Sponsored by What’s Mine and Yours, the new novel from Naima Coster
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! From the author of Halsey Street, a sweeping novel of legacy, identity, the American family—and the ways that race affects even our most intimate relationships. A North Carolina community rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next twenty years.
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. I’m writing this on International Women’s Day and March is Women’s History Month, so today’s book club picks are all about the women’s stories we either haven’t heard or ones that need revisiting for… reasons! It so happens I have three very recent reads for you on this topic, plus an anecdote about me almost ruining my oven.
To the club!!
Nibbles and Sips
In preparation for a quaranteam potluck gathering this weekend, I rolled up my sleeves to do some cooking. I learned a hard lesson: if you are going to store leftover food in your oven that’s been wrapped in beeswax cloth “real quick” while you clean your counters and stovetop, be sure to remove said leftovers from the oven before you turn it on to make brownies. UGH.
Those brownies never saw the light of day, but the papas rellenas I made were on point! They’re these perfect balls of mashed potatoes that you fill with leftover picadillo, a seasoned ground beef dish, then roll in egg wash and breadcrumbs before frying to perfection. I combined a version of two recipes from Cuba: The Cookbook (first make the Havana-style picadillo, then use that to make the papas) with a recipe buried somewhere in my brain. Here’s a simple version to try if it’s your first time, and a tip: do NOT skip the refrigeration step. It’ll help your papas hold up and not completely fall apart while frying. While not traditionally served this way, I love the way these pair with that Peruvian aji verde sauce I shared recently.
Now Let’s Hear From the Women
Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman
This book just came out yesterday (you can hear me gushing about it on this week’s All the Books episode). Jess Zimmerman is the editor in chief at Electric Lit, and this is her cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology. She dedicates one chapter to each of 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, Scylla, and the Sphinx, breaking down how women have been labeled as monsters for daring to be everything from sexual to angry (ya know: human). This is a wonderful work of feminist cultural critique and a sweet sweet hit of dopamine for all my mythology nerds.
Book Club Bonus: Zimmerman gets into the idea that ugliness is so often portrayed as the worst possible thing a woman can be, asking readers to reexamine our relationship to hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, traits that are so often vilified. But my favorite part is her challenge to reclaim the monster label because monsters get a certain kind of freedom that “well behaved” women rarely do: the freedom to be complete, unrestrained, and larger than life. Discuss aaaaall of that.
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
“A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?” !!!!!
Did I mention I love mythology? This gave me Circe + The Silence of the Girls vibes which is just pure catnip. Haynes passes the mic to the silenced women of the Trojan War. Told 100% from the perspective of these women, from the goddesses and nymphs to Penelope and Briseis and Cassandra (oh, my poor Cassandra) and lots more, we get a whole new and gutting layer to a story that until recently has always focused on the heroism of men. (TW: mentions of sexual assault, violence, child death, use of the word “slave” to describe the women who are captured and enslaved)
Side note: Penelope’s letters to Odysseus start off very sweet and “hubby where art thou, come home!” But towards the end, the tone shifts to a very “I just think it’s funny how…” and I DIED. I don’t know if they were meant to be funny, but I laughed out loud.
Book Club Bonus: This quote by the muse Calliope talking about a whiny Odysseus made me put the book down to clap: “ If he complains to me again, I will ask him this: is Oenone less of a hero than Menelaus? He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the most heroic act?” Put the tea on the kettle and get into that.
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs
I recommended this just last month but it just fits so well with this theme. So much has been written about (as it should be) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, but very little has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. Scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood and the power of community by telling these women’s stories with the depth and care that they deserve.
Book Club Bonus: Imagine what it must feel like to watch a person you love be taken from you in an act of violence while they advocated for racial equality and social justice, and to now, if you’ve lived to see this moment, take in how seemingly little progress we’ve made as a society AND watch that loved ones’ image and message used in bad faith by the very people who hold up those systems of oppression. I thought so much about this last summer and think about it every day as I walk through the world and wonder if we learned anything collectively, or done anything meaningful about it, since then. So discuss: what have we learned? What have we done?
Suggestion Section
The Mary Sue Book Club, March 2021: Spring Fever, Magic Wars, and Feminist Fantasies
If you’re looking to diversify your little one’s bookshelf, here’s a review of The Little Feminist Book Club subscription service
This isn’t a book list or specific to book clubs, but I think an important thing to discuss at large, so maybe tackle it with your book club buddies: A Media Studies Perspective on Canceling Books (TLDR: canceling a book is not censorship, and focusing on that perceived cancellation ignores a lot of inconvenient truths)
Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter and catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast.
Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa
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Thanks again to our sponsors What’s Mine and Yours, the new novel from Naima Coster! A North Carolina community rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next twenty years.