Cash Money Records taking over for the '99 & the 2000, reading lists and more
This week has been a pretty interesting week. My parents have been here back to back: first my mom, then my dad and stepmom which has been love. This week, thanks to hearing Brandy can't let go of the "Boy is Mine" beef and listening to the Nod's podcast oral history of "Knuck if You Buck," I've been feeling pretty nostalgic.
Playlists for this week:
Since I'm in a nostalgic mood, I included two of my favorite playlists that I've created. One is a throwback of all the 90's and early 2000's jams like B2K and my old school boo Bow Wow. The other playlist, I call Players & Cognac because it's for our parents or grandparents full of Cameo, LTD, Teena Marie and more.
Summer Reading List:
1. The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton
In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.
This book was actually added to Oprah's Book Club, and you can read her interview with Anthony Ray Hinton here.
2. They Come in All Colors by Malcolm Hansen
Malcolm Hansen arrives on the scene as a bold new literary voice with his stunning debut novel. Alternating between the Deep South and New York City during the 1960s and early '70s, They Come in All Colors follows a biracial teenage boy who finds his new life in the big city disrupted by childhood memories of the summer when racial tensions in his hometown reached a tipping point. It's 1968 when fourteen-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City’s most prestigious boys’ schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey’s white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River.
But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself on academic probation and facing legal charges. With his promising school career in limbo, he begins examining his current predicament at Claremont through the lens of his childhood memories of growing up in Akersburg during the Civil Rights Movement—and the chilling moments leading up to his and his mother's flight north. With Huey’s head-shaking antics fueling this coming-of-age narrative, the story triumphs as a tender and honest exploration of race, identity, family, and homeland.
3. Love War Stories by Ivelisse Rodriguez
Puerto Rican girls are brought up to want one thing: true love. Yet they are raised by women whose lives are marked by broken promises, grief, and betrayal. While some believe that they’ll be the ones to finally make it work, others swear not to repeat cycles of violence. This collection documents how these “love wars” break out across generations as individuals find themselves caught in the crosshairs of romance, expectations, and community.
4. The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat
A haunting story of fatherhood, national identity, and what it means to be an immigrant in America today, Nafkote Tamirat's The Parking Lot Attendant explores how who we love, the choices we make, and the places we’re from combine to make us who we are. The story begins on an undisclosed island where the unnamed narrator and her father are the two newest and least liked members of a commune that has taken up residence there. Though the commune was built on utopian principles, it quickly becomes clear that life here is not as harmonious as the founders intended. After immersing us in life on the island, our young heroine takes us back to Boston to recount the events that brought her here. Though she and her father belong to a wide Ethiopian network in the city, they mostly keep to themselves, which is how her father prefers it.
This detached existence only makes Ayale’s arrival on the scene more intoxicating. The unofficial king of Boston’s Ethiopian community, Ayale is a born hustler—when he turns his attention to the narrator, she feels seen for the first time. Ostensibly a parking lot attendant, Ayale soon proves to have other projects in the works, which the narrator becomes more and more entangled in to her father’s growing dismay. By the time the scope of Ayale’s schemes—and their repercussions—become apparent, our narrator has unwittingly become complicit in something much bigger and darker than she ever imagined.
5. How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs
Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret—Alexia Arthurs navigates these tensions to extraordinary effect in her debut collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.
In “Light Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands,” an NYU student befriends a fellow Jamaican whose privileged West Coast upbringing has blinded her to the hard realities of race. In “Mash Up Love,” a twin’s chance sighting of his estranged brother—the prodigal son of the family—stirs up unresolved feelings of resentment. In “Bad Behavior,” a mother and father leave their wild teenage daughter with her grandmother in Jamaica, hoping the old ways will straighten her out. In “Mermaid River,” a Jamaican teenage boy is reunited with his mother in New York after eight years apart. In “The Ghost of Jia Yi,” a recently murdered international student haunts a despairing Jamaican athlete recruited to an Iowa college. And in “Shirley from a Small Place,” a world-famous pop star retreats to her mother’s big new house in Jamaica, which still holds the power to restore something vital.
6. From the Corner of the Oval: A Memoir by Beck Dorey-Stein
In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein is working five part-time jobs and just scraping by when a posting on Craigslist lands her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate D.C. outsider, she joins the elite team who accompany the president wherever he goes, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forges friendships with a dynamic group of fellow travelers—young men and women who, like her, leave their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president.
As she learns to navigate White House protocols and more than once runs afoul of the hierarchy, Beck becomes romantically entangled with a consummate D.C. insider, and suddenly the political becomes all too personal. Against the backdrop of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters, and, in the process, discovering her voice.
Other Reads:
I’ve really enjoyed reading and learning more about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and this is a great profile of her on my favorite site, The Lily. “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office. I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family--mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx. I was born in a place where your zip code determines your destiny.”
Interesting read on the hierarchy of a Nigerian Wedding: “Nigerians can be superstitious. We are always on the hunt for good fortune, and so we can attach cosmic significance to the markedly mundane. Catching the bouquet has come to symbolize catching your blessing, i.e., catching your husband. At one wedding, when the emcee noticed that the single women weren’t in the mood to play, he resorted to prophecy: “If you’re a single lady here and you don’t come out in the next ten seconds, you will never marry.”
SheaMoisture Founder Launches $100 Million fund for women entrepreneurs at Essence Festival “When you talk to a group of white, affluent male investors and tell them you’re investing in women of color, the first thing that comes out is, ‘Oh, that’s really nice of you. That’s a great mission.’ The immediately correlate us to needing a helping hand.” - Arlan Hamilton
The 'Bold Type' on Freeform is one of my favorite shows. Sadly, I have no one to discuss it with because none of my friends watch it, but I literally binged the whole first season in a day. The show features three best friends who worked together at a magazine called Scarlet which I assume is kind of like a mix of Teen Vogue and Cosmo, and they all have interesting relationship dynamics. Read this piece about the show and one of the main characters, Kat. Also, if you watch it - let's discuss.
I love companies that encourage their employees to have side hustles and explore their creativity. Shout out to MailChimp for being one of those companies.
Shameless self plug, I had a chance to interview one of my favorite Instagrammers, Joanne Encarnacion, aka GoFitJo for the Every Girl. You should read it, and share it with your network.
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