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If you have made it here then I want to direct you to my newer improved blog over on wordpress (New blog.) I just want to thank you guys for the journey.....looking forward to new adventures!

An Old Story By Tracy K Smith

An Old Story 

BY TRACY K. SMITH

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. 

 

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful 

Dream. The worst in us having taken over 

And broken the rest utterly down. 

 

                                                                 A long age 

Passed. When at last we knew how little 

Would survive us—how little we had mended 

 

Or built that was not now lost—something 

Large and old awoke. And then our singing 

Brought on a different manner of weather. 

 

Then animals long believed gone crept down 

From trees. We took new stock of one another. 

We wept to be reminded of such color. 

Book Review : Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

Taiye Selasi
Synopsis: Ghana Must Go tells the story of Folsade Savage
who leaves Lagos for Pennsylvania she meets her Ghananian husband , Kweku Sai, a brilliant surgeon.  Fola, as she is called gives up her dream of going to law school in order to raise their four children.  After losing his job, Kweku abandons them all and returns to Ghana; When the book opens the family has splintered with no one in regular communication. The news of Kweku's death in Accra brings the five remaining Sais together for a bittersweet trip to his homeland. (Source: NY Times Review)

Book Review: Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

Fijrst Impressions:
: Haunting . It felt like we were always on the periphery of disaster, everything was etched in sadness.
I like how the author compared the girls coming of age to a jazz ensemble. The progression  of the girls friendship seemed , in the beginning, melodic , inevitable ,right.


The death of the August's mother permeates everything in the story like being in a smoke filled room you cannot get away from the obvious. A young girl will be deeply affected by the absence of the mother. Her brother and father cope with the  Muslim faith, she on her newfound friends.  The author did an excellent job of foreshadowing that something terrible was going to happen to Gigi, but not giving away what . This unshakeable need to know what happens to Gigi propels you , the reader, into the story. I noticed that there were brief discussions of how  of how other cultures handled the death of their loved ones which I found interesting.


The story shows us how sometimes we are able to overcome situations that are soul crushing and surmount them , like a phoenix  rising from the ashes.  Another thing I thought the author did an excellent job was giving you an up close look of poverty and how it feels to not have enough. The sense of shame having to stand in line for free food. I found that part relatable even though it is set in the 1970's. The brutality of being poor is still the same. I gave the book 5 stars out of 5