Sharpening the Mind with literature
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I’m not a book reviewer although I teach literature and writing. I love reading all types of books, therefore, I never considered myself a follower of one author until I began reading Beverly Jenkin’s The Blessings series. I read the last book of the series, first, and then went back and downloaded the series, book after book, on my Kindle Fire. It was like binge-watching a Netflix series, which I often do. What I’m reading depends on what I’m writing. For example, now, I’m writing autobiography and memoir stuff and reading fiction and in the non-fiction category: academic, guides, and self-improvement. I rarely recommend books because when books are recommended to me, I don’t have time to read them immediately. It took me a year to read Jenkin’s book. And I don’t want someone to feel obligated to read a book and share their thoughts. However, if you ask, I’ll tell.
I began talking about books, as one of the podcast hosts of the African American Studies category for New Books Network. I spent five or six months volunteering. I had a blast reading books, interviewing authors, and talking about their process, their ideas and the message they wanted readers to garner from the stories they told. For a brief stint, I was a curator of literature. When I volunteered, I was studying for my oral comps, then started dating; afterward I eloped, later started writing my dissertation, all in a matter of a year. I could not spend as much quality time promoting my interviews or editing them. However, during that time, I was sharpening my mind with good literature, regularly. The genres varied fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I interviewed academic scholars, professors, and authors and an award-winning poet. That’s where Beverly Jenkins wooed me, during our interview. I knew reading her books were a must. BTW, she’s written thirty-five from historical romance to contemporary.
As a podcast host, the most exciting part was promoting the work of these writers, increasing my own intellectual thinking, and the possibility of creating a community. The idea of building a community of writers was quasi-familiar in my early writing career. However, talking to writers about their published books and their craft reminded me of Toni Cade Bambara’s quote: “Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the empowerment of the community that names me.” Thus, promoting the work of writers empowers me as a literary artist.
“Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the empowerment of the community that names me.” – Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)
Pages of Sex, Love, and Murder:
My former editor recommended I start my own podcast, I haven’t gotten around to that as of yet. I’m still sharpening that saw. However, here are two authors and their debut novels: B. Martin’s Sex, Wine and Chocolate and E.C. Frey’s Enlighted Moon that I’ve finished reading.
Both novels are written by women about women. The authors give us varying perspectives on the lives of women. For example, Martin’s protagonist is an affluent, thirty-something, restaurateur who surrounds herself with other successful female business owners. Frey’s female characters are mothers juggling motherhood, marriage, and work. However, the narratives these authors spin are different. As I tell my students, when teaching lit classes, good literature involves, sex, love, and murder.
Brandi Martin writes a page-turner that will make you crave sex, wine, and chocolate.
Sex, Wine & Chocolate
By B. Martin
373 pp. 2018, $12.99, Kindle, $2.99
Ms. Martin, a self-published author, enters the fiction world with her debut novel, Sex, Wine & Chocolate. The author tells a story that reminds us sex happens before one enters the bedroom; it starts with one’s mind. In the mind of protagonist Alana Jones, she’s working out the difference between sex, love, and romance. The disparity rises when she sees an attractive man first at the record shop, then at a jazz club, and finally in her restaurant as the potential sous chef. Sexual tension swirls in the air between the two just like tension for the wine connoisseur when tasting her vino. Does it have a dynamic quality or is it one-dimensional?
When Alana realizes she met the man who is “the whole package” she has to decide if she ready for a commitment. Or will she purposely sabotage another relationship with her idea that something’s missing: “great friendship, lack of sexual chemistry”; “great sex or lack of communication.”
Sex, Wine & Chocolate is stocked with just that: erotica, vino, and chocolate. The chocolate ranges from a cocoa-flavored cake, wine-infused strawberries, to clothing design, perfect skin color, and attractive men. Speaking of attractive, the cast of characters in Ms. Martin’s novel is good-looking. The men have chiseled chest and tight abs and trimmed goatees. The women have hazel eyes, slicked black ash blond hair, waist length hair, and curvy bodies.
Sex, Wine & Chocolate is also packed with cliché’s and rushed scenes, making us wonder how comfortable she is writing the scene. I read my version on Kindle Fire, and the pagination is not pleasing to the eye. However, this is her first novel, but not her last.
E.C. Frey will have you looking over your shoulder.
Entangled Moon
By E. C. Frey
350 pp., She Writes Press 2018, $16.95, Kindle $9.49
Entangled Moon is a combination of a psychological thriller and chick lit. The novel focuses on five women— Eve, Mariah, Heather, Fiona, Esperanza—who narrate the trials and tribulations of their lives and the lives of their friends as they venture to Charleston for their ten-year reunion. And their lives revolve around a secret and murder causing each of them to seem unstable and delusional.
Mrs. Frey does an excellent job of capturing the struggles these women face as mothers, wives, and career women and the guilt of their past. They sometimes seem fragile and lack confidence. Other times they are unflinching and self-assured. Frey gives them a reason; childhood abuse, rape, infidelity, lackluster marriage, and murder would cause many women to doubt herself, to walk cautiously or even, to let vodka continually numb her pain. For example, Fiona takes long gulps of vodka, stashes vodka nips at the bottom of the stairs, and pours shots in “remnants of my protein smoothie.” She understands that vodka “does not numb the truth.” The bond between these five women illustrates trust and loyalty and being there for each other and being oneself.
The secret they share unravels throughout the novel. In the unraveling, the story moves back and forth from adulthood to childhood in Sunny Hollow, 1968. Sometimes the characters flashback so often, the story is more intriguing as a flashback. How they met, the origins of their parents, and the wisdom of grandparents. It’s easy to get lost in the story that’s happening now? Who killed Tanya in the opening scene and why? Who is stalking Heather or is it a delusion? Will Fiona’s forgive herself for the death that haunts her? Will Eve forgo her journey to Africa to save her relationship? What about the water in Mexico that brings death to families? Who is Paul and how did he merely appear out of nowhere?
Entangled Moon addresses microaggressions against Indians, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse towards women, and mismanagement of corporate and government power.
Until next time,
I pray God’s best life for you,