Time to Listen
In celebration of Black History Month, we recommend listening to Bone Broth by Lyndsey Ellis, an audio book read by Wisconsin Poet Laureate Dasha Kelly Hamilton.
A conversation needs someone to speak and someone to listen. A story is another kind of conversation, and sometimes we are lucky enough to listen to stories in conversation with each other. In celebration of Black History Month, we invite you into conversation by listening to Bone Broth by Lyndsey Ellis, available as an audio book read by Wisconsin Poet Laureate Dasha Kelly Hamilton whose own narratives both construct dialogue and deconstruct histories.
Take time to listen
Set in a struggling suburb of North St. Louis during the Ferguson unrest in 2014, Justine, the new family matriarch, clashes with her children–Raynah, the spitfire activist, Lois, the real estate agent who struggles with economic loss and the loss of her son, and Theo, the public servant battling intersections of his memories and identities–as she tries to connect, but refuses to acknowledge, the details of her murky past.
With clear, cutting, biting prose, Ellis explores how trauma affects family dynamics, how it permeates every aspect of life, and how reckoning and reconciliation require the strength and courage to confront all the broken, jagged memories from the past.
Bone Broth won the Friends of American Writers Fiction Award in 2022 and has been chosen twice as Maryville University’s First-Year Read. Engage further with Bone Broth on Hidden Timber Book’s website in this guest post by Lindsey Ellis–Black History Month: Discovering and Uncovering in which she writes about her experience researching details for the plot and characters in her debut novel.
Connect the conversation
The best conversations continue because they connect you with someone else to talk to. In this case, Bone Broth leads to Vivian Gibson and her book, The Last Children of Mill Creek. Listen as Gibson describes her bestselling memoir, a tribute to her beloved community and its people, and join the conversation. Mill Creek was a segregated neighborhood in St. Louis that was bulldozed in 1959 to build a highway. The Last Children of Mill Creek is an extraordinary work of community history and personal story.
Mill Creek is currently featured in the Missouri History Museum in their exhibit: “Mill Creek: Black Metropolis.”
Listen to more authors in conversation in our Friday Framework series.
Celebrate story
Hidden Timber Books is dedicated to engaging and illuminating stories told through relationships, roots, and histories. We publish and promote these books in our small press community.
To continue the Black History Month celebration with young people, Christi Craig, owner, recommends Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne, a coming-of-age novel in verse, also available as an audio book! Chlorine Sky is available alongside other amazing titles we recommend through other small presses we love on bookshop.org.
Purchase from our shop on bookshop.org. Explore our full catalogue. We hope you find some time to listen this month!
Black History Month Resources:
Listen and learn more about African-American experiences
in Wisconsin–Wisconsin Historical Society
in the Midwest–Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest edited by Terrion Williamson
in publishing–Black & Published Podcast with Nikesha Elise Williams
in Black History Month NPR Code Switch
Attend events in your local area all month long or visit Wisconsin’s African-American cultural sites all year long.
Milwaukee Public Library hosts the Black History Month Challenge
Overture Galleries in Madison host Martel Chapman’s work - Portraits as Jazz/Improvisation in Sound; Improvisation in Form
Advocate for your school or public library to add to their catalogues:
Black Experiences: Affirmation and Resilience, Activism and Resistance in 45 Books for PreK-Grade 12 (UW-Madison Cooperative Children’s Book Center)
Social Justice Books Book Lists
Hidden Timber Books is dedicated to expanding its catalogue by supporting diverse voices because these books preserve and celebrate tenacity and passion for recording their truths, stories rooted in place that offer readers social and historical context, cultural and philosophical insights. I am an experienced classroom teacher, nonprofit staff trainer and curriculum designer who has worked both locally and abroad. I continue to listen to local voices such as “The Journey North: The Shaping of Beloit’s African-American Community.” I am excited to advocate for authors who share these kinds of stories with Hidden Timber Books as the Associate Publisher.
So many good ideas here - thanks!