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Book Reviews and Community information for
flowers bookclub...
Since 2009. flowers bookclub provides space for honest and healing conversations. We meet with authors, thought leaders, activists and scholars to discuss issues that deeply affect historically marginalized communities.
Kimm D. Lett, Creator, Founder and Moderator
A Review of HOMECOMING by Dr. Thema Bryant (below)
A review of flowers bookclub's Summer 2023 book
HOMECOMING, Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self
“People at home within themselves will not sit back in silence and powerlessness while others are oppressed based on their sexuality, race/ethnicity, gender, disability, income, migration status, age, religion, nationality, or size. Homecoming births agency, action, activism, and world changers. This is the secret of homecoming. Caring for others, whether in the form of voting for civic-minded leaders or offering to run an errand for a neighbor, is inextricably tied to caring for ourselves—we were meant to live in community, and we need each other.” - Dr. Thema Bryant
We recently met with the exceptionally gifted Dr. Thema Bryant, affectionately known as Dr. Thema (@drthema) by her multiple listeners and followers. As a healer, poet and dancer, Dr. Thema joyfully approaches her work with a womanist and liberation perspective. She is an ordained minister, tenured professor and licensed psychologist, currently serving as President of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Thema is also a consultant for the upcoming film “The Color Purple” which is based on the award-winning Broadway production and Alice Walker’s Pulitzer prize winning novel with the same title.
During our conversation with Dr. Thema, she guided us through beautiful breathwork which immediately led to a conversation about the necessity of wellness and significance of community care and self-care.
But, reading our Summer 2023 book choice felt affirming and like a breath of fresh air. In Homecoming, readers are taken on a journey where Dr. Thema illuminates a path towards holistic healing. In the book, she does a wonderful job engaging readers, empowering them to participate and steer their own healing journeys.
In Homecoming, Dr. Thema work reflects a life devoted to ministry and advocacy and further proves she practices what she preaches about community care. Her insights are not confined to academia, but she makes them accessible through real-life stories and practical tools which I truly appreciated while reading.
As Homecoming readers, we are all provided with tangible advice that we can incorporate into our daily lives. Whether it's finding inclusive and safe spaces to express our faith to making career and relationship choices that align with our authentic selves, Homecoming emphasizes how coming home to ourselves includes personal care and community care. And, how community care extends beyond words to deeds which is also reflected in how each of us vote and treat others, especially when we belong to dominant cultures. The words found in Homecoming are invaluable and aspirational for its readers.
The paperback for HOMECOMING: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self will be released this month and the forthcoming workbook will be on shelves in 2024. Check out Dr. Thema’s podcast, HOMECOMING with Dr. Thema, available on all major platforms.
flowers bookclub is an inclusive, Black and Indigenous women-centered, womanist led, community and book club.
Learn more in our book club community.
"A memoir of family, faith and the power of books."
flowers bookclub presents...
THE LOVE YOU SAVE
a memoir by Goldie Taylor
Since 2009. flowers bookclub provides space for honest and healing conversations. We meet with authors, thought leaders, activists and scholars to discuss issues that deeply affect historically marginalized communities.
Kimm D. Lett, Creator, Founder and Moderator
A review of flowers bookclub's Spring 2023 book
The Love You Save, a memoir
“I found other poems, all of them speaking to me in different ways, but I kept coming back to Finn. Every line felt like it belonged to me and me alone. Finn had given me the voice I could not find in the church choir or even in the poems I had begun to write." -Goldie Taylor
In light of Missouri’s Republican vote to defund libraries, National Poetry Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month, here is flowers bookclub's founder's review of our Spring 2023 book:
THE LOVE YOU SAVE by Goldie Taylor.
Spring is in the air along with the budding of festive flowers and cherry blossoms. I'm beginning to see my beloved fuchsia and blush peonies more than usual too. It's that time of year where we can enjoy evenings out much later with the sun shining among us.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and National Poetry Month
Our Spring 2023 book club selection is one that expresses the importance of awareness around sexual assault and the value of prose that speaks to the lived experiences of communities that are marginalized even today.
THE LOVE YOU SAVE offers insight into the challenges of the author's early life. The primary theme is finding solace in words–poetry and books–as young Goldie Taylor's exterior and interior worlds are set ablaze.
Already traumatized after her father's sudden and violent death, we see young Goldie grapple with one devastating life event after the next including abandonment, isolation and grief.
Generations before, young Goldie's maternal side of the family migrated from Mississippi to Arkansas to St. Louis, where the book is mainly based. Like many Black families during the first Great Migration, young Goldie’s family sought a better life only to be met with racial discrimination and injustices, violence and economic disenfranchisement.
In THE LOVE YOU SAVE, Young Goldie remembers observing the stark differences between her two childhood zip codes. She noticed how much access she had to books and learning activities at her St. Ann elementary school, a district with majority white students. Abruptly, she would have to spend many of her adolescent years in East St. Louis, an impoverished community ridden with abandoned homes. She took mental notes of how the lack of resources affected her Black classmates' potential, their families and livelihoods.
Young Goldie began to pour her pain and frustration into reading. She escaped to the fictional worlds of Jane Austen and later found refuge in books about the reality she lived, words where only authors with pens akin to that of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison could shed light.
She awakened and found her voice, not just in her Aunt Gerald's church choir, but the poetry of Charles C. Finn.
As a book club community, we know that reading is POWERFUL. As many writers and readers before her, literature saved young Goldie's life.
So, and as I've mentioned several times in flowers bookclub's newsletter, why are so many states—including Missouri, where THE LOVE YOU SAVE is based—attempting to ban more books?
Given how fear tactics are being used to silence truth-tellers like young Goldie's teacher, Mrs. LeCompte, and the authors Young Goldie would read, it’s important to request and read banned books. Get involved. Find out what's happening with legislation around Critical Race Theory and banned books in your state and district. If necessary, fight back. Also, go to other districts where your voice and advocacy is needed. Please do it for the young Goldie Taylors in our communities.
Learn more in our book club community.