Sabra's literacy blog

On my recent visit to a Barnes and Noble that I have been going to for the past several years, I was suprised at my discoveries during my observation. I realized that I have had tunnel vision when I go there, in that I am usually looking for my interest books, which are usually fictions by female African American authors. So the time I spent opened my eyes in my analysis of looking at books with sexism and raciscim. When i first entered the bookstore the first display was of the "hot" popular books, not the bestsellers, but what I interepreted to be the books that looked good and would draw a reader in by its cover. Most of the books were not diverse in the ethnicity of the author and the book that I viewed seemed to lack true substance on dealing with relevant and important issues. After leaving this area I found a small section, titled "eclectic classics" there were several books that I knew of or had read over the years, ones that I recalled reading as a required read for a class. One book that stood out in regards to deal with social class issues, "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. And "The Feminne Mystique" by Betty Friedan, which I have not read but heard about, made me stop an think about the feminist movement.

As I continued on my quest to discovery how diverse the books were in regards to sex, gender and class, I had to vividly look and find books that were diverse. My second book that I looked at was "To Catch the Lighting"by Alan Cheuse. The book was a look at the various Native American tribes and one man's quest to use photography to document as many tribes and document there history. I read a few pages and thought the book was well written and fact based and information given from tribes. This book was located amongest the newly arrived book display. Near by this book,I found, "Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin as I reviewed it, I discovered it was a postive perspective on Iraq culture. My next stop was to an area I frequent the African American literature section. One of my favorite authors wrote a new book, "Trading Dreams at Midnight" by Diane Mckinney-Whetstone. Her books show the struggle and pains of her characters and their lives, but also how they prevail despite their hardships. I then moved o to another section, titled "The choice is yours" which had all of the books on Senator Obama and McCain, of course on opposites sides of the table. The book that caught my eye and appeared to seem racisit was, "Whats Wrong with Obamania", the cover had a picture of him and behind him a life size Superman. After reading several different pages throughtout the book, I realized that the title did not give a good understanding of the book. The author was giving his perespective on politics and Afrcian Americans running for office. My last book was in the children's section, "Barak Obama, Son of Promise,Child of Hope" by Niki Grimes. In reading this book it the reader learned about the personal side but written in manner that children could understand.