The Bluest Eye

 Just finished reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison for my Banned Book book group.

This is turning out to be aa good group because I am reading books I have never read and probably would never have picked up to read.  This is one of them.  I have heard about Toni Morrison for years but never read any of her books.  This one is amazing.  It is disturbing and difficult to read but very worthwhile.

It is not surprising that it has been challenged by a variety of parents in school systems and town libraries. The important part is that Morrison in an interview said that she never intended it to be read by white audience.  She was writing for black people who were suffering through the poverty and racism in the south.   This is the story of young children and the difficult lifestyle they were forced to grow up under in the south.  The poverty and unemployment led adults to depression and low self esteem.  That led to violence against their families. Also the fear of the white employer led to better treatment of the white employer than your own family members and children.  It is very sad to read about.

That oppression passes to the next generation and because there are no role models to look up to that adds to the lack of self worth.  The title comes from a young black girl, in Morrison's class, as a child, who with no black role models, looked at Shirley Temple as the epitome of beauty and said she wished she had blue eyes.  

This book is a fabulous read and just as relevant today as it was when it was first published.

Morning Sun in Wuhan

 Morning Sun in Wuhan, by Ying Chang Compestine is a delightful middle school book about the beginning of Covid in Wuhan, China.  

Told from the point of view of a young girl living in an apartment complex near the hospital. We meet Mei a thirteen year old girl just after her mother has recently passed.  She is intrigued with cooking dishes that remind her of cooking with her mother and also playing a cooking computer game with a few friends.

Her father is a surgeon at the local hospital and when Covid breaks out he cannot not come home to the apartment, leaving Mei alone.  Her refrigerator is full and she can play games to communicate with two boys she knows, but things are getting more drastic as food supplies dwindle and people are having to lock down.  A neighborhood support group forms and Mei and her friends step up to help with cooking meals and delivery.  

This is a must read book for everyone about how community worked together helping each other through a crisis.  Also there are some simple recipes in the book that Mei cooks for herself and others.  Some look easy and delicious.

Signal Fires

Signal Fires, the latest novel by author Dani Shapiro is a small book but packs a big impact.  A person spends their life walking down a road with twists and turns along the way.

You never can see too far ahead, where each decision at an intersection might take you and how it changes and affects the rest of your life and those connected to you.

Following two families that live on Division Street in a small New York suburb, the book jumps between the present and the past.  Two families whose lives over time will intertwine. Starting in 1970, as a happy young couple enters their first home with two young children, full of happiness and hope about the future.  Dr Ben Wilf  and his wife bring up their daughter, Sarah and son, Theo in this small town.  1985,  a tragic car accident, the circumstances of that accident will become a dark secret, never to be spoken about.  

New Year’s Eve, Y2K, another new, young family on Division Street, with dreams of their future, as their son, Waldo, is born that night.  Our individual personalities that we bring to our relationships and how they shape our marriages, our children and the future.

Dr Wilf will comment that he feels we live our lives in loops. We carry our past with us like a series of Russian nesting dolls.  Who we have been and our actions are always there inside of us.  

The present 2020, a global pandemic and all the characters are adults now.  We learn the experiences of these families are connected and how the relationships  have all evolved over time and connected them to each other.  We also, throughout the book as it jumps back and forth, hear the story from the perspectives of the various characters, Ben Wilf, his wife, Mimi, Sarah, Theo, Waldo and his father.

Shapiro balances loss with love, and offers hope with grief.  This is a beautifully written novel that captures the reader and does not let go. It leaves you thinking about your life and the different actions and decisions that have brought you to where you are and made you who you are today.  The history of those who came before you intertwined with the strangers you have yet to meet.

The Diamond Eye

 The Diamond Eye written by author, Kate Quinn.  

Another excellent historical novel!!   Unknown woman heroine comes to light in the fabulous writing of Kate Quinn.  The beginning of WWII Russia is an underdog in the war and helping the Soviet military in the fight to maintain its borders from German occupancy is the sharpshooter, Mila Pavlichenko.  She is a young woman, a history student and librarian with a  young son, who steps up and enlists in the military.  She becomes a deadly sniper, known as Lady Death becoming a national hero.  She visits the US on a good will tour... another story from history that was hidden until now.

I have said this before but I think the most fascinating novels that pull the reader in and do not let go are the historical novels that bring to light a moment in history that was unknown or forgotten.  This is one of those novels.  Mila Pavlichenko is such a incredible character.  This novel follows her and makes her a three dimensional person who the reader can relate to and cheer for.

She marries and has a child by the time she is 18.  Then her husband leaves her and does not want to take care of her or the baby, but also will not divorce her, freeing her.  She goes back to finish school, living with her parents, who take care of her son.  While finishing her dissertation, the war breaks out and she enlists.  She is a marksman with a rifle and she becomes a woman sniper .  This is very unusual, she follows the motto she sets for herself,  "Don't miss, don't fail".  

She rises in the ranks and is a commander and trains her men to become snipers.  She becomes famous for the number of hits she has made.  She is invited with a Soviet entourage to Washington, DC to meet the President and Eleanor Roosevelt and make the case for the United States to step in and help Russia in the war.   She tours America making speeches and winning the hearts of the citizens,.

It is an amazing story and so well told by Quinn.  You are there with Mila as she hides in the brush waiting for the enemy to make a wrong step.  You are there  with Mila as she finds love and suffers loss.  You are routing for her as comes to the US and tours the country, missing her son and only  wishing to return home.