All posts tagged: harper collins

An Opportunity to #Listen

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I started and finished Barracoon in just under four days. I honestly don’t know how to write this review. Full disclosure, book reviews aren’t my forte in general (which you may have figured out if you’ve read any of my others). However, reviewing Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon feels strange. She was brilliant, and scholars and biographers have studied her and her work. I don’t have anything to add there. The book is Kissola’s recollection of his life in Africa, being enslaved, and then being free from enslavement. There is no room to judge the quality of the narrative, because it’s simply his life – we can’t ask that it be anything it’s not.  Therefore, I feel as though I can only speak to my experience reading it. Reading Barracoon at this particular moment feels appropriate. Reminding, or for some people learning, about the experience of enslaved people is an important piece in acknowledging our history and seeking to better our present. My heart broke for Kissola and the pain and suffering he had to endure, …

July Book

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This July at The Bookly Club we’ll be reading Zora Neale Hurston‘s profound work, Barracoon. And we hope you’ll read with us as we all further our education on American history. How do you join? Check HERE. And now more about our selection… Although Hurston wrote Barracoon nearly 100 years ago in 1927, it was only just published in 2018. It’s tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, originally known as Oluale Kossola, who at the time was the only living survivor of the Clotilda; the last slaver known to have made the transatlantic journey (unearthed just last year in 2019). Hurston was, and is, one of America’s most notable authors and anthropologists. She’s the author of dozens of award-winning poems, essays, plays, novels, short stories, books, and a filmmaker. As a Black woman in America at the turn of the century, she focused her work on the issues of the Black community and was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance movement. She told stories of the African American experience, and Barracoon was in fact …

September Book

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Image from the 1962 film “To Kill a Mockingbird” Um, it’s September. We’re not sure how that happened. But, none-the-less fall is upon us (almost)! Which also means that school is back in session, so we’re in the mood for a classic. We’re sure you’ve all seen the back to school commercials lately. Anyone else craving a shopping spree for school supplies? No? Just us? Okay. Anyway, let’s get to the point. For September we’ll be reading the required-reading staple To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee! Most of you are probably very familiar with this book and/or have already read it, but not all of us are/have. So, bear with us as we go through a little Mockingbird 101. It was published in 1960 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. This book has become one of the leading American classics, receiving numerous awards and continuous notoriety. The story it tells is based on an event that Lee observed in her hometown, Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936 when she was just 10 years old. Overall it deals with public attitudes toward race …