Books, and more books...

I recently read a memoir titled "Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson which affected me so much that I just couldn't bring it upstairs to my library and file it under the W's.  The book was so beautifully written, and so profoundly positive, that it needed to be showcased, not merely shelved in alphabetical order.

'Brown Girl Dreaming' resulted in 'White Girl Rearranging Her Library.'  I started on one side of the room, taking all the books dealing with black history and black lives... I lined them up in order in the middle of the room. Then I went to the opposite side of the room and found all the biographies and memoirs of black people that I've admired over the years and those that I've recently discovered (like Woodson).  When all of those books were in the middle of the room, their number surprised me. All of those great books were just hidden on the shelves in ABC order. Surely, all these books needed to be together on a special bookcase, surrounded by a few pieces of my African wood carvings. Showcased... not just shelved.

Some of my favorite books are now on that bookcase... "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave; "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest J. Gaines; "Someone Knows My Name" by Lawrence Hill; "Gloryland" by Shelton Johnson; "Cry, The Beloved Country" by Alan Paton; "Clover" by Dori Sanders; "Cane River" and "Red River" by Lalita Tademy; "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver;  "Jubilee" by Margaret Walker; "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker; the biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Dawson ("Life Is So Good"), the Delany Sisters ("Having Our Say"), Hattie McDaniel, James McBride, Solomon Northrup ("Twelve Years A Slave"), Sidney Poitier, Oseola McCarty ("Simple Wisdom for Rich Living"), and of course Jacqueline Woodson.  There are many more... that bookcase is wider than most of the others so I have plenty of room to add more books along the way.

I have an old copy of "To Sir, With Love," a vintage copy of "The Lilies of The Field," and a very old edition of "Roots," and a special edition of "A Raisin In The Sun." My treasured copy of "Out Of Africa" is on that bookcase now, its pages alive with memories of Kenya ("I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills....")  Does any good reader worth their books not know that unforgettable first sentence?

When I walk up the stairs to my third floor library, the first thing I see now at the top of the staircase is a carved wood figure of a proud African woman... she stands guard on that special bookcase protecting those books that I love so much.