People We Meet on Vacation

July - People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

July is begging us to read something fun that reminds us of the days when summer meant travel and relaxation. People We Meet on Vacation is that perfect book, the rom-com for the summer.

Poppy and Alex have been friends since college. They are completely wrong for each other for so many reasons and, of course, perfect for each other.

Poppy loves to travel, so every summer, she and Alex take a vacation. They meet people, take pictures for Poppy's blog, and indulge each of their weird quirks. Alex wants to find a book store, and Poppy wants to rummage through antique stores and vintage shops.

We all know that Poppy and Alex will end up together, but this book is not about a suspenseful ending. It's about the journey, people! The entertaining banter, the twists and turns that keep them apart, the other woman, and the angst of ruining their friendship. The slow-burning sexual attraction.

Yes, it's fun, but it's also smart. Emily Henry gives us real characters in this romp of a story and even a few genuine insights. Poppy and Alex remind us, very gently but with certainty, how absolutely terrifying it is to be in love and not be sure you are loved back. The vulnerability of not knowing if you could survive the loss keeps them from reaching for the person that they want the most. And though this might be what's happening in every "boy meets girl" story ever written. Here, Henry deftly delivers. She also takes the time to create authentic childhoods for Poppy and Alex and shows us how those shaped them as adults. Their histories impact their psyches, and these details make their story a little deeper and a step above your typical ROMCOM.

But besides that, we get to travel with Poppy and Alex. After a year or more of not leaving our houses, this is the perfect opportunity to take to the road in a summer novel. We get to travel to Sanibel Island forget that it rained the whole time they were there. And the San Juans where they ended up meeting a host of fun young people despite the fact that they were staying in a retirement village. And the trip to the desert of Palm Springs in the heat of summer? Ahh… remember when we went places?

Take the plunge. And join Poppy and Alex on vacation. They don't always stay in the best places, but they are such a fun couple to travel with; you won't want to miss the chance to go along.

Support your local bookstore and pick up a copy, or find more books by Emily Henry at https://www.emilyhenrybooks.com/books or at Blue Bicycle Books.

INTERNET SEARCH From Buckley to Baldwin to Equity

June - Reflections on Racial Equity

Sometimes internet searches parallel my thought processes, not exactly a point A to point B proposition. It's more like wandering the maze of streets in a beautiful village. The roads are winding and connect in unexpected places but so pleasant that you may completely forget that you had a destination in mind.

I was googling trying to find a quote that I half-remembered about the media. I couldn't remember the quote or who said it, but maybe William F. Buckley or H. L. Mencken. And while I was bouncing around and scrolling through my options, I happened on a debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley. My completed manuscript has themes of race, and I have been working to be an ally and learn more about systemic racism, so I clicked.

The debate topic was "Is the American Dream at the Expense of the American Negro?" It took place in 1965 at Cambridge University.

Many of the conversations about race, the recent protests and counter-protests, and discussions about inequity echo ideas expressed in this video from the 1960s. Laws currently being implemented across the country limiting access to voting make Baldwin's observations even more relevant. He made several points worth emphasizing, points that you don't hear quite so much in the discourse.

James Baldwin moved to France. In Paris, he watched Americans interact with the French, and he noticed that the Americans often walked over the wait staff with what he called a charming and cheerful condescension. Of course, people who traveled comprised a far smaller percentage of the population back in the 1960s, but it did make me wonder. I know that I grew up believing that America was the land where any particular individual had the best chance to make it based on their merit. Did that sort of propaganda cause us to hold the rest of the world in disdain?

He went on to say that it appeared that Americans seemed to lack "any sense that this particular woman or man, though they spoke another language and had different manners and ways, was a human being." Could this inability to recognize another person's humanity be part of the American culture? Sometimes it seems like it. Does a failure to connect with people who are different extend beyond being rude to the wait staff in America? Is it reflected in our justice system, school system, and medical system?

Baldwin spoke about the impact of being treated as if you were beneath notice. I thought internalized racism was a relatively new idea, but it was one reason he moved to France. Baldwin could not believe himself to have something worthy to say; he could not believe in himself when so much of his daily experience denied his worth and undermined his self-esteem. He specifically mentions the way his history books taught students about Africans and African Americans. He was taught that he was inferior, and he believed it.

There's a lot of pushback and talk of erasing our history when it comes to correcting the accounts or removing monuments to Confederate Generals who fought against the Union (also known as the United States of America). Still, James Baldwin seemed to realize that we needed to come to terms with the reality of our past. "What one begs America to do, for all our sakes," he said, "is simply to accept our history."

You don't know how much has been left out until you start learning another narrative. Traditional textbooks mention separate water fountains, separate schools, Martin Luther King and voting rights, and water hoses. But we don't hear as much about bombings, about black teachers in Mississippi who earned 10% of the salary of white teachers, that 99% of the GI Bill benefitted whites, or about Medgar Evers or Emmitt Till. We've heard of the Freedom Riders, but maybe not about the white mob that attacked the riders with baseball bats and hammers when they arrived in Montgomery. Or that the police stood by and watched. You may also not have learned that loitering laws were created to enable police to arrest black men for doing nothing and send them to serve in work camps, often doing the jobs that slaves had done.

How do we get to racial equity from here? Baldwin says the first step is to accept our history. I hope we can. I hope we look at our textbooks, our monuments, and our approach to "others" and choose to embrace our ideals. And then maybe we can be the country for the people and by the people and of the people. Getting there might be messy. It's definitely not going to be a straight line. But I hope we aren't sitting here 50 years from now having the same conversation.

If you want to watch the debate, go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFeoS41xe7w

If you want to learn more about Racial Equity, check out:

Equal Justice Intitiative https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/20

Racial Equity Institute https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/

The Kindest Lie

May - The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson

For May's blog, I thought I'd do a little

post-Mother's-Day reality check brought on by Nancy Johnson's novel, The Kindest Lie.

There is so much sentimentality around motherhood. It makes me itchy with a need to push back. And for those of you concerned, I have a therapist. We are talking about my aversion to mushy feelings and anything that smacks of vulnerability.

But you must agree that every mother doesn't qualify for sainthood. I'm a mother, and I sure don't.

When I was young, my conservative southern family referred to the "miracle of birth" in awed tones. As a teenager, I would roll my eyes and remark that giving birth was far too common and too predictable to qualify as a miracle. After becoming a mother, and a few therapy sessions, I amended this statement, but the fact remains: that motherhood isn't that special….or is it?

The Kindest Lie asks us to take a different look at motherhood. Ruth Tuttle became a mother at 17 and gave her son up for adoption before departing for an elite education at Yale. She never spoke of her son, her pregnancy, her decision. Not even to her husband.

And then she did.

Nancy's novel gives us a glimpse into Ruth's circumstances. We are immersed in her world and into the complicated mixture of guilt, shame, self-doubt, love, and hate of her unplanned pregnancy. The Kindest Lie shows us how our families, our communities, and our society are biased against women who experience an unplanned pregnancy. And Ruth experiences an unplanned pregnancy as a teenager and as a woman of color.

Often, at this very vulnerable moment in their lives, a woman finds herself alone.

Humans, being human, are not always thinking clearly. Hormones being hormones. A mammal is built to reproduce. That's not morality. That's biology. Sometimes it happens with all the boxes checked, and the new baby is socially sanctioned. Sometimes, biology has its own ideas.

We know that. But we pile on the blame anyway.

The mother, the one so revered on Mother's Day, gets the full weight of the blame. She should have taken precautions. She should have known better. She shouldn't have been so easy. What did she expect?

The father, the other person responsible for this new life, is often out of the picture, unavailable, inaccessible, and unaccountable. He can slip away clean and without consequence. No mention of his moral compass. No shadow following his reputation.

Even the people who are committed to helping the mother often take over. As with Ruth's grandmother, they make decisions on their behalf in a rush to help. Years later, Ruth is still second-guessing her choices, still thinking about what options she might have had.

When Ruth couldn't contain the secret any longer, she decided to find her son. Her journey takes her back home to ask questions she never felt she had the right to ask. Her journey reconnects her with her family and with parts of herself that she had long denied.

The Kindest Lie asks us to feel Ruth's panic as a teenager and into adulthood as she tries to navigate back to the truth. And it asks us to do a little introspection of our own. About mothers. About race and about empathy. Mother's Day might not be enough.

You can get a copy at your local bookstore or mine, Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston, SC.