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Book Review: ‘Boom Town’ by Nic Stone

Summary: Boom Town by Nic Stone centers on a strip club employee who searches for her former work bestie after the replacement hiree also goes missing. Now that two women have disappeared without a trace, she finds all trails lead to one mysterious man. 

Synopsis: Micah, who goes by Lyriq, works at Boom Town, an established strip club in Atlanta. She gained notoriety performing with Felice, known as Lucky. Lyriq distances herself after a devastating breast cancer diagnosis. She has undergone surgeries to remove her breasts and is deciding on reconstruction surgery. The burden is too heavy to share with Lucky. 

But Lucky takes the distance as abandonment. She finds solace with a customer named Thomas McIntyre. Thomas is not the average patron; he is a White man and a secretive music executive. He tells Lucky he wants a baby while his wife does not. Lucky gravitates toward Thomas’ promise of helping her find meaningful work outside Boom Town. 

Lyriq is usually resting whenever she gets a chance at the club. She can no longer dance, but she helps keep the club running smoothly. One night, she finds Lucky after an assault. She knows Lucky needs her, but when she tries to understand the turn of events, Lucky is gone. 

When Lucky stops showing up to work, Lyriq assigns Lucky’s locker to Damaris, who becomes Charm. She vouches for Charm as a favor, but the teen is having trouble applying her dance skills to Boom Town’s expectations. Then, Charm disappears. But so do thousands of dollars from the club. Lyriq is now forced to find Charm (and the money) and start the search for Lucky. 

Theme: Power, privilege, and control

Like in most (if not all) stories surrounding a strip club, the power dynamics are clear-cut. The dancers are at the bottom of the hierarchy. The clients who are enjoying their bodies hold the power. In this story, the women are navigating their lives around the obstacles to hold onto their power.

Lucky and Charm don’t matter to Bones, the club’s manager. He is furious about Charm stealing money from the club. But he sees their disappearances as annoyances; he has to hire more dancers. And on top of that, he is losing money over Lucky and Lyriq’s act coming to an abrupt halt. It is due to Lyriq’s health condition, which triggers a domino effect as Lucky becomes dangerously close to Thomas and subsequently disappears. 

The club holds some power over them. Lyriq stays at the job to pay for her health care. Lucky has a master’s degree in education, yet makes more money as a dancer than on a teacher’s salary. Then, she gets trapped in Thomas’s web of deceit to the point Lyriq belatedly questions the bond. 

The surroundings these women had lived in before the strip club felt overpowering as well. Before she became Lucky, Felice separated herself from her family. Before she became Charm, Damaris was involved with a youth pastor at her church. She was underage while believing she was in a mature relationship. To find their power, they found themselves at Boom Town, where their power was under threat again. Micah, Felice, and Damaris are fighting to gain control over their situations. 

Theme: Missing Black women and chosen family

A body is found in the first chapter of the novel. Lady Josephine, an unhoused woman, discovers the body in the woods, where she has created a home. She represents a segment of the population of missing Black women. 

The main theme of the novel is the plight of missing Black women and how they can quietly disappear from a community. Boom Town is a place of business, but when two employees stop coming to work without an explanation, nothing happens. Nobody reports them missing. People who are looking for them feel like they could get more done than the police. And some people do not connect their absence to a disappearance. 

It’s a strip club, while most corporate workplaces will at least contact authorities if an employee fails to show up. Boom Town is a place where many workers have severed ties with friends and families outside of it. This is why Lyriq knows she must look for Lucky and Charm. 

As for Charm, she has Dejuan, a friend she was living with, who comes to the club looking for her and raises the alarm on her disappearance. This heightens Lyriq’s concern and forces her to activate the hunt for Lucky, too. 

Theme: Motherhood

Being a mother takes on many definitions in this story. Lyriq serves as a motherly figure to Lucky and Charm. She knows she is the one looking out for these girls in a dangerous environment, inside and outside Boom Town. 

According to Thomas, his wife, LaBrettney aka Brett, does not want a baby. He is obsessed with having a child. Lucky finds herself becoming empathetic. But her empathy leads to danger. More threads tied to motherhood and reproductive choices affect Felice, Damaris, and Brett.  

Conclusion: The author’s adult debut novel has heart and grit, but it is a rocky read with multiple first-person points of view shifting back and forth from the present and the past. The writing is stream-of-consciousness, so the characters’ voices lift off the page. For some readers, this may distract them from engaging with the story. There is a lot of exposition, where the author explains backstory upon backstory and bookends chapters with the present. The story is unique and thrilling for a commercial fiction novel, but the changes in voice and writing style weigh it down, potentially heightening or diminishing engagement. 

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what's lit

Ready to Reshape the Narrative?

I started She Lit in 2016 as a blog sharing my adventures as an aspiring author. At the time, “aspiring” fit the bill. I had been writing (and rewriting) a manuscript for several years, but I had zero idea about how to push it out into the world. (Side note: It was never published. It still needs work 😉)

I was living in Los Angeles, where literary lifestyle events ruled my calendar. I was making an effort to be in the same rooms as best-selling authors, literary agents, book club enthusiasts, bookish celebrities, and other aspiring and emerging writers. Also, by moving to L.A. from Sacramento, I was fully aware of my fortune: the access to these events in a metropolitan area known as a creative capital.

These events were more than entertaining — they birthed wisdom that I knew other writers would be interested in. Because the blog centered on me, I named it She Lit. I was a woman fostering the spark in my potential authorship.

But sharing the wisdom could only go so far. One of the main pieces of advice I received and would give to writers is: read books. Obvious, right? But many writers lose the time to read books when they are knee-deep in a manuscript, screenplay, or any other creative writing project. The time especially disappears when you are juggling a full-time job, parenting, schooling, and other life priorities.

That’s when the advice and experiences shifted to a book blog. But I was competing in a social media sphere where book influencers seemed to be reading a book every day, whereas I spent most of my free time developing my own stories. I read at least three books a month, but it seemed to be no match with BookTok, BookTube, and Bookstagram.

Over the post-pandemic years, I had been querying literary agents about my young adult social justice novel. I had won a competition that I believed would open doors. Before the competition, some literary agents showed interest (during the Black Lives Matter movement) but eventually rejected my story. I kept pushing forward because that’s what you’re supposed to do as a writer, or so I was told.

After querying 100+ literary agents (more than half after my industry win), I decided to pivot to another unfinished manuscript, forgotten on my computer. Thankfully, I was a writer overwhelmed with too many ideas, leaving remnants of stories in myriad files and folders on the computer and on my desk.

Now, I’m querying my upmarket adult fiction novel. Yet I had ignored She Lit to get to this point. I didn’t want to forsake my beloved book blog, but I evolved as an emerging writer. The original intent gnawed at me: I want to share the wisdom I extracted from literary experiences, as well as the wisdom I gained independently about the industry.

I made mistakes, mainly because I was given advice that didn’t jibe with me. We’ve all been there, but the publishing industry is complex enough that the information you receive must be put under a magnifying glass before you act. Being a creative storyteller means you have to be purposely strategic. That’s why I crafted this mission statement:

She Lit is a literary lifestyle brand spotlighting women’s voices in publishing through tailored content and data-driven insights that inspire readers and empower writers.

The She Lit newsletter will still provide insights on publishing, as in its previous iteration, but will focus more on published authors, emerging writers, and aspiring writers. As a longtime journalist, I view trendy stories and buried data as learning models. I plan to share how the latest happenings and statistics will relate to your approach in getting your story published.

Please support the newsletter and the website by subscribing today!

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what's lit

‘Black Cake’ Brilliantly Illustrates the Main Character’s Journey of Deceit

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the TV series on Hulu.

⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below have graphic references to topics such as sexual assault.

Black Cake on Hulu brings Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel to life through a cinematographic lens, showing the main character’s inner conflicts of hiding her identity multiple times to escape an arranged marriage that ends in murder. 

The TV series opens with Covey escaping the murder scene in her wedding dress toward the ocean in 1960s Jamaica then shows 70-something Eleanor walking into the ocean with her surfboard, determined to get lost in the water. The girl and the woman are the same person. How Coventina “Covey” Lyncook, played magnificently by Mia Isaac in her youthful years, becomes Eleanor Bennett, played by Chipo Chung in her older years, makes the story within Black Cake full-bodied like the rich dessert that serves as its title.

For the quick synopsis (the book review can be found here), Covey is growing up in Jamaica as a competitive swimmer and the only daughter of Johnny “Lin” Lyncook, one of the only Chinese immigrants in the Black community. Her mother, Mathilda, left years earlier, so her mother’s friend and housekeeper, Pearl, helps raise her while earning money baking black cakes for weddings. When Lin runs into gambling issues that threaten his general store, he arranges for Covey to marry Little Man, a career criminal. Seventeen years old, Covey wants to keep swimming with her best friend, Bunny. She is also in love with Gilbert “Gibbs” Grant, a fellow competitive swimmer. When Little Man falls to his death during the reception right when Pearl’s black cake is being served, Covey makes a run toward the ocean. She is now a suspect in her husband’s murder. In the water, she is rebaptized as Coventina Brown on her way to England then Eleanor Douglas in Scotland then Eleanor Bennett in the U.S. Her two children, Byron and Benedetta “Benny,” spend the length of the story deciphering their mother’s deathbed confessions through audio files before discovering they have another sibling. 

The overwhelming theme of the loneliness around hiding your true identity to escape a life choice someone made for you bleeds into most of the scenes involving the character of Covey. Her gambling father forces her into an arranged marriage with an older man known for his criminal activity, and now the girl who had dreams of taking over the world of competitive swimming is running for her survival. The criminal arrangement still leads her to a life of criminality that forces her to change and steal her identity to escape trouble. 

In the second episode “Coventina,” Covey labors over a pot of Chinese fish soup at her clients’ family home. She is ordered to make fish and chips for the two children she cares for as a nanny, but the homesickness is too overpowering in London. While she has access to the kitchen, she makes the soup. The maid, who is also Chinese, smells the soup and tastes it. She recognizes the dish and questions Covey about how she learned to make the soup. Covey answers that her grandmother taught her without revealing she too is Chinese. The maid leaves with suspicions. Covey can’t afford to bond with the maid over their shared ethnic identity because she is hiding her entire identity. What if the maid is a Chinese woman from Jamaica? When Covey serves the children the soup, they are disgusted and upset that fish and chips are not being served as expected. Though she is homesick, Covey is embarrassed that she tried to bring a sense of home into someone else’s home, especially serving children without developed and diverse palates. The moment is smaller than the many pivotal moments, but it stands out in demonstrating Covey’s loneliness and homesickness in such a simple light. The dinner forces her to reexamine her fear of living within the Caribbean and Chinese communities in London and wonder if the next batch of immigrants who arrive on the next ship will recognize her and turn her in to the authorities in Jamaica. 

The third episode “Eleanor” shows us how Covey becomes Eleanor after assuming the identity of her upbeat roommate Eleanor, played by Karise Yansen, who is killed in a train accident as they are traveling to live a new life in Edinburgh, Scotland. In the show, she has a hard time finding a job as a Caribbean immigrant while recovering from her leg laceration from the accident. She feels she has to hide even more. It mentally takes her back to the island where she is courting Gibbs, played by Ahmed Elhaj. Since she has a boyfriend, she wants Bunny to find one, too. But Bunny, played by Lashay Anderson, doesn’t seem interested in the local boys. She confesses that she likes Covey the way she’s supposed to like boys. Covey reprimands her friend to never repeat those words and advises Bunny to pretend to like a boy out of protection. Back alone in Edinburgh, Covey as Eleanor realizes the advice she had given her friend is the advice she needs for herself to survive. 

In the same episode, Covey finds a secretarial job. Out of excitement in finding employment, she wears a light pink crocheted dress with pink heels topped with white flowers on her first day. Right away, her Scottish female colleagues seem to be annoyed by her presence and make comments about the brightness of her outfit. Covey is again reminded to hide. So, the next day, she arrives in an outfit with a drabber color. When she spots accounting errors, she tries to bring the problem to Beatrice, played by Anna Mawn, the ringleader of the women in the office. She gets angry at Covey for insinuating she has made a mistake.

But Covey doesn’t feel right about the mistakes in the account. She goes to her male boss, who seems understanding of the situation. He admonishes Beatrice for ignoring the mistakes and invites Covey to dinner with his wife. The trust between Covey and her boss makes her feel seen in a positive light. Then her boss reveals that he knows Covey is lying about her identity. He points out the lack of nursing education, a lie Covey used on her résumé as part of her new identity as Eleanor. With Covey afraid to confess, her boss sexually assaults her. Beatrice notices Covey in shock returning to their room in the office. She follows Covey into the restroom, where she explains the boss had assaulted her and the other women in the office, but they all needed the job. She tells Covey to clean herself up and return to her desk. Covey is visibly upset over the ordeal and how she let her walls down to the first person who showed her attention when she was supposed to be invisible. 

Covey returns to London after having her daughter, Mathilda, as a result of the assault. As the seventh episode “Birth Mother” shows a pregnant Covey trying to stay under the radar at a church, she fights to be noticed to keep her daughter. But she fails when a couple swoops baby Mathilda in a quickie adoption arranged by the nuns. Covey is running after the car carrying her baby away, but she cannot keep up. 

Since Edinburgh turned out to be a disaster starting with the tragic death of her roommate, Covey puts on her cloak of invisibility in the fourth episode “Mrs. Bennett” while walking the streets of London. She notices a protest across the street, and in a perfect moment of fate, she lays her eyes on her beloved Gibbs. He is yelling into a megaphone alongside protestors, but he stops when he lays his eyes on Covey. They immediately reunite and spend time together. But one day, a Caribbean girl notices Covey. She calls out to Covey, but Covey answers to Eleanor now. The girl asks about Eleanor’s whereabouts since it was reported that Covey had died in the train accident. Covey hides behind Gibbs and explains the stress and the loneliness of hiding in plain sight. Gilbert Bennett Grant becomes Bert Bennett while Covey becomes Eleanor Bennett. 

The series shows a healthy portion of the recently past present and current present with Byron, played by Ashley Thomas, and Benny, played by Adrienne Warren, who are making sense of their mother’s story and realizing why both their parents had to change their names once they started their new lives in the U.S. But the dramatic sequence of events featuring Mia Isaac as young Covey tugs on the heartstrings more since the strong emotions of disappointment, loneliness, and despair lay within Covey’s past. Throughout the series, there are flashbacks to the relatively peaceful existence Covey lived in Jamaica, even after her mother, Mathilda, left the family in hopes of finding the promise of a better life in the West. The turquoise ocean, the lanky palm trees, and the golden sunlight of the island warm the screen every time, even at times when the story shows a rough scene. The cover for the series shows a young Covey running away toward the ocean at sunset from her deadly reception. How young Covey navigates a path she stumbled onto for the sake of living her life is the root of the storyline.

The eighth episode ends with adult Bunny, a world-famous competitive swimmer played by CCH Pounder, admitting to killing Little Man with a poison Pearl was preparing for the wedding to give Covey a chance at the life she wanted. Pearl decides it is too risky to use the poison, but Bunny sneaks it into Little Man’s drink. Covey’s three grownup children — Byron, Benny, and Mabel Mathilda, played by Sonita Henry — have joined Bunny, now known as Etta, to discover this revelation. But the TV storyline omits some of the book’s ending and opens to new possibilities of a second season.

Toward the end of the book, Etta leads Byron, Benny, and Mabel Mathilda to visit Pearl, played by Faith Alabi, in Florida. She would visit Pearl when she competitively swam in the state. Pearl is in shock that not only Covey was alive this entire time, but she raised a family with Gibbs. All the children remind her of Lin when they laugh. And Mabel looks the most like Covey, though she is considered White. Still in Florida, Etta also guides Covey’s children to their biological grandfather, who they learned with the revelations is Chinese and still alive in his 90s. After a tumultuous gambling past in Jamaica, his luck had turned in the U.S. through investments. He had a private investigator find Covey, who at the time was living as Eleanor Bennett in California, but he felt his daughter should’ve reached out to him. Though he left the island, most of the island at the time ended up in Florida instead of the U.K. in the late 1960s, so he believes Covey would’ve found him if she wanted to. These crucial reunions and meetings, for example, aren’t covered in the series, but they could add another element in a new season.

Another part of the book that failed to make it to the screen is Covey as Eleanor before her death going to see her old friend, renowned swimmer Etta Pringle, speak at a conference. Eleanor sits in the crowd, and Etta notices the face of her old friend who she believed died in a train accident in Scotland decades earlier. Eleanor gives Etta a note with a phone number. They discuss awkwardly a date to meet, but by that time, Eleanor is dead. 

In the TV series’ fifth episode “Mother,” Byron gets arrested for beating Benny’s abusive ex-boyfriend on the street after Benny calls to be rescued. In the book, Byron’s girlfriend Lynette, played by Rebecca Naomi Jones in the show, calls Byron to notify him that she couldn’t make it to his mother’s funeral because her nephew had been involved in a police incident. Also in the book, Lynette gives birth to their son. But in the show, Byron finds out at the end that he will be a father when Lynette shows up to the funeral, so his parenthood can be explored in another season. 

The series emphasizes a few events in the book. One example is Mabel Mathilda, who is a cultural food anthropologist who gets canceled for whitesplaining indigenous foods during a panel discussion. She is the daughter who reluctantly is given up for adoption. She was raised in a White family and not told about her adoption until Eleanor Bennett’s lawyer Charles Mitch, played by Glynn Turman, reaches out to her. Mabel is raising her son, Gio, alone, but she sends him to boarding school while she lives between London and Italy. This is shown on screen, but in the book, we see Mabel yearn for Gio to return home after noticing her neighbors’ son, who is the same age as Gio. Mabel’s husband died before Gio was born, but the series can dive deeper into Mabel’s life. The scene in the TV series where young Covey is running after the car belonging to Mabel’s adoptive parents is excruciating to the point that Mabel will have to deal with that image and bring it up with her family. She still also has to tell Gio that she is adopted, has met her biological siblings, and went to her biological mother’s funeral while lying about being on her book tour in the U.S. The show spotlights the personal lives of Byron and Benny since we meet them at the beginning of the series, while Mabel is introduced in “Mother,” therefore we have the abridged version of her reality.

Reminiscent of the visual reimagining of Natalie Baszile’s Queen Sugar by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, Black Cake keeps its story mainly intact and gives moments more space to breathe and expand. Along with author Charmaine Wilkerson, Oprah is also an executive producer for Black Cake. Thanks to showrunner Marissa Jo Cerar’s book-to-TV credits, the series tells the story with dramatic cinematographic shots. The series is so exquisitely done, but it’s due to the novel being entertaining and heart-wrenching simultaneously with the tension pulsating on every page the way it’s pulsating in every scene.

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‘And Just Like That…’ Shows How Recording an Audiobook Is Part of Grieving Process

Sarah Jessica Parker in "And Just Like That..."
Sarah Jessica Parker in "And Just Like That..." Photo: Craig Blakenhorn/Max

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the series on Max.

The Sex and the City reboot centers its second season’s third episode on Carrie Bradshaw narrating her story of grief for her audiobook. As she bumbles with emotion over the chapter detailing her husband’s untimely death, Carrie does everything in her power to avoid having to complete the narration. 

And Just Like That… returned for its second season June 22 on Max, formerly HBO Max, and picked up where the first season left off: Carrie moving forward after the sudden death of her husband, John, better known as “Big.” The grief connects to her writing in the episode “Chapter Three.”

Traipsing around Manhattan in her iconic heels, Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is heading to the studio to record her latest book, Loved and Lost. This book fits into a different genre compared to her other books. This one is about her journey of grief after the death of Big, played by Chris Noth (Sexual assault allegations against the actor emerged immediately after his character’s demise. He denies the allegations and hasn’t been criminally charged).

Carrie’s foray into the grief memoir genre has given her an opportunity to narrate her audiobook. Most memoirists tell their stories for the audiobook, and it’s become more of a standard for memoirs about grief. But when Carrie speaks into the microphone, she keeps choking on her words, reliving the moments from the premiere episode of the series where Big dies from a heart attack after riding on his Peloton (The fitness company’s stock fell due to the negative storyline). Carrie’s male audio producers try to coach her through the annunciation issues, like she’s swallowing her t’s and popping her p’s, but they can’t pick up her frustration in reliving that distinct memory by reading it aloud. 

“A memoir this personal needs to be read by the author,” her editor says after Carrie urges for an actress to be hired to record the audiobook, like Julianne Moore or Julianna Margulies. Then Carrie learns that the studio has been booked for five days. She thought it would be only for two. But the publisher already factored in extra days to accommodate the emotional hardship of reading the story. Back in the recording studio, Carrie starts to hear the water from the shower on that tragic day and sees water blurring the words on the e-book she’s reading from. The audio producers decide it’s better to skip the chapter for the time being. 

After a tearful moment in the recording studio, Carrie receives advice from Bitsy Von Muffling, played by Julie Halston. Complaining about the upkeep after a facelift, fellow widow Bitsy recommends Carrie should do whatever she loves to do to make her feel better. So, Carrie goes shoe shopping. She bursts through her apartment door with Bergdorf Goodman bags filled with shoes, such as a pair of pink Gucci ankle-cuff leather pumps and copper-studded Giuseppe Zanotti Intriigo mules.

While trying on her new shoes, she calls up the main audio producer and tells him she has contracted COVID-19. Therefore, the producers need to hire that actress Carrie had suggested earlier. The viral disease that caused a yearslong global pandemic is now treatable enough that it can be a lie to get out of work. She stays in her apartment, even enjoying a hamburger and fries when her friends Seema and Anthony, played by Sarita Choudhury and Mario Cantone respectively, call her for lunch. She lies to them about her fake COVID. Seema comes to visit where Carrie admits her lie and tells her how she needs to attend her neighbor Lisette’s jewelry showcase. 

At the showcase, Carrie and Seema are chatting when they see a man in a black suit pocket the jewelry on display. While they’re questioning the theft, Carrie yells that she has COVID, which clears the outside tents. Seema brandishes a handgun, which turns out to be a lighter. The jewelry is gone, and Lisette, played by Katerina Tannenbaum, is devastated. Carrie visits Lisette the next day with pastries as they mourn the loss. Mourning, even for material objects, helps Carrie prepare to narrate the chapter detailing her husband’s death in the recording studio. She celebrates with Seema, who has recovered her Birkin handbag stolen in the beginning of the episode, at a communal table with young men visiting from Australia. At the end of the episode, Carrie’s lie manifests into real COVID. 

Though the writing in the reboot fails to be as crisp as the writing in the original Sex and the City series based on Candace Bushnell’s 1996 book, emphasizing the hardship of narrating an audiobook about grief seems to be a realistic issue memoirists deal with.

Marketing maven Bozoma St. John, for example, went on tour earlier this year to discuss her grief memoir The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival. In the very first minutes on her audiobook, she narrates the day her husband died from a rare cancer thought to be treatable. Tembi Locke’s 2019 memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home came to life onscreen with a Netflix miniseries. She narrates the story of losing her husband to cancer elegantly for the audiobook edition. You can find the book review here.

On the other hand, Sheryl Sandberg didn’t narrate the audiobook for Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, her 2017 memoir about losing her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg. She may have been worried about being overtaken with emotion, or the publisher decided her voice wasn’t the right fit, even when more memoirists are reading their life stories. Elisa Donovan of Clueless and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch fame stepped in to narrate the Option B audiobook. In fact, the actress narrated the 2021 audiobook for her own grief memoir about losing her father in Wake Me When You Leave: Love and Encouragement via Dreams from the Other Side. 

This a rare episode for Carrie where we see the process of her promoting her book. This is a newer process for some authors, especially for memoirists, with coming to terms to reading an audiobook, even when it draws up tough feelings. Audiobooks are more popular than ever, so publishers are banking on authors to vocalize their own stories of loss and healing.

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‘Shakti Girls’ Author Shetal Shah Uses Poetry to Tell the Stories of Indian Innovators

A former teacher who taught at all-girls schools, Shetal Shah said she noticed how the girls’ self-esteems soared when they were learning about women of various diverse backgrounds. This has led to Shakti Girls, her debut children’s picture book featuring poetic biographies about trailblazing women across the Indian diaspora.

“Shakti” refers to an individual’s divine power and energy in traditional Hinduism. This energy is considered female because mothers have the power to birth new life, according to the first page of the book. Throughout the book, the poems highlight the accomplishments of newsmakers such as Vice President Kamala Harris to actress-producer Mindy Kaling, but we also learn about former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj, and astronaut Kalpana Chawla.

Empowering Hindi words and motivating messages are woven into the verses to affirm each young reader’s identity and self-esteem. A short glossary of English and Hindi words is provided on each page to enhance the experience, as well as activities to empower one’s inner shakti.

The inspiration to tell these stories are not only from Shetal’s education background, but it also pairs with her upbringing in New York City as a second-generation Indian American. She talks to she lit about telling these women’s stories in rhythm and seeing her children’s reactions to the finished product. Check out the conversation below:

she lit: How did you come up with the concept to tell these stories in rhyme and intentionally use Hindi words and phrases in the poems?

Shetal: The idea of sharing these stories was in the back of my mind for quite some time. However, it was my youngest son who sparked the idea to present them in a more engaging format that would resonate with young readers. In order to capture their imagination, I knew the writing had to be lively, fun, and ignite their thirst for learning.

As an educator, I was aware of the cognitive benefits of rhyme in enhancing memory retention and concentration. Additionally, having experienced the sheer pleasure of reading and reciting rhyming poems, I knew it would captivate and delight my audience. With this in mind, I embarked on the task of narrating the stories of these remarkable women in verse.

Later on, I felt compelled to incorporate Hindi words into the poems when I reflected on my own grasp of Hindi and Gujarati, a regional language of India. Having realized that my exposure to these languages did not include many self-affirming and empowering words, I imagined how uplifting it would have felt if the first words I learned were words of empowerment. 

she lit: Growing up as a second-generation Indian American, how and where did you learn about women of Indian descent? What was your sense that classmates and kids around you knew about these women? 

Shetal: Growing up in the United States during the ’80s and ’90s, I did not have access to the resources that would have helped me learn about women of Indian descent. Occasionally, a family member visiting from India would bring me short stories about Hindu goddesses like Lakshmi, but I never encountered a secular book or article about an Indian woman until I learned about Indira Gandhi in high school.

However, the information was limited, and Gandhi remained the only woman of Indian descent I knew about until college. I realized that my knowledge, or lack thereof, was not unique and was likely shared by my peers. Even as a frequent library-goer, I had little knowledge of books and media that celebrated Indian women.

Today, I am grateful to see a shift in diversity represented in children’s literature, but there is still much work to be done. While we have made progress since I was a child, we have yet to scratch the surface of adequate representation.

she lit: From your experience as a teacher at all-girls schools, how did you engage students in learning about women from different ethnic backgrounds who may have been left out of their history lessons? 

Shetal: Witnessing my students’ natural curiosity about the world and its diverse cultures and people was a privilege and a joy. Teaching an extension lesson on Murasaki Shikibu, the author of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, as part of our unit about medieval Japan, was particularly memorable. The thoughtful questions and wonderment my students shared about her and her achievement were exciting.

Fortunately, many of the courses I taught fell under the umbrella of global studies, making it easier to introduce diverse cultures and viewpoints within the curriculum. By starting with student inquiry and later giving them the space to reflect and make connections to historical figures like Shikibu, my students took ownership of their learning and forged deep connections that transcended boundaries and cultures.

Learning about history and the people who made it can be incredibly empowering, especially when students are given a choice and voice in how they want to learn. The true challenge, however, was finding the resources to support different learning preferences and interests.

she lit: There is an interactive component with having readers look for symbols related to the poems in the illustrations. What motivated you and illustrator Kavita Rajput to add this type of engagement for young readers? 

Shetal: As an educator, I recognized that incorporating an interactive component would enrich the learning process by enabling readers to make connections between the visual cues and the women featured in the book.

In my teaching practice, I favored a multisensory approach that engaged learners through storytelling (hearing it), illustrations (seeing it), and activities (interacting with it) that fostered reflection and interaction. I was determined to apply this approach to Shakti Girls, as I believed it would create a more meaningful and enjoyable learning experience for readers.

she lit: How have your children reacted to the book and what has impacted them the most? 

Shetal: From the inception of the book, my children were part of the creative process, unapologetically critiquing, editing, and validating all aspects of it. Now, I catch my son who inspired the rhymes, casually reading the book on his own. I can tell they are proud of their mom, but I can also tell they are excited to learn about these brave women and are inspired by their stories.

As a mother of two boys, I am confident that reading this book will help break down any unconsciously held beliefs they have about women and girls. A defining moment for me came when my oldest son, who enjoys swimming competitively, asked me if I knew any Indian American swimmers who had competed at the Olympics. Given the statistics on diversity in the swim world, I wasn’t surprised when our internet research drew a blank.

However, I was able to share Mohini Bhardwaj’s story from my book. As an Olympian and former captain of the USA’s gymnastics team, who happens to be a vegetarian like my son, her journey was a source of inspiration for him. While it didn’t entirely answer his question, it helped him see that people like him can achieve greatness in athletics.

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What We Learn About Brittney Griner in Her First Memoir

Basketball star Brittney Griner will be releasing a new memoir next year about her 10-month detention in a Russian prison. The release of this book will coincide with the 10th anniversary of her first memoir In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court. As the first memoir highlights the moments leading up to her newfound stardom, the second memoir will focus on the transition of becoming an unexpected political prisoner and activist.

“Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world,” Brittney said in a press release about the memoir. “By writing this book, I also hope to raise awareness surrounding other Americans wrongfully detained abroad such as Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Emad Shargi, Airan Berry, Shahab Dalili, Luke Denman, Eyvin Hernandez, Majd Kamalmaz, Jerrel Kenemore, Kai Li, Siamak Namazi, Austin Tice, Mark Swidan and Morad Tahbaz.”

Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, is the publisher behind the untitled memoir. The news was announced amid the WNBA draft where University of South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston was the No. 1 pick and more than a week after Brittney’s former Baylor University coach Kim Mulkey won her first championship with the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team.

While Brittney spends 2023 revving up on the court, her memoir will sure make a splash when it comes out in spring 2024 as we get rare insight into her experience as a Black gay female athlete navigating various politics in order to win back her freedom.

Pay inequity, cannabis overregulation lead to arrest

Brittney, the No. 1 WNBA draft pick in 2013, was arrested in Russia in February 2022 over charges of carrying cannabis cartridges in her luggage as she tried to fly back to the U.S. after finishing a season playing with the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg. She played overseas, like a lot of her WNBA colleagues from Candace Parker to Maya Moore, because players’ salaries average $117,500 to $215,000, according to Spotrac.

On the list, Brittney’s WNBA base salary ranks at $165,100 this year as the No. 35 top paid player, a drop in standing due to her imprisonment. The No. 35 NBA player is Deandre Ayton of the Phoenix Suns, the same city as Brittney, and ESPN reports he is earning almost $31 million this season. Though WNBA salaries increased after fans voiced concern over the reason why Brittney was playing overseas, WNBA salaries are still nowhere near NBA salaries.

Her arrest also became controversial in the court of public opinion as she brought an illegal drug into Russia, where cannabis possession translated into a nine-year prison sentence. Though she helped the country elevate its basketball game, none of that mattered amid President Vladimir Putin’s administration waging a war with neighboring Ukraine.

Russia launched its first attack against the former Soviet Union republic of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Brittney was arrested the week before on Feb. 17.

She became a political prisoner as the Biden administration went back and forth on negotiations to bring Brittney, known as BG by her friends and fans, back to the U.S. safe and sound. She came home last December after the U.S. traded her with Russia for an infamous arms dealer.

What she entails in her post-imprisonment memoir will become media fodder with Oprah Winfrey-level interviews and a constant replay of excerpts. Brittney co-wrote her memoir in 2014 with Sue Hovey, a former vice president and executive editor at ESPN, a year after joining the WNBA.

The first memoir, published by HarperCollins, detailed her upbringing in Texas, particularly around growing into her sexuality. She was raised by a father, who worked in law enforcement and lived by the law at home. Her mother seemed supportive but couldn’t protect Brittney from her father’s ignorance about how she was developing.

Living under her father’s strict roof made playing basketball at Baylor, a private Baptist university, just as difficult after she left home. She writes about her experiences of dealing with her father and college coach in the book:

“I was finally coming into my own as an adult, but before I could step forward and be exactly the person I wanted to be in public, before I could say and do the things I wanted to do, on my own terms, I had to go through some serious growing pains with the two main authority figures in my life: my dad, Raymond Griner, and my coach, Kim Mulkey.

“I love and respect them both, more than they probably know. But if I had to pick just one word to describe my relationship with each of them? Complicated. All caps COMPLICATED.”

Tension with father, coach over sexuality

Kim was the Baylor coach for 21 years. In her book, Brittney writes about how their relationship deteriorated because she felt her coach showed two faces — one for the public, one for private.

“She would call me into her office to tell me I had done something wrong — like when someone saw me kissing my girlfriend at the movies — but then she would shift the burden away from herself, trying to imply she was just the messenger and this wasn’t how she personally felt. Those conversations caused me a lot of confusion, a lot of pain.”

Amid this year’s March Madness, the championship-winning coach told ESPN she had not talked to her former player since Brittney returned from Russia. To be fair, Kim was busy coaching her team to its first national title while Brittney had just re-signed with the Phoenix Mercury.

Brittney says she had “a lot of mixed emotions” about her time at Baylor, which is located in Waco, Texas. Though she was close to home and her talent was supported on campus, the university had a policy against same-sex romantic relationships, an issue she nor her family were aware of before her enrollment.

Attending a religious school against her sexual identity ties into her time in high school, where she realized she liked girls. At home, she says her father had his own similar policy.

“There was a bit of a cold war going on between us, but I knew our relationship would become red hot if he discovered the truth about my sexuality,” she writes. “I knew if he found out, the walls would come crashing down around me. My dad has always had a very narrow view of the world, perceiving anything ‘different’ as a threat.”

Though she had a simple coming-out discussion with her mother, Brittney says she was warned to not tell her father. She says her father would say passive-aggressive statements like wondering how Kim and Baylor would react to her “being so friendly with gays.”

The relationship Brittney had with these two authoritative figures really impacted how she wanted to live in the world as a gay woman. Her intersectionality also came up with her arrest. Russia is considered to have harsh laws against same-sex relationships. We should see correlations between how she was treated in the U.S. for her identity and how she was treated in Russia as an athlete-turned-prisoner.

It begs the question how her relationship with her father has changed with her high-profile arrest since part of her identity is growing up as a daughter of a police officer. She even once had the same career ambitions to follow in law enforcement.

Also, being Black (and tattooed) as a prisoner in a country that is less than 1% Black added fuel to the fire. When Brittney returned home, she was sporting a short cropped hairdo because she had to sever her trademark locs due to the freezing temperatures in Russia. Her upcoming memoir may go in depth on her feelings about her identity being affected by the erasure of her African hairstyle.

Fame & basketball

Since she was 23 at the time of the first memoir’s release, Brittney was still young enough to dedicate the majority of the book on her coming of age in Houston.

Like many teenagers, Brittney suffered from depression, not quite understanding the toll. She writes about how she was bullied for being tall and wanting to dress in clothes considered appropriate for boys.

“They were constantly making fun of how I looked and dressed, how I walked and talked,” she writes. “I’m not sure I can express exactly how I felt in those moments, because I usually went numb. When you’re on the receiving end of insults every day, they chip away at your self-esteem.”

With her 6’8 height, Brittney started playing basketball in high school, which is almost considered a late bloomer for anyone serious about pursuing the sport seriously in college and beyond.

“The growing confidence I felt off the court carried over to basketball. And the more I improved as a player, the better I felt about the person I was becoming,” she writes. “It all just fed on itself. After fighting and struggling my way through middle school, I now had a new sense of purpose.”

As she became a basketball megastar at Baylor, her sexuality and gender were questioned with higher intensity at the university.

“We could acknowledge, in a general way, that people were questioning my gender, calling me a freak, a man, a female impostor. And yet I couldn’t talk about being gay,” she writes. “Most of the time, I was on autopilot with the media, because I couldn’t really show who I was of the often portrayed—just a big, fun-loving, goofy kid—felt like a two-dimensional version of the real me.”

In the book, Brittney writes about her time playing on the Zhejiang Chouzhou Golden Bulls in China while on break from playing on the Phoenix Mercury, the team she signed with in 2013. She describes how normal it is for WNBA players to play overseas to earn close to equivalent salaries of NBA players. Though she is a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA, she still had to play in Russia, which ultimately led to her arrest.

Regardless of the controversy around her arrest and release, readers may be interested in her captivity in a strict foreign prison as a gay Black female celebrity and how that experience led to the evolution of her speaking up for Americans also imprisoned under trumped-up charges abroad.

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‘Bel-Air’ Shows How a Black Teacher Could Be Punished for Expanding Book Access

"Compromised" Episode 203 -- Pictured: (l-r) Akira Akbar as Ashley, Tatyana Ali as Ms. Hughes -- (Photo by: PEACOCK)

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the series on Peacock.

Peacock’s Bel-Air not only united the original Ashley Banks with the new Ashley Banks, but the reboot drama united them in a storyline highlighting the near erasure of Black literature in the classroom.

The show is a serious portrayal of the 1990s NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that brought rapper Will Smith to the silver screen. The new version stars Jabari Banks, who has an uncanny resemblance to Will and holds the fictional last name of the TV family in real life. It’s still the same story of a Black teen boy from West Philadelphia who must move to the upscale Los Angeles enclave of Bel-Air with his aunt and her immediate family to stay out of trouble. 

Tatyana Ali, who played Ashley in the sitcom, made a guest appearance in the second season of Bel-Air by playing teacher Ms. Hughes to the reimagined version of her former character Ashley, played by Akira Akbar. 

At the elite Bel-Air Academy, Ms. Hughes gives Ashley a book, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland, by Robyn C. Spencer, in the premiere episode “A Fresh Start.” Ms. Hughes asks for a two-page summary, which is an extra credit assignment since the book is outside of the curriculum. 

In the second episode “Speaking Truth,” Ms. Hughes hands Ashley another book after class. This time, it’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. A White classmate glares at their exchange in the background. The look of disgust on the classmate’s face shows the concern that Ms. Hughes is showing Ashley more preference because they’re both Black. Soon, we learn a complaint has been filed against Ms. Hughes. And it’s not the first.

When Ashley later bumps into Ms. Hughes in the hallway with a box of her effects inside, she asks why the teacher is leaving. Ms. Hughes gives Ashley words of encouragement, but Ashley is obviously devastated that her favorite teacher, one of the very few Black teachers in the school, is gone. 

Ashley tells her parents Vivian, played by Cassandra Freeman, and Phil, played by Adrian Holmes, about Ms. Hughes’ firing. They discover that Ms. Hughes was let go over providing books outside of the approved curriculum at a parent advisory committee meeting. Vivian even lists the authors Ashley is now exposed to because of Ms. Hughes’ influence, such as James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Paula Giddings.

Will, Ashley’s cousin, and Carlton, Ashley’s brother played by Olly Sholotan, get involved by bringing the issue to the high school’s Black Student Union in an effort to keep Carlton elected as class president by maintaining the Black student vote. A protest comes up as the best response to Ms. Hughes’ firing. Except Carlton has a chance to win the school’s highest student award and be the first Black student to win the award. The BSU adviser, who is Black, dissuades Carlton to plan the protest; it’s not worth sacrificing the award over a fired teacher who wasn’t following the rules. 

The third episode “Compromise” shows the BSU dealing with the administration’s threat to suspend them all if members and allies walk out during classes. Then Carlton and BSU president strike a deal with the administration: Students can walk out but can’t make speeches or hold signs. The middle school students like Ashley are already barred from participating in the walkout. 

On the day of the walkout at 11 a.m., Carlton leads participating students to the quad in protest of not only Ms. Hughes being fired but also in support for a more inclusive curriculum. The pressure to go against the compromise made with the administration revs up Carlton’s anxiety. Will says he has Carlton’s back as he takes a large sign and runs up staircases to end up on the roof. He unrolls a sign that reads “Black Teachers Matter.” With a raised fist, he starts the chant “Black Teachers Matter.” Students below join in the chant. 

According to Tatyana’s Instagram post, this episode is her last appearance, so the Ms. Hughes storyline may end there. But how students are walking out in protest over demanding inclusive curricula is an example of art imitating life. 

Students in Virginia walked out last fall due to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transgender student policies. Last month, students across Florida walked out to protest Governor Ron DeSantis’ plans to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at colleges and universities. 

At the root of the issue in Bel-Air is that a Black female teacher mentored a Black female student by giving her books that would never be read in the classroom or approved for a syllabus at a predominantly White upper-crust school. But the mentorship was severed by complaints from other classmates not getting the same attention. 

To be fair, unfairness should be reported in situations like classroom settings where teacher favoritism could affect your grades, but that part of the conversation is not discussed. The repercussions of firing a Black teacher over providing Black stories go deeper with dismantling a literary mentorship that had already opened a student’s mind.

One in five Black or African American private school teachers worked at schools with less than 25% enrollment of students of color, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That shows how rare a relationship is between a Black teacher and a Black student at a predominantly White private school. 

Out of 3,420 children’s books in 2021, 36% were “books by and about Black, Indigenous and People of Color,” per data from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison. As books by authors of color seem to see higher rates of bans and attempts at bans, students of all backgrounds may not know about those books if they’re not available to them at school or the public library. Hence, Ms. Hughes giving Ashley books on the side to read that explore the experiences and identities of people of African descent is viewed as an act of defiance.

Although the storyline is rooted in students demanding a more inclusive curriculum, the issue of approved literature impacts many educators who are currently witnessing conflicts with some of their local and state regulators restricting what is taught in classrooms. 

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Aftertastes

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

A wife must come to terms with losing her husband and uniting her family abroad as they grieve in the Netflix series From Scratch. Based on the best-selling memoir by actress Tembi Locke, the series’ last episode summarizes the grief that is expressed throughout the book.

In the last episode, Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, brought her husband Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, home to palliative care as his rare soft-tissue cancer worsened with no cure in sight. After a few days of bittersweet heartache, Lino dies. When Amy meets with palliative care counselor in “Between the Fire and the Pan” episode, she’s told to bring her daughter, Idalia, played by Isla Colbert, to Lino after he passes. She does that in the beginning of this episode to let her daughter grieve her father.

The grieving process is palpable. Amy later collapses as her mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, and her sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, bathe her in the bathtub as she uncontrollably cries. We don’t hear the grief as instrumental music drowns them out. Amy then stays in bed while her family takes over her house. Zora tells Amy that she’s afraid of her slipping away. Amy breaks down that she can’t fly to Sicily to bring Lino’s ashes home. She doesn’t have the energy; she already gave her all.

FINDING HOME IN SICILY

Amy finds herself driving on the rollercoaster roads of Sicily with Idalia in the backseat, along with Lino’s ashes. They follow the directions to Lino’s family’s home, where they are greeted by the entire town led by Lino’s mother Filomena, played by Lucia Sardo. Amy rises out of the car and presents Lino’s ashes to his mother. Filomena gets teary as she carries the urn high in a solemn parade through the narrow alleys to her house.

The priest comes to the house for the blessing while Filomena breaks down. Idalia gets agitated about the overwhelming emotion in the room. Amy carries her to their guest room where she explains they are leaving Lino in Sicily. Idalia thought her father would come back with them to Los Angeles. After the blessing, Filomena tells Idalia she can see her father anytime in her imagination. All in black, the family later goes on another trek to bury Lino as the townspeople bow in respect.

The next day, Filomena makes Amy breakfast, consoling her about the everlasting heartbreak of losing a husband. Filomena’s husband and Lino’s father Giacomo, played by Paride Benassai, dies in the episode “Heirlooms,” a year after visiting the family in LA in the “Bread and Brine” episode. Neither of Lino’s parents attend the wedding for Amy and Lino that takes place in Italy, a sore spot in the “A Villa. A Broom. A Cake.” episode that continues to emerge throughout the series. This is not the first time they have spoken, but it’s the first time Amy has been in the family household and is being treated with care by her semi-estranged mother-in-law.

Amy goes to a wine bar for a moment of peace away from her family. She’s the only woman there. The older Sicilian men watch her in suspicion. Not only is she American, but she is Black, and they have probably never seen someone who looks like her up close. The town’s mayor shares his condolences with Amy. She walks out of the bar and notices the women hanging outside on their patios watch her walk back to Filomena’s house. In Italian, they comment on her darker complexion. Amy thinks it’s comical that they don’t realize she understands Italian as she heads home. For another break, she runs up the hills around the town and sneaks a peek of the Mediterranean Sea as the backdrop to rolling green hills. That’s her moment of peace.

TOWN GOSSIP

“Grief in Sicily is not an individual experience but a communal one where people are called upon to witness and support one another,” Tembi writes in the book where she recounts her life with her late husband Saro, who died from cancer. “The way certain African cultures use drumming as an active means of dealing with their grief—the rhythm is played continuously for days, day and night, over and over, as a constant reminder to the community of its loss—in Sicily the story of the deceased is told over and over.”

In the show, the mourning tour continues as Filomena brings Amy and Idalia to other townspeople’s homes to sit and relive memories of Lino. At one home, Idalia gets sick eating too much candy. The nosy women notice Idalia gripping her tummy once they’re outside and convince Filomena to take this opportunity to see the doctor’s house. Nobody has really seen the so-called palace-like interior. The women want to know what’s inside the massive house. Amy can’t believe she’s being wrapped up in town gossip.

Filomena takes Idalia’s hand as they head to the doctor’s mysterious home. He invites them inside to sit with them in the their mourning. They notice a photo of the doctor with Lino framed on a side table. The two are standing outside the restaurant in Florence where Amy and Lino fell in love in the debut episode “First Tastes.” The doctor explains he had visited Florence and met with Lino years ago. He now prays often for Lino. The unexpected visit becomes the most impactful. Once they leave, the women swarm around the family to hear what they saw. Idalia tells them that she saw several chandeliers inside. This satisfies the town gossipers.

That night, Amy dreams of Lino. She finds him in the kitchen in Sicily cooking her a meal. They embrace. Then she wakes up. She can see him whenever she wants. In the morning, she learns Filomena wants her to meet with the family lawyer. Filomena doesn’t give Amy details until Amy finds herself beside her sister-in-law being asked by the lawyer to sign papers. It’s a deed to the land. Now that Lino as the oldest son is gone, Amy inherits the farmland. She refuses to sign the paperwork.

While resting back at the house, Amy is summoned. A dispute over a car accident with the town’s mayor has broken out with a driver who speaks English. The driver tells Amy that the mayor hit his car. Amy explains to the driver that the man in the car is the mayor, and with the townspeople crowding the area, the mayor will win the argument. The driver takes the loss and speeds away. The townspeople cheer for Amy. She’s one of their own.

SANT’ANNA

Amy goes to church with Filomena while it’s empty. Filomena is praying to Saint Anne or Sant’Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary, the grandmother of Jesus Christ. She says she prayed to this saint when Amy and Lino married, when Lino died. She wants Amy to make Sicily her home. That’s why she sent her to the lawyer’s office to inherit the land. Later, Amy brings Idalia to the spot she had found while running where the hills and the sea create a picturesque vision of peace. Amy tells Idalia that this is where Lino still feels alive because it’s their home.

Sant’Anna’s Day falls on Amy’s birthday. Sant’Anna is the patron saint of travelers and widows. It’s the opportune time to celebrate Lino.

“These women pray to her in times of difficulty and times of celebration,” Tembi writes in the book. “I had also learned that she was the patron saint of widows and travelers. I was born on her day, July 26. I was married on her day. For the people of Aliminusa, that meant she was my personal saint. ‘You drew a good card,’ Nonna told me.” Her family comes to Sicily to join in the Sant’Anna Day procession that starts with a prayer then ends with the band playing in celebration. She describes the moment as the “magic hour,” a phrase in cinematography describing “the moment when the diffused rays of the sun make everything more beautiful.”

Magic hour happens onscreen for Amy’s family, who flies from LA and Texas, to join Amy, Idalia, and Lino’s family as they celebrate life. The joyous and heart-wrenching event ends the series.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Between the Fire and the Pan

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

Netflix’s limited series From Scratch follows a couple affected by cancer, but after years of remission, they’re seeing cancer rear its ugly head again right when they feel like they’re back on track.

Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, and Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, have just found out that Lino’s rare soft-tissue cancer has made a return after seven years in remission. Seven years ago, they weren’t parents to their adopted daughter, Idalia, played by Isla Colbert. They try to strategize how to talk to their young daughter about Lino’s cancer spreading to this lungs.

The family has a picnic at the park, where Idalia wants to share her ice cream cone with Lino. But Amy has to tell her that her father can’t have ice cream because he’s sick. Immediately, Idalia puts her ice cream cone down, as if she knows the history of the cancer and the possibility of its return.

Later, Amy cuts Lino’s hair in their home’s garden. It has become a sanctuary for them to grow the seeds of foods from Sicily that are necessary for Lino’s authentic Sicilian cooking. When Lino was first diagnosed with cancer in the “Bitter Almonds” episode, he cut his hair alone in the bathroom amid his chemotherapy treatments. But now Amy makes sure she’s present for Lino as he sacrifices a part of himself for his illness.

Amy’s mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, and Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, takes turns sitting with Lino during his chemo treatments. On Zora’s shift, Lino gets a spiked fever. He’s rushed to the hospital as Zora calls Amy. The family is back in the hospital monitoring Lino. Amy learns that Lino was taking anti-anxiety meds that may have contributed to his fever.

Lino’s condition worsens. Nurses and doctors keep ignoring Amy’s pleas to find out what’s wrong with Lino. They tell Amy that they can only talk to family. Since Amy is Black and so are the family members in LA, the racism patients and their families experience in the hospital is on full display. Amy notifies the carousel of doctors that she is Lino’s wife and deserves straight answers, but she’s not getting any straight answers.

When the rest of Amy’s family arrives from Texas, Amy receives a call from Lino’s mother Filomena, played by Lucia Sardo. Filomena tells Amy that she had a dream of the Virgin Mary. The Lord is calling Lino home. Amy absorbs the heartbreaking premonition and leans into finding out why her husband is deteriorating.

Meanwhile, Lino is so sick that he’s considered infectious, so children are not allowed in the wing of the hospital where he’s receiving care. This adds more distress to Amy because Idalia cannot see her father. The family devises a way to sneak Idalia inside to spend time with her father. Idalia sits beside Lino as they read a book together. The touching moment inspires Amy to later have dinner alone with Lino while he’s propped up in his hospital bed. Lino asks Amy to go back to her life during his recovery. But they still don’t have answers on what the recovery will entail.

Lino is not getting better. Amy calls Lino’s oncologist about the hepatologist also treating Lino. The oncologist says Lino needs a liver transplant. Amy chases the hepatologist down in the parking garage, where the doctor tries to stay mum after hours but then reveals Lino’s liver is failing. After finally receiving a confirmation, Amy yells at the hepatologist for not being straight with her. None of the many specialists treating Lino seem to be communicating as Lino undergoes countless tests. As Lino’s condition worsens even under this magnitude of surveillance, Amy notices an advertisement for palliative care.

Amy and the palliative care specialist talk about giving Lino care as his body dies. He needs comfort at this point. Continuing medical care is pointless and expensive. Amy notifies Filomena about the decision. Lino leaves the hospital via ambulance as their home is prepared for his last days.

Within days, Lino requests a party to see family and friends at their home’s garden. Amy detects his burst of energy, but their family friend Preston, played by Rodney Gardiner, gives Amy the voice of reason that sometimes a burst of energy reinvigorates someone who is dying. The loved ones surround Lino in the garden.

CARING FAMILY

The frustration of seeing a loved one suffer in their condition mirrors the book, where memoirist Tembi Locke describes her journey of falling in love with her husband to caring for him as he dies from a rare cancer. A parade of specialists go in and out of her late husband Saro’s hospital room.

“Suddenly we had descended into a medical landscape of dueling specialists, expert professionals each of whom saw one piece of the puzzle that was Saro’s body,” Tembi writes. “I was the only one looking at the whole of his life, his body, his heartfelt desires. I tried to humanize the patient behind the chart.”

The discrimination is another aspect. Tembi’s omnipresence in the hospital room is not enough for medical staff to understand she’s the main point of contact for her husband’s care.

“As the heads of hepatology, endocrinology, immunology, gastroenterology, and orthopedic surgery made their rounds, I succumbed to writing my name on the hospital room whiteboard: ‘CARING FAMILY: Tembi, wife. Black woman sitting in the corner.’ It was my response after two nurses had asked me if I was ‘the help.'”

Experiencing racism as a caretaker puts added stress on the situation. With some of the book’s elements changed for the screen, this is a situation that needed to be shown that even in a matter of illness, a person’s skin color can impact the information they receive to deal with the illness. It’s one of the several moments throughout the TV series and the book that shows an interracial couple receiving backlash for their union. Even when it’s a matter of life and death, medical care may be subpar. We see in the next episode that when the patient and their family take matters into their own hands, they can live the rest of their lives on their terms.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Heirlooms

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

The sixth episode of Netflix’s limited series From Scratch shows a couple affected by cancer deciding to expand their family after a loss.

The critically acclaimed memoir of the same name by actress Tembi Locke follows her love path with her late husband Saro and how she ventures to his homeland of Sicily with their daughter after his death. The show features a fictional adaptation of her story.

It’s fall 2006, 18 months after Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, is declared cancer-free. He learns his father has died suddenly from a heart attack in the fields he farmed in Sicily. Consoled by his wife Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, Lino thinks it’s time for them to be parents. His cancer has been at bay with a clinical trial ending.

Like many couples, they begin looking at in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination for the chance of having a biological child. Amy feels overwhelmed about the prospects of putting her body through a lot of changes to have a baby. She doesn’t have a problem with adopting a baby, and Lino realizes he feels the same way.

Six months later, Amy and Lino are in the wedding party for Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler. As soon as the ceremony ends, Amy and Lino receive the call for their daughter. They rush to the hospital to meet with the birth mother, a UCLA student who says she and the baby’s father can finish school without worry now that their daughter will be placed with the right couple.

She explains the couple’s adversity with their interracial and intercultural union and battle with cancer are the reasons why she thought they’d be good parents. The birth mother appears to be Asian while the birth father appears to be Black, making the baby biracial. Lino leaves the room to give Amy and the birth mother more privacy. Amy learns the baby reminds the birth mother of her grandmother, Rose. She adds Rose as a middle name for Idalia, which she says means “behold the sun” in Italian.

In an interview before the series premiered, Tembi said her daughter Zoela chose the name Idalia for the character based on her.

Baby Idalia goes home where Amy’s mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, and her stepmother Maxine, played by Judith Scott, have a fight. A natural health enthusiast, Lynn suggests Amy buy breast milk online to feed Idalia. But Maxine thinks buying bodily fluids from random women on the internet is a bad idea. Maxine, who was unable to birth her own children, feels that her insight is ignored simply because she never gave birth.

“Heirlooms” is the chapter in the memoir marking one year after Saro’s death. Tembi is fielding phone calls from her family members who are flying to Los Angeles from Texas to be with her and eight-year-old Zoela on the anniversary. The chapter name is not for heirloom tomatoes but for fava beans grown from Sicilian seeds in their LA garden. Tembi tells her mother-in-law she plans to serve fava beans to her family and friends in commemoration of her late husband.

“She knew about the heirloom beans, passed down through generations in Sicily, that we had been growing every year,” she writes. “It made her happy to imagine them growing in foreign soil, feeding us thousands of miles away. She gave me tips on how to keep the beans creamy once pureed… I hung up the phone and looked at the pile of fava beans. Some people have heirloom jewelry. I had fava beans.”

Zoela’s adoption story similar to Idalia’s is featured in the chapter “Something Great.”

“My family had welcomed my cousin into our kin by way of international adoption just one year before Saro and I had walked down the aisle,” Tembi writes. “I was watching her grow up from a distance, seeing her at holidays and family gatherings. I saw the joy in her parents’ eyes. I saw the love. I saw the way adoption was deeply intentional and expanding. I saw another way a family could be formed, and I was hooked.”

Like in the show with Amy and Lino, Tembi and Saro decide to be honest about the cancer in the medical history section of their adoption application. After three months, they are placed with their daughter. The call about her birth comes when Tembi is at a Pilates class in LA’s Silver Lake. The couple flies to San Francisco to pick up their daughter.

“We told the birth mom what we planned to name the baby: Zoela. Saro and I loved the name, an ancient Italian moniker meaning ‘piece of the earth,'” Tembi writes. “We thought it symbolic for the child who had brought strangers together. Her name reflected the diversity of her biology and cultures. She was African American, Filipina, Italian, and even, Saro added, Sicilian.”

Back to the show’s episode, Lino undergoes a scan. Him dropping his wedding ring into a plastic tray while dressed in a hospital gown before heading into the scan becomes a regular shot throughout the series. He’s always being checked for cancer. Upon his new fatherhood, he remains cancer-free, for now.

QUALITY TIME

Fast forward to fall 2011. Idalia is a four-year-old sous chef in Lino’s kitchen when she flips a frittata. Idalia and Lino chat about her school’s social scene with the kids and their mothers. Lino is a stay-at-home dad while Amy carries on with her art career to support the family. With Lino still using a cane because of the cancer starting in his knee, he’s still unable to stand for long hours in a kitchen as a chef.

Seeing the close bond between Lino and Idalia, Amy starts to feel jealous that she doesn’t get enough time with Idalia since she’s the sole breadwinner. She confides in Zora that she hates how cancer has disrupted their lives. Lino not being able to work and getting checked for cancer have put a strain on their relationship, Amy shares. She’s upset about her jealousy since the time Lino has with Idalia is precious.

At home, Amy is struggling to keep up with yet another conversation about Idalia’s friends and their mothers and who’s bringing what to a potluck. She finally breaks down to Lino with letting him know she’s jealous of the bonding time he has with their daughter. Lino argues he’s jealous, too. He can’t work as a chef; he can’t do the job he loves.

The episode jumps to spring 2014 where Amy has cut her hours at work to spend more time with Idalia. Lino starts a cooking class, where he can do what he loves in a controlled amount of time.

One day, they eat corndogs together at home. Lino fell for corndogs in the second episode of the series when he goes to an American supermarket for the first time. But this time, Lino chokes on the corndog. Though he tells Amy the corndog bite went down the wrong hole, Lino looks concerned while looking at his family, who are chatting and eating away unaware of the concern.

Lino gets another scan. While waiting for his results, he plans a date night with Amy. They dance carefully. Amy notices a bad rash on Lino’s wrist. Later in their bathroom, Amy finds a hospital bracelet and notices Lino had a scan without telling her. All signs are pointing to the cancer making a return; a reality they tried to avoid, and have avoided, for several years. Now as parents, the stakes are higher. Lino’s concern has transferred to Amy.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Bread and Brine

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

Christmas 2004 opens up the fifth episode of From Scratch when the parents of Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, arrive in Los Angeles to care for their son who’s battling a rare soft-tissue cancer.

Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, is standing at the end of the escalator with her mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith, as they wait for Lino’s father Giacomo, played by Paride Benassai, and Lino’s mother Filomena, played by Lucia Sardo, to come down to their level in the airport. Amy has to run up the escalator to help them since they probably never used one before. Once they all arrive at the house, Lino becomes the focus.

Filomena rushes to her bedridden son while Giacomo stops before the front door and remains in the garden. As a lifelong farmer, he sees myriad mistakes in the boxes where plants like garlic and parsley are growing. He stays outside to tend to the garden.

Inside, Filomena opens up her heavy suitcase to reveal glass jars of pastas, spices, herbs, and tomatoes. She cooks a hearty meal for Lino, but Amy has to tell her that Lino can’t eat that type of meal on his medications. Lino gets jealous others get to eat his mother’s cooking, so he stuffs his face. And, of course, he gets nauseous before his scheduled stay in the hospital.

The transportation of the food happens in the memoir by Tembi Locke as she tells the story of falling in love with her late husband Saro and moving through the stages of grief with her daughter in Saro’s homeland of Sicily.

“Bread and Brine” is the name of a chapter. With the book mostly focusing on Tembi’s time in Sicily after her husband dies, the chapter shows the relationship between Tembi and her mother-in-law Croce, who cooks as she grieves.

“She had never let me cook in her house. Never. Not even her chef son was allowed to,” Tembi writes. “No matter how many nights I slept under her roof, no matter how many times she washed my bras and ironed my underwear, I was her guest. Even if I was also family. She preferred to work alone, at her own pace; she didn’t want company while she cooked. In the past, I had just passed through, made small talk, but had never lingered from start to finish. She, like many women in town, saw their time at the stove as their domain. I was forbidden to even set the table.”

coffee break

As Lino recovers from surgery, Giacomo finally comes to greet his son in the hospital bed. They have a small heart-to-heart when Lino says he would like a cup of coffee. This gives Giacomo a spring in his step as he walks around the hospital in search of coffee without knowing English. He finds a doctor who seems to know a bit of Italian who helps him use the coffee machine. He tells a story about seeing Lino in the hospital when he was a kid who had broken a bone, but now it’s different.

When he returns to the hospital room, he sees Amy’s father Hershel, played by Keith David, bonding with Lino. Standing by the door, he notices the connection between the two, blossoming over his absence from his son’s life at a time when he expanded his family.

Lino soon comes home, where his family and friends sit down to watch football, also known as soccer, on the Italian channels. Giacomo asks one of Lino’s friends about his son. As they talk about kids, Lino becomes increasingly irritated because the chemotherapy has threatened his reproductivity. He gets up and leaves with his crutch.

IT COULD GET WORSE

For a moment of escape, Amy runs to her and Lino’s mutual friend Preston, played by Rodney Gardiner, to drink scotch and talk. He welcomes the opportunity, especially when he’s just watching the Black Christmas classic Holiday Heart starring Ving Rhames as a drag queen helping a girl and her drug-addicted mother. Amy is upbeat about Lino’s surgery to remove the cancer. But Preston has other thoughts. He offers the possibility that Lino may never quite fully recover; the cancer can return.

The doctor tells Amy and Lino that the surgery was successful, but recurrence is possible. Lino describes cancer as “like a weed” to his parents, who learn they have to tame their excitement over the surgery.

Since the surgery was technically a success, Lino now qualifies for a clinical trial. He announces the news at dinner with the entire family. Then Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, announces her engagement to her longtime boyfriend Ken, played by Terrell Carter. The family congratulates the happy couple. Even Giacomo stands up ready to give a toast. Lino is in disbelief. His own father who didn’t go to his wedding is happy an unrelated couple is getting married. The bright mood plummets.

Going back to the book, Tembi brings Saro and his parents to her native Texas to meet her family. Saro’s parents enjoy a Houston Texans football game and struggle to figure out the art of eating Texas Barbecue. Tembi catches her mother-in-law taking in the scene, looking at her son constantly until she turns to Tembi’s sister Attica Locke, who serves as the head of the Netflix series, to tell her her surprise about Saro being welcomed in America.

“And as I sat there with everyone eating—not just consuming food but sharing our dreams, our aspirations, our histories—I could see how the stakes, the specter of illness, had changed all our lives,” Tembi writes. “What was important had changed. We were far from the wedding in Florence, reading telegrams from the half of our family who had refused to come because of race and fear. That trip to Houston was the first time we didn’t have to wonder what it would have been like to have both parts of who we were together in the same room.”

The next morning on the show, Lino and Giacomo clear the air with a hug as Lino’s parents head out for their flight to Sicily. The cancer is gone, and the family is at peace until the next monumental changes come along.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Bitter Almonds

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

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.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: A Villa. A Broom. A Cake.

Image: Netflix

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

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.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Carne e Ossa

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

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-Air plays 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.

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: First Tastes

Image: Netflix

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Read the book, book review, and/or watch the limited series on Netflix.

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.

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Sisters Tembi Locke and Attica Locke Bring Family Dynamic to ‘From Scratch’

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.

The book had been selected as a Reese’s Book Club pick by Reese Witherspoon and her production team at Hello Sunshine, which is producing the miniseries.

“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.”

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Celeste Ng Says Latest Novel Incorporates Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, Book Banning

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 You made 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.”

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Tamera Mowry-Housley Describes How Making Friends Is Like Drinking Wine

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.

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‘Carrie Soto Is Back’ and the Problem of White Authors Creating Main Characters of Color

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.

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Congresswoman Cori Bush, Ibram X. Kendi Discuss Empowerment Factor in Banned Books Movement

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.

Ibram is the author of How to Raise an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby, published by Penguin Random House imprints Kokila and One World. The power of readers seeing themselves in books brings equity in itself, he said.

“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.”

The conversation is available on YouTube.