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A review by divineblkpearl
Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield's First Ride by Joel Christian Gill
4.0
It is 2019, and I’m ready for more books about Black women that history hasn’t forgotten but also hasn’t had the chance to share them for bigger audiences through more mediums.
This time this offering comes in the form of a children’s book. I had no clue who Bessie Stringfield was. Her name did not ring a bell. I did know of another Bessie. Bessie Coleman was the first woman of African-American and Native American descent to hold a pilot license. But this Bessie Stringfield, who was she? Some research on my end revealed that she was the first African-American woman to travel solo across the United States on a motorcycle among many other great accomplishments.
Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield’s First Ride is an imagined account of a young Bessie Stringfield who wants more: she wants to ride, and she wants to ride fast. Yet, she needs the validation and courage to do so. Young Bessie is a little girl who is taunted and left behind and verbally devalued again and again, yet she loves her bike and the power she has riding it.
It’s a bright and colorful affair, and the dream sequences of our heroine riding across bodies of water and across outer space are fun and eye candy. They instantly spur up the imagination that girls, girls that look like Bessie Stringfield with brown skin and afro puffs, can do anything–not just the impossible. This makes for a great vehicle for representing not just the future queen of motorcycles from Florida for younger readers but representing more children of color and specifically little Black girls in books for a younger age group.
Read the rest of my review here: http://blacknerdproblems.com/fast-enough-bessie-stringfields-first-ride-review/
This time this offering comes in the form of a children’s book. I had no clue who Bessie Stringfield was. Her name did not ring a bell. I did know of another Bessie. Bessie Coleman was the first woman of African-American and Native American descent to hold a pilot license. But this Bessie Stringfield, who was she? Some research on my end revealed that she was the first African-American woman to travel solo across the United States on a motorcycle among many other great accomplishments.
Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield’s First Ride is an imagined account of a young Bessie Stringfield who wants more: she wants to ride, and she wants to ride fast. Yet, she needs the validation and courage to do so. Young Bessie is a little girl who is taunted and left behind and verbally devalued again and again, yet she loves her bike and the power she has riding it.
It’s a bright and colorful affair, and the dream sequences of our heroine riding across bodies of water and across outer space are fun and eye candy. They instantly spur up the imagination that girls, girls that look like Bessie Stringfield with brown skin and afro puffs, can do anything–not just the impossible. This makes for a great vehicle for representing not just the future queen of motorcycles from Florida for younger readers but representing more children of color and specifically little Black girls in books for a younger age group.
Read the rest of my review here: http://blacknerdproblems.com/fast-enough-bessie-stringfields-first-ride-review/