Elevated Thought
All About Love by bell hooks (Rania Henriquez)
I am someone that loves love. I talk about it whenever I get the chance; I try to practice love in everything I do. I was thrilled to find All About Love by bell hooks when I was in college. To this day, I still find myself reaching for this work. Some books will change your life. For me, this was one of those books. It changed everything—how I think about love, how I feel about love, and how I practice it. hooks has produced an honest work about love, one that interrogates the danger of lovelessness, which has become all too common as capitalism further roots itself into our everyday lives. I recommend this book to everyone I know. If you’re interested in thinking about love and reading about it—beyond its romantic conception, as a necessary practice for imagining new worlds—this book is for you.
ABOUT
A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love.
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Emma Burke)
I can’t express enough how much I needed this book as a teenager, and how grateful I am that it exists for young readers today. Reading mainstream fantasy often meant not seeing myself in the characters and stories that I loved. While I am not West African, as a Black woman reader, I felt connected to Zélie and her experience of marginalization as a practitioner of magic. Tomi Adeyemi explores intense themes like cultural genocide, systemic oppression, and what it would take to spark a revolution. Adeyemi’s characters and their motivations are complex, and the incorporation of Nigerian mythology builds a vivid, exciting world. (also highly recommended for anyone that enjoys a story about star-crossed lovers!)
ABOUT
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.
Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.
Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers - and her growing feelings for an enemy.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Emma Burke)
Hurston explores themes of race, gender, and class through the intimate telling of Janie Crawford's life, revealing the complexity of Black womanhood in the early 2oth century American South. I don't think it's considered a romance novel per-say, but it deeply changed my perspective on love and its relationship to self-actualization. Sometimes I feel like the search for true love is considered corny or almost naive, which I can understand because romantic love is just one of the many parts of a person's life. Their Eyes Were Watching God made me want to fall deeply in love in a way that feels real, not clouded in fantasy, and is grounded in becoming a better version of myself. I felt (and still feel) deeply for Janie and her relationships not only with the men in her life but herself, and this will remain one of my favorite books of all time.
ABOUT
Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years.
This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in Black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates boldly and brilliantly African-American culture and heritage. And in a powerful, mesmerizing narrative, it pays quiet tribute to a Black woman who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard.
Originally published in 1937 and long out of print, the book was reissued in 1975 and nearly three decades later Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered a seminal novel in American fiction.
Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci N. Todd, Illustrated by Christian Robinson (Celeste Cruz)
As soon as I laid eyes on the cover, I knew I had to pick this up. I’m a fan of anything Christian Robinson and these illustrations brought life to Traci’s beautiful retelling of Nina Simone’s life story.
ABOUT
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in small town North Carolina, Nina Simone was a musical child. She sang before she talked and learned to play piano at a very young age. With the support of her family and community, she received music lessons that introduced her to classical composers like Bach who remained with her and influenced her music throughout her life. She loved the way his music began softly and then tumbled to thunder, like her mother's preaching, and in much the same way as her career. During her first performances under the name of Nina Simone her voice was rich and sweet but as the Civil Rights Movement gained steam, Nina's voice soon became a thunderous roar as she raised her voice in powerful protest in the fight against racial inequality and discrimination.
A Place Inside of Me by Zetta Elliott, Illustrated by Noa Denmon (Celeste Cruz)
This poem works as an affirmation. A Place Inside of Me carries us through our varying emotions and acknowledges that we are not alone. This is one to read when you need to pick me up or just a reminder of all the love that lives inside of you.
ABOUT
Summertime is filled with joy―skateboarding and playing basketball―until his community is deeply wounded by a police shooting. As fall turns to winter and then spring, fear grows into anger, then pride and peace.
In her stunning debut, illustrator Noa Denmon articulates the depth and nuances of a child’s experiences following a police shooting―through grief and protests, healing and community―with washes of color as vibrant as his words.
Here is a groundbreaking narrative that can help all readers―children and adults alike―talk about the feelings hiding deep inside each of us.
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (Nathan Baez)
Wild Seed is the first book I read by Octavia Butler. At the time I was working at the Lawrence Public Library when a friend recommended I read Parable of the Sower, one of Butler's most famous books. We didn’t have that book available and the only book available was Wild Seed so I decided to pick that one up instead. The story follows Anyanwu and Doro as they travel across Africa and North America during the 1600’s and beyond. Anyanwu is over 300 years old and has the power to change her form into other people and animals; Doro, who is older than Anyanwu, has the ability to kill people by taking over their body’s and becoming them. Wild Seed reignited my passion for reading science fiction. Butler's ability to build a world that stretches across time and space is unlike any other author I’ve read. Her prose draws you into the humanity of even the most sinister personalities, forcing the reader to question the often stark depiction of what is “right” and “wrong.”
DESCRIPTION
For a thousand years, Doro has cultivated a small African village, carefully breeding its people in search of seemingly unattainable perfection. He survives through the centuries by stealing the bodies of others, a technique he has so thoroughly mastered that nothing on Earth can kill him. But when a gang of New World slavers destroys his village, ruining his grand experiment, Doro is forced to go west and begin anew. He meets Anyanwu, a centuries-old woman whose means of immortality are as kind as his are cruel. She is a shape-shifter, capable of healing with a kiss, and she recognizes Doro as a tyrant. Though many humans have tried to kill them, these two demi-gods have never before met a rival. Now they begin a struggle that will last centuries and permanently alter the nature of humanity.
