New in Paperback- Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Published by Algonquin ISBN 9781643752587

Trade paperback, $16.95, 352 pages

March is Women's History Month, and there are many wonderful historical novels now out in paperback that make great reads honoring this month. Lauren Willig's fantastic Band of Sisters (my review here) fictionalizes the true story of a group of Smith College alumni who traveled to France during WWI to aid villagers displaced by war.  Another terrific one is Kaitlyn Greenidge's Libertie, which takes us to the Civil War, and tells the story of a Black female physician in New York, and her daughter Libertie. Both are excellent reads.

As the novel opens, Libertie is a dark-skinned Black 11 year-old daughter of Cathy, a light-skinned Black female physician living in Brooklyn during the Civil War. Libertie's father is dead, and in addition to caring for the people of her community, Cathy also aids people on the Underground Railroad.

Madame Elizabeth, whose husband is an undertaker, brings Cathy an escaped slave hiding in a coffin. Cathy resusitates the man, Ben, and then Ben is sent to live in town with other escaped men. Libertie is drawn to Ben, and he has a strong effect on her.

In one striking passage in 1863, during what became known as the New York Draft Riots, mobs of Irish people burned down a Black children's orphange to protest being drafted to fight in the Civil War, and the children that could be saved were rowed across the river to Brooklyn where Cathy and Elizabeth and others rushed to help the refugees. I don't recall learning about this horrifying event in history class.

Cathy and other Black women formed the Ladies' Intelligence Society, and they planned to build a hospital to treat Black people, with a focus on women's health issues. Soon, she began to treat white women who turned to Cathy with reproductive issues they couldn't get help with in their own communities. They allowed Cathy, with her light skin, to treat them, but many wouldn't allow the dark-skinned Libertie to touch them.

Cathy arranged for Libertie to attend a Black college in Ohio to train to become a doctor like herself. While at school, Libertie does not get the grades necessary to continue, and she is afraid to tell her mother when she returns home. 

Libertie meets the doctor who is now assisting her mother, and she agrees to marry him and move to Haiti, where his father and sister have fled the scourge of slavery in the United States. Cathy is furious that the dreams she had for her daughter are gone, that Libertie has chosen to be a wife and mother as her life's ambition.

Adjusting to life in Haiti is difficult for Libertie, her father-in-law and sister-in-law do not treat her kindly, and her husband appears too busy to notice. She becomes attached to TiMe, the family servant, and discovers a troubling situation, one she will not ignore.

Libertie tells her own story here, and people who love Toni Morrison's novels will find themselves drawn to Kaitlyn Greenidge's lyrical style of writing, with an element of magic involved. Libertie has a strong mother-daughter story at its core, and I for one would love to read Cathy's own story told by her as well.

We read to put ourselves in the shoes of others, and read historical fiction to feel how people lived in other times other than ours, and Libertie accomplishes both of those brilliantly. I can see why so many publications called it one of the best books of 2021. Libertie the book and Libertie the person are unforgettable.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Kaitlyn Greenidge's book tour.

Algonquin has many wonderful excellent books for Women's History Month, including Thrity Umrigar's Honor, and Elena Medel's The Wonders. 

Honor

The Wonders

That's What She Said by Kimothy Joy

That's What She Said by Kimothy Joy
Published by Harper Wave ISBN 9780062796769
Hardcover, $21.99, 103 pages

March was Women's History Month, and I had the opportunity to review Karen Karbo's In Praise of Difficult Women, (my review here) profiling 29 women who made broke the rules and contributed to society.

This month, I had the chance to review Kimothy Joy's That What She Said- Wise Words From Influential Woman, which is a wonderful companion piece to In Praise of Difficult Women. Joy is an artist and social activist, whose signature style combines watercolor and ink pen with hand lettering.

That's What She Said perfectly combines Joy's art with her social activism. In the introduction, Foy credits her mother, the oldest of eight children born to a Mexican-American family. Her mother was the first in her family to go to college and earn a master's degree. She was an entrepreneur, a schoolteacher and a spiritual leader, and she imbued her daughter with the idea that women's "strength and resilience are limitless".

Joy profiles dozens of strong, resilient women in her book. Each woman gets two pages- one a very brief profile of her accomplishments, and the other a vibrant drawing by Joy, accompanied by a quote from that woman.

There are the usual suspects here- Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, and some that may be new to the reader- Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, mathematician and computer scientist Grace Hopper, young German student Sophie Scholl who led a German Nazi resistance group, and British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.

A few of my favorite quotes here are:

• "I only move forwards, never backwards, darling."- Grace Jones
• "I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other." - Harriet Tubman
• "I am building a fire, and every day I train I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match."- Mia Hamm
• "Do we have to know who's gay and who's straight? Can't we just love everybody and judge them by the car they drive?"- Ellen DeGeneres 

At the end of this beautifully designed book, there is a place to write about a woman who inspired you, making this a perfect book to give as a gift to your Mom for Mother's Day or a graduation gift for a young lady you'd like to inspire and encourage. It would be great to see some of these drawings and quotes made as posters for sale. I could see them on many a dorm room wall.

Kimothy Joy's website is here, where you can see a video about the creation of the book.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Kimothy Joy's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Tour Stops

Tuesday, April 3rd: A Bookish Affair

Wednesday, April 4th: G. Jacks Writes

Thursday, April 5th: bookchickdi

Friday, April 6th: Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile

Monday, April 9th: Instagram: @jackiereadsbooks

Tuesday, April 10th: Leigh Kramer

Wednesday, April 11th: Literary Quicksand

Thursday, April 12th: Instagram: @thats_what_she_read

Wednesday, April 18th: Stranded in Chaos

Thursday, April 19th: A Bookish Way of Life

Friday, April 20th: Staircase Wit

Books Celebrating Women

March is the month set aside for celebrating Women's History Month, so I reflected on some of the non-fiction books I have read over the last few months that fit well into this category.

Tara Clancy's The Clancys of Queens is a memoir about growing up with her extended family in Queens, New York. After her parents divorced, Tara spent her childhood with her beloved maternal Italian grandparents, running around their Brooklyn neighborhood.

The Clancys of Queens

Her grandparents lived in a two-family house with her Aunt Mary. Her grandparents lived on the top floor, Aunt Mary in the middle level, and the basement level was where all of the thirty members of her family celebrated holidays. It reminded me of all the stories my mother told me about growing up with her grandparents, and this was the best part of the book. It sounded like Tara lived in the 1950s, instead of the 1990s.

Tara also spent time living between a converted garage in Queens with her divorced father, and on a fancy Hamptons estate when her mother remarried. Clancy can sure spin a yarn, and she makes you feel like you are right along side of her in her adventures.

Richard Cohen's She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron shares his decades-long friendship with writer/director Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally).  Ephron has written extensively about her own life, in her books I Feel Bad About My Neck, I Remember Nothing and her novel Heartburn, a thinly-veiled roman a clef about the dissolution of Ephron's marriage to writer Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame).

She Made Me Laugh

Cohen shows us a side to Ephron that most people didn't see, and he doesn't shy away the more prickly aspects of her personality. He'd seen her through thick and thin, and his wife was battling cancer at the same time Ephron was dying from leukemia and trying to hide it from the world.

Reading She Made Me Laugh brings Ephron back to vivid life, and fans of hers will not be disappointed with this candid look at a complicated woman.

Jennifer Weiner is best known as a novelist, but she also writes essays, appearing in The New York Times and other distinguished publications. Her essay collection Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love and Writing tells her story, growing up as a young woman trying to find her way in the world.

Hungry Heart

Weiner tackles what it was like growing up not looking like a Barbie doll, being a bookworm instead of a cheerleader, her family dodging bill collectors after her father up and leaves, and her steely determination to go to college and be a writer.

Some of these essays have been seen before, (the one about her grandmother being ostracized by "mean girl" women at her new adult living home is heartbreaking) and some are new, but all together they tell a tale of a woman coming into her own, trying to make a living at what she loves best- writing.

I loved her stories as a working reporter for a newspaper best, (as I once wanted to be Brenda Starr, if anyone knows who that is) and this is a great collection for young women to read, giving them hope that persistence, a good work ethic and believing in yourself can pay off.

Cara Brookins has had a bad run with men. One of her husbands was mentally ill, terrifying her and her children. Her next husband was physically abusive, and she would wake up to him grabbing her by the throat threatening to kill her.

She needed to prove to herself and her children that she could take care of them, and so she found a mission: to build a home for their family, which she recounts in Rise: How a House Built a Family. 

Rise

Although her children were young, (the oldest being 15, the youngest a two-year-old toddler), Brookins and her children taught themselves how design a home, frame walls, and lay a foundation by watching YouTube videos. (And this was back in 2009 before YouTube videos were as sophisticated as they are today.)

It sounds astounding that the Brookins family could accomplish this, but Cara's belief and determination was infectious and they all pulled together, along with help from a few people along the way, to make their dream come true.

They had many roadblocks, but when Brookins found herself flagging, her children picked her up. It's an inspirational story, and the next time your children tell you they can't take out the garbage, remind them that Cara Brookins' kids helped her build a house.

Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures tells the story of a group of African-American women who worked in the aeronautics industry as mathematicians in the 1940s. This is a truly fascinating story, as these women overcame prejudice through hard work, determination and an indomitable belief in themselves.

Hidden Figures

They came from families who believed that education was the way to make a better life, and their communities helped too, chipping with scholarships to college, and help with childcare when needed.

Women like Katharine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughn and Christine Darden became an integral part of Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia and later helped launch man into space at NASA.

Their story is the perfect example of "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." They prepared to succeed by working hard in school, taking difficult courses in college. When WWII led to a shortage of men working stateside, and the war effort needed more and better planes, these ladies were ready to step and do the job needed for America to succeed.

These women also gave back to their community. In addition to working 16-hour days, and caring for their families, they were choir members at their church, led Girl Scout troops, and mentored other young black women.

Hidden Figures inspired the movie that was nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, and the book is even better. There is something for everyone here- technical stuff for the math and science fans, a great narrative of interesting women for those who like a good biography, and a sense of pride for America and what we can achieve when everyone is allowed to contribute to the best of their abilities. Hidden Figures was the best of the books in this category, it is a must-read.