{"id":15934,"date":"2025-05-08T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T16:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=15934"},"modified":"2025-05-08T16:13:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T16:13:38","slug":"love-rita-an-american-story-of-sisterhood-joy-loss-and-legacy-by-bridgett-m-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/08\/love-rita-an-american-story-of-sisterhood-joy-loss-and-legacy-by-bridgett-m-davis\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy by Bridgett M. Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Love, Rita author, courtesy Nina Subin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

c.2025, Harper
\n$29.99
\n367 pages<\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/p>\n

Take care.<\/p>\n

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, Love, Rita<\/strong><\/em> by Bridgett M. Davis,<\/strong> your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.<\/p>\n

It was a family story told often: when Bridgett Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, \u2018Shut your\u2026 mouth!\u2019<\/p>\n

Rita, says Davis, didn\u2019t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a \u201csister,\u201d and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.<\/p>\n

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight \u2013 on their own and at the urging of their mother \u2013 and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister. She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, \u201cLove, Rita.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita\u2019s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.<\/p>\n

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita\u2019s lupus was an \u201cadded weight of her sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita\u2019s lupus took a turn for the worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid she even stand a chance?\u201d Davis wrote in her journal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just didn\u2019t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start here: once you get past the prologue in Love, Rita<\/em>, you may lose interest. Maybe.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and \u201870s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories and they tend to generally melt together. After about 50 pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t. Not quite yet.<\/p>\n

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now-and-then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.<\/p>\n

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who\u2019s ill or might be ill someday. If that\u2019s you and you can read between the lines, then Love, Rita<\/em> is a book to take carefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

c.2025, Harper $29.99 367 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor Take care. Do it because you want to stay well, upright, away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, Love, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-15934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15935,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15934\/revisions\/15935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15934"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=15934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}