Book review: March

Happy African-American History Month!

To celebrate, check out the #1 New York Times and Washington Post Bestseller March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, winner of:

• National Book Award for Young People's Literature
• Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award, which recognizes an African American author of a book for kids
• Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young-adult literature 
• Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award
• YALSA Award for excellence in young-adult nonfiction
• Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
• Eisner Award
• One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound
• One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read

Is this the same Rep. John Lewis our president recently derided as "all talk...no action or results"? Yes, it is.

As this graphic novel trilogy artistically demonstrates, John Lewis's legacy of action and results began with the Civil Rights Movement, when he was a college student. All three volumes flash between Lewis's participation in President Obama's Inauguration Day in 2009 and Lewis's recollections of his experiences as a young black man in America in the early 1960s, making the first black president's inauguration all the more profound.

• In Book 1, Lewis describes his childhood in rural Alabama during Jim Crow, his desire to grow up to be a preacher, and how meeting Martin Luther King Jr. influenced his participation in the Nashville Student Movement's lunch counter sit-ins.

• Book 2 begins in Nashville, 1960, as nonviolent sit-ins are met with both success and increasingly violent response. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) works with other Civil Rights leaders and groups to organize Freedom Rides, actively demonstrating for integration. The book ends with the 1963 March on Washington.

• Book 3 begins with the horrific bombing of a church in Birmingham in September 1963. Civil Rights leaders, activists, and supporters are mobilized, but the accompanying rise in violence divides even as it galvanizes. Stakes continue to rise as people suffer and die. The book culminates in the historic Selma to Montgomery marches. It ends, after a long, difficult road, with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Powell's black-and-white illustrations capture emotion and action cinematically, bringing scenes and individuals to vivid life. Lewis and Aydin write matter-of-factly, sticking close to events as they happened from Lewis's inside perspective. Yet the inherent drama--whether a SNCC meeting or a violent conflict with police--keeps pages turning, even if you think you know Civil Rights history. 

The book's tone echoes the tenets of nonviolent civil disobedience. The calm, factual rendering of each situation contrasts sharply with the irrational absurdity of the violence and rhetoric against the demonstrators. Who are the "bad guys" here, those steadfastly protesting unjust laws and accepting prison stays, or those hysterically screaming, hosing, beating, and killing people to defend the status quo?

Insane as the words and deeds of people like sheriff Jim Clark, governor George Wallace, and even President Lyndon Johnson ("You've gotta get 'em by the balls and you gotta squeeze!") seem--officials covering the murders of activists' bodies, beating activists in jail, assaulting unarmed marchers--readers will draw parallels to current events.

March serves as a reminder of what the "good old days" were actually like for millions of Americans. 

It also offers inspiration for those working for further reform and change to ensure that all Americans are truly equal and free.

I highly recommend this collection for readers age 13 and up. The language and violence--while accurate and effective--may be too challenging for children younger than 8th grade to truly understand, and the heroic acts may be too complex for young kids to appreciate. 

That said, I hope that families, classrooms, and book clubs will read and talk about March (and John Lewis) as we honor heroes of our recent past--with the intention of encouraging heroes for the near future.

Recycling Christmas trees

How cool is this? In the New Orleans area, we can recycle our Christmas trees to benefit the coastal wetlands.

This was the first year we had a "real" tree. We usually have a fabulous black-and-silver plastic one, prelit and ready to decorate in three steps!

Oh my goodness they were so little!

Which was an improvement over the Christmas Ladder.

Oh my goodness we had no furniture yet!

The Waldorf School of New Orleans sells trees and wreaths as a fundraiser, so we bought a tree, planning to donate it...but it smelled so good...we ended up bringing it home. (Yes, this is also how we ended up with two rescue dogs and a cat.)

I always feel a little funny about paying to cut down a living thing, letting it slowly die in my living room, and then throwing it onto the overflowing garbage heaps. (I try to keep my existential Grinchiness to myself.)

But coastal erosion is a big deal, and Louisiana loses land every year. This means fewer barriers between us and annual tropical storms and hurricanes. Land mass slows them down, so they aren't as powerful when they reach human habitation. Less land + powerful hurricanes = more destruction. I've lived through Katrina and its aftermath. We need to do all we can.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, since 1986, local governments have collected Christmas trees and used them to rebuild the coastal wetlands, bulking up the eroding coastline with "tree fences." According to the article, these tree fences helped preserve marshland even during Hurricane Katrina.

One year, we visited the beach and saw a line of trees doing their post-Christmas work for the houses right on the Gulf. Pretty cool, right?

At least, I think that's a tree fence and not just where locals tossed their trees.

The Violence We Live With

My friend’s boyfriend is flipping out about the Mardi Gras day shootings here in New Orleans. I want to scoff, really I do, but seven people were shot—including an 18-month-old baby—while they were watching parades, arms outstretched, catching beads, only a few blocks from where my family, friends, and I were standing a few hours before. The young men responsible were apprehended within moments, but no motive has been forthcoming; all of the victims appeared to be random bystanders.

And of course, the question everyone has is why. And the next question is, what is wrong with this city? I find myself waiting for the logical explanation for gunfire into a celebrating crowd. I wonder what I would have done had I heard gunshots near me, seen people fall next to me, felt a bullet graze my toddler son as I held him up to catch a bead or stuffed animal.

And then I wonder why I skip over the story, why I want to scoff at my friend’s boyfriend. I wonder, why am I not freaking out? Has it become such a normal part of living in New Orleans that I am willing to accept random acts of violence as part of the price we pay to live here? What if it had been me, my friends, my family who had been shot? Do I ignore it because it hasn’t happened to me? Is it only a matter of time?

Violence in this city has touched me personally. A year after we returned from our Hurricane Katrina-motivated exile, a friend of mine, Helen Hill, was shot and killed in her home; her husband and two-year-old son were chased down and fired at as they hid in their bathroom. Her story made national headlines, too, and her killer has never been found, her death never explained. She and I were not terribly close, but she and her husband were some of the first friends we made when we moved to this city, and their passion for this place was contagious, even as they put themselves to work to improve the many problems here. It still is difficult not to think of the horrible end to their stay here as a warning for those of us who come here to make a difference: get out, get out now before it happens to you.

But I am working hard at seeing it differently. I want to believe that the violence, the poverty, the crime, the pain can be overcome. That the overwhelming problems our city is plagued with can be addressed, that we won’t sink under the weight of it all. Am I an optimist or a fool? Will I feel differently when it happens to me? For now, since Helen’s death, I keep my doors locked even when I’m home and always use the peephole before I open my home. I tell myself that that’s just smart city living. I tell myself it’s a small price to pay to live in such an amazing place. I tell myself I want to raise my children here, I want to grow old here, I want to be part of the fabric of this city. But I don’t want to become one of its bloody statistics, a news story, a reason to leave for good.