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Today In Books

New MS. MARVEL Author Samira Ahmed Discusses Her Plans for Kamala Khan: Today in Books

New Ms. Marvel Author Samira Ahmed Discusses Her Plans for Kamala Khan

New Ms. Marvel author Samira Ahmed is the first female South Asian writer to tackle the Muslim superhero comic book character Kamala Khan. In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, the author discussed her plans for the character. Ahmed says that Ms. Marvel “looms large in my familial culture.” In fact, in her group chat with her South Asian cousins, they often use the acronym WWMMD: What would Ms. Marvel do? Ms. Marvel will be Ahmed’s first comic, and it should be hitting stands in September.

Indigenous Producer Stories First to Adapt Joshua Whitehead’s Debut Novel Jonny Appleseed

Indigenous producer Stories First has optioned Joshua Whitehead’s bestselling debut novel Jonny Appleseed for a screen adaptation. Whitehead’s novel is the coming-of-age story of two-spirit person named Jonny. Leena Minifie, CEO and producer at Stories First Productions, said in a statement, “This story has already resonated with people across the country and is one we are honored to bring to an even wider audience. As an Indigenous owned and operated production company we aim to honor the reimagining of Jonny.”

World Literature Today Announces Finalists for 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

The University of Oklahoma’s World Literature Today has announced the finalists for the 2022 Nuestadt International Prize for Literature. The prize includes a $50,000 cash reward and has a history as a lead-up to the Nobel Prize in Literature. You can check out the full list of nominees here. Ten Neustadt jurors, all creative writers, will choose the winner at the 2021 Neustadt Lit Fest, which is scheduled for Oct. 25–27.

15 of the Best Cozy Mysteries for the Second Half of 2021

The first half of 2021 brought us plenty of twisty page-turning cozy mysteries. But the year isn’t over! Here are the best upcoming cozy mysteries being released during the second half of this year.

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Riot Rundown

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Giveaways

061921-TheHive-Giveaway

We’re giving away 10 audiobook downloads of The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young to 10 lucky Riot readers!

Enter here for a chance, or click the cover image below!

Here’s what it’s all about:

The Hive is a contemporary riff on Little Women follows a mother and her four daughters as they try to keep themselves afloat during a recession in conservative middle America.

Categories
Kissing Books

Romance vs Romantic

Hello again romance readers. I’m PN Hinton, your companion for the world of romance. I hope your spirit is doing well today. If you’re new to the Kissing Books newsletter, welcome and enjoy your stay. If you’re a long-time reader, welcome back; it’s good to see you again. 

My birthday is this week, y’all!! I’m so excited for my birthday visits. I’ve found that as I get older, I don’t need or want big parties anymore. And it’s not just related to birthday parties; summer is ripe for family reunions as well. Whenever the idea for one has come up in years past, all I could think was, “It’s going to be loud, outside, overly crowded, and HOT.” Cause you know…Texas. It’s also become tiresome to try to find a date where all my friends can make it. And speaking of friends, another factor is that my friend pool has shrunk over the years. Due to some of the bumps I’ve faced on this road of life, people have chosen to jump off the friendship wagon. I know I sound like some kind of motivational poster, but you know who your real friends are by how they react to those situations. The age of the friendship doesn’t even matter because you can be left behind by a cradle friend. But, I’ve also come to realize that I’d rather have a small group of true friends than an entire fair-weather flock. 

World of Romance

It seems there was another shakeup in the Romance side of Twitter about whether or not a book can be called a romance if it doesn’t have an HEA/HFN. The discourse happened about Heart & Seoul, which I mentioned a few weeks back as being a new release. Full transparency; I haven’t read the book. I don’t read all the books I talk about here simply because, as much as I may want to, I don’t have the time. I do have a day job and, unfortunately, it’s not reading. 

The dissonance seems to be that there isn’t an HEA or even HFN in this one; nor is there any indication that it is a series. As such, many are upset it’s being labeled as romance when it’s really not. Which I understand. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I will die on this hill; if there isn’t an HEA or an HFN, it’s not a romance novel. It can be a romantic novel, though, which is different. One of the articles from Romantic Reads day listed a few romantic books where the couples broke up; but the article was very careful to call these romantic reads as opposed to romances. This may seem like splitting hairs, but that fine line is there. 

Romantic books are books with romantic elements or a romantic theme. But romance isn’t the driving force behind the story like it is with a romance novel. From what I’ve gathered, Jen Frederick’s book is a more of a romantic book. There’s nothing wrong with that, but be honest with the readers. We are a loyal group, but we also do not like literary bait and switches. Don’t try to trick an entire group of readers to make sales because when word of the trickery gets out, it will be hard to get that reputation back. 

Around the Web in Romance

Jess talks here about the allure of slow reading and I have to say I agree; there is something to be said about savoring a read. I am taking my time with a few of the books I’m currently reading, including Kennedy Ryan’s Reel.

As if you need another reason to read The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, here are a few more.

Harlequin beat Hallmark to the punch with an LGBTA holiday romance story with the announcement that Roan Parrish will be writing the very first gay romance novel in a series line. It’s slated to come out this September and looks like it has all the warm holiday feels you could want. I’m not going to lie, I’m super excited for how sweet this book looks. I’m not a holiday person anymore, so I rely on movies and books to help me not be a Grinch and this looks like a great candidate for the job.

Here are some pairings of princesses and romance novels.

New Releases & Deals

Some of this week’s new releases include The Next Mrs. Russo by Jana Aston, Love is All: Volume 4, an anthology of LGBTQ romances, Jock Royal by Sara Ney, and Love Your Life by Sophie Kinsella (which, being a Kinsella, may be a romantic book). It also looks like quite a bit of Ms. Bev’s back list is getting the audiobook treatment, including Something Like Love and Wild Sweet Love. So, if you’re more of an audiobook reader, that may be more your jam. 

As for your deals, The Champion’s Desire by Marie Lipscomb and The Only Man by Rochelle Allers can both be snagged for $0.99. If you’re having a bit of wanderlust, the roadtrip romance Dine With Me by Layla Reyne is available for $1.99, as are New Ink on Life and Inked with a Kiss by Jennie Davids.

And that is all for now. I’ll see you Thursday with another edition. Until then give me a follow over on Twitter @PScribe801.

Categories
Today In Books

Holly Black Announces First Adult Novel: Today in Books

Kim Johnson’s This is My America to be Adapted on HBO Max

Erik Feig’s Picturestart has aquired the rights to develop and produce a television adaptation of Kim Johnson’s This Is My America for HBO Max. Jessica Freeman (Single Drunk Female) will write the script and executive produce. Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, and Lis Rowinski will also executive produce alongside author Kim Johnson.This is My America is the story of 17-year-old Tracy Beaumont who is fighting for her father, an innocent Black man on death row. She only has 267 days left to save her father’s life, but her life gets even more complicated when her brother is accused of murdering a white girl. The story explores social justice and racism in America from the viewpoint of a Black Gen-Z protagonist.

Holly Black Announces First Adult Novel

Last weekend at TorCon 2021, children’s and YA book author Holly Black announced her first adult novel. The new book is a dark fantasy novel entitled Book of Night, and it’s set in a world of shadow magic where con artist Charlie finds herself pulled into the underground world of shadow trading. Holly Black said, “The book introduces us to a thief and con artist with a messy personal life and a compulsion for disaster, Charlie Hall. Her world seems familiar—but beware the shadows, where magic can be used… or used against you.” Book of Night is hitting shelves May 3, 2022.

Social Justice Children’s Bookstore Opening in West Palm Beach

A new social justice-driven children’s bookstore is opening at Rosemary Square in West Palm Beach. It’s called Rohi’s Readery, and the bookstore will focus on stories featuring children and families from diverse backgrounds. Pranoo Kumar, the founder of the store, explained that the bookstore is actually named in honor of her grandmother: “Rohi is actually short for Rohini. Rohini in India, my grandmother, was a steadfast advocate for educational rights for children especially during the caste system and colonized India.” The grand opening of the store is today, Friday, June 18th. Events are scheduled for Juneteenth and Father’s Day.

50+ Years of Pride: The Best Queer Books from Every Decade

2021 marks the 51st official Pride celebration. Celebrate the history of LGBTQ+ publishing by reading these notable queer books from each decade of Pride, 1970 to 2020.

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The Fright Stuff

The Chatting Dead

Hey‌ ‌there‌ horror fans, ‌I’m‌ ‌Jessica‌ ‌Avery‌ ‌and‌ ‌I’ll‌ ‌be‌ ‌delivering‌ ‌your‌ ‌weekly‌ ‌brief‌ ‌of‌ ‌all‌ ‌that’s‌ ‌ghastly‌ ‌and‌ ‌grim‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌world‌ ‌of‌ ‌Horror.‌ ‌Whether‌ ‌you’re‌ ‌looking‌ ‌for‌ ‌a‌ ‌backlist‌ ‌book‌ ‌that‌ ‌will‌ ‌give‌‌ you‌ ‌the‌ ‌willies,‌ ‌a‌ ‌terrifying‌ ‌new‌ ‌release,‌ ‌or‌ ‌the‌ ‌latest‌ ‌in‌ ‌horror‌ ‌community‌ ‌news,‌ ‌you’ll‌ ‌find‌ ‌it‌ ‌here‌ in‌ ‌The‌ ‌Fright‌ ‌Stuff.

You think you have to worry about the walking dead, but really it’s the chatting dead you need to watch out for. The horror genre has history’s worth of proof that when the dead start talking, bad things are about to go down. Why does the trope of being able to talk to spirits pop up again and again in the horror genre? I mean, there are obvious storytelling reasons to include chatty dead people in your books. When they can speak for themselves they’re able to drop vital hints or bits of information that the protagonist might need to solve some mystery, escape alive, or even defeat the ghosts themselves. But is there another reason that we’re so involved with the idea of spirits who do more than moan and break your favorite coffee cup?

Maybe the obvious answer, and the one that we see realized in a lot of horror fiction–particularly novels in which grief and grieving are a theme–is that we want to think that the dead are reaching back to us. The ones we’ve lost, the ones who are trapped, forgotten, or wracked by injustice. Maybe it’s a bit like believing in aliens, or looking for bigfoot. We don’t want to believe that we’re alone out here. That we are all there is to the world.

And of course there’s the fact that of all the questions science has yet to answer, what becomes of us after death is still one of the greatest unkowns. We know what happens to the body, physically, and many horror authors make stunning and graphically memorable use of the decaying of the dead. But what about the rest of us? These big, squishy brains that give us such hell when we’re alive; do they just go out like lights? Every thought we ever had, all our dreams, emotions, and wants. There’s so much up there, and the thought that it all just stops beggars belief. So it makes sense that, more than just telling ghost stories or believing in ghosts, we want them to talk to us. To reach out. To make contact and prove that something of ourselves survives the end of our days.

Dozens of ghost hunting shows on the Travel Channel can’t be wrong! We talk to the dark because we want to hear the dead talk back. Though, as this week’s recommendations will show, you have to be careful when putting out a call to the dead. You never know who’ll answer.

cover image of The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu

The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu

Ropa speaks for the dead. In fact, she dropped out of school to make carrying their messages to the living her full time job. She’s a ghostalker. After all, she’s good at it, it pays, and generally it’s safe enough. But then a young child goes missing, taken from a dark corner of what Ropa considers her territory, and the dead are whispering chilling warnings about children sucked dry of their life and their joy. Ropa could chose to walk away. This could be someone else’s problem. But these children disappeared on her turf, and she can’t in good conscience turn her back while someone declares open season on the children of her city. So Ropa sets out to find a monster, and discovers a secret Edinburgh, full of unknowns, spirits, demons, and strange magics, where the very fabric of reality seems to bend.

The Whispering Dead by Darcy Coates

In the midst of a storm, hunted by unknown men with guns who want her dead, a woman on the run takes shelter in an abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of a cemetery in the town of Blighty. Frankly, I think it sounds positively peaceful, but then again I have noisy neighbors. And technically, so does Keira. Because while to others the cemetery would appear still and silent, Kiera can hear the dead whispering all around her. The cemetery is alive with the ghosts of those recently, and not so recently, departed, led by a woman who died before her time who begins to haunt Keira when she realizes that the living woman can see her. With the clock of her life running down, Keira races to unearth the dark secrets of Blighty’s past that will not let the woman’s spirit rest.

Bad Witch Burning by Jessica Lewis (August 24th)

Katrell makes her living talking to the dead, ironically. And it’s not much of a living, either. While clients are happy to pay her for access to their dead loved ones they don’t pay well. Let alone well enough for Katrell to pay her way and support her mother and whatever boyfriend her mother has kicking around. Still money is money. Which is why, when a ghost tells Katrell to stop summoning the dead, that terrible things will come of it, she ignores the warning. Besides. It’s dead. What do the dead have to do but moan vague warnings at the living for entertainment? Or so Katrell thinks. Until she accidentally raises a client from the dead, rather than just summoning their spirit, and catches a glimpse of a life beyond poverty. There is money to be made in making the dead undead, and she decides to seize the opportunity with both hands. But the bigger the magic the higher the price, and the dark is circling. Waiting for Katrell to fall.

Fresh From the Skeleton’s Mouth

If you can believe it (I hardly can) the end of June is nearly upon us! I’m not sure where the month went, but summer is really flying fast. And every month seems to bring with it a veritable pile of exciting new horror books. Check out this June new releases list from Ladies of Horror Fiction to make sure that you didn’t miss anything you were looking forward to!

Nightfire has a wonderful interview with Paul Tremblay on their blog, discussing putting story first, writing atmosphere, and the paperback edition of his amazing, deeply moving 2020 novel, Survivor Song.

Categories
The Kids Are All Right

Boredom Busting Activity Books

Hi Kid Lit Friends,

Summer is here, and you might be wondering what types of activities can keep your kids occupied that don’t remind them of school worksheets. Here are some fun ones that I’ve noticed recently!

Print, Pattern, Sew by Jen Hewett

I used this book with my daughter last summer and we learned how to carve blocks and then how to stamp on fabric and create simple patterns for sewing. I would suggest adult supervision with these projects, but they are super fun to do and a great activity to do as a family!

Give This Book A Title by Jarrett Lerner

I love this collection of fun, open-ended writing and drawing prompts by Jarrett Lerner. For example, in the Finish This Comic section, young writers are inspired to write and illustrate a six-panel story. Following How to Draw instructions will encourage kids to find their own drawing styles. This book is filled with activities that will keep kids entertained and busy.

Kwame Alexander’s Free Write: A Poetry Notebook by Kwame Alexander

Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander shares his writing tips for anyone who wants to discover the power of poetry. This book is bursting with cool activities, poetry starters, inspirational quotes, and lots of space to create.

The Ultimate At-Home Activity Guide by Mike Lowery

This is such a fun book filled with endless possibilities of activities to do at home, including throwing a virtual party, holding family Olympics, learning a magic trick, making a flip book, and many more. Doodles, jokes, and entertaining tips enliven the crafts, games, adventures, projects, and creative boredom-busting activities the whole family will enjoy. Most call for common crafting gear and household items, ensuring hours of fun at the tip of your fingers.

Illustration School: Let’s Draw! by Sachiko Umoto

This book was created by one of Japan’s most beloved artists and contains a book with simple step-by-step instructions for drawing the cute animals, plants, and people in this book. There is also a pad of paper in this easily transportable set that is bound together with a thick elastic to keep everything together. I love this illustration style.

How Do You Doodle?: Drawing My Feelings and Emotions by Elise Gravel

I adore Elise Gravel’s books and her quirky and fun illustrations (one of my favorites is If Found...Please Return to Elise Gravel). How Do You Doodle? has over 40 doodle games for you to doodle, scribble, and draw out your thoughts, emotions, and feelings. I love that Elise encourages you to draw or write whatever you want in this book — cute drawings, silly drawings, even ugly drawings – there is no judgment, only an encouragement to express yourself.

What are you reading these days? Let me know! Find me on Twitter at @KarinaYanGlaser, on Instagram at @KarinaIsReadingAndWriting, or email me at KarinaBookRiot@gmail.com.

Until next time!
Karina

*If this e-mail was forwarded to you, follow this link to subscribe to “The Kids Are All Right” newsletter and other fabulous Book Riot newsletters for your own customized e-mail delivery. Thank you!*

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Book Radar

YA Novel THIS IS MY AMERICA Will Be a Series and More Book Radar!

It’s Monnnnnnnnnday! Happy new week, and happy almost-new release day! I am excited about all the great books coming up and all the exciting bookish news going out into the world, even if I forget what they are, lol. I am reading 2022 books now for work, so I’m pretty much confused all the time about what is coming each week. So I have to do a refresher every Tuesday and read my notes. My brain is basically just a chyron that says “books books books” all day, every day.

Moving on: There has not been a lot of big book news the last few days, but what I have for you today is great! I also have a look at an awesome creepy fall book, plus cover reveals, a terrible pun, my distracting office mate, and trivia! Let’s get started, shall we?

Here’s Monday’s trivia question: Tiller, a college student, is the protagonist of what 2021 novel? (Scroll to the bottom for the answer.)

Deals, Reals, and Squeals!

cover of jonny appleseed by joshua whitehead

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead is being adapted for the screen.

This Is My America by Kim Johnson is being developed as a series for HBO Max.

Here’s the cover reveal of Eyes That Speak to the Stars by Joanna Ho and Dung Ho.

These are the top 48 books of the year so far on Goodreads.

Madison Taylor Baez has joined the cast of the Showtime series remake of Let the Right One In.

The world premiere of the new Dune adaptation will happen at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.

Rafe Spall will join Natalie Portman in the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment.

And Jack Huston will join Lulu Wang and Nicole Kidman in Expats, the series adaptation of The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee.

Book Riot Recommends 

At Book Riot, I work on the New Books! email, the All the Books! podcast about new releases, and the Book Riot Insiders New Release Index. I am very fortunate to get to read a lot of upcoming titles, and learn about a lot of upcoming titles, and I’m delighted to share a couple with you each week so you can add them to your TBR! (It will now be books I loved on Mondays and books I’m excited to read on Thursdays. YAY, BOOKS!)

Loved, loved, loved: 

cover of cackle by rachel harrison

Cackle by Rachel Harrison (Berkley, October 5)

So if you’ve been reading the newsletter or listening to All the Books for a while now, you know that I lost my dogpanned mind over Rachel Harrison’s The Return. It was a super creepy novel about friendship, set partly in Maine. I loved it with the heat of a thousand suns.

This time, Harrison is also revisiting friendship and relationships, but with witches. Annie is a teacher in Manhattan, involved in what she thinks is her forever-relationship. Then Sam, her boyfriend of ten years, unceremoniously dumps her. Distraught and adrift, she accepts a new teaching position in a tiny, tiny town in Vermont. Even though the village is adorable and all the people are friendly, Annie is miserable at first. Her apartment is full of spiders, she has no friends, and her students are unruly and mock her openly during class. It makes her even sadder and she spends her free time missing Sam and trying to find hopeful subtext in his text messages.

Then Annie meets Sophie. Sophie is literally the most beautiful, charming woman Annie has ever seen, and she wants to be Annie’s friend! Sophie wants Annie to start recognizing her own potential and stop moping around about her boyfriend. And at first, their friendship is wonderful and Annie is so happy. She’s feeling more confident and isn’t taking anymore guff from her students. But she’s also terrified to sleep at Sophie’s enormous mansion in the woods after a harrowing overnight stay, and the townspeople all seem to be afraid of Sophie. Plus Sophie has become a bit more meddlesome and demanding of Annie’s time. Annie is starting to worry that there might be dangerous repercussions to letting Sophie down…

The heart of this book is a story of friendship and self-worth. Sophie wants Annie to recognize that she is a beautiful person worthy of love. It’s also about witches and the treatment of independent, strong women throughout history. But then it’s also a scary story of ghosts and the unknown. Let’s just say that I have been afraid to open my basement door ever since I read this book! I thought it was wicked charming and creepy, and I especially loved Ralph. (You’ll see.)

(CW for infidelity, murder, sexism, and death.)

What I’m reading this week.

cover of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron 

Objects of Desire: Stories by Clare Sestanovich

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton 

Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke

Groan-worthy joke of the week: 

Why is Peter Pan always flying? Because he Neverlands.

And this is funny:

Here’s a Beauty and the Beast origin story you don’t hear about.

Happy things:

Here are a few things I enjoy that I thought you might like as well:

  • Music! I’ve had to take a lot of car trips recently, which means I get to listen to music! It’s something I rarely do at home, because I cannot read while there is music playing. So I turn the stereo in my truck all the way up (yes, I’m that driver, I’m sorry) and rock out on the road. Here’s a playlist I made last summer that is once again all I want to listen to. (*Roger Daltrey voice* Meet the new playlist, same as the old playlist.)
  • Purrli: This website makes the relaxing sounds of a cat purring.

And here’s a cat picture!

an orange cat with its head resting on a blue book

Farrokh is trying to read by osmosis.

Trivia answer: My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee.

Remember that whatever you are doing or watching or reading this week, I am sending you love and hugs. Please be safe, and be mindful of others. It takes no effort to be kind. I’ll see you again on Thursday. xoxo, Liberty

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Riot Rundown

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Categories
True Story

Juneteenth Reads

There’s a whole lot of conversation about Juneteenth right now, so what if we look at some books related to Juneteenth and the history of the United States’ enslavement of Black Americans.

If you do not know! Juneteenth is “commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.” (x) In a nation with almost no memorials to this hideous chapter in our history, it feels necessary to remind ourselves of what happened and that its legacy is still with us.

cover image of On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

This literally just came out last month and is described as a SLIM VOLUME (I love a slim volume). Gordon-Reed is a Harvard history professor who “provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.” In 144 pages!

From Slave Cabins to the White House cover

From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture by Koritha Mitchell

When people talk about women being trapped as housewives, they implicitly mean white women. Mitchell looks at Black families “asserting their citizenship in domestic settings while the larger society and culture marginalize and attack them, not because they are deviants or failures but because they meet American standards.” As the title indicates, it spans the time of slavery to Michelle Obama in the White House. Mitchell has recently been talking more about “know-your-place aggression” on Twitter, and I highly recommend following her, because she is great.

O Freedom Cover

O Freedom!: Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations by William H. Wiggins, Jr.

What would this newsletter be if I didn’t include an academic press book from 1990? Wiggins looks at the beginnings of Emancipation celebrations, takes four field trips to Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and writes vividly of his experiences. It starts off looking like a somewhat daunting academic text, but if you can read his descriptions of “Texas melon patches, endless acres of gnarled vines,” “sagging russet-rusted roofs,” and “freshly plowed rows glistening in the hot afternoon sun like rolls of licorice,” then you quickly and happily realize your error.

The Half Has Never Been Told

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

This came out in the mid-2010s, and argues that rather than American slavery being isolated in a distant past, we are currently living in a society whose economy was immensely shaped by it. This might sound like “well, yeah,” but I would argue that (in popular culture anyway) systemic thinking has taken hold pretty recently. If you’re interested in getting more facts behind why this was and how “the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States,” then pick this up.

Closer to Freedom

Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South by Stephanie M.H. Camp

I love diving into a subject, because I end up running across so many titles I’ve somehow missed for years. Camp writes about enslaved Black women in the South, and “discusses the multiple dimensions to acts of resistance that might otherwise appear to be little more than fits of temper.” I love her thesis that these (sometimes) small and bodily acts of everyday resistance “helped foment and sustain the more visible resistance of men in their individual acts of running away and in the collective action of slave revolts.” I also love the phrase “everyday resistance.”

fearing the black body cover

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings

This was referenced in Aubrey Gordon’s What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat and I’ve been interested in it for a while, so I wanted to make sure and highlight it. Strings looks at art, magazine articles, medical journals, etc, and says that fat phobia, “as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of ‘savagery’ and racial inferiority” and that “it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity.” It is so important to be conscious of these sorts of things! Our current cultural values have not been the same forever and they will continue to change, but we (if we can) should spend a little time examining why they are what they are.

That’s it for this week! For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.