Home Girl Blog

Book Review: Disappearing Acts by Terry McMillan

Loved it! Disappearing Acts is among my favorites...among the first movies I ever owned (Dirty Dancing was the first...my all time favorite movie...it was a gift). I have it on VHS and whenever I'm in the mood, AND one of my VCRs is wired correctly, I watch it. It's out on DVD now, so I'll need to hook that up. This film was the beginning of my love of Sanaa Lathan (Zora), and with the name "Zora". I already knew and loved Zora Neale Hurston, but never considered naming my potential future daughter that until I saw this movie and heard it spoken so many times. And I've always thought very highly of Wesley Snipes' general appearance, so this movie was easily one of my favs. Now about the book...

This is a love story about some grown-up love...that make-it-through-the-fire love. It's the kind of love you want, but without all the pain. You know, like you want to love somebody so much that you love them and forgive them unconditionally...not becasue you're a punk, but because you need them like breath...like air. You want to love like that, but to not have that joint tested...does that make sense? The moral of the story (in my opinion)is that it's important to maintain your own identity...your sense of self...once you're in a relationship. Ever seen a couple who are so alike...love the same things, have the same freinds, the same hobbies, the same style? It's easy for people to "disappear" in relationships...either by compromising to the point of conforming so much that they end up morphing into who they think partner wants them to be, or simply morphing into their partner becasue they don't have a strong sense of identity themselves...when it's best (for everybody's sanity) to just stay the person they are, and roll with that...be a constantl reminder of why they fell in love with you in the first place. Of course growth is natural, but to grow together... and maintain personal identity...there's the rub. Now back to the book...

Anyway...great characters. Very enjoyable read. I'm actually glad I saw the movie first...and that the book was so different from the film. I got to experience these characters again, but the story for the first time, which was cool. I'm not surprised the book was so much better. To squeez this story into 2 hours a lot of characters were cut out and some things were rearranged. I guess to tell the whole story, they'd have had to make a mini series, like they did with Alex Haley's Roots or Queen. This story is actually good enough to have a series inspired by it...like Soul Food...which how cool would that be? The characters in this story are like that...you just want more of them. I didn't want it to end. That's the same way I felt after I read The Interruption of Everything. As much as you want to, you don't know what will happen next, but you know everything will work out alright. Terri McMillan is really good at those kinds of endings.

This is only the second novel of her's that I've read. I bought Waiting to Exhale after I saw the movie too...still haven't read it. I'm sure I'll play catch up with her other movie inspiring novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back. 'Specially since this was based on her personal love story...and her groove giver has recently turned up gay. I'll save them (and I'm sure her other stuff eventually) for when I need some detox from heavier reading.

Book Review: The Accidental Diva by Tia Williams

I've been finished with The Accidental Diva for a while. It's part of my break from "heavy" reading. IT WAS SO GOOD Y'ALL! The "accidental diva", Billie Burke, lives this very glitzy, very enviable life as a beauty editor for a huge glossy magazine. She's a NYC "it girl". I've tried to resist using this description, but it's the best way to describe her...she's like a Black Carey Bradshaw from Sex in The City, only she's still in her twenties. She's beautiful and stylish, her friends are all really interesting and accomplished, her love interest, Jay, is the perfect good-guy with a dark past, lovable, with so much love to give type guy. Tia Williams created these characters who are sexy--the relationship between Billie and Jay is sexy--this novel is sexy. Their relationship is like, when you meet somebody and you just know they're the one. Sometimes you want to fight it, and you try to fight it, they might even give you a reason to fight it, but it's useless, 'cause they're the one. You are drawn in and introduced to these really cool characters, who ultimately experience great success, in spite of the fact that they've experienced such difficult childhoods involving poverty, drugs, dysfunctional family situations, death and near-death. This was a really entertaining novel. It would make a great movie. It SO has the potential to be the next Love Jones.

I just wish I had discovered this, Tia's first novel, later so I could read her next one immediately. I'm not sure when to expect her second book, but I am certainly looking forward to it.

Book Review: The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips

One word can describe The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips. Heavy. If it was a movie, I would have had to cover my eyes, or ears, or fast-forward through certain parts. The pain, desperation, frustration, and abuses experienced by the main characters in this book made it very difficult for me to read it straight through.

It's about the relationship between a mother, who could pass for white, and her offspring, who (thanks to different fathers) range in skin-tone from driven-snow to licorice. This mother treats each child differently, according to their skin-tone, with the darkest child being her least favorite. At some moments it was hard to believe that this woman has any love in her at all. She is actually pure evil. The way she belittles and berates her boys and forces her girls to sell their bodies was really hard for me to swallow. I kept telling myself that I would understand this mother more by the end of the novel. I had to. She has this hold on her children...it's unfathomable...I guess mother/child relationships are powerful like that. Whether they're good or bad or non-existent, they have a certain amount of power, a definite effect.

Set in the '50s, with Jim Crow in full effect, this book took me through various ranges of anger, empathy, frustration, and denial with every depiction of life back then: from the way "nigger" was used synonymously with "Negro", to the physical and sexual abuses that went unpunished, to the murder and lynching of Black men. It's hard to believe that this was only ~50 years ago...

Then again, many of our country's leaders grew up on the other side of Jim Crow. So, actually, it's not that hard to believe it was just ~50 years ago...I mean many of our leaders today are the children of those individuals who deemed it necessary and justified to deny Blacks basic rights in a country that was built with our blood and sweat...today's leaders were raised by these folks, some ARE these folks. With that in mind, how people can so quickly discount charges of racial bias or discrimination as "playing the race card" is beyond me. But, I digress. See what this book stirs up?

A strange thing happened while I was reading this book: Someone asked me what I thought of it when they saw me reading it one day, and without thinking (I'm a very goofy person, so this is actually a typical response for me) I hugged the book to my chest, smiled upward like a little kid and said between my teeth, "It's SO good, I love it!" I say it's strange because it's such a dark novel, with very few bright moments, yet I SO enjoyed reading it.

One critic described this book as heart-rending. I think that's pretty accurate. This one will stay with me for a while. I had planned to read The Icarus Girl after this, but I need some light reading to chase this one down. I'm moving The Accidental Diva to the top of my 'Next Up' list. I'll catch The Icarus Girl and 72-Hour Hold on the flip side.

Book Review: The Interruption of Everything by Terry McMillan

I finished Terry McMillan's The Interruption of Everything tonight. This is definitely a page-turner. It's a universal story. It's not full of cliches or male bashing or gratuitous sex (I hate that that's what I expected from her, but it sorta was). It's not sugar-coated or exaggerated. It's just real. If we all live long enough we'll experience many of the things these characters do: that mid-life thing they say men go through, menopause, caring for our parents in their old age, empty nesting. I think the author did a great job telling the story of a woman who raised three kids and when she didn't have kids to raise anymore had to redefine her purpose and maintain her sanity while dealing with a shaky marriage, an aging mother and an irresponsible adopted sister, among other things. Initially, you meet these characters who you immediately want to dislike...a strung-out mother of two, a cheating husband, an overbearing mother-in-law. Then the whys of these faulty characters unfold, and you get to what causes their behavior...loneliness, fear of abandonment or rejection, insecurities. Ultimately, it's impossible to dislike these characters, because you understand the whys. The more you learn about them, the more difficult it is to dislike them. The more the main character learned the whys...the more she came to understand her adopted sister, her niece and nephew, her mother, her husband...the harder it was for her to look at them with nothing but love in her heart. She was also able to look into herself...get to some of her own whys. Understanding is so powerful.

And just like Terry McMillan's other works, this one ends with you wondering what will happen, but knowing everything will be okay. This is a good book y'all.

I can see this one joining How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Waiting to Exhale and Disappearing Acts in my DVD collection. Isn't it about time for another Terry McMillan book inspired film? If it is ever put on film, we already know Angela Basset's got dibs on the lead role.

Book Review: This Bitter Earth by Bernice McFadden

My journey with Sugar Lacey has come to an end. Bernice McFadden is an awesome writer.

When I finished Sugar almost a year ago, I wanted to know how she was, and what happened to her after she left Arkansas and where she would end up, if she would be okay. Although it took me forever to get This Bitter Earth to find out, and even longer to finish the story, I'm so glad I did. The characters in these books are so interesting. And the story is sprinkled with ghosts and prophetic dreams and signs and natural symbols (river running blood red, rain for days on end, ravens) all foreshadowing future events and explaining past occurrences.

In the end, I was pleased with knowing how Sugar and the other people of Bigelow ended up. There were so many secrets and so much pain and loss and turmoil, and it was cool to have it all end in a way that is not necessarily happy, but not sad either. There was closure.

I think since so much time passed between my reading of parts 1 and 2, that I should probably read them again back to back for the full effect...the way I should have in the first place...sounds like a good book on tape deal.