Author: Erica Ezeifedi

I think I’ve recommended a few recipes by @kimmyskreations1 already, but I feel like y’all see why. I don’t do much with baking + fruit, but it’s still peach season and I’m looking forward to trying something out of my ordinary.

She doesn’t include printed instructions, but Creole Contessa does here.

You’ll need:

– 2 cans of peaches

– butter

– empanada wrappers

– white sugar

– cinnamon

– brown sugar

– nutmeg

– vanilla bean gel/vanilla extract

You can add amounts by eyeballing @kimmyskreations1’s video (and stopping when your ancestors say to), or just follow Contessa’s listed-out instructions.

This takes place during the Rwandan genocide and is partially fictional, partially autobiographical. Hunger has such a constant presence in characters’ lives that it’s personified as Igifu, “a cruel guardian angel.” A child searches for nourishment at the bud of a flower, a woman recounts her life before the war and after, and a young man remembers his father and the wealth that cattle promised in another time. Zadie Smith has said the collection “rescues a million souls from the collective noun genocide.”

Is “talk to my back” the Japanese version of “talk to the hand?” I personally think so, and if it really is, then this title is serving an extra bit of life. Especially considering its subject matter: it follows Chiharu as she struggles with the state of her marriage and mothering two teenage daughters. As her husband’s disregard for her — he sees her as a domestic servant and cheats on her — becomes apparent, so too does Japan’s failing of its female population. Murasaki was the first manga artist to use manga as a medium to explore the lives of Japanese women in such an honest way, and Talk to My Back was originally published serially in the influential alternative manga magazine Garo from 1981-84.

Janina is an aging astrologist who house-sits for some of her neighbors, who usually only return to their houses in her small Polish town for vacations. She also translates the poetry of William Blake, which is an interesting combination of activities (listen, get you someone who can do both). When the bodies of some of her neighbors, people she knew not to respect nature, turn up dead, she assumes that animals are taking their revenge. This is a mystery that has possible supernatural elements, with a main character who is eccentric and just as passionate about the lives of animals as she is that of humans.

This was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and follows two homegirls and their ever-changing views on motherhood. Since forever, Laura and Alina have thought that becoming mothers wasn’t for them, instead structuring their lives around careers. So much so that when they reach their mid-30s, Laura has her tubes tied. But then Alina does a 180 and announces her decision to have a child. This, understandably, rattles their friendship, but what starts off as shaky ground turns into sympathy for a damning diagnosis for Alina’s unborn child. As Alina contends with what may happen to her baby, Laura begins to see motherhood in a new light, courtesy of her widowed neighbor’s young son.

I have never heard of watermelon fries, but I’m so intrigued! It’s essentially just watermelon cut into fry-like shapes, and @Feelgoodfoodie made a delicious-sounding dip to go with them.

All you need is: a watermelon, crinkle cutter (if you want to be extra cute), and yogurt, honey, and strawberries for the dip. Cut up the watermelon and blend the dip ingredients together and there you have it.

Bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo makes her adult debut with Family Lore. In it, the women of a Dominican American family prepare for a living wake. Flor Marte can see when other people will die, and so it worries her sisters when she requests a living wake for herself. But whether she will die soon or not she keeps to herself — and she’s not the only secret keeper. From a secret attraction to an old lover recently released from prison — the Marte women’s rich, complex, and magical lives are brilliantly brought to life here.

A dead body is discovered in a small town of Black, Jewish, and other European immigrants in Pennsylvania in 1972. To fully understand what happened, McBride takes us all the way back to 1925, when Moshe and Chona ran both the only integrated dance hall as well as the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store in the Chicken Hill community. It’s the Moshes who help their friend Nate, the leader of the Black community, when he needs to hide his deaf nephew to stop him from becoming institutionalized. But then racists interfere and something terrible happens. But the community comes together to protect its own. (Aug. 8)

I really loved Cañas’ The Hacienda and am super excited for this one. It’s the 1840s, and Mexico has long been threatened by invaders from the north. But there’s another kind of monster that threatens the country’s borders. And when Nena and Néstor were young, it was one of these monsters that attacked Nena and caused Néstor to flee. He’s been fleeing ever since, and doing his best f-boi impression to drown out the guilt of having abandoned his best friend. The two are united, though, when Néstor is part of a militia to fight off the Americans, and Nena is that militia’s curandera, or healer. She (understandably) feels some type of way about how he bolted nine years ago, but the real threat soon takes precedence over any long-held grudges. (Aug. 15)

This is part whodunit, missing persons case, meditation on race, philosophical exploration, and more. And it’s delightfully twisty on top of all that. The patriarch of the Parksons goes missing, and it’s only Eugene — one of the Parksons’ kids who has a rare condition that prevents him from speaking — who saw what happened. We follow the investigation, yes, but we also see how the family relearns how to communicate with each other and how they define what it means to be happy. (Aug. 29)

This is a simple dish/technique if you like tobiko/fish roe. You just need the fish roe, steamed rice, butter, fried egg, rice seasoning (like furikake), sesame oil, soy sauce, scallions, and a little bit of sesame seeds.

In this second chance romance, Jana is set to attend a destination wedding in Tanzania and ready for the reset it’s sure to provide. But then she finds out her ex, and child’s father, Anil will also be there, and suddenly her plans are ruined. Even though he’s a good father, she can’t forgive him for what he did years ago. To distract herself and show that she’s not sweating him, she comes up with a list to get her juices flowing. She’ll perform karaoke, do dance routines for strangers, and generally let her guard down. But that makes her more susceptible to her still-lingering attraction to Anil.

Main character Tatsu provides a good portion of this manga’s comic relief as a former member of the yakuza who now spends his days as a loving househusband to his wife Miku. Turns out you can take the husband out of the yakuza, but you can’t take the yakuza out of the husband. Tatsu’s natural aesthetic and demeanor are just a little too gangster-adjacent and still reflect his time as the much-feared “Immortal Dragon.” And, his facial expressions still make people sweat. They’re also just a little out of place in the clearance section of the grocery store. Tatsu brings a hilarious intensity to the most mundane and everyday househusband chores, and it’s fun to watch him interact with his neighbors.

“Get you a man who can do both! “—Miku, probably

Tell me you wouldn’t read this cover in a bookstore or at a library and have to pick it up. And the title is pretty spot on. Cinnamon is drunk when she saves the shifter demon Fallon, and after he follows her home and tells her of the evil goddess that has reduced demons to zombie-like states, she accompanies him to free his people. She helps him free some other things, too, if you know what I mean. This is a fun, funny, steamy monster romance with a Black female lead (in other words, you should read it ASAP). Bonus points for Cinnamon’s siblings being named Chili and Cumin, and for the fact that the paperback cover is fuego.

This queer YA retelling of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is the last entry to Price’s Jane Austen Murder Mystery series. Fanny is living at her uncle Sir Thomas Bertram’s estate, where she suffers at the hands of her mean relatives. Then her uncle dies. Now, against the advice of her crush Edmund, aspiring artist Fanny is trying to get to the bottom of what really happened to her uncle and will uncover blackmail, art fraud, and more.

This is one of those sweet treats that I think you’ll love, but also be good with just one serving. It seems pretty rich. Also, it’s basically just fresh Rice Krispie treats, but with crushed Oreos instead of cereal. Here’s a video to follow along with.

You’ll need:

– a big pack of Oreos

– a pack of mini marshmallows

– 4 ounces of unsalted butter

As with Rice Krispie treats, melt the butter at a medium-low temperature, add the marshmallows and stir until they’re melted as well. Add the melted marshmallows to a tray that you’ve already added nonstick spray + crushed Oreos to. Mix together and spread across the tray/pan evenly, then let it sit in the fridge for 30 minutes and cut into squares.

Now for the books!

The official blurb for this book mentions how Ndopu, a global humanitarian with muscular atrophy, wrote this memoir with “one good finger.” And it’s with that one good finger that he excelled in school when told he wouldn’t make it past age 5, became a highly requested speaker on disability justice in his teens, and got accepted to Oxford University. But it’s also been a struggle — Ndopu speaks on how, while he has the opportunity to do things like sip on bubbly with the world’s leaders, he’s also had to fight that much harder for his success because of the ableist world we live in. Case in point, Ndopu has struggled to get accommodations from Oxford, with all their money and resources. Which is just shameful, honestly.

Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about how living through COVID has been as a disabled, queer femme-presenting person. The fact that the world was made for nondisabled people was made even more clear since the onset of the pandemic, but in this book, they imagine a world where the majority of people are disabled. They posit that disability justice and disability culture is vital to overcoming things like fascism, the environmental crisis, and other issues. They also talk about the care crisis, and how disabled people have supported each other, and how they can continue to.

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.

CW: nasty ableist language

When I mentioned this poetry collection in this newsletter a while back, I mentioned Ted Hughes, and I feel like I should again. 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.