Do Unto Others

Even though this book is receiving less acclaim than I expected, the book was a little better than I expected. Ifa, that African girl, made me angry with her superiority. I think the author has only reflected upon her realities perhaps. So of course not all African people are arrogant. But in my own experience, alot of Africans have had arrogant attitudes. And I can see how Africans in general think Black Americans are lazy. Which is true to a certain extent.

I was able to read this book in two days and it's also my first time reading from Kristin Lattany. When reading this novel I found a lot of shared emotions and experiences amongst the Africans and the "Block People" living in my area. There are a lot of strange sterotypes and misconceptions on both sides. We are very different in many ways with very different ideas, values, religious beliefs, and cultural experiences. Ifa was doing the most and Miss Zena is paying the least attention. Vyester is a key character and a very good friend to Miss Zena. However, I still believe that she also has a personal agenda for herself. Lucious( Deacon extraordinar) needed to be falling to his knees more instead of rocking on them! Aside from that,I love the way Zena (the main character) take control of things when she cross upon certain situation in her life even though she should of listen to her best friend Vy in the first place dealing with Ifa, Zena's "adopted" daughter, but people rather learn the hard way and that she had. I did agree with another reviewer in a diffrent Site that stated that the action of the book does happen towards the end. This book is an easy read and Kristin Lattany did a good job putting it togther but I would recommend it to some readers but not all.

Although I was surprised I finished this book, it was fairly interesting. Living in Los Angeles, I have had very limited experiences with Africans and the book showed an extensive examination of the lives and religion of Africans from a fictional country.Ifa was evil and Zena was good~ their characters lacked dimension.But the book did present an intriguing study of African and African American relationships.

I liked this book, for the most part. The story did start off a little slow but then picked up the pace about 1/3 of the way through. I liked Zena, but found her unrealistically naive. I'm also not sure what the author was trying to say about Africans, as it seemed that her message in the beginning of the book was that we should embrace them, then the end of the book seemed to say "watch out!". "The Soul Brother s and Sister Lou" a young adult book written by Lattany years ago, was one of my favorites as a young girl and I'm happy to see her writing again. I'd recommend the book as a quick, fun read, but don't try to look too hard into the deeper meaning - if there is one.

I enjoyed the book because I like the way that Zena was portrayed. She grew up poor and was self-made, married well, and had her own business. I didn't like Ifa one bit. You could have smelled her a mile coming and then some. But what I like is the fact that after the episode, Zena was wiser and didn't beat herself over the head and just moved on.