Sheila Williams (2)

I liked this! It’s so easy to read, and I loved the progress from Juanita always downing herself to allowing herself to grow and discover her own desires.

I didn’t like the movie adaption at first, but, since reading this, I think they did a good job translating the story to screen. However, I loved the backstories (I had no idea the lady in the movie was Junita’s sister, Juanita had a brother, and the story with Eddie is much more impactful here). The love scene is sensual and beautiful unlike the movie (sorry, not sorry). I wished they would have included the dancing in the rain bit. That scene was more romantic than the entire movie.

Here, the story’s more about Juanita’s journey as it arguably should be, but I liked how the movie focused more on Nita and Jess and that Juanita decided to leave herself in the movie and didn’t have to be convinced.

[rating from personal enjoyment]… (más)

This was an interesting read. It read more like a tell all memoir for a slave captured in Africa. I received this as a gift from one of my sons. I will say this, if you like political correct works according to someone else's gage, you might like to look at what Book crate has to offer. I'm not politically correct and my moral compass swings a little differently. That being said, this is not for the under 18 readers. I've given it a 4* rating. This slave was called a witch because she practiced herbal healing. as well as being a midwife. There were a lot stillbirths and this story depressed me .… (más)

Amazing story based on real life people and an 1870 US Federal Ohio census, the author does a wonderful job of bringing to life the experiences of women impacted by slavery and the years since. A must read.

FROM AMAZON: Born in West Africa in the mid-18th century, Maryam Prescilla Grace - a.k.a “Momma Grace” - will live a long, wondrous life marked by hardship, oppression, opportunity, and love. Though she will be “gifted” various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only 11 years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate’s ward, acting as both a spy and a translator.

Maryam learns midwifery from a Caribbean-born wise woman, whose “craft” combines curated techniques and medicines from African, Indigenous, and European women. Those midwifery skills allow her to sometimes transcend the racial and class barriers of her enslavement, as she walks the razor’s edge trying to balance the lives and health of her own people with the cruel economic mandates of the slave holders, who view infants born in bondage not as flesh-and-blood children but as investment property.

Throughout her triumphant and tumultuous life, Maryam gains and loses her homeland, her family, her culture, her husband, her lovers, and her children. Yet as the decades pass, this tenacious woman never loses her sense of self.

Inspired by a 112-year-old woman the author discovered in an 1870 US Federal census report for Ohio, loosely based on the author’s real-life female ancestors, spanning more than a hundred years, from the mid-18th century to the end of America’s Civil War, and spanning across the globe, from what is now southern Nigeria to the islands of the Caribbean to North America and the land bordering the Ohio River, Things Past Telling is a breathtaking story of a past that lives on in all of us, and a life that encompasses the best - and worst - of our humanity.… (más)