QUICK REVIEWS pt XIII

Hello my lovely readers! It's time for some quick reviews! Let's get into it.

The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil
On the outside, Dionne Daphne had it all: being the beauty editor at a prestigious New York magazine, a boyfriend who could have been plucked out of its model pages, the social life of the upper echelon, and a girlhood steeped in debutant balls. But when her ex-boyfriend returns and delivers life-threatening news, her life falls apart and unearths deep seated secrets.

*This was a HEAVY read. But the author does a great job at making it digestible. (I mean...come on, it's Mara!) 3 out of 5 stars.

They Stole a City by Lauren Collins
In this ambitious and groundbreaking history, Lauren Collins weaves together stories of four Wilmington, North Carolina, families over 125 years to create a full accounting of the long-term effects of the 1898 white supremacist massacre and coup and its critical role in subverting American democracy.

*This was an excellent read that follows up on the aftermath of 1898. It was incredibly well done and a great "sequel" to Wilmington's Lie. Deducted a star for censoring the word "nigger" in historical context. 4 out of 5 stars.

Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife by Imogen Willetts

Hello my lovely readers! This was a fun read! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
There is a specific energy to a Saturday night. Cafés and shops close their shutters. Market traders dismantle their wares. “The air begins to tingle”, as John Dos Passos wrote about ’20s New York. “If you drink enough, talk enough, walk far enough, the train of magical events will begin.”

Nightlife began in the 17th century, when Edo and London built commercial environments designed for after-dark hedonism. Since then, nightlife has been at the frontier of popular culture and self-expression. It has defined cities and generations, bred moral panics and iconic countercultures, and gone from demimonde to global phenomenon, yet its sweeping history has been left untold.

Up All Night provides a guided tour of history’s most captivating nights out—from the luxurious pleasure quarters of samurai-era Japan to the saloons of turn-of-the-century New Orleans and the speakeasies of twenties Harlem. Whisking readers through underground dives, mega-clubs, raves and experimental cabarets, cultural historian Imogen Willetts takes us behind the velvet rope of history's hottest nightspots to show how they changed the world around us.

City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi

 

Hello my lovely readers! This was an anticipated read for me, so I'm glad I finally got my hands on this! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

In February 2020 the US began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly twenty years of occupation. A whole generation of Afghan women had been born during that time—women who had grown up in relative peace, gone to school, entered the professions, even served in the army and Parliament. The women of Afghanistan watched as the Taliban filled the streets again. They knew everything was about to change.

In the bustling, cosmopolitan city of Kabul, women are TV newscasters, shop owners, doctors, teachers, lawyers, even soldiers. They include Marjan, who fought with the Afghan army, and will risk everything to keep her daughter Hawa safe. In her earlier days Marjan was called Rahima and had lived the life of a bacha posh—a girl raised as a boy until she came of age. Forced into an early marriage, Rahima took the name Marjan when she fled her warlord husband. She’s created a whole new life for herself, one she will not give up easily.

So has Soraya, who defiantly wore red lipstick as she led the army’s all-female combat force over the objections of her upper-class family. Soraya’s now a wanted woman whose brother may choose not to shelter her from the Taliban. What will become of her? Or Mina, a journalist and broadcaster whose beautiful face is known to everyone in Kabul—including the new regime?

Fight or flight? Or find a third way? One thing is for certain: none of these women will meekly accept her fate.

Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst

Hello my lovely readers! Ever read a book that sounded PERFECT but then was complete let down? Yup, that's this book for me. Let's get into it. 

SYNOPSIS
Five friends from university; seven summer days in a cabin in rural Denmark. A chance to swim, sunbathe, flirt, read and mess around like in the old days.

At least that’s what Sylvia had hoped. But when her friends arrive with real jobs, kids and partners, Sylvia is left wondering what happened to the radical ways of living they embraced at university. Worse, Esben and Karen announce their plan to get married at the end of the week, striking a blow to Sylvia’s simmering, decades-long crush on Esben – a crush that her monogamous girlfriend Charlie would definitely not approve of.

Whilst the group swim, sunbathe, cook and flirt their way to midsummer night, desire and anxiety swirl in equal measure. As the wedding day approaches, will they achieve their arcadian dreams or will everything come tumbling down?

The Make-Believe by Hannah Murray

 

Hello my lovely readers! It's been a SLOWWWW month, reading wise. This is actually my first book completed this month (I finished the Frederick Douglass bio at the end of July). Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
From her breakout role as a teen actor on the cult TV show Skins, to critically acclaimed movies, to the smash hit Game of Thrones, Hannah Murray built a career in Hollywood cracking open her own psychological foundations and pushing her body to its limits. But one day, the line between make-believe and reality disappeared, and she found herself confined to a psych ward, dangerously in love with the leader of a shadowy wellness organization, and believing in magic. How she got there—and how she managed to rebuild her life—is the heart of this gripping, powerful memoir that asks: How far would you go to find enlightenment?

For Hannah, it was deceptively easy to fall down the rabbit hole. As she struggled with her mental health, she sought help in the form of wellness and self-care. After an eye-opening session with an energy healer, Hannah was introduced to an organization that she was told would bring her further spiritual rewards. Enthralled by its charismatic leader and his teachings of a world filled with magic and meaning, Hannah found herself sucked into a rigorous practice involving high control and financial outlay. And as her sense of reality began to slip, eventually resulting in her hospitalization and diagnosis with bipolar disorder, she realized she had fully ceded control of her life to this mysterious organization. And, she thought, as she reckoned with the Hollywood career that conditioned her to give her body and soul over to others, maybe she’d been doing that her whole life.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

 

Hello my lovely readers! What a mammoth of a book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass spoke widely, often to large crowds, using his own story to condemn slavery. He broke with Garrison to become a political abolitionist, a Republican, and eventually a Lincoln supporter. By the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Douglass became the most famed and widely travelled orator in the nation. He denounced the premature end of Reconstruction and the emerging Jim Crow era. In his unique and eloquent voice, written and spoken, Douglass was a fierce critic of the United States as well as a radical patriot. He sometimes argued politically with younger African-Americans, but he never forsook either the Republican party or the cause of black civil and political rights. In this remarkable biography, David Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historian have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass's newspapers. Blight tells the fascinating story of Douglass's two marriages and his complex extended family. Douglass was not only an astonishing man of words, but a thinker steeped in Biblical story and theology. There has not been a major biography of Douglass in a quarter century. David Blight's Frederick Douglass affords this important American the distinguished biography he deserves.

Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy David Zucchino

 

Hello my lovely readers! This has been on my shelf for a while and I'm glad I finally got to it. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state--and the South--white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.

In 1898, in response to a speech calling for white men to rise to the defense of Southern womanhood against the supposed threat of black predators, Alexander Manly, the outspoken young Record editor, wrote that some relationships between black men and white women were consensual. His editorial ignited outrage across the South, with calls to lynch Manly.

But North Carolina's white supremacist Democrats had a different strategy. They were plotting to take back the state legislature in November "by the ballot or bullet or both," and then use the Manly editorial to trigger a "race riot" to overthrow Wilmington's multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state's largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories.

With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November eighth. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks--and sympathetic whites--were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests.

This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U.S. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a "race riot," as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists.