QOTD: What was your last 5 star read?
__
The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates
__
This book is so blowing my mind! 
Hiram who is the son of a white plantation owner and is raised with his half brother only to have them be separated once he is old enough for the fields and his brother gets to remain in the house. Hiram does not know what makes them different, that is pointed out as cruel, it is unnecessarily cruel!

A very smart man with an eidetic memory who by just the color of his skin is worthless when the son with the white skin with no sense of decorum and a God complex is the one that is coddled.

Through years of having the “privilege” of working in the house for his own family, resentment grows. So when he feels an attachment for someone and decides through some word of mouth that he wants to try to escape with her. 

So much happens in between that makes my insides churn and my heart hurt. I very much believe in, I think it’s called genetic memory, a memory that gets passed down through our DNA.

This is all set in the time of slavery in America. But from the point of view of the son of a white man.

Also, the differences between his experiences in the South and the North were also very dramatic.

I was fascinated by the magical aspect of conduction. I was googling Harriet Tubman and she had fainting spells and visions (similar to Joan of Arc). They say because some a-hole struck her in the head when she was 12 for some inconsequential reason. But her visions were what helped her carry out her rescues. She’s such a legend.

I also read an interview where the author said “I didn’t want revenge. I didn’t want fire, or something like that. I wasn’t really interested in that, because I think that actually evades one of the more interesting aspects of African American history, and that is that vengeance has rarely been a luxury that black people have had.” This resonates through every news story lately.

This is the second book I have read by Ta-Nehisi Coates and I will read them all.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rep note: Under the Sea candle from https://www.etsy.com/shop/ShadoWicks?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=881475733

use LAURA10 to save.

#thewaterdancer #tanehisicoates #fiction #historicalfiction #audiobookreview #bookreview

Synopsis:

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her — but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.