Author: SHE LIT EDITOR

I started she lit in 2016 as a personal blog to describe my adventures in Los Angeles aspiring to be novelist while holding down a day job as a news editor and engaging with other readers on the hottest books of the moment. From my love of creating news and features content, I reshaped she lit into a blog for women looking for interesting stories on the books they’re reading, the authors they’re following, and everything in between. Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | shewrites@shelit.com.

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what's lit

Actress Ginnifer Goodwin to Become President of Young Literati

The Young Literati Annual Toast to benefit the Los Angeles Public Library held at City Market Social House on Saturday, April 6, 2019, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging)

Ginnifer Goodwin, best known for her roles in Once Upon A Time and Mona Lisa Smile, will be the incoming president of Young Literati.

The fundraising group for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles for literary lovers in their 40s and younger, Young Literati named Ginnifer as president during its annual Summer Social event on Aug. 1 at the Tiato Kitchen + Garden Venue in Santa Monica. The organization usually names a celebrity or celebrity connection to its board. Ginnifer will take the reins from Samantha Hanks, the wife of actor Colin Hanks and daughter-in-law of actor Tom Hanks, who served in her presidency for two years.

Due to her work schedule, Ginnifer could not be present at the social, according to the organization, but she did attend its largest event, the 11th Annual Toast, in April.

According to IMDb, Ginnifer said she wanted a partner who was “bookish” before marrying her Once Upon A Time co-star Josh Dallas. “I will end up with someone in the arts. I am positive. I eat, breathe and sleep acting. And I’ll end up with someone who is happy staying at home and having me cook supper. But I also really need to be intellectually challenged and stimulated. I want someone bookish, and someone who is passionate.”

Ginnifer has also starred in films based on books such as Something Borrowed, He’s Just Not That Into You, and Ramona and Beezus with Mona Lisa Smile‘s success producing a companion novel. She’s currently starring in Why Women Kill, which premieres Aug. 15 on CBS All Access.

Young Literati’s honorary chairs include Busy Phillipps, who released her memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little last year, and Constance Wu, who had a star turn in book-based films Crazy Rich Asians and soon Goodbye, Vitamin. Actresses Natasha Rothwell, Lake Bell, Natalie Morales, Constance Zimmer, June Diane Raphael, Ione Skye, and Zoe Lister-Jones are also involved in the organization.

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what's lit

Novelist Tia Williams Talks Creating Characters of Color in Chick Lit Genre

Black chick lit author Tia Williams said classic beach reads inspired her to diversify the genre with Black characters.

In a recent Literary Black Women webinar, Tia spoke about how romance novelist trailblazers Jackie Collins and Judith Krantz produced the devourable books she loved and how she wanted to see herself within the pages.

“I’d always recast them as Black people in my mind,” Tia said. “I always knew I wanted to write books in that space, but envision us, so we’re not Black versions of anything.”

The author of the 2016 best-seller The Perfect Find, Tia said she made the main character in that story, Jenna, a magazine editor interested in cinematography to place a Black woman in industries where they’re not as visible.

“I don’t see Black women in fashion, in the art world, the film world, or in books,” she said.

During her military upbringing, she said meeting a half-Black, half-Korean girl while living in Germany through fifth and ninth grade informed her on what it means to Black and female. “I want to show different layers of the Black experience,” she said. “There isn’t one singular Black experience, and we’re always given tropes.”

Debuting as an author with 2004’s The Accidental Diva, Tia followed up her success with the young adult series It Chicks. The series became an alternative for girls of color interested in the not-as-diverse Gossip Girl series.

While juggling her creative writing career with her full-time gig as a beauty copywriter at Bumble and bumble, Tia said she recently finished her third adult novel. She added that taping for the film adaptation of The Perfect Find film, starring and being produced by Gabrielle Union, should start in the next six months.

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: The Debu-taunt

"Younger" Ep. 608 (Airs 8/07/19)

Finally everyone on Younger knows Liza’s real age—and of course, there’s major backlash.

For the past six seasons, book editor Liza (Sutton Foster) has been lying that she’s in her mid-20s. She did so to get a job in publishing and eventually started working for an imprint called Millennial. But she’s actually in her early 40s. One by one, characters learned Liza’s secret over the years, but some like her former boss and current colleague Diana (Miriam Shor) still was in the dark.

The episode starts with Liza running into Pauline (Jennifer Westfeldt), the ex-wife of Liza’s boyfriend/another former boss and current colleague Charles (Peter Hermann), at Charles’ daughter’s elementary school while dropping off a book report. Liza had been the editor for Pauline’s best-selling novel, Marriage Vacation, but at the time she was hiding her affair with Charles. Now, Pauline and Charles are getting a divorce, and Charles just asked Liza to move into his townhouse.

During a work meeting, Millennial imprint heads, including Liza, Diana, and Charles, discuss which author they should choose for the Publishers Weekly debutante ball. The ball welcomes debut authors into literary society with their publishing mentors. Pauline’s name comes up as Millennial’s most successful author though the imprint lost her sophomore novel due to Charles divorcing her to be with Liza.

To cement the invitation, Liza meets with Pauline for lunch. Fresh from their awkward run-in at the school, Pauline says Liza was the best editor. She even adds she wished she had kept her second project with Millennial. Liza then asks Pauline to accompany her to the ball, and Pauline says yes.

After the lunch, Pauline returns to her daughter’s school, where she runs into the talkative secretary. The secretary overhears Pauline finishing up a call with Liza and commends Pauline for getting along with her ex’s girlfriend. Pauline makes a crack Charles running away with a millennial. The secretary laughs. She reveals that Liza is 42 since Liza had to leave a form of ID at the school.

“She’s been lying shamelessly about who she is for years,” Pauline announces on stage at the ball with Liza standing behind her.

Diana defends Liza in front of the audience as Liza admits she really is in her 40s, not in her 20s. In confusion, Diana stumbles outside in the middle of Times Square and suffers a panic attack. The group takes Diana to the hospital, where Charles gets a call from his lawyer that Pauline’s lawyer wants to revisit the custody battle over their two daughters.

The next day, Liza walks into the office and learns Diana is drafting Liza’s resignation letter. They have a heart-to-heart, and Liza stays in her job.

More secrets surrounding Liza’s age should come up in the next few weeks. Though fans felt this was the saddest outcome of Liza’s lie of a career, at least everyone stayed alive unlike when Kelsey (Hilary Duff)’s unlikeable fiance died seasons ago in that crane collapse where he confronted Liza about her age. And what happened to Liza’s college-age daughter?  There are still other factors that can add weight to the longtime lie.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls’ by Anissa Gray


The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls” by Anissa Gray is being marketed as “The Mothers” x “An American Marriage” with mothering at the root of family deterioration as two members are imprisoned for a crime that has angered the community.

Respected restaurateurs Althea and Proctor Cochran are in prison over allegedly misusing donated funds for a flood in their town of St. Joseph, Michigan. As their reputation becomes tarnished, their teen twin daughters, Baby Vi and Kim, have to stay with Althea’s youngest sister Lillian. Another sister, Viola, lives in Chicago away from the family drama while a brother, Joe, lives a few towns away with his family as a church pastor. The Butler siblings – Althea the oldest, Viola, Lillian and Joe – lost their mother when they were young with their father becoming a traveling pastor barely home. Their mother’s premature death weighs like a cloud over them because of the circumstances they each dealt with living without their mother.

Althea married Proctor and found success at their restaurant. Lillian, who’s taking care of her nieces, is also taking care of her late ex-husband’s grandmother, Nai Nai, who’s Chinese and they still have interracial tension. Viola is breaking up with her wife Eva while dealing with the resurgence of the eating disorder she developed in adolescence. Joe, who’s had a strained relationship with his sisters, wants the nieces to stay with him and his family because he feels with religion he has the most stable household. Their father died years earlier, but his neglect still weighs on them. As they all battle their own demons, Kim is falling down a path of trouble until her implosion forces the family to unite to save her and Baby Vi.

Most of the book measures at three stars. The scenery doesn’t change much; the reader is either in Lillian’s home, which is the family home inhabited by their demons despite all the refurbishments, and the prison, mostly where Althea is. Incidents such as how Althea met Proctor when they were kids at her mother’s funeral are replayed often along with particular verses from her mother’s Bible. Kim is the twin who keeps finding trouble while Baby Vi’s character doesn’t seem that developed as she’s characterized as the twin who doesn’t stir any trouble. Proctor also fades in a way as the reader mostly gets the sense of his character from the letters he’s writing to Althea. The story really revolves around the Butler siblings while there’s still a focus on the twins, and since they are the children of the imprisoned parents, it would’ve been nice to see perspective chapters from them, too. All the chapters are first-person narratives from the sisters: Althea, Viola, and Lillian, while the other set of sisters, Kim and Baby Vi, need chapters. Even Joe needs a chapter to explain his feelings about his sisters compared to just his sisters’ feelings toward him.

Overall, it’s a complicated family story where ghosts from yesterday resurface amid the temporary loss of two members. The title and cover make the book stand out, but the title seems overdramatic for the story. Ravenous and hungry are synonyms and care and feeding are close in meaning in this context, so the title also gets too wordy.

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experiences

Free Black Women’s Library Holds Lavender + Lit Poetry Reading

The Free Black Women’s Library held a read-and-relax event Sunday afternoon at the Underground Museum in Arlington Heights section of Los Angeles.

Taking place in the Purple Garden among purple parasols and plants, the Lavender + Lit on July 21 featured a reading by poet Mahtem Shiferraw, who shared her new collection of poems, Your Body Is War. Her curated reading list sparked a conversation on handling generational trauma.

“With the newer generation trying to distance themselves, they end up replicating the same traumatic act of violence or aggression without actually doing it themselves,” said Mahtem, who spoke from her cultural experience of being Ethiopian and Eritrean. “So part of the process of healing, or when distancing ourselves, we can also recognize what happened because of that ugliness and beauty. We came from that.”

Under the parasols shielding the 40 attendees from the 80 plus-degree heat, the poet and attendees, mostly millennials, discussed their roles in helping an older generation understand the obstacles.

“For Ethiopian people specifically, I know they open more when they’re around friendly faces and when they’re eating and they’re joking, so things come out like that, then they get serious,” Mahtem said. “If I try to have a one-on-one sit-down, they will never talk to me. It’ll be like, ‘Who are you asking me this?’ I don’t mean with just strangers; even my family members will not talk to me like that.”

The two-hour event also allowed the attendees to roam among woven baskets of books separated by genres that make up the library that includes hundreds of works all by black women writers. The Los Angeles arm of the New York-based organization launched in April.

 

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what's lit

Indie Rapper Noname Enters the Book Club Game

Noname / Billboard

Rising Chicago rapper Noname has announced she’s starting a nationwide book club that will have meetings at local bookstores owned by people of color.

Noname, aka Fatimah Nyeema Warner, made the announcement July 14 via Twitter, that Noname’s Book Club will feature works by women of color and LGBTQIA+ writers. The two August book selections are Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and We Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby. In a tweet Thursday, she said she’s looking for bookstore affiliates to hold meetings.

In a world of celebrity book clubs mostly led by white women non-authors, Noname is the second prominent black woman this month to start a public book club. Novelist and memoirist Roxane Gay had her first book club meeting last week discussing Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys that’s being televised on HBO and online at Vice.

Earlier this month, Noname was reminiscing on how her mother, Desiree Sanders, at 25 in 1990 was the first black woman to own a bookstore in downtown Chicago with sharing a business profile on Twitter. According to the profile, the bookstore sat in the back of a beauty supply store with counting celebrities such as Maya Angelou, Chris Rock, and Damon Wayans as visitors.

Instagram

With recent singles like “Song 32,” Noname had canceled the majority of her summer tour due to ongoing health issues. She still has concerts in Los Angeles, where she currently lives, and Chicago, her hometown, set in August.

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: Merger, She Wrote

"Younger" Ep. 509 (Airs 8/07/18)

Younger, preparing for a seventh season on TV Land, has its characters dealing with competition in the publishing industry.

Liza (Sutton Foster) is the main character who had been lying about her age to get into the industry, but most of the people close to her in and out of the office has known she’s over 40 and is not a millennial. She’s dating Charles (Peter Hermann), who still owns her imprint, Millennial, though he started a new venture, Mercury. Liza is telling her friend/roommate Maggie (Debi Mazar) about the dilemma, and Maggie suggests the imprints should have a merger.

At the office, Liza and her colleagues, Millennial CEO Kelsey (Hilary Duff) and editor Diana (Miriam Shor), are listening to a proposal for a book on microdosing. As they listen about how ingesting mushrooms in small amounts can reset your body, the author invites Liza to a medically supervised retreat.

With the promise of a book deal, the Millennial team moves onto finding someone to read the audiobook for their baby boomer erotica auditions for The Seasoned Slut. The auditions are not going well until Diana plays around with the words. Then she nabs the job, which puts a spotlight on a newer element of the publishing industry with audiobooks and finding the right voices for those books.

Later, Liza tells Charles to merge the two competing imprints. Charles doesn’t believe Mercury can merge with Millennial because Mercury hasn’t made money yet. Charles reminds Liza that she’s been invited to join Mercury to squash the competition. Liza says she has a retreat in the morning; Charles is going to the same microdosing retreat. Liza gets up to head home without sharing a cab ride with Charles.

At the retreat, Charles sees Liza at the reception desk and asks to share rooms. Liza says no after learning they’re still competing for the book deal. Josh (Nico Tortorella), Liza’s ex who’s still in the circle, soon appears, with the goal of meeting venture capitalists to expand his tattoo business.

During the audiobook recording sessions back in New York City, Kelsey and her competitive ex-lover/Mercury editor Zane (Charles Michael Davis) connect over believing the formerly accused serial killer who has a book deal with Mercury really was a killer as she puts too much emotion in her recording. Kelsey and Zane talk about the competition between Millennial and Mercury.

Meanwhile at the retreat, Liza is tripping. She keeps confusing Charles and Josh with even believing she’s making out with Josh when she’s with Charles. The trip continues until she sees a “nurse,” who tells her to dance it out. In her imagination, Liza is dancing between Charles and Josh on a Broadway stage when in actuality she’s dancing with a plant and taking selfies with it.

After the retreat, Charles visits the Millennial office with Kelsey, Diana, and Liza. Charles says he has a proposal. Kelsey asks if he’s closing Mercury, but Charles says he doesn’t want to fight with family and that he wants Millennial to buy into Mercury. He proposes one dollar and reminds them his grandfather had mortgaged everything to start the business. Charles says he would like to return as an editor, not to threaten Kelsey’s CEO status, and work alongside Liza, where their romantic relationship would not interfere with business.

Last year, TV Land said Younger would be ending its run on the channel and move to Paramount Network, but the show stayed on TV Land this season and now will see the seventh one next year. This season feels like storylines were being tied up together with Liza and Charles finally finding a way to be with each other while working in the industry. But with the show preparing for another run probably next summer, it would be interesting to see how the merger will pan out and affect the romantic and working relationship between Liza and Charles. They act like it’s an ideal situation, but it probably won’t be… again.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: By the Spit

Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 -- "TBD" -- Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

OWN drama Queen Sugar is focusing this season on a main character’s evolution as a memoirist and how her memoir is impacting her family.

Nova (Rutina Wesley) has written a memoir spilling many unexpected family secrets, but as her family struggles with the secrets coming out of the shadows, she’s enjoying the limelight of having a best-selling, critically acclaimed book.

After reconnecting with her former professor-mentor Dr. Octavia Laurent (Cree Summer) whom she’s also started sleeping with again, Nova learns her book is being shortlisted for the National Book Award. Octavia, who went off on Nova for a measly mention in the book, tries to convince Nova that she doesn’t need accolades to prove her voice. It’s obvious this blast from the past is a hater, but Nova doesn’t see that yet, with even inviting Octavia to an interview about the book as part of the press tour.

During the interview, Nova is told by the reporter that her sister, Charley, is running for office to stop a highway proposal that would affect their family land. The sisters haven’t been speaking to each other since Nova put in her book that Charley paid off her basketballer ex-husband’s mistresses. When the reporter drops that bomb, Octavia interjects her wisdom. “Black girl magic is a continuum,” she says to detract attention, a quotable.

Later in the hotel room, Nova brings up her family. She is still bothered that she didn’t know about Charley running for office. Octavia says family members are “biological accidents,” advice Nova doesn’t care for at the moment. “Sometimes, we have to put family in the rearview to get to where we need to go,” Octavia adds, another quotable.

At a networking soiree, Octavia goes up to a woman she knows. The woman immediately praises Nova, who is left by the hors d’oeuvre table, in front of Octavia and proposes asking Nova to edit a collection of essays on race. Octavia says she would be a better candidate for the project since she’s been looking for one. But the woman says she would prefer emerging writers for the project. Then Octavia returns to Nova and lies about singing her praises. Nova looks at her mentor fly hungrily to one person to another.

Things later come to a head in the hotel room when Nova approaches Octavia about not telling her about the editing opportunity. Octavia tells Nova that she needs 20 years of prerequisites to complete such work. That she “made” Nova. The jealousy is palpable, and Nova thanks her mentor for opening doors but she will continue to walk in her path and reminds Octavia that she invited herself on the book tour. But Octavia retorts, “Emotional labor is still work. I refuse to be treated like an afterthought,” a third quotable. They part ways. Nova later calls Charley to congratulate her on the run.

The mentor storyline stuck out in this episode. What happens when you’re a mentor to someone who reaches the pinnacle of success you always wanted? What happens if your mentor doesn’t seem happy that you found success? These questions possibly come up for writers at times when their dreams come true as some people who worked alongside them throughout their careers may not continue with them.

Other storylines still have the imprint of the memoir’s effect. Charley goes to the Latinx section of town to get votes with her boyfriend and later deals with a brick thrown into her headquarters’ window. Seven-year-old Blue (Ethan Hutchison) gets a child psychologist to deal with learning that Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), the younger brother of Nova and Charley, is not his biological father. Violet (Tina Lifford) realizes that she may have post-traumatic stress disorder after Nova’s book brought back her violent ex-husband weeks ago.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Barracoon’ by Zora Neale Hurston

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Barracoon” by Zora Neale Hurston is an interesting nonfiction piece from a voice that’s rare in our literature.

Cudjoe Lewis aka Kazoola at the time was considered the sole survivor of the slave ship Clotilda, which brought 150 people in 1860 from around Benin in Africa after the ban on ships from going to the continent. Because of the secretive act, the slaves worked on the Alabama coastline. Zora Neale Hurston interviewed Cudjoe while a graduate student of anthropology in the late 1920s. She would go to his home and discuss his life, where he vividly recalls his life in Africa.

The book is mostly his folktale-sounding true stories from his native land involving how the king interacted with the people and how his father worked for the king. He talks about how he was brought to the king with the others and corralled onto the ship. He shudders at the horrendous journey to America, a strange place where he said it took him and the others from his homeland awhile to learn how to tend to the land, especially the sugarcane. He’s a slave for five years until the Union soldiers arrive in town and tell him he’s free. He asks where does he go now, and the soldiers don’t know. The community settles in what they call Africatown, modern-day Plateau, Alabama, where most of the descendants are African-born from the Clotilda. Cudjoe talks about the family he started and how they were gone by the time he’s speaking with Zora, even mentioning how one of his sons was shot dead by a police officer and how he had to look at his son’s disfigurement to understand what had happened.

It’s a quick read that made me research more on Cudjoe – there’s not enough of his story there, yet it’s there. It’s an interesting journey from living a regular life in Africa to adjusting to a new life in America he did not ask for or want. He expresses his longing to return home, especially with the family he started in America passing before him. The way he loses his son to a gun is the way many black families still lose their sons. He talks about being criticized by other African Americans because he was African and remembered Africa and preferred his African name, a sentiment still felt for African immigrants in America. The book opens the reader to a part of history from a personal account we rarely hear from, similar to “12 Years A Slave” by Solomon Northrup though that’s a first-person account.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth

More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are by Elaine Welteroth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a divine order, a divine flow to our lives. We don’t need to have all the answers. But our job is to keep on dreaming and trusting enough to put on foot in front of the other.

“More Than Enough” by Elaine Welteroth is a perfect snapshot of a biracial woman who reached such a historic career pinnacle at a young age and is willing to share her climb on the ladder, knowing based on race and upbringing that her climb is unique.

I found myself finding a lot in common with Elaine. I’m a Black woman editor with NorCal roots who had similar dreams but mine took me elsewhere and, like her, there were signs already putting me on a path that I didn’t see then. She starts her story from her childhood, pulling out certain memories that she now knows signaled her destiny. For example, she would make her own magazines for her fake beauty salon in her backyard with her friend. Like a lemonade stand, it made her realize her entrepreneurial and creative spirit.

By the time she gets to college, she’s in a toxic relationship with the boy she followed to Sac State (being from Sacramento luckily a rep from that college told me my grades were too good and I should go to my dream school). She mentioned it on her book tour and in her book that she regretted not applying for her dream school, Stanford, because she was following a boy, a common mistake. But in college, she meets a lifelong mentor, a professor whom she connects with over their similar parentage (Black mother, White father). On a trip, she shares with the professor and another student that she wants to be a magazine editor-in-chief at Essence. They praise her confidence to follow that dream.

When she does earn the Essence internship, the Ebony editor-in-chief she idolizes finally contacts her after she bombarded the editor with messages and asks her to work with her on a photo shoot in Malibu. There, Elaine suggests the model, tennis star Serena Williams, wear a blue bathing suit. She notices her faux pas, but it turns into an assistantship in which she lets go of her dream internship to pursue the opportunity. After being on the fast track, she’s let go at Ebony and worries about being pigeonholed in Black media. But because of her networking, she finds her way into Conde Nast, first at Glamour then at Teen Vogue, with eventually taking the top editor role at the now esteemed teen publication. Once there, she realizes being the first Black woman in charge holds a lot of responsibility, and that means navigating the direction of content to include all teen girls.

What I enjoyed the most about this book is the candidness. She admits to her stumbles, goes into details over those stumbles, and lets the reader know she thought it was the end until her life took another turn. Before every chapter, one of her quotes is highlighted, and it shows how carefully she chose her words to inspire others with her story. The book is on the long side with over 300 pages (like Michelle Obama’s Becoming), but it reads smoothly as you see her growth. Since I am in the same field and from the same area, I felt a strong connection with her and felt inspired by her moves, but it’s a memoir with a positive message that can transcend to women of all ages, but particularly those who are in college and their early 20s when they’re still trying to find their way when it comes to their careers.

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what's lit

Why Is Oprah Still Only Major Celeb of Color With Notable Book Club?

Oprah Winfrey / Oprah's Book Club

July started with Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jenna Bush Hager, Emma Roberts, and Emma Watson announcing their book club selections. Previous months’ book selections have been announced on she lit as book news, but while analyzing the monthly process, it became noticeably apparent that Oprah, the inventor of celebrity book clubs, hasn’t inspired any celebrity women of color to start their own massive book clubs.

Oprah’s Book Club was birthed in 1996 during the heyday of her famous talk show. A sticker with her book club approval on a hardcover meant automatic sales and best-seller status. It wasn’t until the last two years that celebrity book clubs have gained prominence again with mainly Reese taking the helm via her production company Hello Sunshine, which began with buying the rights of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl before it went on shelves in order to make the $168 million-grossing 2014 film.

As Reese takes on more projects stemming from books, Oprah hasn’t changed her book since November with her website still on Michelle Obama’s Becoming in anticipation of a new version of her book club on Apple TV+. Oprah told Silicon Valley insiders in March that it will be “the biggest, the most vibrant, the most stimulating book club on the planet.”

Other celebrity women jumped on the bandwagon like former first daughter Jenna starting her book club through her gig at NBC’s Today Show. Millennial actresses Emma Roberts and Emma Watson started their book clubs, with Roberts doing it through her literary website Belletrist and Watson getting help from administrators on Goodreads. But no celebrity women of color stand out as having an active and public book club beside Oprah.

Roxane Gay just started her own book club last week on HBO and online at Vice. Gabrielle Union seems to be a great contender to start a book club with multiple film projects in the works based on books by black women. Constance Wu is a chair of the Los Angeles Public Library Young Literati (disclosure: I’m a member) and received her biggest role yet in Crazy Rich Asians, based on the book by Kevin Kwan, and will star and produce the film adaptation of Goodbye, Vitamin, a 2017 debut novel by Rachel Khong. Mindy Kaling, who has written two novels with another expected next year, is another contender with a major role in A Wrinkle In Time, from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic book, alongside Oprah and Reese.

There was excitement in 2017 when Chrissy Teigen and Kim Kardashian announced they were starting a book club. Chrissy is half Thai and Kim is half Armenian, ethnically white but with a darker complexion, and both are constantly covered in mainstream media as well as black media because of their famous black husbands John Legend and Kanye West, respectively. But a year later, they revealed in a video how they met with author Betty J. Eadie, who wrote Embraced by the Light which they chose to be the first selection. In the video, Kim’s sister Kourtney Kardashian joins them. They said they thought it would be easy to start a celebrity book club, but they failed.

With so much publicity for the celebrity book clubs by white women celebrities, there should be more from nonwhite women celebrities. College-educated black women tend to be the most voracious readers, according to an old Pew research study, yet that demographic is underrepresented on the celebrity book club front.

Celebrity book clubs have a lot of influence, such as the aforementioned sticker meaning significant sales. Now with social media, thousands and even millions of readers could follow along with the book and interact with each other under the direction of the celebrity running the book club. This also furthers their influence, which was probably already established in entertainment, media, and politics. It gives them a more educated flair, such as with Watson of Harry Potter fame who began sharing pictures of the books she would read on the subway.

If there is a celebrity woman of color other than Oprah with a massive book club, then name her. The media seems to emphasize the celebrity white women and the books they choose for their fans, so maybe there’s more diversity representation in this game that’s not being covered.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘We Are Never Meeting In Real Life’ by Samantha Irby

We Are Never Meeting In Real LifeWe Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” by Samantha Irby is a hilarious collection of biographical essays that tell the craziest situations in the most verbose way.

Samantha is from the Chicago area and still lives there, so the first chapter is about how she’s never leaving her hometown, with adding that she still sees an elementary school teacher when she gets coffee. The title is an ode to her telling you everything, and being comfortable with that. She goes from her childhood, including her troubled family background; college, where she dropped out; liking men then liking women; adopting a sassy cat (probably similar to the cat on the cover); her irritable bowel syndrome (it does get gross); staying in the same assistant job for 15 years. The chapters that really stand out are the ones around her cat and her father.

The cat, named Helen Keller, gives her trouble the entire time, but the dialogue she puts in the cat’s mouth is funny. It’s like they’re constantly at war, and Samantha only got stuck with the cat because of her job at a veterinarian office.

Samantha doesn’t mention her late mother as much, but she mentions her late father a lot. She talks about her father, who was an alcoholic who would go missing days at a time and when he was home would bring illegal trouble into the home. Though she goes into detail about the unstable upbringing, it’s still in this upbeat, comedic tone. That’s what shines in this book is looking at life’s moments and having a sense of humor about it by describing every situation in the most exaggerated detail.

This book is great when you’re feeling down and need a pick-me-up. It’s the great comedic memoir you might be looking for if you’re open to reading about a black woman’s journey. Plus, she reads the audiobook in her awkwardly funny tone.

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Categories
what's lit

Well-Read Black Girl Founder Glory Edim On ‘Cultivating Joy’ In Her Growing Book Club

Well-Read Black Girl holds an event at Reparations Club in Mid-City, Los Angeles, to discuss the book club coming to the city.

Renowned Black women’s book club Well-Read Black Girl is coming to Los Angeles, with the New York-based founder welcoming the local affiliate last Sunday at the Reparations Club in the Mid-City neighborhood.

Book Soup, the West Hollywood indie bookstore, will house the LA book club as a part of the organization’s program with the American Booksellers Association to create local affiliates to support Black women readers and writers. The first book is fantasy young adult novel Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi for July and the second book will be The Travelers by Regina Porter for August.

Glory Edim, the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, joined Tameka Blackshir of Book Soup and Jazzi McGilbert of the new Black artisan boutique Reparations Club to discuss the book club’s partnership with indie booksellers across the country and how it was important for the group to maintain its safe space status for Black women.

“I felt really particular about going to LA and not knowing the community. Since I don’t live there, does that mean it’s going to be less real, less authentic?” Glory said, adding she needed the local affiliates to be run by local supporters. “Does it mean I’m not investing in the way that I need to? … It just means we need conversations, and it needs to be done where it’s authentic and real and not me just popping in like, ‘Hey, guys! I’m here!’ So when the opportunity going about partnering with independent bookstores [came up], it was ‘OK, boom! You know your bookstore, you know what’s important.'”

With the base in Brooklyn, Glory said she started the book club with promoting a free space where all women from mothers to college students can afford and enjoy the book club. She also said she wants the organization’s annual festival in Brooklyn—which has featured award-winning authors Jacqueline Woodson and Tayari Jones in the past—to be a “family reunion,” uniting Black women from other cities in one place. Besides LA, these cities so far include Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle.

“We’re not excluding people, but this is a space for Black women. That question has been coming up a lot, especially in small cities that are not as diverse,” Glory said about expanding the group. “Another thing I’ve been working through is the idea of how we cultivate joy in these spaces.”

She said cultivating joy is a priority though most of the books selected for the meetings contain traumatic themes.

“When I was curating the anthology [Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves], I was very clear about I want to hear both sides of the story. I want to know the things that are troubling and have shaped an identity but also how you were able to overcome that because when you go through something that’s not the only thing that defines you,” she said. “It helps to uplift you out of that. It’s that experience and the challenge that pulls you into another space that allows you to be brighter and bolder for sharing your story without reservation.”

The first book club meeting in LA will be at Book Soup on Sunday, July 28 at 4 p.m.

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: Stiff Competition

"Younger" Ep. 605 (Airs 7/17/19)

Younger revolves around Liza (Sutton Foster), a 40-something woman working in the publishing industry who had been lying about being in her late 20s for the past five seasons. The show, in its final season, now focuses on the Millennial imprint she helped create with Kelsey (Hilary Duff), an actual millennial, and how they’re trying to build the imprint as it becomes the top one for a longtime publisher.

The episode starts with Liza and Charles (Peter Hermann) going to a literati party. Liza even spots Colson Whitehead (not really there), but they later bump into Meg Wolitzer (really there), the author of The Female Persuasion and The Wife. It turns out both Liza and Charles set up interviews with her at a later date.

They learn Mercury is highlighted as a rising star in a New York Magazine profile. But the next day Kelsey notices she gets an awkward headshot crop at the bottom of the profile in the “low-brow” section.

“Charles is hot and I’m not!” Kelsey shrieks.

A Chip and Joanna Gaines copycat couple flipping homes in New York come into the Millennial office to pitch their couple relationship/do-it-yourself book, The Third Leg. Later that night, Charles surprises Liza with dinner—at a restaurant with the Gaines-like couple.

Of course, the couple had signed with Mercury, as they rave about Charles’ raving of his romantic relationship with Liza. They connected with that piece.

After dinner, Charles tells Liza that Mercury is doing well, but it’s all “smoking mirrors,” since they have zero sales so far.

The youngest conductor for the Brooklyn Philharmonic is the next target for Millennial as Liza pitches the musical prodigy as a potential memoirist. They soon attend a show where Liza talks to the conductor before the start to let her know she brought her team to discuss the memoir. As Liza leaves the backstage room, she bumps into Charles. She knows he’s there to sign the memoir, too, though she’s taken aback since she’d been in contact with the conductor for months. Charles sits down in his orchestra seat while Liza goes back to her nosebleed-ish seat where Kelsey and their colleague Diana (Miriam Shor) saw the couple talking near the stage.

Liza breaks the news that Charles is there for the same reason they are. Diana starts reading the conductor’s bio in the program and sees Charles’ illustrious family had funded her scholarship to Julliard. Game over.

Kelsey and Diana find themselves playing an ax game with beers. Still stressed out about losing current and potential authors, Kelsey brings up that she’s worried Liza may be helping Charles snatch the deals. Diana says the relationship between Liza and Charles isn’t compatible for the business. They soon leave, but Diana pees in the street right when a police car is driving by. So she gets caught for public urination while Kelsey, in angry mode, is raging against the officer with an ax. They both are booked in jail.

Meanwhile at the show, Charles is speaking with the conductor when Liza approaches them. The conductor says she’s still making a decision though Charles’ family has been very generous with their contributions to her success over the years. Liza stresses that Millennial is helmed by history-making women like the conductor.

Kelsey and Diana are bailed out of jail by Diana’s plumber boyfriend. They had contacted Liza, but she comes too late. Outside the jail, Kelsey asks Liza if she’s feeding information to Charles.

“Are you questioning my loyalty?” Liza asks. She then goes on a rant about how she wants everyone to be a winner.

“Stop being such a Pollyanna!” Kelsey yells. “There has to be losers.”

Charles later drops by Liza’s place that she shares with Maggie (Debi Mazar) and while her ex Josh (Nico Tortorella) is visiting with his baby Gemma. While Liza bonds with Gemma, Charles takes it as her bonding with Josh instead. Liza stops Charles outside where he tells her the good news: the conductor will sign with Millennial. Then Charles says he helped Millennial get the deal. And Liza says that’s the problem: her success can’t depend on Charles.

While the episode emphasized the downturn Millennial is taking mostly due to Mercury coming on the market, it looks like it’ll segue back to the whole Charles and Josh rivalry over Liza.

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film reviews what's lit

Gabrielle Union Shines Light on Books by Black Women With Screen Projects

LIVE! WITH KELLY AND RYAN – 9/13/21 – Gabrille Union and Anastasia Pagonis are guests on âĜLive! With Kelly and Ryan.âĝ âĜLive! With Kelly and Ryanâĝ airs weekdays in syndication on ABC. (ABC/Lorenzo Bevilaqua) GABRIELLE UNION

Currently a judge on America’s Got Talent and a creator behind a fashion line at New York and Company, actress and author Gabrielle Union has an astounding number of book projects in the works. Her future screen adaptations over the past year have been separated by articles, but when seeing all the upcoming projects come together, she’s clearly becoming a leader in bringing books to another medium.

The New York Times best-selling memoirist, with 2017’s We’re Going to Need More Wine (a must-read, especially with her voicing it on the audio book), is creating these projects via her production company I’ll Have Another (a play on her memoir’s title), which is wrapping up the first season of Spectrum’s L.A.’s Finest co-starring Jessica Alba.

Unlike Reese Witherspoon who buys rights before a book comes out on shelves, Gabrielle instead is taking novels by black women that reached a belated award-winning, best-selling status. For example, Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO was originally self-published three years ago, but its sales catapulted it to a top publisher and is being re-released this month while The Perfect Find was published under a black woman-owned company. Even Coffee Will Make You Black was a top book for black women readers two decades ago, but may enjoy a resurgence for a new generation when it comes to screen.

Below are snippets about the projects in development.

Tallulah The Tooth Fairy CEO

In March, I’ll Have Another and 5 More Minutes Productions announced they had acquired the rights to Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO, a children’s book written by Dr. Tamara Pizzoli and illustrated by Federico Fabiani.

The book was published under Tamara’s Texas-based, Italy-managed publishing house The English Schoolhouse in 2016 and now with Macmillan’s Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers. The story stars Tallulah, the tooth fairy mother behind Teeth Titans Inc. and National Association for the Appreciation and Care of Primary Teeth, the NAACP-T.

Yamara Taylor, a writer and producer who’s worked on Black-ish and Boondocks, is attached to the project to turn the book into a live-action modern family comedy, according to Deadline.

“Yamara was the perfect choice for us when choosing a writer to bring Tallulah and her story to life,” Gabrielle said with 5 More Minutes’ John Sacchi, who are producing, in a press release. “She is a working mom herself who strives to tell authentic stories that her daughter can relate to. Her interpretation of Tallulah and the world she lives and works in was so grounded and real yet had all of the fun and fantastical elements you need when telling a story about a fictional character, in this case the Tooth Fairy.”

Coffee Will Make You Black

February marked the announcement of Gabrielle’s production company is partnering with Oscar-winning actress and producer Octavia Spencer’s Orit Entertainment to bring Coffee Will Make You Black to the screen with director Deborah Riley Draper and producers Tate Taylor and John Norris. Both actresses will star in the film as well, according to the film’s Facebook page.

The 1994 debut novel of April Sinclair was named Book of the Year in Young Adult Fiction by the American Library Association and received the Carl Sandburg Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. The story follows a teenage Jean “Stevie” Stevenson as she navigates race and sexuality in the 1960s.

On the Facebook page, the team wrote: “This coming-of-age story of an African-American girl confronting race, class, colorism, sexuality and gender roles will be authentic, tender, funny and complicated. Special shout out to novelist April Sinclair who penned this seminal 25 years ago this month. We are proud to announce this important production in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book and Black History Month!”

Book rating: Reading this as a teen, I remember how impactful this book was in the 1990s. With LGBT Pride Month recently celebrated, I’m wondering how this missed those book lists as Stevie is trying to discover herself in a time when a young woman, especially a black one, is discouraged to do that.

The Idea of You

On Dec. 19, news broke that the 2017 novel, The Idea of You, by actress Robinne Lee had been optioned by I’ll Have Another and CEO Welle Entertainment Cathy Schulman to be developed into a feature film. Robinne, Eric Hayes, and Jeff Morrone will join the production team.

According to the fan website, the director and stars have not been announced yet.

Book rating: A teen’s mom falls for the younger boy band heartthrob. At first, it sounds like an unbelievable scenario, but Robinne really emphasizes how this is turning the protagonist’s life upside down. And the traveling takes the reader all over the world as the romance hits a fever pitch. Full review here.

 

The Perfect Find

Top black chick lit author Tia Williams will see her latest novel become a film with Gabrielle in the starring role as a 40-year-old magazine editor who falls for a 20-something aspiring videographer. The Perfect Find was published by Brown Girls Books in 2016.

Book rating: Preordered this book because I loved Tia’s first novel, The Accidental Diva. Tia is probably the foremost author on sophisticated black chick lit, especially with The Perfect Find, which brings the reader into the world of fashion and beauty journalism through a black woman editor battling her nemesis in the workplace and falling in love with someone she feels is too young. Brilliantly written and descriptive.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Face Speckled

Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 -- "TBD" -- Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

Still in the throes of Nova (Rutina Welsey) revealing family secrets in her best-selling memoir, the Bordelons are picking up the pieces as the book climbs the charts.

The episode opens with Nova having nightmares with her younger self, an image of how her memoir is impacting her as family relationships deteriorate.

Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner), Nova’s sister, gets a call from her ex-husband Davis (Timon Kyle Durrett) about his past affairs resurfacing in Nova’s book. Charley says she doesn’t want to be seen in public with him but knows her cleanup skills are impeccable, so she goes to help him.

Meanwhile, Nova is at a fireside chat for her book when a woman in the audience asks why Nova didn’t back her anecdotes with data. The woman argued the anecdotes as just Nova’s experiences are “self-aggrandizing” assumptions about the African-American community. She then calls Nova’s dismissal of data and theory a telltale mark of amateurism. Nova claims to be an “everyday black American,” and that is resounding with audiences.

It turns out the critical woman is Nova’s college professor (Cree Summer!). She was mad she got a sentence of nameless recognition in Nova’s book. She blames Nova for making a conscious effort to not mention her. Then they start making out on the table.

While packing up food from a catering gig, Violet tells Hollywood she’s scared again after Jimmy Dale returned in a previous episode.

Another kid told Blue (Ethan Hutchison) that Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) is not his father, the secret revealed in Nova’s book. Ralph Angel and Darla (Bianca Lawson) comforts Blue with saying he’ll never abandon him though he’s not his biological father.

One non-book reference that was a meaningful point in the episode involves immigration. Charley sees a thriving health care clinic for immigrants that her boyfriend doctor is running in the Bordelon warehouse. Until ICE shows up and families are separated. It could be said that Charley strives to be more charitable with the sugar cane business to prove its black ownership roots, something Nova criticized in her book.

In the next episode on July 24, Nova is shortlisted for the National Book Award.

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: An Inside Glob

"Younger" Ep. 604 (Airs 7/10/19)

The publishing industry TV show that centers on a 40-something woman lying about her age to get a job has evolved into focusing on the imprint and her friend who runs it.

Liza (Sutton Foster) shares at the beginning of the episode with her friend Maggie (Debi Mazar) that her boyfriend Charles (Peter Hermann) may be funding a secret company, a competitor against Millennial, the imprint she works at. That secret company could be Mercury, an upstart by former Millennial associate Zane (Charles Michael Davis), that took a big book deal from Millennial.

One of the highlights of this show is the book titles it comes up. In this episode, it’s The Seasoned Slut by a longtime romance author, who’s been with the original Empirical that has now become Millennial. The author is concerned that the established Empirical became the youth-centric Millennial, when it doesn’t fit with her age and readership demographic.

Kelsey (Hilary Duff), the new CEO of Millennial and a former flame of Zane, decides to hunt down Mercury headquarters. Her GPS leads her to a crowded co-working space. Once she spots Zane, she accuses him of sleeping with Audrey, his new client, who was originally meeting with Millennial.

Liza discusses The Seasoned Slut Metrocycle marketing campaign with the author, who’s not buying the campaign. She says she built her career at Empirical when Kelsey was an assistant. She also adds that her readership doesn’t ride bikes. Her contract with Millennial is hanging on a thread.

At dinner, Charles arrives at Maggie’s apartment where Maggie’s new lover (Nicole Ari Parker! Not a lot of women of color guest stars), Kelsey, and Liza are sitting at a table full of food. Kelsey asks Charles if she heard about Mercury. Charles dodges the question.

“Younger” Ep. 604 (Airs 7/10/19)

Liza approaches Charles about being the investor of Mercury. She said she knows what a liar looks like because of her lying about being 26 when she’s 40 for the past five seasons. Charles admits he’s behind Mercury since it’s his turn to build his own company since Empirical belonged to his father. Liza argues Charles can’t be on the board of Millennial while creating a competitor. So Charles asks Liza to keep the secret. And she does.

The next day, Kelsey is chasing the romance author at the restaurant to convince the author to not sign with Mercury. Liza tries to intercept. Kelsey tells the author that Zane is a former employer with a personal vendetta against Millennial. But the author says she doesn’t know Zane; she’s there to meet Charles. Cue Charles and Zane walking up to the table. (A lot of pivotal moments this season are happening at fancy restaurant tables).

Kelsey has a WTF moment, accusing Charles of funding Mercury. She yells about the back-stabbing and blames them for her newly diagnosed alopecia (yasss for awareness).

Onlookers’ smartphones capture Kelsey’s meltdown. The video makes the rounds on the digital literary circuit that same afternoon. Liza notifies Kelsey that three other authors have just jumped ship from Millennial to Mercury to have the “gray hair in the room,” code for older white man boss. Charles, that boss, had resigned from the board an hour earlier.

A fun note is Josh (Nico Tortorella) reading the author’s erotica to his newborn to quiet her. This episode shows how when publishers change, some authors might not see the change helping them succeed, such as the bike campaign for an older adult erotica book.

The stress of being the CEO of a flailing company is getting to Kelsey, who now has severe hair loss. Her leadership is questioned in different ways each week, but the chain of events has hit the fan and is affecting her body. Next episode should show the fallout over the competing publishers and bring up another aspect of female bosshood.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Season of the Witch’ by Sarah Rees Brennan

Season of the Witch (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, #1)Season of the Witch by Sarah Rees Brennan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

* Giveaway win from I Read YA*

“Season of the Witch” by Sarah Rees Brennan is the prequel novel to the “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” exploring what happens to Sabrina the summer before her 16th birthday when she’s supposed to assume her destiny as a witch and give up her mortal lifestyle.

If you’re familiar with the dark version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch thanks to Netflix, then you know Sabrina Spellman lives with her two aunts, Zelda and Hilda; a cousin Ambrose, and her cat Salem. Her friends, who all conveniently have witchy descendant ties in Greendale, are Roz, Susie, and Harvey, her boyfriend. As Sabrina upholds her regular life, she’s battling the satanic forces bound by her family where she’s expected to give up on her mortal best friends and Baxter High for the Academy of Unseen Arts and battle with the three witch sisters: Prudence, Dorcas, and Agatha.

In this story, Sabrina worries Harvey doesn’t love her since they’re not officially in a relationship after a year of dating. Since she’s about to come into her witching ways, she asks Ambrose to help her cast a love spell. Except Ambrose takes over the spell with Sabrina forgetting the words. Then Harvey starts to act strangely with showing his affection for Sabrina, who keeps worrying that Ambrose may have tricked her with putting the wrong spell on Harvey. As she worries, Sabrina befriends a water spirit in the woods that seems to understand what’s at stake. But Sabrina realizes more is at stake as she comes into her own magic.

My copy is an uncorrected proof, so this scene might’ve been cut out. But the scene of Ambrose’s Blackness being singled out while he’s flirting with a mail carrier stuck out to me. The carrier is surprised to see Sabrina as Ambrose’s cousin and explains the surprise since Ambrose is “African-American.” Which he’s not. He’s from Britain, but later Prudence, who’s also Black in the TV series, is just described as having a dark complexion. Race is irrelevant to the story except for Roz, who is African-American with a preacher father and genetic blindness from her slave descendants relevant to witchery. It seemed like an awkward moment yet expressed a bigger issue of how nonwhiteness has to be pointed out in a kid’s book when the character’s race is not central to the story.

Overall, the book is a fun, dark young adult read that pairs well with the Netflix series. It gets wordy in the descriptions to the point where the book felt a tad longer than it needed to be. There are black-paged chapters in the book to describe backstories to the other characters though not all backstories become a strong thread in the book but maybe will in later novels.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Grit’ by Angela Duckworth

Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Grit” by Angela Duckworth is a great analysis on why we do what we do and what drives us to do that. Through her studies of different groups to just noticing her family and friends, she opens up your mind to how our passions define our purpose.

One point in the book that stands out is how we use certain tools like a career path to really explore our passion and how those tools itself may be misconstrued as the passion. She used the example of a journalist I admire, Jeffrey Gettleman, who was the longtime East Africa bureau chief and correspondent for The New York Times. In college, he fell in love with East Africa. It wasn’t until a professor told Jeffrey his writing talent could translate into a journalism career. That career path never crossed Jeffrey’s mind until he realized he could tell stories throughout East Africa. So Jeffrey’s passion is East Africa, not journalism, but journalism is the vessel able to carry his passion.

As a journalist myself, I realized not everyone is passionate about the field itself but more with what they’re covering. I’m a woman of color in the very white male-dominated environment of business journalism. Though I try to convince other journalists of color to join less diverse newsrooms like mine, they’re not interested. But they might just be interested in covering their own culture and using journalism as a vessel. I, on the other hand, use journalism for my love for writing, so I can write about any news stories (as long as I’m getting paid) and be fine with the content I’m producing. It’s evident in my career where I’ve reported on various topics, which tends to be unusual for a journalist of color because many decide to restrict their topics to what they’re passionate about. This book helped me piece this understanding together.

Overall, it’s a detailed analysis of passion and purpose, but with the scientific and experimental factors, you can also see how it plays out in your life. Are you following your passion? Have you abandoned projects though you thought it was for your passion? The author emphasizes how it’s OK to quit a project when the “natural stop” arrives. I ran a list of things in my mind that I thought I was passionate about, but apparently I wasn’t. It’s about finding that vessel to pursue passion. Sometimes, we’re using the wrong vessels due to our environment, e.g. a parent wanting us to play piano but we don’t practice then piano lessons are wasted. The book is an analysis that could help with your analysis on figuring out your passion and purpose and if it shows in your grit.

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what's lit

How Disney’s Original ‘The Little Mermaid’ Perpetuated the White Mermaid Image

Chloe x Halle Twitter

Disney’s 1989 animated interpretation of The Little Mermaid brought the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale alive through Ariel with her manufactured White beauty that has become the trademark for mermaid images. But one book made me realize mermaids can be Black and any other complexion our imaginations want us to see.

It was Sukey and the Mermaid written by Robert D. San Souci and illustrated by Brian Pinkney. Sukey is forced to work on the farm by her stepfather, but she befriends a Black mermaid, Mama Jo, who gives her hope her life can be better. I loved the story, reread the book over and over. The mermaid in this story was Black and older with long silvery strands and an undersea attire that looked like armor made of gold. Ariel’s juvenescence may have enhanced her magic, but Mama Jo possessed a more sage magic, a majestic presence.

Black mermaids conquered conversation on July 3 at the news of Halle Bailey from Chloe x Halle and Freeform’s Grown-ish nabbing the part of Ariel in the Disney live action remake. The four-day Fourth of July weekend prolonged the uproar on social media where supporters who applauded a Black Ariel clashed with those who slammed a Black Ariel with the argument she can only be White due to the author’s Danish roots.

Since I’ve been working on a young adult novel about Black girls cosplaying as nightclub mermaids, I’ve noticed Disney’s imagery has even warped the marketplace for mermaid-centric merchandise, further emphasizing these mythical creatures can only be accepted as White.

Sukey and the Mermaid fell into my hands after my Ariel doll disappeared. Ariel, with her ketchup red hair and shimmery purple bra and green fin, was found under the Christmas tree when I was five-years-old. I would stick her under the faucet for her to swim in the ocean I created in the sink, put her beside my head at night in bed. Then she went missing.

Me and Ariel on Christmas before she met her untimely demise.

Years later, I learned Ariel was tossed in the trash. My mother despised the attention the only White doll she would ever buy me received over my Black dolls. The Black doll experiment conducted by psychologists Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark in the 1940s found the participating Black children preferred White dolls and used more positive adjectives to describe them. This informed how my mother would raise my sister and me with only Black dolls since she knew a time when she could only get White dolls.

But she caved with Ariel, since I was obsessed with that mermaid. Ariel topped two birthday cakes in a row and became an epic Halloween costume complete with the shimmery green fin. Eventually Ariel was replaced by book mermaid Mama Jo and my Disney obsession moved on to brown-skinned Jasmine in Aladdin.

The controversy around Halle’s casting will hopefully die down as we accept a new image of a mermaid who could be reflected in more stories, products, and images for girls and women of various complexions.