"But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory."
John F. Kennedy Airport, New YorkTuesday, February 22The Day of the Crash
Monday, February 21The Day Before the Crash
To what lengths would a person go to cope with trauma? Jennifer Rossi — a 35-year-old professor who is tormented and exhausted by a broken and painful relationship with her younger sister, Tara — takes the reader on an unexpected journey as she tackles this question and all its unanticipated outcomes. When Jennifer receives shocking news about Tara, she begins a quest to uncover answers she may not want to find. As Jennifer learns more about her sister, she becomes more alone and confused. Jennifer must face up to her complicated relationship with Tara — or lose herself in the process.
This powerful debut tells the story of Paula Williams Madison's Chinese grandfather, Samuel Lowe. He became romantically involved with a Jamaican woman, Paula's grandmother, and they lived together modestly with their daughter in his Kingston dry goods store, Chiney Shop. His Chinese soon-to-be wife arrived in 1920 to set up a "proper" family. When he requested to take his three-year-old daughter with him, Paula's jealous grandmother made sure that Lowe never saw his child again. That began an almost one-hundred-year break in their family.Years later, the arrival of her only grandchild raising questions about family and legacy, Paula decided to search for Samuel Lowe's descendants in China. With the support of her brothers and the help of encouraging strangers, a determined Paula eventually pieced together her grandfather's life, following his story from China to Jamaica and back. Using old documents, digital records, and referrals from the insular and interrelated Chinese-Jamaican community, she found three hundred long-lost relatives in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China. She even located documented family lineage that traces back three thousand years to 1006 BC. This book is a remarkable journey about one woman's path to self-discovery and a beautiful reflection of the power of family.
Alice sat at her desk in their bedroom distracted by the sounds of John racing through each of the rooms on the first floor. She needed to finish her peer review of a paper submitted to the Journal of Cognitive Psychology before her flight, and she'd just read the same sentence three times without comprehending it.
Still Alice ~ by Lisa Genova, 2007, literary fiction (Massachusetts), 320 pages, 9/10
Feeling at the top of her game when she is suddenly diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease, Harvard psychologist Alice Howland struggles to find meaning and purpose in her everyday life as her concept of self gradually slips away. Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty years old, she’s a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children. When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis changes her life — and her relationship with her family and the world — forever. As she struggles to cope with Alzheimer’s, she learns that her worth is comprised of far more than her ability to remember.
Character Education Journal Topics ~ by Terri Simpson and Jodie Priess, 2001, nonfiction. It has 200 bookmark-sized pages of writing prompts related to character education for students in grades 4-8. The illustration shows one of the prompts.
Joe Arneson’s ordinary life is upended by troubling dreams of himself as a different man in another place and time. It isn’t until he visits his estranged grandmother, Pearl, in her Wisconsin hometown that a startling connection emerges. Drawn into his family’s past, Joe discovers secrets weighing on the old woman’s soul: the tragic death of her sister Alice a half century ago and its ripple effect on all who loved her. Digging into the events of that summer in 1916, Joe is convinced that his recurrent visions relate to Alice’s untimely passing and to the beloved man she meant to marry. With the help of Kathleen, a local woman Joe’s fallen for, the puzzles of the past start falling into place. As uncovered truths bring Joe and Kathleen closer together, they also reveal a new danger. Joe’s dreams may be a warning ― from one star-crossed couple to another.
I added this new book to my Kindle recently, partly because I like a comment that it "was written without profanity and gratuitous violence and sex." Do you remember my comment about the gratuitous 4-letter words in Carl Hiaasen's Squeeze Me? It was very annoying.
