FURIOUS HOURS: MURDER, FRAUD, AND THE LAST TRIAL OF HARPER LEE

 Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Casey Cep, Knopf, 2019, 336 pp

This was the February pick for my Bookie Babes reading group and I was not sure I would be happy with it since it is nonfiction and I was longing to discuss fiction. No problem. It was great!

I am surely a fan of Harper Lee. I have read To Kill A Mockingbird and seen the movie. I have read the controversial Go Set A Watchman and the Charles Shields biography Mockingbird. Casey Cep managed to incorporate those books and the movie into a deep diving story of Alabama as it influenced Lee's writing and her life.

Furious Hours has three parts, ingeniously constructed like a puzzle that leads to "the last trial of Harper Lee."

Part One: The Reverend concerns a Black man in Alabama, born in the year that Alabama Power began to build a dam which would flood a large area not too far from Harper Lee's family home and thus bring electricity to the state. Willie Maxwell did become a Reverend, preaching to a wide flock of African American Southern Baptists. 

He was also a con man who perfected a life insurance scam. He ensured, then murdered three wives and numerous relatives, after which he collected their death benefits as beneficiary of their policies. He became rich, feared in his community, and suspected of practicing voodoo.

Part Two: The Lawyer. Tom Radney was an Alabama defense lawyer and politician with Presidential aspirations. He became famous for never losing a case. The Reverend Willie Maxwell hired Radney each time he was accused of murder but was never convicted of either murder or fraud.

Part Three: The Writer. Years passed and Tom Radney never made it to the White House due to being too progressive for a Southern politician. When a member of the Reverend's congregation put three bullets into the Reverend's head, that member was charged with murder.

Tom Radney took the case intending to get the murderer of his former, now deceased client, off on an insanity plea. Harper Lee arrived, after years of isolation and no novel to follow To Kill A Mockingbird, watched the trial and determined to write a true crime account of the entire story.

Though the whole book was fascinating from a historical standpoint, Part Three was the best. It was a relief to have Harper Lee finally appear. The amount of biographical material about her in this section stands way above what Charles Shields presented in his biography. I learned more about her relationship with the infamous Truman Capote than I had read anywhere else. 

Casey Cep writes perceptively about Harper Lee's well known writers block and then details the extreme effort The Writer made to bring her book to completion. As far as we know she failed though I was left with the hope that, like Go Set A Watchman, it could still someday appear.

If you are a Harper Lee fan and/or a true crime aficionado, you will most likely be as thrilled with Furious Hours as I and my reading group members were. Casey Cep showed herself to be a consummate writer of creative nonfiction. The amount of history, biography, and cultural critique she fit into just a little over 300 pages is a feat. Especially because she made it so easy to follow and so delicious to read.

RBG X 2

 

My Own Words, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Simon & Schuster, 2016, 334 pp

In November, two of my reading groups chose two books on the subject of RBG, to be discussed a week apart from each other. Right in step with Nonfiction November! I always have a nonfiction book going in which I read a little most days. To complete the two RBG books in time though, I had to read more than a little each day. Honestly, I felt like I was in school but once again it was time well spent.

My Own Words is a collection of the Justice's articles, speeches and Supreme Court opinions. Assisting her in collecting, editing as needed, and writing Introductions for five different sections, were Mary Hartnett and Wendy W Williams. Those women are both professors of law who were also authorized by RBG to write her biography. As far as I know the biography is not yet published.

Having read Sisters In Law last year, some of the material in My Own Words covered ground I had been over before. That was fine because I gained a deeper understanding of the woman herself and of her life's work as well as the workings of the Supreme Court.

Her speeches are both charming and instructional. Her articles and court opinions are quite dense with legal speak and court precedent, making them more challenging reading for me since I still have scant knowledge of law, courts, and our justice system. 

Now I have more of that knowledge, making me better at reading and comprehending the news about Supreme Court cases and decisions. I have come to realize the importance of comprehending these matters as a civic duty and as a voter in our difficult and changing times.

Conversations With RBG, Jeffrey Rosen, Henry Holt and Company, 2019, 260 pp

This was the second book. It was a much quicker read. In a series of conversations, Jeffrey Rosen poses questions to Ms Ginsburg about life, love, liberty, and law. Her answers provided even more insight into the woman behind the image.

Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center. I have enjoyed many of his articles written for the Center's blog. He has been a friend of RBG since 1991 and it shows in their conversations.

They spoke about her landmark cases, her wonderful and happy marriage to Marty Ginsburg, her relationships with other Supreme Court Justices, and her carefully thought out plans for what she wished to accomplish on the Court.

Of course, my favorite chapter was "Margaret Atwood Meets RBG."

By the end of the book I felt I almost knew the woman personally. In the paperback edition I read, Rosen includes an afterword. It recounts his last conversation with the great woman, on December 17, 2019. So you get her own words, including her concerns for the future, just ten months before her death.

I wager that a full biography will appear eventually and I will probably read it. For now I have a fairly complete picture of this towering woman, her heart, her extraordinary intellect, and her unwavering courage.

ALICE PAUL, CLAIMING POWER

Alice Paul, Claiming Power, J D Zahinser & Amelia R Fry, Oxford University Press, 2014, 702 pp

Embarrassing as it is, I had never heard of Alice Paul before. I read this for the October meeting of The Bookie Babes reading group. It was tough getting through the book but I don't regret the time spent. Now I know that Alice Paul was the key person who got American women the right to vote in every state by pushing until the 19th Amendment was passed, ratified and adopted on August 26, 1920.

Alice Paul was born and raised Quaker in New Jersey. The book covers her entire life, her thirst for knowledge, her struggle for equal rights for women, and the incredibly strong purpose she found within herself.

Due to a dry, scholarly tone, the book was at time dull, but I am forever grateful to my reading group for choosing to read it as well as to J D Zahniser and Amelia R Fry for all their hard work to ensure the full story got told.

I knew about Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It took 80 years for what they and many, many other women started to become Constitutional Law. To paraphrase Ruth Bader Ginsburg, if you change the law you change society. Changing laws is a long hard process. Ask any woman, any person of color, any immigrant.

Still, injustice and inequality can be put right as long as we who see the need for change do not give up, as long as we recognize how slowly that change comes and how many setbacks need to be overcome.

I will never be as focused, as brave, as full of purpose as Alice Paul was, but I have gotten to know another role model and heroine to inspire me and keep me on my own path.

Since finishing the book, I have watched the feature film, Iron Jawed Angels. It was OK but had I not read this book, the movie would have had much less impact. Hilary Swank portrayed Alice Paul as a little too fluffy. The book give you all sides of her. Like any human being, she had many sides. Her strengths outweighed her weaknesses so definitively that she was able to channel the work of perhaps millions of women who have fought for our rights.

If you can take it, I urge you, whether you are male or female or anywhere on that spectrum to read this book.

HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018, 380 pp

 I have wanted to read this book ever since it was published. Now, thanks to The Tiny Book Club, I have. Because I had read with great pleasure Chee's 2016 novel, The Queen of the Night, I knew he was a wonderful writer. Now I know how he became one.

In a series of autobiographical essays, collected and revised, he tells a great deal of his life story, including his family background, his education, his writing teachers and his first forays into publishing. These essays just sing with story and humor and emotion. 

For me, both the boon and the conundrum coming from my reading the book, were how it caused me to examine my own approach to writing. I won't go into all the soul searching and changes Mr Chee put me through, because it was personal in a way I could only try to convey to my reading group members, one a published poet and the other a highly educated reader.

If you are a writer at any stage of becoming or growth, I highly recommend the book, not so much for learning the craft or the business of writing but for how to BE a writer. It is one of the best I have read and I have read plenty.

BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, A Journey Through Yugoslavia, Rebecca West, The Viking Press, 1941, 1150 pp

 

I am well aware that this book will not be for everyone but I wanted to have a record of my thoughts on it here on the blog. Finishing this book has been my greatest reading accomplishment so far this year. I had attempted to read it twice before but bogged down early both times. Last July I tried again, looked up all the words I didn't know, studied maps and took notes. I set myself a minimal pace of 5 pages at a sitting and 11 months later I finished!

 

Rebecca West was an infamously successful journalist, political writer, novelist and feminist from 1911 until her death in 1983. I came to her through one of her novels, The Fountain Overflows, one of my favorite novels ever. I first learned about Black Lamb and Grey Falcon in the days of the Bosnian War, a conflict I could never understand no matter how much news I read. It turns out I needed the history of the Balkans and West's book gave that and much more.

She made two extended trips through Yugoslavia, an area also known as the Balkans throughout history. When she visited in 1937 and 1938, the area was a cobbled together country created after WWI at the Paris Peace Conference. Her book follows the second journey taken with her husband. 

Beginning in Croatia, they continued through Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro. These were the countries that made up Yugoslavia at the time. They visited major cities as well as villages and historic sites. If that sounds like a lot to take in, it was for both Ms West and myself.

One of my followers here found the writing style unlikable. She does revel in long sentences, detailed descriptions and somewhat flowery, emotional reactions to what she sees and how she feels about it all. I did not mind that too much. What else would one expect from someone raised on Shakespeare and Dickens?

Whenever I looked up images of the mountains, valleys, cathedrals and monasteries she described, they looked exactly as she had written about them! Her accounts about the people she met brought them to life as would a novelist with her characters.

When she returned to England in 1938, Hitler was on the rise. She had no doubt that another World War was about to begin. She spent the next few years enlarging her already vast knowledge of the history of those countries, from Roman times, through the Byzantine Empire, the conquering Turks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the debacle that was WWI, and the arrival of communism from Russia. I can't imagine anyone besides a life long historian being able to encompass so much.

Finally she put it all together into Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, two images that recur over and over in the book. She created her perspective on the historical precedents and causes of what by the time of publication was WWII. When I finished the book, even though I had not read an article on the Serbian War or the Kosovo War for over 20 years, it suddenly all made sense to me. 

I don't recommend this tome to everyone. But, if you like to study history, if you have read widely in historical fiction, or you just have an unquenchable desire to understand European history, you might make it through and gain new insights.

Rebecca West was a liberal, a feminist, a humanist thinker, and I can't imagine anyone agreeing wholeheartedly with her politically in 2020. Still, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a huge contribution to historical and political thought.

If you made it through to the end of my attempt to write about this incredible book, you should do fine with Rebecca West, who towered over me in writing and thinking ability.

THE LIBRARY BOOK

The Library Book, Susan Orlean, Simon & Schuster, 2018, 310 pp

 

If you love libraries chances are you will enjoy this book. It includes American library history, true crime coverage of the Los Angeles Public Library fire of 1986, a history of that library, and more.

 

The main suspect in the LAPL fire was an enigmatic fellow by the name of Harry Peak. Orlean opens the book with him and in alternating sections continues his story along with the investigation into the fire. That investigation failed to prove that he started the fire or even to prove that it was arson that started it. I learned that a surprisingly high percentage of arsonists are firefighters. What?

It is a wonder that we still have a main branch of our library in downtown Los Angeles. The destruction of the building and of so many books was devastating. Librarians, the public, and some very savvy people all contributed to its survival and rebuilding. A heartwarming tale of people working together.

Some of my reading group members were less than thrilled by the way Susan Orlean put the book together. It does skip around but it worked fine for me. She plays on the love of libraries that those of us who were taken there by our mothers from a young age will never forget.

She also does a great service to our culture by showing how important they are as repositories of knowledge. I had no idea of the many records libraries hold, especially the main libraries of cities. The records go beyond books to include music scores, maps and dozens of other arcane references.

I was also struck by the many services libraries provide to all ages and peoples, including immigrants, illiterates, and the homeless. Librarians, even the strict and sometimes crabby ones, are a liberal bunch who believe in the power of writing, in privacy, and rights for all. They recognize each other as "library people." I love that! I love libraries. I use mine even more than I do bookstores.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: THE PEACE CORPS AND THE SPIRIT OF THE 1960S

All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Harvard University Press, 1998, 259 pp

 

Summary from Goodreads:

The nation was powerful and prosperous, the president was vigorous and young, and a confident generation was gathering its forces to test the New Frontier. The cold war was well under way, but if you could just, as the song went, "put a little love in your heart," then "the world would be a better place." The Peace Corps, conceived in the can-do spirit of the sixties, embodied America's long pursuit of moral leadership on a global scale...More than any other entity, the Peace Corps broached an age-old dilemma of U.S. foreign policy: how to reconcile the imperatives and temptations of power politics with the ideals of freedom and self-determination for all nations.

 

My Review:

I read this as research for my autobiography. It is a history of the Peace Corps from its beginning as a program created by President John F Kennedy in 1961 through to the late 1990s. The Peace Corps is still going today though we don't hear much about it. After finishing the book I discovered that they have a presence on Twitter and now follow their posts there.

 

The book is good thorough history. It tracks the political scene all through the years covered, as the organization was built, and as changing times had their effects on the Peace Corps in its attempts to live up to American ideals.

 

Though sometimes a bit dry, I made it through the book at my usual non-fiction reading pace of 10 pages a day, finishing it in a month. 

 

Of course I was aware of the Peace Corps during my high school and college years, but I was more aware of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. I was strongly in favor of the first and rabidly against the second. Back then I thought I was "with it" but looking back now, I was in truth quite unsavvy when it came to politics. Most of what I knew came from radical friends. This book was like a crash course in what I had missed and dove-tailed nicely with the biographies of JFK, LBJ and MLK I have read over the past few years.

 

I find it odd that I never knew personally a single Peace Corps Volunteer and have still never met one to this day. 

 

Reading the book made me rather sad about the lost idealism of the 1960s. Despite our current cynicism about the world, I think many boomers still wish we could get that spirit back. It got me wondering if the Cold War and all that has followed was not so much a political and ideological fight but a financial conflict between the "haves" and the "have nots" of the world. Certainly the "haves" hold the power with no intention of letting go or sharing or helping if that means giving up an inch of that power.

 

I recommend the book to anyone grappling with ideas, politics, the uses of power, and what that means for the future.

 

Were you ever a Peace Corps Volunteer or have you ever known one?

THE PASSAGE OF POWER

The Passage of Power, The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 4, Robert A Caro, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 605 pp

 

I have been reading Robert Caro's four extensive volumes about the life of Lyndon B Johnson over the past two years. The experience has been a master class in politics, power, the workings of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the interaction between the Executive and Legislative Branches, and 20th century history up to 1964.

 

The Passage of Power begins with LBJ, still in his role as the most powerful Senate leader possibly ever, trying to decide if he will run for President in the 1960 election. Because he waffled for too long, he did not get the nomination but was asked to be running mate for John F Kennedy. Becoming a vice president under JFK was a huge descent in influence and an almost complete loss of power. 

Then JFK was assassinated and in the space of a few hours, LBJ was in the position he had dreamed of and schemed to reach for most of his life. The next chapters cover his first hours, days, and months filling this new role. That part was as exciting as the parts in Book 3, Master of the Senate, when he achieved his power there and gave that body a 20th century makeover.

The final section covers how he used his Senate leader experience to get passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

I came of political age in the mid 60s at the height of protests against the Vietnam War. My opinion of this man was formed and largely colored by what happened in those years. My friends and I purely hated him. I am glad I took the time to read so much about him. He was deeply flawed but now I am aware of how much influence he had during his presidency and how much change he brought about.

I understand him now as quite a Machiavellian figure whose strengths could overcome his weaknesses. Robert Caro is still writing the final volume but I want to read it immediately. At the end of The Passage of Power, Caro makes it clear that he feels LBJ held his baser instincts in check long enough to get much positive legislation passed but that his momentum and that of our country would be lost because of Vietnam.

I realize that many people do not have the time to read almost 3000 pages about one POTUS, but anyone who does will learn much about politics and the role of government in America. Having read these books, I feel smarter, more able to parse the news, make sense of what is happening today, and hopefully make the best use of my right to vote, a right for which so many women before me have fought.

SISTERS IN LAW

Sisters In Law, Linda Hirshman, HarperCollins, 2015, 301 pp

 

This nonfiction reading group pick is subtitled How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went To The Supreme Court And Changed The World. It was a hard book to read for me because all I know about law and courts I learned from watching Perry Mason as a kid and reading thrillers. While the story of the first two women to serve as Justices of the Supreme Court is exciting stuff, I had some trouble following all the cases.

 

However, some years ago I tried to read The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin and was defeated. Linda Hirshman managed to crack the code for me and I appreciate that a great deal. Now I understand how that court works.

I knew more about RBG, having seen both the 2018 documentary RBG as well as the 2018 movie On The Basis Of Sex. I knew virtually nothing about Sandra Day O'Connor except that she was the first (FWOTSC) and served as a swing vote between the conservative and liberal justices. This book goes into great detail about each woman and the friendship between them. They were quite different in some ways.

What I enjoyed most was learning about the clear intention of RBG to change conditions for women in a deliberate sequence of cases designed to change precedents. Compared to many other things in life, her method is slow. It takes years and decades. Her belief is that if you want to change society you must change the laws. She has done that!

I am very glad I read this book. While the fight for equality is a long slog and while the ingrained, unexamined prejudices about women held by men makes me spitting angry, I could see how her method has worked. I felt some hope. Also we now have three women on the court: RBG, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Another curious fact is that all nine justices are either Catholic or Jewish.

Now all of her work is at risk. With the conservatives in the majority on the court, much of what she has done in setting precedents at least makes it more difficult for those conservatives to send us backward. I have begun keeping track of the cases heard through a great website, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog.

Our reading group discussion was wonderful. We are all liberals, several work in the legal world and we are all women, of course!

WOMANISH: A GROWN BLACK WOMAN SPEAKS ON LOVE AND LIFE

Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life, Kim McLarin, Ig Publishing, 2019, 182 pp

 

 

In this brilliant and truthful essay collection, Kim McLarin covers just about every aspect of living in America as a Black woman. I was enlightened, amused, made quite uncomfortable at times, and impressed over and over by her intelligence. You know I have a thing for intelligent women.

 

Everything she covers is important to a grown or growing woman: on-line dating, depression, racial injustice in the courts, anger, marriage, motherhood, bad partners, revenge vs non-violence, and more. The whole perspective is a Black woman's. I know, it says that in the subtitle, but it bears repeating.

The essay that punched me the hardest, "Becky and Me," considers friendship between Black and White women. As I read I felt there was not any way for me to be a good friend to a Black woman. I had to look at why I have not had a Black female friend since the third grade. I spent hours trying to figure out how I could make a Black female friend at this point in my life and to reason out why I do not even cross paths with Black women in my daily/social activities. I wondered if Kim McLarin would accept me as a friend and truthfully I felt unworthy, unsure of myself, even kind of rejected.

As I gradually got over myself, I realized (not for the first time) that Black Americans have spent way more time observing and figuring out White Americans than we have spent attempting to get a true picture of them. It was James Baldwin who got me started thinking about all that but he is a man.

My education is not complete, nor is my experience. The inherent and continuously glossed over racism in this country will give us problems for a long time to come, perhaps always and forever. This book is a valuable resource I think for both Black and White women and men.

Kim McLarin is bold, intelligent, relentless and brave as a writer and as a human being, but what stood out most for me in her collection was her honesty. A Grown Black Woman Speaks. Yes, she does.

(Womanish is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann, Doubleday, 2017, 291 pp

 

 

I have been interested in this work of investigative non-fiction but it took one of my reading groups to get me to read it. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, nominated for the National Book Award, and a bestseller in 2017, it is an excellent account of one of America's most brutal criminal conspiracies. It made my blood boil.

 

In the 1920s, oil was discovered beneath the ground on the Osage Indian Nation reservation in Oklahoma. These were not the original lands of the Osage, but the rocky, presumably worthless territory they were driven to from their home lands in Kansas. Thanks to a wise and wily Osage leader, the Oklahoma land and any minerals beneath belonged to the tribe by American government decree. To obtain the oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties.

Thus these native Americans became the wealthiest people per capita of the world at the time. Of course, our government has a pitiful history of going back on agreements made with the natives of this land. Once the millions started rolling in, a new law was passed requiring the Osage to have white "guardians" to manage their wealth. Such guardians cheated many of the people out of the money and became rich themselves.

However, that was not enough to assuage the white man's greed. Some of them began to marry into Osage families and then systematically kill off the Indian owners of the oil leases by outright murder and secret poisoning.

David Grann, through years of research, put together the whole sordid story including the partially successful work of the fledgling FBI, newly under the leadership of J Edgar Hoover, to uncover the criminal activities behind the killings. Therein lies another whole story of Hoover's questionable motives for creating an investigation in the first place.

The book reads like a murder mystery although I admit I did some skimming through many pages of procedural and trials. My husband, who also read it and enjoys crime stories, as well as many of my reading group members who work or have worked in the legal profession, loved all that stuff.

I am glad I read the book. By now it is old news as far as the historical and present day perfidy that defines America's dealing with the natives of our land. This book filled in another piece of that tragedy. Though I live with all the benefits of the white, European mad quest for progress, I can never be entirely proud of our legacy. 

I will never understand these rapacious methods of conquest, though they have gone on for millennia. If a reckoning ever comes, books like these will show what and how much atonement must be made.

(Killers of the Flower Moon is available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

All the President's Men, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 1974, 336 pp

 

 

You might ask why I read this book now. After I finished it I asked myself why everyone isn't reading it these days. I had watched the movie, Mark Felt (about the FBI special agent who was known by Bob Woodward only as Deep Throat during the Watergate investigation.) That led me to watch the movie by the same title made from the book All the President's Men. The movie was good but I felt there might be more to know, so I read the book.

 

In 1970 I had my first son followed by another in 1973. We were hippies and we hated Nixon because of our protest against the Vietnam War and because of the Kent State shootings. For some reason, I paid no attention to the Watergate scandal. I blame that on being sleep deprived and living in what my sisters and I call "the baby zone." In fact until I saw Mark Felt I was still hazy on what Watergate was all about.

Both movies made me aware that we are in a similar situation now, in my opinion, with an unstable President who attacks the press and is under investigation for illegal activities regarding his election to the office.

Though both movies were excellent, the book is indeed better and more informative. It gives the entire blow-by-blow account of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's investigative reporting on Watergate and how that contributed to Nixon's resignation. It is a thrilling though terrible account of criminal behavior and cover ups instigated by President of the United States Richard Nixon and carried out by the men closest to him. It was the #2 non fiction bestseller in 1974.

Though Watergate seems almost tame in comparison to today, the story shows the importance of a free press when the American public needs to push back against branches of our federal government, the FBI, and the federal justice system.

Exciting, sobering and so timely. I am so glad I read it. It gave me hope and restored the shaky state of my confidence in our democracy.

(All the President's Men is available in the 40th anniversary paperback edition by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH

The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Kermit Alexander, Atria Books, 2015, 315 pp

 

 

Oh my, this was tough, both due to the subject matter and to the somewhat inept writing.

 

Being the world's least sports-minded person, I had never heard of Kermit Alexander. He is a retired NFL All-Pro cornerback who played for the San Francisco 49ers, the Los Angeles Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles. He is a Black man born and raised in South Central Los Angeles.

His co-writers (not ghost writers because they are credited by name) Alex Gerould and Jeff Snipes are criminal justice professors at San Francisco State University. Creative non-fiction is clearly not their forte. The Bookie Babes were unanimous on the terrible clunkiness of the writing.

Los Angeles is the city where I live, though I am on the outskirts. South Central is deep in the ghetto and in 1984 was beset by drugs, gangs and violence. Some of the brothers there were responsible for the urban legend about blacks killing blacks.

On August 31, 1984, three armed men broke into the home of Kermit's grandmother and slaughtered her, his sister, and two of his nephews. The book tells the story of this seemingly senseless act of violence from the viewpoint of Kermit Alexander. It covers his coming of age in the 1950s, his family history, and the many years of police investigation and trials. The perpetrators were all eventually discovered, the reason for the crime determined, and the perps sent to prison with the death penalty. But Kermit and his remaining family were almost destroyed in the aftermath by their loss and some of the attitudes towards them.

I guess conditions are better in South Central these days but it is still a ghetto, drug fueled and killing the hopes of black children who are born and raised there. I just felt ruined by what I learned from this book and being forced to really confront what goes on in a neighborhood less than 30 miles from where I live.

One of the most informative parts of the book was a history of gangs in American cities. The shootings of Alexander's family members were traced to Crips, one of LA's most infamous gangs. They have a deep network in and out of and between the prisons and life on the streets.

Another educational point was the interaction of the death penalty with the fates of those who receive that as their punishment. I have read about some of that in other books but in this one it was more thoroughly covered. Capital punishment is still the law in California though there has not been an execution since 2006. Close to 750 prisoners are on death row in the state. It is one gnarly topic.

Kermit Alexander did finally recover from his decades of obsession with the murders and rebuilt his family. I am glad I read the book, as horrific as the story is, but I will tell you it was not easy.

One of the Bookie Babes, who recommended the book, is the wife of a retired policeman and the mother of a current one. She assured us that big improvements have been made in the police force as regards brutality, racism and workable community programs. I believe her but there is a long way to go and it is not only in law enforcement that change is needed.

I recommend the book, as well as Paul Beatty's novel, The Sellout. All of the Babes agreed that if we intend to be the change we want to see in the world, we cannot say we are too faint of heart to read such books.

(The Valley of the Shadow of Death is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

IN THE DARKROOM

In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi, Henry Holt and Company, 2016, 417 pp

 

 

Susan Faludi has been has an award winning journalist, has written an acclaimed nonfiction work, Backlash, and is an all around intelligent woman. I knew the name but not much else. Thanks to my reading group, The Bookie Babes, I have now read her.

 

In the Darkroom is part memoir, part inquiry into the meaning of identity, part Hungarian history. Some of the reading group members found it overstuffed and I can't disagree. I also however found it moving as a memoir, thoughtful as to gender identity, and informative on Hungarian history.

Susan Faludi had an unhappy childhood, thanks to her father. He was moody, overbearing, and violent at times. He left her and her mother when Susan was a teen, leaving her with harbored resentment, grievances and hurt for many years. When she learned that he had undergone sex reassignment surgery at the age of 76, she began an investigation into his life. Though her father had been a successful photographer for the fashion and magazine industry in New York, he had returned to Budapest, Hungary, the city of his birth. Though the parent and daughter had maintained a relationship and correspondence, it was strained to say the least.

Many visits to Hungary ensued. Susan took a dual role as daughter and investigative reporter and gradually brought the hidden life of her now female father into view, much the way he had developed pictures in his darkroom. During those visits, it was most unsettling to read sentences like, "My father, she..." Also interesting to learn that Hungarian has no gender specific pronouns!

Though the story contains many emotions, the underlying theme is tragedy due to the horrific circumstances of the senior Faludi's childhood in Hungary under the Nazis and then under Communism. Even to this day the country is a political mess and antisemitism is rife. Susan's father was born Jewish but learned to survive by subterfuge and the ability to assume different identities.

The book is necessarily in part a study of the transgender phenomenon primarily through the views of psychiatry and medicine. I found that the least convincing aspect of the story. Her research seemed well done but came across as dry theories, not all of them credible to me. When she finally wove the whole tapestry together, the issues of identity, gender, war, loss and survival as played out in the life of one Jewish man who chose to become a woman, it developed into a deeply moving and personal story. 

Take a chance on a book, as we say in the Bookie Babes.

(In the Darkroom is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS

The Presidential Papers, Norman Mailer, G P Putnam's Sons, 1963, 335 pp

 

 

I don't know for sure why I read this except that I have a fascination for Mailer. I don't particularly recommend it to the general reader but I am glad I read it. The book is a collection of articles originally written by Mailer for various magazines and newspapers between June, 1960 and August, 1963. In collecting these writings for book form, Mailer added later comments and did some revisions. On publication day John F Kennedy was still alive.

Throughout Mailer rails about American society and politics, as only Mailer could do. He includes a couple pieces written about the Democratic Convention that nominated Kennedy, another about the Kennedy campaign, and one with thoughts about Jackie Kennedy. Thus the title.

Since I have read a full biography of JFK and am currently on the third volume of Robert A Caro's huge biography of Lyndon B Johnson, this was a good companion piece for me. I would recommend the collection for those interested in that period of American history.

I don't necessarily agree with all of Mailer's viewpoints but I have to admire his style, his nerve, and his stances on what was happening to America in those years. I even have to admire his huge raging ego. New fact to me: he was a co-founder of The Village Voice!

(A 2012 reprint of The Presidential Papers is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, The Dial Press, 1963, 106 pp

 

 

This man was so eloquent, his mind so capacious, his ability is to present ideas imbued with emotion but with such clarity. In this slim volume he both stirred me up and calmed me down. It has two parts.

 

The first, My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, a mere eight pages is just that, a letter. I read somewhere, but can't find it now, that this letter inspired Ta-Nehisi Coates to write Between the World and Me. Baldwin is advising his nephew to be strong, assuring him that he is, and recommending a path for the future he will face.

"And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we with love, shall force on our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it." (He is talking about their white brothers.) "We cannot be free until they are free." That advice requires almost inhuman or above human strength and a whole lotta love.

Approximately 53 years later on, Coates was not so full of that love. Too many great leaders slain, too many more black sons slain or imprisoned. Quite a bit more anger and fear than Baldwin was showing in 1962 when he wrote his letter. 150+ years since one of our greatest Presidents issued that proclamation is a long time to wait for the change that was supposed to come. Five generations of waiting.

I found the second much longer section more interesting: Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind. It is James Baldwin losing his religion and yet not really. I knew something of Baldwin's religious life, told as fiction in Go Tell It On The Mountain. In this version he deconstructs it further. A lot happened to him in ten years.

He tells of returning to America after living abroad, of witnessing the cruelties laid on Blacks who followed Martin Luther King's non-violent methods of protest, of befriending Malcolm X, of meeting Elijah Muhammad.

Finally he pulls it all together as really only James Baldwin can do and explains what it would really take to put an end to racism in America. In those words I heard the echos of the truth at the heart of any of the world's religions: the ability to love ourselves and our fellow man is the key to a more just world. He admits to how hard that is for any human being. Then he ends with a prophecy that has come forth from any religion's story of the flood, in the words of a slave song: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time."

I can't say that this brought me hope. I don't think Ta-Nehisi Coates operates from a place of hope. The fire does approach more closely everyday. In some areas of the world it has arrived. Is this ancient dream of peace, justice and brotherhood only that? A dream? Is that why so many write, read, and discuss? Can it ever become reality?

What I do recognize is that James Baldwin, along with many other people of good will, found that dream in a church of some kind. The truly brave and tough people of good will walk out of church into the world to participate in realizing the dream. No matter what name those people give to this spiritual practice, they are my people.

(The Fire Next Time is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, 2013, 386 pp

 

 

I read this for my Tiny Book Club. The subtitle is Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. It was a revelation.

 

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a descendant of the Potawatomi Nation, raised on the stories of her tribe. She went to college and trained as a botanist because, as she told her advisor in her freshman intake interview, in answer to his question, "So, why do you want to major in botany?": "I told him that I chose botany because I wanted to learn about why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together."

At that moment came the collision in her life between modern science and indigenous wisdom!

Sweetgrass, called wingaashk in the Potawatomi Nation, is an honored and much used plant. The word means the sweet-smelling hair of Mother Earth. Kimmerer uses it as the metaphor for her book, braiding the stories of her people, the development of herself, and the depredations of the white European settlers whose descendants now rule this land, into a heartfelt plea for more understanding.

I sat down and began to read the book. Within a few pages my mind wandered, I felt bored, I had the urge to turn to social media or play Solitaire. I made it through ten pages. Reading group meeting was only a week away!

This went on for several days. Eventually Ms Kimmerer and I came to an understanding. I would read one chapter a day, she would be granted my attention for that long. It became for me something like the way some people read a devotional piece or Bible excerpt or psalm daily. Amazing changes came over my mind, my perceptions, my world view.

I have seen reviews of this book where readers complain that it is too poetic or even incomprehensible. I get it! This is a voice from another culture attempting to translate a sensibility about the true reciprocative relationship with the natural world that 21st century people will have to adopt if we want to remain living on our very own earth.

Have you ever spent time thinking about life without fossil fuels? I have. How could this world ever give that up? We are addicted to the very practices which are destroying our health and our home.

To read this book, I had to slow down, leave the time stream of my daily life. Eventually I became aware that my perception was changing, that I was observing life differently. I admit I haven't stopped driving my car, but I became aware that due to her way of presenting ideas this is a very subversive book. Exxon, etc, if they knew about it would have it banned. Our current administration would try to have it banned.

Indigenous wisdom is something modern life has lost and buried, but science is not evil. Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent her adult life in efforts to connect the two. Of course, one could not command or force a climate change denier to read it. I think a teacher of biology or botany or social studies could get her class to read it though. A college or university could make it required reading for graduation. 

This morning I saw a video clip on Twitter of a bison crossing a road in a National Park. We could still save ourselves a lot of suffering and this book could well be a how-to manual. Because of reading it I now am aware of and honor the many groups of our indigenous peoples who are doing their utmost to bring back the lost wisdom of the land and plants, who only wish us a long, prosperous, and happy life on Planet Earth.

I recommend, no I urge you, to check out what this book has to offer for the future.

(Braiding Sweetgrass is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE

The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, W W Norton & Company, 1963, 395 pp

 

 

Getting through his iconic feminist text took work but I am so glad I read it. The work of reading it took different forms.

 

Hardest to read were the passages where she cited primary sources such as Freudian psychiatry, sociology, magazine writing, and the advertising of the times. Only when I reached the end of the book did I appreciate the meticulous way in which she built her thesis. It made for a good many pages of fairly dry reading.

I concluded that she had been influenced by both Simon de Beauvoir's The Second Sex as well as some of Vance Packard's early books such as The Hidden Persuaders, The Status Seekers, The Waste Makers, and The Pyramid Climbers, all of which I have read. She had done her homework and was proving it.

I understand why she did that though, because as a woman writing about women in the early 1960s, she knew she would take some heat and had to stand strong.

Another part of the work for me was all the emotion she evoked. I was only a sophomore/junior in high school when the book was published. I did not know of it then but I wondered if my mother had read it. One day near the end of her life, my mom told me and my sisters that when she was raising us she often felt she had lost track of who she was!

The book got me thinking about and remembering what it was like being raised in a suburban New Jersey town by a stay-at-home mom. I realized that she had channeled all her creativity as a musician into running a home, managing her husband and bringing up three daughters. I also gained plenty of insight into why I felt so smothered by her when I was a kid.

Then I pondered the choices I made as a young wife and mother. I felt chagrined to recognize how much the "feminine mystique" still had a hold on me in those years and caused such conflicted emotions and guilt as I tried to also follow my own dreams and keep a semblance of my own identity.

All in all, it was a rewarding reading experience despite how long it took to get through the book. After all, it was THE book that started second wave feminism. All the later complaints about The Feminine Mystique lacking diversity are true. The women Betty Friedan was writing for were the white, middle class citizens of America. Even so, she hit on universal truths for women: the importance of birth control, legal abortion, education, and the right for all women to be fully contributing members of society.

 

I feel this is an important book that traces why and how women were sent back home after WWII and what that did to us and our children. It was an eye-opening book to read in 2017.

(The Feminine Mystique is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BAD FEMINIST

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Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay, HarperCollins, 2014, 282 pp

Note to my blog followers: I hope I don't wear you out as I double up on posts for the rest of the month. The reason is I have been finishing so many books this month and don't want to get hopelessly behind on posting my reviews. Most of the reviews are somewhat short so there is that. Also next month's reading is going to include longer books=less books read=less posts. 

I have been reading this collection of essays over many months. I have followed Roxane Gay on Twitter for a couple years. If you have not heard of her, you live under a rock. I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.

First of all, the title is brilliant for our times when no one is sure what feminism is anymore or if anyone even needs to be a feminist these days. Having been one since about 1972, I can tell you it is a process and yes, the world is still badly in need of advocates for women. But we don't need anyone defining it for us.

I have lots of admiration for Roxane Gay, a woman of color who has overcome much adversity and with sheer hard work and no reticence about speaking out, has carved a place for herself in the world. She embodies and explicates the ambiguity and hypocrisy of the modern world.

I found the collection a bit uneven but since essays are not my go to reading genre I may not be qualified to say that. Her movie and book reviews and her takes on pop culture reminded me of James Baldwin. The female James Baldwin. Has anyone else felt that way? I have not heard that said about her.

The personal essays in which she recreates pivotal moments in life show equal parts naked self-analysis and sophisticated thinking.

I have owned a copy of her novel, An Untamed State, for a couple years. I am almost afraid to read it because of what I have heard about the rape scenes, but I know I should. For me at least, my fear of rape is stronger than my fear of death. Perhaps I will first read Ayiti, her collection of short stories set in Haiti where her family is from.

Forgive me Roxane. You are almost too much for me. You have however earned a place in my personal pantheon of bad women! 

(Bad Feminist is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS

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The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson, Random House, 2010, 538 pp

I read this as part of my continuing quest to understand racism in the United States. It is an impressive work of history. The Great Migration of its subtitle refers to the period between 1915 and 1970 when 6 million black southerners left the region to resettle in the North. The repercussions of this migration would influence the country in many ways. The author calls it "perhaps the biggest under-reported story of the 20th century." I would say, after reading the book, that it has also been the biggest misinterpreted story until now.

Once again, I learned so much. I don't know if this part of American history is taught in high school these days. It certainly was not in my day.

The book is dense with facts and because it covers over 50 years of time it is dense with incidents. In order to bring human interest into such a vast body of research, the author follows the lives of three different characters who left at different times (1937, 1945, 1953) and settled in different cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.) 

Through their experiences she brings to life the sordid details of Jim Crow discrimination in the South. Though slaves were emancipated in 1863 by President Lincoln's executive order, former slaves and all people of color in the South had barely any rights. When they came north of the Mason/Dixon line, they could drink from the same water fountains, eat in the same restaurants, ride in the same bus seats and railroad cars as whites, sometimes, but a more subtle racism crowded them into city slums. All of this plays out in the lives of those three individuals and their Northern families. It also plays out in the social order of our land.

Some readers and reviewers have complained that the book is repetitive in an annoying way. Since I read it over a period of many weeks, I was grateful for that because there is so much information to keep track of. I thought Ms Wilkerson did an excellent job of organizing all that material.

One-hundred-fifty-four years have passed since the Emancipation Proclamation; fifty-three years since the Civil Rights Act. Many blacks have risen above discrimination and lack of good education to become successful members of American society but the fact remains that among much of our adult population, racism still operates. I ask myself how much longer it will take to right the wrongs of slavery and to correct the injustices of both slavery and current practices. I can't predict how long but I can predict that if Americans were better informed about our true history as a nation the time could be reduced.

The Warmth of Other Suns might not be a beach read, but if you are looking for answers to the puzzling times in which we live, you will find some of them here.

(The Warmth of Other Suns is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)