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Anise
Miller is about to get a bitter TASTE OF REALITY. She is going to have
to make
some life decisions that will affect life as she knows it. Her job, her
marriage and the people that she considers her friends, are all about
to turn
into life issues that she must confront. For sometime now, her marriage
has
been falling apart. Her husband is always working late and finds
excuses to be
out of their home. In spite of her attempts to save their marriage, she
finds
out in the worst way possible that her husband is having an affair,
with a
white woman. Anise has always been proud of her African American
heritage and
all that it represents to her. She is a strong, independent woman that
is
perfectly capable of taking care of things on her own. Never could she
have
guessed that her independence would be a cause for the demise of her
marriage.
How on earth can something that she can’t change, like her skin color
and her
personality traits all of a sudden turn someone off so much that they
choose
someone that is completely opposite? Now he loves to throw in her face
that his
new white girlfriend is complacent and everything that Anise could
never be.
How is that something to be proud of? Anise doesn’t see how things
could get
much worse. But inevitably, they can…
She has
applied for an upper management position for her company twice. Each
time her
superiors have found a reason that the job isn’t meant for her.
Conveniently
enough, she is offered another management position, one that she takes
against
her better judgment. Shortly after taking her new position it becomes
apparent
that her company, Reed Myers, isn’t as upstanding as they should be.
They have
had numerous issues with sexual harassment, gender and race
discrimination and
other despicable business practices. Anise feels no choice but to go
head to
head with the company and fight for what she believes in. Why should
she suffer
for her skin color or her sexuality?
On top of
everything else, Anise now has a crush on someone that she never
thought she
would be attracted to, a white man. Why is it that it took a
reevaluation of
everything in her life to make her find her inner attraction to someone
that
she worked with for quite some time? Will her relationship with Frank
be a
success? Or will they fail because they couldn’t overcome the racial
views that
society has set before them?
A TASTE OF
REALITY is a thought provoking, thoroughly upsetting book. It is a
bittersweet
story of Anise, who fights for what she thinks, is right in spite of
the
repercussions. Her marriage, her job, and her personal relationships
all suffer
due to racial issues. It gives the reader pause and forces them to
focus on
issues that were presumed non-issues due to the evolution of society as
a
whole. Yet Anise and her struggles suggest that sexual and racial
discrimination is alive and well, and not diminishing in the slightest,
in
spite of the efforts that many are making to lessen the boundaries. Ms.
Roby
pens a satisfying story of an independent woman who fights nearly every
personal battle and comes out on top. It is a triumphant tale of
success and
personal happiness.
Reviewed by Ansley
Velarde for The
Road to Romance
July 12, 2004
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