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Ava and Justin are about to be married for the holidays, but there’s just one thing left for them to do. For generations, engaged couples in Ava’s family have traveled into the Everglades to retrieve a rare bird egg and bake it into a wedding cake. Those who succeed live happily ever after. Those who fail are destined for heartbreak. With Ava’s beloved grandmother ill, the tradition means more than ever. Can Ava uphold their oldest family ritual before it’s too late? Read The Marriage Test, a touching short story by Suzanne Redfearn. Prime members read and listen for free.
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
Does anyone else live around bad a** kids lol? I mean, they’re actually very pleasant each of the few times I’ve interacted with them directly, but when I have the window open and they’re playing right outside of it, I can hear all their little drama. And it’s a LOT. They dance, tell jokes, yell (so much yelling), and discuss their dating lives *dead*. They’re a range of ages, but I think the oldest can’t be past ten. I’m so serious. They put all their little business on front street. And, I feel like they think no one else can hear them, maybe because they can’t see us? I don’t know, but they are a mess.
A verbatim excerpt from one of their conversations I overheard:
“Yasssssuh. Look at my leeeggss.”
Several of them: “Ew! No, I don’t wanna look at your legs!” *various sounds of dismay*.
They also practice cussin’ sometimes. I can’t. I have to admit they are low-key funny, though, and I’m also me, so there’s that.
Now, on to the club!
Nibbles and Sips
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Rosalynn Daniels gives us this recipe for this beautifully crusted vegetable au gratin that I think could be graduated to being the main course.
To the books!
In Other Words, I Need to Read More Nonfiction
Since the world has the nerve to already be in the month of December, I’ve started looking back and thinking about what I’ve done this year, etc. One place I think I could have done a bit better in is reading more books outside of my comfort zone. I used Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge to draw some topics from.
#12. A WORK OF INVESTIGATIVE NONFICTION BY AN AUTHOR OF COLOR
Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga
Talaga gives a voice to Indigenous children whose deaths were never properly explained. She makes the case about how the lives of the Indigenous people of Canada have never been treated equally. This is easily seen in how missing cases and deaths of Indigenous people have a history of not being properly investigated. The 1966 case of Chanie Wenjack who froze to death at the age of twelve after having run away from a residential school is an example of this. Although there was an inquest and recommendations given to prevent it from happening again, none of it was taken seriously.
Decades later, seven Indigenous high schoolers died in Thunder Bay, Ontario hundreds of miles away from their families. A few were found in rivers, a couple died in their boarding houses, and one disappeared into the freezing night. Seven years after the first child, Jethro Anderson, was found, an investigation was finally ordered in response to Reggie Bushie’s death. Talaga focuses on the Northern City of Thunder Bay, but its history of handling Indigenous children and people is representative of Canada as whole.
#16. AN OWN VOICES BOOK ABOUT DISABILITY
Disfigured by Amanda Leduc
Leduc examines the role fairy tales have played in society’s view of disability. Throughout her book, she critiques tales that range from the Brothers Grimm to modern Disney iterations, showing how happiness has only ever been thought to be for beautiful, able-bodied people. It’s interesting how every culture has myths, and how much these stories are meant to shape the cultures in turn. Many of the myths from the Disney fairy tales that Leduc discusses here were borrowed from other continents, so the views regarding disability didn’t originate with the entertainment company, but I wonder just how much actually seeing this kind of discrimination play out in the form of movies made them that much harder to dispel.
#22. A BOOK SET IN THE MIDWEST
Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broome
Broome frames his memoir around Gwendolyn Brook’s poem “We Real Cool.” In it, he recounts his experiences growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned, queer Black kid. As you might have imagined, this was an experience was full of homophobia, racism, and even abuse from his father. He further describes how he used sex and drugs to self soothe to disastrous effects in this beautifully written memoir that just won a Kirkus Prize.
Side note: The book blurb describes Brook’s poem as a “loving ode to Black boyhood,” which I think is… interesting. Reading the poem gives me anything but Black joy vibes, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen blurbs use examples of other well-known Black art to describe Black books, even when it doesn’t exactly fit (all the “just like the movie Get Out” books, I’m looking at you). Let me know what y’all think about this.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Suggestion Section
Good news! We’re hiring for an Advertising Sales Manager. Do you like books and comics? Does helping advertisers reach an enthusiastic community of book and comics lovers intrigue you? This might be your job. Apply by December 5, 2021
Here are some more book club themed gifts for your fellow book clubbers
For December’s Book club pick, GMA has chosen Dava Shastri’s Last Day
B*tch Media has chosen Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth as their last pick of the year. There will be an interview with the author that you can join on December 13
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
