Posts Tagged 'slavery'

Stamped by Jason Reynolds

Published April 14, 2021 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Genre: Non-fiction

Number of Pages: 294

This non-fiction title is written as a non-history history book and starts back before the United States was even formed. Jason Reynolds took us through the major developments in this country regarding race, including strategies that were used both politically and socially to try and control the roles people played and the thought process they had regarding race. He really shows how the country’s thoughts and actions on race have been carefully sculpted by those people who had the power and control to do so. It shouldn’t be any surprise that money and power often controlled the events that transpired with race in our country. Reynolds does a nice job of explaining how the country came to be at the Black Lives Matters place we found ourselves in the summer of 2020. For anyone who has never studied the issue of race in the United States this book is very eye opening and encourages you to look at historical events with a different perspective. This book will stay with the reader long after reading it. Recommended.

The House Girl by Tara Conklin

Published April 24, 2014 Historical Fiction , RAC Leave a Comment
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housegirl

Genre:  Historical Fiction

# of Pages:  372

RAC:  Yes

Lina is a lawyer at a high profile firm in New York City.  She is assigned a bizarre slavery reparations case in which she is challenged to find a modern day descendant of a slave who can claim damages today.  She ends up coming across a story about a famous artist, Lu Anne Bell who was credited with wonderful paintings of the slaves on her plantation before her death in 1852.  Some recent criticism has come up in which experts are speculating the artist was actually the young slave girl, Josephine.  Can Lina prove that Josephine was the artist instead of Lu Anne?  Can she find a descendant of Josephine when there is no evidence of what happened to her after Lu Anne’s death?  Can she do it in time for the unimaginable deadline that her boss has set for her?

No one denies that many injustices occurred while slavery was still legal in the U.S., but this book reminds us that there are still many stories to tell.  Although, this is a fictional story it does remind us that each slave had a name and a story and people are interested in learning those.  The way the story is told pulls the reader in through old letters and documents.  It seems impossible to right the wrongs that occurred back then, but there are still truths that can overcome the lies that have pervaded history.  Fans of Sarah’s Key and Between Shades of Gray will enjoy this title as another book that sheds a different light on a big piece of history.

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