Friday, March 9, 2018

New Books Coming Your Way, March 13, 2018

What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood by Rigoberto González
208 p.; Memoir

Burdened by poverty, illiteracy, and vulnerability as Mexican immigrants to California's Coachella Valley, three generations of González men turn to vices or withdraw into depression. As brothers Rigoberto and Alex grow to manhood, they are haunted by the traumas of their mother's early death, their lonely youth, their father's desertion, and their grandfather's invective. Rigoberto's success in escaping—first to college and then by becoming a writer—is blighted by his struggles with alcohol and abusive relationships, while Alex contends with difficult family relations, his own rocky marriage, and fatherhood.

Descending into a dark emotional space that compromises their mental and physical health, the brothers eventually find hope in aiding each other. This is an honest and revealing window into the complexities of Latino masculinity, the private lives of men, and the ways they build strength under the weight of grief, loss, and despair.

We Kiss Them With Rain by Futhi Ntshingila
172 p.; Fiction

Life wasn’t always this hard for 14-year-old Mvelo. There were good times living with her mother and her mother's boyfriend. Now her mother is dying of AIDS and what happened to Mvelo is the elephant in the room, despite its growing presence in their small shack. In this Shakespeare-style comedy, the things that seem to be are only a façade and the things that are revealed hand Mvelo a golden opportunity to change her fate. We Kiss Them With Rain explores both humor and tragedy in this modern-day fairy tale set in a squatter camp outside of Durban, South Africa.

Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories by Kanishk Tharoor
256 p.; Short stories

In one of the singularly imaginative stories from Kanishk Tharoor’s Swimmer Among the Stars, despondent diplomats entertain themselves by playing table tennis in zero gravity—for after rising seas destroy Manhattan, the United Nations moves to an orbiting space hotel. In other tales, a team of anthropologists treks to a remote village to record a language’s last surviving speaker intoning her native tongue; an elephant and his driver cross the ocean to meet the whims of a Moroccan princess; and Genghis Khan’s marauding army steadily approaches an unnamed city’s walls.

With exuberant originality and startling vision, Tharoor cuts against the grain of literary convention, drawing equally from ancient history and current events. His world-spanning stories speak to contemporary challenges of environmental collapse and cultural appropriation, but also to the workings of legend and their timeless human truths.

Not My White Savior: A Memoir in Poems by Julayne Lee
128 p.; Poetry

Not My White Savior is a memoir in poems, exploring what it is to be a transracial and inter-country adoptee, and what it means to grow up being constantly told how better your life is because you were rescued from your country of origin. Following Julayne Lee from Korea to Minnesota and finally to Los Angeles, Not My White Savior asks what does "better" mean? In which ways was the journey she went on better than what she would have otherwise experienced?

Go Home! edited by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
320 p.; Literary collection

Go home!" is always a slur, but often also an impossibility; this collection explores the words' personal and political dimensions.

Asian diasporic writers imagine “home” in the twenty-first century through an array of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Both urgent and meditative, this anthology moves beyond the model-minority myth and showcases the singular intimacies of individuals figuring out what it means to belong.

A Reckoning by Linda Spalding
320 p.; Fiction

It’s 1855, and the Dickinson farm, in the bottom corner of Virginia, is already in debt when a Northern abolitionist arrives and creates havoc among the slaves. Determined to find his mother and daughter, who are already free in Canada, Bry is the first slave to flee, and his escape inspires a dozen others. Soon, the farm, owned by one brother and managed by another, is forfeited to the bank.

One of the brothers, who is also a circuit-riding preacher, gathers his flock into a wagon train to find a new life in the west. But John Dickinson has a dangerous secret that compels him to abandon the group at the last minute, and his wife, two daughters, and thirteen-year-old son, Martin, now face life on the trail and an unknown future alone. After a fateful encounter along the way, Martin and Bry will hatch a plot to get Bry safely to Canada, but each member of the family will be changed, tormented, excited, and exposed by the journey.


Wednesday, March 7, 2018

#BookReview: WHISKEY & RIBBONS by Leesa Cross-Smith

Summary: Evi—a classically-trained ballerina—was nine months pregnant when her husband Eamon was killed in the line of duty on a steamy morning in July. Now, it is winter, and Eamon's adopted brother Dalton has moved in to help her raise six-month-old Noah.

Whiskey & Ribbons is told in three intertwining, melodic voices: Evi in present day, as she’s snowed in with Dalton during a freak blizzard; Eamon before his murder, as he prepares for impending fatherhood and grapples with the danger of his profession; and Dalton, as he struggles to make sense of his life next to Eamon’s, and as he decides to track down the biological father he’s never known.

Review: When a book is really good, it can be difficult to put into words what you want to say about it. I wasn't prepared to love Whiskey & Ribbons as much as I did. I was ready to choose sides and dislike characters and that's not at all what happened. One of the reasons I like Jodi Picoult books is because they're told from the perspectives of several characters. I do believe Leesa Cross-Smith has outPicoulted Picoult.

Evi is a perfectly lovely woman. Readers would be hard pressed to find much fault with her, and I imagine that's exactly why Eamon falls so fast and hard for her. Theirs is a storybook courtship and marriage, right up until Eamon's death. But even in death, he's a hard act to follow, as Dalton, his best friend and confidante, well knows.

Eamon is a man who respects his father, loves his mother and worships his wife. He cherishes his relationship with Dalton, the son of his mother's deceased best friend. Practically raised as brothers, he's the yin to Dalton's yang. As happy as he is with Evi, he truly wants the same for Dalton and his girlfriend, Frances.
"Women, you are sleek and gorgeous. You hold us together, you're the ribbons. We're men. Dangerous only if you take us too seriously. We're the whiskey. To whiskey and ribbons," Eamon said, lifting his glass.
For so many reasons, Dalton and Eamon's relationship reminds me of Tommy and Ghost on Power. Dalton is happy for his friend, but he wants the relationship Evi and Eamon have. And like Tommy, he always seems to be on the fringe observing and waiting to step in to help where needed, no questions asked. Oh, I wanted to hate him so much, but I couldn't because Eamon's death affects him just as much, if not more, than it does Evi. She's lost a husband but he's lost a life long friend who was like a brother to him.

Whiskey & Ribbons is beautifully written. From the characters to the scenery to the little nuances, it's absolutely perfect.

272 p.
Released: March 2018
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.


Friday, March 2, 2018

New Books Coming Your Way, March 6, 2018

Whiskey & Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith
272 p.; Fiction

Evi—a classically-trained ballerina—was nine months pregnant when her husband Eamon was killed in the line of duty on a steamy morning in July. Now, it is winter, and Eamon's adopted brother Dalton has moved in to help her raise six-month-old Noah.

Whiskey & Ribbons is told in three intertwining, melodic voices: Evi in present day, as she’s snowed in with Dalton during a freak blizzard; Eamon before his murder, as he prepares for impending fatherhood and grapples with the danger of his profession; and Dalton, as he struggles to make sense of his life next to Eamon’s, and as he decides to track down the biological father he’s never known.

Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao
320 p.; Fiction

When Poornima first meets Savitha, she feels something she thought she lost for good when her mother died: hope. Poornima's father hires Savitha to work one of their sari looms, and the two girls are quickly drawn to one another. Savitha is even more impoverished than Poornima, but she is full of passion and energy. She shows Poornima how to find beauty in a bolt of indigo cloth, a bowl of yogurt rice and bananas, the warmth of friendship. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to lock down for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend again. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls’ perspectives as they face relentless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them.

Happiness by Aminatta Forna
368 p.; Fiction

Attila has arrived in London with two tasks: to deliver a keynote speech on trauma, as he has done many times before; and to contact the daughter of friends, his “niece” who hasn’t called home in a while. Ama has been swept up in an immigration crackdown, and now her young son Tano is missing.

When, by chance, Attila runs into Jean again, she mobilizes the network of rubbish men she uses as volunteer fox spotters. Security guards, hotel doormen, traffic wardens—mainly West African immigrants who work the myriad streets of London—come together to help. As the search for Tano continues, a deepening friendship between Attila and Jean unfolds.

Meanwhile a consulting case causes Attila to question the impact of his own ideas on trauma, the values of the society he finds himself in, and a grief of his own. In this delicate tale of love and loss, of cruelty and kindness, Forna asks us to consider the interconnectedness of lives, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures, and the true nature of happiness.

Children of Blood and Bone: The OrÏsha Legacy by Tomi Adeyemi
544 p.; Young adult/Fantasy

In a world where magic has disappeared and magis, once revered, are targeted by a ruthless king, Zélie has always feared she would share the fate of her mother, killed at the hands of the king’s guards when Zélie was just a child.

Now, at seventeen, Zélie has a chance to bring magic back to the land of Orïsha. With the help of her brother Tzain and the fugitive Crown Princess Amari, she sets off on a journey to restore her people’s magical abilities. In order to succeed, they’ll have to outwit and outrun Prince Inan, who is hell-bent on ridding the world of magic.

In the face of danger, death, and a star-crossed romance, Zélie must grapple with the ramifications of bringing magic back to her people -- and come to terms with her own powers.

Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
336 p.; Fiction

Ren Ishida has nearly completed his graduate degree at Keio University when he receives news of his sister’s violent death. Keiko was stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister’s affairs, failing to understand why she chose to turn her back on the family and Tokyo for this desolate place years ago.

But then Ren is offered Keiko’s newly vacant teaching position at a prestigious local cram school and her bizarre former arrangement of free lodging at a wealthy politician’s mansion in exchange for reading to the man’s ailing wife. He accepts both, abandoning Tokyo and his crumbling relationship there in order to better understand his sister’s life and what took place the night of her death.

As Ren comes to know the eccentric local figures, from the enigmatic politician who’s boarding him to his fellow teachers and a rebellious, captivating young female student, he delves into his shared childhood with Keiko and what followed. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren realizes that Keiko Ishida kept many secrets, even from him.

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
224 p.; Fiction

On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.

When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
368 p.; Fiction

In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life.

Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home.

Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
272 p.; Biography

Wrestling with the Devil, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s powerful prison memoir, begins literally half an hour before his release on December 12, 1978. In one extended flashback he recalls the night, a year earlier, when armed police pulled him from his home and jailed him in Kenya’s Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, one of the largest in Africa. There, he lives in a prison block with eighteen other political prisoners, quarantined from the general prison population.

In a conscious effort to fight back the humiliation and the intended degradation of the spirit, Ngugi—the world-renowned author of Weep Not, Child; Petals of Blood; and Wizard of the Crow—decides to write a novel on toilet paper, the only paper to which he has access, a book that will become his classic, Devil on the Cross.

Written in the early 1980s and never before published in America, Wrestling with the Devil is Ngugi’s account of the drama and the challenges of writing the novel under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He captures not only the excruciating pain that comes from being cut off from his wife and children, but also the spirit of defiance that defines hope. Ultimately, Wrestling with the Devil is a testimony to the power of imagination to help humans break free of confinement, which is truly the story of all art.


Wednesday, February 28, 2018

#BookReview: THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL by Sujata Massey

Summary: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a legal education from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes women’s legal rights especially important to her.

Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X—meaning she probably couldn’t even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah—in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are
in further danger.

Review: I loved this book like Oprah loves bread! Historical fiction with a first to ever do it character? Yes, ma'am! The Widows of Malabar Hill contains two mysteries, making this a must read: a murder on Malabar Hill and Perveen Mistry herself.

Set in 1920s Bombay, a time when being a woman wasn't necessarily an advantage, Perveen uses it to her advantage. Religious law prevents men from being alone or sometimes in the presence of women who aren't related to them. So it falls on Perveen to speak with the three widows of a recently deceased wealthy businessman. While the mystery of what has happened at the house would be enough of a story, the mystery of Perveen is a bonus.

A mysterious figure stalking Perveen holds the key to her back story and explains how she came to be studying law at Oxford. The introduction of Oxford also introduces her best friend, a spoiled, wealthy white woman whose father is employed by the British government in India. It was nice for Perveen to have a side kick to reminisce with, which allowed readers a glimpse into her history, but ugh! Go away, colonizers!

Between Perveen's history and the widow's mystery, I couldn't stop turning the pages (or swiping my screen). I was excited to find the author intends to bring us more of Perveen in a series of books. The only thing that would make this better would a TV series.

400 p.
Published: January 2018


Friday, February 23, 2018

New Books Coming Your Way, February 27, 2018

Black Girls Rock!: Owning Our Magic. Rocking Our Truth. edited by Beverly Bond
256 p.; Photoessays

Fueled by the insights of women of diverse backgrounds, including Michelle Obama, Angela Davis, Shonda Rhimes, Misty Copeland Yara Shahidi, and Mary J. Blige, this book is a celebration of black women’s voices and experiences that will become a collector’s items for generations to come.

Maxine Waters shares the personal fulfillment of service. Moguls Cathy Hughes, Suzanne Shank, and Serena Williams recount stories of steadfastness, determination, diligence, dedication and the will to win. Erykah Badu, Toshi Reagon, Mickalane Thomas, Solange Knowles-Ferguson, and Rihanna offer insights on creativity and how they use it to stay in tune with their magic. Pioneering writers Rebecca Walker, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Joan Morgan speak on modern-day black feminist thought. Lupita Nyong’o, Susan Taylor, and Bethann Hardison affirm the true essence of holistic beauty. And Iyanla Vanzant reinforces Black Girl Magic in her powerful pledge. Through these and dozens of other unforgettable testimonies, Black Girls Rock! is an ode to black girl ambition, self-love, empowerment, and healing.

A Princess in Theory: Reluctant Royals by Alyssa Cole
384 p.; Romance

Between grad school and multiple jobs, Naledi Smith doesn’t have time for fairy tales…or patience for the constant emails claiming she’s betrothed to an African prince. Sure. Right. Delete! As a former foster kid, she’s learned that the only things she can depend on are herself and the scientific method, and a silly email won’t convince her otherwise.

Prince Thabiso is the sole heir to the throne of Thesolo, shouldering the hopes of his parents and his people. At the top of their list? His marriage. Ever dutiful, he tracks down his missing betrothed. When Naledi mistakes the prince for a pauper, Thabiso can’t resist the chance to experience life—and love—without the burden of his crown.

The chemistry between them is instant and irresistible, and flirty friendship quickly evolves into passionate nights. But when the truth is revealed, can a princess in theory become a princess ever after?

Those Children by Shahbano Bilgrami
368 p.; Fiction

When ten-year-old Ferzana Mahmud and her three older siblings lose their mother to cancer, everything changes.

Their heartbroken father moves them from their familiar Chicago suburb to a city thousands of miles away in his native Pakistan. To help them adjust to life in Karachi and to the eccentricities of their extended clan, Ferzana, Fatima, Raza and Jamila escape into a fantasy world of their own making. As superhuman creatures with incredible powers, they investigate the members of their grandfather’s household. In the process, they discover astonishing facts not only about the Mahmuds but also about the nature of family, love and loss in the troubled yet beguiling city that is now their home.

Told from the perspective of an adult Ferzana reflecting over that fateful year, we see Karachi through the impressionable eyes of a ten-year-old child as she negotiates everything from religious schism and genealogy to patriotism and puberty. Ferzana’s love of sleuthing helps her to piece together her family’s complicated history, a history that brings with it the promise of hope and redemption.

The Night's Baby: A Black Vampire Story by Stina
288 p.; Fiction

When she entered school at a recently integrated college in North Carolina, Adirah Messa was looking forward to a bright future. Then she met a man of another kind who turned her world upside down.

After being turned into a blood-sucking being and then giving birth to a child fathered by the King of Vampires, Adirah thinks that life can’t get any stranger. But when her ancient past becomes a part of the present, she learns that her son has a destiny that is out of her control. With the eyes of very powerful and new enemies set on him, the only way to protect him is for old enemies to put their differences behind them. If the opposing vampire clans don’t come together as one, it could mean the end of their kind altogether.

Promise by Minrose Gwin
400 p.; Historical fiction

A few minutes after 9 p.m. on Palm Sunday, April 5, 1936, a massive funnel cloud flashing a giant fireball and roaring like a run-away train careened into the thriving cotton-mill town of Tupelo, in northeastern Mississippi. Measured as an F5—the highest on the Fujita scale—the tornado killed more than 200 people, not counting an unknown number of black citizens, one-third of Tupelo’s population, who were not included in the official casualty figures.

When the tornado hits, Dovey, a local laundress, is flung by the terrifying winds into a nearby lake. Bruised and nearly drowned, she makes her way across Tupelo to find her small family—her hard-working husband, Virgil, her clever sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Dreama, and Promise, Dreama’s beautiful light-skinned three-month-old son.

Slowly navigating the broken streets of Tupelo, Dovey stops at the house of the despised McNabb family. Dovey hates Judge Mort NcNabb, a powerful man who cannot control his eldest son, a violent and sadistic youth who has left his mark on her own family, linking their fates. Inside, she discovers that the tornado has spared no one. The mother, Alice, a schoolteacher, is severely injured. The shell-shocked judge has gone to look for baby Tommy, blown from Alice’s arms. And Jo, the McNabbs’ dutiful teenage daughter, has suffered a terrible head wound. When Jo later discovers a baby in the wreckage, she is certain that she’s found her baby brother, Tommy, and vows to protect him.

During the harrowing hours and days of the chaos that follows, Jo and Dovey will struggle to navigate a landscape of disaster and battle both the demons and the history that link and haunt them.


Friday, February 16, 2018

New Books Coming Your Way, February 20, 2018

All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva
272 p.; Fiction

Anjali Sachdeva’s debut collection spans centuries, continents, and a diverse set of characters but is united by each character’s epic struggle with fate: A workman in Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills is irrevocably changed by the brutal power of the furnaces; a fisherman sets sail into overfished waters and finds a secret obsession from which he can’t return; an online date ends with a frightening, inexplicable disappearance. Sachdeva has a talent for creating moving and poignant scenes, making the unexpected and surreal feel true and inevitable, and depicting how one small miracle can affect everyone in its wake.

The Undressing by Li-Young Lee
96 p.; Poetry

The Undressing is a tonic for spiritual anemia; it attempts to uncover things hidden since the dawn of the world. Short of achieving that end, these mysterious, unassuming poems investigate the human violence and dispossession increasingly prevalent around the world, as well as the horrors the poet grew up with as a child of refugees. Lee draws from disparate sources, including the Old Testament, the Dao De Jing, and the music of the Wu Tang Clan. While the ostensive subjects of these layered, impassioned poems are wide-ranging, their driving engine is a burning need to understand our collective human mission.

Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad by Krystal A. Sital
352 p.; Memoir

There, in a lush landscape of fire-petaled immortelle trees and vast plantations of coffee and cocoa, where the three hills along the southern coast act as guardians against hurricanes, Krystal A. Sital grew up idolizing her grandfather, a wealthy Hindu landowner. Years later, to escape crime and economic stagnation on the island, the family resettled in New Jersey, where Krystal’s mother works as a nanny, and the warmth of Trinidad seems a pretty yet distant memory. But when her grandfather lapses into a coma after a fall at home, the women he has terrorized for decades begin to speak, and a brutal past comes to light.

In the lyrical patois of her mother and grandmother, Krystal learns the long-held secrets of their family’s past, and what it took for her foremothers to survive and find strength in themselves. The relief of sharing their stories draws the three women closer, the music of their voices and care for one another easing the pain of memory.

Violence, a rigid ethnic and racial caste system, and a tolerance of domestic abuse—the harsh legacies of plantation slavery—permeate the history of Trinidad. On the island’s plantations, in its growing cities, and in the family’s new home in America, Secrets We Kept tells a story of ambition and cruelty, endurance and love, and most of all, the bonds among women and between generations that help them find peace with the past.

Bingo Love by Tee Franklin
88 p.; Comic/Graphic Novel

When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-’60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.

Down the River Unto the Sea: Detective, Heal Thyself by Walter Mosley
336 p.; Fiction

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island.

A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter are the only light in his solitary life. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of--and why.

Running in parallel with King's own quest for justice is the case of a Black radical journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and women within the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Joined by Melquarth Frost, a brilliant sociopath, our hero must beat dirty cops and dirtier bankers, craven lawyers, and above all keep his daughter far from the underworld in which he works. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: King's client's, and King's own.

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper
288 p.; Social Science

So what if it’s true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting.

Far too often, Black women’s anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. Black women’s eloquent rage is what makes Serena Williams such a powerful tennis player. It’s what makes Beyoncé’s girl power anthems resonate so hard. It’s what makes Michelle Obama an icon.

Eloquent rage keeps us all honest and accountable. It reminds women that they don’t have to settle for less. When Cooper learned of her grandmother's eloquent rage about love, sex, and marriage in an epic and hilarious front-porch confrontation, her life was changed. And it took another intervention, this time staged by one of her homegirls, to turn Brittney into the fierce feminist she is today. In Brittney Cooper’s world, neither mean girls nor fuckboys ever win. But homegirls emerge as heroes. This book argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one's own superpowers are all we really need to turn things right side up again.









Friday, February 9, 2018

#BookReview: THE WEDDING DATE by Jasmine Guillory

Synopsis: Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist.

On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend…

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other…

They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century—or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want…

Review: I love a good meet cute, especially one that doesn't come across as cheesy or forced. From the time Alexa and Drew meet, there's definitely chemistry between the two. Jasmine Guillory doesn't lead readers on a long and winding journey to determine if they're right for each other and I appreciate that. Too many authors waste half a book just deciding if the characters like each other. This isn't high school, these are grown people.

Guillory also takes on the aspects of an interracial relationship without playing into tired stereotypes. Alexa is black and Drew is white, but it's not something  either character dwells on when sizing up the other and it's not much of a factor in their relationship. He doesn't fetishize her as a black woman, she's not looking for a white savior. I love that about their story.

The Wedding Date is a solid read with well thought out characters. Their interactions aren't limited to the bedroom and doing the horizontal hokey pokey. While the story does follow the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy might get girl back story line, Guillory has given readers a lot more insight into the relationship of Alexa and Drew and the thought processes behind their decisions.

320 p.
Published: January 2018
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.


Friday, February 2, 2018

New Books Coming Your Way, February 6, 2018

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
320 p.; Fiction

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain--into the future.

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara
416 p.; Fiction

It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.

As mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith
464 p.; Essays

Arranged into five sections—In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free—this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network—and Facebook itself—really about? “It’s a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.” Why do we love libraries? “Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.” What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? “So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we’d just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes—and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat.”

Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, “Joy,” and, “Find Your Beach,” Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith’s own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive—and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith.

How to Slay: Inspiration from the Queens and Kings of Black Style by Constance C.R. White
224 p.; Fashion

One of the few surveys of Black style and fashion ever published, How to Slay offers a lavishly illustrated overview of African American style through the twentieth century, focusing on the last thirty-five years. Through striking images of some of the most celebrated icons of Black style and taste, from Josephine Baker, Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou, and Miles Davis to Rihanna, Naomi Campbell, Kanye West, and Pharrell Williams, this book explores the cultural underpinnings of Black trends that have become so influential in mainstream popular culture and a bedrock of fashion vernacular today. A preponderance of Black musicians, who for decades have inspired trends and transformed global fashion, are featured and discussed, while a diverse array of topics are touched upon and examined—hats, hair, divas, the importance of attitude, the use of color, ’60s style, the influence of Africa and the Caribbean, and the beauty of black skin.

We Are Taking Only What We Need by Stephanie Powell Watts
240 p.; Fiction/Short stories

In “Highway 18” a young Jehovah’s Witness going door to door with an expert field-service partner from up north is at a crossroads: will she go to college or continue to serve the church? “If You Hit Randall County, You’ve Gone Too Far” tells of a family trying to make it through a tense celebratory dinner for a son just out on bail. And in the collection’s title story, a young girl experiences loss for the first time in the fallout from her father’s relationship with her babysitter.

Startling, intimate, and prescient on their own, these stories build to a kaleidoscopic understanding of both the individual and the collective black experience over the last fifty years in the American South. With We Are Taking Only What We Need, Stephanie Powell Watts has crafted an incredibly assured and emotionally affecting meditation on everything from the large institutional forces to the small interpersonal moments that impress upon us and direct our lives

The Disturbed Girl's Dictionary by NoNieqa Ramos
344 p.; Young Adult Fiction

Macy's school officially classifies her as "disturbed," but Macy isn't interested in how others define her. She's got more pressing problems: her mom can't move off the couch, her dad's in prison, her brother's been kidnapped by Child Protective Services, and now her best friend isn't speaking to her. Writing in a dictionary format, Macy explains the world in her own terms—complete with gritty characters and outrageous endeavors. With an honesty that's both hilarious and fearsome, slowly Macy reveals why she acts out, why she can't tell her incarcerated father that her mom's cheating on him, and why her best friend needs protection . . . the kind of protection that involves Macy's machete.


Wednesday, January 31, 2018

#BookReview: MOUTHS DON'T SPEAK by Katia D. Ulysse

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Synopsis: No one was prepared for the massive earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, taking over a quarter-million lives, and leaving millions of others homeless. Three thousand miles away, Jacqueline Florestant mourns the presumed death of her parents, while her husband, a former US Marine and combat veteran, cares for their three-year-old daughter as he fights his own battles with acute PTSD.

Horrified and guilt-ridden, Jacqueline returns to Haiti in search of the proverbial "closure." Unfortunately, the Haiti she left as a child twenty-five years earlier has disappeared. Her quest turns into a tornado of deception, desperation, and more death. So Jacqueline holds tightly to her daughter--the only one who must not die.

Review: It's difficult to read Katia D. Ulysse's Mouths Don't Speak without drawing comparisons to two recent works of fiction set in Haiti: Roxane Gay's An Untamed State and Dimitry Elias Léger's God Loves Haiti. Mouths Don't Speak feels a bit like a combination of both and it works well. But where An Untamed State shocked readers with its brutality and God Loves Haiti gave readers a firsthand view of the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Mouths Don't Speak doesn't have the same brutality and the results of the earthquake are seen from a distance.

When the book opens, Jacqueline is safe at home in Baltimore frantically trying to get through to her parents back in Haiti. For weeks she hungers for news, watching TV day and night as she continually tries to reach home. During this time we find Haiti was never really home for Jacqueline, having been shipped off to boarding school in her early years. And the parents she's desperate to hear from are more of a thorn in her side than a rose in bloom.

As Jacqueline sinks deeper into despair, her husband Kevin becomes a more central figure. He keeps the household running, becomes the caretaker for their three-year-old daughter, Amber. So at first, you think Kevin has it all together, but he's battling his own demons, a result of his own time in Haiti.

Ulysse introduces a lot of interesting characters and story lines that could have fallen flat with other authors, but the writing and the characters feel personal to her. She knows what will shock her audience and how to ease them into difficult scenes and situations. There are no minor characters within her pages because each and every person and line they speak plays a role. I can't wait to see what she does next.

224 p.
Published: January 2018
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher; opinions are my own.

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Click to purchase

Friday, January 26, 2018

New Books Coming Your Way, January 30, 2018

The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips
432 p.; Fiction/African-American

Pakersfield, Georgia, 1958: Thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn is the sixth of ten fatherless siblings. She is the darkest-skinned among them and therefore the ugliest in her mother, Rozelle’s, estimation, but she’s also the brightest. Rozelle—beautiful, charismatic, and light-skinned—exercises a violent hold over her children. Fearing abandonment, she pulls them from school at the age of twelve and sends them to earn their keep for the household, whether in domestic service, in the fields, or at “the farmhouse” on the edge of town, where Rozelle beds local men for money.

But Tangy Mae has been selected to be part of the first integrated class at a nearby white high school. She has a chance to change her life, but can she break from Rozelle’s grasp without ruinous—even fatal—consequences?

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
320 p.; Fiction/Romance

Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist.

On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend…

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other…

They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century—or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want…

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins
272 p.; Essays

Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans.

Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.

Whether she’s writing about Sailor Moon; Rachel Dolezal; the stigma of therapy; her complex relationship with her own physical body; the pain of dating when men say they don’t “see color”; being a black visitor in Russia; the specter of “the fast-tailed girl” and the paradox of black female sexuality; or disabled black women in the context of the “Black Girl Magic” movement, Jerkins is compelling and revelatory.

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom edited by Deborah Santana
336 p.; Essays

All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.

Sixty-nine authors — African American, Asian American, Chicana, Native American, Cameroonian, South African, Korean, LGBTQI — lend their voices to broaden cross-cultural understanding and to build bridges to each other’s histories and daily experiences of life. America Ferrera’s essay is from her powerful speech at the Women’s March in Washington D.C.; Natalie Baszile writes about her travels to Louisiana to research Queen Sugar and finding the “painful truths” her father experienced in the “belly of segregation;” Porochista Khakpour tells us what it is like to fly across America under the Muslim travel ban; Lalita Tademy writes about her transition from top executive at Sun Microsystems to NY Times bestselling author.

This anthology is monumental and timely as human rights and justice are being challenged around the world. It is a watershed title, not only written, but produced entirely by women of color, including the publishing, editing, process management, book cover design, and promotions. Our vision is to empower underrepresented voices and to impact the world of publishing in America — particularly important in a time when 80% of people who work in publishing self-identify as white (as found recently in a study by Lee & Low Books, and reported on NPR).

Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance by Mark Whitaker
432 p.; History

Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson’s famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson—and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne.

Mark Whitaker’s Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. Whitaker takes readers on a rousing, revelatory journey—and offers a timely reminder that Black History is not all bleak.

Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires by Shomari Wills
320 p.; History

While Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Michael Jordan, and Will Smith are among the estimated 35,000 black millionaires in the nation today, these famous celebrities were not the first blacks to reach the storied one percent. Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a small group of smart, tenacious, and daring men and women broke new ground to attain the highest levels of financial success.

Black Fortunes is an intriguing look at these remarkable individuals, including Napoleon Bonaparte Drew—author Shomari Wills’ great-great-great-grandfather—the first black man in Powhatan County (contemporary Richmond) to own property in post-Civil War Virginia. His achievements were matched by five other unknown black entrepreneurs including:
  • Mary Ellen Pleasant, who used her Gold Rush wealth to further the cause of abolitionist John Brown;
  • Robert Reed Church, who became the largest landowner in Tennessee;
  • Hannah Elias, the mistress of a New York City millionaire, who used the land her lover gave her to build an empire in Harlem;
  • Orphan and self-taught chemist Annie Turnbo-Malone, who developed the first national brand of hair care products;
  • Madam C. J Walker, Turnbo-Malone’s employee who would earn the nickname America’s “first female black millionaire;”
  • Mississippi school teacher O. W. Gurley, who developed a piece of Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a “town” for wealthy black professionals and craftsmen” that would become known as “the Black Wall Street.”
A fresh, little-known chapter in the nation’s story—A blend of Hidden Figures, Titan, and The Tycoons—Black Fortunes illuminates the birth of the black business titan and the emergence of the black marketplace in America as never before.










Friday, January 12, 2018

#BookReview: THE PERFECT NANNY by Leila Slimani

Synopsis: When Myriam, a mother and brilliant French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work, she and her husband are forced to look for a caretaker for their two young children. They are thrilled to find Louise: the perfect nanny right from the start.

Louise sings to the children, cleans the family’s beautiful apartment in Paris’s upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late whenever asked, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on each other, jealousy, resentment, and frustrations mount, shattering the idyllic tableau.

Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a riveting exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, and motherhood—and the debut in America of an immensely talented writer.

Review: The Perfect Nanny is delightfully creepy read you won't want to put down once you start it. Told mostly from the points of view of Myriam and Louise, it's the story of how everything goes right until it goes wrong, except the book starts with exactly what went wrong and when. The rewind effect works here because there's no spoiler waiting for you at the end. You know upfront what you're up against and if you choose to keep reading, that's on you.

The author goes into a lot of detail about what Louise looked like, much more so than any other character. We know Myriam is French-Morrocan, but we're never told Paul's race or nationality. But Louise is white, not just white but porcelain white. She's a small dainty woman, fastidious in how she dresses and presents herself. She prepares meals, the children love her, she gives Myriam and Paul their pre-children lives back. She is, as the title says, the perfect nanny.

Paul's interactions with Louis are interesting because it seems he sees the cracks in her porcelain facade long before Myriam does, which isn't surprising. While Paul has always had the freedom of escaping the house daily to go work, Myriam has spent the last few years at home with the children. Wouldn't you avoid looking at what was directly in front of you if it meant you could continue to pursue the career you missed so much?

Because the reader already knows how the story ends from page one, it's not too shocking when we finally come to the scene of the crime. I appreciate the author taking time to go beyond that scene and telling us what happened next, though I would have liked more follow up on Paul and Myriam. The Perfect Nanny is the perfect read for those who love plot twists and creepy little women.

240 p.
Published: January 2018
Purchase: The Perfect Nanny: A Novel