The Silence of Our Friends

 The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos with art by Nate Powell (2012) 201 pages

This is semi-autobiographical based on events that occurred in Houston, TX in 1968. Author Mark Long's father was a television reporter who observed the pushback to SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) organizing Civil Rights protests on Texas Southern University campus. An organizer of the protests, Larry Thompson, his family, and all the African American community in the poorer Wards of Houston face regular racism from the white community. A brutal police response to a protest and a court case provide the climactic events to this conflict. Visually I really appreciate the design of the panels and speech bubbles on each page, the dramatic motion is strongly conveyed.

Anger is a Gift

 

Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro 463 pp.

It's not often a book gives me a strong, visceral reaction but this one hit me hard. The story is one we have seen too often in the news: police overstepping their boundaries, causing death to the innocent African-Americans. The story centers around a high school student named Moss who, when he was younger, saw his father gunned down by an officer and suffers from PTSD as a result. His father's crime was being a known protester against injustice who just happened to be shopping. When the Oakland high school in a rundown building with no money for books or other services, enters into a contract with the police department to make things "safer" the first thing that happens is the serious injury of a previously injured student by "malfunctioning" metal detectors. A student walk-out turns into a violent travesty with the police injuring and ultimately killing a teen, a young man who is Moss's first real boyfriend. Further demonstrations also turn violent and eventually the Oakland mayor and police chief back down somewhat - after a white girl is killed by police. Events in this book are sickening because they are going on in too many places in this country, Reading this book brought back the same feelings I had as a junior high student when I read Kristen Hunter's The Soul Brothers and Sister Lou. Just the idea that we still need books about racial injustice against young people over fifty years later is sickening. When will it ever end? This is one of the books I will be discussing with high school students as part of the Great Stories Grant. 

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, 312 pages.

I can't believe that it took me so long to read this book. It's been on my list of to-be-read since it came out in 2010. Every word of it rings more true now than it seemed to (to me, in my bubble, anyway). Everything about this book is devastating. I feel like I have heard every (well, almost every) part of this book before, in one forma or another, but having all of the details of how racist, horrible and unfair our justice system is shocking and  depressing. Alexander does an excellent job of marshaling her facts and lays out a compelling case that things must change.

American by Day

American by Day: a Novel / Derek B. Miller, 338 p.

I enjoyed Miller's The Girl in Green and was delighted by Norwegian by Night, of which American by Day is a sort of spin-off, but not a sequel.

Oslo police captain Sigrid Odegard travels to upstate New York in search of her brother, an adjunct professor and sometime-drifter.  He's gone missing in the wake of the death (by murder? suicide?) of his lover Lydia.  On arrival Sigrid meets Sheriff Irv Wylie, master of divinity from Loyola, wisecracker in chief and a thinking person's lawman.  Together and separately they confront a tangled case involving Lydia's murdered nephew, a twelve-year-old black boy whose story is almost plagiarized from that of Tamir Rice.

Miller's bio is vague but hints at a former career in State, Defense, or, my guess, Intelligence, and he has an acute sense, on display in all three of his novels, of the way America looks when viewed from the outside.  Generally he puts his perspective to sensitive and dryly humorous effect.  I loved Sheriff Irv's banter, witty but not mean, and Miller writes intelligently about race.  Smart entertainment.