Author: Erica Ezeifedi

Srinivasan, a professor at Oxford, examines the idea of sex in the west, specifically the U.S. and the U.K. Through essays that make the argument that a seemingly private thing is actually a public concern, she asks how we should talk and think about sex. She argues that things like gender, class, race, sexuality, and immigration status should be considered when issues concerning consent are raised. Porn and its role in the objectification of women is also tackled, with Srinivasan questioning whether legislation would help in the internet age. She references second-wave feminism of the ’60s and ’70s, and touches on how laws that were seemingly made to protect vulnerable populations actually ended up harming them and strengthening oppressive institutions, especially in the case of sex work.

Book Club Bonus: What do you think of Srinivasan’s argument on legislation and vulnerable populations? Do you think the further marginalization of the vulnerable with these laws was intentional or merely unfortunate?

Hamad covers much ground— from Zimbabwe to the U.S.— in her analysis of the culture and history of white feminism. She starts in the time of slavery in the Americas and how white women fought to keep Black people, which of course included Black women, enslaved to them. She argues how, since then, many of them have endorsed all of the evil trappings that come with colonialism, leaning onto the pedestal created for them by the patriarchy when convenient. Some of them have protected the privileges of “white womanhood” through the years by participating with white men in things like removing Indigenous children from their families and lynchings.

As evidence of this, she offers the example of how some white women will weaponize their tears in order to avoid accountability in the workplace, forcing the woman of color bringing them to task to accept blame lest she be labelled “aggressive.” Her cultural analysis includes everything from the Hunger Games to the lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest in the 19th century.

Book Club Bonus: Discuss what you think of the idea of exclusionary feminism having started in the time of slavery (at least for the U.S.). Do you think the type of women who believed in slavery if it benefitted them would be the same to believe in feminism?

Let’s take it all the way back, shall we? In this feminist classic, Davis also starts in the time of slavery. Enslaved Black women worked alongside the men in the fields as they, too, tried to fight against slavery whenever possible. These women embodied “hard work, perseverance and self-reliance, a legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality – in short, a legacy spelling out standards for a new womanhood.” In other words, these women lived by feminist principles, but there has been a history of Black women and other women of color being separated from the movement.

Davis starts to explain when the divide took place as she details how Sarah and Angelina Grimke, two southern white sisters, fought for abolition and feminism simultaneously. Then, during the Suffrage movement, the interests of feminism changed, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott leading their followers to focus on issues that largely did not apply to non white women or working class women. Davis continues through history to the present (this book was published in the early ’80s), discussing contemporary issues (like reproductive rights, etc.).

Book Club Bonus: Discuss the contemporary issues presented by Davis. Are they still relevant today, or have they largely been solved?

This took home the audiobook of the year award and was narrated by Ray Porter. It follows Ryland Grace, who just woke up from a looong sleep on a ship in space millions of miles from home. He has a crappy memory and two corpses to contend with. Annd he’s also humanity’s last hope to defeat a threat of epic proportions, but he doesn’t remember that, either. Suffice to say, Ryland is pressed.

Book Club Bonus: Speculative fiction writers have long been credited with predicting the future, but how close to a future reality does this book come, do you think? Has the pandemic changed just how much of speculative fiction you think is possible. Discuss!

Obama won the narration by the author award for this presidential memoir. It makes sense, since our former president has a voice like buttah! Anywho, here Obama takes it all the way back to some of his earliest political goals on through his historic eight year term. He includes everything from developing the Affordable Care Act, contending with Vladimir Putin, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and more.

Book Club Bonus: A lot of things get blamed on the president of the moment, even if said president had no hand or control over the issue. Obama talks about some of his limits as president here. Discuss what surprised you.

This won the Audie award for fiction and was narrated by Janina Edwards, Bahni Turpin, James Langton, André De Shields, Dennis Boutsikaris, Steve West, Gabra Zackman, Robin Miles, and a full cast. Phew! “Full cast,” indeed! This is about Opal, a young, Black woman from Detroit as she figures out what she wants to do with her life in the early seventies. She’s not the type to conform to social standards and wants to be a star. So when she meets the British songwriter Neville Charles, she decides to pursue her musical dream with him. Then, when another band flies the confederate flag at a concert, tragedy strikes. Years later, journalist Sunny is covering Opal and Nev’s musical history and some shocking things come to light. This is told through oral tradition, which is especially suited to an audiobook.

Book Club Bonus: Discuss what the club thought of the revelation. Does it change things? If so, how?

This won for thriller/suspense and was narrated by Brittany Pressley, Jennifer Jill Araya, Gary Tiedemann, and Jesse Vilinsky. It takes place in a peaceful town where Shelby Tebow goes missing. Then, so do Meredith Dickey and Delilah, her young daughter. The case goes cold, but then eleven years later, Delilah shows up! A whole lot of wtf-isms ensue.

Book Club Bonus: A good mystery will surprise you with the reveal, but still lay the groundwork for it to be feasible in the build up to it. Discuss how you felt this book built up to its final conclusion.

This is considered to be thee most successful Ukrainian novel of the ’90s. Zabuzhko is a poet, foremost, and tells the story of another poet in a winding stream of conscious style. The narrator visits Harvard as a professor of Slavic studies and is forever changed. Suddenly, being back in Ukraine feels stifling and she beings to question her culture’s conventions. A parallel is drawn between her own subjugation at the hands of her lover and her country’s through history. There was a lot of controversy when this book came out, but that helped keep it on the bestseller’s list for more than ten years.

Book Club Bonus: Zabuzhko contends with her attraction to a domineering lover. Discuss what drew her to this subjugation.

Side note: I just wanted to say that the author did not have to call me out so early in the book on the subject of house plants: “Now both plants have the appearance of having been watered with sulfuric acid for the last three weeks.” Ma’am.

Argentinian Ocampo has had everyone from Jorge Luis Borges to Helen Oyeyemi singing her praises on her skill with short stories and novellas. Her stories tend to include the unsettling and grotesque, like a house of sugar that leads to possession, talking horse statues, and children locking away their mothers. She studied painting and other various forms of surrealist art, which no doubt had influence on her very original stories.

Book Club Bonus: Borges was friends with Ocampo’s husband and a great admirer of her work. He once made observations on her “strange taste for a certain kind of an innocent and oblique cruelty. I attribute this to the interest, the astonished interest, that evil inspires in a noble soul.” She grew up in a privileged household, and was, as a result, a “lady.” Discuss this need of Borges to define her often dark stories. Do you think he’s on to something, or is this an unwillingness on his part to fully identify someone like Ocampo with her stories?

Miaojin was Taiwan’s first openly lesbian writer, being active in the late ’80s/early ’90s. She was studying clinical psychology and feminism with French philosopher Hélène Cixous when she met a tragic end at 26. The award-winning Notes of a Crocodile was released at the height of Taiwanese media’s unhealthy obsession with lesbians. It’s about a group of queer students at a prestigious college after Taiwan came out of martial-law. The narrator Lazi (which is a slang term for “lesbian”) details the goings-on of her crew who do everything but studying with a mix of vignettes and observations on life. She’s attracted to an older women who is ambivalent towards her, but is still reveling in her new freedom and romantic ideals.

Book Club Bonus: Discuss the analogies contained within Miaojin’s crocodile fable where, once it got back from work, the crocodile “removed the sweat-soaked human suit clinging to its body.”

This collection of poems is essential for a list like this. As I mentioned before, Walker came up with the label “Affrilachia” to give visibility to Black people from the region. With this collection, Walker distills his experiences as a creative growing up Black and male in Kentucky, thorough the medium of poetry, shining a light on another corner of the Black American experience.

Book Club Bonus: If you’ve read other poetry collections by Black people that are about their lives, how does this one differ? Everyone has different experiences, and we’re all our own people, but based on this collection, how do you think growing up in the region changes Black childhoods?

In response to Catte’s title, I say “a lot.” Catte read Hillbilly Elegy and felt some type of way, and with good reason. In this book, the East Tennessean historian shouts down the harmful stereotypes— like the idea that the region consists solely of white people with supremacist ideologies— espoused in J.D. Vance’s book. She counters Vance’s stereotypical portrayal of the area by showing how diverse it is, and even how many of the people leading the area’s progress are young minorities (while its problems are perpetuated by corporations). She also highlights the region’s activism and how there was great support for political candidates like Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential election. (She’s not Black, but I included her here because she’s a native of the region and talks about its diversity.)

Book Club Bonus: If anyone in your book club read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, this would be a great opportunity to discuss Catte’s criticisms of it. Also, how do Catte’s descriptions of the area make you feel about it? Why do you think stereotypical views of it are so persistent?

Wilkinson drops us into a fictional town called Opulence located in the mountains of Kentucky. There, we follow several generations of women from two families as they struggle with mental illness, secrets, coming of age, womanhood, sexuality, and assault. We also see how the town both is both blessed and cursed by its mountainous surroundings. The writing is lyrical and poetic, as can be expected from a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets group and Kentucky’s Poet Laureate since 2021.

TW: s*xual assault

Book Club Bonus: I’ve seen the question asked before about why some Black people stayed in the South during the Great Migration, while around 6 million others moved north. How does this book answer that question?

bell! The late iconic feminist writer bell hooks offers vignettes on what it was like growing up in the ’50s as a Black girl in the South. She tells how she realized at an early age the difference in gender roles, and how colorism and racism were enforced. She describes living in a household with a distant and sometimes physically abusive Father where she’s grappled with her own identity in relation to “… a rich magical world of southern black culture that was sometimes paradisiacal and at other times terrifying.” As a child, she was a loner but found solace in books, which, same Auntie bell, same. hooks also has a poetry collection titled Appalachian Elegy.

Book Club Bonus: bell alternates between first and third person for this book, which some might find to be odd. Discuss the choice of using third person for a memoir. What does it add and what does it take away? Do you think it’s a way to detach from the story or simply an artistic choice?