Author: Kendra Winchester

When I think about my favorite books of last year, handsdown, Neema Avashia’s Another Appalachia stands out. Neema Avashia’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from India, settling in West Virginia, where they were one of several Indian families who moved into the area. Avashia’s essays stand out to me because she discusses her culture as an Appalachian in such unique ways.

In one essay, she describes how she had many adoptive grandparents, who treated her as a member of their family. Her basketball coach, who was a white Appalachian man, chose her for his basketball teams, drove her to and from games, and created a position for her as an assistant coach when she aged out of the league. In Appalachia, we have this deep sense of community care, a form of mutual aid ingrained into the culture. We look out for our own.

Of course, this essay isn’t just about the great things about Appalachia. Avashia describes how during the election of 2016, she began to see friends from back home posting anti-immigrant beliefs on their social media. People she deeply loved and who were like family to her didn’t seem to understand that they were talking about families like hers.

At another time, Avashia and her partner Laura finally decided it was time to meet Avashia’s family and friends back in West Virginia. She felt incredibly nervous about bringing her serious girlfriend back to West Virginia, but for the most part, she found warm and accepting family and friends waiting for her.

All of these moments create the contradictions that Avashia has to hold in her mind as a queer Indolachian. Appalachia is an incredible place where the people have traditionally had to care for each other, so that part of the culture is incredibly strong. But there are also people who post hateful, xenophobic continent to their Facebook page. Avashia’s Another Appalachia is a love letter to West Virginia, but she must also reconcile that with an Appalachia that doesn’t always love her back.

Joshua Whitehead’s most famous book to date is Jonny Appleseed, a novel featuring a Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer main character navigating the world. Now he’s back with a collective of essays. Throughout the collection, Whitehead reexamines storytelling from a perspective of decolonizing the way we tell stories. What does that mean for him, an Indigenous storyteller? How does Western thought confine his storytelling?

Many of Whitehead’s essays present queer love as he’s experienced it. It’s an intimate portrayal of the emotional complexity of living and loving as an Indigenous person in a society informed by colonialism. Told in beautiful prose, his essays feel as if you are going on this journey with him, working through his thought process as he struggles to find himself and his story in everyday narratives.

I love a good essay collection. There’s nothing like sitting down with a short piece of nonfiction, examining ideas or learning about different moments in history. Whitehead’s writing can be challenging in the best way, asking readers to reexamine ideas around literature and what it can do. There’s something special about the way Whitehead discusses storytelling, especially the way he examines how his personal experience informs his writing.

There’s one essay where he discusses the use of video games and how it connects with Indigenous people working through their experiences with generational trauma. It reminded me of one of Elissa Washuta’s essays in her collection White Magic, where she examines the game Oregon Trail and its connection with colonialism and Indigenous histories. Like Washuta, Whitehead possesses the ability to take vastly different topics and ideas and successfully tie them together all in one essay. It’s a brilliant thing to behold.

If you would like to check out Indigenous Reading Circle’s other suggestions, head over to their Instagram or their Patreon.

The bookish world is all abuzz for Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor, which was just chosen as Good Morning America’s next book club pick AND Roxane Gay’s January pick for her book club. What has everyone talking about this novel?

The novel opens in Delhi with a horrible car accident: a speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and five people end up dead. A man named Ajay is arrested and convicted of the crime, but he wasn’t actually the one responsible for the crime.

From there, we follow this sweeping epic to rural India where Ajay grew up. After his father is killed, Ajay’s mother sends him away to earn money so she can pay off his father’s debts. Eventually Ajay works for Sonny, a rich man making a name for himself as a patron of the arts. Ajay is Sonny’s right-hand man, driving him around, serving his guests, and helping sneak Sonny’s secret girlfriend into various hotels.

As the novel unfolds, we eventually get Sonny’s perspective, and he describes how he feels suffocated by his father’s expectations. He is simultaneously haunted by a memory from his past he wishes he could forget. His father and his uncle are rumored to have made their money illegally, but how much is Sonny aware of? And how can he escape his family’s history of sketchy dealings?

These are just two of the many characters that make up this sweeping crime drama full of messy families and complicated love stories. I love a hefty book that I can just settle in with for hours, especially in the winter. All of these characters feel adrift in different ways, each one trying to make a place for themselves in the world, to change their fate, even just a little bit. 

I listened to the audiobook performed by the incredible Vidish Athavale. He created such an incredible mood with his narration. You feel like you are right there beside the characters as they make terrible decision after terrible decision. Athavale uses his performance to create unique voices for each character, no two sounding exactly the same.

If you are looking for a long novel to sweep you off your feet, this is it.

Razia Mirza grew up in a working class neighborhood of Corona in Queens during the 1980s and ’90s. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Pakistan, finding community with other Pakistani Muslim families. But Razia chafes against her parents’ traditional values, wanting more choices for her life.

With such a close-knit community, there’s plenty of interpersonal drama. But when the drama comes to her family, Razia loses her best friend as the adults argue amongst themselves and refuse to let the girls remain friends. Razia loves school, but the many families in her community question whether girls need school at all. Back in Pakistan, Razia’s mother never received the education that she wanted, so she becomes determined that Razia receive an education.

Eventually, Razia is accepted into a special high school in Manhattan. There, Razia begins to realize there are ways of living that she never even dreamed of, and she begins to wonder what her future might hold. If she doesn’t follow the traditional life of her parents, what might her life have in store?

Razia’s story is an incredible coming-of-age tale of a queer girl discouraged from even thinking of how her life might be different. But there’s also a deep sense of love that she has for family and community. For years, she tries to find a way to have both her family in her life and be true to who she is and the people she loves.

Author Bushra Rehman performs the audiobook with such heart and deeply felt emotion. I listened to the whole novel in a single day — I just couldn’t stop listening! Razia’s character has so much depth. Roses, in the Mouth of the Lion is just a stunning novel all around.