March 8, 2025
Happy International Women’s day!
In the last month and a half I’ve been actively searching out and reading diverse authors. It has been an incredibly enriching and rewarding experience. In celebration of both Black History Month (February) and International Women’s day (today – when I wrote this – March 8), and in rebuke of the dismantling of DEI programs in the States, I’d like to share with you three reading recommendations.
Elizabeth Alexander
The first is the author Elizabeth Alexander. Alexander is a prize winning author, renowned American poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate, who presented one of her poems at Obama’s 2009 inauguration. She is president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, America’s largest funder of the arts, culture and humanities. The book of hers I read is titled: “The Trayvon Generation”, a collection of essays exploring America’s unresolved problem with race. Alexander’s intelligence, knowledge, and love of language, poetry, and art make her writing a pure joy to read, and of course the subject matter demands attention. This book is essential reading.
Across her writing, three ideas of hers that I’d like to highlight and encourage you to think on are as follows:
- Words are powerful.
“We are at the outer edge of an era of a crisis wherein speech has been debased from the highest levels of governance, and abusive language and its violence are increasingly ambient. Words are vessels filled with meaning and intent. … If we believe in the power of words, and that words matter, and that precision with words matters most… if we believe also that there is too much language in the air right now that is imprecise, fasle, harmful, operating not to bridge understanding but to create misunderstanding, to divide… then we might ask: What is the power of our words? How are we responsible for them? What can we do with them, and do words move us closer to the hoped-for ideal of beloved community?” (p. 9/10 Trayvon Generation)
In our current political climate, these words are even more relevant. My question to you is: How will you be joyful with your words in the next week? Will you carefully choose the words you use when you speak to both others and yourself? What words can you use to advocate for something that matters to you?
2. What if the mightiest word is love?
From her poem “Praise Song for the Day” (Obama’s Inauguration):
“Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.”
At this time when there is so much political and economic turmoil, what if we countered the growing wave of vitriol and division with a spreading Great Lake of Love?
You can read her whole poem here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52141/praise-song-for-the-day
3. We must work in community.
Alexander is writing specifically about the ongoing, omnipresent violence towards blacks in America, including black children, and calls us forth with a question from Gwendolen Brooks, who asks of the community: “What does it mean to say we are all responsible for our children, even if we cannot fully protect them?” Then after Alexander shares a chilling poem wherein the speaker has heard the gunshots that killed a child in her/his ally, a child who died alone after calling out “Father! Mother! Sister! Brother!” – she concludes: “I have known this boy; we all could be this boy; we must see this boy as our child; we must know one another. We are responsible to and for each other.”
Acknowledging that as a white person I have not experienced the same racially-based threat to myself or family, I still fully agree that we could and should all be more responsible to and for each other – in whatever community we happen to be in. I think about parenting in my community, which is one of mixed races. In my mind, we are all parents of each other‘s children. Parenting is best done in community, by community, for community. How can I raise my children, and support all the other children I know to be inclusive, to be allies, to be advocates? To see similarities, and to acknowledge and celebrate differences. To take up their rightful space, despite internal or external challenges? To listen, and consider a variety of perspectives and experiences? To have empathy? How can we instill the values of love, respect and appreciation not just within our families, but to the furthest reach possible? How do I support other parents and leaders in doing the same? These values and desires permeate my daily actions, and possibly, this is the crux of my life’s work: to increase love and compassion in the world.
The Cricket War
The second recommendation is a youth historical fiction entitled The Cricket War by Tho Pham and Sandra McTavish. While accessible for readers as young as grade 5 or 6, it was still a captivating read for me as an adult. It tells the story of a 12 year old Vietnamese boy who escapes the communist regime by boat along with innumerable other refugees. The story reveals the oppression and fear under the communist rule, the desperation to escape, the resulting division of families, and the plight of the Boat People. It’s a page turner covering pirate attacks, stowaways, refugee camps, friendships, conflict and resilience.
More info can be found here: https://www.kidscanpress.com/product/the-cricket-war/
Mishka
A third recommendation, also on this theme of the refugee experience, is a book called Mishka by Edward van de Vendel and Anoush Elman, translated from Dutch by Nancy Forest-Flier. Based on the real life experience of Anouch Elman, this story seems initially to be about a bunny rabbit that an immigrant family buys and falls in love with. As the story unfolds, we learn about the family’s escape from Afghanistan and five year journey to end up in the Netherlands. My daughter in grade 2 loved listening to this story, and it was a lovely tearjerker at the end.
You can read more about the book here: https://www.levinequerido.com/mishka?srsltid=AfmBOoqtU75tfq7MmiWWdd35mHxg_RgOoIJElys1FcQYmZt00yXdtjq_
Conclusion
I hope that these three recommendations of books/authors are inspiring to you and encourage you to start reading stories from more perspectives. Every Saturday morning, I am in the library in a comfortable chair, sitting opposite a display shelf which highlights female authors, diverse authors, books showing different perspectives and topical such things. I love to cast my eye over the titles and select ones that resonate for me. I flip it open to a random page, and if I like the writing I keep reading. How do you choose new books? What do you do to increase your exposure to different cultures and perspectives? What are you doing this year to celebrate International Women’s Day? Put your comments below!
Camilla combines careful listening, acceptance, enthusiasm and challenge to help all her clients reach their maximum potential.
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