Tag: adult fiction

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Colored Television’ by Danzy Senna

Colored Television by Danzy Senna ventures into the touchy subject of biracial identity through a protagonist desperate to share her story but finds it is considered indigestible in book form to a screen-obsessed society, which she figures would rather consume her story through TV. 

Jane, a biracial woman proud of her ethnicities, is a literature professor at a liberal arts college who can’t wait for her sabbatical. She plans to spend it finishing her epic novel that spans generations, decades, and centuries. It centers on biracial identity politics in the U.S. and is told through various characters. She feels her powerful novel will change America so much that it will become a classic. If she gets this sophomore novel published, then she will be granted tenure. But one of her female colleagues returned to campus without tenure because her epic novel was rejected. She pushes those negative thoughts as she submits her long-awaited book to her agent and editor. The book has to work for her as she and her family house-sit for her uber-successful TV producer friend in a Los Angeles mansion. They don’t have permanent housing, and she feels her talent should bring her a mansion as well. 

Weeks later, Jane learns that her agent and editor could barely read her work. It’s considered a complete labyrinthine mess. They drop her since they waited a decade for just the rough draft. The explanatory rejection authors fear when the publishing middlemen are unable to decipher your story is described on page 79 in the hardcover edition:

Later, Jane would only remember certain phrases. Josiah felt the book was “Frankensteinian.” Like the monster, he said, her book was an ungainly mishmash— and like the monster, it felt sloppily constructed, the stitches and scars showing. He said it was sarcastic, bracing and cruel at times, mawkish and purple at others. It bewildered him. He had no idea why she was cramming all these figures together. What did Zoe Kravitz have to do with the Melungeon people in nineteenth-century Tennessee? How did any of it connect to Sydney and Justin, O.J. and Nicole’s kids, or to Jane’s own creature — this fragile, trembling 1950s film actress who roamed the book in her negligee, barefoot and suicidal, worrying about the color of the baby growing inside of her. Josiah didn’t understand what Jane was attempting to do here, but he cared about Jane and felt that publishing this novel would be a kind of career suicide.

Not only are Jane’s literary dreams shattered, but her economic stability is uncertain. Her husband, Lenny, is a struggling artist obsessed with learning Japanese to have an exhibit in Japan. Their daughter, Ruby, would rather play with the White dolls as she makes more White friends in their temporary living status. Their son, Finn, is on the autism spectrum as they seek to understand his needs. Jane realizes that no book means no tenure. Out of desperation, she goes through her friend’s desk to find contacts in the television industry. She ends up meeting mega-producer Hampton Ford, who seems interested in her work. His assistants, Layla, the “Nigerian Valley Girl,” and Topher, the “perennially lost white boy,” are pathetic at pitching premises for shows. But Hampton likes Jane’s idea of having a biracial family sitcom akin to Black-ish, so he asks Jane to join the team. 

After pitching contemporary episodes, Jane feels proud about this new phase in her creative career. Except Hampton is not feeling any of the finessed ideas. Then, Jane tells him about her epic novel about biracial identity. Hampton is so intrigued that he offers to read her manuscript. Jane feels her fortune is finally changing, so she looks for a house in her ideal neighborhood she nicknamed Multicultural Mayberry. She prepares for a high-earning career like the friend who allowed her to house-sit. As she realizes all her dreams may not come true the way she hoped, she wonders if her stories will ever see the light of day. 

The story shows one’s racial and ethnic identities through stereotypical lenses. And these lenses are developed from stories by writers who do not have a connection to the said group or groups they are writing about. Jane and Lenny have thoughtful conversations on racial and biracial identities constantly throughout the story as they try to figure out how best to tell stories about the biracial experience. Lenny is Black, but because of this, he feels he understands the complexity of the conversation, while Jane wants to share her stories centered on biracial characters, real-life figures, and pointed moments in history. When she receives the opportunity to work with a powerhouse like Hampton Ford, she applies her deep intelligence and subject expertise to construct everyday sitcom episodes that will impact audiences of all backgrounds. She is so hungry to share her perspectives, outside of her pillow talk with her husband. This eagerness, which can also be interpreted as desperation, eventually harms her in the end. 

Another subject woven through the story is the high rate of rejection in creative industries. Jane is a debut novelist who hasn’t delivered her sophomore success. She feels the pressure to secure a book deal to secure her tenure as a professor and home as a mother. She appears lost in the mix, trying to take care of her children and support her husband’s art while looking for an avenue for her story to live. Her mind races back to a time when she chose her husband, moved from New York City to Los Angeles for a new creative start, and started having kids to understand her current situation. 

Overall, the book details the ups and downs of a creative career when someone feels ready for the next stage, and the stage keeps moving. It also dives deep into biracial ethnic studies. The main character struggles to share her lived experience as a biracial woman when her intellectual approach is dismissed. The question of how to bring her art forth to the public lingers throughout Jane’s story. 

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘One of Our Kind’ by Nicola Yoon

*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon is a slow-burn psychological thriller set in a Black utopia where race is no longer a barrier, but when some characters seek to improve race relations outside the utopia, they notice their neighbors eerily avoid the topic of race. 

Jasmyn is a Black woman carrying the world’s weight on her shoulders. Besides being a wife to King, a former teacher, and a mother to six-year-old Kamau, she is a civil rights attorney worrying about her cases and the ones that make the news. Those cases, like the one involving a young Black girl named Mercy Simpson being shot by police, have her wanting to stay rooted in her Los Angeles community. But King wants to move to Liberty, California. 

Over the last few years, King has transitioned his career from public education to finance. This has elevated the family to a new income bracket. Now, they can move to Liberty, which is 100% Black and high-income. Located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Liberty is the brainchild of Carlton Way, a financial entrepreneur who happens to also be King’s mentor. Jasmyn is unsure about the mansion life, but King convinces her that it is the next step for their expanding family. Since she is pregnant with their second child, Jasmyn finally approves the move. She can’t wait to be around her own people and not worry about the weight of the world at home as a Black woman.

Right away, Jasmyn notices a coldness among her new Liberty neighbors. She brings up the developments in the Mercy Simpson case, and her neighbors don’t seem concerned. They may be too relaxed with their wealth and addiction to the wellness center atop the hill. She notices them meditating up there in their robes, and it doesn’t sit right with her. 

The only neighbor who shares Jasmyn’s concern is Keisha, who’s also Kamau’s teacher at the local elementary school. Keisha also detects the coldness and prefers to stay away from the wellness center, though her wife frequents the center. Together, they decide to start a Black Lives Matter chapter to raise awareness about the Mercy Simpson case and other future cases. They meet another neighbor, Charles, who wants to start the chapter based on his same interpretations of Liberty. He, too, doesn’t trust the wellness center that his wife loves. 

Then, suddenly, Charles changes his mind about starting a BLM chapter. He even cuts off his dreadlocks and sells his Afrocentric art collection. These moves bewilder Jasmyn and Keisha. They move forward with their plans. Then, Keisha changes her mind as well, now that she straightens her natural hair and wears neutral-toned business suits — a far cry from her Afro, colorful clothing, and large gold hoop earrings. 

Jasmyn is now the only one left standing. King won’t completely commit to opening the chapter with her or volunteering with Black youth like he used to when they lived in the city limits. Everyone seems to be addicted to the wellness center. Jasmyn has stayed away because she’s pregnant and doesn’t want any treatment to harm the baby. But King loves going to the wellness center. Things are not adding up. Using her court connections, Jasmyn hires a private investigator to see what happened to the last family who lived in her mansion. The family had only stayed for a year. Why buy a house for only a year? The more she finds out, the more she feels she’s in danger. 

The idea of a utopia was coined by Thomas More in his 1516 classic Utopia. He created the word “utopia” from ancient Greek, which translates to “not a place.” So, if a housing development or closed-off community boasts that it is a utopia, then there is already a reason to run in horror. The book garnered some online criticism for creating a story around a Black utopia that ends in giving in to the racism of the outside world. Without giving too many spoilers, the ending becomes a Get Out-esque situation. The utopia is flawed from the roots because it targets certain people and convinces them to be in a social experiment when reality seems too overwhelming. 

With the utopia, the novel taps into the monolithic definition of Blackness. One of the main examples is showing Jasmyn’s desperation to unite her neighbors to start a BLM chapter. The real-life controversial organization works to protect Black lives across the diaspora, but not every Black person supports the mission and its activities. Jasmyn assumes every Black person is in agreement with feeling upset over a police brutality case, and that’s not the case in Liberty. But that’s what makes the hairs on her arms stand up? In this politically charged society, it may feel safer for many Americans to live in communities that share their values, and Jasmyn is realizing she did not move into a like-minded community. Other examples emphasize the monolithic falsehoods within the African American community, such as Keisha wearing her Afro and hoop earrings, which means she’s down for the cause. And when her style changes, that is the telltale that she is not down anymore. While other characters seem cold for ignoring the Mercy Simpson case and straightening their African curls, it feeds into the stereotype that all Black Americans feel the same way about certain issues by their vocal expression and outward appearance. How the characters are constructed with simplicity may distract some readers expecting a complex racial thriller. 

Overall, the simplicity also speaks to the author’s transition from the young adult genre to the adult genre. In YA, character and story development must be easier for a young reader to follow. We see the same pattern in this adult book, though the tension between the characters and unfolding events still make it a page-turner. 

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Our Missing Hearts’ by Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng transports us to a near-dystopian future where Asian Americans are sidelined in society due to security fears soaring too high over China, and their contributions, especially in the arts, are being systematically eliminated from public consumption.

Bird is a 12-year-old boy who lives with his university librarian father. His mother is out of the picture, but he doesn’t know where she is. She was known as Margaret Miu, a Chinese American poet whose indie-published poetry collection became a target under PACT, or the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. The poem, “Our Missing Hearts,” remains a rallying cry for the disenfranchised, which includes Asian Americans, now known as Persons of Asian Origin, and other people of color who are still seen as threats. At school, Bird only has one friend, Sadie. Outspoken about being taken from her “Chinese sympathizer” parents, Sadie brings up the memories of her peaceful home and how the current politics destroyed it. Being a biracial girl, Sadie has a hard time staying with foster families. Within a split second, Sadie is transferred out of their community. But Sadie’s stories about her parents have already influenced Bird, who is tapping into his memories of his mother. He receives letters he feels are from his mother with illustrations of cats. He tries to solve the riddles, yet he needs more information. His father refuses to bring up his mother, but Bird is getting older and has questions that lead him on a journey that thrusts him into a world of advocacy. 

All over the country, a scattered network of librarians would note this information, collating it with the Rolodex in their minds, cross-referencing it with the re-placed children they might have learned about. Some kept a running written list, but most, wary, simply trusted to memory. An imperfect system, but the brain of a librarian was a capacious place.

In the real world of banned books impacting libraries, the story shows a deep connection to libraries and librarians acting as justice-seekers. Bird’s father is a linguist whose connection to Margaret has relegated him from professor to librarian. Because he is White, he can raise Bird, but he fears the times when someone may detect Bird’s Asian ancestry in his son’s facial features. This fear forces Bird’s father to remain a quiet librarian who refuses to break the rules. On the opposite side, when Bird sneaks off to the library, librarians search for Margaret’s book or another related book such as one featuring Asian fairy tales on Bird’s behalf. They know these books have been banned, but they still hold out hope they can be found. Someone requesting a banned book may be an advocate. The librarians are sharing notes between pages of books as a secret communications channel for advocates. 

The advocates are seeking racial justice. Asian Americans are in hiding or have been removed through imprisonment or deportation. When one group is being disenfranchised more than ever, then other historically disenfranchised groups do not feel safe. It’s why Marie Johnson, a first-year college student who’s African American, went to a protest and used “Our Missing Hearts” as a rallying cry for the first time. She is killed by a police officer’s stray bullet. The event puts a target on Margaret’s back. That’s when she lives her life on the run, especially since Child Protective Services threatened to take Bird away. Margaret finds herself at Marie’s parents’ house, where she believes they could provide a haven. They are upset that this Asian woman has shown up at their door when her poetry inadvertently led to the events that killed their Black daughter. It forces Margaret to reconcile how she saw her parents react fearfully in the presence of African Americans in the past and how most people react fearfully toward her now as an Asian American. 

She thought, belatedly, of the Asian and Black worlds, orbiting each other warily, frozen at a distance in a precarious push-pull. In her childhood: a young Black girl shot, Los Angeles on fire, Korean stores aflame. Her parents had fumed, reading the news, indignant at the damage, the delinquency. And then, years later, a young Black man dead in a stairwell, a Chinese American cop’s finger on the trigger. There’d been outcry on all sides — an accident, police brutality, scapegoating — until the circles separated again into an uneasy truce.

Margaret’s line of thought goes to the uprising known as the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, which kindled after the acquittal of the police officers who had viciously beaten Rodney King. The uprising inflamed with the burning of Korean American business owners’ stores because of the death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, a Black teenager who was killed by a Korean American grocer the year before. In 2014, Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old Black man, was killed by an Asian American police officer in an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York. In both cases, the punishments were reduced to probation. The aforementioned events emphasize the community relationships fractured by the hierarchical racial caste system that has been turned on its head in the story with Asian Americans at the bottom compared to African Americans who had historically been at the bottom. The story emphasizes how discrimination toward any group harms the entire society as productivity goes down by raising widespread fear and accusing people of not being American enough. 

Margaret eventually becomes a part of the resistance in New York City by trying to raise the volume on the injustice. As Margaret hides from society the best she can, Bird finds himself in hiding as well on his quest to search for the mother he barely knew and for the solution that would bring his family together again.

Overall, the story hits a timely chord as a believable dystopia as anti-Asian hate peaked amid the COVID-19 pandemic and security concerns out of China. The thread on banned books and the authors who wrote them being shunned is also a real issue that penetrates the media every day. Seeing how these relevant issues interplay in a society driven by fear is eye-opening, especially through the lens of a boy who only wants to know where his mother is and how he can find her. Family separation, particularly for Indigenous Americans and people of color who are immigrants, is another issue that has spanned centuries in North America. Bird’s innocence and determination to get answers about his mother’s whereabouts soften the edges of the distressful storyline. The poetic storytelling helps move the mundaneness as the characters seek justice.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘A Love Song for Ricki Wilde’ by Tia Williams

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams takes a supernatural direction when a florist falls for a man who is cursed to live forever. 

Ricki Wilde is the youngest daughter in a wealthy Atlanta family that takes their funeral business seriously. Except she loves floral design and uses that passion for the funerals and social media clout. Her sisters and her mother think it’s a crying shame that Ricki wants to play with flowers all day instead of taking leadership roles in the undertaking empire. She prepares a business plan for a flower shop, but it’s rejected. She wonders about her next move. One day, she comforts an elegantly dressed widow named Ms. Della. Upon hearing Ricki’s story, Ms. Della offers her the first story of her brownstone in Harlem. Since Ms. Della just lost her husband, she didn’t want to be entirely alone. The first story had been vacant for years, but it’s the perfect place for a flower shop.

In Harlem, Ricki opens her shop. She finds out that the brownstone was the site of a famous Harlem Renaissance nightclub. As she searches around the property, she sees a man her age who disappears mysteriously. She even notices the scent of night-blooming jasmine in February, which is unusual because it’s not the flower’s season. That’s also mysterious. While trying to unravel the mystery of the location, she needs to keep her business afloat. Via Instagram, she highlights different flowers at different locations throughout the neighborhood to boost business. Her heightened visibility leads her to find the mysterious man. 

Ezra Walker has been looking for Ricki forever. And Ricki feels a supernatural pull to Ezra. She has tea parties with Ms. Della upstairs and confides in her celebrity friend, Tuesday Rowe, about her newfound love interest. Ricki learns more about Ezra as she falls deeper in love with him. But he has a secret. He’s a perennial. Not the plant that returns every year, but a person who has been cursed with immortal life. Once upon a time, Ezra was an up-and-coming pianist during the Harlem Renaissance who escaped the segregated South after his family was killed by Jim Crow terrorism. He was cursed by a dancer at the nightclub that used to be housed in Ricki’s brownstone. The only woman who could break his curse is Ricki. Ezra had been writing a song for nearly a century that he could only play for Ricki. If they are still together by Leap Day, then Ricki will be cursed with immortal life as well.

The author loves to weave pop culture references into her stories, and this story doesn’t disappoint. It also seemed like she had been pressured by an industry that loves romantasy to inject that magic into a modern-day love story, and it works seamlessly. The fantasy sprinkled into the romance doesn’t overtake the story despite the plot leaning more toward fantasy. The groundedness in reality is still strong. The term “perennial” for an immortal person also seems to be up for debate as a flowerlike word choice by the author, instead of an official dictionary definition. 

Another aspect of the romantasy is the historical element of the Harlem Renaissance and its documented and undocumented culture. Stories still emerge about the 1920s era, where African American society flourished in New York City. The story is set in a brownstone that was a nightclub where sultry sin and artistic influence occurred inside and outside its walls. The setting remains a century-old dream for many people like Ricki and Ms. Della, who develop an intergenerational friendship that supports each other in their transitions, as Ricki finds love after leaving home and starting a business, and Ms. Della finds love after the death of her husband. Harlem feels like a magical place all on its own. 

Overall, the love story stretches over pages with positive energy, though the ending is likely predictable for readers who know to expect the happily ever after by dissecting every character’s relationship with each other. 

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what's lit

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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what's lit

‘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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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Dominicana’ by Angie Cruz

Dominicana by Angie Cruz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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Dominicana by Angie Cruz is a coming-of-age literary fiction novel about a Dominican girl in the 1960s who’s forced into a marriage to get her chance to live in the United States, but the American dream comes with more sacrifices than she expected.

Ana Canción is growing into her own. She loves her family composed of her parents, three siblings, and two cousins, and helps them on their dying farm in the Los Guayacanes area of the Dominican Republic. Except her family needs to sell some land to the entrepreneurial Ruiz brothers, who mostly live in New York City. Ana’s mother convinces Ana to marry middle brother Juan to seal the business deal and have an opportunity to live in the U.S. As the obedient daughter who witnessed her older sister Teresa suffer the downfall of having a child with a no-good man, Ana says yes to a marriage proposal that’s been on the table since she was eleven years old, even though she’s falling for Gabriel, her first crush:

One kiss and suddenly I’m una mujer. Not a niña or jovencita but a woman. I touch the mirror to understand how it happened without warning, but with the hot-pink dress on, the girl who had never been kissed is gone. I am Ana, about to be married and to travel to America. Juan Ruiz is expected before noon.

On the way to New York, Juan buys Ana a ceramic doll at the airport she calls Dominicana. By the time they get to their apartment in Manhattan on 168th Street and Broadway, Ana realizes that the doll is the only constant. Juan works most of the day in the garment business and comes home smelling like another woman’s perfume. He becomes violent when Ana isn’t the perfect homemaker, always cooking, cleaning, helping with Juan’s side hustle, and staying home as an undocumented immigrant who doesn’t know English. Juan’s side hustle is selling men’s suits out of their apartment. Ana figures out a way to overcharge and keep some of the profits for herself, hidden in Dominicana. But upon expanding her world, she loses her money and feels desperate about starting over again.

To make matters worse, Ana discovers she’s pregnant. She needs her own money. Juan’s younger brother César comes to her rescue. While Juan sorts out business affairs in the Dominican Republic, César, who also works all day and comes home smelling like another woman’s perfume, takes it upon himself to be the husband he knows Ana doesn’t have. They form a bond that seems indestructible until Juan returns home.

Every detail of a regular life juts out in a way that’s still interesting in this historical fiction novel reflecting the journeys of Dominican women coming to the United States in the 1960s when the island was on the brink of civil war. Seeing the world unfold from her window, Ana even witnesses Malcolm X’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom next to her building.

It’s a snapshot of immigrant life in American history that’s rarely told in American literature. The story follows a pattern from other novels such as Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, which takes place in London with a woman from Bangladesh brought there by a much older husband, of the teen bride-turned-housewife dedicated to serving the husband who works all day while she doesn’t get the love she deserves until she finds it elsewhere. But the story also features domestic violence and rape as Ana is fifteen and Juan thirty-two, more than double her age. Ana feels stuck in a new country and in a promise to financially support her family. The weight is heavy of being the chosen daughter of a poor family from a poor country where she has the chance to make life easier for everyone by sacrificing herself for the cause.

Overall, the reader sees Ana’s growth from shy teenage girl to determined mother-to-be looking for ways to escape her marriage without causing harm to her family. Throughout the book, Ana thinks about her family as tragedy strikes amid her home country sinking into war. Her dedication to her family is strong as she depends on one Ruiz brother to save her from another.

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Book Review: ‘Mexican Gothic’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a slow burn novel that takes place in a mansion tinged with supernatural forces where the main character is trying to diagnose her cousin’s mysterious illness and the settings that made her sick.

Noemí Taboada is a wealthy socialite living in 1950s Mexico who wants to pursue a master’s degree in anthropology. Her father, an entrepreneur in the ink industry, promises Noemí he will fund her education if she visits her newlywed cousin Catalina. The destination is High Place, a Gothic mansion high up a mountain in a remote town that belongs to Catalina’s in-laws, the Doyles. When Noemí arrives at the mansion, she finds Catalina is ill.

A disturbing letter from Catalina claiming she is being poisoned by the Doyles forces Noemí to make the long-term visit to check in on her cousin, who lost her parents at a young age. So Noemí enters the High Place believing her cousin is putting on the theatrics for attention. Then, Noemí meets the Doyles. There is Catalina’s husband, Virgil, who makes Noemí uncomfortable right off the bat. Florence Doyle, Virgil’s aunt and the drill sergeant of the house, chastises Noemí for questioning the rules like seeing the sickly Catalina at her convenience. Howard Doyle, Virgil’s father, appears at the first dinner and remarks on how Noemí has darker skin and hair color than Catalina. After making a mental Post-it note on the microaggression, Noemí answers that her cousin is half-French. This leaves a bad taste in her mouth. The only ally Noemí has is Francis Doyle, Virgil’s younger cousin, who appears gentle enough to get along with.

After having a chance to survey Catalina, Noemí notices the illness has overtaken her cousin with strange symptoms. The doctor working with the Doyles keeps medicating Catalina and assuring Noemí nothing else can be done. Noemí doesn’t buy that. She sneaks out into the town and tries to get a doctor to come to High Place. The one doctor she finds is afraid to get involved with the Doyles’ matters. A medicine woman in town claims to know Catalina and had given her natural remedies before Catalina was confined to High Place. From the townspeople and the Doyle grounds, Noemí discovers that hundreds of miners died during an unexplained epidemic from the family’s silver mining heyday amid the start of the Mexican Revolution.

Piecing together the strangeness of the Doyles and their home, Noemí forges on her quest to save her cousin. Except she is having hallucinogenic visions and doesn’t quite feel like herself. She confides in Francis more and more for help until they figure out the magnitude of the engulfing presence that defines the family and their surroundings.

Not a fan of thrillers, but this historical fiction novel set in Mexico weaves the social sciences and the physical sciences together to create a perfect storm of extreme tension between Noemí and the Doyles sans Francis. Though there is a supernatural element, there is also the lure of how the Doyles live and where they live. Noemí realizes the house would draw a fairy tale-loving Catalina in:

It was the kind of thing she could imagine impressing her cousin: an old house atop a hill, with mist and moonlight, like an etching out of a Gothic novel. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, those were Catalina’s sort of books. Moors and spiderwebs. Castles, too, and wicked stepmothers who force princesses to eat poisoned apples, dark fairies cursing maidens and wizards who turn handsome lords into beasts. Noemí preferred to jump from party to party on a weekend and drive a convertible.

The book is also part romance with Noemí trusting Francis as the days go on as the only person who can help her with Catalina. Even though he’s a Doyle, he takes a liking to Noemí and looks for ways to help as the youngest member of the family who’s grown accustomed to how everything functions and doesn’t know if he wants to poke the bear of what’s lurking around them.

Overall, the suspenseful ending solves the mystery of what’s ailing Catalina, and the reason is complicated like the journey to discovering the secret. Again, the unique setting in place and time elevates the story and the complexity of the characters.

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Book Review: ‘Seven Days in June’ by Tia Williams

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Seven Days in June by Tia Williams follows two best-selling authors who reunite on the New York literati circuit years after a high school fling that left them scarred. It’s a sophisticated romance still accompanied by a happily ever after.

Manhattanite single mom Eva Mercy is a former best-selling novelist whose Black vampire romance series à la Twilight still excites fans via the interwebs. By chance, an author drops out of a panel event, and Eva gets the last-minute invitation to fill the spot. That’s where she sees fellow, still-successful best-selling novelist Shane Hall, a mysterious intellectual who makes women and men alike swoon. Eva tries not to swoon because it turns out she and Shane went to high school once in D.C. and spent a week of debauchery in a mansion during their senior year. They meet up for a day in New York where the deep-rooted chemistry overtakes them. The day blends into another one and another where they start catching up about what went wrong when they were teenagers. Eva thinks Shane, who was a foster child and drug dealer at the time, abandoned her at her lowest point, but she learns that another force divided them. As they try to rekindle what they had as adults, Eva and Shane must combat their demons to accept the love that was severed so many years ago.

This is Tia Williams’ most complex work yet. Known for centering her novels on Black women in New York working in media, the author adds more layers to Eva’s character and Shane’s character not common in a lot of women’s fiction and romance novels. In adolescence, the main characters are dealing with substance abuse, self-harm, unstable homes, and missing parents. In adulthood, the age-old traumas return with them realizing how reflective their behaviors are when they interact with each other and the kids in their lives like Eva’s Gen Z daughter Audre and Shane’s mentee Ty. The character and storyline complexity blends well with the ubiquitous pop culture references the author loves to add to her novels.

Also, this is the first novel the author makes her main character an author as well when her previous novels’ main characters are beauty and fashion editors like her former day job life. Switching up the career choice also shows more depth with Eva translating her healing process through her books and Shane doing the same with his. Another element of the novel is Eva living with her invisible disability of suffering from debilitating migraines that worsen with barometric pressure. This also reflects the author’s life. She has given this trait to her first novel’s main character from The Accidental Diva, but this time around in Seven Days in June she makes Eva feel the everyday pain and impact and gives Audre the fear of seeing her mother chronically ill. The migraines also contribute to Eva’s writer’s block and how she’s struggling to deliver the 15th book of her famous series that is getting the film treatment with some hiccups along the way.

Overall, this novel is an excellent summer beach read that’s definitely a page-turner the deeper you get into the book. Tia Williams’ last novel from 2016, The Perfect Find, is in production with Gabrielle Union for Netflix. This novel also has silver-screen potential, especially with the book-to-film subplot that brings up diversity and inclusion in Hollywood projects.



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Book Review: ‘Caul Baby’ by Morgan Jerkins

Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins explores the relationships between women in two families intertwined by a broken promise that haunts a community over the alleged power of the caul.

Set in Harlem, the novel introduces us first to Laila, a Black woman who seems to have it all in her perfect brownstone where she lives with her perfect husband. But she can’t carry a baby to term, her miscarriages becoming the talk of the town. Then one day, she’s pregnant again but constantly worries about losing the baby. A man at her church named Landon approaches her about the opportunity to make sure her baby will be born alive and full term. Landon, who happens to be Laila’s niece Amara’s godfather, seems to be someone who can be trusted. He offers Laila a piece of caul, a rare layer of skin purported to have protecting powers. Laila ponders about buying the caul for her unborn child when she meets Josephine, a clerk at the convenience store. She sees Josephine get a paper cut and instantly heal with the caul she tries to hide. This magnetizes Laila to Josephine Melancon, who also says she’s had a history of miscarriages. Once Laila decides to buy the caul, Landon says the deal is off. This drives Laila to insanity as she loses her baby.

Laila ends up losing her husband and her home and lives with her sister Denise. Denise’s daughter, Columbia University student Amara, sees her aunt Laila unable to recover from the breakdown. The attention on Laila saves Amara, who is keeping her own pregnancy a secret. When she meets her godfather Landon at the church, Amara falls but rebounds. Landon notices this power and the pregnancy and offers Amara a place to hide out. Amara stays with Landon and his family until she gives birth to a girl named Hallow. Born with a caul, Hallow is raised by Landon and his mistress Josephine and is groomed to continue the profitable Melancon family business of selling caul to wealthy White people and denying caul to the Black people in their community.

Years later, Amara is preparing for a run as district attorney, but what the Melancons did to her family still gnaws at her. Laila’s tragedy becomes her driving force to be a successful lawyer, and she feels she finally found the legal solution with shutting down the Melancons’ caul-selling empire. In the back of her mind, she’s also thinking of the daughter she gave up and wondering what happened to her.

The novel is centered on the folklore of caul and how it would be sold through centuries to people who sought protection from danger. It also blends in family, fertility, race, class, and gentrification, spanning over 20 years in an evolving Harlem. Female-centered families anchor the story with most of the focus on the Melancons with matriarch Maman, oldest daughter Josephine, and youngest daughter Iris, who also lost her mind from having to be cut for her caul to protect anyone who pays for it. Iris’ daughter Helena had an accident as a child making her unfit to donate caul, which makes her an unruly companion to Hallow, who’s considered the perfect caulbearer. Josephine also feels stuck in the business but sees her affair with Landon as a way out. As the Black residents of Harlem see a mysterious family in the brownstone, the Melancons inside are in constant conflict about the business they refuse to share with the community because the community cannot afford the caul services. If one has the remedy, then why not share it with your community? That’s the question that plagues the outside where residents like Laila and Amara have a vendetta against the Melancons.

Overall, the first novel from journalist and nonfiction author Morgan Jerkins is a smooth literary fiction read that takes an element of magical realism and mixes it with the changing times around race and gentrification.




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