Da Bruhs BookShelf

This episode the bruhs discuss Assata, an Autobiography. The memoir details her journey from community activist through her framing and eventually political exile. This personal account provides insight into the very layered mind of Assata. The team questions some of her decisions and wonder, “did it really have to go down like it did?” Listen as we try to deconstruct the complicated and incomparable life of Assata.

Stay With Me - Some marry love. Some marry for money. But when the locus of your marriage's purpose comes from a place without, what are those involved to do to keep the love within? Stay With Me, is the interrupted love story of Yejide (ye gee day) and Akin (akeen), lovers content with one another, whose happiness is put under the strain of pressures of family and what others define a family to be. When the couple experience difficulty having a child, they find they have no safe refuge in family. The ends to which the lovers go to satisfy perceived wants and needs lead to an intimate story of shock, betrayal, and ultimately redemption as told by from the perspective of both spouses.

This episode the bruhs discuss From #blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamata Taylor. Keeanga-Yamata does an excellent job deconstructing the myths around injustices inflicted on blacks, dispelling negative myths regarding work ethic, morals, and will to achieve. We’re taken on a succinct and tacit journey from the middle passage all the way to the killing of Michael Brown. Taylor indicts white-supremacists, black activists, and the black bourgeois for perpetuating the narrative that has been so harmful to blacks. Join the bruhs in this passionate discussions.

On this episode, the Da Bruhs explore Shawn D. Rochester’s “The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America.” The book gives discrete examples not only of how being black causes one to pay more for homes, cars, and all of life’s necessities, but also the missed opportunities and lost wages black people often aren’t even aware of. Join us, as the Da Bruhs share stories of being taxed and the impact on the greater society.

Da Bruhs take on “Hurricanes,” a memoir of Rick Ross. Ross chronicles his life growing up as a middle-class black kid in Mississippi who is uprooted to Miami once his dad got a promotion. It wouldn’t be long before the allure of the streets beckoned him into a life of hustling. We are taken from his early adolescence through his days as a correctional officer and onto his rise as a Rap heavyweight. Da Bruhs meet this story with the skepticism, adulation and hostility usually reserved for the play cousin that likes to lie. Tune in as the Da Bruhs discus

The bruh’s review Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, a tale of twin sisters who now live very distant lives, but are eternally entangled. Twins Desiree and Stella Vignes decide to escape a life of what they believe to be monotony and unreconciled strivings for what they thought would be more. Things take a fascinating turn when one of the twins absconds and decides to live the rest of her life as a white woman. This novel if full of twists and raises questions on what identity is and how its function affects our lives. We cover topics on race, gender, sexuality, and the quality of self-worth versus the world’s continuous effort to define us.

Another episode where we delve into the content of a popular book by a popular radio host who has made a career out of broadcasting his truth.

Brother Don a Chicago Police Sergeant walks the host Bro. Lennon Givens and Dr. Harvey Hinton III on a Journey growing up and policing on Chicago’s southside in the notorious West Englewood neighborhood. From shutting down drug houses and working with the city of Chicago’s social services to have practices in place to relocate the residence after their building has been raided by law enforcement.

There’s a discussion about being a part of positive change by reaching back and exposing the under-privilege youth to a world larger than their square radius and offering them a second chance.

We delve into the story of Chicago’s southside corrupt officer Ronald Watts and provided our real talk commentary

We touched on BLM, Laquan McDonald, implicit bias, profiling, and personal accounts of racism on the job as a Chicago law enforcement officer.

An American memoir of a young  Mormon girl growing up in a survivalist family on a salvage yard isolated from mainstream society that did not believe in the medical establishment, they never saw a doctor or a nurse.  All accidents, injuries, and sickness were treated at home through herbalism. Her father was a zealot Mormon and struggled with mental illness. Constantly being placed in harm's way and experiencing abused at the hand of her older brother, Tara sought to escape the family by attempting to enter college. Being ostensibly homeschool, Tara struggled with the basics. She was able to teach herself enough Algebra and Trigonometry to score a 28 on the ACT which earner her entry into Bringham Young University. From there, her world expanded far beyond the family's junkyard to a vast world of opportunity, growth, and understanding.