Tag: biracial women writers

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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: ‘Belonging’ by Michelle Miller

Belonging: A Daughter’s Search for Identity Through Loss and Love by Michelle Miller with Rosemarie Robotham shows the CBS Saturday Morning cohost go through childhood and adulthood wondering the whereabouts of a mother who refused to raise her. 

Born at the end of 1967, Michelle arrives back in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968. The night before, her father, Dr. Ross Miller, becomes embedded in one of U.S. history’s most tragic events: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Michelle’s father was the first doctor to examine the presidential candidate’s gunshot wounds. Still a newborn, Michelle flies back to the city of her recent birth from Birmingham, Alabama, after her grandmother, Bigmama, discovers her existence. Her father sent his secret daughter to family in Alabama, but Bigmama demanded her granddaughter return to LA. It’s Bigmama’s responsibility to raise Michelle out of sight from her son’s wife and two adopted daughters. This is where the journalist’s story begins. 

Her mother, a Chicana fair enough to pass as White, worked in the same hospital as her married father, a top Black cardiopulmonary surgeon. Their affair sparks hate from her mother’s family; they only see their daughter and sister dating a Black man. Once her mother, known by the pseudonym Laura Hernandez throughout the book, gives Michelle to her father, the doctor depends on his family to raise his first biological child. As Michelle grows up around civil rights activists like her father, attends a historically Black college like her father, and embarks on a news career, she leans into her Black identity while wondering about her other ethnicity and the woman who birthed her. 

“All my life, I had encountered people who would take note of my light skin, long wavy hair, and pointed features and be curious about my ethnicity. ‘What are you exactly?’ they might ask. ‘I’m Black,’ I would tell them, cheerfully removing their confusion. Sometimes, if I was in the mood to claim my mother’s contributions to my heritage, despite her absence from my life, I might say, ‘My father is Black, and my mother is Hispanic.’” 

Growing up in 1970s South Los Angeles, Michelle attends predominantly Black schools at first then gets bussed far away to attend predominantly White schools. Bigmama, who is 73 when she starts raising her newborn granddaughter, is a retired teacher, so education is prioritized in their household. Michelle’s father lives in his own townhouse in Long Beach and visits often after his shift at the hospital. He also brings in girlfriends who become a part of Michelle’s greater village, such as civil rights legend Xernona Clayton, who Michelle lovingly calls “Big.” 

When Bigmama gets sick as Michelle becomes a teenager, a neighbor named Vondela starts to help out in the house. She becomes Michelle’s surrogate guardian and also takes care of Michelle’s adopted sister Cheryl. Bigmama’s house evolves and expands with the village once Michelle attends Howard University to continue her family’s legacy of attending the renowned HBCU in Washington, D.C. There, she develops her journalism career while making lifelong friends like her roommate, actress Wendy Raquel Robinson. After graduation, she starts hitting the pavement looking for opportunities to report on the news.

“For one thing, I had spent years obsessing over the mother who did not stay, and fixating on the maternal surrogates who had been there for me while their relationships with my father ran their course. Yet I had hardly noted that it was Vondela who had truly stepped up to care for me. She had been more of a mother to me than anyone else, save Bigmama.” 

By the time she starts her news career, her father is diagnosed with cancer. He gives Michelle her mother’s contact information. He says her mother should know who she is. Michelle doesn’t know what to do with the information, her motherlessness always lingering in the background of her ambitious life. She eventually calls her mother for the first time. As the years and decades pass, even with Michelle starting a family of her own with former New Orleans mayor and National Urban League president Marc Morial, she finds that every time she reaches out to the woman genetically linked to her as her mother that she longs for answers she may never get. 

“Suddenly, my mother’s decades-old abandonment of me felt as near and as raw as if it had happened yesterday. In becoming a mother, I had stumbled upon a vast reservoir of hurt that I hadn’t even realized I was still carrying, one that might have been forever drained of its poison with one simple act—a phone call or a card from my mother hailing the arrival of our beloved boy.” 

This memoir touches the deep vein of living without a mother who is alive and well. From child to adult, Michelle wonders about her mother’s whereabouts while people around her are wondering the same. She is able to connect with people like a young man she dates during a foreign exchange program in Kenya who didn’t know his late mother, or like her stepdaughter who is raised mostly in the Ivory Coast with her mother without spending the same adequate time with her father in the U.S.

Not having a mother distorts her life journey a bit since she’s always expecting her mother to show up magically to support her for the important events, but other women show up instead. Her motherly surrogates seem numerous as her father inadvertently creates a village for Michelle. She is raised by her grandmother, her neighbor, her father’s girlfriends, and her family friends. The African proverb of it taking a village to raise a child is in action, yet there is still the longing for Michelle to have her two biological parents raising her. 

Overall, from the storytelling perspective, the underlying motherlessness weaves into the author’s life moments smoothly. She wonders where her mother is as a child, for example, seeing other girls at her school getting picked up from school by their mothers. But that feeling remains when she becomes a mother to her own son and daughter and still wonders if her mother will show up as a doting grandmother. The racial undertones of the reason why her mother is missing is also explained well as a reminder that her White-passing Chicana mother refused to be a present mother simply because her daughter was the product of an affair with a Black man. This story shows how there are still families who have missing members due to racism and the fear of prejudice.

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what's lit

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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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Acne’ by Laura Chinn

Acne by Laura Chinn tells the story of the television writer/actress’ tumultuous childhood and young adulthood and how her struggles were reflected in a severe case of acne. 

Laura Chinn created and starred in the 2019 Pop TV sitcom Florida Girls (think Broad City with Florida Woman adventures) that unfortunately received the ax during the Covid-19 pandemic. The entertainer, who has written for shows like The Mick and Children’s Hospital and acted in shows like Grey’s Anatomy and My Name Is Earl, actually was born in the Los Angeles area where she lived with her “hippie” parents and older brother Max. Though her mother is White and her father is Black, she doesn’t get a sense of her biracial identity until she’s eight-years-old. She never noticed the concept of race since everyone in her house has a different complexion. While Max has brown skin and is often confused for “Mexican or Hawaiian,” Laura has fair skin and dirty blonde curls, so she’s considered outwardly White. Growing up in La Crescenta, she is homeschooled with other kids in her neighborhood. Her childhood is disrupted when her mother announces the family is moving to Clearwater, Florida, the best place for Scientologists like themselves after Los Angeles. Laura, Max, and their mother move to Clearwater while their father stays behind to tie up loose ends. 

Laura’s father never moves to Clearwater as Laura navigates her new preteen life in a new place. She starts to notice red pimples erupt on almost every surface of her face. How can this be? She and her family eat a strict healthy diet. Her father blames his genetics for the acne since he says he had the same skin condition as a teen. Scientology tells Laura and her family that internal toxins are clogging her pores. She tries to cleanse the acne that is putting a damper on her social life as she befriends girls like Tori who also have lopsided family situations. 

At thirteen years old, Laura is going through the abandonment issues stemming from her father’s decision to not join them in Clearwater. To make matters worse, Max moves back to Los Angeles and stays with their father. There, her brother is diagnosed with a brain tumor. He has to have a surgery that he may not wake up from. Laura and her mother fly from Tampa to Los Angeles to be by Max’s side. He survives the surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, but he has a mountain of health issues that keeps Laura and her mother in a hotel as they witness her father parading his barely-adult, chicken nugget-addicted girlfriend Chardonnay around the intensive care unit. Laura returns to Clearwater alone to go back to school. She gets picked up by her mother’s alcoholic boyfriend Joe who drops her off at home with some money for food. 

In the short time of raising herself as her parents deal with Max’s cancer diagnosis, Laura is stealing and drinking alcohol with Tori and other friends who are already having sexual relations with boys at school. Laura’s acne is still on a volcanic level as she uses makeup to cake up her face and go on living her unsupervised life. Then Max’s cancer progresses in other parts of his brain, so the family who again tap into their Scientologist teachings to find alternative healing methods decide to move to Tijuana for a form of chemotherapy not approved in the U.S. Laura drops out of the ninth grade to join her family in Mexico. 

After realizing she’s better off finishing her education rather than helping Max who has their mother as a caregiver, Laura moves back to Clearwater to finish her freshman year. This time, Joe moves in, but Laura is still raising herself de facto. Due to the miracle of Accutane, teenage antics progress like her losing her virginity.  

Accutane had healed my face, neck, chest, and back; it seemed like a wonder pill until, like with all pills, the side effects kicked in. First it was dry skin, then peeling skin, then every day I would shed my entire face like a snake. My lips were painfully cracked and bloody, so for the third time in my life, I didn’t smile for months. Then my vision started to get weird. 

Her quick-fix cure makes her think she has cancer like her brother, whose diagnosis came from blurry vision, but she doesn’t. She develops suicidal thoughts while on the medication and while watching her friends find boyfriends she can’t seem to attract. She’s realizing her neighborhood is full of dysfunctional people, including the woman next door who burns her house down to cover up her husband’s murder, as her own mother and brother return to Clearwater unchanged by the failed treatment in Mexico. Laura has to put aside her acne and adolescence to help her mother care for her dying brother, but she still finds herself caring more about what her friends are doing and how her skin is doing. 

The older she gets, the more she sees being a high school dropout is not enough. Her father agrees and invites her to live with her half-sister and her niece in Woodland Hills, a section of Los Angeles. Laura finally feels like she’s being supervised but again she can’t help but think what’s going on in her Clearwater social circle. She eventually moves back to Clearwater. Then she gets her GED and tells everyone she’s going to be a famous actress in Hollywood, so back to Los Angeles she goes. But she breaks her arm, so that means back to Clearwater. Despite what’s going on with her family and friends and her face, she has a knack for acting that slips behind the pages. 

Once she permanently stays in Los Angeles, makeup artists on sets complain about her acne. Thanks to her father, she heads to the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre to undergo a rehab experience to clear up her acne. She feels imprisoned by her acne. It’s not until she realizes all the physical and metaphorical losses she has experienced over the years had somehow manifested into an extreme case of acne.

Now I forgive with a deep intensity and a passion. I take all the money, effort, and time I was putting toward microdermabrasion, facials, and benzoyl peroxide and I put it all toward learning how to forgive. I honestly wish I could bottle forgiveness and sell it; I’d put Proactiv out of business in a week. 

If you ever watched Florida Girls, you will see the comedic messiness there in the pages of Laura’s memoir except her real-life version of events seem more depressing as she details her life as a teen practically unmonitored because of her brother’s unthinkable disease. Her friends experiment and indulge in drugs and sex at a very young age that the peer pressures stunt their growth. The conflict of being a selfish teenager while having to care for her family is deeply realized since most teen girls would be the same way with wanting to focus on boys and controlling their acne to avoid what’s going on at home. 

We see Laura’s mother as the main caregiver for Max despite her alcoholic boyfriend turned husband in the house and her ex-husband unable to cope with his son slipping away. Laura helps as much as she can, especially when her brother’s health deteriorates to the point he is blind, deaf, and immobile. It’s heartbreaking to see the transition of her athletic, skateboard-loving brother becoming a very sick young adult who can’t take care of himself. With her life divided between two places that can be difficult to survive in, Laura sees more tragedy within her family and her friend group as she tries to establish herself in Hollywood. 

Overall, the memoir connects the dots on a common skin condition that has been relegated to teenage hormonal activity. The author spends her lifetime digging deeper for the reason why her face is covered in pimples on top of pimples, quickly recognizing that her friends who are the same age as her are not dealing with the exact issue but they do have their own issues. It takes years for her to classify acne as her visible issue as she overcomes abandonment and loneliness growing up in an interracial, Scientologist, bicoastal, divorced family. Her love for acting, even in the book, is weaved in and out because her environment is overwhelming her. It’s impressive that she, like many people who had announced they were heading to Hollywood to be a big star, actually overcame the obstacles to achieve her dream that’s still in incubation. 

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what's lit

Karyn Parsons’ Sweet Blackberry Promotes Lesser-Known Stories for Black History Month

SHE LIT BLOG - Saving the Day: Garrett Morgan's Life-Changing Invention of the Traffic Signal by Karyn Parsons

Actress and author Karyn Parsons is sharing the stories this February her literary nonprofit Sweet Blackberry produces to educate kids on Black history.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star discussed how her books and animated films are narrating the stories of Henry Box Brown and Garrett Morgan this week on the third hour of ABC’s Good Morning America.

Henry Box Brown was an enslaved man in 1848 when he mailed himself to freedom from slaveholding Virginia to the free city of Philadelphia in a box.

“I was so fascinated by this story, and also by the fact that I’ve never heard of it and my friends hadn’t heard it,” Karyn tells Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes on GMA3: What You Need To Know. “I really wanted to bring this story and others that I started to discover, which my mom brought to me as well, to kids. And I wanted it to do it in the form of books and animated films. So, that’s how Sweet Blackberry started.”

The Journey of Henry Box Brown is narrated in verse by Emmy Award winner and Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard. The story was Sweet Blackberry’s first animated film in 2005.

The daughter of a librarian, Karyn also shared the story of Garrett Morgan, the inventor of what would become the traffic light. Though Morgan is one of the icons named during Black History Month, his full story of being a businessman and inventor during the early 20th century is rarely recognized, Karyn says.

“The traffic signal that we know today: the light…, not the color, but the actual mechanism, that’s all Garrett Morgan,” she says. “We live with that today, and we take it for granted and never think it was a Black man who did it.”

Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Saving the Day: Garrett Morgan’s Life-Changing Invention of the Traffic Signal came out in December as a hardcover picture book for kids between the ages of four and eight. The book, also told in verse, is written by Karyn and illustrated by R. Gregory Christie.

The story is the basis of the second film from Sweet Blackberry called Garrett’s Gift, narrated by actress and recording artist Queen Latifah. 

Karyn’s late Fresh Prince costar James Avery, who played her character Hilary Bank’s father Philip Banks, loved sharing lesser-known Black history stories, Karyn says, calling him a “historian” in his own right.

“It didn’t really occur to me though until just recently how much he had an impact on me, on my bringing these stories to kids,” she says in the ABC interview. “A lot of that came from James.”

Founded in 2005, Sweet Blackberry creates visual content and publishes books with a mission to “bring little known stories of African American achievement to children everywhere.” The organization provides virtual school sessions with DVD viewings, interactive discussions with Karyn, hands-on projects, and guides for teachers to support the telling of the stories.

The organization, along with Little, Brown, published Flying Free: How Bessie Coleman’s Dreams Took Flight about the famous Black female aviator in December 2020.

Michelle Zauner Talks ‘Crying in H Mart’ in HBO Docuseries About Asian Food Culture

Lisa Ling and Michelle Zauner discuss shopping and eating in Korean grocery chain H Mart in HBO MAX's "Take Out with Lisa Ling" in the "Korean American Dream" episode. Michelle wrote best-selling, award-winning grief memoir, "Crying in H Mart." Photograph by Hannah Yoon

Memoirist and Japanese Breakfast frontwoman Michelle Zauner explains her journey to appreciating Korean cuisine with journalist Lisa Ling.

HBO Max’s “Take Out with Lisa Ling” is a six-episode docuseries featuring East Asian and South Asian communities across the U.S. and how they keep their cultures alive through food. Michelle, the author of the best-selling and award-winning memoir Crying in H Mart, joined Lisa to discuss being grief-stricken at a Korean grocery chain H Mart location and how that grief inspired her to write about losing her mother.

The she lit book review can be found here.

In the sixth episode titled “Korean American Dream,” Michelle and Lisa meet at an H Mart in Northern Virginia.

“I knew pretty early on that the book was going to begin with: ‘Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart,'” Michelle says. “It’s like this private ritual, where I’m just in my thoughts and thinking about my mom.”

Likening her weekly shopping trips to H Mart as her version of “church,” she tells Lisa that she better understood why her mother depended on places like H Mart to connect to her native land.

“My relationship to Korean food changed so much because I was trying to resuscitate her in a way,” Michelle says over jjamppong, her mother’s favorite dish that’s a Korean noodle soup with ingredients like onions, garlic, Korean zucchini, carrots, cabbages, squid, mussels, and pork. The dish, along with many others, gets an honorable mention in the book.

Crying in H Mart centers on Michelle’s relationship with her mother and the fear she feels that her cultural awareness may disappear when her mother dies because she is biracial, her mother Korean and her father White American. How she illustrates her rich culture is mostly through food since authentic Korean ingredients over the years have come stateside through venues such as H Mart.

“Being mixed-race and losing your parent who ties you to this culture, you have to actively work to preserve it,” she says in the docuseries. “In writing this book, I learned so much about our relationship that I didn’t even realize before. That particular type of friction between an immigrant parent and a first-gen American is really a unique, tumultuous relationship.”

The memoir reaches a depth of making sense of a loved one’s premature death. In the docuseries, Lisa asks Michelle how she thinks her mother would’ve reacted to the book after they discuss feeling long-awaited pride in their cultures.

“My mom was really a private person, like a lot of Asian parents are, so I’m sure she would have scolded me for sharing some details,” Michelle says. “But I always think, like, if there was another half-Korean girl who wrote this story about her mother, and I bought this book for my mother and I, I think that my mom would say to me, ‘This girl really loves her mother.'”

Michelle’s book deal with Penguin Random House imprint Knopf came out of a winning 2018 essay of the same title that was published by The New Yorker.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Crying in H Mart’ by Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Read more book reviews like this on my blog shelit.com

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a grief memoir detailing the author’s journey in grappling with the death of her mother while suppressing the fear of losing the only tie to her Korean culture in America.

What makes this memoir beautiful is the descriptions of the food being used as examples to show readers the depth of Korean culture for the author, who identifies as biracial with a Korean mother and a White American father. Her mother’s cancer prognosis motivates Michelle, a twentysomething musician holding down odd jobs in Philadelphia, to move back home to Oregon to help care for her mother. As the author goes into caretaker mode with her father unable to handle the stress, she finds herself questioning if her mother dies, will her connection to Korean culture die.

The main way her mother is able to highlight her Korean culture in America is through food and venturing to Korean grocery stores. That’s why the book starts off with Michelle shopping and eating at H Mart, a Korean supermarket chain, after her mother dies, trying to piece together meals she had shared with her mother throughout her life with the right ingredients. But seeing other people sit with their families in the dining area and cruising the aisles for dish must-haves makes the author cry every time as she navigates her culture without her mother.

I closed my eyes and let my tears flow. I tried to envision us together again in Seoul. I tried to envision the mung bean batter sizzling in grease, meat patties and oysters sopped and dripping with egg, my mother explaining everything I needed to know before it was too late, showing me all the places we’d always assumed we’d have more time to see.

Growing up in Oregon, the author stays by her mother’s side as her father travels for work. Michelle and her mother take biannual trips to Korea to stay with family and absorb culture in the homeland. Being American, Michelle is seen as more rebellious, even as a child, a trait that escalates in her teenage years, upsetting her parents. The stain of adolescence lingers in the background as Michelle experiences her family as an adult and soon as an unexpected caretaker.

My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line—generational, cultural, linguistic—we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key.

This memoir has raw moments around the author seeing her mother deteriorate quickly to stage IV squamous-cell carcinoma and searching for joy amid the process. As her mother is dying, she puts on her chef’s hat and leans on YouTube to guide her through recipes for traditional Korean dishes such as doenjang jjigae, described as “a rich, hearty stew filled with vegetables and tofu” that her mother had loved serving, and jatjuk, a porridge made of pine nuts, rice, salt, and water, perfect to serve to the sick. While her mother tries to keep food down, Michelle works in the kitchen to perfect her Korean dishes to preserve the culture her mother taught her.

Of course, like in most families, there is drama around who can care for her mother the way she needs as a Korean woman in America. The author finds herself butting heads with one of her mother’s Korean friends, who seems to know everything to do to make her mother comfortable. Her father is largely absent, unable to accept his wife is dying on the cusp of retirement; a fantasy full of travel is dashed by cancer. And at 25 years old, Michelle is trying to stabilize her life as a musician and maintain her relationship with her partner, as she worries what her life will be like without her mother.

Overall, the memoir illustrates the elaborate details we all experience in our own cultures, but the art of writing customs that are practiced and the foods that are eaten elevates the story. The balance of bittersweet is on every page, as the author deals with her mother dying but also experiences a renewed interest in diving into her Korean culture. It’s the uncertainty of being able to carry on the culture without the parent who taught you the culture that hops off the page. Despite the story leading up to the grief of losing a mother, the memoir ends on a hopeful note that as long as the roots are planted, they stay within you and the loss empowers you to nurture those roots.

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what's lit

Meena Harris Adds Phenomenal Book Club to Growing Multimedia Portfolio

Meena Harris attends the Los Angeles screening of “Women of the Movement”. The series is based on the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley, who in 1955 risked her life to find justice after her son Emmett was brutally murdered in the Jim Crow South. The six-episode series will air in three parts beginning Jan. 6, 2022 for three consecutive weeks on ABC.

For a 2021 literary lookback, we noticed Phenomenal Media mature this year with the addition of a book club focused on exposing readers to works by underrepresented authors, particularly women of color.

The four-year-old company founded by Meena Harris launched the Phenomenal Book Club in November with choosing The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story and its young readers’ companion The 1619 Project: Born on the Water as the inaugural picks and inviting author and editor Nikole Hannah-Jones and illustrator Nikkolas Smith to a virtual event. Phenomenal Book Club was the exclusive book club partner for the books based on The New York Times project named after the year enslaved Africans first came to the U.S.

A bona fide social media star, lawyer, and activist, Meena is best known for being the niece of our first female, first Black, and first Asian second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris. Her pro-vaccine Dec. 21 tweet announcing she has a breakthrough case of Covid-19 after receiving her booster shot went viral with over 70,000 likes. The success online, her family connections, and her entrepreneurial activism spirit has opened doors for her to grow her media company named after Maya Angelou’s famous poem “Phenomenal Woman.”

Besides her history-making aunt, Meena’s family tree also consists of her mother Maya Harris, who has also developed a reputation expressing her activism via Twitter as a lawyer and policy expert; her stepfather Tony West, the chief legal officer at Uber; and her late grandmother Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist whose story is told in Kamala’s 2020 memoir The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.

Expressing activism through books

Like her aunt, Meena has a publishing career. She wrote two children’s books: Ambitious Girl, published by Little, Brown Young Readers and illustrated by Marissa Valdez, about a girl finding her journey to overcome the “too ambitious” label; and Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, published by HarperCollins’ imprint Balzer + Bray and illustrated by Ana Ramírez González, about the kid versions of her aunt and mother organizing their community. Both New York Times best-selling books came out in the last year and most likely served as inspiration for Phenomenal Book Club.

Meena’s company started in 2017 as Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, a community-oriented organization focused on social causes mainly through message shirts. Top campaigns include the #PhenomenalVoter campaign to encourage voters to exercise their right in the 2018 midterm elections to the Justice for Breonna Taylor last year that manufactured shirts saying “Arrest the Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor.”

So far, the merch maker’s interaction with over 1,000 celebrities, athletes, and activists has catapulted it into a multimedia venture that also includes Phenomenal Productions that’s described as having “a specific emphasis on communities of color and underrepresented voting blocs.”

Curating books for children

The mother of two daughters, Meena has voiced her opinion that anti-racism works need to be incorporated into children’s libraries through their parents since schools on average have failed to add these works to their curricula. She wrote in The Washington Post op-ed published Nov. 15:

Of course, for Black and Brown parents, this isn’t exactly a revolutionary concept. Many of us have already taken it upon ourselves to give our children the full, accurate history lesson we know they must hear — just as our parents did for us, and their parents for them. But it’s time all American families start taking time at home to discuss the injustices that shaped our nation’s past, the work still to be done in our present, and the values that should define our future.

The new book club will announce selections quarterly and highlight a book already published between those selections. One of the missions of the book club is to aid the publishing industry in upholding its commitments to anti-racism and equity after the George Floyd protests.

Community chats last week were featured on the book club’s Instagram for its first highlight, Severance by Ling Ma, and promoting a giveaway on social media for 50 editions. For the holidays, Phenomenal is selling sweatshirts with a reproductive rights message and cookbooks by women of color.

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what's lit

‘Passing’ Cast Members Discuss Differences Between Novel and Film in Netflix Book Club

Netflix

*Spoilers ahead! Read Passing, then check out the book review on shelit.com and watch the film on Netflix*

Netflix Book Club uploaded its first video episode in a series looking at the streaming giant’s film adaptations based on popular books. The inaugural selection is the almost century-old novel Passing by Nella Larsen that became Netflix’s most recent book-to-film adaptation that started streaming last week.

Now live on Netflix’s YouTube and Facebook channels, “But Have You Read The Book?” is hosted by Orange Is the New Black star Uzo Aduba sitting down at Starbucks Reserve Roastery New York with Passing film director Rebecca Hall and actors Ruth Negga and André Holland.

The film stars Tessa Thompson playing Irene Redfield, a Black woman in 1929 Harlem, who bumps into childhood friend Clare Kendry Bellew, played by Ruth, as they realize though they’re of the same race they are living on separate sides of the color line with Clare passing as a White woman. Based on the 1929 novel by Harlem Renaissance royalty Nella Larsen, the film and the book explores a toxic friendship where the two main characters wonder if the grass is greener on the other side as their lives unravel amid the fear of Clare’s dangerous secret becoming public.

Rebecca starts the book club conversation with what she says became stringing together her own family history with her grandfather being African American but living as a White man in the U.K.

“I grew up looking at my mother, thinking you’re a Black woman, you look to me like a Black woman, but that’s not in your lexicon,” she says. “It’s not how you’re talking about yourself. It’s not how you’re living your life because she wasn’t given that because her father was passing.” 

Once she read the book, she says she had a better understanding of the situation surrounding her grandfather and countless others like him.

“This book was a big turning point for me because I didn’t know that there was this word ‘passing,'” she says. “This was something that many, many, many people of color in this country did to get better lives for themselves.”

Passing, or assuming another usually racial identity based on appearance, became a pathway for people of color to pursue their dreams and unlock their potential, Ruth says.

“To be quite clear about passing, many times it wasn’t a rejection of yourself, your Black self,” she says. “It wasn’t a rejection of your Black culture at all. It was a choice to choose a path of access. Access to what we would call White privilege.” 

While her character Clare is considered the main one passing, the book unpacks the layers of Irene as a person also passing but in a different sense, such as a wife and friend becoming unstable when she believes she sees sparks fly between Clare and her husband Brian, played by André.

“Clare is obviously passing,” Rebecca says. “She’s gay when she needs to be. She’s straight when she needs to be. She behaves like a man when she needs to be. She behaves like a woman when she needs to be. She’s Black. She’s White. She’s this walking duality.”

Tessa Thompson, adorned in a Chanel choker, reads an excerpt in her taped cameo from when her character Irene notices the piercing gaze from Clare in the hotel tearoom where they reconnect. Irene is distraught the stranger—who she doesn’t know is her old friend Clare—could tell she’s a Black woman passing to gain entry into the posh hotel.

For slight changes in the film, Rebecca talks about how she allows Irene to reveal to her White author friend Hugh Wentworth, played by Bill Camp, that Clare is passing as White. It’s a dangerous move that Irene barely dodges in the book, failing to remove any suspicion of Clare at a time when she seems to notice Clare’s charisma suck the air out of a room and leave Irene envious. The book has Irene wrestle with revealing Clare’s secret, knowing she has the ante to destroy her friend while she also wants to protect her friend. 

Irene’s back-and-forth with herself doesn’t save Clare from her tragic demise after being found out by her White bigoted husband John, played by Alexander Skarsgård. As John bangs on the door of a party in Harlem full of Black guests, he darts toward Clare, calling her a liar. Clare positions herself in front of an open window to get away from John and closer to Irene, but the sway of arms somehow forces Clare to fall out of the fifth-story window and into the snow. But whose arm is at fault is a mystery in the book as well as the film.

“Nella Larsen keeps it ambiguous for a good reason,” Rebecca says. “She’s also pointing out that it doesn’t really matter because everyone is sort of complicit in something. And also whatever happened, Irene does feel like she was responsible.”

To sum up the story, Uzo says the phrase spoken by Irene when discussing Clare with Hugh about everything not appearing as it seems threads the film together.

“We’re watching characters who can exist and move through life in ways that might not be as they seem,” she says. “I think it was consistent with the larger narrative being told throughout.”

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what's lit

Can You Tell Your Story Your Way? Mariah Carey Faces Lawsuits From Siblings Over Her Memoir

Songstress Mariah Carey enjoyed debut author success when her long-awaited memoir hit bookshelves last September. But the memoir that dives deep into how she found her voice in what she calls an abusive family environment has led to lawsuits from her siblings.

While promoting The Meaning of Mariah Carey with Oprah Winfrey on an Apple TV+ special last fall, Mariah said after years of therapy she calls Alison her “ex-sister” and Morgan her “ex-brother.” Her so-called former siblings now are suing her in New York Supreme Court over allegedly false and defamatory claims.

News broke this week that Morgan Carey, Mariah’s older brother, filed a lawsuit on March 3 against Mariah, co-author Michaela Angela Davis, Andy Cohen of Bravo fame whose imprint published the book, and Macmillan Publishers that owns Andy Cohen Books. Mariah’s older sister, Alison Carey, also had filed her own lawsuit on Feb. 3 solely against Mariah.

In the memoir, the singer describes several alleged violent interactions with her siblings. From the descriptions, lawsuits were expected, but it begs the question of how a memoirist can write her own story and portray real-life characters the way she interpreted their behavior and personality.

What Are the Allegations?

First, in Alison’s two-page complaint, she is representing herself and asking the court to have her sister pay $1.25 million in damages plus money for legal costs. She has issue with the chapter in Mariah’s memoir called “Dandelion Tea,” which is dedicated to Mariah’s allegedly dangerous experiences with her sister, who she claims tossed boiling hot water on her when she was 12 years old that made her black out and develop third-degree burns.

Alison says she was a troubled preteen, but she blames their mother, Patricia Carey, for allegedly forcing her to “attend terrifying middle-of-the-night satanic worship meetings that included ritual sacrifices and sexual activity.” Alison goes on to write that she has been diagnosed with a series of mental and physical health diseases. She says Mariah “used her status to attack her penniless sister” and “callously dismisses” her as an ex-sister.

Morgan also references in his lawsuit about being called publicly by Mariah as her ex-brother. He claims Mariah falsely depicted him as a “physically violent man.” In his own words, he alleges their father, Alfred Roy Carey, was the abuser and the reason he was placed in a children’s psychiatric center, a revelation Morgan says is an invasion of privacy. He says he believes he was portrayed as a stereotypical violent Black male for Mariah to “play the victim card and curry favor with the Black Lives Matter movement.” As part of the lawsuit, he attached a page of photos from over Mariah’s career of them together appearing happy to dispute his sister’s allegations.

Memory or Mismemory?

Memoirists have to reach for memories and describe those memories and the meaning behind what happened and how it impacted their lives. But as humans our minds may misinterpret an old memory and transform it. That’s a concern that impacts any writer writing their own true story.

“This is because memory is not just about retrieving stored information,” reads a Scientific American article on the unintentional phenomenon of misremembering, or the act of remembering incorrectly. “Our minds normally construct memories using a blend of remembered experiences and knowledge about the world. Our memories can be frazzled, though, by new experiences that end up tangling the past and the present.”

Should a writer discuss what they plan to tell in their story with people who will have a major appearance? It’s a question about how much to reveal about someone and how similar are the memories you share with that someone to ensure the right description makes it into the book. But if you’re not close to that particular someone, then reaching out can get murky. Also, reaching out could mean that someone wants their name and any reference to the event they’re mentioned in to be out of the book, subtracting some of the author’s freedom to express their story.

Your Truth or Their Truth?

Both of Mariah’s siblings say they weren’t contacted by the press for their sides of the story nor were given a copy of the unpublished book to verify any information.

There are memoirs, especially celebrity ones, that share private information about others without substituting names. Actress Demi Moore in her 2019 memoir Inside Out, for example, wrote she had taken actor Jon Cryer’s virginity. This aspect, of course, exploded in the media, but Jon issued a correction on Twitter saying he lost his virginity in high school before meeting Demi.

For Demi, her mismemory was forgiven though it involved sexual information that’s usually preferred to remain private.

Mariah hints at the alleged situation with her family in “Petals” off her 1999 Rainbow album.

Who Will Win?

When the lawsuits spill in claiming false and defamatory statements after a memoir is published, it’s hard to say how the court battle will go down. Most lawsuits head toward settlement as in we may never hear the result of the settlement if Mariah and her siblings believe that’s the best route to resolution.

In 2003, Augusten Burroughs published his memoir, Running with Scissors, that mentioned his time living with a family that he gave a fictional name. In the family’s chapter, he recounts abuse, drug use, and overall dysfunction. The real family filed a defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuit against the author and his publisher St. Martin’s Press. The author argued his memories were as accurate as he remembered, therefore what he wrote was true. The $2 million lawsuit settled outside of court with the author saying in his apology that the family’s memories were “different from my own,” The New York Times reported in 2007. The memoir became a movie starring Alec Baldwin and Annette Bening.

Mariah told The Hollywood Reporter in December amid her Apple TV+ Christmas special that she’s in talks to adapt her memoir for the screen. This is before the lawsuits were filed that may or may not impact any future projects, especially around the division of profits if that becomes part of the probable settlements.

If you are working on a memoir and worried about your memories sparking lawsuits, here are some resources to check out:

A Writer’s Guide to Defamation and Invasion of Privacy, Writer’s Digest

How Not to Get Sued for Your Memoir, HuffPost

Writing Memoirs—What You Need to Know to Avoid Being Sued, Self Publishing School 

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Meaning of Mariah Carey’ by Mariah Carey

The Meaning of Mariah CareyThe Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*Reviewed by a dedicated member of the Lambily who has waited for this story for three decades*

The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey is an in-depth celebrity memoir that highlights the intersection of racial and familial trauma and how the world-famous songstress converted the pain into laser focus on talent exploration and superstardom success.

Mariah clarifies that this is her story from her perspective as she describes her family in the negative light that she viewed them. The story starts with Mariah’s childhood that hints at trauma described in many of her songs from “Outside” on the Butterfly album to “Petals” on the Rainbow album. The youngest of three children, Mariah is years apart from her teenage brother Morgan and sister Allison, who were both already showing signs of psychological damage from growing up in an interracial family in the 1960s and 1970s in New York City. Mariah also has the fairest complexion that makes her a target of sibling abuse ranging from her brother exhibiting violence to the point where cops are called to her sister pimping her out to a grown man. Race plays a huge part with her Black father and White mother and seeps into her upbringing as she lives with her mother in a White section of Long Island and visits her father in Black Harlem. The location forces Mariah to attend predominantly White schools where she’s called racial slurs on an everyday basis for being Black. Then when she hangs out with her father and her Black cousins on the weekend she feels her complexion comes up in the question of her paternity. One of the issues that bothers little Mariah the most is that her mother never could wrangle her curls. The untidiness of her appearance brings self-esteem down even more until her opera singer mother trains her to sing, and music becomes Mariah’s saving grace.

A major portion of the book covers a few chapters on her tumultuous marriage to Sony Music executive Tommy Mottola, who discovered her and became her first husband. Mariah goes into detail about how what looks like a storybook fairy tale romance is slow torture to her twentysomething self. She even calls the mansion in upstate New York she shared with Tommy “Sing Sing” like the infamous prison. Metaphorically, she describes the luxurious baths she would take as washing off the Mariah Carey persona to become an unhappy housewife. The mental abuse is more described here with what Mariah calls Tommy’s incessant anger that was shown to her all the time and visible to others in his inner circle.

There are explanations for some of her obsessions that have been magnified in the media to make her seem frivolous. For example, she connects with her idol Marilyn Monroe after seeing her in film as a young girl and learning little Norma Jeane Mortenson also had a tumultuous childhood. Mariah is “eternally twelve” because the physical and emotional abuse hit a fever pitch at that age where she wishes she could be a regular kid.

Like Mariah said on her book tour, what she says is unimportant is not in the book from the highly publicized engagement and breakup with Aussie billionaire James Packer to the highly publicized stint and battle on American Idol with rapper Nicki Minaj. She also brilliantly throws shade at other highly publicized events from her career to show the media monster she’s over it. And shade is hinted toward Jennifer Lopez, who Mariah claims she does not know, and now we know the subtle beef started way before the meme.

Overall, this is an extraordinary celebrity memoir by Mariah, along with her co-writer and Black cultural writer Michaela Angela Davis, that emphasizes her biracial identity and how that impacted her family and her drive. Because of the depth, it’s recommended to read the actual book though the audiobook is also an excellent choice due to the amount of well-known lyrics within the chapters. There is a lot of digging deep into the construct of race and how it could destroy individuals with Mariah describing her journey of working to overcome the obstacles placed in her path.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘More Myself’ by Alicia Keys

More Myself: A JourneyMore Myself: A Journey by Alicia Keys
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More Myself by Alicia Keys is a memoir by an artist whose wins seem to dominate the losses, making the book less relatable, but she tells her story of striving to lead an inspiring life.

Alicia starts her story of being a girl in a cab with her mother and seeing a sex worker outside in the wintertime. She asks her mother about the woman standing on the corner, and the way her mother answers her question plants a seed for her to remember to work hard for her dreams to come true. She then takes us through her childhood in 1980s and 1990s Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, near Times Square and the theater district. It’s not the neighborhood it is now but one that was riddled with crime where she lived with her single mother, a former actress. She talks about her strained relationship with her father, who she sees seldomly throughout her childhood as he starts another family. As she navigates adolescence in New York City, she’s working on her music with her older music producer boyfriend Kerry “Krucial” Brothers. She lies about her age to him several times as their romantic and career-defining relationship grows. Then she’s offered a record deal simultaneously as an acceptance to Columbia University. She learns quickly she can’t juggle college and music, so she drops school and dedicates herself to become a full-fledged artist. Once her debut album Songs in A Minor drops in 2001, she solidifies her music superstardom.

Actually listening to Alicia’s voice on audiobook brought the story alive, though her hardships seem little compared to her success. For years, she tends to talk about her life in rough New York City with her single mother, but with her piano and singing skills, she’s signed to her first record deal at 15-years-old. That already puts her above the average upbringing in that same scenario. Unlike Jessica Simpson’s Open Book where that singer describes hardships before and throughout her career, Alicia’s story fails to come off as relatable to the average reader. It does leave that awe-inspiring glow of “if you stick to your dreams, then your dreams come true,” which we all know does not add up for most people. Alicia’s chapters open up with words from her husband Swizz Beatz, Jay-Z, Clive Davis, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and America Ferrera. Also as well as her father and her ex Krucial, both relationships she has repaired to the point they’re willing to contribute vocal notes to her audiobook. Again, not the most relatable move but could be seen as inspiring. Don’t we all want to repair past relationships so when those people are mentioned in our memoirs they get a say? Maybe, maybe not.

Overall, it’s a positive, not-as-moving portrait of a famous singer who sings on the audiobook at times with her voice really illustrating her story in a more entertaining way.

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music reviews what's lit

Halsey’s Poems May Dive Deeper into Her Biracial Identity

2019 AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS.® - Hosted by Ciara and broadcasting live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, Nov. 24 at 8:00 p.m. EST, on ABC. (ABC/Image Group LA) HALSEY

Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Halsey announced she will have a poetry book come out later this year called I Would Leave Me If I Could. With the poems hitting shelves on Nov. 10, will it touch on race and her fight to be understood as a biracial woman?

Halsey’s poetry collection will explore “longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.” Publisher Simon & Schuster describes the book as:

In this debut collection, Halsey bares her soul. Bringing the same artistry found in her lyrics, Halsey’s poems delve into the highs and lows of doomed relationships, family ties, sexuality, and mental illness. More hand grenades than confessions, these autobiographical poems explore and dismantle conventional notions of what it means to be a feminist in search of power.

The “family ties” part looks promising for Halsey to share her story on being half-Black and half-White and the criticisms she received about her racial identity while famous.

In an August 2017 Playboy interview, Halsey said she was “White-passing” and that she has “never tried to control anything about black culture.” At first, it sounded like a Rachel Dolezal situation until she cleared up that her father is Black and her mother is White and that her light complexion on first impression does not show her Blackness.

After she emphasized her biracial identity, she complained about hotels in 2018 for having toiletries that “entirely alienates people of color.” She goes on to say she “can’t use this perfumed watered down white people shampoo.” The hair care industry still marks products for “normal hair,” meaning it’s designed for the hair of most White people, for example.

She quickly corrected those who said she is White and didn’t believe racism exists in the hotel toiletry business with clarifying again that she is biracial. Months later, she revealed a photo of herself in her natural curls, where again she faced attacks from fans who didn’t know her biracial identity.

Over the past few weeks, Halsey has been sharing content surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement and the latest protests by supporting Black artists and activists on Twitter and Instagram. She even participated in a protest in Los Angeles which she shares in a post on June 1 where she treated protestors hit with rubber bullets and tear gas with a massive first aid kit. The post has 1.5 million likes.

Halsey joins other singer-poets such as Jhené Aiko, the author of the poetry collection 2Fish, and Lana Del Rey, who plans to release her poetry collection and spoken word album Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass later this year.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Know My Name’ by Chanel Miller

Know My Name: A MemoirKnow My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Know My Name by Chanel Miller is a poignant memoir about a sexual assault survivor whose case gains enormous media attention as she struggles to find her voice amid the noise.

Chanel is known as Emily Doe in what becomes known as the Stanford Rape Case. At a Stanford University frat party in January 2015, Chanel is found unconscious half-naked outside by a dumpster being assaulted by Brock Turner, a star swimmer at the university. Chanel, at the time, is a recent graduate of University of California Santa Barbara who had decided to join her younger sister and friends at the frat party. But they get separated, and Chanel blacks out. She isn’t the perfect victim. She becomes too drunk to the point she passes out. She already graduated from another college, a lower-level one. She has a boyfriend. She lives in Palo Alto, miles away. This plagues her case throughout as she notices Brock’s golden white boy status as an Olympic-bound swimmer trumps what happens to her, who she is.

She narrates the hardship of being raped and not remembering the act. Her details of how she is found and realizing the number of men who had seen her in that position haunts her. As a student at UCSB during the infamous 2014 Isla Vista rampage where a mass murderer blamed his actions on girls who wouldn’t have sex with him, Chanel brings this memory up sometimes along with the fear of being punished by men for not letting them use her body as they like. During the trial, she sees Brock being believed more than her because of her unconsciousness at the party, her non-star status. Brock says Chanel enjoyed the penetration, the dry humping, the breast fondling so much she had an orgasm. His words over hers, his character witnesses’ words over hers follow her around as she tries to find peace in the yearslong case, even running to Rhode Island for an academic program and Pennsylvania to stay with her Wharton-bound boyfriend.

In the beginning, she mentions how she misspelled “subpoena” in a court document and that people judged her for it. But she is honest about not quite understanding the intricacies of the legal system and ultimately how she sees the system not being on her side. One important factor that becomes a theme is how she is defined as a white female in court. She’s half-Chinese. When this book came out, readers were surprised about her being Asian because the amount of support she received may have been determined by her whiteness alone. She shares how her mother is a well-known Chinese author and living within her Chinese culture in California.

Overall, the memoir introduces us to Chanel as she describes her journey to accept what happens to her post-trauma and how to use it as a force of positivity to help others going through a similar ordeal.

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Book Review: ‘Grand Union’ by Zadie Smith

Grand Union: StoriesGrand Union: Stories by Zadie Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Grand Union: Stories by Zadie Smith is an offbeat story collection that dives into the lives of various characters from the U.K. to New York. The author’s literary fiction style sometimes shines in certain stories and fails to deliver in others.

The longer stories resonate stronger because the characters are established better, with some even having chapters. “Sentimental Education” is about a college couple where the young woman is trying to find herself sexually while she becomes annoyed by her boyfriend’s attention to his recently jailed best friend. “Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets” surrounds a drag queen’s shopping trip to a department store to find a version of an old corset; the corset has changed and so has the store’s management. “Downtown” sounds like it has more personal reflection from the author as the narrator details an everyday adventure in New York City from noticing the movements of an artist to dropping the kids off at school. “Big Week” features a recovering alcoholic as we follow him from meeting his son at the bar, picking up a professional woman at the airport for his new job as a driver, and reuniting with his ex-wife as he moves out.

Stories like “The Dialectic” and “The Lazy River” are similar to “Downtown” with describing what sounds like Zadie’s real moments, but they describe the setting and characters mostly without having a tangible plot. Other stories like “Kelso Deconstructed” and “For the King” have an overflow of conversation and character descriptions that buries the plot.

Overall, it’s an interesting short story collection because there isn’t a central theme; it’s her random stories, many previously published in magazines, placed together in one book. Some stories stand out while others don’t.

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music reviews

The Songstresses Who Have Memoirs Coming Out This Year

JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! Ð ÒJimmy Kimmel Live!Ó airs every weeknight at 11:35 p.m. EST and features a diverse lineup of guests that include celebrities, athletes, musical acts, comedians and human interest subjects, along with comedy bits and a house band. The guests for Wednesday, January 29, included Jessica Simpson (ÒOpen BookÓ), Lakeith Stanfield (ÒThe PhotographÓ), and musical guest Orville Peck. (ABC/Randy Holmes) JESSICA SIMPSON

2020 is looking to be a momentous year for three divas who’ve grown into multihyphenates. After pursuing extraordinary careers with the media capturing the highlights and lowlights, the singers plan to tell their stories, from rocky childhood moments to failed romantic relationships.

Jessica Simpson

The 2000s teenage pop star turned fashion designer has written her memoir, Open Book. According to her book’s official page, she had originally been approached to write a motivational guidebook but felt like she would be lying to her fans.

“I promise to be totally honest with you, so you can feel safe to be honest with yourself, too,” Jessica says in a HarperCollins Publishers promo video for the book.

With the book going on sale last week, the press has focused on the newsmaking details such as Jessica surviving child sex abuse; having an emotional affair with Johnny Knoxville while married to 98 Degrees frontman Nick Lachey; and developing a yearslong diet pill addiction after Tommy Mottola, former Sony Music CEO and Mariah Carey’s ex-husband (see below for her pending memoir), told her to lose 15 pounds when she was 17 years old.

Music note: Jessica’s best album, 2003’s In This Skin, was written while she was in the throes of love with Nick Lachey. It produced some of her best hits: “With You,” “Sweetest Sin,” and the cover of Robbie Williams’ “Angels.” Unreleased gems include “Everyday See You” and “Be.”

Alicia Keys

Fresh off from hosting the Grammy Awards, Alicia plans to soon debut her memoir, More Myself: A Journey. Macmillan Publishers says in the book’s synopsis that Alicia will detail her experiences such as the “challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.”

The book, co-written by celebrity memoir collaborator Michelle Burford, is under Macmillan’s imprints Flatiron Books and An Oprah Book from Oprah Winfrey. The press around Alicia’s memoir hasn’t started yet for its March 31 release, but it may be due to Flatiron and Macmillan dealing with the firestorm of their literary partner Oprah choosing their best-selling debut novel American Dirt as her book club pick. That book has been criticized for perpetuating stereotypes about Mexico and Mexicans.

Music note: The Diary of Alicia Keys solidified Alicia’s budding career in 2002 after her debut hit, “Fallin’.” This album produced even more hits such as “You Don’t Know My Name,” “Karma,” and the reality TV audition favorite, “If I Ain’t Got You.” Unreleased gems include “Diary” and “If I Was Your Woman.”

Mariah Carey debuts the “mixed-ish” theme song to partygoers in September 2019. (ABC/Image Group LA)

Mariah Carey

Mariah’s highly anticipated memoir will be released under Andy Cohen Books, the Henry Holt and Company imprint by the eponymous Bravo personality.

The singer, who just attained her 19th No. 1 hit with holiday classic “All I Want For Christmas Is With You,” has not revealed a name for her memoir.

“I did not feel like I was being treated the same as some male artists when I was coming out with my first album,” she told Variety in October. Though she didn’t add details about the industry misogyny from her interview, Mariah may save it for her memoir, along with her tumultuous marriage to Tommy Mottola and her relationship with her estranged father while growing up biracial in New York in the 1970s and 1980s.

Music note: Mariah Carey’s eponymous album from 1990 launched her unbelievable career with her first single, “Vision of Love,” hitting No. 1. It is rumored the title of this song may be the title of her memoir. Other No. 1 hits on this album are “I Don’t Wanna Cry”, “Love Takes Time,” and “Someday.” Unreleased gems include the rest of the album.

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what's lit

‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Gushes Over Debut Novel

Celebrity host and lawyer Sunny Hostin excitedly announced she will be releasing her debut novel in June.

On last Tuesday’s episode of The View, Sunny announced Summer on the Bluffs surrounds an Afro-Latina lawyer, Esperanza “Perry” Soto, who returns to her godmother Ama’s beach cottage in the exclusive Black beach community of Oak Bluffs with her two godsisters as they vie for the real estate while harboring a secret .

“[Perry] escapes from New York every summer for the beaches of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard where she shares a beautiful seaside home with her two godsisters, Billie and Olivia, and their home is owned by their godmother, Ama. She’s the first Black woman to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, but this summer on the bluff is different,” Sunny said on The View. “Because Ama decided to give her house to only one of her goddaughters. Each of the women want the house desperately.”

The book will be released on June 16, 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers.

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what's lit

Singer Amerie Kicks Off New Book Club With ‘The Water Dancer’

Amerie announces her new book club / Instagram

Amerie, best known for her 2000s R&B singles Why Don’t We Fall In Love? and 1 Thing, announced on YouTube she will be launching her new social media book club with making The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates this month’s inaugural pick.

Over the past few years, Amerie has been reinventing herself as a literary talent with her video book, beauty, and lifestyle blog. She contributed to the forthcoming black girl magic anthology, A Phoenix First Must Burn, that’s being called “Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience.” Her editing credits include another young adult anthology, Because You Love To Hate Me, and she has plans in the works to release a debut novel. She made a surprise return to music last year with the twin albums, 4AM Mulholland and After 4AM.

“For so long, I know you’ve been wanting the book club, and I’ve been reading the comments, but I didn’t know how I exactly want to do it and I believe I figured it out,” Amerie said in her announcement video.

She said her book club will “feature books by authors sent to us an array of different perspectives, voices, and I hope we can come together and learn from each other, listen to one another, also be heard, and embrace and celebrate our differences, and come away from the whole thing somewhat changed.”

Instagram and YouTube will be the main outlets for the book club conversation. The selections will be announced on the first Wednesday of the month with reminders throughout the month and final conversations at the end of the month.

Oprah’s Book Club famously chose The Water Dancer as its first pick in its Apple-backed reincarnation.

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music reviews what's lit

Mariah Carey Talks Forthcoming Memoir, Writing Songs With Women

Mariah Carey constantly touted her memoir in an in-depth interview with Variety as the entertainment publication honored the songstress in its Power of Women edition.

When asked about the events that had led up to her 2001 “emotional and physical breakdown” coinciding with poor reviews of her debut film Glitter and her inherent love for Christmas that spawned a forever holiday hit and album, Mariah said: “All of this to be revealed in the book, by the way, which I’m obsessed with writing right now. It’s so cathartic.”

With the special edition focused on women, Mariah discussed the role of women in her career, especially in the beginning where she felt there weren’t enough young female artists like her as she was surrounded by a lot of men in the music industry. To stay on top of the ambitious career of her dreams, she said she learned how to play the game.

“It’s sad that we’re still playing games at this point,” she said in the video interview. She then hinted at sexual harassment and the current #MeToo landscape. “And as a woman, yeah, I’ve been in situations where I’m looking at stuff now going, ‘Omigod, this happened to me, that happened to me.’ I totally relate to this woman’s experience, but I didn’t necessarily go along with it in a complete way, but I was like, ‘Oh, this person just like tried to have a moment with me’—without being too specific—in the studio, in the dark. Thank God, I was like, ‘Ha ha ha ha,’ and laughed my way out of it. That’s just my mechanism that I turn on. So these things have happened to me, yeah, but I really respect the women who have come forward and paved the way, so that the newer generation of women don’t have to deal with this and know they don’t have to deal with it.”

She said she felt isolated coming up in the industry, where her eponymous album came out in 1990 when she was 20 years old. Now, with more female artists in the game across the age spectrum, she said she finds ways to work with them.

“I love writing with other women, and it’s something that’s newer thing for me. People like Bibi Bourelly and Priscilla Renea, like new young writers I really enjoy working with because it’s a different energy and they may or may not have been inspired by me, and I thrive on it. Even some of my favorite songs on Butterfly, which is one of my favorite albums and it represents coming into a new era in my life and finding my own freedom as a woman. I remember one of the sessions was with Missy Elliott. We just had the best time working together and writing together.”

Mariah also goes into how the media compared her with Whitney Houston.

“What has to change in our industry the most is the pitting of women against each other. There was the situation when I started, ‘Oh, her and Whitney. Let’s put them against each other’ and blah blah. We didn’t know each other, and she was one of the greatest of all time. Then we finally did a duet together that won an Oscar. We had the best time working together. It was female camaraderie. We both got it. We’re both like, ‘She doesn’t hate me.’ We’re actually having this great time together and laughing. And this is the most fun I have ever had working alone ever. I think camaraderie with women you respect is a huge deal.”

The Mixed-ish theme singer and songwriter said her book will begin with her humble beginnings as a biracial child in New York and follow the highs and lows of her record-breaking career. Explaining she had recently extended her memoir, Mariah said to look for it in the latter half of 2020.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Golden Child’ by Claire Adam

Golden ChildGolden Child by Claire Adam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Golden Child” by Claire Adam follows the family of twin boys in Trinidad as money eventually rips the family apart. The story feels slow at times, but at the end when seeing the story in its entirety, it’s well-told exploring the haves and have nots within the family.

The story opens up to Clyde looking for his teen son, Paul. Clyde is trying to gather support from the neighbors to see where his son has gone. Paul has been told he’s mentally disabled because he lost oxygen during his birth. His twin brother, Peter, is the opposite, considered very bright and reasonable. Their doctor uncle, Uncle Vishnu, who was present at their birth, is the one who diagnoses these differences between Peter and Paul. As a doctor, Uncle Vishnu, invests in Peter’s education. Clyde fights to keep Paul with Peter in school though Paul is slow. Uncle Vishnu is the biological uncle of Joy, Clyde’s wife and mother to Peter and Paul. Joy also has a brother named Romesh, who has good jobs, and Philip, a famous judge. But there’s jealousy of why Uncle Vishnu financially supports Clyde and his family, the only ones who live in a very modest home, especially with Peter having the potential to leave the island for the pursuit of education and success.

With the story opening to a search for a character, the search feels longer than it should be until the story gets into the history of why Paul went missing. There are point-of-view issues with the beginning mostly belonging to Clyde then hopping to Paul to Peter to the brothers’ teacher, Father Kavanaugh. Some sentences may take a second to realize the point-of-view is not pointing to the right character. It’s just interesting how the point-of-view changes and why it changes because at times it felt like it didn’t need to change or the situation should’ve been told by another character.

The emphasis on the difference between the twin brothers is reminiscent of Abraham Verghese’s “Cutting For Stone,” especially with parallels of following a family of Indian descent in Trinidad where Verghese’s book is on a family of Indian descent in Ethiopia. The differences between the brothers are so heightened throughout the book, but the reader may pick up that there may be nothing wrong with Paul; he acts the way he does because he’s been told his whole life that something’s wrong with him. Paul’s actions propel the jealousy bubbling within the extended family that Clyde and Joy never put much attention on.

Overall, this story punctuates one of the main issues that tear families apart: money. And also shows how some are concerned with the money while others don’t see the concern, which could lead to a troubling sequence of events. It’s a good book for readers who enjoy literary fiction taking place in a country and focusing on a culture underrepresented in books.

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