Tagged with person of color

Extraordinary, Ordinary People is a great title, but inapt for this book. Toward the end Rice quotes the Greatest American Hero theme song "Believe or not, I'm walking on air." (YouTube link) I think a more accurate title in the same vein, would have been "Believe it or not, it's just me." Whether you love or hate her (and I'm in the latter camp, though I'd probably say "fear/revile," rather than "hate"), you have to acknowledge that Rice is in no way ordinary. Most people know she excelled in piano, but did you know she was also a competitive figure skater in her adolescence? Ignoring her political accomplishments (or crimes, if that's how you see them), she is a superstar solely as an academic, having achieved the rank of full professor and provost at Stanford University before she was 40. Also, although Rice clearly loves and appreciates her deceased parents and extended family, this is not a memoir of family; it's an autobiography from birth (preceded with a little family history) to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in favor of W. To me it's also interesting as a memoir of the Birmingham Black middle class.

I'm not sure whether to class this book as memoir or essays. It's a series of essays about the author's family and about herself. It's person-focused, rather than linear. Normally I'm wary of that sort of thing, but I didn't mind it here. Njeri is a journalist, so each piece could appear by itself in a magazine. With the context of all of the other pieces, though, you get a more complete picture of the author than you would otherwise. Her family is huge, and she has a lot of facets to her own personality to explore. Still, there are some commonalities. Njeri is full of heart, also moxie. She is not uncritical of her family and herself, but she also shows a lot of love and understanding, even for the broken parts of her family and herself.

Helga Crane, the protagonist of Quicksand is never happy in one place for long. Through her eyes the reader gets to experience life as a light-skinned African-American in the south, Chicago, Harlem during the Renaissance, Europe, and then the south again. Although the book takes place mostly in Crane's 20s, I see it as something of a coming-of-age novel.

A 12-year-old is ashamed of her trauma onset epilepsy and is aided in coming to terms with it by a fugly one-eyed prizefighter. I wanted to like this book about a pre-teen Mexican-American girl named Chula more than I did. It's an award winning book, so I blame my lack of enthusiasm on my documented difficulty with the tween genre. This was a book club selection, so maybe I'll understand what I missed when I discuss it with La Celiacita. She'll be able to school me, I'm sure because getting some extra education in children's lit.