Maya's Notebook

I'm Maya Payne Smart, a globetrotting writer who enjoys food trucks, toddler art and college basketball. I have a 92-year-old house, a bionic knee and a vivid imagination.

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Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner

Why would anyone stay with an abusive partner? Leslie Morgan Steiner’s “Crazy Love” illuminates the answer.

“Crazy Love” by Leslie Morgan Steiner is a personal history of abuse with a social mission of redemption. Steiner recounts a series of harrowing milestones in a relationship gone wrong, illuminating why she and so many others stay with violent partners–and how friends, family, bystanders can help. Addressing the reader directly, she writes: “If I were brave enough the first time I met you, I’d…

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Heather Bellino: Ending Domestic Violence

Heather Bellino delivers free legal help for victims of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault and stalking in Texas.

It’s hard for domestic violence victims to see a path to safety, let alone travel it.  They have to survive the violence itself, overcome the guilt, shame and alienation it causes, and risk death or injury to escape.  They have to secure shelter, food and clothing and navigate a mire of legal proceedings to distance themselves from their abusers. Often with few resources and little hope. When we…

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On Protesting Whitewashed Reading Lists

I enthusiastically dove into a Time.com list of must-read books. What did I find? Same old, same old.

Scanning through my Twitter feed recently, I came across a Time.com message touting 35 Books Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime.  List lover that I am, I dove in, eager to refresh my to-be-read pile. Instead, I found the same old, same old: an overwhelmingly white and male list.  It featured just three women authors — Harper Lee, Margaret Atwoood, L.M. Montgomery. Haruki Murakami was the lone…

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My Pick for A Book Everyone Should Read? “Each Kindness” by Jacqueline Woodson

"Each Kindness" distills the essence of human conflict--a refusal to see the humanity in others and extend simple warmth.

I love this elegant story of kindness and cruelty.  In just 32 pages, it distills the essence of human conflict–a persistent refusal to see the humanity in others and extend simple warmth and care. Set among school children, “Each Kindness” is told from the perspective of Chloe, a young girl who refuses to accept small gestures of friendship from Maya, the new girl.  Maya wears spring shoes in…

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Sarah Scarbrough: Putting Offender Recovery and Reentry Research Into Practice

Sarah Scarbrough: Putting Offender Recovery and Reentry Research Into Practice

Sarah Scarbrough exudes passion and pragmatism. She’s internal program director for the Richmond City Justice Center in Virginia (formerly the Richmond City Jail), and she’s serious about giving offenders another chance. To help these most disadvantaged, dismissed members of our society, Scarbrough takes a holistic approach in partnership with other agencies and the community at large. I saw…

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The Sisters Are Alright, by Tamara Winfrey Harris

What’s wrong with black women? Not a thing, says Tamara Winfrey Harris in “The Sisters Are Alright.”

In her compendium of propaganda against black women, “The Sisters Are Alright,” Tamara Winfrey Harris exposes America’s historical and ongoing contempt for “the sisters.” She identifies stereotype after devastating stereotype, from whitewashed beauty standards to angry-black-woman clichés, and calls for recognition of the diversity and humanity of black women. Although billed as a pep talk,…

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The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna in 8 Quotes

The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna in 8 Quotes

A career change inspired “The Crossroads of Should and Must,” Elle Luna’s manifesto for passionate living. Part pep talk, part illustrated guide, the book is all heart. It offers a remedy for discontent and unachieved potential to people who feel their talents are being stifled by others’ expectations. I’ve read unapologetic calls to “just do you” many times before, but Luna’s use of drawings…

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How A Picture Book for My Daughter Spurred Me to Deeper Reflection

“You’re such a good boy,” Jazz Jennings’s mother always said. “No, Mama. Good GIRL,” returned Jazz, a transgender child who would grow up to write a picture book about her path to girlhood. Until that book, I Am Jazz, appeared on the Girls of Summer reading list, I had not thought about introducing the transgender experience to my three-year-old daughter. She’s got quite a girl-power library, but…

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Our July Book Giveaway is Closed

Thanks for your interest in entering to win a complete set of the 2015 Girls of Summer List, curated by authors Gigi Amateau and Meg Medina. Stay Tuned! Another exciting giveaway will launch on August 17. We’ll release details via social media and my weekly newsletter, The Smart Take.  Thanks for being a part of our reading community.  Email book and author suggestions for future giveaways to…

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Summer Reading: Five Amazing Books for Amazing Girls

  Each year authors Meg Medina and Gigi Amateau launch the Girls of Summer List of “amazing books for amazing girls,” in partnership with the Richmond Public Library. The lovingly curated selection of titles–from picture books through young adult–all feature strong girl protagonists navigating incredible tests on their journeys to womanhood. The summer’s list launches with a party at the library,…

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Can Reading Local Cure My Amazon Addiction?

Here’s my confession. I buy 90% of my books from Amazon (gulp!), even as I diligently link to Indiebound.org on my blog to spur readers to shop indie. I have not been walking the walk. Blame it on Prime or One-Click or the 2,000-employee fulfillment center one county over (which I visited — witness the addiction). The speedy delivery is alluring, addictive even. I’ve pondered using a…

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Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” is a full-hearted embrace of a complex, layered identity.

Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” is a heartbreaking work of staggering revelation.  I have not read a memoir that felt more truthful, urgent and brave. Mock chronicles her perilous journey from boyhood to womanhood, illuminating all of the obstacles race, class, life circumstances and other people (even well-meaning ones) erected in her path. The narrative is deeply personal and also political…

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Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County by Kristen Green

“Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County” is a perfectly timed look into the persistence of one community’s segregationist roots.

Journalist Kristen Green seems born to write this particular and personal history of Prince Edward County’s legendary segregationist resolve. Yet her book, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, reveals the many ways her family and community groomed her to do otherwise–to look the other way as devastating racial divides persisted. The story of her awakening is powerful. It is rooted…

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Book Giveaway: Win 18 Amazing Books For Amazing Girls!

Each year, I eagerly look forward to the launch of the Girls of Summer list, a compilation of 18 titles from picture books to young adult selections. Authors Gigi Amateau and Meg Medina carefully and lovingly curate the list for strong and amazing girls everywhere. The Girls of Summer list is not your school’s reading list! It’s a celebration of a girl’s connection to the world around her, where…

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The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In “The Beautiful Struggle,” Ta-Nehisi Coates pens a deeply personal survivor’s tale with all its complexity and beauty.

I love Ta-Nehisi Coates’s unflinching essays on race.  They exemplify journalism’s highest calling as a discipline of verification. He consistently eviscerates uniquely American delusions with deep reporting, impregnable facts and powerful prose. Witness this brilliant story in which he lets confederates themselves declare the battle flag’s meaning, quoting long passages of their defense of…

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A Farewell to Remember

I drifted through the farewell party, feeling unmoored.  Our house, no longer our home, stood empty a couple of blocks away.  Our belongings were en route to a new city, our departure imminent. Yet here Zora and I stood in celebratory pause, having our last hurrah, a Happy Trails party to launch us toward our new home. I knew I would be back in Richmond again soon.  I had a house to sell and…

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I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam breaks down the 168 hours in a week to reveal ample time for work, family, friends and (gasp!) sleep.

I was reading Laura Vanderkam’s “I Know How She Does It” when news broke of the racist killing of nine churchgoers in South Carolina.  At first, it felt meaningless to be mining the book for time-saving strategies and productivity tips as the nation (or some of it anyway) went into mourning.   It felt absurd to read a self-help book when I could be toppling confederate monuments or lobbying for…

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