wake: the hidden history of women-led slave revolts

While I was in Las Vegas this last week with my sister, we chatted about our most recent reads, and which ones stood out weeks and months after the reading. For me, one of those reads was Dr. Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martínez's graphic novel memoir-slash-academic history Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. I picked this title up at my local library after seeing it mentioned in a newsletter from the publisher, and found it haunting and important.

Women warriors planned and led revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history.

Wake tells the “riveting” (Angela Y. Davis) story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain’s logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the “negro burying ground” uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere.

Using a “remarkable blend of passion and fact, action and reflection” (NPR), Rebecca constructs the likely pasts of Adono and Alele, women rebels who fought for freedom during the Middle Passage, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. We also follow Rebecca’s own story as the legacy of slavery shapes her life, both during her time as a successful attorney and later as a historian seeking the past that haunts her.

Illustrated beautifully in black and white, Wake will take its place alongside classics of the graphic novel genre, like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. This story of a personal and national legacy is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake.

In Wake, Dr. Hall weaves together the process of historical discovery – detailing time spent in archives, attempting to cross-reference what fragments of source documents still exist, and the frustrations of accessing both – with the riveting histories of women-led slave revolts both on the Atlantic and in America. She combines a clear (and fascinating!) approach to the historical record with interpretation of what may have happened in the gaps – the untold stories – and her own experiences in academia as a Black woman investigating the horrific acts and legacies of slavery. Then she mixes in what she knows about her own ancestry. The resulting narrative is a fascinating intertwining of research and personal memoir that speaks directly to today’s issues of police brutality, protest, and white supremacy. 

“While the past is gone, we still live in its wake.”

What stood out most? I loved the insider's view of how anyone can go about “finding” women’s history. We are often told (or simply assume) that women were not instrumental in history because they are not mentioned in the historical record. But Hall breaks down that fallacy beautifully, showing that if you know how to search, if you look in the absences and margins, and dig, you can indeed find histories of women who changed the world, even in the driest and most difficult of documents. Her topic, of course, is women who led slave revolts. She refused to accept that it was always men who led slave revolts, and she was able to find evidence to support her hunch. 

One of the moments when I felt the most indignant about the content of this book (which after all would not exist without the inhumanity and banal evil of slavery) was when Dr. Hall was turned away from the archive at Lloyd’s of London. This former insurer of slave ship cargo (and now, just plain bank & insurer) cared (cares?) more about protecting its reputation than about the truth of the historical record. On their website they now claim to have taken responsibility and apologize for their part in the transatlantic slave trade in the wake of the George Floyd protests, but Hall points out that they care about profit and reputation than possibly connecting people who were forcibly stripped of their histories, culture, and lives with (any) closure. Hall is right to call them out, and I could feel the intensity of the moment when she recounted being escorted out of the Lloyd’s building by security deep in my chest. What cowards! 

Beyond the electrifying content, much of the success of a graphic novel depends on the interconnection of text and art. Hall and Martínez are a talented team – this story jumps off the page and into the light. The no-nonsense, realistic art style, in black pen on white background, puts the emphasis of the book on the very important content. That isn’t to say the art is neglected, no! There are feelings that are too much for words, and Martínez skillfully illustrates emotional, fraught, and frustrating moments so that the reader feels as if they are in them with the women of the story. The dust jacket is also gorgeous – with embossed layers, interesting fonts and illustration, and vivid color. 

In all, Wake is a powerful, instructive, and merciless look at the way history is made, recorded, found, and interpreted, and it is at the same time a very personal, familial story and a call to action. I felt deeply moved by this work, and I hope many will read and learn from it. 

Recommended for: fans of historical nonfiction and graphic novel memoirs, anyone interested in books that tie-in history and current issues for young readers (Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped, for instance), and those looking for beautifully-constructed narratives that challenge them as readers, and challenge accepted history!

good girls don't make history

While I was visiting upstate New York earlier this summer, I spent a day at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. It was powerful to experience the museum there, and visit the houses and places where Americans met and fostered a movement to win women the vote. What I appreciated most were the words of women long gone: women who believed with their hearts and backed up with their actions that change and progress were necessary, inevitable, and good. It was a pleasure to continue to think about those extraordinary women (and many more!) by reading Good Girls Don't Make History, a new graphic novel for young adults written by Elizabeth Kiehner, Kara Coyle, and Keith Olwell, and illustrated by Michaela Dawn and Mary Sanchez. 

History has rarely been told from a woman’s point of view. 

Good Girls Don’t Make History is an important graphic novel that amplifies the voices of female legends from 1840 to the present day. 
 
Reliving moments from the lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells, and Susan B. Anthony, these inspiring stories are boldly told from one of the most formative eras in women’s history—the fight for the vote in the United States.

The tale begins at a modern-day polling station in California with a mother and daughter voting together, then flashes back 180 years to the World Anti-Slavery Convention where the women's movement got its legendary start.
 
The twists and turns take readers across the country and through time, illuminating parallels between epic battles for liberty in the past and similar struggles for justice today. 
 
A powerful and important examination of some key figures in the ongoing fight for equality, Good Girls Don’t Make History’s accounts of bravery, perseverance and courage are truly inspiring for readers of any age.

Good Girls Don’t Make History isn’t quite nonfiction, but it reads like it. I say it isn’t, because it takes some creative license with the conversations historical figures may have had with each other, and it also includes some original characters for the sake of the narrative – to intro specific stories and vignettes. What it is: a collection of the experiences of influential women in the women’s suffrage movement. The book attempts to illustrate most of the important events from a history often excluded from mainstream U.S. History narratives. It does this by taking readers through a rough timeline of events in the suffrage movement, and by introducing many of the historical figures involved. The effect is a skim: for fully-fleshed out history and context (and to truly “meet” the characters and know all of their aims and dreams, and to read them in their own words), most readers will want to do additional research.

 

According to the forward, the team behind Good Girls Don’t Make History hopes to present women’s history that is glossed over in textbooks in an accessible, easily digestible format. The goal is to educate, to reveal hidden (or forgotten, or ignored) history, and to reach those who might not dive any deeper than their high school assignments for information about America’s past. While that is admirable, the book itself suffers from a lack of cohesive storytelling and from trying to pack too much history into a short volume. The sheer number of names, organizations, dates, and competing interests are confusing, even to someone with prior knowledge of the events covered.

 

One thing I appreciated about this graphic novel was that it complicated the view of suffragettes as heroes focused on equality for all. The book tells the story of Black women who were excluded from national suffrage organizations and points out that they did their own organizing as a result. Good Girls Don’t Make History also makes clear that many women of color did not receive the vote until many years after the passage of the 19th Amendment. This may, even in 2021, still be news to a lot of people.

 

Let’s talk about art! It was constructed digitally, with a watercolor-like look, in a palette of blues, reds, and yellows. My favorite page spreads were those with a short quote from an important woman in history one page, and a portrait of that woman on the facing page. I also appreciated the spreads with illustrated renderings of actual newspaper headlines from important dates and events related to woman’s suffrage. I would have liked to see a little more emotion in the art – the closeups of women’s facial expressions could have told more of the story instead of relying completely on the text or dialogue.

 

In all, Good Girls Don’t Make History is an introductory text that covers the timeline of an important history. While I didn’t find it compelling, I think it could spark conversation, especially if included in a library alongside graphic novels like Mikki Kendall’s Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists.

 

Recommended for: middle and high school libraries and classroom libraries, and those who may not know where to begin reading about the women’s suffrage movement.

 

Good Girls Don't Make History will be available from Wide Eyed Editions (Quarto) on August 31, 2021. 

Fine print: I received an e-ARC from the publisher for review consideration. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

the princess and the warrior

I go through cycles with book discovery. Sometimes I rely on recommendations from my book club, other times I pay attention to what the book blogging community seems to like, and occasionally I’ll go on a “throwback” kick and look up the backlist titles of favorite or new favorite authors. With Duncan Tonatiuh’s picture book The Princess and the Warrior, it was pure serendipity. I had planned to visit the Abrams booth at Book Expo America (an enormous annual book fair)(in other words, heaven!) to look for another title, and saw an image of the cover and note that Tonatiuh would be signing copies later. I quickly identified the story as fairy tale/myth, the art as traditional Central American, and was instantly sold.

Award-winning author Duncan Tonatiuh reimagines one of Mexico’s cherished legends. Princess Izta had many wealthy suitors but dismissed them all. When a mere warrior, Popoca, promised to be true to her and stay always by her side, Izta fell in love. The emperor promised Popoca if he could defeat their enemy Jaguar Claw, then Popoca and Izta could wed. When Popoca was near to defeating Jaguar Claw, his opponent sent a messenger to Izta saying Popoca was dead. Izta fell into a deep sleep and, upon his return, even Popoca could not wake her. As promised Popoca stayed by her side. So two volcanoes were formed: Iztaccíhuatl, who continues to sleep, and Popocatépetl, who spews ash and smoke, trying to wake his love.

The Princess and the Warrior is the story of Itza and Popoca, who according to legend lived long ago in the area near modern-day Mexico City. Princess Itza spent her days in the fields, teaching poetry to the workers. She had no interest in leaving her life to live in a palace, and so she was not swayed by the rich men who wanted to marry her for her beauty. Popoca, a simple warrior, won her heart with honesty and a promise of loyalty. In order to gain her father’s blessing, Popoca went out to fight a fierce enemy clan. When he was close to defeating them, Itza was tricked by the enemy’s messenger and fell into a sleep from which she never awakened. Popoca kept his promise to stay by Itza, and in time they turned into two volcanoes which look over Mexico City today.

I am HERE for fairy tale retellings and myths and legends, and this one is a great one, wrapped up in a beautiful package. Tonatiuh’s retelling includes not only a bittersweet story (ugh, the angst of lovers divided by deception!), but he also highlights the use of poetry, sprinkles Nahuatl and Spanish words throughout, and focuses on characters who defy gender stereotypes (Itza by valuing honesty and loyalty above riches and compliments, Popoca by accepting Itza as she is and promising to stay by her forever and then following through). Love story based on honesty, loyalty, and intelligence, featuring Native American characters, with a mythic background? It just hits on so many of my favorite things, and we’re not even counting the fact that I spent three years in grad school focused on Latin American history. I really like this book, friends.

On to the art! Which is basically a bonus for me at this point but for most people it can make/break a picture book. As you may be able to tell from the cover, the style pays homage to traditional pre-Columbian art, where people and animals are always depicted in profile. The digital collage method that Tonatiuh used highlights the texture of the textiles of the characters' dress (linen and other woven materials are distinguishable), and the colors and backdrops are bright and active. The style might take a minute to adjust to, but it enhances the story and adds another layer of context to the legend. There's plenty for little eyes to look at, and the Jaguar Claw warrior panels are particularly engaging.

In all, The Princess and the Warrior is a lovely picture book suitable for all ages. I plan to gift it to my young cousin who is obsessed with princesses, and I'll also strongly encourage my elementary school teacher friends to stock it in their classroom libraries. Diverse kidlit FTW!

Recommended for: fans of myth, legend, and pre-Columbian history, and anyone with a stake in supporting diverse children's literature and #ownvoices.

Fine print: I picked up a copy of this title for review consideration at BEA. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

when audrey met alice blog tour - author guest post

Author Rebecca Behrens is here today at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia with a guest post about famous women in history for Women's History Month.  First Daughter Alice Roosevelt is a character in her debut middle grade novel When Audrey Met Alice.  When Audrey Met Alice was released on February 4, 2014 by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky.  Check out the end of the post for the chance to win a copy!

Welcome Rebecca!

Rebecca Behrens grew up in Wisconsin, studied in Chicago, and now lives with her husband in New York City, where she works as a production editor for children’s books. Rebecca loves writing and reading about girls full of moxie and places full of history. When she’s not writing, you can find her running in the park, reading on a beach, or eating a doughnut. Visit her online at www.rebeccabehrens.com.

In writing When Audrey Met Alice, I loved getting to explore the eventful life of the real Alice Roosevelt. My favorite thing about writing historical fiction is delving into the lives of real, and sometimes famous, women like Alice. Here are a few more historical women whom I find particularly fascinating:

• Sacagawea: We know a lot about Lewis's and Clark's lives, but frustratingly little about the teenager who helped make it possible for them to reach the Pacific Ocean. Sacagawea was the daughter of a Shoshone chief, but she was kidnapped at age ten and later married to a French trader, Charbonneau. She was pregnant with their child during the Lewis and Clark expedition, giving birth at the winter camp with a rattlesnake-tail concoction to ease the pain. An interpreter and the only woman in the permanent party, Sacagawea helped negotiate peacefully with the tribes they met on their journey—including one led by her long-lost brother.

• Nellie Bly: Nellie was the 19^th-century journalist who famously traveled around the entire world in 72 days—at a time when most women wouldn’t do solo travel anywhere. She’s less famous for some of her investigative journalism, but it’s just as impressive. In 1887 she took on an undercover assignment for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, in which she faked a mental breakdown to get admitted to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York. She spent ten days in the hospital, successfully convincing all the clinicians that she was mad—and once she got out, she wrote a scathing expose of the abusive and negligent care women were receiving there. Her reporting was turned into the sensational book Ten Days in a Mad-House.

• Jackie Mitchell: Do you know who struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during one exhibition game in 1931? A seventeen-year-old girl named Jackie Mitchell. She was playing for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a minor-league team that offered her a contract after seeing her pitch for a local women’s team. There is plenty of controversy about her striking out two of the greatest players in history—some think it may have been a publicity stunt. Regardless, it’s amazing to think of a teen girl pitcher leading to Babe Ruth being pulled off the field in a hissy fit. The baseball commissioner canceled her contract shortly after, saying that the sport was “too strenuous” for women, but Jackie continued playing ball until 1937. Women were officially banned from signing baseball contracts in 1952.

• Julia Child: Julia brought the art of French cooking into countless American homes. But before she made her career in a (custom-designed, thanks to her height) kitchen, she was a spy! Too tall to enlist in the army, she joined the OSS (an intelligence agency that preceded the CIA). While later in her life she’d downplay her role as being that of a administrative clerk, her husband and others have confirmed that she oversaw information, much of it classified—and that her work was sometimes risky.

• Jane Goodall: As a child, Jane’s father gave her a toy chimpanzee, Jubilee. It sparked her interest in and love of animals. Jane went on to become an expert primatologist, and now knows more than probably anyone on earth about chimpanzees. She completed a famous 45-year study on chimpanzee social and family life at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, sharing with the world that other primates can show the personality, emotions, and rational thought that humans do. Today she advocates for animal rights and the environment through the Jane Gooddall Institute. And she still keeps her toy chimpanzee, Jubilee, on her dresser.

Thanks so much for sharing the stories of those women (and girls!) with us, Rebecca!  I'll look forward to seeing if any of them make an appearance in your next book.  And now... a giveaway!

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Would you like to win a copy of When Audrey Met Alice?  I'm offering one finished copy to a lucky winner.   To enter, simply fill out the FORM. Giveaway open internationally, will close on Monday, March 31st at 11:59pm EST.  Winner will be notified via email.  Good luck!

First daughter Audrey Rhodes can't wait for the party she has planned for Friday night. The decorations are all set and the pizza is on its way. But the Secret Service must be out to ruin her life, because they cancel at the last minute-citing security breach and squashing Audrey's chances for making any new friends. What good is being "safe and secure" if you can't have any fun?

Audrey is ready to give up and become a White House hermit, until she discovers Alice Roosevelt's hidden diary. The former first daughter gives Audrey a ton of ideas for having fun...and more problems than she can handle.

a greyhound of a girl

I go to Ireland in less than a month!  It’s going to be fabulous!  I can’t wait for September!  And how am I progressing on my goal of reading all those Irish middle grade and young adult books anywa…?  Oh dear.  I fell off the wagon.   I’ve been so busy planning my actual trip and trying out Irish pub recipes that I’ve failed to read kid lit by Irish authors.  EXCEPT!  Look at this: today’s review qualifies!  Roddy Doyle’s A Greyhound of a Girl is a lovely, haunting little book – a ghost story with heart.  Set in Ireland.  By an Irish author.  I’m saved!

Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky 12-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Granny is dying. But Granny can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Granny, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. The woman is the ghost of Granny’s own mother, who has come to help her daughter say good-bye to her loved ones and guide her safely out of this world. She needs the help of Mary and her mother, Scarlett, who embark on a road trip to the past. Four generations of women travel on a midnight car journey. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, one of them is driving, and one of them is just starting out.

Mary is a precocious girl whose best friend just moved away (such cruelty!) and whose beloved grandmother is in the hospital.  She's at the intersection of childhood and teenage angst, and she's that special mix of angry-at-the-world/loving/rude that goes along with upsetting life change.  Enter a ghost and the memories and perspectives of four generations of women in her family. The resulting interactions transform each woman, and show them the things that connect them all.

Doyle’s strength is his dialogue – it is funny, moving, and only contains the absolute necessary – there are no info-dumps or long, over-wrought passages full of description.  At the same time, this is not a spare, minimalist story – it is Just Right, as Goldilocks would say.  Really, beautifully, right.  It’s nominally fantasy (there’s a ghost!), but it reads a bit like Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls, the fantastical is woven into a very real, solid contemporary setting, with threads of the past woven in too with distinct narrators and voices.

In all, A Greyhound of a Girl is a lovely little book that impressed me with its depth, its sense of place, and its sentiment.

Recommended for: readers of all ages who appreciate funny, emotional fiction, fans of middle grade ghost stories, and anyone interested in Ireland as a setting for literary children’s fiction.

code name verity

My favorite film is an obscure one, and it is based on a novel by Sebastian Faulks (I’ve never read the book, actually).  Charlotte Gray features actress Cate Blanchett in the titular role as a Scottish woman who parachutes into France as a WWII intelligence operative, only to see her mission crumble around her.  It’s not a light or happy story, but it makes for a beautiful film, and is both visually and emotionally vivid.  Given that my favorite movie is about a woman sent to France as a spy, Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity was either going to succeed or fail in spectacular fashion.  My heart will never be the same, because Code Name Verity is PERFECT.

Oct. 11th, 1943—A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun. 

When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution. 

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Harrowing and beautifully written, Elizabeth Wein creates a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other. Code Name Verity is an outstanding novel that will stick with you long after the last page.

When a young Scottish woman is arrested by the Nazis for spying in France, her interrogation and confession become not only a desperate revelation of secrets that might keep her alive for a few days longer, but also an unspooling of her memories and friendship with Maddie, a female pilot and mechanic who should not have been flying to France.  In tense moments and amid various reprisals, her testimony shines as brightly as her spirit, and the reader cannot help but hope that somehow, someway she’ll make it home.

What can I say about this book without ruining it for another reader?  It is one of the most convincing, beautiful stories of female friendship that I have ever seen put to paper – it is straight magic in that regard.  Maddie and ‘Verity’ come alive in each other’s eyes; they are real, beautiful young women with hearts and heads, idiosyncrasies and weaknesses.  They are possessed of such courage, determination and ferocity that it is impossible at the end of it all to remember that they are only fictional characters. 

Let me try again to make this sound professional and impartial: Code Name Verity is a taut, moving novel of friendship forged in the midst of World War II, when girls were being called upon to pilot planes, take on intelligence missions and serve their country in ways they never had been before.  This is a story of the line between truth and lies, of the intensity of human existence, of the importance of the family you make for yourself, and a patchwork of those indelible moments that scar, mold, and change a person forever.  It is beautiful and dangerous and heart-rending.

Ah, I don’t think I succeeded.  Here are a few other things I’ll say: I’ve owned this book since May (thanks to @Ginger_Clark’s badgering and many, many retweeted rave reviews), but I held off on reading it until yesterday.  I missed my book club meeting in the afternoon to finish it without spoilers.  Charlotte Gray happened to be on television as I finished the book (so. many. coincidences!), and then this morning it was awarded a Printz Honor.  All those rave reviews, the awards?  Deserved.  Code Name Verity left me a sobbing wreck of a human being, in the best way.

Recommended for: everyone (well, everyone age twelve and over), but especially those partial to historical fiction, WWII accounts and aviatrixes, and anyone who appreciates a haunting and wonderful story.

home front girl (+ giveaway!)

As a kid I loved historical fiction, and especially WWII fiction.  I also read (for myself first and then for school) The Diary of Anne Frank and Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.  These nonfiction first-hand accounts showed not only the immediacy of war, but also the personalities of those who survived it and found ways to thrive amidst terrible events.  You had to be inspired by the intelligence and humanity of these women, writing and telling stories and falling in love or doing what was right, no matter how hard.  I’ve recently found another inspiring and entertaining first-hand account from the WWII era in Joan Wehlen Morrison’s Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America.

Wednesday, December 10, 1941 

“Hitler speaks to Reichstag tomorrow. We just heard the first casualty lists over the radio. … Lots of boys from Michigan and Illinois. Oh my God! … Life goes on though. We read our books in the library and eat lunch, bridge, etc. Phy. Sci. and Calculus. Darn Descartes. Reading Walt Whitman now.” 

This diary of a smart, astute, and funny teenager provides a fascinating record of what an everyday American girl felt and thought during the Depression and the lead-up to World War II. Young Chicagoan Joan Wehlen describes her daily life growing up in the city and ruminates about the impending war, daily headlines, and major touchstones of the era—FDR’s radio addresses, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Goodbye Mr. Chips and Citizen Kane, Churchill and Hitler, war work and Red Cross meetings. Included are Joan’s charming doodles of her latest dress or haircut reflective of the era. Home Front Girl is not only an entertaining and delightful read but an important primary source—a vivid account of a real American girl’s lived experiences.

Joan Wehlen Morrison was a girl of 14 in 1937 when this selection of her diary starts, and it continues through her adolescence until 1943, the year she married.  She writes of school assignments, reading, friends, family, boys, world events and the lead up to war and then the reality of it.  From her home in Chicago, the reader sees through Joan a vision of America during wartime as it was ‘at home.’  Her intellectual curiosity, humor and facility with language mark this diary not only as an important historical record, but a superb read as well.

Home Front Girl exists because Joan’s daughter, Susan Signe Morrison, found Joan’s diary amidst her papers after her death in 2010.  The book contains a portion of the entries she wrote in the years mentioned, only edited in punctuation and spelling (with a footnote here and there for the reader who doesn’t pick up on allusions or historical events).  There are snippets of Joan’s little illustrations, along with photos of her and examples of her writing.  Of course, not all diary entries are equal.  Joan wrote not only observations, but poetry, philosophical meanderings, calls to her generation – and about lipstick, bridge, and dates.  She was a very intelligent girl and then woman, and her mind was an active and beautiful thing, no matter her topic.

A reader cannot help but connect with Joan after only a few pages.  She is likeable, remarkably aware and observant, and no more self-obsessed than any other human being.  She chronicles her small triumphs and doings with style.  Her writing is elegant in stretches, naïve or quirky or snappy in others.  Joan’s reactions become the reader’s – her wonder at fresh-fallen snow or beautiful music, pondering the significance of a world event, seeing a film, recording her dreams.

While I think Joan’s diary is an important primary source (a first-person historical account), I think it is more interesting as literature.  I hope it will be read as a coming-of-age account during a historically significant moment.  And as a side note, my favorite entries were the ones written around Christmas each year (perhaps that’s inevitable as we are ourselves in the holiday time now).

Recommended for: anyone who has wanted to get inside the head of an American young person during WWII, and those who enjoyed The Diary of Anne Frank.

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Would you like to win a copy of Home Front Girl?  The publisher has kindly offered one hardcover copy to a reader with a US mailing address.  If you'd like to enter, simply fill out the FORM.  Giveaway will end on December 27th at 11:59pm EST.  Winner will be selected randomly and notified via email, book will be mailed by publisher.  Good luck!

Fine print: I received a copy of Home Front Girl for review from IPG and Chicago Review Press.  Giveaway book provided by the same.  I received no compensation for this post.

eat the city (+ giveaway)

When I left my graduate school program in history three years ago, my reading choices swung wildly from a steady diet of non-fiction to almost exclusively fiction (and YA fiction at that).  One exception to that general rule is food writing.  I follow food blogs, I read cookbooks, and I have been known to search out obscure magazines and read the latest volume of Best Food Writing on a whim.  Robin Shulman’s Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York pays homage to food and history and a great, metropolitan city.  It was therefore irresistible to me.

New York is not a city for growing and manufacturing food. It’s a money and real estate city, with less naked earth and industry than high-rise glass and concrete.  Yet in this intimate, visceral, and beautifully written book, Robin Shulman introduces the people of New York City  - both past and present - who do grow vegetables, butcher meat, fish local waters, cut and refine sugar, keep bees for honey, brew beer, and make wine. In the most heavily built urban environment in the country, she shows an organic city full of intrepid and eccentric people who want to make things grow.  What’s more, Shulman artfully places today’s urban food production in the context of hundreds of years of history, and traces how we got to where we are.

 In these pages meet Willie Morgan, a Harlem man who first grew his own vegetables in a vacant lot as a front for his gambling racket. And David Selig, a beekeeper in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn who found his bees making a mysteriously red honey. Get to know Yolene Joseph, who fishes crabs out of the waters off Coney Island to make curried stews for her family. Meet the creators of the sickly sweet Manischewitz wine, whose brand grew out of Prohibition; and Jacob Ruppert, who owned a beer empire on the Upper East Side, as well as the New York Yankees.

Eat the City is about how the ability of cities to feed people has changed over time. Yet it is also, in a sense, the story of the things we long for in cities today: closer human connections, a tangible link to more basic processes, a way to shape more rounded lives, a sense of something pure. With wit and insight, Eat the City shows how in places like New York, people have always found ways to use their collective hunger to build their own kind of city.

In Eat the City, Robin Shulman breaks down what would be an insurmountable task (chronicling the history of food production in New York and connecting it to the present) into personal stories, tidbits of history, and deep local research.  She takes the tone of a journalist and dives not only into the lives of current New Yorkers, but into the radio, magazines, newspapers and records of the past.  Of course, in a city the size of New York, there is no ‘one’ history of food.  But Shulman takes the reader on a far-reaching tour that seems as though it must touch every corner, and the result is a new appreciation for food and its varied history, and for what human beings can do in an urban environment.

Shulman creates a personal connection between the reader and food history, and allows a look into past lives through creative description and research.  That descriptiveness, while at times overdone, often put the reader IN the scene – in the butcher shop or on the rooftop.  That is no mean feat.  

Eat the City should appeal to all readers, because food is universal.  That said, it will appeal most to foodies, hipsters, and anyone with a connection to the food chain in New York, even if it is just a delicious meal in one of the neighborhoods that Shulman mentions.  The ‘chapters’ on honey, meat, vegetables, fish, sugar, beer, and wine make for accessible reading.  The narrative as it is, typically focused on one person in the present combined with many lives in the past, connects present reality and a world stretching hundreds of years into the past.

Though I enjoyed the book and found its many stories delicious, uplifting and astonishing by turns, I found that some sections were stronger than others.  Honey and vegetables were two robust chapters, while the one on fish came off a bit as preachy, and parts of wine sounded to this ear like an old man’s tall tale, undiluted.  In addition, I was a little bit dismayed to see that this history of New York’s food production is, overall, a man’s story.  I can’t help thinking that there must be more women’s stories in the city, and I was dismayed to see the central lives and focus given solely to men.

Whatever I found to criticize is balanced by the fact that not only can I give this book to half of my relatives for the holidays, I also enjoyed it, and the writing made me very, very hungry.  Shulman has a way with words, with description, with personal history and (unsurprisingly) with food.  A bit of the essence of Eat the City, from page 64:

“Every human being is a museum piece.  Along with DNA, we inherit the language, knowledge, and values of the people who raised us, and those who raised them.  Among the most profound and unshakable parts of our inheritance is food.  Recipes from the Old Country often last generations, longer than language, sometimes longer even than ritual and religion.”

Eat the City is an introduction and invitation for those living in an urban area to ask, “Where did this meal come from, and what is my city’s history?”

Recommended for: foodies, food historians (amateur or otherwise), urbanites, devoted New York City residents or those who merely curious, and anyone with an eye and ear for description and a taste for food.  So, basically, everyone.

Interested in other food-related posts?  Check out Beth Fish Reads’ Weekend Cooking.

Fine print: I received a copy of Eat the City for review.

dangerous neighbors

I thought I was sitting down to read a historical novel, something to do with the Philadelphia Centennial. I thought I knew what to expect. But I didn’t foresee such beauty in the language, such mastery over the written word. I didn’t know I’d want to reread paragraphs to more fully appreciate their poetry. I didn’t realize that Beth Kephart would make me shed tears over hope lost and found again.

Could any two sisters be more tightly bound together than the twins, Katherine and Anna? Yet love and fate intervene to tear them apart. Katherine's guilt and sense of betrayal leaves her longing for death, until a surprise encounter and another near catastrophe rescue her from a tragic end.

Set against the magical kaleidoscope of the Philadelphia Centennial fair of 1876, National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart's book conjures the sweep and scope of a moment in history in which the glowing future of a nation is on display to the disillusioned gaze of a girl who has determined that she no longer has a future. The tale is a pulse-by-pulse portrait of a young heroine's crisis of faith and salvation in the face of unbearable loss.

I’d heard about Beth Kephart. When I started blogging and then following other book blogs, I noticed people talking about her and her books. Still, I didn’t pick one up. I didn’t feel a sense of urgency. That has definitely changed – Ms. Kephart is going to go straight into the category of ‘read the entire backlist!’ And mind that exclamation point while you’re at it!

True confession: I’d rather avoid grief and sadness. I know that’s pretty human of me, but I take it farther. If I know ahead of time that a book or a film is going to be melancholy, I avoid it. I’m a bit of a coward. And so, although Dangerous Neighbors sat on my nightstand for over a month, I was hesitant to pick it up. After all, it says right there in the blurb that fate and unbearable loss (hello, tragedy!) are in the picture. But the cover artwork kept calling to me, and then I actually read the first couple of pages. That’s all it took – I was hooked.

There’s a dangerous sort of beauty in Kephart’s prose. It’s complex, it’s beautiful, and it will suck you into its emotion and obsession. Dangerous Neighbors is a story of twin sisters growing up in Philadelphia. It’s the story of a city dressed up in celebration. At the same time, it is a tale of loss and grief and change. It’s tragedy on one side, and redemption (of sorts) on another. I really can’t do justice to it – only to say that it is heartbreaking and also breathtaking.

Another confession: It turns out that I'm not going to write about the plot, or even very deeply about the characters in this review. It’s not that I don’t want to, you understand. It’s just that whenever I start a paragraph, I somehow end up with sentences crowded with words like ‘literary’ and ‘atmospheric.’ I was deeply impressed by the description and the emotion in this little volume. And so I’ll leave it at that, and let you to discover the ‘doings’ on your own. I strongly suggest that you go out and get a copy NOW. If, you know, it seems like your thing. Or even if it’s not.

Recommended for: fans of literary fiction, spectacular young adult literature, history, tragedy, deliverance, and descriptions so well rendered that they seem tinged with the magical.

I received an ARC of Dangerous Neighbors for review from Winsome Media Communications.

history and the half moon

I like history. In fact, I studied history in graduate school for three years. I don’t, as a general rule, like to read history for fun. There are a couple of exceptions, and I’m actually quite fond of historical fiction. It’s just that I read so much academically that I needed an escape in my pleasure reading time. BUT, I was offered an ARC (advance reading copy) of a newly-released historical non-fiction book, and found myself enjoying it (rather a lot, too!). Lesson: rules are made to be broken. Or something.

Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage That Redrew the Map of the New World is rather self-explanatory. It’s about Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage – the one during which he hijacked his Dutch-sponsored ship and instead of sailing to Russia, went to North America and ‘discovered’ and mapped the Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River.

The year 2009 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 adventure that put New York on the map.

Hudson was commissioned by the mighty Dutch East India Company to find a northeastern passage over Russia to the lucrative ports of China. But the inscrutable Hudson, defying his orders, turned his ship around and instead headed west—far west—to the largely unexplored coastline between Spanish Florida and the Grand Banks.

Once there, Hudson began a seemingly aimless cruise—perhaps to conduct an espionage mission for his native England—but eventually dropped anchor off Coney Island. Hudson and his crew were the first Europeans to visit New York in more than eighty years, and soon went off the map into unexplored waters.

Hudson’s discoveries reshaped the history of the new world, and laid the foundation for New York to become a global capital. Hunter has shed new light on this rogue voyage with unprecedented research. Painstakingly reconstructing the course of the Half Moon from logbooks and diaries, Hunter offers an entirely new timeline of Hudson’s passage based on innovative forensic navigation, as well as original insights into his motivations.

Half Moon offers a rich narrative of adventure and exploration, filled with international intrigue, backstage business drama, and Hudson’s own unstoppable urge to discover. This brisk tale re-creates the espionage, economics, and politics that drove men to the edge of the known world and beyond.

I don’t think I can offer too much more in the way of ‘summary’ – that description really does the book justice. All that’s left is to say what I liked and why, and also offer an abbreviated academic critique (it’s the only way I know to handle historical non-fiction – apologies in advance!).

What I liked: though the source documentation is pretty sketchy for anything except the actual voyage logs (I mean, it WAS 1609, after all!), Hunter’s done a great job of incorporating all of the ‘what ifs’ of the situation. Through intensive period research and investigation of any and all possible players in the situation, combined with an understanding of the political climate of the time and possible Hudson motivations, he’s created a believable narrative. He takes us through the steps of the voyage: pre-voyage commissioning and the goals of the Dutch East India Company, then the day-to-day progress, what it meant in the context of previous information about North America, and then the eventual unraveling of the voyage, even as fresh discoveries and contact with natives escalated. The book does not end with the end of the voyage, however. Hunter instead continues Hudson’s biography and chronicles his eventual demise, the aftereffects of the mutiny that marooned him as a castaway, and then the final remembrances of Hudson through Dutch, English and eventually American imaginings.

Though Hunter is very intentional and methodical throughout the narrative, it’s never boring or dry. Enough variables are at play, enough whispers of hope and slivers of personality visible in the documentation that the reader is kept guessing as to the outcome, Hudson's next act, and the success of the voyage. I thought it a remarkably accessible nautical history. That’s not to say it’s light reading. It’s substantive in content, and it takes concentration and dedication to get through. But it’s going to appeal equally to the informed public audience AND the academic market.

Critiques: After making the claim that Half Moon will appeal to the academic as well as the amateur history buff, I have to qualify the statement. Historians (or at least the ones I trained with) are obsessed with order, with correct documentation, and with full disclosure of that documentation. In other words, they want footnotes. Extensive ones. Citing where and when all information was got, and especially if any of it was translated, and could you just give us the original in the original language please so we can check it ourselves and make sure you got it right? AHEM. So though the research is thorough, the findings qualified and the narrative interesting…there will be those who decry the lack of ‘research notes’ telling them exactly how they may replicate Mr. Hunter’s work. Be assured, they will still read it. And possibly learn something. I know I did, and I used to specialize in the history of the early 17th century Americas myself. That is all for the critique section.

The author, Douglas Hunter, has previously written about Hudson’s earlier voyages and co-authored a book on yacht design. He lives in Ontario, and is an experienced sailor. It fits, I think – sailor/writer interested in Henry Hudson, one of the most influential navigators for North American history.

I recommend this book to anyone who finds themselves watching The History Channel at random times, especially if they like the nautical bits. It’s not light, and it’s not sex or court intrigue, but it IS the fascinating story of the unique motivations and a possible tapestry of events, knowledge and luck that led to the discovery of an important place at an opportune time. History addicts, enjoy!