Reading List: Authors with February Birthdays

February may be our shortest month, but we still had several authors to choose from as we continued with our Author Birthday Read Aloud Series. This blog will include the ones featured on the library’s Instagram, plus a few others.

Langston Hughes was born on February 1^st, 1901. I (Rachel) read three poems from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Over 800 poems are featured in this book, and they’re written over a span of five decades.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7^th, 1867. Amber read a portion of On the Banks of Plum Creek, but we have several other titles written by her in our collection.

Jules Verne was born on February 8^th, 1828. Darius read a portion from  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. If you like this book, you may also enjoy Daughter of the Deep, which drew inspiration from Verne’s classic tale and was written by Rick Riordan.

Jacqueline Woodson was born on February 12^th, 1963. She mostly writes for children and adolescents, but adults can also enjoy and learn from her works. Some of her titles we have here are as follows: Brown Girl Dreaming, The Year We Learned to Fly, and Red at the Bone.

Marissa Meyer was born on February 19^th, 1984. She is best known for her retelling of various fairytales. If you enjoy Little Red Riding Hood, I recommend reading Scarlet, which is part of her Lunar Chronicles series. If origin stories are what you’re in the mood for, I recommend Heartless. This delves into the world of Alice in Wonderland where we meet the girl that eventually becomes The Queen of Hearts. One of her most recent releases is Gilded and that gives us a story inspired by Rumpelstiltskin. It was one of my favorite books that I read in 2022. If you have interest in reading a little more, I give a brief description in this blog.

Last, but certainly not least, is W.E.B. Du Bois. He was born on February 23^rd, 1868. While he is well known as the first Black American to earn a PhD from Harvard University, he is also credited for his work on sociology, history, and civil rights activism. Du Bois on Religion and The Social Theory of W.E.B. Du Bois are two of his works that we have in the Logos.

Which of these authors and titles have you heard of? Which ones do you think you’ll add to your TBR list? Hope you join us again next month as we feature authors that were born in the month of March.

Book Review: “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama

Right now, I want you to set aside what you know about politics and Republicans and Democrats. Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father is not really about any of these things. It’s about racism and identity: a black man with a white family trying to find his place, and who he is, in an unfair, confusing world. Dreams From My Father follows Obama’s life through his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia to his acceptance to Harvard and his journey to Kenya.

Mild spoilers ahead.

What Dreams From My Father gets right: Whether or not you voted for Obama or enjoyed his presidency, you can learn so much from this book. Obama speaks with the voice of someone who has thought a long, long time about what he’s going to say and how to say it in the best way possible. He’s not afraid to use harsh language or metaphors, but he tempers this anger with understanding. Even as a fiery college student, he recognizes that others haven’t read what he has, or don’t struggle with their identity in the same way he does, and he’s willing to look past the differences and reach across the boundaries.

I’m white, so I will never have the racist experiences and burdens that Obama has faced. Racism shaped and scarred his entire journey of self-discovery. Despite my own ignorance and disconnection to Obama’s struggles as a black man, I appreciated his willingness to open up; and what I can relate to and aspire to in his narrative is Obama’s drive for truth and justice. Like Obama (although for different reasons) I also went through several months of reading every black thinker I could find in the library: W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marcus Garvey. And like Obama, I found that the man who made the most sense and greatest impact on my way of thinking, even though I definitely didn’t agree with his religion or his views on women, was Malcolm X.

Obama read these books as a young man for his survival; he did not have the luxury of reading a persecuted peoples’ history from a place removed as I did. I read these books to try and see the world through an opposite perspective of my own: a black male experience. Whatever your reason for reading these timeless classics, though, you will emerge with an enlightened view of how the world works and what we can do about it- the same tried and true lessons that you can learn from Dreams From My Father.

What Dreams From My Father does wrong: I loved this book because of how it fed me intellectually, so it’s hard for me to find much fault with it. I will note that there’s some uncomfortable language in it, but I think it’s warranted by the subject matter. It was also hard to read how women were treated in Obama’s Kenyan family (who were in a patriarchal culture where men could beat their wives and take multiple wives, whether the women consented or not).

Who should read Dreams From My Father: People who want to learn more about racism in the United States, and what it was like to grow up as a biracial man in the sixties and seventies. Readers who are interested in Obama’s life story and how he became the man he is today.

Who shouldn’t read Dreams From My Father: If you’re looking for something light to read or for a fiction book, then just add this one to your “TBR” list for now.

 

Dreams From My Father is available in print book and audiobook formats at the library.

Content note: language.