Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
Reading Color friends! I hope your Thanksgiving was peaceful if you celebrate it. Mine was cool but busy. I was driving around a bit for last minute things, and then later as I went to a couple houses.
For the rest of the weekend, the Nintendo Switch — and the Pokémon game — I gifted myself for early Christmas/Black Friday barely left my hands. And the time I wasn’t playing was spent looking up games I should get before sales end. I felt like I was 10 again making lists of video games I wanted. The only (dangerous) thing that is different is that I can actually buy them all now. *sweats*
As I ponder the ramifications of this recent decision, let’s get into some books!
Bookish Goods
Brown Girls Read Puzzle by thetrinigee
I’ve been meaning to get into puzzles — I’ve heard great things about doing them while listening to an audiobook — and this one’s art is pretty. $21+
New Releases
A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continents by Mary-Alice Daniel
Daniel’s young world got a sudden shock when her family moved from Nigeria to the cold suburbs of England. She got another shock when they uprooted again, this time relocating to the Southern U.S. With each move and each effort to adjust to her changing environments, she lost a little of her mother culture. In this poetic memoir, she wrestles with this upbringing and all the differences in religion, race, and class that converged upon it.
We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds
This one is also about a move, but not as big of one. Here, 17 year old Avery’s mother moves them from D.C. to Georgia because her grandmother is dying. Her grandmother isn’t very welcoming, and neither is the town, but Avery is still able to find friends in Simone and Jade. Turns out the Avery’s new home is also riddled with secrets — from Jade’s mother’s unsolved murder case to Avery’s family’s history within the town — and finding them out will come at a cost.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Here’s just a little more recent nonfiction to close out Nonfiction November.
Conversations with Birds by Priyanka Kumar
Kumar is a filmmaker and novelist, and grew up in the beautiful Himalayas, whose beauty she took for granted, before she moved to North America. After the move, she felt disconnected from the natural world until her 20s, when she met birders on the beach and her eyes were opened to the lifestyle. In this memoir, she tells of how the beauty and majesty of birds helped her to not only appreciate her natural surroundings more, but also to realize her place in the universe.
We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle
Gayle tells the complicated history of Black Creek identity, starting with how some Creek people owned enslaved Black people. They also accepted free Black people fully into their nation as citizens — with some even becoming Chiefs, like Cow Tom. But this was undone in the ’70s by tribal leaders. This book tells why this came to be, how the U.S. government was involved, and how it still affects Black Creek people to this day.
File this “under interesting things in U.S. history that I know next to nothing about.”
Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with the fab Tirzah Price, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.
Until next time,
Erica