February is Black history month in the United States. In my office, our new Diversity Director is re-starting our book club with Caste: The Origin of Our Disconents by Isabel Wilkerson which I read a couple of years ago.
Reading more Black and Diverse authors is an ongoing priority for me, and I am also reading and re-reading books as I downsize, so I recently re-read Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
The details about her life and coming of age in Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmother and her great uncle under segregation are graphic and vivid. As well as her own plus her younger brother’s struggles being raised apart from their parents, their reunion with their mother in St. Louis and subsequent events that changed her childhood and youth forever.
It is not a long book, but brutally honest about life and American culture of segregation plus the trauma of childhood assault.
Shalden & Neatham sister site to the Reluctant Janeite 
I still vividly remember her reminiscing about how her assailant’s murder led her to believe in the power of her words. If led her to being mute for almost a year. It’s the most brutal awakening in a culture of abuse.
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