Pots and Pages

Well folks, Fall is just about here.  Here in The Dirty Nati, evenings are getting really cool and chilly.  It's time for some heat!  Of course, you all know the Colored Man, and I am thinking about good comforting stews and soups, and some pages to turn in a book or two.

As far as the soup is concerned, I have a recipe for a Columbian soup called puchero, featuring spare ribs, beef brisket, chicken and cassava.  I have never eaten the South American and African staple cassava, but this is definitely one recipe that I will be preparing some weekend as the months get even colder.  Since we all will be spending alot of time indoors watching cable and reading, I thought that I would share with you some books that I think will keep you quite occupied during the upcoming cold season, just as they have keep me entertained in the past few months.

The first book that I am recommending is entitled, Wench, and written by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.  I recently met Mrs. Valdez at a book fair, and asked her what inspired her to write the book.  She explained that she was reading an autobiography about W.E.B. Dubois, and there was a sentence about a summer resort in Ohio, named Tawawa House, where Southern plantation owners brought there female slaves for vacation.  This sparked her interest and she began researching.  What I really like about this book is the fact that it provides new information about something that I never even imagined happened.
At times, both brutal and chilling to read, Ms.Valdez steadily delivers a powerful punch in her first book, that is soon destined for the big screen.  A Must Read.

Ms. Valdez, at the Cincinnati By the Banks Book Fair

 

My next selection, is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, written by Pulitzer-prize winning writer, Isabel Wilkerson.  I cannot praise this book enough.  Ms. Wilkerson has written a scholarly tome that focuses on the migration of African-Americans from the South to the North from 1915 to 1970.  The Colored Man finds it very engaging that Ms. Wilkerson interviewed over 1,200 subjects for the book, and narrowed her story down to three individuals - Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, who migrated to California, and became the physician to the entertainer, Ray Charles; George Swanson Starling, who migrated to New York and became disillusioned when his children became trapped in the vices of the big city, despite the hardships and sacrifices that he had endured; and finally, Ida Mae Gladney, who migrated to Chicago, and remembered meeting Barack Obama when he was running to become her district representative in the Illinois state senate.  This is a book that mixes real-life struggles and courage, along with historical documentation. Many of us can relate to the migration saga within our own families, and this book deserves your time and attention.  The Colored Man would not lead you astray.  Trust me.

If you can't tell by now, the Colored Man reads quite alot.  This is something that I have done my entire life.  I mainly read American authors, and only recently started reading books by authors of different cultures.  With that said, I am not into romance-type books, but the next book is kinda "romancy", but also has a good story.  The book is entitled, Conquistadora, and written by Esmeralda Santiago, a writer of Puerto Rican heritage.  The novel is set in the mid-1800's, and is the story of a young Spanish girl, Ana Larragoity Cubillas, who dreams of traveling to Puerto Rico and owning a sugar plantation.  She gets her wish, but you know the old saying, "be careful what you wish for."  According to the author, this is just the beginning of what will be a trilogy of books about the conquistadora, Ana.


My final recommendation to keep you toasty this winter, is entitled, Slavery by Another Name:The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, written by Douglas A. Blackmon, a prize-winning writer for the Wall Street Journal, and author of several critically-acclaimed books.  Mr. Blackmon weaves a historical tome that focuses on Black men being rounded up from the roads and settlements in the South, and being placed in modern-day concentration camps to provide labor to plantations and companies throughout the South.  This was a predicament that not only befell many men, but also quite a number of women, who were forced to work as cooks, laundresses, and sex slaves at the various camps located in the South.  This type of slave labor was used to make the bricks that were used on the streets and sidewalks of Atlanta, mined natural resources for Alcoa, and helped several insurance companies become the business giants that they are today.  Two adjectives can accurately describe this book - Enlightening and Maddening.

Well there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen, about 3,000 pages of various words put together to create a story, or share some history.  These are the books that the Colored Man is recommending for the upcoming frigid days and nights.  I have provided the entertaining, exciting reading material, now the succulent, lip-smacking stews are up to you to come up with.