Category: True Story

Because of her parents’ work, Sophia Glock grew up all over the world, living in six countries by the time she was in high school. One day, she discovers a secret about her family—her parents are actually spies. Learning this secret right as she’s starting at a new school begins a process to better understand her life, her family, and herself. I just finished reading this one and liked it a lot. The “my parents are spies” aspect isn’t as prominent as I expected, but it’s still a great story about complicated friendships, teenage choices, and learning to be who you are.

Robin Ha grew up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea. That early experience was a challenge, but it formed a deep bond. When Robin is in high school, her mom announces that they are moving to Huntsville, Alabama, and that she is getting married. Robin has to attend a new school where she doesn’t speak the language, looses connection to her friends in Korea, and has to find her way with her new stepfamily. I love this book so much. The illustrations are beautiful, and Ha does an amazing job showing how difficult it was to understand her new school and community through her text and illustrations. It’s great!

Dr. William H. Turner has been writing about Black Appalachian history for decades. He edited essay collections and researched the vital role Black Appalachians had on the region. Harlan Renaissance focuses on the Black communities in Harlan, Kentucky, where Turner is originally from. Turner discusses how much of the country forgets the importance of Black communities in Kentucky, writing it off as a state with just a bunch of white people. The reality is more complex than that. I really appreciate Turner’s perspective and the care he put into this book. Harlan Renaissance is a brilliant piece of oral and recorded history that celebrates Black Appalachian culture.

In this follow up to her critically acclaimed book Dopesick, Beth Macy returns to Appalachia to describe the ongoing opioid crisis. In Raising Lazarus, Macy focuses on the efforts of folks around the region working to help those seeking recovery. From needle exchanges to prescription drugs thought to help people stay in recovery, Macy outlines the programs and details the challenges that different recovery programs face. While many judges and people in law enforcement believe that abstinence is the only option, Macy points out why that’s not necessarily the case. There’s no single path to recovery.

Set in August 1920, this book chronicles the fight to have the 19th Amendment ratified in Tennessee–the 36th and last state needed for the amendment. Forces on both sides of the debate converged in Nashville during a special session of the legislature. The book follows several women coming to the fight from different angles, looking at the ways they tried to influence and change the minds of the men voting–through “dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel’s, and the Bible.” This one is really fascinating!

This book offers an extended history of African American women’s political lives in the United States. It begins with the founding of the country and goes past the 1965 Voting Rights Act to show how Black women pushed against both racism and sexism to make change. She shared the oft-ignored work of Black women like Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Fannie Lou Hamer who helped lead the way for Black women’s enfranchisement.

I love a good story of an unlikely friendship, and Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano’s friendship is one of the best. When Morisano first bought the old Greyhound bus station in Savannah, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with it. But as an Italian white man from Long Island, he grew up with a profound love of food. Soon he was introduced to Mashama Bailey, a Black woman from Queens who also had family ties to Savannah. Soon they became partners in The Grey, a restaurant that brought them both National acclaim. You can even see them featured in an episode of Netflix’s popular Chef’s Table series.

Originally descended from enslaved West and Central Africans, the Gullah Geechee people have lived in the Lowcountry for generations, creating their own distinctive culture and language. Their cuisine focuses on natural resources found in the Lowcountry wetlands, often using rice and seafood. Of course, I had to grab a cookbook (in fact, I now have several), but one of my favorites is Bress ‘n’ Nyam. He tells his family history through the recipes he shares, many of which have been passed down for generations.

In 2013, 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators were charged with racketeering and conspiracy, which came as a result of being accused of changing answers on their students’ standardized tests. Nearly all of the teachers were Black. Shani Robinson, the youngest teacher charged with a crime, faced up to 25 years in prison. In this book, she partners with journalist Anna Simonton to look at how the Atlanta school system and leaders in the city historically failed Black students, leading directly to the cheating scandal. I can imagine an Orange is the New Black style adaptation for this one. 

I’m a sucker for stories about con men and women, which we also know can make great television adaptations. In this book, Abby Ellin writes about her relationship with a man she called the Commander – a whirlwind romance that led to their engagement after just six months. But soon his exotic stories stopped adding up, leading Ellin to discover he’d been lying from the start. The book also explores the art and science of lying and shares stories from other people duped by their romantic partners. I get a lot of Inventing Anna vibes from this one.

As a fan of My Brilliant Friend, I knew I wanted to read Ferrante’s nonfiction. So a few years ago, I picked up Frantumaglia, which contains a lot of essays that came out before the success of Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet. These essays discuss the reception of her novel, the film adaptations, and her thoughts about written and visual arts. Since Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym, these essays often feel like secret missives as Ferrante guards her identity while still engaging with her readers’ reaction to her work. I’ve read most of Ferrante’s novels and found it fascinating to see the publishing process from Ferrante’s perspective.

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favorite authors, so when I heard she was learning to write in Italian, I felt incredibly sad that I couldn’t read it. But I shouldn’t have worried. Elena Ferrante’s translator, Ann Goldstein, translated In Other Words into English. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering why Lahiri didn’t translate the text herself, but Lahiri has stated that she wants readers to get a more accurate perception of her skills in Italian. This book is cleverly formatted to include the English translation on one side and the original Italian on the other. The topics of the essays mostly focus on Lahiri’s relationship with the Italian language and her motivation in learning it. This book is perfect for any language nerd.

In 2010, Stacey Haney and her neighbors in Amity, Pennsylvania, signed agreements with Range Resources, a Texas-based energy company, to mine natural gas on her family’s land through fracking. Almost immediately, Haney and her two children get sick. Their animals and pets start to die, and chemicals show up in their air and water. They enlist the services of a husband-and-wife legal team to figure out what’s going on, a fight that pits neighbors against neighbors in their small community. This 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner is a stunning read, using in-depth reporting to show the humanity behind our energy needs, what happens when institutions fail to protect, and the complicated questions that can arise between economics and the environment. 

When Danielle Henderson was 10 years old, her mother left her and her brother with their grandparents so she could run away with her drug-addicted, abusive boyfriend. While that’s obviously a dark central experience to center a memoir on, one of the things I loved about this book is how well it balanced that darkness with moments of levity and observant insight. Henderson’s grandparents weren’t perfect parents, by any means, but they tried to give her the stability she needed to eventually make it on her own. This memoir is also about being “Black, weird, and overwhelmingly uncool” in a largely white community, and the lessons that helped Henderson find faith in herself and what she was capable of achieving. This is a great, great memoir. Content warnings for drug use, violence, and childhood sexual abuse.

Matt Rowland Hill grew up in a working class Welsh family constantly on the move as his father, a pastor, moved from congregation to congregation. While Hill felt deeply devout as a child, he began to doubt his parents’ faith when he grew older. As his identity as a Christian unraveled, Hill fell further and further into his addiction.

Hill discusses his struggle to stay clean and make it through recovery programs, but to do that, he has to confront the religious and family trauma that drew him to drugs in the first place. He doesn’t shy away from the horrible things he’s done for drugs or the reality that his memoir can’t have a happy ending. Living in recovery always means that a relapse could be just around the corner. All he can do is hope.

As a huge fan of Viola Davis, I started her memoir as soon as it hit my audiobook app. Davis described her childhood growing up as an economically disadvantaged girl in Rhode Island. Boys bullied her on her way home from school, rats ate the faces off her dolls, and her parents constantly argued.

After a tumultuous upbringing, she found escape in performance, and became determined to make it as an actress. Knowing about her career now, it was lovely to learn more about her work in younger years and the different people who helped her out along the way. Plus, Davis performs the audiobook edition, so Finding Me is perfect for audiobook lovers too.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, two perspectives she weaves together beautifully in this book about the lessons we can learn from other living beings. While not specifically about growing food, this book argues that we need to expand our environmental consciousness to connect more deeply with the rest of the living world. This book has gotten nothing but rave reviews from everyone I know who has read it.

Originally published in 2007, this memoir from novelist Barbara Kingsolver shared her family’s experience moving to a farm in southern Appalachia and their personal quest to spend a year only eating locally-produced foods. Reprinted in 2017, the 10th anniversary edition expands on the original with new contributions from each member of the family sharing how their original, year-long effort has expanded or changed their lives since then. This book is so charming, and a true inspiration if you want to think more deeply about your food.

Many people in the US are unfamiliar with the nation’s history of disability, and Kim E. Nielsen’s book seeks to rectify that problem. From the ugly laws that could get people with bodily differences arrested for being in public to the countless number of institutions across America, the United States has been all too happy to make it known that disabled people are not welcome. But as the disability rights movement started to take hold, disability rights activists paved the way for further legislation that protected disabled people and ensured that society accommodated our needs. Eventually, this led to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

In Care Work, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha points out that queer femmes of color have always been at the forefront of Disability Justice. Disability Justice is a key component of understanding disability rights. Disability Justice focuses on an intersectional approach to mutual aid and community care, centering on the disabled people who sit at the many intersections of disability identity. Care Work does a great job expanding one’s understanding of disability theory and the role it has to play in everyday disabled people’s lives.