Ben Jealous

Healing the Soul of America!

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 10 seconds

I’ve been reading Ben Jealouss “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing” since last Saturday. In his book, Mr. Jealous emphasizes the importance of every person taking responsibility for their healing, which can contribute to repairing America’s broken heart. He suggests treating each other like cousins would be transformative for all Americans.

I am grateful to live in a community where I can develop close friendships and witness the power of treating each other with the same love and respect shared between close family members. Living in downtown Cranford has helped me heal after losing my wife. Though I have put my grief behind me now, I might still be grieving if I were living somewhere else.

InscriptionLast May, I met Ben Jealous briefly during the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism‘s Day of Action in Washington. As the board chair of Bridges, I’m committed to working for justice. That event was part of my ongoing, lifetime commitment to that cause.

I attended his talk at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield. His advocacy for civil rights, the environment, and the healing of America’s broken heart deeply inspired me. Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and the former President of the NAACP.

It means a lot to me that someone with Mr. Jealous’s experience wrote the inscription in my copy of his book. I highly recommend this book!

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Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 10 seconds
Never Forget Our People Were Always Free

Never Forget Our People Were Always Free

TToday, I started reading "Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing" by Ben Jealous, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. The book highlights how the path to healing America's broken heart begins with each of us having the courage to heal ourselves. According to Mr. Jealous, it would be transformative if every American treated each other as cousins.

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Ben Jealous
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Never Forget Our People Were Always Free

Read: March 2024

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Never Forget Our People Were Always Free

by Ben Jealous

Today, I started reading “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing” by Ben Jealous, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. The book highlights how the path to healing America’s broken heart begins with each of us having the courage to heal ourselves. According to Mr. Jealous, it would be transformative if every American treated each other as cousins.

Ben Jealous is the son of parents who had to leave Maryland because their cross-racial marriage was illegal.

I briefly met Ben Jealous last May when I went to Washington with the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism‘s Day of Action. When I saw Mr. Jealous speaking at Temple Emanu-El in neighboring Westfield, I immediately signed up to attend in person. He is an inspiration as an advocate for the environment, civil rights, and the healing of America’s broken heart.

His lively, courageous, and empathetic storytelling calls on every American to look past deeply cut divisions and recognize that we are all in the same boat now. Along the way, Jealous grapples with hidden American mysteries, including:

  • Why do white men die from suicide more often than black men die from murder?
  • How did racial profiling kill an American president?
  • What happens when a Ku Klux Klansman wrestles with what Jesus said?
  • How did Dave Chappelle know the DC Snipers were Black?
  • Why shouldn’t the civil rights movement give up on rednecks?
  • When is what we have collectively forgotten about race more important than what we know?
  • What do the most indecipherable things our elders say tell us about ourselves?

The book Never Forget Our People Were Always Free is told through parables. It features intimate glimpses of political and faith leaders such as Jack Kemp, Stacey Abrams, and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The book also highlights unlikely heroes such as a retired constable, a female pirate from Madagascar, a long-lost Irishman, a death row inmate, and a man with a Confederate flag over his heart.

Never Forget Our People Were Always Free offers readers hope that America’s oldest wounds can heal and her oldest divisions can be overcome.

Although I have only read a handful of pages of the book, I highly recommend it!

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Thrust: A Novel

Read: August 2022

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Thrust: A Novel

by Lidia Yuknavitch

Thrust: A Novel by Lidia Yuknavitch is a book I recommend without reservations. The protagonist of Thrust is Laisve, a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. The book begins with the construction of the Statue of Liberty, and Laisve, with the gifts of a carrier, travels through water and time to rescue vulnerable figures from the margins of history.

The novel also focuses on rising waters and an encroaching police state endangering Laisve’s life and family. As a reader who likes historical fiction and time travel, Thrust: A Novel by Lidia Yuknavitch proved to be a page-turner.

The full GoodReads summary provides an overview of this book published on June 28, 2022,

Lidia Yuknavitch has an unmatched gift for capturing stories of people on the margins–vulnerable humans leading lives of challenge and transcendence. Now, Yuknavitch offers an imaginative masterpiece: the story of Laisve, a motherless girl from the late 21st century who is learning her power as a carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time.

Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries: a French sculptor; a woman of the American underworld; a dictator’s daughter; an accused murderer; and a squad of laborers at work on a national monument. Through intricately braided storylines, Laisve must dodge enforcement raids, find her way to the present day, and finally, to the early days of her poor country, to forge a connection that might save their lives–and their shared dream of freedom.

Thrust will leave no reader unchanged, a dazzling novel of body, spirit, and survival.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month are matched dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Prophet Song: A Novel

Read: January 2024

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Prophet Song: A Novel

by Paul Lynch

In 2024, I started my reading journey with the Booker Prize 2023 winner – Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch. The book presents a chilling and astonishing outlook of a nation sliding into authoritarianism while also painting a profoundly humane portrait of a mother’s struggle to keep her family together. I have not set a goal of the number of books to read in 2024, but this is an excellent first-day pageturner.

It all begins on a dark, rainy evening in Dublin when Eilish Stack, a scientist and mother of four, opens her front door to two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police. They are there to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart as the government is gradually turning towards tyranny. As her world crumbles and the people she loves disappear, Eilish faces the dystopian reality of her country. How far is Eilish willing to go to protect her family? And what, or who, is she ready to leave behind?


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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Trouble the Saints

Read: January 2022

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Trouble the Saints

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII. Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens.

The book is written in three sections with different protagonists and voices. Phyllis, or Pea as her friends call her, is a black assassin for a white mob boss narrates the first section of the book. Her saint’s hands are the ability to use knives to commit murder. She can also pass as white as Phyllis, but she is a black woman from Harlem as Pea. The section she narrates is difficult at first to follow as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her actions. Can the past ever be the past?

Dev, Indian and Phyllis’s lover, narrates the second section. He is an undercover cop who protects her and helps her free herself from the mob boss. This section is located in the Hudson Valley and highlights the tensions before the war between whites and non-whites.

The third protagonist, Tamara, narrates this section. The war separates Phyllis and Dev. Phyllis is pregnant, and Dev and Tamara’s love interest are serving in the military. This section brings together the threads and reminds us that the past is never the past.

As Goodreads summarizes the book,

But the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most.

Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

I recommend this book and encourage all readers to read it to the end.

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The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding: A Novel

Read: April 2022

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The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding: A Novel by Lydia Kang is a spellbinding historical mystery about hidden identities, wartime paranoia, and the compelling power of deceit. It was my free April book from First Reads, and it was a page-turner that I highly recommend.

The first year of World War II and the Manhattan Project is the backdrop of this historical fiction. The siblings’ Will and Maggie Scripps are well-defined andy sympathetic characters. I will leave it for the reader to find out the truth about them. Ruby Fielding is a fascinating character, although it takes time for her to be fully developed.

Again, I highly recommend this novel!

Goodreads provides a concise overview.

Brooklyn, 1942. War rages overseas as brother and sister Will and Maggie Scripps contribute to the war effort stateside. Ambitious Will secretly scouts for the Manhattan Project while grief-stricken Maggie works at the Navy Yard, writing letters to her dead mother between shifts.

But the siblings’ quiet lives change when they discover a beautiful woman hiding under their back stairs. This stranger harbors an obsession with poisons, an affection for fine things, and a singular talent for killing small creatures. As she draws Will and Maggie deeper into her mysterious past, they both begin to suspect she’s quite dangerous―all while falling helplessly under her spell.

With whispers of spies in dark corners and the world’s first atomic bomb in the works, the visitor’s sudden presence in Maggie’s and Will’s lives raises questions about who she is and what she wants. Is this mysterious woman someone they can trust―or a threat to everything they hold dear?

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Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel

Read: August 2021

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Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer

by Sena Jeter Naslund

Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund is a book I could not put down once I finished the first chapter. “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.” is one of the most-recognized first sentences in literature–along with “Call me Ishmael.”

Sena Jeter Naslund has created a transcendent heroine – Una Spenser – who is as memorable as Ahab. Una’s universe spans a time that begins to redefine both women and men.

After a spellbinding opening scene, the tale flashes back to Una’s childhood in Kentucky; her idyllic adolescence with her aunt and uncle’s family at a lighthouse near New Bedford; her adventures disguised as a cabin boy on a whaling ship; her first marriage to a fellow survivor who descends into violent madness; courtship and marriage to Ahab; life as mother and a rich captain’s wife in Nantucket; involvement with Frederick Douglass; and a man who is in Nantucket researching his novel about his adventures on her ex-husband’s ship.

Ahab’s Wife is a breathtaking, magnificent, and uplifting story of one woman’s spiritual journey, informed by the spirit of the greatest American novel, but taking it beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph.

Having read this book, I can easily understand why my life loved the book and encouraged me to read it. Her life story was much like Una’s, an uplifting story of her spiritual journey and her quest to repair the world.

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The Faraway World

Read: January 2023

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The Faraway World: Stories

by Patricia Engel

The Faraway World: Stories by Patricia Engel was released six days ago. The Faraway World is an exquisite collection of ten haunting, award-winning short stories set across the Americas and linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise. I highly recommend this collection of short stories. All ten are ones I would read again. As Leigh Newman wrote in her review in the NYTimes, The Faraway World is “a collection about the Latin American diaspora.”

In addition, Leigh Newman described The Faraway World proves that Engel, like one of her characters, is capable of noticing “that between two people, a look reveals more than a fingerprint.” The first story in the collection, “Aida,” is about two twins, one of whom goes missing. Once I read this story, I could not stop until I had read all ten.

The stories are based in Cuba, Colombia, and the US. I know a few NJ settings that gave more meaning to these stories. I felt like I was in Cuba and Colombia, which I had never visited.

NPR interviewed Patricia Engel. She described how she wrote the stories.

They came to me at different points when I was thinking about other things. But of course, they are connected by this – the motivating force for change, desire, and the ever-changing conditions of identity and movements and changing geography and landscape and diaspora. Those are things that I explore in all my writing, and it’s something that I explore in my life. So, of course, it permeates my stories.


The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Two Colombian ex-pats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami to life-altering ends.

The Faraway World is a collection of arresting stories from the New York Times bestselling author of Infinite Country, Patricia Engel, “a gifted storyteller whose writing shines even in the darkest corners” (The Washington Post). Intimate and panoramic, these stories bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of the community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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