Kevin D. Hendricks's Blog, page 31

Is How I Feel About Trump How You Feel About Obama?

The presidential candidacy of Donald Trump scares me. Like more than just the usual disagreement with someone with opposing political beliefs. This isn’t just pro-life vs. pro-choice or tax policy or foreign policy. It’s his proud racist/misogynistic/xenophobic views and his ‘I’m Trump, you suck’ demeanor.

And I’m not the only one scared of Trump.

This will be the fifth presidential election I’ve followed, and while I’ve disagreed with and spoken out against candidates, I’ve never been afraid...

Stuff I’m Enjoying Lately

A few months back I borrowed Addie Zierman’s post style and shared music I’ve been listening to lately. I keep meaning to do it again and put it off, so today I thought I’d share a smorgasbord of stuff I’m excited about lately: crowd-funded comic book projects, music, books, picture books, an event and a little self promotion about what I’ve been doing.

Comic Books to Support

The lack of diversity in, well, just about everything, is a common theme these days. That’s why I track the diversity...

A Black NASCAR Driver in the 1960s?

This quick, animated history of Wendell Scott is pretty great. He was the first black driver to race and win at NASCAR’s highest level. And he did it the early 1960s facing incredible racism—this was the age of Freedom Summer, Birmingham and Selma.

The hatred even led to denying Wendell Scott his only win. Here’s the story:

They didn’t acknowledge the win until two years later. NASCAR awarded his family the trophy in 2010, 47 years after the race and 20 years after Scott’s death.

NASCAR is j...

Nekima Levy-Pounds on Racial Justice in Minnesota

I went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at Luther Seminary today to hear Nekima Levy-Pounds speak. She preached.

Powerful words like hers are so needed today and every day.

We are part of the solution or we are part of the problem. Our silence makes us culpable. We’re living off the legacy of Hubert Humphrey, but we haven’t done the work. Instead of compassion we’re taught to look the other way and focus on self preservation. We’re told to trust the law, to rely on the system. But the...

Talking Books: SMBMSP Podcast

I talked with Mykl Roventine about books on the Social Media Boombox podcast. Lots of good book nerd talk.

Learn more about my book about reading books, 137 Books in One Year, and buy a copy.

Getting Into Graphic Novels

I spent an hour talking books last week with Mykl Roventine for the Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis-St. Paul podcast (should be live this week). One of the topics that came up was trends in my 2015 reading and I think graphic novels were a huge trend.

I read a lot of graphic novels.

It’s an interesting medium that really takes some time to find your footing as a reader. I tend to read too fast because there are so few words. While graphic novels are quick reads, if you go too fast you tend...

Top 5 Nonfiction of 2015

Another year of big reading and I’ve got some favorite nonfiction to share.

Kid President’s Guide to Being Awesome by Robby Novak and Brad Montague
He’s good in videos and he’s good in book form. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
I generally don’t like poetry, but this was great. An honest and challenging look at racism. Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Chuang
This memoir has such a fresh voice and gives a great perspective. Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving & Finding the Church b...

Top 10 Fiction of 2015

After another big year of reading I present my favorite fiction reads for 2015.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Garbrielle Zevin
A story about a dad who runs a bookstore. What could be better? Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
I read this with my daughter and really enjoyed the unique perspective of the main character. How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
This book confronts racism with a mutli-perspective approach that was just great. The audiobook with a huge cast was great. Nimona by N...

2015 Racial & Gender Diversity in My Reading

Last year I started tracking diversity in the books I read. It wasn’t exactly good news.

It became apparent that race and gender diversity only happen when you’re intentional about it.

I tracked both the gender and race this year. I base gender simply on the author, counting a book if any contributor is a woman. For race I count a book if a contributor or main character is a person of color.

Here are the results for 2015:

54% POC books 56% female authors.

Here’s how diverse my reading has b...

2015 Reading List

Lots of good reading this year. Another year of ridiculous numbers—149 this year.

One of the benefits of reading is an increased sense of empathy. You can understand someone different from you a lot better if you can see from their perspective. If there was one theme this year, it was understanding different perspectives.

Some of the various perspectives that could use some understanding this year cropped up again and again in my books this year. Themes such as racism, disability, transgender...