Category: True Story

Ok, I usually do not read sports stories, because I do not do sports (…that’s the phrase, right), but Kim and I just did an Olympics ep of For Real and it’s got me thinking about how uplifting tales of sportery can be, so let’s look at some!

Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream by Ibtihaj Muhammad. An Olympics read! Muhammad was the first Muslim American woman to wear a hijab while competing for the United States in the Olympics, and the first Muslim American woman to medal. As “the only woman of color and the only religious minority on Team USA’s saber fencing squad, Ibtihaj had to chart her own path to success and Olympic glory.” I love this cover so hard.

 

Tessa and Scott: Our Journey from Childhood Dream to Gold by Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir. I’m not gonna pretend like there wasn’t a time when I was following three separate Virtue/Moir fan accounts on Instagram. So talented! So cute together! And yet not dating! They seem like they genuinely love hanging out, and they’re equally talented, so this is awesome. Also, another Olympics read!

 

Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers by Debra A. Shattuck. It’s like A League of Their Own except not at all. But there’s baseball! This isn’t about a specific women’s baseball team, but about early involvement by women in the nineteenth century. Shattuck “tracks women players who organized baseball clubs for their own enjoyment and found roster spots on men’s teams.” Sports or women’s history nerds, here’s your crossover read.

 

Heart of a Champion: An Autobiography by Michelle Kwan. Michelle Kwaaaaan! This teensy autobiography (shorter than 200 pages) is aimed at middle schoolers and was written in 1998 (can you believe that was more than 20 years ago?). Kwan has a more recent book (2009), but it’s more focused on lifestyle. This came out right around the time she won a silver medal at the ’98 Olympics in Japan and then won the ’98 World Championships. She is an icon, and if you know a middle schooler, maybe get this for them.

 

As always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the nonfiction For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

We’re wrapping up July with some new releases. Remember to support authors with new books out! They can’t do live touring and their publicity is tamped wayy down, so if you can even request their book at the library, you’re doing a good thing. All right, here we go:

Fantastic Origami Flying Creatures: 24 Amazing Paper Models by Hisao Fukui. I don’t know about you, but I bought a bunch of crafts when quarantine started, and then did maybe half of them. That being said, I’ve been getting really into DuoLingo again, and my fiancee and I painted some papier-mache dinosaurs the other night, so maybe skills/crafts are in a second wave? She asked, based solely on her own experience. But for reals, these look VERY fun and then you could have a little origami menagerie on your windowsill.

Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto by Michelle Bowdler. I know, what a provocative title. It points to the idea of “whether rape is a crime given that it is the least reported major felony, least successfully prosecuted, and fewer than 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail.” Bowdler writes about her own rape and “after a career of working with victims like herself, Michelle decides to find out what happened to her case and why she never heard from the police again after one brief interview.”

Living Lively: 80 Plant‑Based Recipes to Activate Your Power and Feed Your Potential by Haile Thomas. I don’t usually have cookbooks on here, but 1) plant-based and 2) this looks v good. Also the author is nineteen years old. There’s also, in addition to eighty recipes, a journaling section?? And focuses on different kinds of wellness. She starts you off with “My intentions as I read this book,” and honestly I never buy cookbooks, but this looks genuinely helpful and good.

True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News by Cindy L. Otis. There is so much garbage “news” out there, y’all. My rule of thumb is usually, if this sounds too much like what I want to hear, I check it out further. But I don’t work for the CIA! So here’s an entire book about tips on how to evaluate news stories and become a better-informed citizen. Otis also walks you through the history of fake news, which sounds A+, and there’re a bunch of illustrations and sidebar graphics.

That’s it for new releases this week! Stay tuned for Themed Friday, and I hope you are having as RESTFUL a week as possible. As always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

On July 26, 1990, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) passed. We’re at the 30th anniversary! Which is super weird, because you’d think maybe we would mandate access for all people before we focused on things like slap bracelets, but it exists now. So let’s look at some books!

The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca, Daniel Rieley. More nonfiction for young people! This is good for, let’s say 5-7 year olds and tells the story of Temple Grandin, who was diagnosed with autism in her twenties, but showed signs from a young age. Her “unique mind allowed her to connect with animals in a special way, helping her invent groundbreaking improvements for farms around the globe.”

 

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century ed. by Alice Wong. Speaking of the 30th anniversary of the ADA, Wong started the Disability Visibility Project for the 25th anniversary, and has now put together this excellent collection of essays for this year’s anniversary. One in five people in the United States live with a disability, and we should start seeing more of their stories in print. This collection covers a lot of ground, but I’m hopeful we’ll see more in the near future.

 

In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America by Laurie Edwards. Are you a human person? Then you probably know someone living with a chronic illness. This book goes from Plato to the post-WWII shift re medicine and illness in the U.S. to disability rights, the Women’s Health Movement, and more. If you like bird’s eye views of things, I’d recommend this. It was written in 2013, so it’s not going to have up-to-the-minute information, but its job is to say how we got to where we are in the 21st century.

 

Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma. Girma was the FIRST Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. If you love excellent chapter titles, these include “Ableism and the Art of Blind PB&J,” “Kicking Butt, Legally Speaking,” and “Alaska Gives Me the Cold, Hard Truth.” Among many others. When I read about this one, I immediately put it on hold at my library. She climbs icebergs, she fights for the rights of blind readers, she develops a text-to-braille system. Amazing.

 

The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love With Me by Keah Brown. Creator of the viral hashtag #DisabledAndCute, Brown talks about her life and growing up with cerebral palsy, but also her opinions on the Backstreet Boys and TV shows. If you want a low-key, chat-with-a-friend book, this is for you. She also has some good chapter titles, like “You Can’t Cure Me, I Promise It’s Fine” and “Freedom of a Ponytail.”

 

We need to do better! And these awesome books give me hope that we will. Let’s publish more.

All right, find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the nonfiction For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Happy Wednesday! The new release stream is beginning to slow a bit (classic late July/August!) but there are still some great new books coming out. Here we go:

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine. Cartoonist Tomine writes about “fandom, fame, and other embarrassments” in his memoir. It’s designed as a sketchbook, which is super cool, and he walks you back to his childhood and through his career, including the racism faced as a Japanese American and how it has interfered with his ability to enjoy his successes (like drawing covers for The New Yorker!). This one looks really good.

 

They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties by Lisa Levenstein. Awwwww yeah, ’90s feminism. If you’re around my age, you were a child in the ’90s and vaaaguely aware of the state of feminism. Scholar Levenstein talks about “the Year of the Woman,” which can be traced back to Anita Hill’s testimony against Justice Clarence Thomas and the subsequent election of five women senators the following year. ’90s feminism involved coalition building that “centered on the growing influence of lesbians, women of color, and activists from the global South.”

 

Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained by Colin Dickey. Look. We all love weirdo mysteries. And travelogues! Because where can we go right now. Dickey goes to Mount Shasta in California (did aliens live there! probably not but maybe!), looks into the Great Kentucky Meat Shower (noooo), and talks about why we’re so into these stories. Dickey is the author of Ghostland, so also check that out if you want some more about the paranormal.

 

BACKLIST BONUS

A lot of feminism-centered books are out this week (find the full list on Book Riot Insiders‘ New Release Index), so let’s look at some feminist backlist!

Feminism is for everybody: passionate politics by bell hooks. “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” If you’re looking for a short intro to feminism (from the year 2000!), this is a classic. It goes from defining feminism to “an argument for the enduring importance of the feminist movement today.” Remember when people tricked the culture into thinking “feminist” was an embarrassing word? hooks wrote this when that was still a prevalent thought.

 

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Okay, maybe read this first, because these essays/speeches are from 1976-1984 and then you get to experience a LINEAR HISTORY (if that is your jam). Lorde covers “sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.” This was sold out eeeeverywhere recently, but I think it’s starting to become readily available again, so check. it. out.

 

All right! Find me on social media @itsalicetime and you can also find me co-hosting the nonfiction For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Until this year, I had never watched RuPaul’s Drag Race. Now it is my favorite thing to talk about out of anything in the entire world. Drag Race came out of a long history of queer queens of color making a safe space for themselves, and now drag is experiencing a massive moment in the culture, with multiple DragCons a year (in NYC and LA) and a slew of spin-off shows. Quick side note before we dive into books — I saw no one as enterprising and QUICK to respond to the current pandemic as the drag community. This was so notable, Rolling Stone did a March article about it. Drag kings and queens are creative, they are savvy, and they are talented. I’m so happy we’re recognizing their contributions to art and to activism. Let’s look at some books!

Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen by Amrou Al-Kadhi. This memoir goes from Iraq to the U.K. and tells the story of Al-Kadhi, or “Glamrou,” if you call them by their drag name. They discuss their: “teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university;” as well as their relationship with their mother and new and queer interpretation of Islam. Also, they have a TED Talk!

Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood by Trixie Mattel and Katya. Trixie and Katya are the Carrie Underwood of the Drag Race world, and not only because they’re all approximately the same shade of blonde. When you think of Underwood, do you think American Idol? No! These two became intensely popular mostly through their show UNHhhh and Mattel’s music. This short guide is hilarious and has gorgeous photos. If you’ve ever wanted to see Katya in an open relationship with two mannequins dressed like her, here y’go.

Female Masculinity by J. Jack Halberstam. Drag Race came out and drag kings got pretty left in the dust. Halberstam looks at the “diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances.” This goes from Anne Lister of Gentleman Jack fame to Radclyffe Hall, and “the enigma of the stone butch.” Which is a phrase that is fun. This came out in 1998, but a 20th anniversary edition with a new preface was released in 2018.

GuRu by RuPaul. Look. I can’t NOT include a book by RuPaul. Whatever her personal life choices, in the drag community, she has provided a huge platform for dozens of queens, which has allowed them do what they love full time. If you enjoy gasping whenever RuPaul walks down a runway (my fiancée and I do), then this is perfect, because it’s a LOT of photos. There are also sections like “Glamazon Defined” and random pithy remarks. But — mainly photos.

The Diva Rules: Ditch the Drama, Find Your Strength, and Sparkle Your Way to the Top by Michelle Visage. I OWN THIS ON AUDIOBOOK. Oh man, Michelle Visage. Just livin’ her life, comin’ on too mean sometimes, pushing people too far in one direction at other times, but at the end of the day, I like her because she seems like she should be on Real Housewives of New Jersey at all times. You don’t have to take this book super seriously, but it’s light and fun and nice to hear Life Coach Visage tell you how GREAT you are.

Do you have favorite Drag Race contestants? Please tell me on Twitter. I’m there @itsalicetime and you can also find me co-hosting the nonfiction For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

How’re your reading stats for this year? Normal? Low? Not caring about reading stats anymore because of The Times in Which We Live? (this is very fair) Well! If you’re feeling in a rut, don’t worry, ’cause we’ve got some good new picks this week:

Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe by Mario Alejandro Ariza. I cannot explain why I’ve felt obsessed with this book, but I have. Maybe it’s the color scheme on the cover?? Ariza writes about how Miami is likely, by century’s end, to be underwater. He shares “not only what climate change looks like on the ground today, but also what Miami will look like 100 years from now, and how that future has been shaped by the city’s racist past and present.”

 

Little Book of Video Games: 70 Classics That Everyone Should Know and Play by Melissa Brinks. I haven’t played video games on a console since Final Fantasy VII, but that doesn’t mean that OTHERS should not hear of this very cute book. For real though, Brinks talks about the history of video games going back to the 1950s, which is awesome (TELL ME MORE OF PONG) and goes up to the early 2000s. If you like learning about the cultural roots of something and how things you love were influenced, bam. Also, tbh, I want to read this just because I like knowing how Things Affect Other Things.

 

A History of My Brief Body: Essays by Billy-Ray Belcourt. This book looks potentially stunning. Belcourt, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and member of the Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta, here writes “essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.” It’s being compared to Ocean Vuong and Heart Berries, so if those are your jam, seriously consider picking this up.

 

Miracle Country: A Memoir by Kendra Atleework. You know how some memoirs are really grounded in places? Ok, so this is one of those. Atleework grew up in California, in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, a parched and somewhat desolate deserty area “forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds.” Be warned, fair amount about her mother getting sick and then passing away when Atleework is 16. She moves from her home to Los Angeles, Minnesota, and back home again.

Support new books! You can do this by buying them or checking them out from your library. If you don’t have a library card, a lot of libraries are letting you apply for one online now! And then you can use an app like Libby. And remember, if the library doesn’t have a book you want, you can always request that they buy it.

As always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Over the last few decades, we’ve started to see books coming out that emphasize different histories of the United States. I’m gonna say it right now; a lot of these are published by Beacon Press, because Beacon does some good good work. Here on this 10th of July, let’s check these out:

A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross. This came out this year and is by two awesome academics. They tell the story of Black women in America from “the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today.” They highlight enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and “women who lived outside the law.” And they do it in less than 300 pages. Amazing.

 

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. This starts with Christopher Columbus coming over and destroying people’s lives and continues up through President Clinton’s first term in office. Zinn focuses on America’s “women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers.” This book was groundbreaking in terms of its emphasis that there are other stories to be told, and we should pay attention to them.

 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. “Native peoples have vast claims to reparations and restitution,” yet “[n]o monetary amount can compensate for lands illegally seized, particularly those sacred lands necessary for Indigenous peoples to regain social coherence.” Dunbar-Ortiz speaks against the founding myth of the U.S. and walks you through the blatant colonial and genocidal ambitions of those in power regarding Indigenous populations.

 

A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen. Published in 2012 and covering pre-1492 to then, this is the first book to “place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American narrative.” I am super psyched for this, because who is FREQUENTLY left out of the narrative? Yes, people with disabilities. Nielsen is a professor and director of the disability studies program at the University of Toledo.

Have a good weekend! Be safe! And as always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Helloooo, nonfiction fan. Very excited to talk about some new releases this week, as we’ve got some great ones. We’re more than halfway through 2020! Let’s celebrate with books:

Say It Louder!: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy by Tiffany D. Cross. Political analyst Cross looks at the role Black Americans play and have played in American politics, how they have been shut out from the voting process, and how they have been critical to particular electoral wins (ex: the 2018 Democrats’ blue Wave). She examines “how America’s composition was designed to exclude Black voters, but paradoxically would likely cease to exist without them.”

 

The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands by Jon Billman. When people vanish into the wilderness, what happens? From Search & Rescue to bloodhound handlers, river divers, detectives, and more, this book looks closely at cases of people who have gone missing, and those who search for them. Billman centers his narrative around the case of Jacob Gray and his father, who left everything in his life to search for his son. This is being compared to Into the Wild a lot, so if you like that, give this a look.

 

The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide by Zerlina Maxwell. Author Maxwell worked on two presidential campaigns and now works as a political analyst. “In 2020, after the Democratic Party’s most historically diverse pool of presidential candidates finally dwindled down to Joe Biden, once again an older white man, Maxwell has posed the ultimate question: what now, liberals?” She urges progressives to empower marginalized groups, lean into identity politics (using the actual definition), and try to level the playing field for all.

 

Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity by Tana Wojczuk. Haven’t heard of Charlotte Cushman? Great, ok, so — it’s the 1830s in America, and this actress comes on the scene. She played both men and women, famously playing Romeo opposite her sister in Romeo and Juliet, she was in relationships with other women (hey-o), used her fame to promote the works of African American/Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and generally lived a very dramatic life.

 

How to Take Awesome Photos of Cats by Andrew Marttila. Look. We’re stuck at home. We’re all photographing our cats. And maybe we need some tips. Marttila talks photography basics, photographing your very special cat with your phone, with a regular camera (haha do people own those?), how to edit your photos, and how to best share them. If you’re really bored and want to up your game here, this is pretty ideal.

 

Hokay, happy July! If you want the full list of new releases, don’t forget to sign up for Book Riot Insiders because it has the sweet New Release Index. As always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

I am genuinely super excited about these end-of-June releases. A lot of these were spring books that got pushed, and so I’ve been excited about them for a while and they are FINALLY HERE.

A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America’s First All-Black High School Rowing Team by Arshay Cooper. Ok, this is about a group of young men growing up on Chicago’s West Side who formed the first all-Black high school rowing team in the nation. Dangit, I love stories about youths coming together and doing a thing. Author Cooper was the captain of the team and shares their story. There’s also a documentary out about this and I’m super excited about both.

 

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century ed. by Alice Wong. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was “a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability.” If you’ve heard of people asking whether something is ADA-compliant? That’s why. More than 30 essayists contribute to this compilation that brings to the forefront the fact that one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. And we should be talking about their stories more.

 

Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen. Y’know how in the 1970s and ’80s no one really paid attention to things like “safety”? Action Park was a “New Jersey-based amusement playland [that] placed no limits on danger or fun” (good lord). Called a “DIY Disneyland,” it was also nicknamed Accident/Class Action Park. I’m interested in if this book veers more towards “remember the good ole days when no one had safety standards?” or is more like “omg how did this happen” à la Bad Blood. I guess we’ll see! One thing I will say is that this cover is extremely fun.

 

This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope by Shayla Lawson. Ok, speaking of good covers. I love this so much? Lawson is “on a mission to move black girls like herself from best supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she’s taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn’t always told, the places where the voices of black girls haven’t been heard.” Lawson is also a poet and a writer-in-residence at Amherst. POETS. Making things happen.

So many new releases, so little space. If you want the full list, don’t forget to sign up for Book Riot Insiders because it has the sweet New Release Index. As always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

More Pride! Pride all the time. We’re at the last Friday newsletter of June, so here we go with some real gay (or queer. or trans!) books:

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock. This book is a JOURNEY. Mock tells her story of growing up “young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America.” What is it like to grow up trans and without privilege? When I read this, I felt like it offered tremendous clarity about the breadth of experience out there, how every person’s journey is different, and what humans are capable of accomplishing. If you’ve already read it, check out Mock’s second book, Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Kim on For Real HIGHLY recommends this. I bought it at Powell’s Books in Portland and haven’t read it yet, but I’m expecting it to be amazing. It’s a memoir of the emotionally abusive relationship Machado was in, as well as the aftermath. It’s called beautifully written, but “haunting,” so watch out if you can’t handle that kind of thing right now. What makes it truly stand out is that Machado changes up the style of every chapter, including a Choose Your Own Path and a Haunted House-style section.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America by Lillian Faderman. If you were looking for queer history books 5 years ago (and I was), you would come across Faderman all the time, because she was one of the few people writing about it. This is one of her better-known works, where she traces the history of lesbian culture in America. One reviewer accuses her of holding a “culturally-based view of lesbianism,” which is legit, but overall she’s cautious with evidence and does a good job highlighting histories that might otherwise be lost.

All right! Have an excellent weekend, be safe, and as always, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.