Ordinary Hazards: An Audio Book Review and Giveaway

Congratulations to Barbara Younger for winning CAVE DADA from last week's blog.

Nikki Grimes writes powerful young adult books in verse. You'll find my reviews of Between the Lines and Words with Wings on previous posts. Now I know why she is able to write such authentic poetry. It comes from the depth of her soul and the pain from her past. 

Note: since this is a review of the audiobook, I did my best to capture quotes from the book. 

REVIEW

Nikki narrates the book and begins with this definition:

Memoir: A work of imperfect memory in which you meticulously capture all that you can recall and use informed imagination to fill in what remains. As she says later in the book, Trauma is a memory hog.

Quickly, the reader learns about Nikki's schizophrenic, alcoholic mother; her musician father who feels incapable of raising children; and a childhood full of instability, fears, and abuse. Her only constant was her older sister, Carol, who she adored.

“I have a Ph.D. in avoidance 

We’re all masters of selective memory 

We’re all allergic to pain."

*****

Home was never a safe place.

Forget the guns. 

I was put in a dresser drawer away from the rats.

As a child she realized her mother had a secret life since she talked to invisible people. "Mommy who are you talking to?” was met with,  "Shhh!" and a finger to her lips. 

After her father left, the family temporarily lived with a relative but her sons shot heroin. They moved out, her mother went to work, and the girls were left in the care of a person who locked them in a closet during the day. Nikki was 3, Carol was 8. 

A demon lived inside of us for years in fear of the dark.

When neighbors reported that her mother neglected them, social services took them away. That began a series of foster homes. Some she remembered; she forgot several. One foster mother whipped her and her sister. She and her sister ran away to their grandmother's house; she refused to take them in. 

Did we do something wrong? Is that why no one wants us? 

Anger and I stood together on the train. 

When she was six, she found an oasis of love and peace with the Buchanan's foster family. Although she didn't talk for several days, the family's welcome broke down her distrust. She went to church, started school, and took dance lessons. But she was terrified of the night's darkness. She discovered Psalm 18:28: "You, Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light," and realized, 

Grace! Outstrips the dark every time.

Early on, she started pouring out her feelings in notebooks; the blank page was her safety.

The writing thing was some kind of magic. 
But magicians rarely share their secrets.

Although she grew to love the Buchanan family, she yearned for Carol and wrestled with not hearing from her parents.

Why did mom love liquor more than us? 
Why didn’t they love us?

When someone explained that her mother had a nervous breakdown she asks, How can nerves break? She is told that her mother doesn't know what's real and what's not, and Nikki remembered her mother's imaginary friends. 

When she overheard a relative at a picnic say that Mr. and Mrs. B always took in strays, Nikki realized, This beautiful family was only borrowed.

She found a picture of herself in the Buchanan family album when she was nine.  She had settled in and let her guard down. Then her mother called. She was remarried and wanted Nikki to join them. 

“I had to go. How could I say no? One mother is all that you get. I wasn’t ready to give up on her yet."

The city scared her, it was difficult always changing schools mid-term. This time, her mother deliberately kept her father away and spent more time in politics and civil rights than with her. But Nikki moved in any way--what choice did she have? She quickly learned that in Brooklyn you have to join a gang for protection. When she is singed with a cigarette butt, her mother doesn't ask about the bandage. Nikki writes,

Why does she avoid dark and painful things? 
Who taught her to pretend? 

There were gangs on every corner, danger her mother refused to see, and the Brooklyn Library became her refuge. 

My life is like musical chairs. 
Every time the music plays, I have to move. 

When her mother started talking to herself again, she feared that “this stuff” was in her. 

God, please don’t let insanity be my inheritance.

Both her father and stepfather were useless. Nikkie took the situation into her hands; she was a kid who had to get her mother hospitalized. 

Every damn episode wore another hole in my soul.

She entered puberty and was alarmed when boys and her stepfather eyed her funny. She hated the changes in her body. Her sister moved in but didn't stay; Nikki didn't realize why Carol left until after “my mother’s monster” raped her. No amount of showers or notebook entries could take her pain away. In the same way that her mother didn't want to hear the truth about the neighborhood gangs, Nikki knew her mother would be no help against her step-father's abuse.

Her pent up anger terrified her. She learned to vocalize and to translate her feelings into words on the page.

I knew writing could take me places. 
But writing was a lonely place. 

Although her mother discounted her writing talent, at thirteen Nikki performed her first reading with Harlem poets. She was nervous, but her father affirmed her talent. He said, 

Explore every art form. You can be whatever you want.
......

My father fed me books and art by blacks. 
It left me dreaming of what books I might bring into the world.

After going to the Copacabana with her father she thinks, Not all stars in the firmament are white.

Nikki's faith does not break in spite of the many difficulties she faces. At one point she writes,

How can I not believe in God? 
If it weren’t for Him I’d be in prison or the grave.

As I mentioned, Nikki narrates the book herself. The only time her voice wavered was when she read about the car accident in which her father lost his life. He had promised to see her Easter morning and she blamed herself for him driving too late at night to get home in time. She felt powerless in the face of death.

Why did the one parent who knew my heart have to die? 

Here is an audio snippet to give you a flavor of the book.

*****

This is a powerful memoir that I recommend for mature teens as well as for adults. Nikki Grimes has taken the fragments of her life-- "scattered memories"--and pieced them together into an amazing volume of poetry. Teens who have known abuse will find comfort in reading this book and knowing that they are not alone. Teens who have grown up in safety should gain empathy by reading or listening to Ordinary Hazards. 


GIVEAWAY

I have a code that you can use to download this book for one of you. Leave me a comment by 6 PM on June 13th to enter the giveaway; please make sure to leave your email address if you are new to my blog. Share this on social media or start following my blog and I'll enter your name twice. 

The Good Braider: A Review and a Giveaway

When Tracey Adams of Adams Literary recommends a book, I listen.  As a result, when I was given the opportunity by Recorded Books to listen and review the book Tracey recommended,  the good braider (Skyscape, 2012) I jumped at the chance. For one fortunate blog reader, you'll be glad that I did. Following this review you'll find directions on how to win this beautifully produced audio CD, narrated by Cherise Boothe. Written by Terry Farish, the good braider was selected in 2013 as the Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year and a book of Outstanding Merit. You can find the study guide here; Farish has donated this book to the Worldreader program.

South Sudan. A nation torn by civil war as well as religious and ethnic conflict. The country from which Viola and her mother escape to the United States. The story told poignantly in free verse, is captured in this trailer:


Viola's father is a rebel soldier who has been gone for five years and she lives with her beloved grandmother, mother, and younger brother, Francis, in Juba. Their lives are full of two enemies: the Sudanese soldiers who rape women and kill young boys or conscript them for the army, and poverty. Yet the family are embraced and loved in their community. 

Viola yearns for freedom, and to escape to America where her uncle lives. When she is raped by a Sudanese soldier, she is full of shame knowing that she will no longer be valuable as a bride:
      At home I rub palm oil into my mother's hair.
     She is silent. 
     She knows. Everybody knows.
     The story rolls along like drumbeats from house to house.
     Viola has lost her bride wealth. 
Her daughter's devastation and pain precipitates her mother's push to escape. But the family must leave her grandmother and beloved village behind. Although they journeys thousands of miles, Viola can't leave behind her feeling of being ruined as a woman. While waiting to be approved to immigrate to America she thinks:
      I cannot imagine my future and my past is a snake, ready to strike.
Francis sickens and dies while they are waiting to leave Africa. His loss is huge to both Viola and her mother. She wakens from a nightmare about the rape and clutches one of her few possessions, a book her grandmother gave her: 
    I hold it to me and breathe
    as if I could breathe life back into us all. 
The metaphor of braided hair weaves throughout the book. It was an important way in which the women connected with one another. Viola learned how to make tiny rows of braids from her mother:
    When I was young, my little fingers rode on her long              narrow ones 
Explaining the death of her brother to her friend Lokolumbe, Viola says:
    I am not who I used to be.
    We were three, like three strands. 
    We lay, three of us, on the steamer warming each other.
    Without the third, I don't know what to do.
She asks him:
    What does it matter about a refugee’s hair?
    Why not have knots like a child? What does it matter?”
    He looks ahead into the sand.
    As tall as I am,
    I come only to Lokolumbe’s shoulder.
    He does not answer at first.
    We both keep walking in the desert,
    following a fragile dream of America.
    “Braids are from our culture,” he says, this boy who   read and knows all the American capital cities.
    “They are the African designs we give to the world.     When you are ready, you will braid.”
 After almost two years of living among other refugees in a church courtyard in Cairo, Viola and her mother receive the blue card needed to go to America. But life in an apartment in Kennedy Park in Portland, Maine has its own set of challenges. The language, culture, the color of the people--even the weather--are all foreign. Eventually, Viola gets used to her new school, the new technology, and different foods, but she feels caught between two cultures:
    I wish I could see my grandmother’s bright eyes.
    I have been here less than a year,
    yet I do not think I can be all Sudanese, all the time.
    Already, am I part American?
    I don’t feel like any one thing. 
Her friend Jackie, explains the gap between Sudan and America:
    “If you live in Kennedy Park, you remember.
    The elders make sure you remember.
    Your mother makes sure you remember.
    If you go to McDonald’s, your mother makes you remember,
    ‘You need African food,’ she says.
    ‘You cannot eat this food. You will die!
    That’s what they say if you forget to remember.”
Viola's confusion is reflected in her feelings about her hair:
    That night I stand at the mirror
    and see my ragged, broken hair.
    With scissors I cut, cut,
    cut, until my hair all around
    is cut as close to my head as I can make it.
    When I am done,
    I gaze at my unflinching eyes.
    Hey ! I tell Lokolumbe,
    this is the way I look in America
Viola and her mother survive the turbulence of Viola's friendship with Andrew:
     A girl as skinny as the Nile on a map of Africa and a boy with red hair who smells like fish. 
but it is not without a run-in with government agencies and agony for both mother and daughter. Viola confides her despair to her guidance counselor:
   “I am not doing well. I am not American.
    Or Sudanese.
    I’m not in Sudan and not really in Maine.
    Or maybe I’m in both of them
    at the same time.
    I’m in someplace I’m making up.
    Even talking to you.
    This story about the soldier . . .
    my people
    would never talk about it.”
    Still I go on, leaning into her.
    “I don’t do the Sudanese braids
    in my hair we all do in my culture.
    Why don’t I? I don’t know.”
    I rub my hair again. I laugh
    and hold my hands out, palms open,
    my body is all question.
Farish's simple, yet eloquent free verse ends Viola's story with hope. She misses the feeling of braiding other people's hair and in the end she braids a white girl's hair and is wearing braided extensions in her own hair. 
In the final scene, the reader sees Viola playing with a young child:
    The nights have gotten longer.
    I sit on the couch beside my mother with Jamal,
    a solid, warm weight plopped
    in my lap. He is singing the names of
    animals he looks at in a picture book.
    Out the window the moon is shining.
    My mother tells me to sit on the floor.
    I do with Jamal still in my lap,
    and her strong fingers
    begin to massage jojoba oil into my hair.
    Jamal holds the book high in the air,
    then drops his head back against my belly,
    grinning upside down at me.
    “Who is this boy,” I tease,
    “this one who eats Cocoa Puffs for breakfast?”
     I scoop him up the way Habuba would have.
     I play the traditional game. “Who wants this child?
    Anybody want this child?” and pretend to pass him
    around to Frieda or my mother while he squeals.
    My mother describes for him
    the feel of the earth when the elephants walk,
    and Jamal’s eyes grow wide.
    I shut my eyes and can feel the heat
    of the cook fire in our courtyard.
    Then comes a hint of the smell
    of the earth by the Nile.
    I’m an American girl in Portland, Maine.
    But I am also
    a girl from Juba.

*******************

To win this audio CD please follow these directions:

1. Leave me a comment with your email address (if I don't have it.)

2. Become a new follower of this blog and I'll add your name twice.

3. For each time you post the link on social media I'll enter your name again.

4. Drawing to be held before noon on Saturday, May 31.