book review: michelle by liza mundy *spoiler alert(?)*

(can you really spoil a famous person's person's biography?)i finished the book a little while ago, but i wanted to get my thoughts together before writing. so. i liked the book--it was a biography so it got a little slow in places and it's not an authorized biography (which gave me pause about even buying it initially) so you could tell that the author was really reaching for people to talk to to help shape the story in parts. but overall, it was a pretty good biography. it sucked me in in the beginning because it was talking about chicago (my honorary hometown) and chicago politics during the time period in which michelle grew up. her story was not super-interesting, partly because we've heard a lot of it before, but the author did a good job of tying pieces together, getting quotes from people, and surveying the media coverage of her (you get the impression that she almost stalkerishly lived, ate, breathed michelle to write this book).
once again, i was impressed by how much michelle and i seem to have in common and so when the author got to the part about michelle at princeton or in law school and the way she generally felt like a fish out of water until she found her niche, either with other black people or with a particular cause, i could relate. there wasn't a lot about her time in law school other than the clinic work she did and the one, completely useless quote from someone who sat next to her in a class on race who said 'she didn't say much in class but she seemed like an affable person' or something like that. thanks.
and i was upset, but not surprised when the white people with whom she worked and the white man who introduced her to the firm said they were disappointed in her when she later criticized the firm and said she didn't like being there. as if they could speak to her experience and say what she should have felt about that environment. ugh. i also got tired of the random white people quoted saying 'she's so funny'. something about that doesn't sit right to me. lol. i know it's well documented that she is witty and can make people laugh, but when when one of the only things a white person can say about someone so personable, educated, and overall impressive is that she's funny, it makes me think they've missed something and shouldn't be quoted.
i think my favorite part was when the author talked about the obama groupies and panty flingers. michelle has the attitude that if someone can come between them then they must not have had very much at all. . .the other side of her calm, cool, collected answer is that everyone who knows them says he knows she would leave him, actually she would kill him first, then she would leave him (as one source put it). he simply says it wouldn't be worth it to cheat on her--which is sweet and noble, but now we know there's a little bit of fear behind those words! lol.
so anyway, of course the book ends before the election. it's funny how it shows how she went from being against the whole politics thing, to reluctantly involved, to very enthusiastically involved, then censoredly involved as the campaign had to 'handle' her and her image. so all in all it was informative and as interesting as possible, i'm sure there will be another one about her as first lady. . .hmm, what else:

betcha didn't know:

• sasha's (the youngest daughter) real name is natasha--they just shortened it and call her sasha at home--and now so do we!
  
• they have a rule--michelle is allowed to poke fun at him in public (not picking up socks, leaving the butter out, etc) but he isn't allowed to to do the same to her
  
• he proposed to her in a restaurant (during the middle of one of her many rantings about how they should get married) by having the waiter bring the ring out on a plate as 'dessert'
  
• they have talked about effecting change and helping to change the country for the better since they first met, but she didn't know that he wanted to do it through politics (the book does a good job of explaining why she was wary of politics). and his early political career caused a significant strain on their relationship. on their annual christmas trip in 1999 they were barely on speaking terms.
• when he made his show-stealing speech at the dnc in 2004 he could barely rent a car to get there--their credit cards were maxed out (i was worried about our first black pres having bad credit, but after that speech the royalties from the first book came flooding in along with a $2 million dollar advance for what would become the audacity of hope)

what i appreciated most/learned from michelle by reading this book:
to my credit, i was pretty much there on my own--anyone who's ever been in a relationship with me has heard me say 'i can't change you or what you do or make you do anything and i won't try, but i can and will change me and what i do, so let me know what you're going to do and i'll adjust myself accordingly'. it saves you a lot of pain, wasted time, and wasted energy if you adopt this approach to dealing with people who aren't your children. lol.
anyway, michelle came to a revelation during their time of not speaking, her being angry and miserable at his absence and even more miserable at his presence, and her time of feeling tricked into being a single parent. she decided to create her happiness. she says she "had to stop being angry and expecting him to change, and focus instead on how she could gain control and extract happiness out of her life." she asked herself "how do i structure my world so that it works for me and i'm not trying to get him to be what i think he should be." she realized that even when he was doing his best when he was at home trying to be a father and husband, it wasn't enough to keep her happy and sane and instead of asking for the impossible of their current situation and being mad that he wasn't making her happy, she decided to make herself happy. she figured out what she needed and that she didn't necessarily need him to be the one doing it--if she needed alone time away from the kids, instead of being mad that he couldn't give it to her, she asked her mom to watch the kids. she was getting what she needed without banging her head against a brick wall. and i hate to generalize, but she did and it helped her. she says she realized that men, all men, put themselves first and everything else after whereas women are more likely to put themselves near the bottom of their own lists.
once she made her revelations and put things into action, she was happier, her household was happier, and it opened up the opportunity for him to become the president--if she hadn't had that revelation, there would be no president barack obama and his adoring family. either he would have been at the top without michelle, or they would be together and he would be in private practice somewhere.
anyway, this is for all ladies in relationships (and even those looking for relationships) from michelle obama (and this poem i like): take control of your own happiness and don't blame him for your unhappiness. don't expect him to fulfill all of your needs or make yourself miserable because your needs aren't being met. extract your own happiness, "plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers."

book review: a mercy by toni morrison *spoiler alert*

another of my fiction exceptions is literary greats. . .how can you deprive yourself of toni morrison?
anway, so i bought this the day it came out, but i was wary because of her 'stream of consciousness', william faulkner-inspired writing style. you know what i mean, the style that made beloved a much better novel than a movie, because there was sooo much going on that couldn't be translated onto film. . .
anway, this book was very good! it was about slavery, but not really. . .and i love books that have a line in them that tells you where the title comes from. albeit, this one was at the end, but that's part of the 'magic'. the most important voice for the foundation and understanding of who i would call the main character was at the end. it was like all the pieces finally came together right in the last few pages.
the story is told in a few different viewpoints. as the chapter changes, so does the viewpoint. you have the white master/owner, his mail-order bride, and the rest of the 'family': lina--a native american, sorrow--a shipwreck survivor, and florens--the 'main character' whose mother offered her to the white man. this 'offering' is what shapes florens' personality and exposes her vulnerability. although florens is introduced to us as a potentially vulnerable character, you can forget about her vulnerabilities. . .until you can't. she is introduced as a slave child with the hands of a slave, but the feet of a portuguese lady--she has a thing for shoes and refuses to walk barefoot. there are also two white men--indentured servants--whom we learn about but don't really meet until you think all of the 'introductions' are done. there is also the blacksmith, who, while he doesn't have a 'chapter' is still an important character. he is both florens' shoes and shoes removed throughout the story (umm, is he alive and injured? or is he dead?).
the benefit of the time period of this story is that the idea of 'slavery united states' is still forming--the master, jacob vaark, doesn't like 'dealing in flesh' in there are other ways to make oneself rich. he is a kind, but pragmatic man when it comes to people and perhaps is given too much credit for being kind, when sometimes it is just pragmatism that he is displaying. anyway, instead of being a book about slavery, it is a book about several things, you are distracted from the idea of slavery (and it's not easy to distract someone like me from the idea of slavery!) with talk of other things--religion, death, smallpox, and character development--toni definitely makes you reach for scraps to form images of the characters. i still don't think i have even a muddy picture about what florens looks like.
i liked the book and would recommend it, but if i were to waste 3 wishes on this book, I would wish the book was longer, i wish for more character development, and i wish for a happy ending.
too bad t-mo's not a genie!!

book review: midnight by sister souljah *spoiler alert*

had i not been so excited about re-living my freshman year experience with my 3c girls and winter santiaga, i might have waited for some reviews of this book so that i would know what to expect. . .but i couldn't wait. i bought it the day it came out and began reading. i don't normally read fiction books (i'm planning a revolution, remember? besides, i get enough fiction and junk entertainment thrown at me on a regular basis anyway) but i make a few exceptions. this was one of them.
after reading sister souljah's explanation of her book, i realize that i went into it all wrong. it even took me until akemi's third or fourth appearance to remember that the subtitle of the book was 'a gangster love story'. i was hoping for a winter sighting somewhere before it ended, wondering how sister souljah was going to make him grow all the way up before the end of the book. i admit to calling it a 'sequel' to coldest winter ever once or twice. all that to say, i have always liked sister souljah's writing--clear and descriptive, word choice very deliberate, but i can't say i loved this book.

• i HATED the pictures--the little boy that they have pictured throughout this book is not what my mind says midnight looks like. part of the intrigue of the intial character is that he looked different to every woman who read it. you can't ruin that with pictures of a boy who is far from fine! if she would have let me imagine akemi for myself, she too would have been way more beautiful than the girl in the pictures. but nooooo!
• also, despite the fact that this little boy had been exposed to things that made him wise beyond his years, by no stretch of the imagination is this book about a 14 year old. it is too hard to imagine midnight as a 14 year old knowing, doing, and seeing all that he does. nearly impossible. i had to make up my own age for him to avoid the cognitive dissonance that would have resulted from me trying to make him 14
• i did appreciate how well researched the cultures in the book were. you can tell that sister souljah spent time researching the various cultures and religions presented and took deliberate care in delivering the descriptions to her audience--sometimes to the point of overkill, but still a nice touch. i absolutely love the idea of a male being so protective of the women in his life and of how the early influence of a father and other strong males can be so important and influential.
  
• i didn't like the way black american females were portrayed in this book. ss says she was trying to show black women that they had to be 'more' and have more to compete with in this global economy, but the point was lost on me. not one of the black american females midnight comes across is anything other than exaggeration and caricature. the one he does take the time to interact with, 'bangs', deserves a story of her own--i especially didn't like how ss left it in the air and let midnight get away with being able to judge bangs for being a victim of incestuous rape. it is still lost on me how midnight can think it worth the trouble to communicate his religion and way of life with someone he can't even verbally communicate with or understand, but thought it was a waste of time to try to educate any of the black females he came across. he even chose akemi over sudana--who understood him, his culture, and his religion perfectly. it is as if ss is giving black men an excuse to not want to date or marry the women who are more like them, like she's giving them an excuse to be embarassed and/or flee from what the type of women who shaped them. or maybe she is trying to tell black women to be more submissive and quiet? i'm lost. . .
  
• it is wholly unrealistic for someone to fall in love and marry someone whom they have seen no more than 10 times and can't communicate with without an interpreter. this relationship is far too mature. . .then, as if to simplify it all, when they finally do get married, it seems like they just rushed to get married so midnight could feel okay about having sex with her. their relationship couldn't really deepen because they still can't talk to each other, now they are simply playing charades and having sex in his mother's apartment. and it creeped me out when his mother talks about akemi glowing now that they've had sex. furthermore, the last thing they need is to have a baby!
  
• most of all, i don't like books that aren't full stories. you have 498 pages--tell me a full story. end in a period and not an ellipse. it's not fair. if you want to write another book to pick up where this one ended, fine. . .but end this one! she didn't even have the decency to tell us what the letter said or even what happened to his father (btw, were his other wives just thrown out on the street? no one said anything about them coming to the united states)

anyway, i suppose i'll be stuck reading the next one, whenever it comes out--maybe. i mean, part of me wants to know what happens next, but part of me never took the relationship seriously enough to care about what happens to it. maybe if the next one starts with akemi being able to speak english. . .or even arabic, i will feel like reading it.