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Dark Room Etiquette by Robin Roe should be required reading for any student of psychology. Set in Texas, this is a powerful book about the aftermath of a traumatic event and illustrates how the human mind is a total mystery. Roe tells the story of two years in the life of Sayers Wayte (Saye), a sixteen-year-old who turns eighteen in the course of the novel. As the story opens, Saye is basking in his status as a junior eligible for Homecoming Court at Laurel High School, as a popular young man with friends and a girlfriend, and as a member of the upper class whoseRead More →

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Brandy Colbert writes an important book, a story that needed to see the light of day. Black Birds in the Sky is a nonfiction account of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It is filled with sad and horrifying cruelty as it recounts one of the most deadly and destructive acts of racial violence in American History. Colbert makes her readers aware of just how much the past inform the present. She enlightens us, explaining that history is full of progress and setbacks. The Unites States, in particular, has a violent genocidal foundation. Traumatic times often get passed over in classrooms and conversations because they makeRead More →

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A form of cognitive efficiency, labeling helps people make sense of their worlds. Although labels give our brains the ability to categorize and to draw useful conclusions, they can also limit thinking and lead to stereotypes. With labels like normal, mentally ill, or bipolar, we not only make assumptions about others but about ourselves and our potential abilities. These assumptions can even influence our identities. It is this identity labeling that concerns Journey Smith, the seventeen-year-old protagonist in Faith Gardner’s novel Girl on the Line. Journey doubts the truth about many of the things the world tells her and believes that her brain ruins everything asRead More →

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Four Three Two One by Courtney Stevens recounts the story of four young adults, all unique in their idiosyncrasies as they board Charter Bus 21 in New York City on June 15 bound for Ellis Island: Chandler Clayton is allergic to sudden changes but artistic with a sketch pad or a chain saw and logs; Golden Jennings is eager to explore the world beyond the towering oaks and billowing blue grass of Kentucky with her vintage No. 3 Kodak; Rudy Guthrie is a talented soccer athlete and a writer who has just won a scholarship to Emerson College in Boston; and Caroline Ascott from a wealthyRead More →

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Strong-willed and filled with questions as a child, Clara Hartel loves time spent with her dad, who promises, “You’ll never be lost as long as I’m here” (99).  Having already lost her mother to thyroid cancer, Clara requires reassurance that she will not be completely abandoned.  So, when her father dies suddenly from a heart attack, eight-year-old Clara no longer feels safe and secure. Devastated by her father’s death, Clara figuratively confines herself in a glass coffin, like that remembered from the bedtime story of Snow White.  Psychologically shut away from the outside world, Clara goes through the motions of life, where sounds are muffled,Read More →