So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo is the kind of book that will have you really thinking about your actions and the way that they affect others. When I finished this book, I immediately passed it onto my manager to read because I wanted to continue the conversation. Oluo uses her own experiences as a person of color navigating our (you have to admit) white supremacist society here in the United States. So this is not only extremely relevant but also a necessary book about an incendiary topic. We (I speak as a collective here with a definite side-eye at my fellow white folks of privilege) need to do better and that starts with educating ourselves. Oluo uses this book like an instruction manual with vocabulary lessons on things like microaggressions, the school to prison pipeline, tone policing, intersectionality, cultural appropriation, and the model minority myth. It's full of talking points about how to successfully navigate uncomfortable talks about race, racism, and racial inequality. This isn't an easy book to read because the truth about our society and the way that we have been conditioned to act is a hard pill to swallow BUT it's important to face this head-on so that we can move on to all (hopefully) be better people. Lest you think this is directed solely at white people, Oluo also stresses the importance of people of color having affirmation that their feelings and hurt are valid. Basically, this is a great book that all people wanting to do better should read. 10/10

What I'm Currently Reading: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

Thanks to Alex, Rosie and the whole team at Pen & Sword for providing me a paperback copy of this book that I freely chose to review.

I was fascinated by this book and by the way it is told. The case itself cannot compare to some of the sophisticated cases we read about in mysteries and thrillers, complex and full of twist and turns. A shopkeeper, widowed, that lived with her dog, and sold a bit of everything, appeared murdered on a Monday morning, next to the body of her dog. There was blood everywhere, she’d evidently been hit on the head, possibly with a weight that was found close to the body, and there was money missing. People had been at her shop on Saturday evening and one of her neighbours had heard some strange noises in the early hours of Sunday, but that was it. This was 1919, and, of course, forensics were not as advanced as they are now, but there was an investigation of sorts, although, surprisingly, in the first instance the local police decided it had been an accident. When the new police chief revised the case, he was not so convinced, and called on Scotland Yard for assistance. They sent Detective Chief P. S. Wensley, who had been involved (although only marginally) in the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders and would become pretty well-known for the Houndsditch murders and the siege of Sidney Street. Unfortunately, two weeks had passed since the original crime he was sent to investigate, the body had been buried, and the evidence had not been well-looked after, but still… He and his team investigated and put together a case against an Irish immigrant who’d fought the war. And, well, the rest is history (and you’ll have to read it yourselves).

Despite, or perhaps because, of the somewhat ‘simple’ murder, the book is a fascinating read. The author explains his reasons for choosing to tell this story, to recover the case of a fairly anonymous woman, and to do it in this particular way, pointing out that he did not intend to set off on a ‘cold-case’ type of investigation.  In his own words:

That is the beautiful thing about history; trying to show exactly what happened using original material and putting it in a contemporary social setting so that the reader can better understand and make sense of it all. I hope that the narrative has not only thrown light on policing in the early part of the century but portrayed it as a piece of history and not as retrospective critique. (Stickler,  2018, p. 145)

In my opinion, he succeeds. Stickler’s method, which consists in looking over the shoulder of the people who were investigating the murder and those who participated in the court case, showing us what they would have seen, and guessing at what they might have thought, while at the same time providing us historical background, so we are able to understand how the police force worked, and what the atmosphere was like in the country shortly after WWI, works very well. As we read the book we can’t help but think about what we would have done, worry about their mistakes, and wonder about the missing details and the conflicting witness statements and evidence. We learn about the social make-up of the town, the relationships between the different communities, the way the police force worked at the time, and we gain a good understanding of the legal issues as well, without having to read long and dry historical treatises. The writer has done a great deal of research and his skill as a writer is evidenced in the way he seamlessly creates an involving narrative that never calls undue attention to it. For the sake of completion, the author includes a commentary at the end, where he provides a postscript, as it were, with information about what happened to the protagonists, and also with his own speculations (that he had kept to himself until then) as to why things happened as they did.

I recommend this book to people who are interested in true crime, especially in Britain, Criminology and Criminal Justice System students, readers who enjoy historical police procedural novels, and also writers of the genre interested in researching the topic (the bibliography and the author notes will be of great help, and there are also pictures from the time provide a fuller understanding of the story). And, as I said, I also recommend checking the author’s blog to anybody interested in the topic.

A great book and a fabulous resource.

I knew this would be a hard read and I was right.  I learned so much in this book.  I am appalled that this discrimination is going on.  I did not know how completely a felony conviction takes over a person's life and how much it ruins that life.  This book opened my eyes to the abuses that go on today.  I do not know how we can go about correcting the wrongs of mass incarceration but changes do need to happen.  This is one book everyone should and must read.

Sometimes I forget how I heard about certain books and why they made it onto my TRL (To Read List) but a lot of the time I just see a blurb about a book somewhere and it peaks my interest. That's what happened with The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff. As the title suggests, it's about the witch trials that occurred in Salem during the year of 1692. I've actually visited Salem and read up a bit on the subject but Schiff covered the start of the accusations through to the far-reaching consequences of the trials into present day. She touched on the justice system, political climate of the Americas (Massachusetts specifically), and the cultural/religious climate of the area. The belief in witches was nothing new or novel to the people of Salem. At this point, there had been other cases of witchcraft that resulted in trials, convictions, and deaths in others parts of the world. However, the volume of accused which ballooned in the year 1692 and the paranoia that gripped the people of Salem was so extreme that we're still talking about it today. What I found most intriguing about the book was the aspect of gender roles and how that most likely played a leading role in the affair. Preteen girls and women were the primary accusers (and women the accused). This group had no voice in society and yet they were able to completely blind the rest of the community into believing that they saw visions, wrestled with specters, and signed pacts with the devil. They pointed fingers at innocent people and everyone stopped and listened to them. Why was this? Why did their opinions suddenly matter? Why were much of the women accused on the fringes of society? There are a lot of questions which we may never have the answer to because documentation is sparse (much was lost or intentionally altered). We can only theorize and rationalize to the best of our ability. The occult and the manifestation of it on people is so fascinating to me. I really enjoyed this book (the bibliography is AWESOME). If you're as curious about this topic as I am and you want to look at it from a variety of angles then I recommend you give The Witches: Salem, 1692 a shot.

I am going to get my rage on by starting this tonight.

Expect updates.