The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

At eighteen, Victoria finally ages out of the system - eighteen years of failed foster experiences, an almost adoption and a life changing mistake.  Through it all has been a primal connection with plants and flowers.  She has even received instruction in the Victorian understanding that each flower carries with it an emotion as well as the exact moment that a grape is ready to become wine.  Which is stronger - the hurt and anger that has become an essential part of her being or the possibility that she can learn a new more hopeful language?  Nothing heavy duty here.  Some of the characters are unbelievably good and the alternating back story/present structure makes start and stop reading tricky but the idea of the language of flowers is most interesting.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Someone suggested this book as an insight into "red" America.  Born into a hillbilly culture and raised in the Rust belt by a single, often drug dependent mom and multiple father figures, Vance's Mamaw and Papaw where his strange but consistent source of security.  But he got out.  Now a happily married Yale Law School graduate, he looks back at how he got out.    What things provided a way up and out?  What were the road blocks?  Given my introduction to the book, I expected some blame to be placed securely at the feet of the government.  Not so. Vance examines ACEs - adverse childhood experiences - as the greatest barrier.  Actual abuse and neglect are easy to identify as ACEs but it is the lack of family support, all the constant reminders that you are part of a loser culture that are just as devastating.  It was not knowing what fork to use or when a suit was required that got in the way of his climb out.  It is a reminder that we need to acknowledge our own history and focus on the changes required for a different future - the changes we must make for ourselves.  Not sure how "red" America sees his own personal rise. 

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters are born in the Gold Coast in the late 1700's.  Raised by different African peoples, neither is aware of the other.  One stays behind in Africa and becomes the "African wife" of a young British officer involved in the slave trade.  The other  is sold and sent to America on a slave ship.  And so begins a story told through generations.  Esi's generational story is one of slavery, hard won freedom, the sad consequences of segregation and Jim Crow,  Civil Rights,  and eventual success.  Effia's story is one of the development of Africa from tribal wars to colonialism and the eventual independence of the country of Ghana.  And then generations later - without the benefit of Ancestry.com - the worlds of the Fante and Asante come together again.  This is history from multiple perspectives and multiple decades with enough revelatory detail to span the missing years. There is an authenticity to both stories that may come from the fact that the author was born in Ghana and raised in America.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Pulitzer and National Book Award Winner - and probably many more.  It is both historical fiction about America at it's worst and a little bit of magical realism that allows Whitehead to play loose with time and metaphor.  Both disturbing and hopeful.  As a child, Cora lives in a antebellum cotton plantation in Georgia.  Abandoned by a mother who fled north, scorned by many of her fellow slaves and selected for frequent abuse by a sadistic "master", she escapes at the age of fifteen.  The underground railroad that carries her north is an actual system of tracks and engines and stations deep underground.  At each stop in her journey, she becomes a leading character in the long history of cruelty.  Lynchings, eugenics, slaughter of whole black communities, occasions of freedom that quickly turn dark - they are all there.  Cora draws strength from her anger at the people who have abandoned and abused her.  She knows she is meant to be free.  There are many thought provoking passages about the notion of prejudice and "manifest destiny" as well as insights into the slave experience. It is a hard history to acknowledge made even sadder by the fact that it sometimes feels more current than historical.