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BOOKS I READ: Read Until You Understand by Farah Jasmine Griffin (2021). A memoir and meditation on characters and themes from Black literature, Griffin connects them to her life growing up in Philadelphia. We meet her extended family, a support network that softens the heartache of losing her father when she is a young girl. We feel the love for her mother, and the longing for her father, who nurtures her intellectual curiosity, even after his death, and is the source for the book’s title.
Griffin explores difficult subjects, racism and colorism, poverty and addiction, slavery and white supremacy, through the writings of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Frances Harper and many more. I found two of her chapters especially illuminating: one on beauty, discovering and seeing beauty, and featuring Romare Bearden’s art; and one on the music of her youth, when jazz, Motown, and the Philly sound were a perfect mix tape. But the most touching section is simply titled, “Death,” where she revisits her father’s death and funeral. She takes solace in how Black writers, such as Langton Hughes in his poem, “Dear Lovely Death,” describe death not as an ending, but change.
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See also, my reading log; or continue with the previous log entry:
