are about to learn what it’s like to be fish out of water as they travel from the streets of Brooklyn to the rural South for the summer of a lifetime.
Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit their grandmother, Big Ma, and her mother, Ma Charles. Across the way lives Ma Charles’s half sister, Miss Trotter. The two half sisters haven’t spoken in years. As Delphine hears about her family history, she uncovers the surprising truth that’s been keeping the sisters apart. But when tragedy strikes, Delphine discovers that the bonds of family run deeper than she ever knew possible.
Powerful and humorous, this companion to the award-winning One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven will be enjoyed by fans of the first two books as well as by readers meeting these memorable sisters for the first time.” (Gone Crazy in Alabama, inside cover)
My copy: Gone Crazy in Alabama, hardcover 289 pages
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 27 – Book Spine Poetry
Day 27 – Book Spine Poetry 
Blacks – Gwendolyn Brooks
Some Sing, Some Cry – Ntosake Shange & Ifa Bayeza
Life in Motion – Misty Copeland
Crossing the Mangrove – Maryse Condé
The Chosen Place, The Timeless People – Paule Marshall
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 26 Recommended to you
Day 26 – Recommended to you I had to pick The Street by Ann Petry. It was recommended to me by Girl Danielle from OneSmallPaw on You Tube, who’s co-hosting this photo 
challenge with me.
“THE STREET tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry’s first novel, a beloved bestseller with more than a million copies in print. Its haunting tale still resonates today.” (The Street, Goodreads description)
My copy: The Street, paperback 448 pages
Check out Danielle’s review of The Street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFYuw3EZftw
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 25 – Most Read Author
Day 25 – Most Read Author Toni Morrison, the Queen, is my most read author. I’ve read everything except Paradise, Love, and God Help the Child. I’ll need to get on to reading these three really soon since I’v heard through the grapevine that she’s working on a new book titled Justice. Sounds intriguing….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyA8ASbYrpQ
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 24 – Favorite "Chick Lit"
Day 24 – Favorite “Chick Lit” I read this book about four years ago and it made me feel so many different things. 32 Candles is more than a typical “chick lit”. Between the engaging story and the touching protagonist, Davie Jones, it’s a winner. It’s nice to have a few light reads on the shelves too. I’m really excited about picking up Ernest T. Carter’s second novel The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men. What are some of your favorite chick lit novels by black authors?
“32 Candles is the slightly twisted, utterly romantic, and deftly wry story of Davie Jones, who, if she doesn’t stand in her own way, just might get the man of her dreams.
Davie—an ugly duckling growing up in small-town Mississippi—is positive her life couldn’t be any worse. She has the meanest mother in the South, possibly the world, and on top of that, she’s pretty sure she’s ugly. Just when she’s resigned herself to her fate, she sees a movie that will change her life—Sixteen Candles. But in her case, life doesn’t imitate art. Tormented endlessly in school with the nickname “Monkey Night,” and hopelessly in unrequited love with a handsome football player, James Farrell, Davie finds that it is bittersweet to dream of Molly Ringwald endings. When a cruel school prank goes too far, Davie leaves the life she knows and reinvents herself in the glittery world of Hollywood—as a beautiful and successful lounge singer in a swanky nightclub.
Davie is finally a million miles from where she started—until she bumps into her former obsession, James Farrell. To Davie’s astonishment, James doesn’t recognize her, and she can’t bring herself to end the fantasy. She lets him fall as deeply in love with her as she once was with him. But is life ever that simple? Just as they’re about to ride off into the sunset, the past comes back with a vengeance, threatening to crush Davie’s dreams—and break her heart again.
With wholly original characters and a cinematic storyline, 32 Candles introduces Ernessa T. Carter, a new voice in fiction with smarts, attitude, and sassiness to spare.”(32 Candles, back cover)
My copy: 32 Candles, paperback 335 pages
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 23 – Favorite Non-Fiction
Day 23 – Favorite Non-Fiction Has to be The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. If you haven’t read it you absolutely NEED to. The Warmth of Other Suns follows two 
men and a woman. We as readers go on the journey with them to leave the south for the north and for California for a better life. It’s captivating, and extremely informative. The subject of the Great Migration occurred between 1910 and 1970. Strangely there aren’t many detailed books about it and it isn’t even taught in history class. Isabel Wilkerson’s writing will suck you in and change the way you think about how non-fiction books are written. The Warmth of Other Suns reads like a passionate fictional story, framed in important details and facts that will enlighten you politically and socially about the United States during this sixty year period of upheaval for African-Americans. Who had it harder – the African-Americans who remained in the south or those that fled to the Northeast, Midwest, and West?
My copy: The Warmth of Other Suns, hardcover 622 pages
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 22 – Made You Cry
Day 22 – Made You Cry I don’t usually cry when I read books. However this one made me tear up a little. That surprised me… Have any books made you cry? If so which ones?
My copy: Daughter, paperback 260 pages
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading
#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge Day 21 Favorite Poetry Collection
Day 21 – Favorite Poetry Collection Hands down has to be Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks. I’ve gotten almost three quarters through the collection this month and I’m in awe by the sheer brilliance of all of these poems – depth, syncopation, lyrical, cultural, meaningful, black…. This is a collection you must own and read. I’m sure I’ll be rereading Blacks over and over for a very long time.
“Here is a necessary collection of poetry for admirers of words and treasurers of literary 
beauty. Spanning more than 30 years, this collection of literary masterpieces by the venerable Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks, arguably Illinois’ most beloved Poet Laureate and Chicago’s elder black literary stateswoman, Blacks includes all of Ms. Brooks’ critically acclaimed writings. Within its covers is the groundbreaking “Annie Allen,” which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. There is also the sweepingly beautiful and finely crafted “A Street in Bronzeville,” a highly anticipated and lauded poetic treasure that spoke volumes for this great poet’s love of black people, Chicago’s Black community, and even the community of the world. Blacks includes a special treat, Maud Martha, Brooks’ only novel.” (Blacks, Goodreads description)
The Bean Eaters – (Blacks, page 330)
Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917 – 2000
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
My copy: Blacks, paperback 512 pages
I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.
http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading