I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

   1969; 310 pages.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Biographies & Memoirs; Banned Books; Civil Rights Movement; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    When we think about the start of the Civil Rights movement in America, the 1950s will most likely come to mind.  Things like Martin Luther King Jr., Selma, bus boycotts, Rosa Parks, protest marches, and much more.

 

    But what was life like for Blacks in the years just before all that?  In the 1930s everyone struggled with the Great Depression, and in the 1940s, World War 2 saw over a million American soldiers either killed or wounded, including both blacks and whites. What was it like for black children growing up in those years?

 

    Also, were conditions different for blacks depending on what geographic area of the United States they were living in?  For instance, were things better in Missouri than in Mississippi?  Maybe being Black in California was better than both of those places.  If so, how much better?

 

    Maya Angelou, American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist, was born in 1928, so grew up in the 1930s/40s. and lived in all those areas along the way.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings recounts her turbulent experiences during those decades.

 

What’s To Like...

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first book in the 7-volume autobiographical series.  It details her childhood experiences starting when she was three years old and, along with her four-year-old brother Bailey, moved in with her grandmother due to the divorce of her parents.  The book ends with a momentous life-changing event in her life when she was sixteen, and presumably the sequel, Gather Together in my Name, continues from there.

 

    The 310 pages are divided up into 36 chapters, which averages out to 8+ pages/chapter.  There is heavy emphasis on Maya’s interactions with her family members, particularly her brother Bailey.  We also watch the child Maya struggle to come to grips with racism (be careful when going to “whitefolksville”), sexual assault (Maya was raped when she was eight years old), and self-reliance (she grew up in a world where circumstances were heavily stacked against her).

 

    Maya’s birth name was Marguerite Annie Johnson, and it was fascinating to learn how her first name morphed into Maya (Marguerite --> Margaret --> Mary --> Maya).  I presume the changing of her last name is due to marriage, but that doesn’t happen in this book. Religion plays a prominent part in Maya’s entire family, and along the way the reader accompanies her to a tent revival (I’ve been to a couple) and learn why the phrase “by the way” is considered blasphemous in some fundamentalist circles.  

 

    Maya’s teenage years were just as unsettled as her childhood, but the reader gets to watch Maya evolve from someone “ignorant of her ignorance” into someone “being aware of being aware”.  In a show of perseverance, Maya applies for, and is eventually hired as San Francisco’s first Negro streetcar conductor.  A short time later, she learns to drive a stick-shift car, with no advance training, at night, on a lonely stretch of road in Mexico, with her dad passed out in the back seat.  Which then leads to her getting stabbed by her dad’s girlfriend.

  

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 36,661 ratings and 4,245 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.30*/5, based on 555,423 ratings and 17,684 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Powhitetrash (n.) : someone so poor (and white) that they cannot afford the missing “o” and “r”.

Others: Siditty (adj.); Chifforobe (n.); Ordurous (adj).

 

Excerpts...

    San Franciscans would have sworn on the Golden Gate Bridge that racism was missing from the heart of their air-conditioned city.  But they would have been sadly mistaken.

    A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat.  Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well.  She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima.  The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve.  He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”  (loc. 2590)

 

    The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and Black lack of power.

    The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence.  It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.  (loc. 3284)

 

Kindle Details…

    The e-book version of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings sells for $7.99 at Amazon right now.  The other six books chronicling Maya Angelou’s life range in price from $5.99 to $13.99.  Maya Angelou was a prolific writer of poetry, plays, screenplays, memoirs, essays, children’s books, and cookbooks.  Most of her works are in the $3.99-$14.99 price range for the Kindle format.

 

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.  (loc. 3268)

    For such a tough start to her life, there is a surprisingly small amount of profanity in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  I noted just eight instances in the first 50% of the book, and most of those were the N-word racial epithet.  The sexual molestation is handled as tactfully as possible, and later on there is one roll-in-the-hay.  I caught only one typo in the whole e-book: staring/starring.

 

    The Wikipedia article mentions that some reviewers categorize I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as “autobiographical fiction” but it also cites other reviewers (in the “Style and Genre” section) as fully meeting the requirements to be called an “Autobiography”.

 

    I have always suspected that any autobiography will be inherently slanted to some degree in the author’s favor.  For that matter, I think this happens even in most biographies.  If you’re an biography writer, and you want to get paid for your work by your subject, you’re naturally going to present the life you’re writing about in a favorable light as much as possible.

 

    For me, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was a thoroughly captivating and heartfelt work.  I grew up in the Civil Rights era, but that was during the 1960s, not the 1940s/50s.  It was enlightening to read about the roots of the Civil Rights movement.  My only quibble is that I have to read six more books to learn the complete story of Maya Angelou’s life.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last thing.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been one of the most banned books in the US school system for many years.  Wikipedia’s article on the book devotes a whole section, titled “Censorship”, to the details and statistics of the bans.  It is worth your time.

Twelve Years A Slave - Solomon Northup

   2013; 363 pages.  Full Title: Twelve Years A Slave: The Autobiography of Solomon Northup. New Author(s)?  : Yes.  Genres : Biographies & Memoirs; American history; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    Twelve Years A Slave is a gripping account of the horrors and injustices of the pre-Civil War slave system.  Probably only Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a bigger impact on abolitionist sentiment in the Northern US states during the 1850s.

 

    We follow Solomon Northup as he is kidnapped and shipped to New Orleans, then forced to work on cotton plantations and in the sugar cane fields.  He spent twelve years of his life in servitude, twelve years that he’ll never get back.  Twelve years of being separated from his wife and three kids back in New York who were left wondering what happened to him and whether they’ll ever see him again.

 

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Twelve Years A Slave are both acclaimed accounts of slavery in the South.  But there’s one important difference.

 

    Uncle Tom’s Cabin is fictional while Twelve Years a Slave is an autobiography.

 

What’s To Like...

    It may sound like an oxymoron, but the autobiography Twelve Years A Slave is written by three authors.  As a black freeman born in New York in 1808, Solomon Northup had learned to read and write.   But this book was actually ghost-written in the 1850s by David Wilson.  A century later, long after Twelve Years A Slave had faded into complete obscurity, historian Sue Eakin came across a copy of the book, thoroughly researched its contents, and published an “expanded version” of it, which is the format I read it in.

 

    Solomon Northup was kidnapped and enslaved in 1841, and wasn't rescued until 1853.  My history classes didn’t spend too much time on that decade prior to the Civil War, so there were a number of historical surprises waiting for me in Twelve Years A Slave.

 

    One of them was the way Solomon became a slave.  He was drugged while in Washington DC, put into a slave pen there, then put on board a ship sailing to Louisiana.  It was called a Reverse Underground Railroad, and I’d never heard of such a thing.  Sunday Money was also an eye-opener for me, ditto for the rules used for slaves celebrating Christmas in the South (see the second excerpt below).  I marveled at the use of “lumber women”, was revolted by the conditions in the slave pens, and was amazed at the system used to pick cotton efficiently.

 

    Solomon’s even-handed portrayal of plantation life impressed me.  Yes, there were some exceptionally cruel masters, such as the man who owned Solomon for the last ten years of his incarceration.  But he had served under the ownership of a relatively kind-hearted owner for the first two years.

    This variety of descriptions seemed to irritate a number of readers/reviewers.  Some gave low marks because they felt the book painted too gruesome of a picture of slavery.  Others gave low marks because they thought it painted too rosy of a picture.  That’s where Sue Eakin’s research comes into play.  Her exhaustive investigation, detailed in more than a hundred footnotes, confirms Solomon’s observations for the most part, although there were one or two instances where she felt David Wilson may have been “stretching the truth” a bit.

 

    Although this is a non-fiction tale, it has a storybook ending, with Solomon at long last reuniting with his family.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that; after all, if he never regained his freedom, this book would never have been written.  But it's worth reading this book to see how he managed to win his release.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 946 ratings and 519 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.22*/5, based on 117,665 ratings and 8,076 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Expatiate (v.) : to speak or write in great detail or length.

Others: Groggery (n.); Cachinations (n., plural); Condign (adj); Latterly (adv.); Betimes (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    Ten years I toiled for that man without reward.  Ten years of my incessant labor has contributed to increase the bulk of his possessions.  Ten years I was compelled to address him with down-cast eyes and uncovered head—in the attitude and language of a slave.  I am indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse and stripes.  (loc. 2115)

 

    During the remaining holidays succeeding Christmas, they are provided with passes, and permitted to go where they please within a limited distance, or they may remain and labor on the plantation, in which case they are paid for it.  (…)

    They are different beings from what they are in the field; the temporary relaxation, the brief deliverance from fear, and from the lash, producing an entire metamorphosis in their appearance and demeanor.  In visiting, riding, renewing old friendships, or, perchance, reviving some old attachment, or pursuing whatever pleasure may suggest itself, the time is occupied.  Such is “southern life as it is,” three days in the year, as I found it—the other three hundred and sixty-two being days of weariness, and fear, and suffering, and unremitting labor.  (loc. 2529)

 

Kindle Details…

    This version of Twelve Years A Slave presently sells for $0.99 at Amazon.  There are several dozen other versions of it available in e-book format, ranging in price from $0.99 to $10.00.

 

In cotton picking time, Patsey was queen of the field.  (loc. 2180)

    There’s little to quibble about in Twelve Years A Slave.  The standard cusswords are handled in an unusual manner: the underworld is given in the text as “h_l”, and to be condemned to be sent there is rendered as “d_d”.  The racial epithet n-word is the main bit of profanity, but let's face it; this story couldn’t be written without it.  The sum total of epithets-plus-cusswords for the first third of the book was less than a dozen, which both surprised and impressed me.

 

    There was a fair amount of British spellings, such as offence/offense and whisky/whiskey; some cities were hyphenated, such as New-York, and a slew of "separated" compound words, such as heart sick/heartsick and candle light/candlelight.  I’m pretty sure these are not typos.  All languages evolve over time, including Americanized English. As an editor, I found this fascinating, not distracting.

 

    This being the expanded version, means there are oodles of extra sections, both before and after Solomon’s actual account, which ends at 59% Kindle.  I’d tell you the page number, but those aren’t included in this e-book version.  The only “must read” added section is “After Freedom, What Happened?” which is located at Kindle 59%-64%, and provides an eye-opening epilogue to Solomon’s life.  Other than that, feel free to partake of or eschew any of the extras.  Some I read; others I skipped.

 

    For me, Twelve Years A Slave was a great read.  So much of the details of the daily life of slaves gets pushed under the carpet in history classes, and that’s true no matter what part of the US you live in.  It was enlightening to finally read a firsthand account of how it really was.

 

    9½ Stars.  After being freed in 1853, Solomon Northup went on a widely-popular speaking tour throughout the North, railing against the evils of human bondage.  Alas, his stardom was short-lived and he, along with his book, soon fell back into obscurity.  No one knows where and when he died.  Nobody knows where his body is buried.  Solomon Northup simply disappears.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

A Mighty Long Way - Carlotta Walls LaNier

   2009; 273 pages.  Full Title: A Mighty Long Way – My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Civil Rights; American History;  Non-Fiction; Black and African-American Biographies.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I am old enough to remember watching on TV the struggles to integrate schools in the Deep South.  The one that remains etched in my mind is George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, standing on the steps of a building, presumably on the University of Alabama campus, impeding black students, who were being escorted by federal troops, from entering therein.  Bloodshed loomed in my 12-year-old brain.

 

    But before push came to shove, and after giving a short segregationist speech, Wallace moved aside.  Shooting and other assorted violence were averted, at least while the national cameras were capturing the moment.  The students walked through the doors.

 

    But I’ve always wondered:  What was it like for those black students, and those who integrated other schools throughout the South, on the second day of school, or a week later, or when the next semester rolled around?  What harassment did they did they suffer through when all the cameras, troops, and news crews were no longer present?

 

    Thanks to A Mighty Long Way, I have an answer.

 

What’s To Like...

    Carlotta Walls LaNier is one of the “Little Rock Nine”, a group of high school age black students that took the first steps in integrating the Arkansas educational system in 1957.  I was just seven years old at the time and frankly I don’t remember it at all.  A Mighty Long Way is Carlotta’s memoir about the experience and how it impacted her life for many decades to come.

 

There are 17 chapters plus a prologue in the book.  They can be roughly divided into:

    1.) Prologue + Chs. 1-3:  Family history and early life.

    2.) Chs. 4-9: High school years and Integration.

    3.) Chs. 10-11: The house-bombing.

    4.) Chs. 12-14: High school graduation and college years.

    5.) Chs. 14-17: Post-collegiate Life.

 

    It should come as no surprise that Carlotta’s traumatic 10^th grade year (some of the other Little Rock Nine were 11^th and 12^th graders) had a profound effect on the rest of her life.  It did surprise me, however, that for many years afterward, she avoided mentioning her role in the integration movement and turned down all requests to speak at schools, churches, and other public events about it.

 

    The “Jackie Robinson test” was enlightening, and I was in awe of Carlotta’s meeting the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I enjoyed her (and my) grade-school memories of eagerly awaiting the Weekly Reader to be passed out, and I had to look up what the rules were to the card game “pitty-pat”.  I cringed when she had to endure being spat upon, cursed at and shoved in the high school halls while going to classes, and shuddered when she gave the details of the lynching of Emmett Till.  The dynamite-bombing of her family’s home and the relentless and untraceable telephone hate calls made me realize that integrating someplace in the South meant risking your life, as well as your family’s.

 

    The book closes on a high note: Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008.  Carlotta sees it as a culmination of the Civil Rights movement, and one she never expected to see in her lifetime.  Even if she did favor Hillary Clinton early in the campaign.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 540 ratings and 70 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.14*/5, based on 1,365 ratings and 204 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

She-Ro (n.) : a woman regarded as a hero.

 

Excerpts...

    It never occurred to me as I grew up to question, even in my mind, why colored folks could go to the park only on certain days, why we had to climb to the back of the bus, or why stopping at a gas station to use the bathroom in most areas of the South wasn’t even an option.  Those were just the rules, and I learned to follow them like I learned to walk, by observing those closest to me and following their guidance until I knew the steps well enough to venture out on my own.  (loc. 340)

 

    Wherever I go to talk to students, I usually encounter some who know little or nothing about the Little Rock Nine.  Sometimes they’re African American.  Sometimes they’re white, Latino, or Asian.  But when they hear my story, often they get angry, like the white kid whose hand went up slowly in the back of the room after my first speech at Ponderosa High School in a Denver suburb many years ago.

    “Why am I just learning this?” he asked.  “Why haven’t I learned this in school before now?”  (loc. 3984)

 

That is the point of this book: to show that determination, fortitude, and the ability to move the world aren’t reserved for the “special” people.  (loc. 128)

    There’s not much to quibble about in A Mighty Long Way.  I counted just 7 cusswords in the entire book, and those were mostly when she was quoting somebody.  There is of course a slew of instances where she has to endure the N-word being screamed at her, but that was to be expected.

 

    There’s also a lot of name-dropping of people she met.  To name a few: Thelonius Monk (and many other jazz musicians), Thurgood Marshall, Satchel Paige, Langston Hughes, Herb Adderley, and Bill & Hillary Clinton.  But those encounters rang true, particularly the stone-throwing incident in Central Park, and it was kinda neat to see all the celebrities she rubbed shoulders with over the course of her life.

 

    I spotted only two typos – mid wester/midwestern and fifty-two-hundred/fifty-two hundred.  Kudos to the editors and proofreaders.  The book cover lists it as being written “with Lisa Frazier Page”, and the Foreword is by President Bill Clinton.  In Chapter 8 there are some family pictures of Carlotta and her kin.  Those were extremely heartwarming.

 

    9 Stars.  We live in an age where book-banning has once again become commonplace, and teachers, whether they are mentoring elementary school students or collegians, risk being fired for revealing what really occurred during critical moments in America's History.  Desegregation was an ugly time for the United States, but sweeping it under the carpet just makes it worse.  Thank goodness there are books like A Mighty Long Way, which tell the facts about the American Civil Rights movement, even if it is a harsh awakening.

North To Paradise - Ousman Umar

    2019 (first published), 2022 (translated); 143 pages.  Original Title: Viaje al Pais de los Blancos.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Autobiography; Travel Memoir; Non-Fiction; Africa.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    We call them many things.  Immigrants, foreigners, undocumented aliens.  Some come from Central and South America northward.  Others travel from Eastern Europe westward. 

 

    For what?  What motivates these folks to leave their families, possessions, and homeland behind, and embrace an uncertain future?  How dangerous is their long trek?  What percentage of them reach their destination?  What kind of predators lurk along the way?

 

    If only one of them would write a memoir, telling how harrowing (or not so harrowing) such a migration is.  But that’s unlikely, because even if they are successful in their journey, they rarely sit down to write their story and get somebody to publish it.

 

    But Ousman Umar did, after leaving his small village in tropical Ghana on foot, and with a goal to somehow reach Spain.

 

North to Paradise.

 

What’s To Like...

    It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Ousman Umar did reach his destination, although it took him five years to do so.  There were languages to learn along the way, including both Catalan and Spanish once he arrived.  North to Paradise was originally written in Spanish, and recently translated into English by Kevin Gerry Dunn.

 

    Traversing the Sahara Desert with only what one can carry is daunting enough, to do it on your own, as a youth, verges on suicidal.  Worse yet, the need for water and avoiding the authorities meant a straight-line journey was impossible.  There’s a map at the beginning of the book showing the route he took; he was forced to meander all over northern Africa.

 

    The first chapter describes Ousman’s life as a child in Ghana, and gives the reader a great “feel” for what that’s like.  In some ways, life was very modern – in school they had computer classes, including how to use MS-Excel.  But other aspects were sadly outdated – there were no actual computers in the computer classes (the teachers drew pictures of the screen shots for Excel on the blackboard), and Ousman has a traumatic first meeting with an escalator, something he likens to an “enormous python”.

 

    After leaving Ghana, Ousman’s trek takes him through another ten countries, the last being the Canary Islands region of Spain.  It takes him five years to get there, four of which were spent in Libya, trying to eke out a living and save enough money to be smuggled into Spain. 

 

    Being a memoir, the book is written in the first-person POV.  The writing style is straightforward: “I did this, then that happened”, but in amongst all the events he sprinkles some remarkably adult-like insight about life.

    Don’t stop reading when you reach the end of the tale; there are a number of “extras” tacked on, including some great Photographs of the author and his families (89%-92% Kindle).  Then there are Afterword, Author’s Note, and Acknowledgements sections that tell you what Ousman has been up to since gaining citizenship in Spain.  It'll leave a lump in your throat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 7,938 ratings and 572 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.27/5 based on 7,706 ratings and 534 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Trotro (n.) : in Ghana, a minibus.  Google-image it.

 

Excerpts...

    The first stage of my journey wasn’t too rough.  My concept of time was entirely different: if you had asked me what I would be doing five years in the future, I wouldn’t have known.  Long-term planning wasn’t a priority; my concern was what I would eat that day and whether I’d have anything to eat the next.  In Ghana, buses depart only when they are full; there’s no hurry, and people wait patiently until all the seats are taken.  You can’t make many plans.  (loc. 305)

 

    Another aspect of life here that I could never wrap my head around was this idea of “vacation.”  I took time off work only when I had exams.  Once, I went on holiday with a girlfriend, and it was really hard because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with myself.  Why were we wasting time like that?  I need food, I need clothes, but I don’t need vacation.  I didn’t understand that I had the right to take time off work, and to be honest, I still don’t totally get the point of doing nothing on purpose.  (loc. 1421)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, North to Paradise sells for $4.99, although ISTR I got this as a freebie on Amazon’s “World Literature Day” or whatever they called it.  At present, it is Ousman Umar’s only published book, although you can get the Spanish and Catalan versions for $6.99-$7.99.

 

Given all the hardship I’ve experienced, it would be easy to think that the world is full of bad people, but I prefer to think that most people are good.  It’s just that the good people make less noise.  (loc. 1442)

    I don’t really have any quibbles about North to Paradise, but there are a couple things to be aware of.  First and foremost, at 143 pages, it’s a very short book.  The writing may be straightforward, but it’s also powerful, and I would’ve loved for it to be twice as long, particularly since some of the countries Ousman Umar passes through, such as Togo, Burkina Faso, and Tunisia, are barely mentioned.

 

    I don’t recall any cusswords, but as a small, male youth, the author twice has to find off attempted rapes.  Acronyms are sometimes introduced without what they stand for, such as “NGO”, but hey, that's what we have Google for.  Also, there are some brutal scenes – Ousman comes across withered corpses in the Sahara; some of his traveling companions die along the way: of the 46 that start out, only 6 survived the trek across the Sahara; and the plight of the “sinkers”, migrants who are stuck in some woeful place with no means to go forward to their destination or back to their homeland, is utterly heart-wrenching.

 

    Finally, at one point in his Spanish residency, the author mentions that his grades at the university weren’t good enough to get into the school's Pharmacy program, so he had to "settle for" the Chemistry program instead.  As a degreed chemist, I’m just a little miffed.  😊

 

    Despite its brevity, I found North To Paradise to be a fantastic book, providing a rare look at life in the African equatorial subcontinent, as well as stark insight into the challenges faced by undocumented migrants anywhere in the world when they travel through dangerous and foreign lands.  Those who undertake such a venture are not suicidal, just desperate.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  I was impressed by Ousman Umar’s balanced views on humanity.  Yes, as a black migrant he is introduced to racism, but some of the best and kindest people he meets are also white.  Yes, there are some nasty people in Ghana, North Africa, and Europe, but all those places have lots of kind and helpful souls as well.  Some reviewers gave up on North To Paradise as soon as the subject of racism cropped up.  You stopped reading too soon, folks.

Somebody To Love? - Grace Slick

   1998; 364 pages.  Full Title: Somebody to Love? – A Rock-and-Roll Memoir.  New Author(s)? : Yes (and Yes).  Genres: Music History; Rock Music; Autobiography.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Jefferson Airplane.  They were one of the top rock bands of the 1967 “Summer of Love”, thanks mostly to their fantastic breakout album Surrealistic Pillow, which had two songs, Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, that later made it onto Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

 

    Most people don’t realize that Surrealistic Pillow was actually the band’s second release.  Their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, had been released a year earlier, and garnered almost zero excitement.

 

    There were a couple of personnel changes between the two albums: a new drummer, and a new female vocalist, with Grace Slick replacing Signe Anderson, who quit to devote time to her newborn daughter.

 

    Interestingly, Grace Slick is credited with writing White Rabbit, and her then-brother-in-law is credited with writing Somebody to Love.  The two songs on the "500 Greatest" list.  So, was Jefferson Airplane's adding Grace Slick to the band and their simultaneous meteoric rise to stardom a case of causation or correlation?

 

    Let’s read her autobiography Somebody To Love? and find out.

 

What’s To Like...

    Somebody to Love? was published in 1998, when Grace Slick (neé Grace Wing) was 59 years old and retired from the music scene.  The book includes lots of great photographs of Grace’s life, loves, career, cohorts.  It was co-written by a friend of hers, Andrea Cagan (you can see her name in the bottom right-hand corner of the cover image), and the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book gives a nice thank-you to Andrea by Grace as well as detailing how the whole writing thing worked.

 

    The first hundred pages or so chronicle Grace’s childhood, schooling (she went to a snotty “finishing school for girls” for a while), and first marriage, all of which was surprisingly interesting.  You’ll learn why her family nickname when growing up was “Grouser”, what her slang word “toodles” refers to, tag along for her “first time”, and marvel that her first songwriting effort managed to offend a bunch of “preppy boys” at a college party, causing them to ask her to leave and never come back.

 

    The next two hundred pages are pretty much an extended discourse about sex and drugs and rock-and-roll, and booze, all of which Grace embraced with passionate persistence.  Musically, these chapters cover her time with the bands The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Starship, and a short-lived solo career.

 

    Grace Slick does a lot of name-dropping here, which is a plus, not a minus.  Besides her bandmates, some of the notables include: JFK (before he was president), Jerry Garcia, Neal Cassady (a Merry Prankster), Wavy Gravy (who?), David Crosby, Mick Jagger, Frank Zappa, Abbie Hoffman, Craig Chaquico (who?), and Mickey Hart.  She credits Randy Newman, Odetta, and Lenny Bruce with each having a significant impact on her musical career.  Oh yeah, there's also a threesome involving Grace, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and a plate of strawberries.  Chapter 26 is devoted to that.

 

    The last 70 pages show us the present-day (in 1998) Grace Slick: calm, content, and gratefully retired from the excesses of being a rock-and-roll star.  She wishes her parents were still alive, is proud as any mother can be of her daughter China, has had enough of cheating husbands, offers some thoughts about geezer-aged rock bands reuniting for a brief time (one tour, one album), and introduces us to her current flame, Buckminister Ratcliff Esquire III, whose fat, furry body Grace loves to play with.  Get your mind out of the gutter, he’s a lab rat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 405 ratings and 175 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.74/5 based on 1,345 ratings and 113 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Girl-ask-boy dance.  Okay.  I went straight to the top by asking the school’s star quarterback to be my date.  He was older and he didn’t know who the hell I was, but he said yes.  Polite, I guess.  I bought a pink, flower-covered, wedding cake-like monstrosity of a dress and went with Mr. Hotshot to a pre-dance party thrown by a senior cheerleader.  She opened the door in a red, body-hugging floor-length number with four-inch dangling earrings, which made me look like an exploding cotton candy machine.  (pg. 49)

 

    In 1988, Paul called together all the original members of Jefferson Airplane and suggested a short (one album, one tour) reunion.  After some brief discussion about logistics, we all agreed to the adventure.

    Fantastic, I thought.  This time Airplane will be assisted by one of those professional management teams in L.A. (as opposed to well-meaning hippies from San Francisco) who really know how to put a rock-and-roll package together.  Now that we’re all old enough to prefer seamless negotiations, it’ll be a snap.

    Sure, Grace, and polar bears use toilets.  (pg. 323)

 

I was naïve enough to be sucked in by the “Wanna see my Bugatti?” routine.  (pg. 60)

    I don’t really have any great quibbles about Somebody to Love?  Yes, there was some cussing, but a lot less than what I expected – just 9 instances in the first 20% of the book.  Yes, Grace hopped into bed with all sorts of guys, especially musicians, including most (but not quite all) of her fellow members of Jefferson Airplane.  But there were no lurid details (not even about those strawberries), and hey, most readers expect a rock star’s bio to include some romantic trysts.

 

      Personally, I would’ve liked more pages devoted to the Jefferson Airplane/Starship  years but let's remember that Somebody to Love? is story about Grace Slick’s life, not about those bands.  And perhaps some negative details are omitted due to not wanting to dwell on the trials and tribulations of the daily coexistence with one’s bandmates.

 

    Finally, it would be nice to have an updated version of this book, since it’s been 23 years since Somebody to Love? was published, and Grace Slick is still alive and in her early 80s.   But if you’re dying to know what she’s been up to in the last quarter century, you can read Wikipedia’s post on her here.

 

    All in all, I enjoyed Somebody to Love?  The content is a nice balance between the flower-power lifestyle of the 1960s, the human side of being in a top-tier band, and the challenge of having a stable personal life all at the same time.  The chapters are short (54 of them covering 364 pages) which made this a quick, easy, and informative read, and since I was a teenager myself in the 1960s, the book brought back some great memories of my salad days.

 

    8½ Stars.  Here’s a few other noteworthy highlights of the book: Grace’s introduction to LSD (pg. 94); her first peyote trip (pgs. 90-91, which also brought back old memories), getting busted again and again (ch. 30), playing “butt bongo” on the Howard Stern Show (pg. 332), and her love for the music of The Gipsy Kings (pgs, 351 and 359).

Game 7, 1986 - Ron Darling

   2016; 226 pages.  Full Title: Game 7, 1986 – Failure and Triumph in the Biggest Game of My Life.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Sports; Non-Fiction; Autobiography; Baseball.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    The 1986 World Series was a baseball fan’s delight.  The Boston Red Sox, a team stocked with veteran players, were trying to erase “The Curse” (aka “the curse of the Bambino”) that had plagued the organization for more than sixty years.  Wikipedia has a page about it; the link is here.

 

    Their opponent, the New York Mets, were a cocky bunch of youngsters trying to win it all for just the second time in franchise history, seventeen years after the “Miracle Mets” in 1969.

 

    What everyone who follows baseball remembers about this series is when Red Sox first-baseman Bill Buckner muffed an easy grounder that would’ve given the Red Sox the championship.  Alas, the ball dribbled through his legs into right field and the Mets rallied to win the game.

 

    What most people forget is that that happened in Game *6*, and although the Mets won, it just meant they’d evened the series at three games apiece.  There was still Game 7 to be played, for all the marbles, a chance for redemption for Buckner and the Red Sox, a chance to complete the miracle comeback for the Mets.

 

    The starting pitcher for the Mets in the series finale was Ron Darling.  This book is his story of that game.

 

What’s To Like...

    Game 7, 1986 was published in 2016 to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the Mets’ 1986 championship year.  The book is divided into 11 chapters, plus an introduction, with the themes of each section being:

    Introduction: Overview

    Ch. 1: A rainout of Game 7.

    Ch. 2: Growing up a Red Sox fan.

    Ch. 3: The Red Sox batting order.

    Ch. 4: Darling’s the starting pitcher.  First inning.

    Ch. 5: Interlude.  Drug and Booze and After-Hours Partying.

    Ch. 6: Second inning.  Boston leads 3-0.

    Ch. 7: Third and fourth innings.  Darling pulled from game.

    Ch. 8: Fifth inning.  The lonely walk to the clubhouse in mid-game.

    Ch. 9: Sixth and seventh innings.

    Ch. 10: Eighth and ninth innings.  Mets rally to win 8-5.

    Ch. 11: After-game celebration and ticker-tape parade.

 

    The book gives a nice “feel” for what it’s like to be a major league baseball player:  the highs, the lows, the pressure to produce, the camaraderie, and the obsessive analyzing of the opposing team’s roster to gain some edge, no matter how small.  Darling acknowledges that drug-usage was commonplace: cocaine was a favorite, and there was a jar of uppers in the locker room if you knew where to look for it.  Yet this is not a “tell all” book.  He claims to have never witnessed any actual usage, and he doesn’t name names.  That’s his story and he’s sticking with it.

 

     He does a lot of name-dropping, and I thought that was a big plus, since it brought back many childhood sports memories for me.  Richie Allen, Mel Stottlemyre, Gary “Kid” Carter, Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd”, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Carl “Yaz” Yastrzemski, and many, many more.  He gives detailed analysis of a couple players he especially admired: Keith Hernandez and Lenny Dykstra, and a somewhat less-than-glowing analysis of Darryl Strawberry.

 

    I learned a lot of fascinating things about Ron Darling as well.  He received a death threat after he was named the starting pitcher of Game 7, which meant added stress and dealing with security personnel.  He went to Yale, which is hardly a baseball powerhouse.  Players routinely receive “provocative mail” from admiring female fans.  And he once got arrested and thrown in jail, during the season, for sucker-punching a bouncer at a bar.

 

    The final chapter serves as an effective ending to the book.  There’s the aforementioned celebrating, but there’s also a “savoring the moment” aspect.  The Mets have never won another championship, although they’ve come close, losing in the World Series twice: in 2000 (to the Yankees) and in 2015 (to the Royals).   Ron Darling closes in poignant fashion by looking back on the past 30 years, and musing about “what if” scenarios.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Solipsistic (adj.) : of or characterized by the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.

Others: Balletic (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 101 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.68/5 based on 379 ratings and 55 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    When you’re young and stupid and on top of your game, you find ways of convincing yourself you’ll always be young and stupid and on top of your game.  You stick your chest out, you strut, because you’ve been conditioned to stick your chest out, to strut.  You move without thinking, make a lot of decisions you’d like to take back, tell yourself the baseball part can be switched to autopilot while you and your teammates find a bunch of new ways to enjoy the ride.  (pg. 1)

 

    Lenny [Dykstra] was the strangest, most interesting teammate I ever had.  He used to give off this manic Hunter S. Thompson vibe—without the hallucinogens.  You never knew exactly where he was coming from, and the thing of it is, Lenny himself never seemed to know exactly where he was coming from.  He was a bundle of frenetic energy, a freak of human nature.  He moved about the field, the clubhouse, the team bus like a windup toy on tilt.  (pg. 183)

 

I worried.  And then I worried some more.  And then I worried that I was worrying.  (pg. 69)

    There’s not much to quibble about in Game 7, 1986.  As you’d expect in any book about life in a baseball locker room, there is some cussing, although I didn’t find it excessive.

 

    I have nothing but admiration for the author writing about a game where, as the starting pitcher, he was less than phenomenal.  Yes, the Mets staged an exciting comeback, but it is telling that Ron Darling still carries some pain with him about his subpar performance.

 

    In the end, the worst I can say is that it has to be incredibly difficult to write 200+ pages about one baseball game, no matter how important that game was.  Hats off to Ron Darling, along with NY Times bestselling collaborator Daniel Paisner, for doing a creditable job of making the book interesting and enlightening from start to finish.

 

    8 Stars.  Add 1 star If you happen to be nutso about the New York Mets.  Add another star if you paint your face, wear a weird team-colors wig, and wave a giant Styrofoam hand while attending MLB games in your area on a regular basis.