I Don't Belong to You: Quiet the Noise and Find Your Voice by Keke Palmer

Synopsis:

A sometimes serious, often hilarious, and always inspiring guide that encourages young women to live a life full of ownership, confidence, and freedom from singer and popular Scream Queensand Grease Live! actress Keke Palmer, delightfully illustrated in four color with Keke’s favorite inspirational quotes, journal entries, and memes.

As a successful music artist, actress, and talk show host, from inner city Chicago, Keke has always used her social media following and platform for real talk about the issues that matter most to her generation, but now she is speaking out candidly and for the first time about the secrets, struggles, and practices that have guided her to succeed. On the surface, it may appear that Keke has it made, but under the success, she has grappled with the same issues all young women wrestle with—identity, pressure, self-worth, love, sexuality, heartbreak, and family.

With this in mind, she created I Don’t Belong To You—an inspirational guide that encourages young people to change their mindset and live with more freedom, confidence, and love as they navigate the rough terrain of the twenty-first century. Full of revealing stories from Keke’s personal and professional life, this book tackles twelve topics—sexuality, race, anxiety, success, bullying, and body image to name a few—with refreshing honesty.

Within each chapter are quotes, texts, song lyrics, and funny memes that have inspired her; and practices that can help you stay on a path of always growing, never grown. With a voice of empathy, tough love, and determination, Keke speaks about the challenges and triumphs she has experienced on her journey to finding her own voice and creating a beautiful life. I Don’t Belong To You is the motivation you need to move past pain and fear to lead a life full of creativity, spirituality, passion, and unlimited success.

Rating:★★★★★

Review:

I can't even explain in words how excited I was to read this from Keke so I'll just jump right into it. The thing I loved most about this book is that while reading it, you know it's Keke that wrote it and not just some editor. If you know Keke in any way, shape, or form while reading this you unmistakably hear her voice in your head, like a personalized audiobook, and that to me just made this so much more personal to read.

This was my first read in the self-help genre and I was a little bit hesitant because I thought it was going to be very generic and just telling me what I wanted to hear, but it was far from any of that. I really appreciated, and I think others as well will appreciate that she isn't acting like she has all of the answers to this crazy thing called life by telling us what we NEED to do. But she's without a doubt telling us what SHE did in whatever situations she found herself in and how SHE let HER experiences shape HER life. It's your life, do with it what you will but make it count!

I enjoyed reading about how she came to realize certain things about herself (getting to know herself) and how she grew and learned from her mistakes. I loved how blatantly honest she was about her ups and downs in all aspects of her career, all of the good and bad she's experienced getting in the industry and staying in the industry. She basically shows us that just because something didn't go as planned the first time doesn't mean we should give up all hope and quit. #Empowerment 

That brings me to the fact that I think ladies around 13 or 14 would also really benefit form reading this because I feel like it's just very uplifting and empowering to girls that are coming into their own and changing into the future adults their going to be for the rest of their lives. 

This was just a very beautiful book all around! I loved all of the emoji's, hashtags, and quotes, this was just very fun to read and I definitely recommend this.

One of my favorite quotes from the book: "Remember, the caterpillar doesn't ask, 'When am I going to become a butterfly?' It just waits patiently until it is transformed"-Keke Palmer

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge By: Josh Neufeld

Synopsis:

A stunning graphic novel that makes plain the undeniable horrors and humanity triggered by Hurricane Katrina in the true stories of six New Orleanians who survived the storm.

A.D. follows each of the six from the hours before Katrina struck to its horrific aftermath. Here is Denise, a sixth-generation New Orleanian who will experience the chaos of the Superdome; the Doctor, whose unscathed French Quarter home becomes a refuge for those not so lucky; Abbas and his friend Mansell, who face the storm from the roof of Abbas’s family-run market; Kwame, a pastor’s son whose young life will remain wildly unsettled well into the future; and Leo, a comic-book fan, and his girlfriend, Michelle, who will lose everything but each other. We watch as they make the wrenching decision between staying and evacuating. And we see them coping not only with the outcome of their own decisions but also with those made by politicians, police, and others like themselves--decisions that drastically affect their lives, but over which they have no control.

Overwhelming demand has propelled A.D. from its widely-read early Internet installments to this complete hardcover edition. Scheduled for publication on the fourth anniversary of the hurricane, it shines an uncanny light on the devastating truths and human triumphs of New Orleans after the deluge.

Rating:★★★★★

Review:

     This book hit really close to home for me because I am a Louisianian. I was 9 years old when Katrina hit and even though I didn't live in New Orleans to experience the flood waters I still had to experience the before, during, and after effects of the storm. 

     I think this book did an amazing job at representing so many different point of views from so many different people about their experiences because depending on where you were during the storm you experienced things differently. Even including the big conspiracy theory that has been going around for years surrounding what really happened to the levees was represented in this book. I started to tear up on the death scene, not because I did not know that this happened, but because it bought up memories of seeing all of the news reports being played over and over, constantly, with all of the death tolls from the storm.

     I believe this can really give people that are not from Louisiana some insight on what Katrina was like for those who experienced it. I always here people ask or say, "why didn't they listen and evacuate?", "If they just would have left like the mayor told them too, none of this would have happened.", and my favorite "That's what happens when people are being hard headed". I think people need to understand that many people didn't evacuate because they did not have the money or transportation to leave, especially the sick and elderly, and also the mandatory evacuation was issued only hours before Katrina hit. Also, in Louisiana hurricanes are a normal occurrence, no one usually bats an eyelash when one makes landfall so many of us never leave for hurricanes thus a lot of people just figured it was going to be another little hurricane leaving behind some wind damages and power outages for a few days. No one new it was going to be as bad as it was and we were not even a little prepared.


     I recommend this to everyone because everyone needs to see exactly what New Orleans went through, before, during, and especially after Katrina hit. The city, to this day, is still not 100% rebuilt. It's almost as if the rest of the city were forgotten about. 

Brown Girl Dreaming By: Jacqueline Woodson

Synopsis:

Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. 

Rating: ★★★★

Review:

"But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies."

     I really enjoyed reading this autobiography in the format that this is written in. Being written in verse really made this book go by faster than what a normal biography or autobiography would. I loved the fact that I after reading this I feel like I know Jacqueline personally and like I've know her and her family all my life. I thought it was awesome to have the family photos at the end, which made it so much more personal than any other autobiography that I've read. 

     Jacqueline really opened the door and let all of her readers into her world, her histories, and her memories. I recommend this to everyone because it really shows you from a child's point of view, how the world worked and how the world affected a whole society during this huge time of change in America. 

The New Jim Crow By: Michelle Alexander

Synopsis:

The New Jim Crow was initially published with a modest first printing and reasonable expectations for a hard-hitting book on a tough topic. Now, ten-plus printings later, the long-awaited paperback version of the book Lani Guinier calls “brave and bold, and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Levering Lewis calls “stunning, will at last be available.

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service are suddenly legal.

Featured on The Tavis Smiley Show, Bill Moyers Journal, Democracy Now, and C-Span Washington Journal, The New Jim Crow has become an overnight phenomenon, sparking a much-needed conversation including a recent mention by Cornel West on Real Time with Bill Maher&mdas;about ways in which our system of mass incarceration has come to resemble systems of racial control from a different era.

Start Date: February 21, 2017

Finish Date: April 3, 2017

Rating:★★★★★

Review:

     This was truly amazing and downright informative! I learned things I didn't know, things were bought to my attention that I did know, and this just made me want to inform others of what I now know. It's upsetting to me that a book this good and honest does not have as big a media following as other books. This is not a book that is police bashing or bias it simply states the facts of what is going on in American society thoroughly. I believe this should be considered required reading for high school students. I absolutely recommend this book to literally EVERYONE, any age and any race, this is a read I feel that people need to digest and understand.