Growing Together Blog

  Title: White Tears/Brown Scars Author: Ruby Hamad Summary/Themes: Breaking down the stereotypes and archetypes that women of color are often forced into. Looking at how these create dangerous binaries. Notes/Quotable Moments: "White parents often bequeathed human property to their female children, with land usually passed down to the males." "When enslaved people could bear no more and attempted to flee, it was often their female owners who places notices in newspapers offering a reward for their return--with explicit instructions not to return the slave to her husband." "...we still see this kind of exclusion and appropriation of the work of women of color by white feminists today--perhaps most glaringly when white women adopt a self-serving 'intersectional feminist' identity, both as a shield against criticism from women of color and as a weapon with which to silence us by claiming we are causing division in the sisterhood...There is no sisterhoo...

Hey hello! This is my first official “Book Breakdown” where I write about a fiction and nonfiction book that I read each month. These are books that we have here on the shelves at the Duxbury Free Library, and feature authors from historically marginalized identities (such as immigrant, POC, LGBTQ, and/or disabled authors).  Let's get started! Title: There There Author: Tommy Orange Summary/Themes: This novel brings together Indigenous histories and cultures throughout each story told, past present and future. From book jacket: "Follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize...together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism." Notes/Quotable Moments: "We are defined by everyone else." ...