The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

Hello my lovely readers! I'm burning through books lately. My immediate TBR list sits at 15 that I'm hoping to get through by the end of the year! This book was one of them.  Let's get into it!

P.S. I have a MUCH larger TBR (aka my personal library and my local library) that I plan on tackling next year. 

SYNOPSIS
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.

Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.

As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.

Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin

Hello my lovely readers! I'm really making headway on my 10 Books 10 Decades Challenge  just before the year end. I only have two more books to read and I'll have completed it. This was my first James Baldwin read and wow...what a book. Let's get into it. 

SYNOPSIS
Baldwin's classic novel opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Originally published in 1953, Baldwin said of his first novel, " Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else."

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Hello my lovely readers!

Another re-read. Another book in my 10 Books 10 Decades Challenge. Another example of why I love  revisting books long after I read them as a teenager. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Life wasn't easy for Celie. But she knew how to survive, needing little to get by.

Then her husband's lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled into her world and gave Celie the courage to ask for more - to laugh, to play, and finally - to love.

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Hello my lovely readers! I was duped again by this author. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.

There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.

When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Hello my lovely readers! This was a re-read for me as I decided to make it part of my 10 Books, 10 Decades Challenge. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North.

Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs' harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like "garret" attached to her grandmother's porch.

A rare firsthand account of a courageous woman's determination and endurance, this inspirational story also represents a valuable historical record of the continuing battle for freedom and the preservation of family.

Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou

Hello my lovely readers! I'm slowly making my way through all seven of Maya Angelou's autobiographies and this is book number two. It's also part of my 10 Books, 10 Decades Challenge. Let's get into it!  

SYNOPSIS
In Gather Together in My Name, Maya Angelou continues her stunning autobiography. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, passionate and mellow, she fills the pages with both wisdom and wonder as she brings us along in her struggle and dance through life.

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Hello my lovely readers! I don't usually read memoirs, but I had to get my hands on this one. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now.

In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.

Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.

Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore by Char Adams

 
Hello my lovely readers! I ate this book up! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Black-Owned celebrates small businesses and their role in community building—and in liberation. Journalist Char Adams reports on how Black bookstores have always been centerpieces of resistance. This is a story of activism, espionage, violence, and perseverance. The first Black-owned bookstore was opened by an abolitionist in 1834. In the twentieth century, civil rights and Black Power activists started a Black bookstore boom nationwide. Malcolm X would deliver speeches at the doorstep of the National Memorial African Book Store in Harlem, a place dubbed “Speakers Corner.” Soon many bookstores became targets of the FBI and local law enforcement alike.

Amid these struggles, bookshops were also places of Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstore and Maya Angelou even became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. Now a new generation of Black activists are joining the radical bookstore tradition, with rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles. And several stores made national headlines in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement. Today finds Black-owned bookshops in a position of strength—and as Adams will make clear, in an era of increasing division, their presence is needed now more than ever.

On Air: The Rise and Tumult of NPR by Steve Oney

Hello my lovely readers! Another book on journalism...let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Founded in 1970, NPR is America’s most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and This American Life that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. NPR and its hosts are a cultural force and a trusted voice, and they have created a mode of journalism and storytelling that helps Americans understand the world in which we live. In On Air, a book fourteen years in the making, journalist Steve Oney tells the dramatic history of this institution, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents (Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Ira Glass, Cokie Roberts, and many others) and the rise and fall and occasional rise again of brilliant and sometimes venal executives. It depicts how NPR created a medium for extraordinary journalism—in which reporters and producers use microphones as paintbrushes and the voices of people around the world as the soundtrack of stories both global and local.

Featuring details on the controversial firing of Juan Williams, the sloppy dismissal of Bob Edwards, and a $230 million bequest by Joan B. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonalds, On Air also chronicles NPR’s daring shift into the digital world and its early embrace of podcasting formats, establishing the network as a formidable media empire. Fascinating, revelatory, and irresistibly dishy, this is a riveting account of NPR’s unlikely launch, chaotic ascent, and ultimate triumph—a must-read for anyone interested in the history of public radio and its impact on American culture.

In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press by Katherine Corcoran

Hello my lovely readers! This was one of the book selections for the Morbidly Curious Book Club. I don't follow the book selections each month. I usually just find what interests me from their list for the year and put it on my TBR list. This book really piqued by interest, since I am a journalist and we all know I love a good journalism book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

Regina Martínez was no stranger to retaliation. A journalist out of Mexico's Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, Regina's stories for the magazine Proceso laid out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics. She was barred from press conferences, and copies of Proceso often disappeared before they made the newsstands. In 2012, shortly after Proceso published an article on corruption and two Veracruz politicians, and the magazine went missing once again, she was bludgeoned to death in her bathroom. The message was clear: No journalist in Mexico was safe.

Katherine Corcoran, then leading the Associated Press coverage of Mexico, admired Regina Martínez's work. Troubled by the news of her death, Corcoran journeyed to Veracruz to find out what had happened. Regina hadn't even written the controversial article. But did she have something else that someone didn't want published? Once there, Katherine bonded with four of Regina's grief-stricken mentees, each desperate to prove who was to blame for the death of their friend. Together they battled cover-ups, narco-officials, red tape, and threats to sift through the mess of lies-and discover what got Regina killed.