Category: True Story

Stacy Jane Grover grew up in Southeastern Ohio, not really viewing herself as Appalachian. But as she moved through the world —transitioning as a teen, falling in and out of love, and trying to find a career— she slowly began engaging with the idea. Grover illustrates a way of being that we don’t often read in literature. Much of trans history focuses on urban centers, but Grover tells a different story of growing up with her family having a different understanding of who she was. Her grandfather just called her “shy,” which in her region of Appalachia just meant a sort of difference that was accepted, if not understood.

Lamya H figured out she was gay as a teenager in a Muslim school while living in a country in the Middle East. When she moved to America for university, she began to slowly come to terms with her sexuality and what that might mean for her life as a Muslim person. However, she constantly ran into non-Muslim people who told her she couldn’t be Muslim AND queer. That’s not how it worked. Lamya disagreed, finding her own way of being as a queer Muslim. Lamya structures her memoir around different figures from the Qur’an, weaving together figures from her faith with her own story.

Winner of the IACP 2019 First Book Award presented by The Julia Child Foundation, Bottom of the Pot celebrates Persian cooking, highlighting the incredible wealth of flavors of this cuisine. Naz Deravian is a home cook based in L.A., and she shares recipes from her childhood and her takes on Persian classics. When she was just a girl, Deravian and her family fled Iran during the height of the revolution. Food has been a way that Deravian and her family have stayed connected to their culture. I loved these recipes, photos, and little snippets that Deravian shares about her past, connecting moments in her life with her recipes.

Victuals, winner of a James Beard Award, is one of my newest cookbook acquisitions, and I fell in love with it from the moment I saw it. In the last several years, Southern Appalachian cooking has been making its mark on the literary world. Ronni Lundy looks at traditional, heritage recipes from Appalachia, celebrating simple ingredients like beans and greens. The photos by Johnny Autry are gorgeous, taking me back to summers watching my grandparents eat salted tomato slices while relaxing on the back porch of their cabin.

Earlier this year, I listened to the audio edition of Imani Perry’s essay, A Dangerously High Threshold for Pain. You may know Perry from her National Book Award-winning book South to America, which was my favorite book of the year when it came out. In this essay, Perry writes about her experiences living with chronic illness and the pressure she feels to be excellent in all things. But the truth is, she can’t do everything. Eventually, Imani is diagnosed with Lupus and Graves Disease, and her doctor warns her that her dangerously high threshold for pain often results in her ignoring her body’s need for rest. Perry narrates the audio version, and her performance has stayed with me since I first heard it.

Sometimes, the very concept of a book catches my eye, and I have to read it ASAP. That’s what happened with Wolfish, a book where Erica Berry delves into societal ideas around wolves. What do wolves symbolize to human civilization? How has that perception impacted society today? These are just a couple of the big questions that Berry examines. Lessa Lamb deftly performs the audio edition, making the listening experience fly by, even in sections that I imagine might be a little dry to read in print. I loved every second of Lamb’s performance.

Opinions collects the work of Roxane Gay, and includes celebrity profiles, advice columns, cultural criticism, and opinion pieces. I have enjoyed Gay’s writing since I first read her essay collection Bad Feminist. But it can be hard to keep up with all of her pieces that have been published in different outlets over a decade. But now, the best of her published writing from across the internet is all in one place! She interviews artists like Janelle Monáe, and writes about the legacy of Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of Black Panther. She strikes a beautiful balance of vulnerability and relatability, writing essays that have just the right amount of personal touch. This collection is perfect for stolen moments at holiday parties or family dinners.

Somehow, The Creative Act was never on my radar until Read Spotted Newt bookstore owner Mandi Fugate Sheffel told me that it was one of her favorite books of 2023. (You can listen to her other picks on the latest episode of Read Appalachia.) She explained how, as someone who is working on her own memoir (due out of University Press of Kentucky in ‘25), Rubin’s book made her rethink how she viewed creativity and what it looks like in people’s lives. Of course, I immediately went and bought a copy. It’s a beautiful meditation on the creative life, and the chapters are divided in a way that makes it perfect for readers to sit and muse over in those quiet moments between holiday activities.

Raechel Anne Jolie grew up as a working-class kid on the outskirts of Cleveland. When she was just a girl, her father was hit by a drunk driver, which ended their way of life forever. From there, her childhood was spent moving from home to home, never seeming to stay for long. She finds the alt scene downtown and begins to discover a whole new world that she feels irrevocably drawn to. This tiny memoir is a shining testament to a love of working-class people, the Midwest, and queer culture.

Brian Broome couldn’t wait to leave northeast Ohio. He spent his childhood as a queer, Black kid, never fitting in. But no matter where he moved, he still faced racism and homophobia. He describes how he coped with sex and drugs, always trying to forget the trauma he’s experienced while searching for belonging. Broome’s prose is incredible; every word is there for a reason. His memoir is full of heart and a deep sense of longing.

Michelle Obama is back with a second book. The Light We Carry is a collection of essays that each expands on her ideas around standing her ground and going high when they go low. She also shares about her family’s experience weathering the pandemic. Her essays are kind, supportive, and encouraging while firmly making her points. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook, which Obama reads herself. Listening to the audiobook feels like you’re sitting down with her for a cup of coffee while she shares encouraging anecdotes from her own life. So, if you’ve had a rough year (haven’t we all), then this is a perfect holiday gift for yourself.

Hands down, Hannah Gadsby’s Ten Steps to Nanette is one of my favorite memoirs. In it, Gadsby shares what it was like to grow up as a queer, autistic kid in Tasmania, Australia. Gadsby is well-known for her comedy special Nanette, which you can still watch on Netflix. Her memoir expands on the ideas in Nanette and gives us a closer look into how Gadbsy’s life led to her creating this incredible one-woman show. The audiobook is out of this world. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking all in one book.

While Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s mother is Japanese, her father comes from a family of wheat farmers in Nebraska. After spending years getting to know her family in Japan, Mockett decides that her next writing project will look at her father’s family. Every year, migratory harvesters arrive at the family farm to help harvest the wheat. So, Mockett decides to travel with the harvesters to get to know them and better understand their world. Starting in Texas, Mockett travels with the group of men and women for weeks as they make their way up to Nebraska. Mockett discovers she carries a lot of assumptions about this more conservative group of blue-collar workers and begins to challenge her own perception of their lives. This book proved endlessly fascinating for me as Mockett began to better understand the world of her father’s family and the people who helped them out on the farm. She portrays herself in all of her messy humanity, making mistakes along the way but always looking to better understand the people around her.

Sarah Smarsh is the first woman in many generations of her family to go to college instead of starting a family right away. After breaking this family norm, Smarsh begins to think about her life as a working-class girl from Kansas and tries to better understand where she comes from. Focusing on the different generations of women in her family, she looks at the history of the heartland and the people who live there. Her prose is intimate, practical, and straightforward. Every word pulls its weight as Smarsh describes her childhood living with a family just trying to scrape by. As a teen, she didn’t have time for a lot of friends or boyfriends; she was going to college. I appreciated Smarsh’s take on her hometown, both the good and the bad. She perfectly captures the feeling of not being able to stay home and achieve your dreams. But having left, you know you will never be able to return, and nothing will ever be the same.

Heading into Monsters, I had imagined that it would be instructive or at least informative. But instead, Monsters is more a memoir of the author taking us along her thought process as she wrangles with the age-old question, can we separate the art from the artist? Dederer looks at a series of great artists (mostly men) who have done horrible things and asks herself how much her knowledge of their biographies impacts the way she engages with their art. Over and over, she poses this question as she discusses terrible person after person. Monsters would make a great pick for book clubs that love to discuss the theory and philosophy of living. Or maybe you want to discuss this topic with a friend. Monsters doesn’t come to a singular conclusion but rather poses a series of questions for readers to engage with, for us to make our decisions about the art we are willing to consume.

Enjeti and her family moved to the South when she was small. Since then, she’s called the South her home. But as a mixed-race Brown girl, many people there didn’t necessarily make her feel welcome. Now an adult, Enjeti writes about her experience with racism as well as her complicity in systemic racism. These essays feature her thoughts on feminism, the new South, gun violence, voter suppression, and so much more. Enjeti’s South is different than you might imagine. It’s complex, vibrant, and ever-changing.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1975. Dillard, a master prose stylist, describes her life at Tinker Creek. She chronicles the changing of the seasons and shares the comings and goings of the other living creatures around her. There’s just something beautiful about the calm her writing creates. I love her ability to see the tiniest things and communicate their vast importance to the reader. She has an obsession with parasites and the way they exist in the world. Admittedly, I don’t share this fascination, but I respect the way she loves them.

In 2019, Sarah M. Broom won the National Book Award for The Yellow House, which follows the story of her family and their connection to New Orleans. She describes her family’s history through the Yellow House, the childhood home that her mother owned for decades. We learn about Broom’s family history and the history of New Orleans. Her writing is vibrant and engrossing. You come to love her family and the Yellow House. This book is such a beautiful work of nonfiction, and I can’t recommend it enough.

For years, Naomi Klein has found herself continuously confused with Naomi Wolfe. They are both Jewish women who have historically moved through feminist spaces. But in the last decade, Wolfe has steadily become more connected with extremist right-wing politics. In this one-of-a-kind book, Klein details the history of the confusion and misidentification the two women have experienced online. From there, Klein expands into what she calls the mirror world, a place where men like Steve Bannon go off about stolen elections and forced mask mandates. Wolfe joins Bannon on his popular podcast, which astounds Klein as she listens to Wolfe’s guest appearance after guest appearance. Doppelganger is a fascinating look at the evolution of American politics and how we got to the chaos that we’re experiencing now.

bell hooks’ backlist is slowly but surely being turned into audio editions, so I’ve been making my way through them. Most recently, I picked up Breaking Bread, which is a series of conversations between bell hooks and Cornel West, two of the greatest minds of their generation. I’ve sometimes wondered what it would be like to sit in on conversations like this, and Breaking Bread brings us in on that conversation. hooks and Cornel describe their experience being in community as Black intellectuals. They include essays about each other, showing such admiration for each other’s work. It’s a beautiful testament to their friendship and mutual respect.