The Spirit Over the Earth: Pneumatology in the Majority World
Gene L. Green, K.K. Yeo and Stephen T. Pardue
Book
Though the global centre of Christianity has been shifting south and east over the past few decades,...
The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait
Barbara Villet and Grey Villet
Book
In June 1958, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, a couple from a small town in northeastern Virginia,...
Crossing Borders: Essays on Literature, Culture, and Society in Honor of Amritjit Singh
Tapan Basu and Tasneem Shahnaaz
Book
Crossing Borders is a gathering of twenty original, interdisciplinary essays on the paradigm of...
Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women
Book Watch
Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and...
History Politics gender studies
Failure to Protect (Dre Thomas & Angela Evans #4)
Book
The author of the award-winning thriller Anybody’s Daughter explores the bullying epidemic and its...
African-American bullying legal thriller fiction
ClareR (5721 KP) rated Your House Will Pay in Books
Oct 29, 2019
Grace Parks is a pharmacist in a Korean pharmacy and lives with her parents. She has a strained relationship with her sister who left home and refused to speak to her mother thereafter. She won’t, however, tell Grace why she won’t talk to their mother.
When a terrible crime happens, Grace is confronted with another crime that happened 30 years before, and the Parks family are forced to face the Matthews family.
I really loved this book - the build up and the slow reveal was really well done, I thought. It looked at a part of American life that I, as a white British female, would have little personal knowledge of - other than what I’ve read. It was so thought provoking. This isn’t an escapist read, and I could feel the tension coming off the page, but it was a page turner that I didn’t want to put down. I read this on The Pigeonhole, so due to the fact that they released a stave a day for 10 days, I HAD to wait 24 hours for each instalment!
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for choosing such a great book for us to read!
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated Us (2019) in Movies
Mar 25, 2019
Director/Writer Peele is at it again with the horror film (predominantly filled with African-American actors )US - and audiences, I'm sure, are going to go back in to the theater hoping that they will get scared again. And they will, but they will also get something else - a truly unique film.
I see a lot of movies, so for me to be (1) scared and (2) completely surprised by what is going on in a film is a rarity, indeed. And Jordan Peele has done both of these things with US - he has scared and surprised me, and I mean this in a a good way.
US stars Lupito Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson, a young mother who had a traumatic experience at the beach as a child. Now, as 30-ish mother of two who is visiting that same beach with her husband and 2 children, the traumatic experience comes rushing back. To tell anymore of the story would be to spoil it and to spoil this film for anyone would be a shame, for the fun in this film is trying to figure out what will happen next. Even when you think you know what's going to happen, something else happens instead and you are kept guessing throughout the film.
As far as the acting goes, Nyong'o shows that she can carry a film. I was beginning to fear that she would be one of those former Oscar winners (for 12 YEARS A SLAVE) who fade into obscurity, but this film puts her right back - front and center - on the map, a map that she deserves to be on. She carries this film - and she carries it well. Winston Duke (M'Baku in BLACK PANTHER) ably plays her husband, but is reserved (for the most part) as needed comic relief. I am always concerned when a heavy part of a film falls into the hands of unknown child actors, but Evan Alex (as their son) and - especially - Shahadi Wright Joseph (as their daughter) pull off the acting they need to do.
Credit for all this falls on Jordan Peele who's direction and script shows that GET OUT was no fluke. As I said before, this is a truly ORIGINAL film in plot and content and Peele keeps the action moving forward in interesting ways.
This is a film that needs to be seen more than once. I, for one, can't wait to go back into the theater and check out US again.
Letter Grade A- (but it might move to an A after a 2nd viewing)
8 out of 10 stars and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
Mick Hucknall recommended Led Zeppelin 2 by Led Zeppelin in Music (curated)
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
Book
The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century:...
Copyrights & Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity
Book
Copyright reflects far more than economic interests. Embedded within conflicts over royalties and...