Vanessa Riley's Research Blog

I bought my daddy’s glasses for me. It was completely by accident. I saw a pair of rectangular frames, dark, sort of ebony for a change. The priced was just right, and the try-on feature told me they would work: the dark frames on my oval brown face.

The description said lightweight with structure, but every time I looked in the mirror, I see heavy and concerned. I see my daddy staring back at me.

If you’ve followed me over the years, I tend to talk about my mother because of her seismic impact on my life. She gave me my love of literature and writing. Louise was my first editor, my first winning essay was about her—the struggles of motherhood when she had to step up and lead our household after my father left.

So there are reasons I don’t talk about Daddy as often. But he shaped me too, in quieter ways. My mathematical mind, my sense of logic, my ability to break down problems and even find order in chaos—that comes from him.

He came to America in the 1960s, a young man with dreams and a head full of ambition. Trinidad and Tobago had just broken free from colonial Britain, declaring its independence on August 31, 1962.

My father left a country in the uncertainy of self-rule and chose the land of milk and honey and bootstraps, the United States. Independence in Trinidad was marked by parades and music and celebration, but also instability and questions about what freedom would really mean. America, by comparison, was older, heavy in opportunity and structure.

An immigrant from Port of Spain, Trinidad, who’d traveled widely on boats to his fellow Caribbean islands and London decided to join the American experiment. He chose to stay because he believed in the vision America was selling: if you worked hard, pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, you could find economic freedom and belong to the great melting pot.

When he slipped on his black frames in the 1960s, he saw a country flawed but full of possibility. The sixties in the US marks immense change with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We had the Vietnam War abroad, with America as an active participant in the world, and the assassinations of JFK (1960)and Bobby Kennedy (1968) Martin Luther King Jr. (1965) and Malcolm X (1963).

Yet the there was cultural freedom in arts, particularly TV.

That Girl shows Marlo Thomas as an independent, single woman pursuing a career was very different from housewives and mom shows of the past.

Star Trek showcased a diverse crew, to offering a unified vision of humanity.

The Twilight Zone used storytelling to explore moral and political issues like McCarthyism and racial prejudice.

Yet, if Patrick were alive and slipped on those glasses on today, would he even recognize this place?

My lenses show armed soldiers patrolling American city streets when no war has been declared. Natural disasters made worse by climate change and inept officials unwilling to respond with humanity or clearing red tape.

The sixties marked the first time TV news was the most trusted source of information. Now wars are escalated by tweets, have we have to figure out if it’s deep fakes or AI falsehoods.

He’d shake his head at how rules bent and broken and cages being built to house immigrants that may someday serve as prisons for Americans.

I don’t think he’d see America as the shiny city on a hill of liberty. It’s hard for me to see it.

The same energy that puts weapons on the streets of D.C and Los Angeles and now threaten Chicago and other urban spots because some are confuse fighting crime that it’s the same as punishing those with differing opinions.

But why can’t such marshaling of forces and money be used for places like Kerrville, Texas, where July 2025 floods left families stranded. People drowned and communities suffered while forms got shuffled and delays mounted.

And then there’s the quieter violence—against books, against ideas. During National Library Week 2025, the American Library Association released data showing that the majority of book censorship attempts came from organized political movements, 72%.

Imagine my father, who once saw America as a land of expanding stories, looking at a country that now bans them.

I didn’t exist in the sixties. I like the way my glasses looked in 2008.

I wore lenses tinted with optimism. High-tech jobs were expanding opportunities not cutting jobs. Respectability and admiration were central parts of our leadership.

A man named Barack Obama had just been elected president, and for the first time in a long while, it felt like nothing was unachievable. The American narrative was open and limitless. More stories found ways to be published. Through those lenses, the future shimmered. It roared, Yes we can. Oh it was bright.

I want those glasses to work again. But my prescription is what it is. The lenses are cut sharper. They see starker truths. I witness insecurity, not strength. I wish I didn’t like genocide, violence, and above all fear.

My father would remind me that humanity has always been fragile. He’s logical like that.

So my friends, I don’t come with answers. If I had them, they’d be lost in my Fred Sanford drawer of glasses. I’d slip them on and then I’d be able to see how to fix everything that looks so very wrong. And being able to envision solutions and fixes means, I haven’t lost hope. I hope you haven’t either.

This week, I picked a few books from the sixties for our book list:

Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James – (1963)

Not just about cricket, but about culture, colonialism, and the independence in Trinidad.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan –(1963)

Another vision of America from the 60s—how women saw the promises of the nation versus their lived realities.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin – (1963)

A piercing letter on race and America’s moral failure

Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr. – (1964)

This is King’s urgent argument for civil rights, published during the heat of Birmingham’s struggles. It frames a hopeful yet turbulent vision of America in the 60s.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X & Alex Haley – (1965)

This is a cornerstone text of Black identity, faith, and survival in America. Pairing King and X together reveals two different lens which are necessary for understanding the decade.

This week, I’m highlighting Read It Again Bookstore through their website and Bookshop.org

We are four and half months away from Fire Sword and Sea—Help me build the momentum for this historical fiction. Please spread the word and preorder this disruptive narrative about lady pirates in the 1600s. They are women, many our Black and Indigenous. All want a better way of life. Piracy is legal. It’s their answer. This saga releases January 13, 2026. The link on my website shows retailers large and small who have set up preorders for this title.

Show notes include a list of the books mentioned in this broadcast.

You can find my notes on Substack or on my website, VanessaRiley.com under the podcast link in the About tab.

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