My book list

Becoming by Michele Obama

I just finished reading "Becoming" by Michelle Obama. I loved this book! I loved every page of it! Her book is divided into 3 sections, Becoming Me, Becoming Us, Becoming More.

I especially loved the first section, Becoming Me. It was mainly about her upbringing on the south side of Chicago. I was excited that she mentioned her family was part of the great migration because I have been studying up on the great migration in preparation for Black History Month. I loved reading the stories about her education, from elementary to college. I often try to talk about privilege to people and her book discusses it in such an easy to understand way. She talks about her grandparents and the discrimination they faced when they moved from the south to Chicago. Jobs were hard to come by as most managers hired people who had a union card. Most Black people were unable to get a union card.  She says " this particular form of discrimination altered the destinies of generations of African Americans, including the men in my family, limiting their income, their opportunity, and, eventually, their aspirations." p. 38 She recalled the story of a high school counselor who informed her she wasn't Princeton material. She talks about how she didn't change her method, she changed her goal. She applied to Princeton, and got help from someone else. I love this: "I never did stop in to tell that counselor she was wrong--that I was Princeton material after all. It would have done nothing for either of us. And in the end, I hadn't needed to show her anything. I was only showing myself." p 67

One pattern that I noticed in her life is that if a job wasn't a good fit for her, she would find a new job. She would reflect about what change she wanted to bring and would find a job that would serve her purpose. I am in a situation right now where I am really pondering what I want to become. I love teaching. I know that I have a passion for it, and that I am pretty good at it. I also know that I want to be a part of a positive change. I have goals that I want to see accomplished and I need to figure out what path I should take to best help make changes. Should I go back to school and possibly have a bigger impact? Keep being a teacher and make smaller changes? What is the most practical for my family? Anyway, I'm blabbering here but you get the picture.

I really loved how open she was about being a working mom. How she would set boundaries for herself and her employers about getting home by a certain time each night, and being flexible so that she could attend her daughters school functions.

Here are some other quotes I loved:

“You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”

"One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am."

“We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we've cleared the way.”

"When they go low, we go high.”

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” 

“Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again.” 

Funny in Farsi by: Firoozeh Dumas
My friend Laurel recommended this for our book club and I loved it so much! The author, Firoozeh moved to southern Califronia from Iran as a young child. It is funny, refreshing and gives a valuable glimpse into what it is like to grow up as an immigrant in the U.S.A.

Favorite quotes:

"Just because someone is Muslim, Jewish, or Christian doesn't mean a thing. You have to look and see what's in their hearts. That's the only thing that matters, and that's the only thing God cares about."

"Throughout his job ordeal, my father never complained. he remained an Iranian who loved his native country but who also believed in American ideals. He only said how sad it was that people so easily hate an entire population simply because of the actions of a few. And what a waste it is to hate, he always said. What a waste."

" My name Firoozeh, chosen by my mother, means "Turquoise" in Persian. In America, it means "Unpronounceable" or "I'm not going to talk to you because I cannot possibly learn your name and i just don't want to have to ask you again and again because you'll think I'm dumb or you might get upset or something."

Tatoos On The Heart By Gregory Boyle

This book has taught me so much about Christ's boundless love for everyone.

Favorite Quotes:

"If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.

Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness.

Kinship– not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not “a man for others”; he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that.

God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.

The God, who is greater than God, has only one thing on Her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold the One who can't take His eyes off of you. Marinate in the vastness of that."




Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

This book was full of interesting and complex characters and a very realisitic storyline. This book is full of examples of implicit bias, explicit bias and racism.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed.

Active racism is telling a nurse supervisor that an African American nurse can’t touch your baby. It’s snickering at a black joke. But passive racism? It’s noticing there’s only one person of color in your office and not asking your boss why. It’s reading your kid’s fourth-grade curriculum and seeing that the only black history covered is slavery, and not questioning why. It’s defending a woman in court whose indictment directly resulted from her race…and glossing over that fact, like it hardly matters.

You say you don’t see color…but that’s all you see. You’re so hyperaware of it, and of trying to look like you aren’t prejudiced, you can’t even understand that when you say race doesn’t matter all I hear is you dismissing what I’ve felt, what I’ve lived, what it’s like to be put down because of the color of my skin."


The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

A riveting realistic fiction about a teenage girl whose best friend got shot by a cop. This book discusses grief, navigating friendships, sticking up for yourself, and the injustice within the justice system. I could not put down this book. Super quick read! It was interesting to read a book from this girl's perspective. Even though I am a white woman who has so much privilege, I could relate to how this young girl had to find her voice and learn how to stick up for herself and the people around her.


Quotes from the book:

" Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.

That's the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?

I’ve seen it happen over and over again: a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve Tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed every petition out there. I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down.
Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak.

People like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right.

Funny. Slave masters thought they were making a difference in black people’s lives too. Saving them from their “wild African ways.” Same shit, different century. I wish people like them would stop thinking that people like me need saving.

To every kid in Georgetown and in all “the Gardens” of the world: your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter. Be roses that grow in the concrete.

Right. Lack of opportunities," Daddy says. "Corporate America don't bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain't quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don't prepare us well enough. That's why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don't get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It's easier to find some crack that it is the find a good school around here.
"Now, think 'bout this," he says. "How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking 'bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don't know anybody with a private jet. Do you?"
"No."
"Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they're destroying our community," he says. "You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can't get jobs unless they're clean, and they can't pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That's the hate they're giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That's Thug Life."



Born a Crime by Trevor Noah


Trevor Noah tells his story about growing up during the apartheid in South Africa. Many stories he shares are similar to things going on in America.

Quotes from the book:

People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing

I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.

But the real world doesn't go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it's not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening. And at some point you have to choose; black or white, pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, oh I don't take sides, but at some point, life will force you to pick a side.

You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad. Where you either hate them or love them. But that's not how people are.

Autobiography of Fredrick Douglas

All I can say is go to your library or click on the link and read one of his autobiographies. I know there are a few out there varying in length.  What an influential man Fredrick Douglas was! 

Quotes from Fredrick Douglas: 

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."


Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing follows to African sisters and their offspring throughout a few generations. One sister is forced to be a slave and come to America, the other sister stays in Africa.

Quotes from the book:

We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.

here should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?

You want to know what weakness is? Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.



Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson 

First, I just want to put it out in the world that one of my long term goals is to get this book in the hands of teenagers. I have the intention of working with school districts to have high students read this book instead of Huck Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird. 

I loved this book so much!
I really enjoyed how the author, Isabel Wilkerson mixed historical facts with true, stories of actual people. 

This book is the story of the Great Migration time era which spans many, many years. I don't think people realize the extent of the Great Migration. Because most of our schools teach a white washed education, many people I have spoken to have not learned about the Great Migration even though more people moved during the great migration than the Gold Rush and Dust Bowl migrations combined. 

This book tells the story of 3 different families who migrated from the south to the north during the Great Migration time era. Their stories are each unique with heart ache and joy. frustrations and celebrations. I fell in love with each of the people and really wanted them to succeed and have joy. 

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book: 

"Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.... Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential.... There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem--a magnanimous understanding by both races--is the first step toward its solution."

"The revolution had come too late for him. He was in his midforties when the Civil Rights Act was signed and close to fifty when its effects were truly felt.

He did not begrudge the younger generation their opportunities. He only wished that more of them, his own children, in particular, recognized their good fortune, the price that had been paid for it, and made the most of it. He was proud to have lived to see the change take place.

He wasn't judging anyone and accepted the fact that history had come too late for him to make much use of all the things that were now opening up. But he couldn't understand why some of the young people couldn't see it. Maybe you had to live through the worst of times to recognize the best of times when they came to you. Maybe that was just the way it was with people."

"Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Foster, and George Starling each left different parts of the South during different decades for different reasons and with different outcomes. The three of them would find some measure of happiness, not because their children had been perfect, their own lives without heartache, or because the North had been particularly welcoming. In fact, not a single one of those things had turned out to be true. There had been sickness, disappointment, premature and unexpected losses, and, among their children, more divorces than enduring marriages, but at least the children had tried. The three who had come out of the South were left widowed but solvent, and each found some measure of satisfaction because whatever had happened to them, however things had unfolded, it had been of their own choosing, and they could take comfort in that. They believed with all that was in them that they were better off for having made the Migration, that they may have made many mistakes in their lives, but leaving the South had not been one of them."