SPECIAL EVENT FOR

SEATTLE CARES MENTORING MOVEMENT

Friday, October 15, 2010, 6:-8:30pm

Gathering Hall at New Holly

7054 - 32nd Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98118

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Seattle Cares Mentoring Movement (SCMM) is a call to action to every able body adult to put his or her hand on a valuable young person's shoulder. So many of our young people - our treasure and our future - are in peril.  The negative forces claiming our children are more powerful at this moment than our community's and country's efforts to secure them.  Linking arms and aims we open wide the pathways to happiness, wholeness and high achievement for our young people.  Let us all be accountable.  Our beloved children are waiting.

This is an invitation only event. RSVP Hazel and Donald Cameron at 206.772.1434 or 206.720.6134 or at camerondh@comcast.net



We Do Survive

If you’re looking for a read that requires focus and will provoke thought, you will find what you’re looking for in Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza.

Through seven generations of one family the authors take the reader from post Civil War life through the Civil Rights Movement to current day. The historical aspect entwined with the lives of the Mayfield’s gives this work a personal touch. Display of the female character's strengths and weaknesses assists the unfolding of how adversity is handled in their lives.

Readers can readily identify with characters whose dreams were shattered due to familial needs, health challenges or resignation to their own skewed perception of the hand life has dealt them. Through it all the story is one that will provoke thought and for some, a call to action regarding dreams delayed.

Book purchased by reviewer.

PLIGHT - FEATURING SHARON NYREE WILLIAMS

Plight: I am my brother's keeper (Special Event for ARTS Crush)

Thursday, October 7, 2010 - Public Event

Seattle Northwest African American Museum

2300 S. Massachusetts Street

7:00P - 8:30P

Standing Tall

Most came to know the name, ‘Shoshana Johnson’ from the headlines that proclaimed her 2003 captivity in Iraq. Her story is the stuff that movies are made of, people line the streets to applaud and honor is given to whom it is due.

For Shoshana Johnson her 22 day ordeal was the beginning of what turned the world of this army cook turned Shero, inside out. Within in the pages of I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home, Ms. Johnson candidly reveals her innermost fears as she prayed to be rescued from the ambush that killed 11 of her comrades and left her with injuries sustained from gunshots to both ankles. 

Readers are expecting to hear the horrific and mundane events of her imprisonment. What is unexpected is the treatment received by the country she voluntarily chose to serve. It has been in her country where she continues to fight an unjust battle for the most simple need of any soldier returning from war—adequate coverage for ongoing physical and mental needs and livable compensation for all she endured for her country.

Her story is not unlike that of many African American soldiers returned from foreign wars. It however is inspirational in that through it all, she has not been defeated. She continues to move forward raising her daughter, returning to culinary school and speaking to those with an ear to hear.

Book purchased by reviewer.