These book marks are actual library checkout cards that have been laminated. They come with real signatures and dates, and you can choose from the ’40s-’50s, ’60s-’70s, or the ’80s. This is the perfect mix of vintage + practical and it benefits a library in Dadeville, AL that centers children and elderly patrons in rural areas. $8-$19.
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
It’s hot and humid af, so I’ve been staying inside (mostly) reading, watching a little TV, and playing with my poorly behaved new kitten. One of my most recent reads has been a new horror anthology I mentioned in this week’s New Releases Tuesday post , which actually made me want to recommend some more books by disabled authors. The anthology, titled Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, features authors from marginalized backgrounds writing around the theme of the other and what role it has played in horror. I’m still working my way through it, but I already highly recommend it (the Tananarive Due story still has me shookington).
This collection’s theme of questioning what we deem as the other goes so well with many of the books I’m mentioning today, and with that said, on to the club!
Keepin’ it light and simple today with this crisp and fresh cucumber salad. I love cucumbers, especially in the summer, and this recipe’s inclusion of miso paste and peanut oil give it a lil sumn extra, I think.
You’ll need:
8 mini cucumbers
salt
3 garlic cloves (minced into paste)
1 tbsp chilli flakes
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp miso paste
1 tbsp peanut oil
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
2 tbsp chilli oil
spring onion
Make sure to watch the vid for a fancy cucumber slicing technique!
Now for books!
I love how the this book presents fairy tales as our (the United States, that is) foundational myths, because they really are, but I never seem them presented as such. It’s an important thing to note when speaking of constructs and norms within our society. Leduc looks at how fairy tales have positioned disabled bodies as other, and influenced our views of disability in everyday life. She also reimagines these stories from a modern-day disablist perspective, tying disability activism to more modern, magical stories.
Book club bonus: It’s interesting to think of how villainy in fairy tales has often been identified by physicality. This kind of logic has helped to perpetuate the idea that people who are deemed “attractive” are inherently good. What real life implications do you think this has had?
Chloé Cooper Jones has all the things, all the flowers. She’s a Pulitzer Prize finalist, has received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction grant, and is a philosophy professor, and with this memoir, she sheds light on what it’s been like to live with a rare congenital condition. The condition, sacral agenesis, affects how she walks and stands, which has resulted in often being dismissed outright or pitied. It’s also the reason she’s had to make “pain calculations” when planning her days, and why she learned early on to retreat into the neutral area of academia. Things change when she has a child, though. The spaces, both physical and mental, that she often thought were off limits to her are ones she now wants to reclaim. And, by traveling to things like Beyonce concerts and gardens in Rome, she sets out to take up the space she’s due, questioning our views of beauty along the way.
Book club bonus: Here’s another examination of beauty being a determiner of value, and how that beauty itself is determined. It’s often not about ability or skill, but physical appearance. Meanwhile, beauty standards can literally change with the wind. We’ve seen, within just one country, how vastly different beauty standards can be. I’ve even witnessed a few beauty standard changes within my short 30 years in this country alone. Discuss why and how societies have placed so much importance on something so flimsy.
Have to mention how Antrobus features a Ted Hughes poem titled “Deaf School” where he crosses out each line. Why? Because Hughes wrote things like “the deaf children were monkey nimble” and how they had “faces of little animals.” Antrobus actually won the 2018 Ted Hughes award (the irony) for poetry with this collection, in which he explores his identity as a d/Deaf person, a British Jamaican, and society’s failings where d/Deaf children are concerned.
Side note, but when I tried to look up the poem by Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s husband for those unawares), I could only find stuff having to do with Antrobus, which was… interesting. The original poem is so gross to me, I can’t imagine how Hughes has a poetry award in his name, but here we are.
Book club bonus: I obviously feel some type of way about Hughes’ poem. Because he had the nerve to think those things, commit them to paper, and that it was accepted and he revered enough to have an award named after him. I think we should just sit and let it marinate how this view of disabled people was not only accepted, but celebrated in many ways (i.e. the award). How did this type of thinking manifest in their lives? What is its legacy?
First thing’s first, sis’ title is a whole mood. It’s no surprise that Brown was the originator of the #DisabledAndCute viral hashtag, and I’m not mad. Here, she explores her experiences growing up Black with cerebral palsy. Despite her immense confidence now, she explains how that wasn’t always the case. The title, even, refers to how her identical, able-bodied twin was always referred to as “the pretty one” in relation to her. With this collection, she aims to do away with distorted, able-bodied stereotypes, and give a peek into her life by looking at things like her love of pop culture and her romantic entanglements.
Book club bonus: It blows my mind how Brown’s identical twin sister was labelled “the pretty one.” Like, how? When they’re identical?? Discuss how the mere label of things, specifically being labeled as disabled, can completely color people’s perceptions of others. How has this affected disabled people?
You’ve probably heard about this book in recent years, but if you haven’t read it, then you may not know that the main character, like the author, has Autism Spectrum Disorder. Stella is good with algorithms but not so much with romance. She decides to fix her lack of experience by hiring a professional, escort Michael Phan, to help her, um, practice (heh). Practice, they do, but they also realize that their previously strictly dickly (lol) arrangement is starting to feel so right in other ways.
Book club bonus: Discuss society/mainstream media’s portrayal of the sexuality of disabled people. How is it handed generally?
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
The best books of the year (so far)!
Mysteries and thrillers as beach reads?
Y’all, TikTok now has a bookclub and the first book is… Persuasion by Jane Austen. I would have never guessed *insert Pikachu shocked face*
I hope this newsletter found you well, and as always, thanks for hanging out! If you have any comments or just want to connect, send an email to erica@riotnewmedia.com or holla at me on Twitter @erica_eze_. You can also catch me talking more mess in the new In Reading Color newsletter as well as chattin’ with my new cohost Tirzah Price on the Hey YA podcast.
Until next week,
-Erica
Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
IRC friends! Good news: my friend got me a kitten! Actually, he literally caught a kitten with his bare hands that was near the library where he works. Yes, he really did, and yes, I know (I’ve been telling him he’s country like me, but he won’t listen). The kitten was understandably scared at first, but quickly warmed up and is now doing parkour (purr-kour?) off my forehead at 2 a.m. Children are poorly behaved no matter the species, I realize.
In other news, poet Danez Smith makes a good point here. Run me my dropss.
This shirt keeps with the theme of education and its needed reform, and will serve as a great note on things we should keep in mind. I also just like the imagery of wildflowers growing out of a book. The shop is Indigenous owned, and the shirt is customizable at $24.
This YA graphic novel is being pitched as a mix of Stranger Things and Riverdale. In it, two high school boys become unlikely friends (and then more, eow). Popular track star and part-time delinquent Tony Price and quiet kid Eli Hirsch, who has a chronic illness, contend with the werewolf curses, fishermen ghosts, and general messiness that is high school in the town of Blackwater, Maine. An interesting element of this graphic novel is how Jeannette Arroyo and Ren Graham take turns writing each chapter, so you get a mix of styles.
Get ready to start hearing about this everywhere. In this retelling of The Island of Doctor Moreau, Carlota Moreau is a young woman who has spent her entire life in the luxuriant bubble her father, Dr. Moreau, has created for her in Yucatán, Mexico. Contrasted against her seemingly idyllic life, though, is the existence of her father’s creations—obedient part human, part animal beings who are meant to remain in the shadows. But this carefully curated world starts to fall apart when the son of Dr. Moreau’s patrons, Eduardo Lizalde, arrives.
For a more comprehensive list, check out our New Books newsletter.
Abbott Elementary has racked up SEVEN Emmy nominations! You love to see it. If you’re not familiar with the show, you really should watch it. It’s shot in a mockumentary style and follows an idealistic teacher as she begins at an underfunded Philadelphia school. The cast is outstanding and it is genuinely funny, which I think is low key hard to do. (The show has also led to free book fairs for underfunded schools!)
Now, the books here don’t capture all that goodness that is Abbott Elementary individually, but they each offer an element that is similar.
Any of Robinson’s books’ll do ya, to be honest. In this one, she covers a wide range of topics — including her hair, the BLM movement, the commercialization of self care, and even some parental values (see: the title). Through all her essays, she offers a similar kind of humor and earnestness —and pop culture reference — as Abbott Elementary does.
And can I just say that the title is a word. I’ve literally had to tell people this before, smh.
Liz Lighty is shy, awkward, and trying to secure her way to an elite college. When she doesn’t win a scholarship, despite her stellar grades and extracurriculars, she’s convinced to try and win the prom queen scholarship. She’ll just have to deal with the competition, spotlight, and internalized self doubt that comes courtesy of growing up as a Black person in a very white, Midwestern area. There’s a bright side to all this, though, in the form of Mack, who is also running for prom queen. Lovely romcom shenanigans ensue.
Liz reminds me of Quinta’s character Janine in Abbott Elementary. Although she’s younger, she’s still kind of awkward, smart, and very hopeful about her future. She is also real about the racism around her.
The show’s entire premise is based around the struggles of trying to teach in an underfunded school in Philly, and while this provides many scenarios ripe with humor, it’s not nearly as funny for those living it. So I wanted to share a book that actually looks at the city’s education system. Here, Urban education scholar Camika Royal analyzes 50 years of education reforms in Philadelphia and how they’ve helped the largely Black student population, as well as how they haven’t. Royal makes the point that most of the work to reform schools has been done by teachers, just like in the show.
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Here’s the little aforementioned forehead jumper, if you were curious. I haven’t decided yet, but their name will most likely be Lavender. We shall see!
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.
-Erica
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
I saw something about the ghosts of family members possessing people and it made me think of generational trauma, which has been getting talked about more in mainstream media lately. It’s always interesting to think of how there are certain things, especially as far as spirituality goes, that get validated by psychology.
As far as ghosts and generational trauma goes, it’s come out lately how trauma may actually change children’s DNA. How ghost possession is said to take over bodies is akin, I think, to how gene expression can be changed by trauma, bringing the parents’ past into the present and projecting onto the new generation. The books I’ve chosen will give a lot in terms of discussion potential surrounding family, generational trauma, and culture.
Now let’s get to the club!
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Here’s a bright, summer-y drink that looks as cute as I think it tastes like.
Now for some books!
Jessamyn is broke after graduating and decides to move back to Malaysia— a place she hasn’t been since she was small— to live with family and try to figure things out. At her aunt’s house, she tries to be sociable with her aunt’s friends and manage her expectations for what she wants for herself compared to familial expectations (like their expectation for her to be straight compared to her having an actual girlfriend). Welp, all that takes a back seat once her granny low key possess her. Turns out her grandmother was a medium when she was alive and the avatar for the Black Water Sister deity. Now she wants Jessamyn to get involved in a world of gods, ghosts, and gangsters to avenge the Sister’s honor. Mess only begins to describe it.
Twenty-two year old Winnie is working as an English teacher in Saigon and believes herself to be as unremarkable as beige wallpaper (literally! bless). She only hopes her ineptitude in all things, especially English, isn’t found out by her colleagues. Well, one day she suddenly goes missing, and from the circumstances of her disappearance unfurl the history of Vietnam. Kupersmith shows how Winnie is connected to another Vietnamese girl who went missing decades before through ghosts, ancestors, and colonialism. The story weaves in and out of the past and the present, connecting things like French expatriates, kids sent to boarding schools, zoos, colonial mansions, and tales of revenge.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Mr. and Mrs. Cho just started getting more business for their restaurant in Hawai’i and they’re feeling pretty well about things. Until a video of their son, who moved to South Korea to teach English, goes viral. In it, he tries to cross the Korean demilitarized zone into North Korea. Suspicion immediately falls on the Chos and their restaurant sales drop. What no one knows is that their son Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his grandfather who now desperately wants to get back to the family he left behind. As Jacob is detained, his sister Grace slips more into her drug use, and the Chos don’t know what will become of their family or their business. As serious as all this sounds, I promise the book actually has a good dose of humor.
Read about the great publishing resignation
The correlation between sundown towns and book bans
Here are some of the best fantasy series to listen to on audiobook
Here are the best mysteries and thrillers out
Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
We’re introducing a new format for newsletters that we think will make the experience more reader-friendly. With it, we’ll include some interesting links, a bookish good, new releases, and a section of riot recommendations. Hope you like it!
I don’t know about you, but I can never have enough bookmarks. These are artful and thoughtful. The pack comes at $12.
Contreras grew up in the turbulent Colombia of the ’80s/’90s in a house filled with her mother’s magic. Her grandfather was known as a powerful curandero, or a community healer gifted with “the secrets,” and her mother was the first woman to inherit this gift. She offered fortune telling to clients and could cast out spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.
One day, Contreras suffers an injury to the head that is not unlike the one suffered decades earlier that precipitated her mother gaining access to her healer abilities. A shared dream between her, her sisters, and her mother ushers Contreras to make a sojourn to Colombia with her mother. There, they plan to (literally) dig up their family tree, uncovering the Indigenous and Spanish sides of her lineage and the violence— both physical and cultural— that is inherent to colonialism and its aftermath. She also has her own reckoning with her family’s gifts and what they mean for her.
In this memoir, Wong has a bone to pick with her Dominican mom. Except she can’t, really, since her mother has already passed away. Before she died, though, she had moved Wong from living with Chinese immigrant Peter Wong— whom she still calls Papi— in Harlem to New Hampshire with Charlie, who was presented as the picture of “ideal” white fatherhood. After a DNA test reveals that neither man is her real father, Wong sets out to unravel the truth behind her parentage, all while trying to reckon with a lifetime of never fitting in.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
The mini Hey YA podcast episode I recorded that’s coming out tomorrow highlights a few books with road trips, so I thought I’d come up with a few more for the In Reading Color audience. As I mention in the episode, I wanted to do an episode on road trips because they’re one of the things I think of and like about summer. They can be fun, freeing, and light-hearted opportunities for growth. They can also be catalysts that set already existing issues to boil in a pressurized setting. These books lean towards the latter.
This is television writer R. Eric Thomas’ YA debut (he also wrote the hilarious Here For It). When it’s revealed that besties Harrison and Linus’ days of hanging out are coming to a close at the end of the week when Linus’ family will move to South Carolina, Harrison is low key devastated. To commemorate their last days together, he comes up with a Black and queer Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-esque list of memorable activities. The mini road trip across Baltimore becomes memorable in some undesirable ways, too, though, as they dodge their overly protective parents and have to contend with racism. This isn’t a super light read, but it has its moments of lightness. It really shines in how dearly it portrays a Black, queer friendship that doesn’t try to veer into the romantic.
This reminded me so much of Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, specifically As I Lay Dying. In it, 13 year old Jojo and his toddler sister Kayla are forced to leave their grandparents’ home where they live— and where his grandmother lies dying from cancer— to journey with their drug addicted mother to the prison where their father is set to be released. Ghosts— of family members and departed friends—surface as the family contends with the lasting effects of racism, trauma, and general dysfunction.
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.
-Erica
Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
I think that with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there is an urge by some to view everything surrounding it as women’s issues. And they are, but that’s because they’re human rights issues. The forces that threaten equality, at least in the western world, can largely be grouped under the umbrella of the white patriarchy. The concept of intersectionality has shown that they compound each other’s negative effects, thereby strengthening each other’s effectiveness. This is why sexism must be toppled to stop racism, ableism must be abolished to eradicate classism, and so on.
The books I’m discussing today will focus on gender-based violence, but also showcase just how united all of these forms of oppression are in achieving their goal of achieving privilege for the few.
Okay, so can we be real for a moment and acknowledge how, if those in power had believed Anita Hill in the ’90s about Clarence Thomas, we might not be in this mess today? Okay, cool. Here, Hill recounts her testifying against Thomas’ sexual deviancy as she gets into the origins and pervasiveness of gender-based violence in the U.S. She makes the case of how it not only affects its victims, but everyone. I have to say, her speaking out against a man of power concerning sexual misconduct in 1991 as a Black woman is fearless af and she needs every last one of her flowers.
I wanted to include a novel since I feel like seeing something through the eyes of the characters helps to make it more real and current for some. Also, this one takes place in the summer before Roe v Wade. It’s about four teenage girls from different backgrounds who are all dealing with unplanned pregnancies. Ola is a teen in rural Georgie who is pregnant, the responsibility of which falls on her younger sister Izella. Then there’s Missippi, who hasn’t fully realized the gravity of her situation. Missippi’s father sends her to Chicago to give birth and it’s there that she meets Susan, who is white and whose father is an anti-choice politician.
This book shows how the women of the Hoopa Valley Tribe started to revitalize the traditional coming-of-age dance for women called the Flower Dance. It’s a dance that, like many other aspects of Indigenous culture, hadn’t been practiced in decades. To recover the dance, the women consult their elders, medicine women, oral histories, and even museum archives. Baldy discusses the revitalization of the dance within the context of colonization and the gender inequality— and therefore gender violence— that came with it. There are many parallels between Indigenous women’s experiences with being controlled through reproduction and Black women’s. With both groups, the U.S. government has flip-flopped between forced birth and forced sterilization, with a dose of separating children from families thrown in between.
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.
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
Last week somehow feels like two weeks ago. I think my brain copes with traumatic events by warping time? Is that a thing? Sounds like a thing. Anyway, I hope everyone is safe and doing well!
July is Disability Pride Month, which I recently learned takes place in July because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed on July 26, 1990. Which… seems too recent. *heavy sigh* It, like many other Pride celebrations, was started to highlight the brilliance within a marginalized community, while dispelling whichever brand of dehumanization that is attached to it. The following books are a mixture of nonfiction and fiction and do just that.
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People sometimes try to play me when it comes to salad recipes. Like, yes, it’s all raw, but flavor combinations are always a thing when it comes to food, sheesh! Anywho, this green goddess salad recipe has cucumber, cabbage, nutritional yeast, and all other manner of good things that makes this satisfyingly crunchy, summer-y, and light.
Now for some books!
Disability activist Alice Wong has gathered a collection of contemporary, disabled writers with the aim to explore the experiences of disabled people outside of the lens of ableism. The collection includes everything from blog posts to manifestos, Congressional testimony to original essays that highlight the disabled experience in all its glory. Wong also includes more reading options in the form of nonfiction, podcasts, and poetry.
Book club bonus: There have been disabled people who talk about how people may doubt the validity of their disability because it’s not as easily seen. Discuss what this collection of essays says about that and compare to what people have written about having more visible disabilities.
“True biz” is a phrase in American Sign Language (ASL) that means “really; seriously; real-talk.” Its use as the title of Nović’s book is to show how ASL is not simply the equivalent of English for Deaf people, but its own language with its own phrases and idioms. Here, we follow the lives of Charlie, Austin, and February, who are all linked through River Valley School for the Deaf. Charlie is a transfer student who will be meeting other Deaf people for the first time; Austin does well at the school, but has new things to figure out when his sister is born hearing; and February is the headmistress who is trying to keep both the school and her marriage together.
Book club bonus: What surprised you about the residential Deaf school?
O’Connell actually stars in Queer As Folk and Special, and has a few things in common with the main character of Just by Looking At Him, Elliott, who is a TV writer, gay, and has cerebral palsy. Elliott is super-duper going through it, though. Behind his seemingly Instagram perfect life, he’s struggling with alcohol addiction, being unfaithful to his boyfriend, and issues with internalized ableism. There are quite a few laughs to be had as he tries to get his ish together.
Book club bonus: Discuss how the intersection of queerness and disability manifests in Elliott’s life.
Wang’s collection of autobiographical essays will take you on a journey. First, she details what it took to get diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and how those in the medical field even have disagreements concerning procedures surrounding diagnosing. She also shows how schizophrenia has shown up in her life, how she’s used her sense of style to present as high-functioning, and how illnesses like PTSD can compound symptoms. Her essays strike a nice balance of analytical with personal, no doubt in part due to her time as a researcher at Stanford. Make sure to also pick up [Don’t] Call Me Crazy, edited by our own Kelly Jensen, which Wang has contributed to.
Book club bonus: Discuss how medical professionals disagree on mental illness. What implications does this have for patients?
A reader’s guide to Disability Pride Month
Honey & Spice is Reese’s July pick
The Dead Romantics is the GMA July pick
Jenna Bush Hager’s July pick is The Measure
Here are some non-murdery mysteries
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
I hope this newsletter found you well, and as always, thanks for hanging out! If you have any comments or just want to connect, send an email to erica@riotnewmedia.com or holla at me on Twitter @erica_eze_. You can also catch me talking more mess in the new In Reading Color newsletter as well as chattin’ with my new cohost Tirzah Price on the Hey YA podcast.
Until next week,
-E
Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
I think that with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there is an urge by some to view everything surrounding it as women’s issues. And they are, but that’s because they’re human rights issues. The forces that threaten equality, at least in the western world, can largely be grouped under the umbrella of the white patriarchy. The concept of intersectionality has shown that they compound each other’s negative effects, thereby strengthening each other’s effectiveness. This is why sexism must be toppled to stop racism, ableism must be abolished to eradicate classism, and so on.
The books I’m discussing today will focus on gender-based violence, but also showcase just how united all of these forms of oppression are in achieving their goal of achieving privilege for the few.
Okay, so can we be real for a moment and acknowledge how, if those in power had believed Anita Hill in the ’90s about Clarence Thomas, we might not be in this mess today? Okay, cool. Here, Hill recounts her testifying against Thomas’ sexual deviancy as she gets into the origins and pervasiveness of gender-based violence in the U.S. She makes the case of how it not only affects its victims, but everyone. I have to say, her speaking out against a man of power concerning sexual misconduct in 1991 as a Black woman is fearless af and she needs every last one of her flowers.
This book shows how the women of the Hoopa Valley Tribe started to revitalize the traditional coming-of-age dance for women called the Flower Dance. It’s a dance that, like many other aspects of Indigenous culture, hadn’t been practiced in decades. To recover the dance, the women consult their elders, medicine women, oral histories, and even museum archives. Baldy discusses the revitalization of the dance within the context of colonization and the gender inequality— and therefore gender violence— that came with it. There are many parallels between Indigenous women’s experiences with being controlled through reproduction and Black women’s. With both groups, the U.S. government has flip-flopped between forced birth and forced sterilization, with a dose of separating children from families thrown in between.
I wanted to include a novel since I feel like seeing something through the eyes of the characters helps to make it more real and current for some. Also, this one takes place in the summer before Roe v Wade. It’s about four teenage girls from different backgrounds who are all dealing with unplanned pregnancies. Ola is a teen in rural Georgie who is pregnant, the responsibility of which falls on her younger sister Izella. Then there’s Missippi, who hasn’t fully realized the gravity of her situation. Missippi’s father sends her to Chicago to give birth and it’s there that she meets Susan, who is white and whose father is an anti-choice politician.
See what the stars have to say about your next read
Get a book rec based off your favorite pop star!
Must-read under the radar queer reads from the first half of the year!
Dubai opened a new book-shaped library
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
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,
-E
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
Friends! I’m writing from the future as I will be out for a few days for my birthday week. My friend is visiting, and I would promise some stories of b-day grade debauchery I could share upon my arrival, but the way my knees and indigestion are set up *cries in early 30s*…
Yeah, so I’ll just leave you with leaked footage from the Joker musical that no one asked for instead.
See you next week!
Okay, so I know it’s been a little pasta heavy ’round these parts lately, but hear me out. I literally made this sun-dried tomato pasta three times recently and people have loved it. It’s a pretty simple and relatively quick dish, depending on your protein. I opted for shrimp, which has a short cook time. For it, you’ll need:
* 4 teaspoons Italian seasoning
* 1 teaspoon paprika or smoked paprika
* 3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
* 2 tablespoons salted butter
* 1 medium shallot or red onion, chopped
* 2 cloves garlic, chopped
* 1 pound short cut pasta
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
You cook the protein first with oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and some of the parmesan (if using something like shrimp, undercook a bit first because you’ll add it to the pasta later). Then you remove the protein, add butter and sauté the garlic and onion/shallot. When those are translucent, you add a cup or so of water and the pasta. Add more water to cover the pasta, cover and cook for about half the time the pasta packaging says. Then add the heavy cream, dijon, shrimp/other protein, remaining seasoning, and parmesan, and cook for the rest of the pasta cook time. Add the spinach with about 1 minute left. Thank me later.
Now for some books!
Iconic magician Violet Volk performed thee ultimate magic trick by actually disappearing mid act. And not being seen since. As the tenth anniversary of her disappearance nears, super fan Cameron Frank increases his efforts to secure an interview with Violet’s more responsible and non-magically oriented sister Sasha, who stayed out of the limelight as she raised her daughter. Even as Sasha would rather avoid the subject of her sister, who she still holds some resentment for, she starts experiencing sleepwalking episodes that are connected to Violet. Then there’s Quinn, Sasha’s daughter and Violet’s niece, who idolizes her aunt and wants to find out what happened to her for herself. When I tell you Violet has a grip on the gworls! Gone for 10 years, and people are still talking! Truly iconic.
Book club bonus: What do you think of the more surreal elements of the story? Do you feel they boosted or held back the mystery at the book’s core?
Sweet like plantain, hot like pepper. They taste the best when together…
Bars! If you’re a person of culture, you may recognize the good sis Bolu as the person who shot her shot with Michael B. Jordan. For this, I will always stan her, but Honey & Spice gives even more stanning material. It follows Kiki Banjo, the hostess of popular student radio show Brown Sugar. Quick-witted and even quicker to read down a wasteman (which is just British for “f-boy”), Kiki hopes to keep her fellow Whitehall University students from wasting time with men who are only interested in situationships and other f-boy trappings. Her reputation takes a bit of a nosedive when she’s seen kissing a guy she publicly denounced as a wasteman on her show. To save face, they start fake dating and learn that they may be ready for more than they thought.
This lyrical and funny romance is Babalola’s debut novel, but make sure to also check out her collection of stories, Love in Color.
Book club bonus: What did you think of Kiki and Malakai’s relationship? Would you want to experience something similar? Why or why not?
Look at that cover! I’ve been excited about this sequel since I read Dead Dead Girls last year (which I don’t think you need to have read already if you want to pick this one up). Here, 27-year old Louise Lloyd returns to the world of amateur sleuthing in 1920s Harlem. After having helped catch the Girl Killer last year, she now manages her friend’s nightclub the Dove. When one of the girls she was kidnapped with years ago steps back into her life, it spells disaster. The morning after Louise and the girl reconnect, the girl is found dead and Louise’s girlfriend Rosa Maria is covered in her blood. Louise needs to make quick work of the mystery of who killed Nora before it’s too late for Rosa Maria.
Book club bonus: Even though I know the era wasn’t a walk in the park for a lot of people, especially people with marginalized identities, reading about the ’20s can be really fun sometimes. Discuss some of the elements, good and bad, of the time that you were surprised by.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Here are some more book club friendly reads
The Subversive Verse of Shel Silverstein (also, A1 title!)
Here are some current bookish trends (which ones have you noticed yourself)?
I hope this newsletter found you well, and as always, thanks for hanging out! If you have any comments or just want to connect, send an email to erica@riotnewmedia.com or holla at me on Twitter @erica_eze_. You can also catch me talking more mess in the new In Reading Color newsletter as well as chattin’ with my new cohost Tirzah Price on the Hey YA podcast.
Until next week,
-E
Welcome to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
I’m really looking forward to the next few days I have off and even have a (very ambitious) list of books I’d like to read. Naturally, I know they can’t all be read in a week, but such are the book life struggles!
Also, I thought I should follow up on the impact of Beyonce’s single that was released last week. The influence! If you haven’t listened, you need to. It’s ’90s house with a touch of Big Freedia. There’s even a little delicious shade that comes with.
As one of the funnest months (my birthday! Pride!) ends, I wanted to highlight a few queer, translated books.
I’ve written in another newsletter about how Miaojin was Taiwan’s first openly lesbian writer who was active in the late ’80s/early 90s. And Notes of a Crocodile seems autobiographical. In it, the alienation college student Lazi feels because of her attraction to women leads to severe depression. The novel is structured as eight notebooks, which detail Lazi’s romantic struggles, as well as the lives of her complicated friends. This is a queer coming-of-age novel that is more character than plot based and really captures the essence of feeling alienated from others. Miaojin wasn’t able to see her novel achieve cult classic status, sadly, as she passed away in ’95.
This won the 2019 Lambda award for bisexual fiction and is both a family saga and story of Iranian history. Kimiâ Sadr serves as narrator and is the youngest daughter in a family of intellectuals who speak out against the government. She jumps back and forth through time, telling a story that juxtaposes her current experience with her family’s past, effectively telling Iran’s past in the process. While waiting in a fertility clinic in France, where she and her family fled to when she was ten, she recounts her childhood as a person descended from a harem. The story’s many characters, changing timelines, and historical events are tragic at times, but can also be funny, with Sadr occasionally breaking the fourth wall.
San is a young woman in South Korea in 1970s who first faces rejection from her parents, and the stigma of her father having left, and later rejection from the one person who made her feel less alone. Now 22 and working in a florist’s shop, San continues to struggle with relationships, partially because how things ended with her childhood friend still haunts her.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Boston Globe-Horn book award winners announced
Which of these book trends have you noticed?
Do you know what Twitterature is?
Librarian vandalizes two public libraries and more censorship news
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,
-E
