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BOOK REVIEW: “Miss Jessie’s: Creating a Successful Business from Scratch – Naturally”

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Starting a business is not for the faint of heart.

 

It takes brains and guts enough to step out of a comfort zone. It requires going against the grain, letting go of pride, and a dash of innocence. Starting a business is the worst, most difficult, wonderful, magnificent thing you’ll ever do – but as in the new book “Miss Jessie’s” by Miko Branch, sometimes it’s also quite hair-raising.

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Jessie Mae Pittman was born in 1919 to a sharecropper family in North Carolina, and grew up hating fieldwork. To avoid picking cotton, she taught herself to cook and later became renowned for her skills. That independent self-sufficiency impressed her granddaughters; Miko Branch and her sister, Titi, were raised knowing that they’d someday be businesswomen.

 

Author Miko Branch

Author Miko Branch

Throughout their childhood, the Branch sisters learned and dreamed. They also toiled long hours with their father at various family businesses, which was work they did for free. That eventually taught Branch the value of her labor and gave her a sense of what owning her own business might entail.

 

When it was time to enroll in college, Branch decided on a career in fashion but her schooling taught her what she didn’t want. Upon graduating from Fashion Institute of Technology, she’d realized that she needed to work with hair; specifically, she wanted to work in a high-end salon that catered to a certain kind of clientele.

 

“There is a long, rich… complex history surrounding African-American women’s hair that ties to… self-image,” Branch says. As a woman with curls, she knew she could make a better product than what was available. She experimented with gels, crèmes, and technique before she and her sister opened a salon that ultimately grew into a full-fledged, hip and trendy mini-empire with products named after their grandmother.

 

But, like many fledgling entrepreneurs, the sisters made mistakes – one of which led to a split, lawyers, and a month’s long parting that hurt Branch in more ways than one. It took two years, two moves, and too much money to fix what broke.

 

Business book or memoir? Though it may appear more the latter, the answer is that “Miss Jessie’s” is both.

 

Sometimes, of course, the story of a business is the story of its creators, and author Miko Branch takes her readers back nearly 100 years to see where the very roots of her company began. That’s a very interesting tale but if it’s not what you read a business book for, well, Branch has that part covered, too. She subtly includes business advice for entrepreneurs in nearly each chapter, and a nicely succinct epilogue as a final takeaway. That serves to entertain and inform readers on one hand, while steadily encouraging entrepreneurship on the other.

 

Though I thought there was a bit too much repetition here, I did enjoy this by-the-bootstraps story of a growing company, and I think you will, too – especially if you’re up for the unique format of it. Still, business book or memoir, “Miss Jessie’s” is something you won’t mind curling up with.

 

“Miss Jessie’s: Creating a Successful Business from Scratch – Naturally” by Miko Branch, c. 2015, Atria, $24.99, 256 pages.

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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.

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iStock.
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.

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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.

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Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.
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.

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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.

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Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.
Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

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

“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.

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.

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