Escape on the Pearl - May Kay Ricks

 Sub-title: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad

I picked this up in Tucson at Bookman's before the Tucson Book Festival.  I read the first chapter and was hooked into continuing to find out what happened to a group of 77 Baltimore, Maryland slaves in 1848 who attempted an escape by ship to the North.  

The book revealed for me the stark divide over slavery, beginning the story in the late 1840s and leading up to the Civil War.  The author used extensive materials from the time to tell the story of two sisters in the group, Emily and Mary Edmonson, whose family was scattered in the aftermath of their capture.  The girls' became spokespersons for the anti-slavery movement, subjects of Harriett Beecher Stowe's second true book of slavery, and ancestors of a family who still honor their legacy.  

I learned context for a time when there were tic mark censuses of slaves without their names, the background of the country's leaders leading up to the Civil War, and the attitudes and practices of slaveholders in our nation's capital, Washington D.C.

An engaging read that I highly recommend, to history lovers and genealogists alike.

Published: 2007  Read: April 2024  Genre: History

Learning to Live - Theresa Cameron

 Sub-title: A Black Woman's Journey Beyond Foster Care

This is the concluding memoir of Theresa, who died in 2012, possibly due to heart problems.  

Her voice is one of someone who never was able to function fully in society because of the scars left from growing up in foster care.  It's a sad story to read.  While she triumphed over her fears to obtain a PhD from Harvard in Urban Design and became an associate professor at Arizona State University, after the book;s publication she was fired from ASU in a controversial decision and died a few years later.  

Published: 2009  Read: August 2022  Genre: Memoir, Auto-biography

Foster Care Odyssey - Theresa Cameron

 Sub-title: A black girl's story

While travelling this summer, I picked this up at a campground book exchange.  Serendipitously, this story of a woman raised from birth in the foster care system is the story of an adoptee whose mother left her with Catholic charities and who never knew her father.  The author survived this system, barely, and went on to get her doctorate from Harvard.  

I learned a lot about how the foster care system operates and the impact on children.  Inadvertently, I think, the author's writing revealed the guarded, stilted communication style that came from an unstable, unpredictable childhood.

I wanted to see if she ever found her father so I researched her. Therese Cameron wrote a second book about her struggles in her adult life Learning to Live: A Black Woman's Journey Beyond Foster Care.

But, I also found that she was fired from Arizona State University for alleged plagiarism of a syllabus, and sued and lost a discrimination case that she brought as the root cause of her firing.  After losing the case in 2011, she died in 2012 and I've yet to find any genealogical records of her death.  

I ordered her 2nd book ...review to come.

Published: 2002  Read: June 2022  Genre: Memoir

me and white supremacy - Layla F Saad

 I read this book for a reading club seeking to understand our biases and beliefs around race.  It's written as a series of thoughtful, progressive essays followed by questions to be answered in writing where you reflect on the reading and your experiences with the topic.  The author's state that "the primary force that drives my work is a passionate desire to become a good ancestor" - by which she means to "seed new possibilities for those who will come after I am gone."

The author shares the definition of white supremacy as "a racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races".  It explores not only the belief but its impact on organizations, societies and institutions in a culture.  The book looks at how this is manifested and experienced at a personal and individual level.

I admit this was a difficult book to work through and I'm glad I had the support of a study group.

Quotes:

"...when we don't agree with the answers we have demanded, we all too often feel qualified to dismiss them."

p. 212 - the Circle Way by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea

p. 178 - White feminism is an extension of white supremacy.  It is only concerned with white women gaining parity with white men.

Published: 2020  Read: April 2022  Genre: Sociology, Non-Fiction

Kindred - Octavia E Butler

 I'd found out about this book when I read it was a classic of African American fiction that illuminated the horrors of slavery and the impact of racism.  The author uses time travel to have her main character, Dana, pulled back into 1815 to protect the son of a white slaveowner who will become her great-great-grandfather.  The tie in with genealogy (sort of) was intriguing and I checked it out.  The book is a great read, so much so I finished it in one day (about 6 hours!).  

Dana finds herself blacking out in the present day (1970s) and waking up in the South in 1815, prior to the Civil War and in the heart of slavery.  As a black woman she has to struggle to survive and when fearing for her life, is propelled back to the present.  The story explores the experience of living during slavery and the grinding into submission and acceptance of its victims.   An insightful and moving work.

Published: 1977 Read: October 2021  Genre: Fiction, science fiction

White Fragility - Robin Diangelo

Sub-title: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism

In the current political and social environment, this book was recommended to me by a relative who had read it for a diversity program.  This was a difficult read as it provided a viewpoint I don't think I'd been exposed to in the past and challenged my thinking on the topic of race.  

The author explains the evolution of white privilege in our society and its consequences and why it is so difficult to see ourselves as racist as a result of being born and raised in it.  I have a long way to go.

Quotes:

"The idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment; belief in racial inferiority is not what triggered unequal treatment...first, we exploited people for their resources, not according to how they looked."

"Narratives of racial exceptionality [example of Jackie Robinson first African American in major league baseball] obscure the reality on ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy." 

[Color blind - insists they don't see race, Color celebrate - sees and embraces diversity] "All the statements [made by these groups of people] ultimately function in a similar way; they all exempt the person from any responsibility for or participation in the problem." 

[Difference between race prejudice /discrimination and racism] While everyone of every race holds prejudice and can discriminate against someone of another race, in the US and other white/settler nations, only white people are in the position to oppress people of color collectively and throughout the whole of society."

"Conceptualizing myself on an active continuum changes the question from whether I am or am not racist to a much more constructive question: Am I actively seeking to interrupt racism in this context?  And perhaps even more importantly, how do I know?" 

"White fragility is also evidenced in the need for so many white progressives to 'build trust' before they can explore racism..[they are saying].I need to trust that you won't think I am racist before I can work on my racism." 

"To let go of the messenger and focus on the message is an advanced skill...Part of processing of that feedback [on our racist behavior and thoughts] will be to separate it from its delivery and ascertain the central point and its contribution to my growth." 

Published:  2018  Read: April 2021  Genre: Sociology, Politics