The Book of Negroes

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully written novel about the life of Aminata Diallo. Meena as she is known later is kidnapped from the interior of Africa at the age of 11 and sold into slavery. She escapes, makes her way to Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, and ultimately London, England.

Hill’s research is thorough—the character’s life weaves in and out of facts and truths from the time.

Personally, it helped me to understand some of what my ancestors endured in their lifetimes as well as some of the history of how Africans lived and their own roles in the slave trade.

View all my reviews.

A Must-Read—Really!

Bryan posted this on his blog: read it!

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable 

Now, go do something in the real world. I am. :^)

How to Be Peace

IslamOnline.net published a controversial poem titled “How to Behead” written by a British Islamic radical woman. They called for poetic responses. Here’s mine:

Let go
Open your arms to the world
And soften your heart
Just enough
Open your eyes
So that you won’t hesitate as much
For on seeing the suffering of the world
You’ll begin to shake
And cry for your brothers and sisters
And weep for the children
Trust me–this will sure get you angry
It’s better to have at least two or three others by your side
Who can see the truth
Because as soon as you open your eyes
And see the naked world
You’ll come to know what needs to happen
It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think,
It’s all about seeing yourself in others.
No doubt the haters will twitch and scream
But ignore the ignorant
And continue to serve humanity
You’ll feel yourself hit
The wall of denial
But don’t stop
Continue with all your might.
About now you should feel
your heart murmur
You can feel the warm heat of love
This is due to seeing the truth of others as yourself.

May all beings everywhere feel peace and love in their hearts.

Gassho.

Saturday Morning Stuff part 2

Sometimes, you need the perspective of an outsider to clearly see what is happening. Sometimes, you just need a good technical communicator to properly present the information graphically. This article from the BBC has both. Enjoy!

The U.S. Sub-Prime Crisis in Graphics

(Yay for technical communicators!)

Old poem

While decluttering paperwork, I came across a poem I wrote about 7-8 years ago. It’s a found word poem, written to celebrate the 70th birthday of Roshi Roslyn Seiun An Stone. The party goers (all Seiun’s students) gave me a list of words and I then composed the poem. Here are the words:

• orange
• warm
• compassionate
• outrageous
• balloon
• shy
• chocolate
• gratitude
• mom

And here’s the poem:

The night weeps warm tears of gratitude
For our wise woman
Compassionate mom
Outrageous dragon of the Dharma
Venerable lover of chocolate
Free as a balloon floating in orange sunset
Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar
Nine bows to the shy Roshi
Who has given herself for 70 years

Waaaahoooooo!

May your life go well.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!