Book reviews: “Bloom,” True History & “What Is Juneteenth?”
(Photo by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley)
It was a horrible week. I think I’ve cried more in the past few days than I’ve cried in the past few years. What good will my tears do? They won’t bring back the 19 children and 2 teachers who were slaughtered (while the police refused to go inside the school) in Uvalde, Texas.
But i had to let my tears go. I needed to wail so I did.
Assault rifles need to be banned in America. Completely, thoroughly, totally banned forever. I can vote yes on this, but I can’t make it happen. The officers who stayed outside? They’re going to have to live with that forever. How much collateral damage are we going to see? How much survivor guilt? Post-traumatic stress? Anxiety? How much depression and how many suicides will follow? I am shaking, but I will keep saying, See something/say something. Some people are homicidal/most of us aren’t. Are you that way? I’m not that way, either. Hold strong, hold your children and loved ones tightly.
Don’t give up.
These books, all new releases, give us some insight into America, its past and present. Hopefully things will get better in the future, but I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime. I don’t mean to be bleak, but it’s hard to be positive right now.
“Bloom,” by Ruth Forman, ilustrated by Talia Skyles
“True History: The Legacy of Jim Crow,” Clarence E. Haynes, introduction by David Ikard
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