Manjani by Freedom Speaks Diaspora

Publisher/Date:  Sun Cycle Publishing, Aug. 2008
Genre(s):  Coming of Age, Young Adult
Pages:  320
Website:  http://www.manjani.com

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Never will you read a novel with a more outspoken, unwavering young lady than MANJANI, a tale that narrates a girl’s coming of age and chronicles her ultimate self-fulfillment written by Freedom Speaks Diaspora.

The title character, Manjani, is one to be reckoned with. When she speaks, she speaks the truth. The problem is that it’s her version of the truth. Manjani wants to be a revolutionary, bless her heart. Although she means well, she uses her most powerful weapon – her voice – to annihilate anyone who impedes her growth and doesn’t ascribe to her way of thinking – including her teachers and even her own friends.  Determined to lead the charge to cure her “deaf, dumb and blind” peers, she sets out to prove how gullible “African-Americans” are, ignorant of the full history of their Afrikan people. It’s not that her message is flawed, it’s that the way it comes across leaves people turned off.

But never mind that. Manjani has a mission: to be revolutionary. With her father a member of an Afrocentric band and her sister, Aniba, a student at a healer’s school, Manjani has a few examples of role models to follow. However, her family is torn apart when a fire destroys their home, and Manjani is left with her father and younger brother while Aniba is missing. Living in a new home, her father decides to enroll her in Catholic school, where she is one of the few black faces there.

In short, life is a nightmare for Manjani. It doesn’t get any better when she realizes the school supports racist traditions – one that Manjani can’t stand for. Soon she’s kicked out of school, and joins an academy for future revolutionaries like herself. The Black Nationalist Academy is where she envisions achieving her life’s purpose with students and teachers who have the same goal in mind. Except the more she learns, the more Manjani realizes the world isn’t black and white, but several shades of gray. It’s even more complicated when she falls in love with a woman, who is both her teacher and mentor. But revolutionaries can’t fall in love, can they?

As the story progresses, Manjani finds out being true to yourself is the best cause she could fight for.

Manjani is a clever, energetic novel from an author who creates an honest character. Diaspora has a method to her writing that is introspective, but doesn’t come off as too preachy. I enjoyed the rise of a true woman warrior who knows her value and endeavors to make a difference with it.

Reviewed June 2009

What Goes Around Comes Back Around by C. D. Kirven (Feb. 2009 Pick of the Month)

Publisher/Date:  Outskirts Press, Nov. 2008
Genre(s):  Coming of Age, Coming Out, Identity, Self-Love
Pages:  224
Website:  http://www.cdkirven.com

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Karmic retribution allows the universe to make things happen the way the world intended. Yet we still have some control over our destiny, to shape the future based on our experiences and goals. C. D. Kirven’s debut novel, WHAT GOES AROUND COMES BACK AROUND, builds on this premise as we follow the coming of age of Kingsley Ross.

As the novel begins, Kingsley can be best described as passive, a 14-year-old girl who believes her grandmother’s words of what goes around comes around. She and her best friend, Tanya, spend their days doing typical teenage mischief, which returns to bite her in the ass. When it comes to getting what she wants, Kingsley doesn’t aggressively pursue her desires, and by adulthood, she’s living with glimmers of regrets.

One decision she laments is not allowing herself to fall in love. Uncomfortable with her blossoming lesbian tendencies, Kingsley fails to pursue a relationship with a woman she meets through a set-up, the drop-dead gorgeous Emery, who has the swagger to make Kingsley swoon despite her trepidation of being with a woman. They spend a glorious night together, leaving Kingsley more confused than ever. When Kingsley sees her months later – with another woman – it devastates her that she never told Emery how she felt. She let her fears prevent her from the love she could have had.

Seeing Emery moving on with her life, Kinsley vows to take charge of her own, experiencing everything the world has to offer. It helps her to see things clearly, to see that she was living by other’s standards – her family, society – instead of her own.

“I realized that all this time I had been thinking that I was no one on my own but everything with someone else. This was a lie that became my way of life. I am everything now…”

Nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, What Goes Around Comes Back Around captures a woman’s passage to herself. Through Kirven’s writing, it’s refreshing to see Kingsley grow from her antics as a teenager to a woman of her own. The transformation, described in colorful detail, is engrossing on many levels: Kingsley becoming an adult, accepting her sexuality, and discovering herself. Kirven allows you to take the ride with her character, and while a little bumpy, it leads to a place of self-fulfillment and love.

Reviewed February 2009

Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice by April Sinclair

Publisher/Date:  Harper, Feb. 1997
Genre(s):  Coming of Age, College Life
Pages:  324
Website:  http://www.aprilsinclair.net

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Everything feels fresh and exciting much like Stevie in AIN’T GONNA BE THE SAME FOOL TWICE, this colorful sequel to Coffee Will Make You Black.

By the novel’s start, Stevie has graduated high school and is leaving and is leaving to attend college in a small Illinois town not too far from her native Chicago. Although the school is predominately white, Stevie manages to hang with Black folk, making fast friends with Sharlinda and Today. But it’s her relationship with French girl Celeste that proves to be her life-changing moment: that’s when Stevie discovers the delicious taste of a woman.

It’s also confirmed when she, Today and Sharlinda travel to San Francisco for a getaway after graduating college. After her buddies ditch her dates, Stevie decides to explore the city on her own by going to a women-only dance. There she meets Traci, one of the few sistahs in the place. The two hit it off, and pretty soon Stevie decides to stay in San Francisco to carve out a life of her own.

Stevie moves in with Traci, taking over the room and rent for one of the roommates who’s traveling abroad. Although the romantic relationship is great with Traci, it’s hard for Stevie to adjust to the city a first; trying to find a job is pure hell and San Francisco has its share of far-out folk. But you can never keep a Black woman down, and Stevie’s willing to explore new experiences. It’s 1975, and the world is changing; Stevie wants to change along with it.

In time Stevie finds out the more things change, the more things stay the same. Racism might to be as blatant in the City by the Bay as it is in the Windy City, but people are still hung up on color. And after her affair with Traci goes sour, she discovers love is a bitch, too. But she takes everything in stride, and learns that you can be a fool, but you won’t ever be the same fool twice.

Sinclair’s Ain’t Gonna Be is dynamite. Stevie’s spunky character is a hoot, complete with the 70’s lingo and all. The story is fulfilling and leaves you wanting more. Although not as sweet as its predecessor, it’s still a funky good time.

Reviewed January 2006

Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood

Publisher/Date:  Riverhead Books, Jan. 2001
Genre:  Coming of Age
Pages:  238
Website:  http://www.shayyoungblood.com

Rating: ★★★★½ 

When reading Shay Youngblood’s BLACK GIRL IN PARIS, you’ll feel as if you’ve stepped in to France’s capital city yourself. You’ll rendezvous with Eden, the protagonist in Youngblood’s adventurous tale, as she travels the city in search of literary greatness and her mentor, James Baldwin.

Eden grew up a poor Southern girl in Birmingham, when in the late 1960s, the racial climate was violent at its worst. The four girls killed in the infamous church bombing was a significant event in Eden’s young life, and she vows to one day live in a city where life is free. In Paris, Eden believes, black people are just people and not a color.

So at age 26, recently graduated and looking for something more, Eden takes off to Paris. She arrives with only $200 but hopes to gain immeasurable riches from life experiences.

During her stay in the City of Lights, Eden befriends many eccentric personalities, including her flamboyant tour guide, Indego, who shows her the real Paris that tourists never see. She also involves herself in romantic tête-à-tête with Ving, a white jazz musician. It is with him that despite how liberated Paris seems, she’s reminded with disdain that she’s still a black woman. Eden also engages in an erotic friendship with a woman, Luce, which teaches her the true meaning of love.

Every adventure, every moment is vividly captured in Eden’s expedition in Paris that you feel as if you’re there, traveling with her through the French boulevards and savoring the foods. Although her outing was the poor man’s experience of Paris–many days she didn’t know where she would lay her head that night– she emerged a much stronger person.

Youngblood’s lyrical prose was superb, and her characters rang true. I wouldn’t take nothing her
Eden’s journey now — except to one day go myself.

Reviewed January 2006

Soul Kiss by Shay Youngblood

Publisher/Date:  Riverhead Books, Feb. 2000
Genre:  Coming of Age
Pages:  207
Website:  http://www.shayyoungblood.com

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Shay Youngblood’s SOUL KISS is one of those books that has a mysterious air about it. You can lose yourself in its beauty, its lyricism and its poetry. Soul Kiss is also a journey through loneliness, pain and ultimately, love.

Mariah Santos grew up as the love of her mother’s life. She gave Mariah everything she needed – plenty of hugs, kisses and words. She would tell her daughter about travels taken, her dreams, and about her father, a man Mariah’s never met.

When Mariah’s mother becomes depressed, she decides to leave her seven-year-old daughter with two aunts in Georgia, promising to return soon. Mariah yearns for her mother, her best friend, to reappear. She doesn’t, and the girl is left in the care of Aunt Merleen and Aunt Faith, two elderly spinsters set in their ways.

With these two women, Mariah lives a quiet life, full of gardening, cooking, and looking after the health of her aunts. Mariah also falls in love with the cello given to her by Faith. It becomes her new best friend, its sound soothing the wounds of losing her mother.

After several years of waiting for her mother, Mariah gives up hope and begins rebelling against her aunts. They send her to Los Angeles live with her father, a virtual stranger. Mariah is sublimely happy being with Matisse, a painter. She’s only known about him through her mother’s vivid tales of how the couple met, but that good feeling soon leaves. Matisse is never home and even more distant when he is. When one of her aunts passes away, Mariah returns home to Georgia – and it finally feels like home.

Youngblood’s Soul Kiss is a story of pain is a masterpiece. It boasts lesbian undertones, as Mariah has strong bonds with female peers and shares her first kiss with a girl. Mariah’s touching journey through her childhood, losing her mother and discovering her father, is drawn perfectly through Youngblood’s words, and you really connect to Mariah’s ache. It grabs hold of your heart, and never lets go till its very end.

Reviewed December 2005

The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson

Publisher/Date:  Puffin, Oct. 2003
Genre(s):  Coming of Age, Young Adult
Pages:  114
Website:  http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Remember what it was like having your first crush on a girl, that delicious sensation of something sweet and forbidden, but tingling with anticipation of doing it again?

That feeling is captured in Jacqueline Woodson’s tender novel, THE HOUSE YOU PASS ON THE WAY. Evangeline “Staggerlee” Canan, the 14-year-old biracial protagonist of this tale, deals with her true feelings when her cousin, Trout, comes to visit.

Before Trout’s arrival, Staggerlee’s life is filled with longing. Despite being surrounded by a loving family, she’s lonely and doesn’t have many friends. She does grow close to new classmate Hazel, whom she kisses in between the cornflowers, but that soon fades once Hazel discovers Staggerlee’s tragic family past.

Before her parents married, Staggerlee’s grandparents were killed by a car bomb. Both famous entertainers, they were immortalized in her small town of Sweet Gum. Because of it–and her parents being an interracial couple–people look at Staggerlee and her family differently. They assume she’s stuck up and treat her as an outcast.

Everything changes when Trout comes to Sweet Gum. Staggerlee’s never met her 15-year-old cousin. But when she does, she’s taken aback by Trout’s beauty and presence. Trout’s a little pensive at first, but the more the two spend time together, they learn they have a lot more in common. They share a love girls, both having had their first same-sex crushes. Because of this connection, their bond evolves into a deep friendship. Staggerlee has found somebody who truly knows how she feels. She realizes that her feelings for girls are real and valid.

Woodson is a truly gifted writer to craft, The House You Pass on the Way, a beautiful novel about a girl’s search for self. Not only did it showcase a young woman’s budding sexuality, but highlighted the unconditional love of a family. One can truly say this novel takes you back to the past when love was fresh and new and innocent.

Reviewed October 2005