Richard W. shared a post on August 21, 2021
Nat Turner Rebellion, 1831

Nat Turner’s Legacy

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 36 seconds

One hundred and ninety years ago, “Nat Turner, an enslaved American, led about 70 of his enslaved and free Black neighbors in a rebellion to awaken his white neighbors to the inherent brutality of slaveholding and the dangers it presented to their own safety.”

Heather Cox Richardson ties together this event and the continued campaign to deny education to persons of color in today’s Letters from an American. We must address these issues. If you don’t subscribe to her email newsletter, you must read it; you can click here.

I am an amateur history buff concerned about current events and repairing the world.

Subscribe

Contact Us

Bridge to the Future

Back to the University

For years I have seen the advertisements for One Day University and have waited too long to register. I finally took my first class on February 9, 2019! 250 Years of American Politics in a few hours
Richard W. Brown February 10, 2019

Go back to Stream

Share your thoughts and ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Donate Now!
Nat Turner Rebellion, 1831
×
Mother Mary Comes to Me

Read: December 2025

Get this book

Mother Mary Comes to Me

by Arundhati Roy

“Mother Mary Comes to Me,” Arundhati Roy‘s first memoir, is an intimate and inspiring account of how she became the person and writer she is today. It explores how her life was shaped by various circumstances, particularly her complex relationship with her extraordinary mother, whom she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” The book has been named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Top Ten Books of 2025 and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

Devastated by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022, Roy experienced a mix of confusion and shame over the depth of her emotions. She began writing to understand her feelings for the mother she had distanced herself from at eighteen, not out of a lack of love, but to preserve her ability to love her. Her writing marks the beginning of an astonishing, often disturbing, and surprisingly humorous memoir that chronicles the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to her accomplishments as a prize-winning novelist and essayist, and continues to the present day.

With the scope, richness, and emotional depth characteristic of her novels, “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness“, as well as the passion, political insight, and warmth found in her essays, “Mother Mary Comes to Me” serves as an ode to freedom and a tribute to complicated love and fierce grace—a memoir unlike any other.

Arundhati Roy is the author of “The God of Small Things,” which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” a novel translated into more than 40 languages and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Roy has also published several nonfiction works, including “The End of Imagination,” “The Doctor and the Saint,” “My Seditious Heart,” and “Azadi.” In 2023, she received the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and in 2024, she received the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” She resides in Delhi.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

×
Endling

Read: August 2025

Get this book

Endling: A Novel

by Maria Reva

“Endling” by Maria Reva, a novel of exceptional literary merit, has been longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Set in Ukraine, the story follows an eccentric scientist who breeds rare snails and two sisters pretending to be part of the marriage industry in their quest to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey that involves kidnapped bachelors and the last of its kind snail. This darkly comic novel delves into themes of survival, love, and hope in times of increasing darkness.

In Ukraine in 2022, Yeva is a loner and a daring scientist who lives outside her mob country. She traverses the country’s forests and valleys, attempting to breed rare snails, though her efforts often fail. Meanwhile, her relatives pressured her not to settle down and start a family. What they don’t realize is that Yeva is already dating multiple men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.

Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also caught up in the booming marriage industry. They pose as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who disappeared after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.

Together, they embark on a journey across hundreds of miles, joined by three angry women, a truckload of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a rare snail with one last chance to perpetuate his species. However, their plans come to a sudden halt when Russia invades.

In a strikingly ambitious and profoundly moving metafictive narrative, Endling masterfully balances horror and family, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat navigating her family’s struggle for survival during wartime. As fiction and reality converge on the page, Reva explores the harsh truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? How do we maintain our routines amid military occupation? And for those watching from abroad: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?

Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.

Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and raised in Canada. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. Her fiction has been published in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, and Best American Short Stories, among others, and has won a National Magazine Award. Additionally, she works as an opera librettist.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

Enjoy a limited-time offer of 20% off your next book purchase at Bookshop.org!

×
Killing Stella

Read: July 2025

Get this book

Killing Stella

by Marlen Haushofer

Yesterday, I read “Killing Stella,” written by Marlen Haushofer and translated by Shaun Whiteside, which is a domestic horror story that culminates in an apocalyptic ending. This novella captures many of the themes present in Haushofer’s acclaimed novel, “The Wall,” presenting them within a claustrophobic, gothic, and striking narrative. It offers a gripping and incisive exploration of a fractured marriage, highlighting the remarkable talent of the author of “The Wall,” now available in English for the first time.

Main description: Left alone for the weekend while her husband and two children visit her in-laws, the narrator of “Killing Stella” recounts the addition of her friend’s daughter, Stella, to their already tense and tumultuous household. As she stares out the window at her garden, she worries about a baby bird in the linden tree, her husband Richard, who flits from one adulterous affair to another, her son’s gloomy demeanor, and her daughter’s obliviousness to everything. Most of all, she worries about Stella, a confused teenager who has met a sudden and disastrous end.

Marlen Haushofer (1920–1970) was an Austrian author known for her short stories, novels, radio plays, and children’s books. Her work has significantly influenced many German-speaking writers, including Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, who dedicated one of her plays to Haushofer. One of her most notable works, “The Wall“, was adapted into a film in 2012, directed by Julian Pölsler and starring Martina Gedeck.

Shaun Whiteside is known for his translations of classic works from German, including those by Freud, Musil, and Nietzsche.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

Enjoy a limited-time offer of 20% off your next book purchase at Bookshop.org!

×
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Read: October 2021

Get this book

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

by Katherine May

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May is “an intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.”

Two quotes that resonated with me were:

That’s what grief is – a yearning for that one last moment of contact that would settle everything.

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall upon us, revealing our bare bones. Given time they grow again.

May writes in a clear voice that conveys the importance of accepting the cycles of life instead of fighting them.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a breakup, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath swimming in icy waters, and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the serene beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

I recommend this book without reservation.

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.

Subscribe

Contact Us

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.

×
The missing hours

Read: February 2022

Get this book

The Missing Hours

by Julia Dahl

The Missing Hours by Julia Dahl is a novel I chose to read as I was looking for something different from the recent books I have read, and a fellow reader recommended this one. The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act. Like a bomb exploding, the ripple effects of the novel’s primary event impact the victim and her family, friends, and the larger community.

A trigger warning to all readers, the violent act in the novel is a sexual assault that is filmed and shared. Claudia, the victim, has no memory initially of what happened. She had been drinking and wearing clothes that she liked to wear. None of her choices is an excuse for those who victimized her.

She cannot remember what happened until a friend receives the video.

Being wealthy and social media savvy, she is aware that reporting the assault before or after the video is released would only allow her to be re-victimized. Her choices and how she seeks to secure justice make this a book I enjoyed and highly recommended.

This is the Goodreads overview.

From a distance, Claudia Castro has it all: a famous family, a trust fund, thousands of Instagram followers, and a spot in NYU’s first-year class. But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she’s just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows.

Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful – and then, one drunken night, everything changes. Reeling, her memory hazy, Claudia cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing.

Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.

From the critically acclaimed author of Invisible City and Conviction, The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act.

Subscribe

Contact Us

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

×

Read: April 2026

Get this book

The Future Is Peace

by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon

“The Future Is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land” explores the experiences of two lifelong peace activists, Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, who serve as guides in Israel and Palestine. Both have personally endured loss due to the ongoing conflict. They lead readers on a profound and transformative journey through this sacred yet tumultuous land, revealing the historical, political, and personal narratives that both divide and connect their communities and peoples.

“We do not see ourselves as Palestinians and Israelis, or as Jews and Arabs, but as human beings who believe in fostering a culture of dialogue, a culture of forgiveness, and a culture of peace. To those who see only division lines, we say: If you must divide us, let it be as those who believe in peace and equality and those who don’t… yet.”

Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon forged a bond of brotherhood when the world expected them to be enemies. Both have lost family to the conflict. Both have known the bitterness of righteous anger. Yet, they chose a different path.

In The Future Is Peace, Sarah and Inon take readers on a transformative weeklong journey across a sacred and bloodstained land. Facing competing narratives, they explore how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred. Throughout their travels, they have been asked again and again: In the face of so much loss, how can we ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it.

This book is a rebuttal to a broken world and a bold challenge to the belief that more violence can ever bring security. Told with unflinching honesty, their story is proof that peace is not a naive dream, but a courageous choice—for reconciliation to heal the wounds of revenge, for partnerships to change a destiny of war, and for empathy to save us from drowning in sorrow.

Pairing unapologetic candor with inspirational prose, Sarah and Inon are sending an urgent message: the people have the power to make change. Peace is inevitable. For Palestinians, for Israelis, and for the world that awaits their example, it is not just possible—it is the future.

Aziz Abu Sarah serves as Co-CEO of InterAct International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East. He is a peacebuilder, entrepreneur, National Geographic Explorer, TED Fellow, and a respected speaker and trainer in conflict resolution and responsible travel.

Aziz is also the co-founder of MEJDI Tours, a travel company aiming to transform tourism into a powerful tool for citizen diplomacy. He has received numerous accolades, including awards from the United Nations, the Institute of International Education, and the Explorers Club.

Recognized as one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan, Aziz has contributed opinion pieces to prominent publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al-Quds, and Haaretz.

Maoz Inon is the Co-CEO of InterAct International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East. He is a peace activist from Israel and an entrepreneur. In recognition of his efforts, he has received the prestigious Franco-German Human Rights Prize and the Shared Living Award from Abraham Initiatives.

He has spoken before audiences on Capitol Hill, at universities across the United States, and in the European Parliament. Additionally, Inon has contributed articles to various publications, including The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and Haaretz.

He has also founded several initiatives aimed at fostering peace in Israel and the Middle East, including the Jesus Trail, Fauzi Azar Inn, and the Abraham Hostel & Tour brands.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books I’ve personally vetted for quality and enjoyment. Supporting these selections not only helps me continue to provide you with personalized recommendations but also ensures you have access to meaningful stories that enrich your life. Your support truly makes a difference in helping me share more books and insights with you!

×