Where creative storytelling meets purposeful strategy
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.
Delivering a cake to a Sicilian baker’s third cousin leads to a new job opportunity for Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, in From Scratch as Amy’s husband Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, fulfills his dream of being the head chef in his own restaurant.
The Netflix drama is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by actress Tembi Locke about her relationship with her late husband Saro, who succumbs to cancer, and her journey through the grief in Saro’s homeland of Sicily.
In the limited series, Amy starts volunteering at the Watts Tower with teaching kids art. She feels more of a purpose as a volunteer compared to her job at an upscale art gallery. When her boss calls her to convince a client to keep their work in the gallery in the middle of a volunteer session, Amy realizes she would rather make the community gig full-time.
Meanwhile, Lino loses his job. The greasy Italian restaurant he had been working at since he moved to Los Angeles is closing over loss of business. The owner says he’ll keep the building, but operations will cease. Lino asks if he could finally cook his own authentic Sicilian cuisine in an experimental dining experience. The owner agrees, making Lino the head chef of the new iteration.
Amy wrestles with her decision for the lower-paying job, so she calls her father Hershel, played by Keith David, for advice. Hershel reminds her that she’s a married woman who needs to discuss the life-changing decision with her husband.
When Amy and Lino come together to talk through their career moves, they convince each other to follow their dreams.
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
A banner for L’Isola, Lino’s test run of a dining experience, hangs over the old restaurant’s signage for opening night.
Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, brings her former NFL boyfriend Ken, played by Terrell Carter, to the new restaurant. Zora is acting on Amy’s advice to introduce her boyfriend to their mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith.
Frenzied by serving patrons, Amy tells Zora that she did not expect the introduction to happen on the opening night of her husband’s restaurant. But Zora explains that they would all be under the same roof, so it makes the most sense until Lynn rebuffs Ken every time he shares information about himself. The introduction is a fail, especially without Amy being able to sit down with her family to be a mediator. Zora becomes upset with Amy for the bad advice.
A DREAM DEFERRED
One day, Lino comes home after a long day at work complaining about pain in his knee. Amy checks the knee and notices it’s swollen. Noting the hardened texture, she suggests Lino should see an orthopedic doctor.
Amy reaches out to Zora for an orthopedic doctor since Ken would know one with his professional football background. Zora becomes enraged; she feels she’s being used by her needy younger sister again. She gives Amy the information but warns her about her dependence.
At the doctor’s office, the scan of Lino’s knee leads to a referral to an oncologist. Lino eventually gets diagnosed with a rare soft-tissue cancer. Right away, Lino is rushed to chemotherapy, as Amy suddenly becomes a caretaker.
Though L’Isola is getting rave reviews, the trial restaurant closes immediately without Lino being able to be on-site as the head chef. Amy must convince her former unfeeling boss at the art gallery to give her contract work in order to keep her health insurance policy. She doesn’t share Lino’s diagnosis, but her sobbing convinces the boss to help her.
Zora comes by the house to see what happened to Lino’s restaurant. As soon as she’s at the door, Lino collapses behind Amy. They rush Lino to the hospital, where he has to stay. Amy reveals to her family Lino’s cancer diagnosis and how it has already upended their lives.
THE BITTER AND THE SWEET
The name of the episode, “Bitter Almonds,” is also the name of a chapter in the memoir. But the book focuses more on life in Sicily after Tembi’s husband Saro dies from cancer. During her time of grief with Saro’s mother, Tembi receives a heavy bag of almonds from a neighbor in the town who said the almonds were from a cousin of Saro’s mother. When Tembi brings the almonds to the home, she realizes she brought another chore to the kitchen. Cracking the nuts open becomes a worthwhile experience to taste authentic Sicilian almonds.
“Bitterness, Sicilians understand, is an essential flavor both in food and in life. It has shaped the island’s culinary identity. There is no sweet without bitter. The poetry of island tells us that the same is true of the Sicilian heart.”
Saro’s cancer diagnosis is first detailed in the chapter “At the Table,” where Tembi describes the hardship of becoming a caretaker while still working as an actress. They are exhausted from the medical situation until Saro suggests Tembi should “take a lover.” They can’t enjoy their time together as he gets sicker. The swift transition came with her husband’s chemo rounds and knee surgery. The cancer is still a secret to his family.
“Many rounds of chemo, three hospital stays, and a major surgery later, Saro still had not told his parents about his diagnosis,” Tembi writes. They soon have to notify his family, who fly to LA. Like in the next episode where Amy must pick up Lino’s parents at the airport stateside and prepare mentally on how to deal with the parents who have failed to build a relationship with her.
In the third episode of From Scratch, we make an 18-month jump to summer 2004 where Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, and Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, are touring their wedding venue, a duchess’ mansion in Florence.
When they’re talking to the duchess about paying for their reservation, the duchess repeats how she needs the deposit in full. The microaggression from the duchess becomes a laughing matter when Amy and Lino meet with friends because they know the duchess, like many others, didn’t expect to see a Black American woman with a Sicilian man wanting to marry in an Italian mansion.
The series is a fictional adaptation of From Scratch by Tembi Locke, who tells the story of how she fell in love with her husband and how she fell in love with his country after his untimely death from cancer. This episode covers the wedding that doesn’t stray away too far from the memoir.
FAMILY MATHEMATICS
Before family arrives, Amy and Lino joke about him meeting her entire family. Lino will be baptized as a Texan, Amy laughs. Lino asks if that means he’ll be dipped in barbecue sauce. Amy giggles and says the choice condiment would be hot sauce.
What is unspoken between them is Lino’s family is not coming to the wedding. With his father still angry about his decisions to leave Sicily for education, career, and now a wife, Lino will have to lean on Amy’s family.
Like clockwork, Amy’s father, Hershel, played by Keith David, arrives in Florence in Texan cowboy attire, along with a crowd of their family members. The Black family dominates the guest list, and they’re wondering why the Sicilian family is not present. They compare the commute times from Houston to Dallas with Florence to Sicily, both trips an hourlong flight. How did they come halfway around the world while the much closer other side didn’t bother to show up?
At the low-key bachelorette slumber party, Amy asks her older sister, Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, if it’s OK to get married without her future in-laws in attendance at the wedding. As the day gets closer, the hope they will show up is dissipating.
Meanwhile in Castelleone, Sicily, Lino’s mother Filomena, played by Lucia Sardo, is visibly upset about not being able to attend her son’s wedding. She’s from another generation, as in she obeys her husband, Lino’s father Giacomo, played by Paride Benassai, disapproves of Lino’s actions. In fact, Giacomo calls Lino a “disgrace.”
It’s the wedding day. Amy gets her something old, something borrowed, something blue from Zora, her mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith; her stepmother Maxine, played by Judith Scott; and her grandmother Evelyn, played by Greta Sesheta.
With the men, Lino is christened with Texas-shaped cuff links from Hershel. Though his father is not there, Lino can now depend on his father-in-law.
Before they walk down the aisle outside on the terrace, Amy and Lino meet inside the mansion. They console each other that they will be fine getting married without his parents there.
Image: Netflix
The Sicilan side did not show up in the book either. At least Tembi’s late husband Saro’s immediate family was not there, but an aunt and uncle-in-law had shown up.
“Unbeknown to us, they had driven down using the address on the invitation I had sent them. They had told no one they were coming, not Saro’s mother, not Saro’s father. To do so would have been a family betrayal. Still, there they were. Saro was speechless, moved to tears by their gesture. And for the first time, I sensed what we had missed in not having is parents there. My heart opened wide.”
After exchanging vows and jumping the broom, they have dinner. Lynn rises from her seat for a toast and advises the new married couple to not allow pebbles of problems pile up into a boulder. When there are too many peddles impeding growth, then a couple may never get past that boulder. She says she had that problem with Hershel. The moment becomes tense between the divorced couple, but Hershel finds a way to end the toast as guests drink their wine. Everyone later dances the Harlem Shuffle under string lights on the terrace.
PEBBLES TURN INTO BOULDERS
Amy and Lino embark on a trip to Sicily. Lino couldn’t return to the U.S. without seeing his family, although they refused to come to the wedding. Once on Sicilian ground, he calls his family’s home. His father picks up and warns him to not come near the house. Devastated, Lino says they can go back home. Amy says no; they can still enjoy their time.
At the hotel, Amy calls the house herself. Lino’s sister Biagia, played by Roberta Rigano, answers the phone this time, cradling a baby daughter who’s never met her uncle. Amy explains Lino wants to see the family badly. Biagia says it’d be impossible for her and her mother to see Lino; the very action will bring shame to the family for disobeying the patriarch.
Later, Giacomo comes inside the house and takes off his boots. Filomena notices a pebble in one of the boots that she slides into her apron’s pocket. It symbolizes the pebbles, or the problems, that could pile up in a marriage, per Lynn’s wedding toast.
The next day, while Amy and Lino walk around the farmers market, Lino spots his father bringing a merchant some of his crops. Lino and Giacomo lock eyes, but Giacomo jumps into his truck and speeds away.
At home, Filomena scrimps on Giacomo’s meal by barely adding any tomato sauce to his spaghetti. This deliberate action eats away at her so that she tells her priest during confession. The priest asks why would she do that as a dutiful wife. She explains the fractured relationship she now has with her son, including missing his wedding, because she must obey her husband.
As Amy and Lino are leaving the hotel after a fruitless effort to see his family, Lino notices his mother, his sister, and his baby niece. They sit down outside to catch up, but not for very long. Filomena and Biagia must go before Giacomo notices anything is amiss. They return to the priest’s car and drive away.
The memoir has Tembi surprising Saro with a trip to Sicily months after the wedding. They stayed in a hotel and shared their schedule with Saro’s sister Franca. This brought different family members, mostly cousins, to their hotel to meet with Saro and Tembi. Then finally, Saro’s parents came.
“As we passed bread, no one referenced the previous years. There was no grand apology or even gesture of regret for time lost. We just ate and carried forward as if starting our relationship from that moment.” Tembi goes on to write that she ate “pasta with local capers and a simple tomato sauce that pleased my palate like no other.”
CAKE DELIVERY
On this trip, Tembi and Saro are saddled with a dry cake a local baker gives them. The cake, or “the traditional cake of Polizzi Generosa,” is supposed to be delivered to actor Vincent Schiavelli, known for his roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ghost, and Batman Returns. Once they’re back in Los Angeles, Tembi calls her agent about how to contact Vincent. The actor himself calls and comes over to pick up the cake.
This is dramatized with Amy and Lino being in the same predicament looking for a distant cousin of a Sicilian baker who lives in LA like them. Amy uses her contacts at the art gallery to find the cousin, who happens to work at the Watts Towers art installation, which was created by Italian immigrant artist Sabato “Simon” Rodia. The cousin also gets his cake.
The cake leads to more for Amy as she wrestles with a major career decision right when she and Lino are stabilizing their married lives.
The second episode of Netflix’s new drama From Scratch based on Tembi Locke‘s heart-wrenching memoir about her love journey with her late husband has the young couple move to Los Angeles for a fresh start.
It’s November 2002 where Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, and Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, have finally united in the City of Angels after an 18-month long-distance relationship. They live with Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, as they look for jobs in their preferred fields. While Amy works in an upscale Hollywood art gallery with an international flair, Lino is only able to get a job at an American Italian restaurant that serves plates piled with questionable-looking spaghetti and meatballs.
WORKING FOR THE MAN
At the gallery, Amy sells a photographic piece featuring girls in burqas resembling basketball jerseys for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. The fact she can recall Kobe’s fluency in Italian due to a military upbringing seals the deal with the man who says he’ll buy the piece. Office politics makes Amy’s boss upset, but the sale translates into a greater deal of respect.
On the other hand, Lino leaves work early because of slow days at the restaurant. He gets restless. As Thanksgiving approaches, he asks Zora if he could help with the grocery list. Lino heads to Jons, one of LA’s supermarket fixtures, for a trip where he discovers frozen corn dogs.
The scene features a Jons employee showcasing the corndog samples played by Nick Locke, the brother of author Tembi and their showrunner sister Attica Locke, who’s also an award-winning mystery novelist. Their other brother, Doug Locke, makes a cameo as a receptionist at the art gallery. When Lino and Zora bond over the grocery list, one of Tembi’s first TV appearances in a 1994 episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airplays in the background.
With Amy gaining the ranks at the art gallery, she asks her boss for an introduction to a top Italian restaurant chef who could hire Lino, an authentic Sicilian chef who has mastered Italian cuisine. Amy drives Lino to the interview. During the interview, the chef belittles Lino for his immigrant status and Sicilian ethnicity. Lino returns to Amy’s car, upset over the ordeal.
CULTURE NOT ACCEPTED
For Thanksgiving dinner, Lino, as the chef in the house, cooks the entire holiday meal. But when the family of Amy and Zora arrive looking for Black staples like macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and, of course, turkey with gravy, Lino’s Sicilian-inspired meal is pushed off the table to the windowsill, uneaten. On top of the failed job interview, Lino feels his culture is disappearing.
Over dinner, Amy’s mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, comments that she wants “Brown grandbabies” and asks Lino if his family approves of him cohabitating with Amy. Lino shares that his family hasn’t approved of him in a long time after he left home to attend university then dropped out to become a chef. But, yes, running to America to be with a Black woman who’s not Catholic adds a cherry on top to the disappointment.
After being bummed about the adjustment to his new home, Lino sits up in bed to a surprise bowl of hot grits. That’s what Amy calls the dish, but Lino calls it polenta. The boiled cornmeal is a shared delicacy in Texas and in Sicily; there are similarities between the two places and their two cultures. Earlier, Amy had gone to the restaurant looking for Lino, who had left before his shift ended. She notices his coworkers playing football, better known as soccer by Americans. It motivates Amy to bring Lino to an Italian American bar where he can bond with his work friends and new friends who share the same culture.
In the parking lot of the bar, Amy and Lino get carried by “Try a Little Tenderness” playing in the car. They start dancing behind the vehicle. Lino would listen to the blues while he cooked in Florence.
“In a city, where there is no center, I’m your center, you’re my center,” Amy says. Their dreams may never come true, but they will at least have each other.
Her knee is about to drop when Lino intercepts. He wants his knee to hit the concrete first, but Amy says no. She proposes marriage. Lino says yes. His friends are in the parking lot, too, and cheer for him. With the good news, he calls home. His father picks up the phone. He tells his father that he’s marrying Amy. His father disowns him.
In the book, Tembi and Saro, the inspiration for Lino, get married in New York City in front of a justice of peace due to his visa. Though their real-life proposal may not have been as romantic as the one portrayed on the show, they plan a wedding ceremony and reception in Florence. Amy and Lino do the same.
The first episode of Tembi Locke‘s fictional adaptation of her best-selling memoir From Scratch starts with a Black Texan law school student and a Sicilian chef taking life and love risks in Italy.
Starting in fall 2000, Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, arrives in Florence for an art program. With a pickup from friend Caroline, played by Kassandra Clementi, Amy is taken to her dorm building where she meets her suitemates. She’s an artist though she’s also a student at Georgetown Law School, where she could become a lawyer like her father and choose a practical career path compared to being an artist. So, she’s taking a risk with her future by indulging in Italian life with art, friends, and a boyfriend whose family owns an art gallery.
One day, Amy and Caroline run into Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, a chef at a nearby fancy restaurant called Ristorante Vigna Vecchia. Amy points out Lino’s black pointed toe boots as an interesting fashion choice. As Amy struggles with her Italian, Lino laughs and lets her know he knows English.
They later go on a solo walk after a night at the bar where Caroline works. Lino tells Amy he is fluent in English from his time when he studied translation at university. He disappointed his father with his decision to leave his home in Sicily and abandon farming his family’s land. He also abandoned his university studies to become a chef.
Amy is doing the same thing, sort of. When she calls her older sister Zora, played by Till star Danielle Deadwyler, back in Houston where their family is having a barbecue, their father refuses to talk to Amy over her decision to delay her return to Georgetown Law in favor of an art program in Florence.
The look
Lino soon brings Amy a bike that he “finds,” so she won’t have to ride the bus to her program. He then invites her to Vigna Vecchia. She says she may bring the guy she’s dating, and Lino says he is welcomed as well.
That night, Amy brings her two suitemates instead to Vigna Vecchia. The moment she pulls her chair out to sit at the table conveniently facing the kitchen, Amy locks eyes with Lino. Then Amy proceeds with her suitemates to eat extravagant samples of the finest Italian food described in the book as “heaping plates of strozzapreti with braised red radicchio in a mascarpone sauce; fusilli in a fire-roasted bell pepper sauce; gnocchi with gorgonzola in a white martini reduction with shaved aged parmigiano.”
The book goes on to tell the true story between author Tembi Locke and her real-life love, Saro, who was a Sicilian chef working in Florence. This meal sealed their fate.
“I began to see that Saro was speaking directly to me, each dish an edible love letter: succulent, bold. By the third and fourth courses, I accepted that this chef who wore elf boots was making love to me, and we hadn’t even so much as kissed.”
Image: Netflix
Though the limited series is more of a fictional portrait, Tembi said in a recent interview with her sister and showrunner Attica Locke that the moment the characters Amy and Lino connect in the restaurant is what happened in her love story as well, and that that moment ignites the story.
“In Florence and that first time I go to Acqua al 2, which was my late husband Saro’s restaurant, and he cooks me a meal. You cannot have a series called ‘From Scratch’ without that moment,” Tembi said.
“First Tastes” is not only the name of the episode but also the first chapter of the book, where the precise moment they realize that a relationship may blossom from a delicious meal is described as below:
“From my place at center stage, I could see Saro moving like a wizard behind a scrim of sizzling heat, orchestrating the clamorous clanging of pots; setting the pace and unfurling magic onto plates from Acqua al 2’s narrow, searingly hot kitchen. At first glance, the kitchen looked like Aladdin’s cave. There was Saro in a white T-shirt, floor-length apron, white clogs, and red bandanna with James Brown hollering out, ‘This is a man’s world’ from a boom box in the background. Saro caught my eye, smiled, and signaled that he would be out later to say hello.”
Back to the TV series, which shows Amy running off with her pseudo-boyfriend after saying goodbye to Lino. Even after a meal and a spark, Amy can’t fall for a chef when her other romantic option has a connection to art.
African roots
On that walk where Amy and Lino converse about their lives, Lino first pronounces Amy’s name as “ah-mee,” which involves “love” in Italian related to amore. Amy shakes her head no, as she pronounces her name the American way and says it’s short for Amashé, which she tells Lino means “beautiful one” in the South African Zulu language.
Amy later calls Zora, who has moved from Houston to Los Angeles to achieve her dreams while starting out as a teacher. But then their mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, gets on the phone. She’s staying with Zora until she embarks on an ashram in Topanga. Lynn gets straight to the point, advising Amy to not “fall for some Disney princess castle shit” in “White-ass Europe.” She reminds Amy about her friend’s daughter who is studying in Kenya as a Fulbright scholar and dating a Ph.D. student in Nairobi. “That is some different shit,” Lynn explains.
The phone call in the series is not much different from the book. The author mentions how her shortened name, Tembi, is for Tembekile, a name bestowed upon her by South African folk singer Miriam Makeba, who was married to former Black Panther Stokely Carmichael. Her parents spent time with both of these figures during their participation in the Pan-African Liberation Movement, a piece missing from the series.
When Tembi talks to her mother further about the situation, she tries to balance her behavior with her mother’s expectations:
“I had been raised to sympathize with the challenges facing people of color across the African diaspora. Why, then, had I come to Italy, the heart of European culture, to study abroad? Why was I not in Kenya, like the daughter of her friend Mary from her former Movement days? Mary’s daughter was on a Fulbright and teaching Kenyan children English as part of her studies at Wellesley. Why was I not more like Mary’s daughter? And why in God’s name was I continuing to hook up with ‘white boys’? She wanted something more for me.”
The spread of parental worry reaches Amy’s father Hershel, played by Keith David, as he arrives in Florence in Texan regalia complete with denim jeans held up by a leather belt with a huge buckle, a pair of cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. He comes with Amy’s stepmother Maxine, played by Judith Scott, to survey Amy’s adventures in Florence. They go to Lino’s restaurant for dinner. Lino believes Amy’s parents are there to meet with him until Amy’s boyfriend enters the scene late. Devastated, Lino backs away into the kitchen.
Hershel tells Amy he doesn’t care for either of her love interests. He also reminds Amy that she shouldn’t fall for any man in a land where the men don’t look like her, the same sentiment her mother shared earlier.
BLACK GIRLs want ROMANCE too
Lino approaches Amy about the mistaken meeting. He confesses his unprecedented feelings for her. She doesn’t say much in response but gives him a notebook he had eyed at a street market. The sentiment that Black girls can’t have fairy-tale romances resonates with Amy, especially when she shares the update on Lino with Zora.
During her art showcase, Amy impresses her teacher, which was the professional goal she had during the program that has been clouded with the possibility of love. Then she sees Lino at the showcase, but he slips out without going up to Amy. She runs after him and asks why he’s leaving. Her teacher calls after her about an opportunity to hobnob with other artists. She tells Lino to meet her at her place later. As she walks away, Amy seems worried that Lino will not come over later. Her carefree time in discovering art and engaging in lust may have cost her true love.
At home, she falls asleep as nighttime falls. Rain starts to fall. The pitter-patter against the windows wakes her. Did Lino come? The moment she looks outside, Lino is looking up at her window. He looks apprehensive. She runs outside in the rain and kisses Lino. A kiss turns into a sleepover. Once they wake in the morning, Lino tells Amy he can cook anywhere in the world. He is willing to uproot his life to be with Amy. That’s when Amy realizes a fairy-tale romance may be in the cards for her after all.
Tembi Locke’s memoir about her love journey with her late husband is getting an onscreen adaptation with fictional characters similar to her and her family members.
From Scratch became a best-seller in 2019 when the actress opened up about meeting her chef husband Saro in Sicily while studying abroad in college and how they built their lives in Los Angeles in order for her to pursue her Hollywood dreams. When her husband succumbs to cancer, she finds herself as a single mother to an adopted daughter as they venture through Sicily to engage with her husband’s family and homeland without him.
The Netflix series debuts Oct. 21.
In the eight-episode miniseries, Zoe Saldaña plays Amy, a character like Tembi who’s a Black woman from Texas in Italy for her dramatic studies. Eugenio Mastrandrea plays Lino, a character like Saro who’s a Sicilian chef who falls for Amy and follows her to the U.S. where they build their family until his untimely death.
“When the book club was going to pick ‘From Scratch’ as its May ’19 book club pick, every day literally I wake up and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how, but thank you, just thank you,’ because it has been such a gift,” Tembi said at a Netflix sneak peek event. “They have been incredible collaborators. They have believed in every aspect of this story, every frame of it, everything that we wanted to do, and they have really given us as sisters this platform to put this book on a bigger canvas.”
Attica Locke, who’s an award-winning mystery novelist and screenwriter who worked on Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere based on Celeste Ng’s novel, joined her sister Tembi to bring the family love story to the screen.
“I think there is a beautifully absurd family dynamic at the heart of it, and it touches on everybody. And all of our families has some element of the absurd to them underneath our love,” Attica said. “There’s love of food. There’s love of my culture. There’s love of music. And we wanted to show kind of every aspect of it. I don’t think there’s any dyad. I don’t think there’s any relationship between two people that doesn’t hit a bump over the course… including the sisters hit a bump that they have to kind of have to get through and decide in the time that we have left, how do we want to spend it together as a family?”
The miniseries covers a yearslong journey of a character falling in love then learning to preserve that love, Tembi said.
“We wanted to render life in its fullest sense, and here’s a woman coming into her womanhood and all that that means with it and owning all of who she is and the arc of her journey of self-discovery,” she said.
Due to her proximity to the true story, Attica said she’s learning how to tell stories more authentically through book and TV projects.
“I would hope that, and what I think is happening in my life, is that through the books and through the television shows that I’ve worked on, that I’m getting closer to and more comfortable with telling the truth,” Attica said. “What telling stories that have fundamental truth in them. And whereas I may have been more shy as a younger writer about saying something that is clearly my point of view that I believed to be the kind of truth of something in the world.”
As for a non-spoiler, Tembi said the first time the character based on her goes to the restaurant owned by the character based on her late husband and receives a cooked meal is pure magic. “You cannot have a series called ‘From Scratch’ without that moment.”
*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*
Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon is a collection of poems examining the author’s South Los Angeles upbringing in the 1980s and looking for comfort in the harsh memories from then.
Each poem tells a story about realizing the beauty in a situation although it’s difficult to find the beauty amid the obstacles of growing up in the area formerly known as South Central.
In the poem “I Say You Can’t Go Home Again,” for example, she shares her experience of being unhoused as a child and her family living in a dispossessed home of a convicted drug dealer. A bright spot is witnessing the collection of roses by a female who may be her mother. She steals varieties of roses from their unknowing neighbors as a “rose petal shoplifter.” But they as a family look for the hidden drugs on the five-acre property; stealing is a source of comfort, whether it’s stealing roses or drugs.
“Life Map” describes the geography of where events take place from home to school, but also include where her father bought crack cocaine and where her mother was treated for cancer. Traveling off familiar highway ramps and on avenues like Slauson and Vermont touches on nostalgia, yet her parents are dealing with hard truths as they make their daily trips around the area.
The origin of the term “assault weapon” is explored with the term being born the same year as the author along with “Band-Aid” in a poem called “I Left Out ‘Bells and Whistles’ Written with a Little Help from Websters Dictionary.”
Assault weapons could
have easily served
as pacifiers in my
South Central Los Angeles home.
I was seven the first time
I remember holding one.
With making lemonade out of the lemons that fell into her hands, there is still mental trauma happening within the pages. A poem called “NYP Psychiatry” describes the fear of keeping everything inside or spirits will take advantage of those emotions. The last line: “I arrived a martyr and exited a shadow.” Poems such as “All Day Long” and “I Felt My Brother’s Wrists” shows how she is with her brothers seeing them be abused and tormented by their father. She tries to be their savior and watches over them. Thinking she has the power to help her brothers overwhelms her as she realizes her actions can’t stop the pain.
I hold my brother’s hand.
I clench my breath.
His scream lowers to a bleat.
The closed door becomes an ocean,
Our prison an oasis.
Just he, me, and the sea
Playing hand-clap games,
And we cannot be bound.
We are free, I tell him.
We are infinite
Because I declare it
As sister and deity.
Being a Black woman is also an underlying theme. “Sojourner” narrates the hardships of living in a society constructed and maintained by White men today and during slavery when abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth walked the planet.
You never forgot to say who a woman
Could be, what a Black woman could do
When we eschewed weakness and misogyny.
No one helped you. You just carved the trail.
No one helps me either. That’s what I learned
It means to be a Black woman.
To be strong, to plough, to plant, to raise barns.
That’s what you did. I do that metaphorically.
Now, I raise children, plough through journals
With my pen. I always remember to never
Pin my tongue for fear of other’s thoughts
This is the way you walked.
Overall, the poetry follows a path of Black girlhood to Black womanhood amid traumatic settings when one needs to fixate on what’s beautiful or what’s calm in a situation to survive the moment. Random thoughts as a way to deal with the obstacles turn into a poem like the one about words that were added to the Webster’s Dictionary the year the author is born. It’s a way to examine life, the time of birth, the hometown, and all the elements that make up the cosmic journey.
⚠️Spoilers ahead! Read the book and/or watch the film on Netflix.
⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below have graphic references to topics such as sexual abuse, self-harm, violence, and eating disorders.
Jessica Knoll’s chilling debut novel rocked the best-sellers lists in 2015. Another women’s fiction book about a magazine editor who wants to take on New York City in designer duds, but this version has a twist. Well, several twists that give the borderline unlikeable character a reason for her behavior.
At the time, many readers hated Ani FaNelli, the main character of Luckiest Girl Alive heart-wrenchingly played by Mila Kunis as an adult and Chiara Aurelia as a teenager. Every thought of imperfection runs through Ani’s mind. She is thin because she heads to the gym to ensure every morsel of food is negligible from her dieting and occasional binge eating. She likes BDSM sex; the torture turns her on. She is obsessed with Gucci belts, Rolex watches, and the generational wealth of an engagement ring from her blue-blooded fiancé with a lofty Manhattan business career. She has everything, yet she’s unhappy about everything.
In the film, her thoughts are narrated aloud by Mila. The first three minutes of the film show her holding two knives to consider if they’re worthy to be on her wedding registry. Then we see the blood dripping from the blades. She shakes her head to get rid of the image. Throughout the entire film, it’s difficult to stray your eyes away from the screen because there are numerous visions and flashbacks of the multi-tiered incident that forever wrinkles the threads of Ani’s seemingly perfect life.
Ani is redeemed by the visual representation of her as an adult and as a teenager. Ani used to be TifAni FaNelli, a girl who needed tuition to attend the private Brentley School in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. She makes friends with the outcasts and the popular kids, similar to the comedic classic Mean Girls, but in Luckiest Girl Alive, the friendships feel darker.
One night after a dance, Ani leaves with her popular friends to a house party. She drinks, like all the other kids are drinking. But she blacks out. When she comes to, she can’t move, but a boy is raping her. Then she passes out again. Another boy desecrates her body. She soon finds the strength to get up, but a third boy rapes her anyway. She fights him off to run out of the house and to a gas station where her English teacher takes her to his house so she can avoid her mother.
These events happen in the book. When the book came out, people wondered how the author could come up with such a horrible story that unfortunately happens more in this society than we would like to acknowledge. It took author Jessica Knoll a year to share her story of being raped by three boys at a party as a high school student, as a minor, as a girl.
Nonprofit organizations RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and Sandy Hook Promise reviewed the scripts for the sexual assault and gun violence content, and an intimacy coordinator was on set to support the cast and crew, the author told Vanity Fair.
What comes after the rapes in the story is even more violent. Ani’s outcast friends also had their own stories of humiliation executed by the same boys who had raped Ani. They get upset with Ani for not standing up, until they realize they hadn’t stood up for themselves. Without Ani’s knowledge, they bomb the cafeteria at lunchtime and start shooting select kids. This takes place in 1999, the same year the country was horrified to see the mass school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Ani fends for herself going through the school looking for her popular friends who are being targeted. Her friend armed with a rifle hands her the weapon to shoot the boy who had raped her when she was conscious. Dean, played by Carson MacCormac as a teen and Alex Barone as an adult, is crying for his life. Ani can’t do it. Arthur, played by Thomas Barbusca, kept pushing her to fight back, stop protecting her rapists. He shoots Dean at the waist. Ani stabs Arthur to death. She wanted to stop the control of being told what she should do about her trauma and stop the bloodshed triggered by her trauma.
When the public memorials begin, Ani is turned away with her mother, played by Connie Britton, because she was accused of having relationships with Dean and two of the boys who were killed. That’s when her mother first hears Ani had been raped. Her mother berates her for drinking at the party, laying the blame on Ani for the rapes, but says she will attain a lawyer.
Ani’s relationship with her mother is still strained as they prepare for her luxurious wedding 16 years later. Her mother doesn’t want to relive the situation. She hates that Ani blames her for making Ani stay at the Brentley School after the multiple incidents in order to get into the best college. She hates that Ani blames her for the slut-shaming; it’s not her fault Ani developed faster than other girls. What was she supposed to do with a curvy daughter accused of being involved in a school shooting because the daughter had been raped while drinking at an off-campus party? She wants Ani to ignore the past and focus on the present.
The emotions of the school shooting are rawer than ever as an independent documentarian, played by Dalmar Abuzeid, keeps reaching out to Ani to convince her to discuss the nation’s “largest private school shooting in history.” As the documentarian tries to get Ani on board, Ani watches Dean’s interviews on the TODAY show and other shows as he paints himself purely as the wheelchair-bound victim and continues the allegation that Ani knew the school shooting was going to happen. Getting famous off his memoir, Dean signs onto the documentary. So does Ani, as long as she doesn’t see Dean.
Jessica Knoll / Image: Sabrina Lantos
When she sits down for the interview taped at the staircase of the Brentley School, Ani tells her side of the story. She says she didn’t know her friends had plans to kill classmates over what happened to her and what happened to them. Her rapes became inconsequential to the coverage the public was fed about the shooting. During her interview, Dean starts wheeling himself toward her. She leaves, feeling unprotected again. The documentarian chases her outside and says her story will help other women. She says the women seem to be fine without hearing her story.
Back in Manhattan, Ani is a senior editor at a women’s magazine similar to Cosmo, but she has received an offer from The New York Times. She decides maybe her story could be told in her own way, so she writes a draft essay. Once her boss, played by Flashdance legend Jennifer Beals, skims the essay, she tells her own story of being raped by a high school boyfriend. The essay is not intense enough, she argues. Ani is too afraid to reveal her rapists and describe the nitty-gritty, including her true emotions. That will help women. Not surface-level bullshit.
Ani goes back to the drawing board by dropping in on one of Dean’s book tour stops in the city. Afterward, Ani approaches him about pushing the lie that she was involved in the shooting. Dean says he’ll stop pushing that lie if she keeps quiet about the rape. The power dynamics are in full range, where a man is believed over a woman, a boy is believed over a girl, especially a girl depicted as a slut after being sexually assaulted. Ani pushes that Dean should admit he had raped her when they were 16. He finally admits it, reluctantly, as if he’s tired of hearing that allegation. Satisfied, Ani walks away and makes sure her iPhone recorded their conversation.
Meanwhile, Ani arrives at her rehearsal dinner on Nantucket. She gets word that her new and improved essay will run in The New York Times. Her best friend from college, played by Justine Lupe, is thrilled for her. Ani’s fiancé Luke, played by Finn Wittrock, does not have the same reaction. Like Ani’s mother, he’s tired of hearing about the 16-year-old traumas, especially at their wedding weekend. Why can’t they be happy on the happiest of days? Why does Ani have to keep bringing up her traumas that always need unpacking? Ani admits that Luke was a box to check off on her list of a perfect life. She was a “wind-up doll” that said whatever she needed to say around him. After realizing that she needs to keep healing with a partner supportive of that healing, she calls off the wedding.
Back in the city, Ani is getting emails from women touched by her essay. They had been sexually assaulted, too. They were familiar with their assaulter or assaulters, too. They didn’t report the assault or assaults, too. They weren’t believed, too. Then another female reporter accosts Ani on Fifth Avenue and complains she didn’t have to ruin Dean’s reputation. After all, Dean has done so much for the community. Ani tells her to fuck off.
The film follows the novel, which is published by Simon & Schuster, almost to a T. In the end credits designed like the original paperback with bright yellow font against a wilting black rose that turns into a blooming red rose, the author is listed as the screenwriter and executive producer. For the author to have such a strong presence over the film, it brings a unique energy to the project.
Jessica Knoll fought to remain the screenwriter for the film, unlike many other authors who do not have the experience of writing screenplays. She may not have had the experience, but she knew she had to have ownership of how the story will play onscreen. The dedication is apparent as one of the better book-to-TV projects available on streaming now. She makes an early cameo in the elevator with Mila’s Ani on the way to work.
The cinematography, as in every scene is flawless, tells the story in different time periods, in different places exquisitely. We see the little things that annoy Ani, that would annoy many perfectionists, like a loose thread hanging from a steering wheel. We also see the simulated rapes and shootings that are very hard to watch, especially knowing it’s fiction based on true events.
Because of the graphic images, reviewers from top news outlets have said the film is unstructured. The film packs a lot with a heavy punch. The film is not fodder for true crime, another complaint in some of these reviews. It’s about a traumatized woman whose flashbacks are getting worse as a classmate’s memoir is selling and a documentary is forthcoming based on her traumas and void of her voice. She is not healed in the end despite the high readership of an essay about the traumas. It’s not a story representing every woman in the #MeToo movement. It’s one story that has many parallels to the author’s real-life story.
Watching the film is more intense than reading the book. Like we said above, the book had readers hate Ani, but watching two actresses play Ani in the throes of her traumatic experiences we first learn about in the book gives a more fine-tuned visual. If you were not affected by the story through the book, you will be affected by the story through the film. It’s a complex portrayal of a triggering story that came from the author’s own experiences. It was never an easy story to digest, but it was a story people were willing to read.
SHE LIT: Cuffing Season Is Writing Season 🔏It’s getting colder, and that means writers are cozying up to writing their next book. Plus, the latest books to read under the blankets.
Celebrate National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month by reading works from these authors 📚
As the weather gets colder, writers start to cuff themselves to their own book projects
“Cuffing season” is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary describing how single people find a partner and attach themselves to that partner to stay warm during the colder months. Well, writers are doing the same thing, except cuffing themselves to new writing projects.
I recently completed the Black Creatives Revisions Workshop with We Need Diverse Books, the nonprofit organization working alongside the publishing industry to diversify the industry on the publisher level and the creator level. The summer-long workshop included monthly discussions with successful traditionally published authors and literary agents of color and meetings with Black editors to help us hone our manuscripts.
For the workshop, I had put forth my most promising project: a social justice, historical fiction, young adult novel. I came up with the idea for the book in February 2020, and when that weekend in mid-March that year came along with warnings to stay inside, I began researching and writing with all the time I was forced to hunker down to avoid contracting the unpredictable COVID-19.
Now with the manuscript on its way to industry insiders, I can start querying agents and outlining the next book. Like thousands of writers around the world, I usually spend October plotting a book in anticipation for National Novel Writing Month in November. Known as NaNoWriMo, the movement that interferes with Thanksgiving plans motivates us writers to craft 50,000 words within the month to call ourselves “winners.” That means laser focus. I win almost every year—I “lost” in 2016, traumatized by the presidential election.
That being said, I’m spending most of my days after I clock out of my real job, wrapped up in my blanket on my loveseat with my laptop. Cozying up to my next book. Also cozying up with a published book, or two, or three, or five. The to-be-read list never goes down, despite all these efforts.
With the slower months, content on shelit.com may come out slower. This newsletter will take hiatus in November aka NaNoWriMo. But hopefully the book and book-to-screen selections below will entertain us enough to keep us warm during the seasons like a piping pumpkin spice latte.
Well-Read Black Girl opening festival, chapter in D.C.
The preeminent festival celebrating Black female authors and readers is heading to Washington, D.C. this year. The Well Read Black Girl Festival has tickets on sale now for the Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 event. Tricia Hersey, the founder of The Nap Ministry, will be the keynote speaker discussing her new book, Rest Is Resistance, forthcoming from Hachette Book Group’s Little, Brown Spark. The book club is also starting a new chapter in D.C.
Jada Pinkett Smith to write memoir on road to Hollywood
Actress, musician, and host of Red Table Talk Jada Pinkett Smith plans to release her memoir with Dey Street Books next year. The book will cover her journey dealing with suicidal depression to tapping into her “authentic feminine power,” according to media reports. The publisher says Jada will touch on growing up in Baltimore to drug-addicted parents, becoming a theater kid with promise, and breaking out into Hollywood with her friend Tupac Shakur before marrying one of the biggest stars, Will Smith, and starting her own family and path of self-discovery.
The Morristown Festival of Books in New Jersey is taking place this Friday and Saturday, Oct. 7 and Oct. 8. Headlining authors include Adriana Trigiani, Nita Prose, Marie Benedict, and Katy Tur, who will interview keynote speaker Frank Bruni on Friday night at the Mayo Performing Arts Center. James Patterson will close the event in conversation starting at 5:15 p.m. on Saturday.
Penguin Random House needs an editor or a senior editor to acquire and edit fiction for Phoebe Robinson’s Tiny Reparations imprint. The imprint works on the mission to publish books that “highlight and amplify unique and diverse voices.”
Little Fires Everywhere novelist Celeste Ng wrote her third novel during the COVID-19 pandemic as anti-Asian hate violence flared up. What was happening in the world affected her writing, she told the co-anchors on CBS Mornings this week.
“That became a really big part of it, especially after the outbreak of COVID started and we started seeing a huge rise in anti-Asian hate,” she said in the interview with Jericka Duncan, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil about her new book, Our Missing Hearts, which is out now from Penguin Random House‘s Penguin Press.
The story centers on a 12-year-old boy who embarks on a journey to find his mother, a Chinese American poet whose writings have been banned over claims of being unpatriotic and being outside “American culture.” In this dystopian novel, writers of color, especially those of Asian descent, and their works are disappearing.
“Growing up as a Chinese American—I’m from Cleveland—I think I’ve known my whole life that I’m seen as other by other people and the way other people see me is not the way I know myself to be inside,” said Celeste, whose 2014 debut novel Everything I Never Told Youmade her a rising literary star. “And seeing that play out in the news with Asian people just being attacked on the street in the middle of the day really made it important for me to try to talk about some of that in the book.”
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a wave of anti-Asian hate in 2020 after the potentially fatal virus was discovered in China.
Current events inspired the dystopian events described in her book, Celeste said, adding what was happening in today’s world naturally crept into the work.
“It’s a world that I think is really governed by fear. There’s a lot of distrust of other people,” she said of her book. “And it’s a world in which if you are acting un-American, your children can be taken away. And, so, it’s a world in which I think the characters have to make some really hard choices and again figure out how they’re going to raise their children to still survive in this world.”
She felt “useless and helpless” during the pandemic wondering if going to medical school would’ve made a difference since she could’ve treated patients, she said.
“As a writer, what am I doing? Am I helping the world at all?” she said. “But I realized one of the things that was getting me through was reading my favorite poems, listening to music that I love, watching movies that I love, that reminded me of what the world could be. The world wasn’t always like this. It’s not always going to be like this. We can make a difference. And I think that’s one of the things art can do. It can give us hope for the future.”
Sister, Sister star Tamera Mowry-Housley is promoting her new memoir that resonates on the vein of Gabrielle Union‘s memoirs with incorporating the significance of drinking wine and learning lessons.
In her first TV stop on the book tour, Tamera spoke to Jericka Duncan, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil on CBS Mornings Tuesday about You Should Sit Down for This: A Memoir About Life, Wine, + Cookies. She told the co-anchors she hopes readers will understand her words of wisdom, or what she calls “Tameraisms.”
“The one thing that I want people to take away is that I didn’t live this perfect life,” she said in the interview. “They usually see me, and they’re like, ‘Tamera, you’re always so happy. You always look very joyful.’ And the thing is I choose to be happy. My circumstances do not define me.”
Tamera was 15, along with her identical twin sister Tia Mowry, when they became breakout stars on the WB sitcom Sister, Sister. After that early success, Tamera and Tia starred in movies together as adults like Seventeen Again with their young brother Tahj Mowry, and Twitches, a Black Halloween Disney classic that spawned a sequel. The sisters also filmed a popular reality TV series on the now-defunct Style Network.
Over the years, the sisters have carved out their own independent paths. Tamera went on to be a co-host on The Real for six seasons and won an Emmy Award with the panel that included author and comedienne Loni Love. She has been busy working on Hallmark and Lifetime productions, including a starring role in the film Girlfriendship that debuted last Saturday on the Hallmark Channel under its Mahogany brand.
Calling herself an “old soul,” Tamera said she felt self-conscious at a young age with feeling wiser than her years. She’s now embracing her “gift.”
“I wanted my readers to know you may have a rough start, but you just have to move forward and push through, but you also—I always say—you can’t cheat at life,” she said. “It doesn’t come easy. You’re not going to grow as a person if you don’t look at your trials or ‘negative’ experiences and face them head-on. The book is about growth. The book is about my wisdom that I have learned along the way.”
Going off of the book’s subtitle, she talked about how she chooses her friends like how she chooses her wine. She co-owns a family winery in Napa with her husband, former Fox News correspondent Adam Housley.
“For me, wine is very subjective, but now owning a winery and tasting lots of wine, I don’t want to waste my experience and my taste buds on bad wine. It’s the same thing with friends,” she said. “You eventually either change your environment or your environment is going to change you, another Tameraism that’s not in the book.”
The book is out now from Legacy Lit, a Hachette Book Group imprint.
Coming off the heels of the historic US Open where we saw tennis legend Serena Williams bid goodbye to the sport, Penguin Random House and its Ballantine Books imprint was in the throes of promoting Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new novel, Carrie Soto Is Back. The publisher even had a pop-up at Wimbledon over the summer.
The novel focuses on a retired tennis champion who sees her record about to be broken by a younger player, so she feels she must come back to defend her record. Book influencers expressed concern about these characters being women of color trying to defeat each other. Many of these influencers say it’s problematic that a White author pit a Latina title character against an Asian character.
“Carrie Soto Is Back is a story of a Latina tennis player written by a White woman, which we’ve been here before many times,” Tomes and Textiles book influencer Carmen Alvarez said in a reel published on Instagram and TikTok to her combined nearly 60,000 followers. “You’d be surprised to find out that Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto Is Back has more untranslated Spanish than any book I ever read, even by Latinx authors.”
White authors who center stories around Hispanic and Latine characters tend to get higher paychecks and more marketing dollars compared to Hispanic and Latine authors who write authentic stories about their communities and cultures, she adds. She likens the tennis novel to the American Dirt controversy in 2020 where Jeanine Cummins, who later identified as White Latina, wrote a immigration novel that performed well in sales despite the lack of immigration stories by Hispanic and Latine authors getting the same publishing attention.
Book influencers brought up the issue of Taylor giving voice to another Latina main character in her popular 2017 novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. This half-historical fiction novel follows a Latina actress, who passes as White by dying her hair blonde, as she becomes a Hollywood legend. At the end of her life, she plucks a biracial journalist, who is half-Black and half-White, to write her tell-all. It turns out Evelyn and her husband each carried their own queer love affairs in an agreement to not reveal their sexual orientation.
Though the well-paced book gained prominence and favorable reviews, the criticism started to surface since the author, who is White, created a secretly queer Latina main character, a biracial character, and other characters who are queer and non-White. Those allegations are resurfacing with the recent release of Carrie Soto Is Back, featuring another Latina main character.
BookTuber Jesse Morales-Small is the voice behind Bowties and Books and identifies as an “Afro-Chicano book nerd.” They created a video about not being excited about this book despite the major marketing push and voiced concerns about the racial dynamics in the novel.
“You came out of retirement because an Asian woman broke your record. You’re like, ‘I must come out and uproot my life.’ Bitch, just sit down and relax,” they said in a video from March.
“I’m worried about how the story might go,” they continue. “This narrative of this White woman coming out of retirement, so that she can reassert her record over an Asian woman, I don’t know…It’s just with the story being written by a White woman, it makes me feel weird.”
This is before readers realized Carolina “Carrie” Soto is Argentinian American and the opponent threatening her record is Nicki Chan, who is British Chinese. Carrie’s manager during the comeback is Gwen Davis, a Los Angeles-bred Black woman.
Another problem associated with mentioning women of color is White female authors tend to emphasize these characters’ beauty, which they do not do with their White female characters. Because White women are considered the standard gold of beauty and attraction, it becomes a problem when the author brings up the issue when describing a character of color.
Here’s an example of when we’re introduced to Gwen, again a Black woman who is living in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Uprising and currently dealing with the racially tense O.J. Simpson murder trial as the city is reeling from the January 1994 Northridge earthquake. These impactful events are not referenced except a small O.J. trial mention in a fake media report, which is a huge oversight in relation to the characters with LA roots. Carrie’s comeback and perception of women are all that matters:
“I turn toward Gwen as she sits down on the sofa next to me. She’s in her late fifties, dressed in a red pantsuit and mules. Sometimes I wonder if she’s in the wrong field; she’s too striking, too glamorous to be the one behind the scenes… Something about that Gwen doesn’t care what her assistant wears in the office while she, herself, looks like a runway model makes me like them both even more.”
So, Gwen is a Naomi Campbell-type because any other Black woman wouldn’t fit the narrative of a tough manager. At this racially turbulent time in Los Angeles, a native-born Black woman would have been impacted by these events to some degree, as well as a Latina like Carrie. They wouldn’t be so worried about their looks unless those looks were under a criminal attack.
Nicki, Carrie’s sworn enemy, is also said to be beautiful on more than one occasion. Here’s a scenario where Carrie meets Nicki’s eyes as they sit in the audience of a match before they spar in the French Open. All Carrie can think about is how Nicki looks:
“Her long, broad body is unmistakable. Her strong, muscular arms. Her wide shoulders. Her long black hair. Nobody ever talks about it much—which is telling—but Nicki Chan is gorgeous. Showstoppingly gorgeous. A round face with high cheekbones, full lips.
“Other women in tennis—blond women with big boobs and long legs—often get modeling contracts at age seventeen. They show up on the cover of men’s magazines within a year or so of hitting the court for the first time.
“But not thicker women, like me. Or dark-skinned women like Carla Perez or Suze Carter. Not women who are British Chinese, like Nicki, or downright scary in their intensity like her either. Not the women who aren’t skinny and white and smiling.”
When characters of color are central to a book, some type of struggle tied to racial and cultural identity has to come up because for people of color that’s everyday real life. So, not receiving an adequate background on Carrie Soto only that her father came from Argentina for tennis opportunities and her mother died young shows the lack of deeper understanding of representing an Argentinian American woman who becomes one of the top athletes in the world in the 1980s.
To Tomes and Textiles’ Carmen’s point, there is a lot of untranslated Spanish interweaved with English. This is to make sure the reader gets what’s going on without translating the Spanish. If you’re around enough nonnative English speakers like myself, they usually do not weave English with their native language so often, especially when talking to a family member, because that’s not natural. English will come up for words that are only in English, such as a brand name like Kleenex or Starbucks. So, the use of Spanish looks gimmicky.
Overall, the book is unfortunately a snooze. Authors put themselves in their characters’ shoes by doing extensive research, but in this case Carrie’s story is not entertaining enough. It takes place on another timeline, but tennis stars Gabriela Sabatini, who is Argentinian, and Mary Joe Fernández, who is Dominican, would be able to tell us eye-opening stories about competing in professional tennis as Hispanic and Latine women in the 1980s and 1990s.
Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (Image: Penguin Random House / Janice Checchio)
Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and anti-racism intellectual Dr. Ibram X. Kendi discussed the magnitude of banned books in Washington, D.C., for one of the busiest Banned Books Week observances in recent years.
Holding their conversation at the Anacostia location of the Busboys and Poets bookstore on Thursday, the congresswoman and the author of anti-racist thought focused on the history of banned books, particularly for Black Americans. The event was hosted by The Emancipator, a vertical of The Boston Globe focused on racial justice and equity founded by Ibram.
Earliest censorship in this country began with beating and killing enslaved people for learning to read or being suspected of knowing how to read, they said. That legacy continues with readers now seeing books that share accurate histories and personal narratives of experiences with race and gender being banned, they added.
Banned Books Week is held every year in mid-September, but over the last few years, book bans have been making headlines over more school districts and local libraries removing books, primarily targeted to kids, due to complaints from parents and other adults. Many of these books contain themes surrounding race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Almost half of distinct titles banned are young adult books at 49%, followed by picture books at 19% and middle grade books at 11%, according to PEN America‘s recent report on banned books.
Book bans occurred in 138 school districts in 32 states, meaning 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students have been impacted by a book ban, PEN America found.
Cori and Ibram sat in front of bookshelves with books by authors of color as they emphasized the importance of books giving young people the ability to see worlds different from theirs and how removing access to books is hurting that freedom.
“Some people don’t want to speak about their story, and that’s OK,” the St. Louis congresswoman said. “For those who feel compelled to, when we tell our stories, other people are able to see themselves. Just like you, I didn’t see myself when they made us read Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t see myself when I was made to read The Odyssey, and books like that. I didn’t see myself, and there weren’t books presented before me where I did.”
Cori will tell her own story in The Forerunner: A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America, which will be on shelves Oct. 4. Knopf of Penguin Random House is publishing the political memoir.
“Books are treasures. And they’re not just sort of treasures that reveal wisdom,” he said. “They’re treasures for that person who isn’t able to, or doesn’t have the ability to, travel around the world. But they can travel around the world into time through books. It’s a democratizer.
“But I also think as you mentioned that there’s something beautiful about the power of seeing your own story in the mirror through a book, and I also see the differences,” adds the humanities professor and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. “There’s just something affirming. There’s just this connective tissue that allows human beings to connect.”
Most Likely by Sarah Watson follows a group of four friends who lean on each other to make sure they excel in their senior year of high school as one of them is destined to become president of the United States.
The story starts in 2049 the morning of the inauguration for the president-elect, except her identity is not revealed. We see her bemoaning the decision to take her husband’s surname, Diffenderfer. Her advisers had told her it would be the traditional thing she can do to please the masses. Then we’re teleported back to 2019 Cleveland, Ohio, where a Logan Diffenderfer rounds the corner of William McKinley High School track that leads us to a group that’s been focused on sisterhood since pre-kindergarten without the traveling pants: Ava, CJ, Jordan, and Martha, their names listed alphabetically for fairness.
Ava Morgan wants to be an artist with her eye on the Rhode Island School of Design, better known as RISD, but her workaholic lawyer mother keeps begging her to choose a more stable career path and a more well-rounded institution. But with the argument over what she wants to do with her life and her life morphing into adulthood, she wonders about the identity of her biological mother. She feels like she can’t agree with her adoptive mother, who’s White, since she’s seen as the “moody Latinx girl.” It doesn’t help that she misses her advanced placement classes due to anxiety and depression. She also can’t stand the arrogant Logan Diffenderfer, her art class project partner, but when she ignites the search for the woman who birthed her, Ava may need Logan’s research expertise to fill out her family tree questions.
CJ, short for Clarke Jacobson, feels like Stanford University is in the cards for her if only she can bring up her SAT scores. After being disappointed with her previous scores on the first and second times taking the exam that determines college placement, CJ is preparing to take the exam for a third time. In the meantime, the cross-country runner is adding other activities to her résumé such as volunteering with an after-school sports program for kids with physical disabilities. Spending time with her boss Wyatt, who uses a wheelchair, is making her feel like she never felt, but she has to focus on the SATs. Logan Diffenderfer earned schoolwide recognition for his high SAT score, so maybe CJ can get help from him to stay on track.
Jordan Schafer, who is half-Black and half-White, knows she has to insert extra energy and determination in everything she does with the added pressure of racism. Already an award-winning journalist for her school newspaper, she’s trying to sniff out the answers for why the city has decreased opening hours for their beloved community park. The more she gains the trust of a legislative aide named Scott who works for a councilman, the more she risks revealing her hidden identity as a high school student reporter. And the line between source and reporter is getting murkier as Jordan presents herself in work dresses as an older, freelance reporter. She dated Logan Diffenderfer briefly since they work on newspaper activities like the exclusive story she’s hunting down.
Martha Custis worries she might not be able to afford college. Her single father just received a promotion in his warehouse job that grants him a regular work schedule but not health insurance. Though Martha is named after her distant foremother the first First Lady Martha Washington, her family blood doesn’t mean anything for her family finances as she juggles a job at an independent movie theater nobody goes to. She finds herself befriending her coworker Victoria, a rich girl with a European accent who’s only working at the theater because her uncle owns it. The socioeconomic divide between them irks Martha. When Logan Diffenderfer comes to the theater one day, he seems to be getting close to Martha’s coworker, and this intrigues Martha more than she would like to admit.
This young adult novel takes a more positive route by giving us college-bound female characters who are so ambitious that one of them assumes the U.S. presidency. We see all four girls working hard to stand out in their college applications but also helping each other through the pressures. The course of actions they are going through in the story is making them realize some of their goals are not exactly what they want.
Author Sarah Watson is accustomed to boosting supportive female friendships with her experience as the creator, executive producer, and writer of the former Freeform series The Bold Type. The five-season series focuses on three twenty-somethings in New York City trying to climb the hierarchy within a storied women’s magazine. In the show, the characters stand by each other through thick and thin to make sure they each succeed despite professional and romantic hurdles. The same formula is followed in a simpler setting like Cleveland where most girls’ ambition starts: high school.
The Bold Type also received backlash from star Aisha Dee, who played the third and lone Black and queer friend Kat on the show, for its lack of true diversity storylines for the character. The author takes that lesson through her novel to emphasize the girls’ diversity markers and the obstacles they present such as Ava being a transracial adoptee with mental disorders, CJ being academically challenged while working with the physically challenged, Jordan being biracial standing out in predominantly White spaces, and Martha being low-income raised by a single father.
Another factor is we meet the First Gentleman Diffenderfer in the beginning then realize each girl has their own complicated relationship with a boy with that last name, who is also smart and ambitious but seems breezy about his capabilities. Each girl is annoyed to some extent by Diffenderfer, his surname purposely full of syllables to let us know he feels like a handful to the friend group. The girls’ feelings toward Diffenderfer change throughout the story as we see them struggle to overcome their obstacles. Diffenderfer’s expertise always seeps into each of their situations. Though it seems like Diffenderfer is central to the story, the boy serves as the supporter they need, the supporter a female president would need to get to that history-making level of power.
Overall, Ava, CJ, Jordan, and Martha are a breath of fresh air when it comes to reading about ambitious girls and seeing their adventures of trying to shine for their dream schools and dream careers. These stories seem to fall behind in the young adult genre with the marketability and consumer appeal for the fantasy and romance subgenres that entertain teenage readers with stories that are largely unrealistic. This novel was published in the beginning of 2020, so it seems to have fallen behind in its media attention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re looking for a book for a high schooler aiming for the stars, this book is for her. If you’re looking for a reminder that children are our future, this book is for you.
SHE LIT: Book-to-Screen Colorblind Casting Gets Complaints 📺The cast of the “Lord of the Rings” TV series says it won’t ignore racist comments toward actors. Plus, a famous poet retires from a longtime gig.
Racist backlash follows book-to-TV series over actors of color existing in fantasy land
The long-awaited Lord of the Rings TV series debuted on Amazon Prime Video last week, but the casting choices became the news.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cast shared a messageWednesday on social media saying it stands in solidarity “against the relentless racism, threats, harassment, and abuse some of our castmates of color are being subjected to on a daily basis.”
The statement went on to say that the world author J.R.R. Tolkien created is by definition multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic in having characters “defeat the forces of evil.”
“Our world has never been all white, fantasy has never been all white, Middle-earth is not all white. BIPOC belong in Middle-earth and they are here to stay,” the statement continues.
The show introduces us to various stars, but Sophia Nomvete, who plays the first Black female dwarf; Nazanin Boniadi, who plays a village healer; and Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays an elf, have become the target of racist online attacks with social media comments accusing the TV production of not being true to Tolkien’s works by casting actors of color and therefore creating characters of color.
Racism persists in our world so greatly that we imagine it also exists in a middle-Earth fantasy world. As in select viewers are hyper-focused on characters’ skin colors rather than their personalities and motives, missing elements of the story and the purpose of entertainment.
Colorblind casting for book-to-screen projects has dominated headlines over the last decade.
People were upset in 2012 when the The Hunger Games film featured the character Rue as a Black girl, played by Amandla Stenberg, and Thresh, a Black boy, played by Dayo Okeniyi. Both Rue and Thresh are described by author Suzanne Collins as having dark brown skin in the book series.
People were upset in 2016 when a Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play in London casted Noma Dumezweni, a Black woman, to play Hermoine Granger, who was famously played by Emma Watson, who is White, in the big-budget film series. Author J.K. Rowling at the time gave her blessing to the play, claiming Hermoine could be Black.
And people were really upset in 2019 when Halle Bailey, of R&B sister duo Chloe x Halle and Grown-ish fame, was casted as Ariel in Disney’s live-action version of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. The lead character was originally animated by Disney as a White girl with ketchup-red hair in the 1989 film.
For The Little Mermaid controversy, social media users fought back that Ariel was White, and all mermaids are White because they’re figments of European folklore. Though this is true, aquatic half-human and half-fish beings are central to folklore all over the world in countries who built civilizations around oceans and rivers like in Africa, Asia, and South America.
But yes, they’re not called mermaids everywhere because that’s a Middle English term meaning “sea maid,” according to Merriam-Webster dictionary. They’re called Mami Wata in the African diaspora, ningyo in Japan, and Iara in Amazonian Brazil, for example.
As you might be able to tell, I’m more of a mermaid person rather than a middle-Earth person, but that being said, I’m for diverse and inclusive fantasy. More authors of color are writing fantasy young adult novels to inspire readers who want to see that representation.
If there are blessings to pursue a book-to-screen project from the author or the author’s estate, then the casting shouldn’t be an issue to the audience because everything has been approved. For The Rings of Power, Simon Tolkien, the grandson of author J.R.R. Tolkien, served as a consultant on the project.
And sometimes authors don’t want colorblind casting. Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke revealed in 2018 that author Stephenie Meyer didn’t want some characters to be “diverse,” including the Cullen family and Edward Cullen, who was ultimately played by Robert Pattinson.
The author, who had been criticized for using the real-life Quileute Tribe in the Twilight series, argued that she wrote the characters with the assumption of them being White. She attached skin color to her characters, which is fine. This is why authors of color are creating their own characters with skin colors like theirs.
Tolkien’s first Lord of the Rings book was published in 1954. This author and his works are from the mid-twentieth century when diversity and inclusion was taking root, more in the court systems to desegregate schools amid the civil rights movement.
Though these works are from another time, positive interpretation of how these works fit into our current cultural landscape is welcomed. All that matters is the story still touches audiences, regardless of our racial and cultural differences.
‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ book-to-film to make debut next month
Novelist and screenwriter Jessica Knoll shared the film trailer for her best-selling 2015 novel Luckiest Girl Alive this week. Calling the project “seven years in the making,” the Netflix film stars Mila Kunis as TifAni “Ani” FaNelli, a New York City woman who seems to have it all, except a dark secret from high school starts to resurface and threatens the seemingly perfect life she created for herself. The film will start streaming on Oct. 7.
Poet Nikki Giovanni retires from professorship at Virginia Tech
Renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni has retired as a University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. Assuming the position at Virginia Tech in 1987, her retirement date was Sept. 1 after 35 years. “In all fairness, I’m getting old,” she told a campus publication. She is currently preparing for the release of her new children’s book, A Library. Illustrated by Erin K. Robinson, the book is expected to hit shelves Sept. 27 from HarperCollins imprint Versify.
Celebrity-helmed book clubs select September picks
Reese’s Book Club is reading On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
What we’re reviewing
Book Review: The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman
What we’re reading
Magnolia Flower by Zora Neale Hurston
Adapted by Ibram X. Kendi from a story in Zora Neale Hurston’s 2021 book Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, this picture book tells the story of an Afro-Indigenous girl whose parents escaped slavery and the Trail of Tears. She wants to taste freedom, so when she meets a man her father disapproves, she feels freedom is closer than she ever imagined. But now she has to make a choice on whether to embark on the journey that her heart is leading her on.
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz
The author of Dominicanadelivers another story about a Dominican woman in New York City, but this time she’s living in the 2010s where she just lost her lamp-making job due to the Great Recession. Matched with a job counselor, she begins to narrate her life story from her love affairs to her struggles with debt and gentrification. She even starts talking about what really happened between her and her estranged son. Though she feels stomped down by life, she realizes there is still some fight left in her.
Carola Lovering’s 2018 novel Tell Me Lies is now a book-to-TV series on Hulu following a couple through the course of their relationship over eight years. What seems like a simple college campus romance evolves into an addictive romance that seems to put the two lovers on an unpredictable course that changes their lives and the lives of everybody in their orbit. The first three episodes started streaming this week.
Chicago’s 37th annual Printers Row Lit Fest takes place this weekend Sept. 10-11 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Admission is free for the book festival starting on South Dearborn Street, from Ida B. Wells Drive to Polk Street in historic Printers Row, once the bookmaking hub of the city. Participating authors include Natasha Trethewey, Jessamine Chan, and Rebecca Makkai. More than 100,000 visitors are expected to attend the festival, which will also host over 100 booksellers.
Amazon Publishing is seeking a senior editor to acquire and publish commercial fiction works. The editor will be responsible for discovering and acquiring content, managing author relationships and the editorial process, and collaborating across teams. The position is based in Seattle.
The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman leans on the grittiness to tell the story of a Black girl living in the Chicago projects searching for why her unarmed sister was killed outside the home of a police officer.
Sixteen-year-old Beau Willet is trying to overcome the disbelief of attending her older sister Katia’s funeral. She wears a memorial sweatshirt in honor of her 22-year-old sister, who was killed by a single gunshot wound to the face fired by an off-duty police officer outside of his home in the middle of the night. Katia was accused of planning to rob the home, but Beau doesn’t accept that narrative. She depends on her friend Deja to help her figure out what happened to Katia, who was with her boyfriend Jordan at the time of the killing. Except Jordan has been missing since Katia’s death, and he is the only person who could clear Katia’s name.
I should be crying, too, but I can’t for some reason. It’s like my ducts are all blocked up and the tears are dripping down my insides instead of my cheeks. Katia, why didn’t you just stay home with me instead?
Beau knows the police department and the city will not investigate her sister’s killing fairly because she’s Black, her sister was Black, and they’re from the impoverished Grady Park neighborhood where Black people get killed all the time. Katia’s death is in the news cycle for what feels like a second until the rest of the city moves on and feels sympathy for the police officer and his family instead of Beau and her family. To get the answers she needs, Beau is determined to find Jordan. She feels alone in her quest when it comes to her family, her parents too depressed to push for more answers while trying to keep the roof over their heads. Deja seems occupied in a new relationship to help Beau solve the crime, and Beau feels guilty pulling Deja into her web of grief. While she’s looking for Jordan, Beau finds herself falling for Champion, a boy she goes to school with though he lives in a McMansion in the affluent Purple Hills neighborhood.
Everything’s all screwed up between me and Champion because I’m the girl with the murdered sister. Neither of us says it, but if he asked me to be his girl now, everyone would think it’s because he feels sorry for me.
As Beau and Champion become more than friends, Beau finds herself and her friends engaging in petty fights with girls and guys in Grady Park who may or may not know what really happened to Katia. Nobody is snitching. Then Beau gets an anonymous tip that Jordan is in her apartment building complex. At first, she doesn’t believe that rumor because she knows everyone in the complex and hasn’t seen anything amiss; she swears she would’ve noticed Jordan by now, better yet someone would’ve been loyal to her and told her about his whereabouts.
While Deja seems to fade into her relationship, Beau taps Sonnet, another friend who uses her Pretty Little Liars knowledge to play detective. Sonnet lives a life more similar to Champion’s, so Beau feels immense pressure to protect Sonnet and herself. The guilt of Beau’s grief ebbs and flows as she leans on the friends not used to the atmosphere of the projects she lives in. The deeper they get into their investigation, the higher the stakes are. Blindly, Beau follows every clue until she finds herself in trouble to the point she may meet the same fate Katia did.
Being inside Beau’s mind from the first-person perspective is incredible as she pushes aside the grief and depression of losing her sister while looking for answers for why her sister died at the hands of a gun fired by an off-duty police officer. Why was Katia outside this officer’s home at 4 a.m. with Jordan? Why did Jordan disappear? The questions resound throughout the pages as Beau tries to unwrap the mystery in her crime-ridden neighborhood where asking such questions about why someone was killed could get you killed. When Beau is in the bedroom she shared with Katia, the gloom overwhelms her as she looks through her sister’s belongings for any clues, but she only finds what could’ve been Katia’s destiny. The plans for the future seem to be the only clues Katia left behind, and it strengthens Beau more in doing the work the police won’t do.
Overall, this young adult novel stands out with the reality of being a Black kid in the inner city and feeling like you, anyone who looks like you, and anyone you love doesn’t matter. Beau knows her sister’s killing will never get a fair investigation because Katia was accused of burglarizing a police officer’s home. But she knows her sister wouldn’t commit such an act, so she’s the only one who could stand up for Katia. Beau and her friends are the Black girls left standing who have to stand up for the Black girls who don’t make it out of places like Grady Park. In the audiobook version, narrator Ariel Blake does a fantastic job of conveying the sadness and determination in Beau’s voice. Out of similar works such as Angie Thomas’ books set in the similar fictional neighborhood of Garden Heights in The Hate U Give, On the Come Up, and Concrete Rose, Juliana Goodman’s debut novel makes a splash in the subgenre of social justice YA with digging into the mental health aspect of showing the tumultuous journey of the teenage main character struggling with how society paints girls like her, including her dead sister, and trying to prove that they deserve to be seen like any other girls.
SHE LIT: Banning Books Could Lead to Defunding Libraries 📖A rural Michigan town defunds its library over books with LGBTQ+ content. Plus, the latest in the Virginia book obscenity court case.
Public libraries becoming targets for collections that include LGBTQ+ books
A rural Michigan town defunding its library over books featuring LGBTQ+ themes is the next level of book bans.
Book bans are at their highest level, according to the American Library Association that marksBanned Books Weekevery year this month. From Sept. 18-24, we will mark a year where more than ever school districts are voting to remove books from campus libraries, lawsuits are being waged to remove books from public libraries and bookstores, and now those public libraries could lose community funding over a particular book.
Patmos Library in Hudsonville, Michigan, was facing closure in early August after voters rejected a measure to renew funding for the library. The vote was blamed on a campaign waged by conservative Christians who believe books associated with LGBTQ+ themes are “grooming” children to be pedophiles, a QAnon belief that has become a mainstream conservative theory, according to media reports.
Less than 1% of Patmos Library’s books have LGBTQ+ content, the nonprofit advocacy group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State found. Yet the library was defunded.
Most book bans seem to occur within school libraries since parents have more power to address their school districts to remove books they deem inappropriate for children to read. Of course, many of these books being targeted are by LGBTQ+ authors and authors of color who write about gender, sexuality, and race.
But more of these book bans are trickling inside public libraries where individuals are heading to their city councils and court systems to request books be removed from libraries and even bookstores.
A concerned Patmos Library patron started a GoFundMe that now has raised over $255,000, which is $10,000 over the goal to help the library continue operations throughout 2023. Renowned romance novelist Nora Roberts noticed the GoFundMe after reading The Washington Post story about the library’s defunding and donated $50,000, her publicist’s blog notes. The funds are from the author personally, and not from her foundation, the blog adds.
Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir is one of the books at issue. It’s also the most banned book in America. The author and cartoonist, who uses e/eir pronouns, discusses eir discovery of eir gender identity in the graphic novel. The book was also at the center of an obscenity matter in a Virginia court that is resolved for now (more on that below).
Though Patmos Library is located in a community with a population of just less than 10,000, the possibility that a library can be defunded over the books they choose to carry is concerning. The head librarian, who identified as queer, quit amid the defunding campaign after being harassed inside the library, BuzzFeed News reports, adding other librarians had also quit for similar reasons.
Now that the library received national support to keep going, hardships still lie ahead. The harassment may continue toward the librarians, another campaign to somehow rid the library of LGBTQ+ books may be planned, or people may stop using the library.
The library’s next board meeting takes place Sept. 12, so we will see what the library has in store under the spotlight glow. Though the money will be there, its location in a community that largely wants it gone over a few books is an ongoing concern.
Virginia court dismisses request to label books as obscene
The American Civil Liberties Union announced that its clients were victorious in getting an obscenity lawsuit against two books dismissed. The Circuit Court for the City of Virginia Beach rejected an effort to label Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas as obscene and illegal to sell and lend in the state.
The ACLU and the ACLU of Virginia represented local booksellers and book organizations. Barnes & Noble was the largest target of the lawsuit. Gender Queer was the most banned book in the U.S. last year, according to the American Library Association, one of the ACLU’s clients. Legal experts believe this is just the beginning for these types of lawsuits.
Prolific YA author shares new middle grade book, film trailer
Angie Thomas, the creator of The Hate U Give, has been quite busy this week. She introduced her upcoming The Manifestor Prophecy middle grade trilogy with the first book Nic Blake and the Remarkables. In an Instagram post, she writes the roots of the book were inside her for 15 years and the story has “hellhound puppies and haints and a literal Underground Railroad. It has Black Girl Magic.” The first installment is expected to be released April 4, 2023 from HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray.
During last Sunday’s presentation of the MTV Video Music Awards, the full trailer debuted for On the Come Up, Angie’s sophomore hip-hop-infused YA novel. Directed by actress Sanaa Lathan, the film stars Jamila Gray as Bri, the prodigal daughter of a late hip-hop legend trying to find her voice in music and at school. The film will start streaming on Paramount+ on Sept. 23.
While sharing the news of her projects via social media, she also shared her concerns as a Jackson, Mississippi, native seeing the current water crisis impacting the city of 150,000 unfold. Damaged infrastructure has caused the Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves to declare a state of emergency over residents—more than 80% who are Black—having little to no water pressure.
Reese Witherspoon adds kids’ author to her bookish titles
Book club queen and book-to-screen producer Reese Witherspoon announced the upcoming release for her new children’s picture book, Busy Betty, about a girl on a mission to bathe her dog before her friends come over to play. Her book launch will take place at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville. Illustrated by Xindi Yan, the book is published by Flamingo Books under Penguin Random House and will be available for sale on Oct. 4.
Michelle Buteau’s memoir-based comedy series starts casting
Comedienne and The Circle host Michelle Buteau’s book is getting the screen treatment. Her 2020 essay collection, Survival of the Thickest, will be turned into a Netflix comedy series of the same name starring the author in a fictionalized storyline. Her character will be a plus-size, single, Black woman who is struggling as a stylist but “determined to not only survive but thrive with the support of her chosen family, a body positive attitude, and a cute v-neck with some lip gloss,” according to Deadline. Tone Bell and Tasha Smith will also star.
What we’re reviewing
Book Review: The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes
What we’re reading
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
This music-themed book features a trumpet player in 2013 Boston who finds out the woman he loves is pregnant by him. But he can’t handle that new responsibility, so he flees. His teenage daughter still needs him as she figures out her sexuality while her mother’s mental health deteriorates due to her parents’ failed marriage. How one man finds a way to break so many hearts leads to the women in his life moving on with him missing from the picture.
Music remains the theme with this novel set in 1950s San Francisco as The Salvations are on the brink of stardom. The three-sister group is helmed by their mother, who finally nabs the record contract they’ve been waiting for, but White real estate agents are offering Black property owners like them money. As their neighborhood gentrifies, the sisters are becoming women and getting into adventures that don’t involve music. It has their mother worried about their future in saving a space for them in the music industry and in their own community.
The Oprah Winfrey Network series Queen Sugaris airing its final season premiere on Tuesday, Sept. 6. The TV drama, now in its seventh season, is based on Natalie Baszile’s 2014 novel of the same name about the Bordelon siblings’ ups and downs of managing a sugar mill left to them by their father in his will. Ava DuVernay is the creator and executive producer of the series, known for its raw portrayal of a multigenerational Black family and its beautiful cinematography in rural Louisiana.
Hosted by the Library of Congress, the 2022 National Book Festival will take over D.C. this Labor Day weekend. The festival’s main events are on Saturday, Sept. 3, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Authors who will be there include singer Janelle Monáe, civil rights legend Ruby Bridges, and two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. The free event will be livestreamed.
Scholastic, the largest children’s book publisher and distributor, is looking for a managing editor. This person will manage product strategy for all digital properties and check content updates and implementations are carried out. The position is remote in New York.
