Monday, May 25, 2015

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD: My Blue Suede Shoes

Such a great book! The stories are so well written they kept my attention for the better part of a day and a half!  I have read so many books in my life that it is rare for a book to do that for me now.

MY BLUE SUEDE SHOES  is a book of four novellas woven together by the common theme of domestic violence. The wild card in each story is a pair of blue suede shoes which is also a common theme helping to tie the stories together as well.

All the authors of these stories as well as the fictional characters happen to be African American but the ethnicity of all the characters could be changed to any ethnicity without the truth of the stories meanings being lost.  BREAKIN' IT DOWN  by Desiree Cooper details what a successful celebrity who was abused as a child does to her own daughter. BROTHERLY LOVE written by Tracy-Price-Thompson tells a tale of family cycles of incest.  In BREAKIN' DISHES TaRessa Stovall weaves the double looped story of a husband beater and a cheating husband. THE WRONG SIDE OF MR. RIGHT is an interesting tale of the fine line between being a traditional, submissive wife or an abused one. None of the blue suede shoes are the same in any of the stories.  They are merely an instrument used to bring hope or make the protagonist stop and think or rebel against their individual situations.

Practical life applications:

1.  If a partner hits you, then they are not the one for you.
2.  Everyone, no matter how successful they are presently, has insecurities and baggage left over from childhood.
3.  No amount of money or prestige is worth putting up with mental and/or physical abuse.
4.  There are ways out of situations like that if you look for them.

Interestingly enough I had to find some shoes for work around the time I was thinking of this post:

 
I did not even realize until after I had gotten home from shopping that I had bought myself a pair of blue suede shoes. I thought I had merely bought them for comfort!
 
5.  What are some circumstances we might need our own set of blue suede shoes for or our own hope for?  How about yourself? What do you need your own set of blue suede shoes or hope for?
 
picture credits to ONWARD