By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez

Some say you march to a different drummer.

You follow the music you hear in your soul, blazing your own path while the rest of the world watches. You’re the best companion you know for yourself. You know who you are, and that’s all that matters.

In “The Outsider Advantage” by Ciera Rogers, founder, and CEO of Babes, you’ll see what you can do with your “you-niqueness.”

There was once a time when Rogers lived in her mother’s Jeep.

She was a teenager then, and though her mother tried to keep a roof over their heads, a handful of low-paying jobs just didn’t cut it. They were constantly moving, and Rogers switched schools often, which forced her to learn how to fit in quickly and get by.

That resourcefulness was key to her survival later in life. As the first in her family to attend college, Rogers earned a degree, but she was unable to take an unpaid intern position, which were all that were available a decade or so ago, she says. This hurt her job chances, but she knew she would survive. She was bold and smart.

One afternoon, broke and unemployed, she thought about her mother’s small boutique in Houston, launched with few resources and less money. Rogers knew how to thrift. She could make videos. She could sell clothing online, eventually creating one-of-a-kind outfits, mixing and matching, catching the attention of celebrities and moviemakers becoming a million-dollar business started literally on scraps.

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“Remember,” she says, “most big things start with a tiny idea.”

You don’t have to have piles of cash or big inheritances to start a business. Look for free help or free platforms that can move your enterprise along. Make do with what you have at first. Stop procrastinating and don’t miss any opportunities.  Know what you stand for. Know that you are not alone, either in your uniqueness or your situation.

“There’s a box where everyone else is,” says Rogers. “Get out of it. Be different.”

So, you don’t have any money. You don’t even have bootstraps to pull yourself up. But if you can read, you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, says Rogers. “You only need to take that first confident step.”

As you start this book, though, you may wonder why anyone would think it’s for entrepreneurs. What Rogers has to offer is, indeed, more memoir than advice, though there are nuggets to capture on nearly every page and end-of-chapter takeaways embedded in a lively, fun sort of treasure hunt. Rogers’ entire life on the edge shows readers that being a little bit (or a whole lot) unique isn’t a hurdle. Unconventionality is not a deal-breaker; in fact, it can help you break into success.

This book inspires — especially for readers whose dreams are burning with ideas but not a lot of coin. “The Outsider Advantage” is for when the drum beat of entrepreneurship is just too irresistible.

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By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Deep down inside, there’s a part of you that always wants to do right.

Did someone teach you that? Or were you just modeling what your elders did when they did what was true and right? Either way, your moral compass points the way, always. You do right for the world, even if, as in the new novel “54 Miles” by Leonard Pitts, Jr., it’s the wrong personal decision for you.

Sitting in church, hundreds of miles from home, Adam Simon felt the distance keenly.

This surprised him. It wasn’t like he was close to his parents. No, his father, a White minister, had over-preached to Adam for too long, and his Black mother never showed Adam much warmth. With no siblings to help soften these facts, Adam left college to head to Alabama, to work with SNCC’s voter registry efforts.

That was the plan, anyhow, but down-deep, Adam had no idea what he was doing. It was a good cause, a great and righteous one, but not without danger: he was almost killed while marching across the Edmund Pettis Bridge.

And that’s how his frantic parents learned where he was: alerted by Simon’s parents, his Uncle Luther tracked the young man down in a Selma hospital, took him in, and notified Simon’s parents that he was safe.

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By that time, Simon was on his way to Alabama for his son’s sake.

Years ago, George, the elder Simon, and his now-wife, Thelma, had busted almost every racial law the South imposed, and they married. Shortly afterward, Simon’s father sent the new family north, for safety.

And now Simon was in Alabama, in the mouth of the dragon and he had other troubles on his mind.

Simon knew he shouldn’t have snooped, but while staying with his Uncle Luther, he found a stash of old letters, and he read them. What he learned shocked him, and he had to leave Luther’s home immediately.

The problem was, Simon had nowhere to go.

Were you there? If not, can you imagine what it was like to live in 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement? Readers who don’t know or can’t picture it will get an eyeful of what was possible inside “54 Miles.”

In setting his novel roughly in the years 1945 to 1965, author Leonard Pitts, Jr. doesn’t make reading this book easy. There are passages inside this novel that will make you want to wince and turn away and – caution! – they’re not for the weak-stomached.

Just remember, they’re essential to the story and to why the characters act as they do.

On that, you’ll enjoy most of these characters as they look to the past and future, working their ways through personal struggles and one of the more tumultuous periods in American history. Details help, making this books’ cast feel more authentic.

Be aware that “54 Miles” can be slow, at certain points, but stick with it and you won’t be disappointed. Especially if you’re a historical novel fan, this book will do you right.

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By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookwurm Sez

Well, thank you so much to your co-worker.

That’s where you got this ick, this scratchy-throat, achy-body, upset-stomach, can’t-sleep virus. He sneezed and that’s all it took. Now you’ve got what he had and you’re trying not to spread it anymore.

As you know from experience, and as attested in the new book “Treating Violence” by Rob Gore, MD, epidemics affect everybody. In this book, the scourge is violence.

Once upon a time, Gore had a brother. Angel wasn’t biologically related to Gore, but within a short time after Gore’s parents fostered the young boy, they considered each other siblings.

They tussled and played together. Gore watched over his “brother” and when Angel got older, he did the same for Gore. But Angel was anything but an angel and, slowly, he turned to hustling drugs.

Gore says he wishes he’d done more to stop him. Eventually, Angel went to prison.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Gore knew that the streets were not kind to people who looked like him, people with Brown or Black skin, and he understood early how privileged he was.

He was granted – and sometimes squandered – the best education. In high school, after he was given a chance to “shadow” sports medicine practitioners and after he noticed a lack of Black people in medical careers, he saw his own future. Gore attended Morehouse College, with an eye toward helping Black and Brown people in crisis.

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Gore says, “homicide… is the number-two cause of death for Black males ages one to nine…” but there are ways to identify issues before they become dangerous, out-of-control problems.

The process moves through examination of a person’s childhood traumas and what happened to them as adults, followed by listening, validating, and asking for calm.

Gore understood this as a young doctor, and he decided to do something about it.

“Lack of funding was a roadblock” for it, he says, “but the seed was planted, and my conviction continued to grow.”

You’re tired of attending funerals, and tired of reading about another dead child somewhere. You’re ready to act. You’re ready to read “Treating Violence.”

Indeed, this book might light a fire under you.

Gore first explains what street violence does to Black communities and families, which is shocking and upsetting.

This begins his biography, which is a brief (too-brief!) set-up for how and why Gore ultimately founded Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI), an organization that uses trained volunteers to lower the anger level and any desires for revenge when someone is the victim of violence.

The story is a rousing one, but readers may feel a bit cheated by the rushed transition from Gore’s life and his work as an ER doctor, to KAVI. Information on KAVI and similar organizations may spur you to take action.

With the Surgeon General’s recent warning on gun use in mind, “Treating Violence” couldn’t be more timely or necessary. Find it, read it for the excellent biography and the ideas, statistics, and urgency – and get to work.

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