.

“When you deal with a person who’s experiencing dementia, you can see where they’re struggling with knowledge [. . . ] You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they’re trying to remember. … What I saw in my mom’s eyes and in some of her expressions, was her saying, ‘I want to understand it; I want to understand what you’re saying; I want to enter into a dialogue with you; I want things to be the way they were.’ That’s the crux of the novel: What would you do to have things the way they were?” ― Walter Mosley on The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

My Summary: 91-year old Ptolemy Grey is lost in his memories until a doctor gives him the medicine he needs to gain clarity, set resolutions, reflect upon regrets, and seek redemption.

Their Summary: Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but forgotten-by his family, his friends, even himself-as he sinks into a lonely dementia. His grand-nephew, Ptolemy’s only connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive-by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life, until he meets Robyn, his niece’s seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephew’s funeral. But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy’s hermit-like existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy won’t live to see age ninety- two but that he’ll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds-in his own past, in his own apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephew’s death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget.

Thoughts on the Book: There was plenty of wisdom shared throughout the pages of Ptolemy Grey. I could see and hear every character and various emotions were raised during their interactions with one another. The book made me question and reflect upon my own life, wondering what regrets or memories I might hold onto if I reached 91. What relationships impacted me in ways I might not realize now and what thoughts would bring me sorrow? Obviously, Ptolemy Grey is the kind of book that makes you think and even teaches lessons, as all books should. I mean, the summary says just enough of what you need to know about this one. I loved it. I suggest you read it for yourself. I don’t know what more I can say.

Oh, I will add that when I thought about who might play the part of Ptolemy in a movie adaption, the first person that came to mind was Samuel L. Jackson. Little did I know that according to Shadow & Act (they know everything!), there’s already something in the works. Read more on that. Sorry this isn’t much of a review. I just really enjoyed this book. Sometimes it’s that simple.

Excerpt: “Are you still having trouble thinking?” Church asked.

“No. I think just fine,” Ptolemy said. “It’s just that I got some trouble remberin’ things I used to know. I mean, I know you got them gloves on ’cause you think there’s a germ in here. I know that this girl here is my granddaughter. But I don’t remembah where I put things a long time ago, an’ I cain’t, I cain’t . . . things I need to find.”

There was so much he couldn’t do. Sometimes he’d stand over thee toilet for five minutes waiting to urinate. Sometimes when the phone would ring he’d go to the door and ask, “Who is it?” and when Robyn told him that it was the pone he’d get so embarrassed that he’d go  into the bedroom just  so he wouldn’t have to see her feeling sorry for him.

Walter Mosley on Writing:  My only ritual for writing is that I do it every morning. I wake up and get to work. If I’m in a motel in Mobile — so be it. If I am up all night, and morning is two o’clock in the afternoon, well, that’s okay too. The only thing that matters is that you write, write, write. It doesn’t have to be good writing. As a matter of fact, almost all first drafts are pretty bad. What matters is that you get down the words on the page or the screen — or into the tape recorder, if you work like that. Your first sentence will start you out, but don’t let it trip you up. If you are the intuitive type, just sit down and start writing the novel: Lamont had only enough cash to buy half a pint of whiskey at Bob’s Liquor Emporium, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough. Ragman was dead, and that was at least a quart’s worth of mourning. What does it mean? How should I know? Those were the first words that came out. I’m not going to worry about it; I’m just going to keep on writing until either something clicks or I lose momentum. If it doesn’t seem to be working, I’ll start with a new first sentence. I’ll keep on like that until something strikes my fancy and I have enough of a handle on the story to continue. (Read more . . . )

.

Happy reading, y’all.

.

Aside from marrying my husband and having my children, hiking the PCT was the best thing I ever did. The hike very literally forced me to put one foot in front of the other at a time when emotionally I didn’t think I could do that. You have to keep walking, no matter what. - Cheryl Strayed

My Quickie Summary: Proceeding her mother’s death, a divorce, sexual awakening, and heroin habit, Cheryl Stayed decides to hike the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) to sort out her mind state—without a real plan.

Their Summary: At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Thoughts on the Book: Wild had the potential to maintain my initial interest, or so I believed. I don’t hike or do outdoorsy type stuff and honestly wasn’t familiar with the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) until this book. After reading the summary, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to her out on that trail that would make Oprah not only select her book for her book club, but also that would make so many other people read it. Well, I found out for myself that Oprah’s stamp of approval may not suit my tastes.

Cheryl Strayed begins her memoir with her mother’s death and then shifts through a divorce with Paul, a man she’d been married to since the age of 19. After dealing with promiscuity and a developing heroin habit, she decides to hike the PCT to get her mind and life back. When she begins this hike, what drove me was that she didn’t have a real plan. She admitted to the stupidity of this as often as it entered my own head. Her backpack was too big, her boots too small, and overall she just wasn’t prepared. I kept reading to see how she’d overcome these shortcomings, but then the book started to read like this:

blah, blah, blah, backpack too big, blah, blah, blah, my feet hurt, blah, blah, blah, can’t get this song out of my head, blah, blah, blah, trees, blah, blah, blah, animal, blah, blah, blah, hungry/thristy, blah, blah, blah, met a kind stranger, blah, blah, blah, sexy man, blah, blah, blah, I stink, blah blah, blah, I really stink, blah, blah, blah, burn another book, blah, blah, blah, strangers gave me a ride, blah, blah, blah, too much snow must detour, blah, blah, blah, I’m broke and want a Snapple lemonade, blah, blah, blah, ex-husband is so supportive, blah, blah, blah, memories of mama, blah, blah, blah–I DID IT!

I don’t read erotica/romance, so I must also admit that it’s sad when I’m hoping for a sex scene to add a little spice to a book–especially a memoir. The really unfortunate part is that when I got one, I was sourly disappointed. That said, at about page 130 I started skipping around until, with an eye barely open, I found my face plastered to the final page. I read that page, closed the book and decided to move on with my reading life. Did I miss anything? Doubt it.

Wild Excerpt: Each day I felt as if I were looking up from the bottom of a deep well. But from that well, I set about becoming a solo wilderness trekker. And why not? I’d been so many things already. A loving wife and an adulteress. A beloved daughter who now spent holidays alone. An ambitious overachiever and aspiring writer who hopped from one meaningless job to the next while dabbling dangerously with drugs and sleeping with too many men. I was the granddaughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, the daughter of a steelworker turned salesman. After my parents split up, I loved with my mother, brother, and sister in apartment complexes populated by single mothers and their kids. As a teen, I lived back-to-the-land style in the Minnesota northwoods in a house that didn’t have an indoor toilet, electricity, or running water. In spite of this, I’d become a high school cheerleader and homecoming queen, and then I went off to college and became a left-wing feminist campus radical.

But a woman who walks alone in the wilderness for eleven hundred miles? I’d never even anything like that before. I had nothing to lose by giving it a whirl.

Cheryl Strayed on Writing: I often recommend writing as a tool for self-discovery because it’s helped me so much. I use writing in different ways: I write as an artist but I also write when I’m just trying to work through something or make a tough decision. And I think, a lot of times, even people who aren’t writers will write in crisis. They’ll write in their journals after breaking up with someone, even though they haven’t written for two years. That’s because it’s a way to essentially practice your thoughts and see what’s there. Writing forces you to locate your clarity.

.

You know, I think A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown would have been an excellent selection for Oprah’s Book Club–a crackhead turned lawyer? Tell me that’s not an inspiring memoir. Anyway, somebody better recommend something good for me to read soon–and not Oprah.

Happy reading, y’all.

According to Goodreads, I’ve only invested 2 weeks time into Temple of My Familiar. I feel like it’s been an entire month and I’m just not getting through it. Each day I tell myself, I’ll knock out a few more pages—or I convince myself that I’ll finally finish it on my days off, but nope. I’m just not interested and I can’t make myself get interested. So, after 150 pages, I’ve decided to put it down. Maybe I should have a long time ago. After Third Life of Grange Copeland, I had really high hopes for Temple of My Familiar, but after my mom mentioned that even she couldn’t get through it . . . I officially give up. In the meantime, I found an article online that helped me realize where things went wrong.

Reviewers generally applauded Alice Walker’s 1989 novel, The Temple of My Familiar, for its development of ideas and themes introduced in her earlier fiction and essays—its castigation of white and male oppression, its valorization of African American and female identity, and its emphasis on the importance of community and female friendship. At the same time, however, they were perplexed by the novel’s conglomeration of narrative techniques and styles. Joyce Maynard, for example, labeled The Temple “a radical feminist Harlequin romance written under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms . . . There’s a little black history here, a little crystal healing there, with a hot tub and some acupressure thrown in for good measure.” (Read more . . . )

So that was it for me. The “narrative techniques and styles.” Sounds like a good place to point the finger.

And now I must move on to the next book. But one of these days, I’ll pick up another novel by Walker. Just not any time soon. Even if Celie, Sophia, and Shug promise to make an appearance again.

Happy reading y’all.

Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go continues to generate a bit of a buzz around the web. I read a summary before the book’s publication and even skimmed a few reviews here and there. If you haven’t heard of it by now, here’s the excerpt:

He didn’t want a garden. He couldn’t have been clearer. Nothing lush, soft, or verdant; all the lines clean, etc. (In fact, he didn’t want the things that he associates with gardens, like Fola or the English, on his property, in his sight.) He wanted pebbles, as in the driveway, a wall-to-wall carpet of white pebbles covering the plot like fresh snow around a rectangular pool. With the sun glinting brilliantly off the white and the water, the blazing heat kept at bay by a concrete overhang. This is what he’d sketched in the Beth Israel cafeteria, sipping cheap, lukewarm coffee, stinking of disinfectant and death. A chlorine-blue box on a beach of bleached white. Sterile, square, elemental. An orderly view.

And the life that came with it: getting out of bed every morning, coming to sit in his little sunroom with the paper and a croissant, sipping fresh, expensive coffee served by a butler named Kofi to whom he’d speak in a British accent (somewhat inexplicably),

“That will be all.” All his children sleeping comfortably in the bedroom wing (now the guest bedroom wing), his cook cooking breakfast in the dining wing. And Fola. By far the best part of the view: in her one-piece white bathing suit swimming the last of her morning laps, Afro bejeweled with droplets, rising dripping from the water like Aphrodite from waves (somewhat improbably; she hated getting her hair wet), and waving. (Read more . . .)

The author video clip alone has me interested enough to find a copy. More to say about this title in the near future, hopefully. In the meantime . . .

Happy reading, y’all.

Chinua Achebe, who has died aged 82, was Africa’s best-known novelist and the founding father of African fiction. The publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958 not only contested European narratives about Africans but also challenged traditional assumptions about the form and function of the novel. His creation of a hybrid that combined oral and literary modes, and his refashioning of the English language to convey Igbo voices and concepts, established a model and an inspiration for other novelists throughout the African continent.

The five novels and the short stories he published between 1958 and 1987 provide a chronicle of Nigeria’s troubled history since the beginning of British colonial rule. They also create a host of vivid characters who seek in varying ways to take control of their history. As founding editor of the influential Heinemann African writers series, he oversaw the publication of more than 100 texts that made good writing by Africans available worldwide in affordable editions. (Read more . . .)

I can recall visiting my mother for the holidays sometime ago, and she happened to have the audiobook for Things Fall Apart going in her car. She shared a few interesting details about the book and more recently another friend mentioned that it was one of her favorites. Here’s a quick excerpt from the opening chapter–I’m sure most of my readers have already read it (I’m the late one):

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino. He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end, Okonkwo threw the Cat. (Read more . . .)

Achebe, born November 16, 1930, died March 21, 2013. He held numerous honorary doctorates and awards. His legacy cannot be captured in a couple of quick blurbs. Maybe it’s time that I move this author a little higher up on my list.

Happy reading, y’all!

“You are still young. Free,” he said, spreading his hands apart for emphasis. “Do yourself a favor. Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.“

- The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Her mother now made her living selling her incredibly beautiful feather goods to the cold little gringa blonde who had a boutique on the bottom floor of an enormous new hotel that sprung up near their village, seemingly overnight. Sometimes her mother stayed on the street near the hotel and watched the gringas who bought her feathered earrings, pendants, and shawls–and even priestlike headdresses–and wore them as they stamped up and down the narrow dusty street. They never glanced at her; they never, she felt, even saw her. On them her work looked magnificent still, but the wearers looked very odd.

I’m reading it slowly, but it’s not due to lack of interest. Happy reading, y’all!

Protests broke out across the web when casting decisions for the first Hunger Games film were announced (view my Hunger Games: The Blacks post). People didn’t want to believe that blacks could possibly exist for the film adaptation, let alone  in the bestselling novel. Well, I wonder how certain folks will feel about the non-white faces that plan to grace their screens for Catching Fire. According to a post from Shadow and Act, take a look at the browner side of things for this November 22nd release:

Two of the women that I traveled with to India completed Catching Fire during our trip. They kept suggesting that I read it, and while it’s on my list, I don’t know if I’m ready to pick it up yet. Unlike them, I read the book AND saw  the movie. I was impressed with both, but I just haven’t gotten around to reading the other 2 titles in the series. Who knows, maybe I’ll read them next.

Happy reading, y’all.

Only twice a week, the nights the review class meets, does he look forward to her company. They do not have each other’s phone numbers. He does not know exactly where she lives. She always goes with him to his apartment. She never spends the night. He likes the limitations. He has never been in a situation with a woman in which so little of him is involved, so little expected. He does not know, nor does he want to know, her husband’s name. Then one weekend, when he is on the train to Massachusetts to see his mother and Sonia, a southbound train slices by, and he wonders if perhaps the husband is on the other train, on his way to see Bridget. Suddenly he imagines the house where Bridget’s husband lives alone, longing for her, with his unfaithful wife’s name on the mailbox, her lipstick beside his shaving things. Only then does he feel guilty. -- The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

.

He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things, seated on newspapers on the living room floor. Instead of a knife she used a blad that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas. The blade was hinged at one end to a narrow wooden base. The steel, more black than silver, lacked a uniform polish and had a serrated crest, she told Eliot, for grating. Each afternoon Mrs. Sen lifted the blad and locked it into place, so that it met the base at an angle. Facing the sharp edge without ever touching it, she took whole vegetables between her hands and hacked them apart: cauliflower, cabbage, butternut squash. She split things in half, then quarters, speedily producing florets, cubes, slices, and shreds. She could peel a potato in seconds.  At times she sat cross-legged, at times with legs splayed, surrounded by an array of colanders and shallow bowls of water in which she immersed her chopped ingredients. – Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

.

Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear old clothes of Dudley’s, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair, and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lighting. He had had it for as long as he could remember, and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten it. – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

.

If you intend to come along I done made out some rules for you, for make no mistake it’s going to be my house and in my house what the white man expects us to act like ain’t going to git no consideration! Now, first off you going to call me Mem, Mrs. Copeland, or Mrs. Mem R. Copeland. Take your pick. And second you is going to call our children Daphne, Ornette and baby Ruth. Although you can call any one of them ‘honey’ if you got a mind to. Third, if you ever lays a hand on me again I’m going to blow your goddam brains out–after I shoots off your balls, which is all the manhood you act like you sure you got. – The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

.

It is not just the state to which the lavatories were soon reduced, fetid caverns such as the gutters in hell full of condemned souls must be, but also the lack of respect shown by some of the inmates or the sudden urgency of others that turned the corridors and other passageways into latrines, at first only occasionally but now as a matter of habit. The careless or impatient though, It doesn’t matter, no one can see me, and they went no further. When it became impossible in any sense, to reach the lavatories, the blind internees began using the yard as a place to relieve themselves and clear their bowels. Those who were delicate by nature or upbringing spend the whole day restraining themselves, they put up with it as best they could until nightfall, they presumed it would be night when most people were asleep in the wards, then off they would go, clutching their stomachs or squeezing their legs together, in search of a foot or two of clean ground, if there was any amidst that endless carpet of trampled excrement . . . – Blindness by Jose Saramago

So, here’s a quick range of thoughts. Of the five books, The Third Life of Grange Copeland was the overall favorite. A definite page turner and I finished it in about 3 days. Loved the story, loved the writing, loved the characters. The book that stayed on my mind most after completion was Blindness. There’s just something about the entire world going blind and imagining the possibilities of what we’d all do that captured my imagination.  Then again, I love dystopian fiction, so it figures. I will also admit that Blindness was a challenging read. What assisted me in getting through it was that I saw the movie a few times and my remembrance of it made the book easier to follow. Unfortunately, I’ll pass on the novel’s sequel, Seeing. I read Harry Potter just to finally say I did. No further opinions about it. The Namesake is one of my favorite movies and the book was far from a disappointment. Interpreter of Maladies, however, was just okay, but it won a book award, so what do I know?

Happy reading, y’all.

.

Number one, I think what I write is literature. People have the tendency to call it urban fiction because whenever black people come into a professional space and do very well, instead of people competing with us upright, they create a new label for it. So that you can be at the top of your game over there in that corner, but this is literature. – Sister Souljah

My Quickie Summary: Porsche Santiaga is the spoiled middle daughter of a hustler. Readers witness as she moves through the stages of being a juvenile delinquent, crackhead care provider, hustler, healer, dancer, and emotional wreck.

Their Summary: At last, mega-bestselling author Sister Souljah delivers the stunning sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever. Fierce, raw, and filled with adventure and emotional intensity, A Deeper Love Inside is an unforgettable coming-of-age story in the words of Porsche Santiaga, Winter’s younger sister. Sharp-tongued, quick-witted Porsche worships her sister Winter. Cut from the same cloth as her father, Ricky Santiaga, Porsche is also a natural-born hustler. Passionate and loyal to the extreme, she refuses to accept her new life in group homes, foster care, and juvenile detention after her family is torn apart. Porsche—unique, young, and beautiful—cries as much as she fights and uses whatever she has to reclaim her status. Unselfish, she pushes to get back everything that ever belonged to her wealthy, loving family. In A Deeper Love Inside, readers will encounter their favorite characters from The Coldest Winter Ever, including Winter and Midnight. Sister Souljah’s soulful writing will again move your heart and open your eyes to a shocking reality.

Thoughts on the Book: After reading a decent portion of the book, I went online to research “Deeper Love Inside ghostwriter.” After reading The Coldest Winter Ever (TCWE) in high school and then again in college, I just couldn’t believe that the person who produced that and the Midnight books (ok, I only read one), would throw together something like this. Outside of specific genre based fiction (fantasy, science fiction, etc.), when you read fiction you don’t usually want to feel like, this would never happen or this is a bit much to swallow–even in fiction. I understand that some readers were disappointed in that although this novel is touted as a sequel, that it really isn’t. I didn’t necessarily care about that, until I neared the novel’s conclusion. By the close of TCWE, I believed that Winter had an awakening. She didn’t want her sisters to have the same experiences that she had. In A Deeper Love Inside (ADLI), when Porsche visits her sister in prison, Winter is disappointingly her same old ignorant self.

There are a few major issues I had with this book. I will be cautious to make my thoughts spoiler free. One, the writing just wasn’t that great. There was one scene in particular where the character recalls her father’s arrest and she describes what he wore and how his hair was styled. In a way, this is consistent with how lost this girl is, but really? Two, the pacing of the novel didn’t flow. We speed through periods in Porsche’s life to discover things that just didn’t add up. Three, one thing I liked about Souljah’s other books is that she tends to get heavy-handed with offering her readers several uplifting messages about culture, marriage, societal issues, etc. (or at least she makes you think). Such just wasn’t in this book. Even in the “Special Collector’s Edition Reader’s Guide” found in the back of a more recent publication of TCWE, Sister Souljah makes it obvious that a great deal of thought and planning went into her writing. This just isn’t the case for ADLI.

Now, I don’t read urban/street-lit, but this novel really read like one. I am really disappointed with Sister Souljah’s latest work, and although I was able to read it to the end (shaking my head the whole while), what it really made me feel like doing is re-reading TCWE again to see whether her writing (and style) has changed as drastically as I imagine. The excerpts below comes from the funeral scenes of both novels. I know these are small portions, but you tell me whether there’s a difference in characterization and writing style.

Coldest Winter Ever Excerpt: Just as the priest started going through the motions, a big, black 600 series Mercedes Benz with black-tinted windows pulled up on the pavement. It had been moving at a high speed so it stopped with an abrupt jerk, alarming the guards who had already assumed the shooting position. They called out for the person to identify himself. But the music coming from the vehicle was so loud, I was sure that people inside could not hear anything else. As the door opened, a model type of girl, straight out of the pages of a high-fashion magazine, stepped out of the car. Dressed in a white Dolce and Gabbana leather stilettos. She was obviously paid out of the ass. I still couldn’t see her face behind the sunglasses. Stepping carefully on the new, soft spring grass, she came right over to me.

“What’s up, Winter?” She smiled wide and pulled off her sunglasses. It was Porsche, my sister. She came alone, pushing a whip it would take the U.S. president’s salary to pay for. She hugged me. She kissed Daddy. She waved at Midnight, Lexy, Mercedes, and the two women with him. She stepped up and looked in my other’s coffin for all of three seconds.

She stepped back, grabbed my arm, and leaned inward to talk privately with me. The guard signaled for her to back up. “Damn!” she screamed on the guard. “Can’t I talk to my own sister without you being all up my ass!” So they let her talk. I couldn’t believe how she chumped them.

“I wanted to come and check you, girl,” she said, chomping on some bubble gum. “But you was just too far away. Tell me what you need. Whatever it is, I can get it for you.”

“Whose fucking whip is that?” I asked, amazed.

“Buster’s,” she responded.

I raised my eyebrows, like Who dat?

.

Deeper Love Inside Excerpt: Standing beside Winter cause of everybody living she cared the least about me, I didn’t have to say too many lines to her. I delivered each one without a sprinkle of love or affection in it. The same way she would’ve if it was the other way around. Winter was defeated. It was all in her eyes. Poppa was still sweating Winter, as normal. Poppa cried over Momma.

“Too late!” I mumbled to myself. Mercedes and Lexus stayed stuck on Midnight and to themselves. The armed guards crowded their cuffed prisoners, Poppa, and Winter.

As the closed coffin was lowered into the ground, I kicked dirt over it with my stilletos. My heart cracked some more. I kicked some more. I was burying Momma and Poppa and Winter, all at the same time.

Sister Souljah on Writing: There is a difference between writers who are impatient and writers who are patient. There is a difference between writers who live in front of a television or inside a movie theater and writers who live by doing, working, participating, talking, and observing. There is a difference between writers who have read and studied the great writings of powerful writers who came before them, and those who have not. There is a difference between writers who have had the discipline to at some point sit still and study the craft of writing and those who have not. I would say to all up-and-coming writers that you need to first be willing to learn, to be observant and patient. You must also live life, build something, do something, develop something. It is the only way to sit down and create an authentic work with vivid descriptions and compelling characters. Capturing the truth of the human soul and experience and weaving it together like a fine tapestry is creating characters, voices, and scenes that will live forever.

Although Sister Souljah’s words on writing are inspiring, maybe she should consider giving them to her ghostwriter or meditating on them herself. She can do better, but then again, how often are people satisfied by sequels? No disrespect, Souljah.

Happy reading, y’all.