A gorgeous, elegant, wise, and heartbreaking book, destined to become a classic. The author is a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In poetic prose, she shows how Native-Americans understand botany on a personal level.
Her intricate essays explain that the land feeds and heals us and, when it is healthy, so are we. But when it is broken, we are as well.
I kept thinking, “what if” throughout the book. What if we had followed Native American custom and respected the land, returning as much as we have taken, and giving thanks for the gifts of nature, instead of seeing it only as something to use for our own gain? — Pat Prijatel
Category: Non-Fiction Reviews
Between the World and Me, by Ta Nehisi Coates.
This book is a letter addressed by the author to his 15-year-old son: Samori.
Ta Nehisi Coates relates the fears of his youth while growing up in West Baltimore. “When I was your age the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid..… The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood, in their large rings and medallions, their big puffy coats… which was their armor against their world. “
Everybody knew someone who had lost a child or adult life violence, jail, or drugs. “I saw it (fear) in my own father, who loves you.” But if the young Coates got in trouble, which he often said he did, his father would crack the belt, “which he applied with more anxiety than anger. “
Coates tells his son that “fear ruled everything around me, and I knew, as all black people do, that this fear was connected to the Dream out there, to the unworried boys, to pie and pot roast, to the white fences and green lawns nightly beamed into a television sets. “
The author explains that the law did not protect the Black community. “And now in your time, the law has become an excuse for stopping in frisking you, which is to say, for furthering the assault on your body. “
Coates repeats several times in his letter that he had been a curious boy. His mother taught him to read and write when he was very young. His father was a research librarian at Howard University; his father loved and owned many books by and about Blacks.
Coates suffered at the hands of both the streets and the schools. He believed the schools “were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance…. When the elders presented school to us, they did not present it as a place of high learning, but as a means of escape from death and penal warehousing. Schools did not reveal truths, they can concealed them. “
Ta-Nehisi questioned the need for school: “Their are laws were aimed at something distant and vague.” It was not the classroom but the library that he loved. “The library was open, unending, free. “
Coates wants his son to ask many of the same questions as mother had put to him: “Why did I feel the need to talk at the same time as my teacher; why did I not believe that my teacher was entitled to respect; how would I want someone to behave while I was talking?” author goes on to state that his mother’s assignments did not curb his behavior, but because these were the earliest acts of interrogation, of drawing myself into consciousness… she was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing— myself. “
It was later at Howard University and especially The Mecca, that Ta-Nehisi he was formed and shaped.
The Mecca: A machine, crafted to capture and concentrate the dark energy of all African peoples and inject it directly into the student body… We have made something down here. We have taken the one drop rules of Dreamers and flipped them. They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people. Here at the mecca under pain of selection, we have made a home as do black people on summer blocks marked with needles, violence, and hopscotch squares. As do black people dancing it out at rent parties, as do black people at their family reunions where we are regarded like the survivors of catastrophe.
—Lauri Jones
TATTOOS ON THE HEART, by Gregory Boyle
In this uplifting and intimate memoir, Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle recounts his three decades of working with “homies” in the barrios of East Los Angeles, an area with an extreme concentration of murderous activity, including over 1,000 gangs with almost 90,000 members. I was by turns mesmerized, horrified, and enthralled as I read.
In each chapter, we benefit from Boyle’s hard-earned wisdom, inspired by his faith, serving alongside the gang members and loving them as Jesus intends us to love others (our neighbors), amply demonstrating the impact that unconditional love and compassion can have on lives. Father Greg, or G-Dog as he is called by the homies, saw the need for a rehabilitation center and started Homeboy Industries in 1986 to provide jobs, tattoo removal, job training and encouragement for members of rival enemy gangs. Their motto, printed on tee shirts is “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”
Homeboy Industries has grown to a $8.5 million headquarters, housing Homeboy Bakery, a beautiful Homegirl Café, a catering service, various craft industries, and a Homeboy Diner. It currently employs about 300 former gang members, daily serving about 1,000 customers, and monthly provides 500 treatments for tattoo removal.
The book distills his experience working in the ghetto into a breathtaking series of stories which capture and convey the lessons he learned from kids who have struggled through challenging times and tried to turn around their lives. In each Chapter the reader benefits from Boyle’s wonderful, hard-earned wisdom. With an ear for dialogue, he deftly captures the expressive flavor and colorful language of the Spanglish patois spoken there. That alone makes Tattoos of the Heart remarkable literature.
The individual stories he tells are woven into parables that will break your heart, as many are about young gang members who start to get on track, only to be randomly shot and killed. It’s difficult to keep a dry eye. Manny was a boy covered with tattoos caught in the crossfire of gang warfare and died on the emergency room operating table. He had enrolled in community college, but was cut down before he ever attended a class. A nurse who was evidently disgusted by his tattoos, told another “Who would want this monster’s heart?” The other nurse reacted angrily, “How dare you call this kid a monster. He belonged to somebody. Shame on you.”
Then there was Jason, a young crack dealer, the son of two addicts, who, after rejecting several of Boyle’s invitations, finally got a job with Homeboy Industries. He left his anger behind him, eventually had a home and family, and was looking forward to his daughter’s baptism and had bought her a new dress. But then he was gunned down in the streets.
Luis, also a drug dealer, came to Greg after his daughter was born. He was hired to work in the bakery. He got a car, a home and a whole new life. One evening, while loading his car, he was shot and killed by some gang members who ventured into his neighborhood barrio.
There are other stories like those of Manny, Luis, and Jason, kids who Greg befriended, turned their lives around, looked to the future with hope, only to end up one more victim of the violence of the LA streets.
But then there are other stories of some who turned their lives around. Bandit came to see Greg after being locked up for selling crack. Boyle got him a job in a warehouse, and Bandit got married and had three kids. He told Greg he was proud of himself, showing people were wrong who called me a “Bueno para nada” (Good for nothing).
Boyle sees beyond these experiences and reminds us that we are all deserving of God’s love. These young people are not monsters, but scared kids who want a purpose in life. He challenges the reader to “stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.” This is a holy book about the power and impact of unconditional love and compassion.
Considering that he has buried more than 150 young people from gang-related violence, many of which he has known since childhood, and called them by the names their mothers used, the joyful tenor of the book remains an astounding literary and spiritual feat. Tattoos on the Heart, which reminds us that no life is less valuable than another, is destined to become a classic of contemporary spirituality. But, be careful — reading it may change your thinking, and your ministry!
—Ken Johnson
P.S. The book left a tattoo on my heart too.
Books, Brews & Banter 