LaToya Rogers

Fortune Cookie

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:06:00 +0000

“The signs are mixed, the next twelve months could bring new challenges and unexpected changes. Moulds may be broken wild some patterns may reoccur. A shedding of skin could be on the horizon. Moments of adversity, calamity, triumph, disappointment, delight and tedium should also be expected.”

This astrological prose sums up the year of 1989 experienced by a twenty-four-year-old woman. Fortune Cookie is a diary-style novel, detailing the life of Robin, a marketing clerk for a publishing company, living in Montreal with her four friends in a two-story walk-up apartment. This book is a refreshing take on a young woman’s journey, one that encompasses the protests of the world to catalyze its heroine’s coming of age.

Robin is vicariously searching for something more in her life, and she knows that her marketing clerk job is not it. She sees standing by doing nothing as unfair justice. Her daily entries are at times interrupted with news headlines highlighting the political and social events of the year, including Tienanmen Square, the Chantal Abortion case, and the Montreal Massacre. Also mixed in are astrological musings loosely based on the Chinese calendar.

This book reminded me of the feeling I got when I decided to take action and become involved in my community around the issues that mattered to me. Robin experienced this same feeling while watching the Tienanmen Square protest and the abuse taken by police on television. Fortune Cookie is a novel that brought back memories of the No. 1 song of the week, like Milli Vanilli’s “Blame it on the Rain” and the Berlin Wall coming down. Towards the end of the year you get to find out what Robin decides to do at the start of the twentieth century, which is an amazing journey of self-discovery.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, November 12th 2009

Yes, My Darling Daughter

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:36:00 +0000

By Margaret Leroy

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

“Such a pretty girl. Four years old; well loved by her young mother, Grace. But there’s something...'off ' about the child.”

The above excerpt sets the scene for Margaret Leroy’s Yes, My Darling Daughter. Margaret Leroy offers a novel that is so original and suspenseful it pulls you in from the first page. The story involves Grace, a single mother who works full-time at a London flower shop, and Sylvie, her four-year-old daughter. Things become complicated and strange when Sylvie begins to display behavior that is out of her nature and involves mean-spirited actions at preschool and with friends. She begins to have tantrums, outbursts, and a strange fear of water. These sudden changes seems mysterious, and Sylvie's psychiatrists blame Grace.

Grace knows there's something happening to her daughter that can’t be explained and is beyond her control. To help understand Sylvie's trouble, she decides to seek help from Adam Winters, a university professor who has studied paranormal behavior. Adam has theories about what is happening to Sylvie that prompt the three to travel together to Cold Harbour in order to understand Sylvie’s connection to the area, particularly to the house she continuously draws thought she has never been near it.

Set in London and Ireland, Yes, My Darling Daughter provides a backdrop full of characters that are intriguing and moves along with a past life twist told by an uninvited character. Leroy’s words entice readers into a nonstop and exciting murder mystery. If you enjoy the idea of visits from the other side, this book will satisfy your paranormal appetite.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, September 22nd 2009

Never Tell a Lie

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:26:00 +0000

By Hallie Ephron

Harper Collins

In a suburban area in Massachusetts, David and Ivy Rose host a yard sale as a way of getting rid of items left in the attic by previous owners of their recently purchased Victorian home. During the sale, a woman named Melinda, whom they both knew in high school, informs David and Ivy that as a child she played in the house they now own and would like to see the inside again. When David offers to take Melinda inside for a tour, he leaves her alone for a brief moment and unbeknownst to him, this is the last time he or anyone else will see Melinda.

When Melinda disappears and her car is found nearby with the newspaper ad for the Rose’s yard sale circled, Detective Blanchard traces her last known steps to the yard sale. No one, including David, remembers seeing her leave, yet detective Blanchard discovers her bloody clothes among the leftover items of the sale. The police take the Roses in for questioning, and Ivy discovers that David hasn't been entirely truthful.

As the evidence mounts and clues are uncovered, David is charged with murder and placed under arrest, which leaves Ivy to find the truth. In Ivy’s search to find out what really happened to Melinda, she discovers some unexpected secrets leading back to their high school years.

Never Tell a Lie is a very quick and easy read. A surprise toward the end provides the perfect twist to this tale of suspense. Hallie Ephron introduces the perfect suburban couple, and then turns their lives into deception, danger and unraveling the truth. This mystery is a page turner and you will not be able to put it down until the very last sentence is read.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, March 9th 2009

Freeing Tammy: Women, Drugs, and Incarceration

admin — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:57:00 +0000

By Jody Raphael

University Press of New England

Meet Tammara Johnson, an ex-19 year heroin addict, ex-prisoner and now a job development trainer for an in-patient drug treatment program. Freeing Tammy is the final book of a trilogy that discusses women, poverty and violence. Raphael brings to light the circumstances that plague women in poor communities, especially black women, for survival within their community - a survival that reaches all realms of the existence of women combating abusive relationships, childhood sexual abuse and drugs.

A correlation of these factors is presented within the existence of Tammy’s life. We are taken on a journey beginning with her making progress to kick her heroin addiction to going to jail for holding drugs within her home for a drug dealer. While in prison, Tammy’s son, Terrance, is left behind to live with his aunt and struggle with the realization that his mother is in jail and his father is an alcoholic that can’t provide the parental involvement he needs.

Freeing Tammy not only effectively revolves around Tammy’s incarceration experience, but shows the reader the inner working of our prison system. Raphael provides in-depth research, interviews and statistical data regarding women in prison and its effects on their self-esteem and dignity as a woman and a human being. A passage in the book reflects this point: “In prison the effects of being stripped of your dignity and your self-esteem have a long lasting effect. It has an effect that is so damaging that I don’t even think that therapy can take it away.” She opened the door of the reader’s mind to the dehumanization, humiliation and disregard of a woman’s identity in prison.

I was expecting the book to be solely about Tammy, but was thrown off by the research data, yet welcomed the opportunity to learn about our criminal justice system and the subconscious behavior exhibited by authority to degrade and belittle a female criminal. Jody Raphael created an exciting mixture of the data, which was easy to read and thoroughly pleasing.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, September 4th 2007

The Session

admin — Sun, 20 May 2007 21:24:00 +0000

By Aaron Petrovich

Hotel St. George

The Session is a novella mystery with quirky, intellectual humor dispersed throughout the book. It reminds me of the “Who’s on first?” Abbott & Costello skit:

What we’re after here is the truth of the situation. I’ve got it. I’m pleased to hear it. In the palm of my hands. That’s the wrong place for it. On the edge of my seat? In anticipation of…? What? What? What are you waiting for? Who says I’m waiting? You’ve just done. I said no such thing. You are on the edge young man of your seat. But I’m standing.

See what I mean? This unconventional dialogue engages the reader in the conversation, feeling perplexed yet intrigued at the same time. Two detectives by the name of Smith try to solve the murder and theft of a mathematician and his missing bodily organs. While discussing the events that led to the mathematician’s death, both Smiths begin to venture into deep, thought provoking conversations about life and how individuals perceive the reality of their own existence. Their quest for the truth leads them to an insane asylum, which houses the men and women who are part of a cult that may have given the mathematician his fate.

This short text will pull you inside the storyline quickly because you’re trying to understand the complexity of the situation. Toward the end you get the feel of the story, but by that time it’s too late; the book is complete. You begin to ask yourself, “Are there really two people talking or just one? Is Detective Smith the murderer? Or does his monologue simply bring you to the way his brain falls into complex illusions about the existence of life and how we live?”

The book is a must read. It left me wanting more, and definitely kept me engaged. The reader will feel as if she or he is lurking behind the walls, listening to the Smiths’ long-winded, intellectual yet funny conversations about who killed the mathematician.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, May 20th 2007

Bitch (Issue #35: Super)

admin — Sat, 19 May 2007 21:45:00 +0000

B-Word Publishing

Bitch, as depicted on their website, is “a print magazine devoted to incisive commentary on our media-driven world." Reading Bitch was my first experience with a magazine that showcases feminist commentary about the media towards women in an eye-opening, upbeat conversation with the consumer. Issue 35 is considered to be the "Super Issue."

In the "Love It/Shove It" section, a few articles are written in a hardcore feministic opinion about women's role in society depicted via television and advertising. In the article, "This is What a Feminist Should Look Like," the author grapples with blogging and the argument about feminists getting Brazilian bikini waxes and loving high heels as “going along with the patriarchy” and being a crappy feminist. Authors, Samhita M. and Jessica Valenti from Feministing wrote, “Isn’t the whole point that women should be able to decide for ourselves what our appearance means to our feminism-and if it means anything at all?” This speaks volume to the kind of rhetoric that is being displayed in this magazine. It showcases the views of varying feminist sisters who define the term in their own ideological manner.

I found the article "More Than a Woman" to be an excellent composite of women making feminist strides in our society. It started with Aphra Behn (1640-1689), who achieved success as an author of plays, poems and novels: “She is believed to have witnessed a slave rebellion during a stay in Surinam, traveled to the Netherlands as a spy for King Charles II, and wound up in debtor’s prison all before she turned 30.” It concluded with Lois Weber, an auteur of early Hollywood. According to the article, “Weber was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid directors, heading Universal Studio's production department and pioneering technical innovations such as split screens and camera angles.” This section alone is reason enough to pick up the magazine to find out our history and add it to our repertoire of women making history in America.

Overall the magazine was stimulating, and is an excellent precursor to women-orientated discussions on how we are depicted in popular culture. The articles provide an opinionated, in-depth backdrop to those conversations.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, May 19th 2007