alicia

I recently heard a fascinating interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” program with author Scott Spencer. He spoke candidly and thoughtfully about his latest book A Man in the Woods which focuses on a man on a hunting trip who accidentally kills another man. Aside from one of Gross’s personal idiosyncrasies (her penchant to utter dryly ‘that’s funny’ rather than simply chuckling when she finds something humorous) there was something else that I couldn’t ignore.

Those of us who live in the U.S. of A. hear of “wars and rumors of wars,” but our children are usually spared the horrible details. This is not true of the child soldiers on distant shores who meet war in the close up and personal way that young Ishmael Beah did. In his book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier , It is 1992, andtwelve year old Ishmael, his brother, and a few friends leave their village in Sierra Leone, West Africa in hopes of becoming rap stars in a talent show.

Conception by Kalisha Buckhanon is the moving tale of Shivana Montgomery. Fifteen years old, pregnant by a much older married man, and struggling to make her way in a world she isn’t mature enough to fully comprehend, Shivana makes her way through life’s many challenges. Her mother Annette loves her, but is verbally and physically abusive. The brightest light in this story is her powerful and supportive aunt Jewel. But Shivana’s unborn child wants desperately to be born.

Reading Obrey Hendricks, Jr.’s book, the Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted, is like sitting at the feet of a contemporary griott, and having the story of a hero told in a fashion that makes that hero larger than life. Given that the hero, Jesus Christ, is already larger than life, the story becomes all the more enriching because of the many historical interpretations of today.