My name is Stacey Gibson. I’m a parent, educator, and Evanston resident who enjoys a well-crafted story and the sun.
1) John Crow’s Devil by Marlon James (2005)
James peppers the pages with anvil heavy Jamaican patois, mystical practices of redemption, and sweeping battles where good and evil masquerade with and as the other.
2) Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)
Morrison’s ability to isolate a single incident and usher from that incident a kaleidoscope of emotion and recognition makes Sula a courtship of the heart.
3) Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (2014)
Some men sit in conversation holding more to their assumed authority (even if that authority is frail and/or unearned) rather than to the other person with whom they are conversing. Solint’s book presents how this act continues to inform and uphold perilous gender dynamics.
4) The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (1999)
A coup of the imagination, full of sensory escapes where the Black feminine order reads material and abstract reality to disrupt artificially constructed falsehoods.
5) Aya: Life in Yop City and Aya: Love in Yop City by Marguerite Abouet (2007)
Coming of age graphic novels set in 1970’s Côte d’Ivoire.
