Cephalopod Coffeehouse: September 2017

Welcome one and all to the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, a cozy gathering of book lovers, meeting to discuss their thoughts regarding the works they enjoyed most over the previous month.  Pull up a chair, order your cappuccino and join in the fun.  If you wish to add your own review to the conversation, please sign on to the link list at the end of my post.

Title: March: Book One
Writers: John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
Artist: Nate Powell

via Amazon

Racial tension is nothing new in the United States.  In truth, it is the central theme of our history.  This land was not "settled" by Europeans.  It was stolen.  Our economy was dependent on African slave labor for generations.  More than once, our government has used an attack by foreign powers as an excuse to betray its own citizens.  Obviously, the events in Charlottesville brought the issues into sharper focus than we've seen in a long time.  But pretending this is a new or even reawakened problem is ignorant, naive, delusional or worse.

Congressman John Lewis is a genuine American hero, a front line veteran of the Civil Rights Movement.  In the three-part graphic novel series March, Lewis tells the story of his life in the struggle. Book One begins in medias res, Lewis joining in the march across the bridge in Selma in 1965, then jumps ahead to the morning of Obama's inauguration in 2009, then back to Lewis's childhood in rural Alabama.  This first volume about his early life takes us up to his experience with the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville in 1960.

Lewis's reflections on discrimination and the fight to end it are deeply personal.  He recalls the conversations he had on the bridge in Selma, the pain of realizing what separate but equal meant to his own education and the challenges of training for non-violent resistance.  As much as we might pat ourselves on the back for the progress made in the half-century since Selma, the lessons of Lewis's story are just as relevant now.  Equality is incrementally closer but still a long way off.  It has been heartening, in the weeks since Charlottesville, to see that so many are still willing to take a stand.  May Lewis's example serve us all in our always uncertain yet forever hopeful future.

Please join us and share your own review of your best read from the past month.  This month's link list is below.  I'll keep it open until the end of the day.  I'll post October's tomorrow.  Meetings are the last Friday of each month.  Next gathering is October 27th.