Arts and Culture

Book Review: “Black is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine”

Published

6 years ago

April 1, 2019

Your mother dealt with things you can’t imagine.

It was a different time when she was your age, with societal issues you’d never tolerate and rules you wouldn’t abide. Same with your grandma: scrapbooks, history books and museums are the only places you’ll see what she lived. So what will your children know? As in “Black is the Body” by Emily Bernard, what’s your story?

In 1994, while sitting in a quiet coffee shop and wresting with a college paper she was writing, Emily Bernard was stabbed “in the gut” by a white man with a hunting knife. That’s her story to tell and she’s recited it often in the last two-decades-plus, though it’s told differently by others who were there. It’s a story that kicks off her book, but she insists that it does not define her.

Nor does racism. Bernard is proud of her Black body.

She’s also proud of her experiences, the successes she’s had, the people she’s known, and the stories she carries inside her. These become tales that recall her mother’s unhappiness before she died, that lent Bernard’s grandmother the strength to stand up to misogynistic rules, and that shape Bernard’s stories to come.

Like any good story, though, there are catches to the telling.

Take, for instance, the way we deal with “the n-word.” And how Black women can sometimes hate their hair. And how we let “the absurd and illogical nature of American racial identity” tell us who we are or should be.

No, Bernard lets family do that.

Her husband is white, a fact that some in her mother’s family hated – although they ultimately bonded with him through food, as though it were a new language. Her grandmother disliked the Civil Rights Movement. Her mother died too young. Bernard’s adopted twin daughters were born in Ethiopia and she calls them brown girls who are “’growing up in a house with a white person who loves them.”’ They, too, will have experiences their mother won’t have, and stories to tell.

“Black is the Body” is one of those books that’ll make you wish you had a Time Travel machine. Devour this book, set the machine for 20 years into the future, and see what author Emily Bernard’s daughters would write in a sequel…

This memoir has a lot of launching points for that, in tales that quietly demand that you pay attention and in anecdotes that highlight racial issues while also minimizing them. Readers are likewise invited to examine a variety of ideas with a certain amount of wonder and curiosity, and to follow Bernard to see both sides. That open, often-placid viewpoint provides a gentle way of leading readers to think about human differences and similarities, which resonates throughout and makes this memoir one to keep on your shelf.

Indeed, “Black is the Body” is a book you’ll want to read again because it’s engaging and just plain enjoyable. It offers thoughts you’ll want to turn over in your own head.

This is a book to tell about.

“Black is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine” by Emily Bernard, c.2019, Knopf, $25.95 / $34.95 Canada, 223 pages

Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez

Posts by Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez

Activism

New Oakland Moving Forward

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Post Staff

Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.

Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.

So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

1 month ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

1 month ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.