Tag: black women writers

How Erica Kennedy Defined 2000s Multicultural Women’s Fiction

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date March 24, 2022

March 24th marks what would’ve been Erica Kennedy’s 52nd birthday. The promising author, who published two novels entrenched in media and entertainment through two multicultural female characters, died in 2012. Ten years after her untimely death, her novels Bling and Feminista remain pillars in the modern-day establishment of the “chick lit” and “bitch lit” genres for Black and multicultural readers that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Born in 1970, Queens native Erica Kennedy Johnson worked in entertainment and fashion journalism with writing clips for New York Daily News, Vibe, and InStyle. She blogged at the now-defunct xoJane and other sites that dominated the female-centric blogosphere in the mid-2000s. Writing and commenting on entertainment gave her a platform as she amassed over 4,000 followers on her personal Twitter—a number in 2012 that would’ve paved the path for Black Twitter stardom. Her last tweets defend President Barack Obama against conservative attacks and give us a play-by-play of Scandal episodes. Famous film critic Roger Ebert even listed Erica as a tweeter to follow and tweeted about her death, directing users to Erica’s writer-friend and memoirist Bassey Ikpi’s now-private blog.

Erica’s writing chops sprouted from her fashion publicity résumé working at Tommy Hilfiger and from her upbringing in what she coined the “hip-hop glitterati” with mogul Russell Simmons and Puff Daddy before leaping into the literary world with her 2004 debut novel that reportedly earned her a $500,000 advance.

Bling follows Mimi, a half-Haitian and half-Italian twenty-year-old from Ohio who arrives in New York City with her two best friends as they audition as their R&B girl group Heartsong. Looking beyond the poorly named group that was Mimi’s brainchild, fortysomething record label executive Lamont Jackson only sees Mimi as the answer to his prayers of climbing to the top of Triple Large Entertainment, known for churning out rappers. Mimi meets with Lamont alone and gets signed to the label as a solo star.

To give her the industry-standard look, Lamont assigns her the ultimate glam squad: He introduces her to Lena, an entertainment lawyer’s spoiled daughter; Kendra, Lamont’s on-and-off girlfriend who happens to be a supermodel; and Mama Jackson, Lamont’s mother who adores Kendra and treats her as the daughter she never had because she’s ready for a daughter-in-law. But the magnetization between Mimi and Lamont makes them the hottest couple in the industry. Mimi, also known as the “Haitian Mami,” begins work on her album while Lamont tries to clean house in preparation for their meteoric rise that may not look the way they expect.

“I’m not all decked out in bling. I recognize the absurdity of driving around in a powder blue Bentley. I do have to worry about paying bills.”
Erica Kennedy, “Black Writers Seize Glamorous Ground Around ‘Chick Lit’“

The satirical novel has 500 pages of deliciousness where the reader is transported behind the scenes watching characters who resemble real R&B and hip-hop stars of yesterday and today. Each section of the novel is titled as a disc with chapters named after hip-hop hits. More details even include the naming of Mimi’s debut album track list complete with the namedropping of real-life producers like Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins as contributors.

The main character, whose birth name is Marie-Jean Castiglione, goes by a nickname that R&B-infused pop diva Mariah Carey adopted publicly a year later during her The Emancipation of Mimi reign. Having the stark age difference also feels Mariah-like since she was twenty-years-old when she fell for the record label executive Tommy Mottola after a similar Cinderellaesque discovery.

Coincidences make the book feel authentic in its world-building and character-building, which are points of difficulty for every writer: trying to make the world they’re describing in words feel as real as possible that the reader easily transports there mentally and lives in the world seeing the action from the outside.

Bling was published by Miramax Books, a publisher created by brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein to turn books into movies through their film production company Miramax Films. The book’s film rights had been sold to Miramax Films, according to the book’s original printing. Miramax had been affiliated with The Walt Disney Company until 2005, leaving Miramax Books to be folded into Disney’s publishing arm Hyperion.

Of course, Miramax experienced its downfall when co-owner Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault allegations came to light in 2017, with two allegations evolving into convictions. Miramax is now owned by beIN Media Group and Paramount Company. The Weinstein brothers had created their own imprint again after Miramax Books’ sale, called Weinstein Books, which had been dissolved by Hachette Book Group in 2017 again after Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault allegations ignited the #MeToo revolution.

“The thing I admired so much about Erica is that she deferred to no one. Shortly after Miramax optioned her first novel Bling, she called me at The Hollywood Reporter, and we were talking about the deal’s press coverage. I was able to get a photo of Erica in the paper—a beautiful one, natch. But she was outraged that Variety ran a photo of Harvey Weinstein instead of her. ‘It’s not like he wrote the book,’ she deadpanned. And I just had to laugh. She was right, of course. Most people would have been satisfied to take second billing to an Oscar winner. But not Erica. And that was the kind of hutzpah that so defined her for me.”
Tatiana Siegel, “Eisa Ulen Remembers Her Friend, Erica Kennedy“

That being said, will we ever get the Bling movie? Will Gabrielle Union or another book-to-screen lover adapt the novel to film, especially after living in a post-Empire world? Bling‘s film rights are still owned by Erica and Miramax, the U.S. Copyright Office record shows.

The book itself looks like it hasn’t been published on a large scale since its hardcover and paperback releases in 2004 and 2005, respectively.

Erica’s author profile hasn’t been updated by Macmillan, which published her 2010 sophomore novel that earned the certification of “bitch lit” highlighting a female character wanting it all and pushing whoever and whatever out the way.

Published by Macmillan‘s imprint St. Martin’s Griffin, Feminista, from its title, is meant to stretch out the typical “chick lit” mold featuring a character in her thirties vying for career elevation and trying to ignore the biological clock yearning for a man.

Sydney Zamora is an entertainment journalist for Cachet looking for a promotion as her publication underpays her. Like Mimi in Bling, Sydney identifies as biracial with a White mother and an Afro-Cuban father. Sydney drops thousands for matchmaker Mitzi Berman, but her hard shell repels potential matches. While on assignment, she meets Max Cooper, a department store heir who wants to prove himself as an executive. They butt heads, and their aspirations get tangled into each other. The fact that he’s an eligible bachelor that Mitzi tries to rein in doesn’t phase Sydney. But in a happily-ever-after, Sydney and Max eventually fall for each other.

What makes Feminista a different type of “chick lit” romance novel in general is the character is fighting with herself to stabilize her career and lifestyle only to yearn for the male partner that female professionals can’t dream of because they’re too busy taking over the world. That’s the definition of being a feminist many women take on, so Sydney struggles to figure out if she’s losing her feminist status if she conforms to societal pressure even if that pressure could translate into love and happiness that will enhance her life.

“Female ambition was something I really wanted to explore. Even in 2009, there are so many women who are not comfortable being the boss. I got a lot of money for my first book and I remember a male friend said, “Wow, you must have a great agent!” I said, “Yes, that’s why I hired him.” But I still felt guilty about having the money. I’m loathe to even admit that but it’s true.”
Erica Kennedy, “Frisky Q&A: Erica Kennedy, Author Of “Bitch Lit” Novel “Feminista”“

Seeing these Black, multiracial, multicultural female characters at pivotal ages striving in realistic Manhattan while pushing toward their career and love goals invited a more diverse readership. These books came out in the mid-2000s when novels by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus of The Nanny Diaries fame, Lauren Weisberger of The Devil Wears Prada fame, and Plum Sykes of Bergdorf Blondes fame reigned supreme on the best-sellers’ lists by White women featuring fictional White women.

In a Q&A with The Frisky, Erica says she decided to make her starring ladies multiracial, “so anyone could see what they wanted to see in her,” in reference to Sydney from Feminista. The novel has an illustrated cover depicting characters that can be misconstrued as White, Erica says, but it came from a black-and-white illustration with a splash of color.

Erica wasn’t alone in drawing non-White readers into the “chick lit” audience. At the time, Tonya Lewis Lee and Crystal McCrary Anthony co-wrote the Gotham Diaries following the intersection of circles within the Black elite of Harlem. They shared the spotlight with Erica of being on The New York Times best-seller’s list. Another writing duo, Charlotte Burley and Lyah Beth LeFlore, wrote Cosmopolitan Girls about two Black women who think each live an enviable life under the lights of New York City. All the authors posed for a photo at the Bling launch party at the now-closed NYC nightclub Lotus in June 2004.

Danyel Smith, also an entertainment journalist and former Vibe editor, wrote Bliss in 2005, a music-themed novel like Bling with Mariah Carey, now an author herself, contributing a review on the front of the book. And lastly Tia Williams had her first novel The Accidental Diva debut in 2004 but last year’s runaway hit Seven Days in June made her a rising literary star.

Authors like Tia Williams and Danyel Smith, whose successful podcast Black Girl Songbook will be translated into a nonfiction book called Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop coming out April 19, are finally receiving their flowers with their newer work.

When Erica died in 2012, Black female writers who knew her as a friend and an acquaintance wrote moving tributes, hinting at her mental health struggle possibly being the reason for her demise. The sisterhood of support in recognizing her unique creativity but also recognizing her and their own depression created a strong presence online. There wasn’t a cause of death announced, her family asking for privacy.

“My hope is that the next black author gets six figures for this kind of book. I just want to be home in sweats and glasses, writing.”
Erica Kennedy, “Erica Kennedy, a Music Writer Who Satirized the Hip-Hop World, Dies at 42”

Our ever-evolving literary landscape brings to mind how Erica was eligible in having the same accolades such as having her book seen on screen or selected by a celebrity book club. But leaving her work behind, we can only spread the word on what she gave us—whether her books are considered likable enough with their range of online reviews—since they’re worth reading and imagining pieces of ourselves within the pages she wrote.

Tags black chick lit, black female authors, black female characters, black female writers, black women authors, black women writers, bling, chick lit, deep lit, erica kennedy, feminista, multicultural chick lit, multicultural romance, multicultural women's fiction, women's fiction

deep lit what's lit

‘Ashes of Gold’ Author J. Elle Shares How She Crafted ‘Wings of Ebony’ Fantasy YA Series With Black Duality in Mind

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date February 28, 2022

Fantasy young adult author J. Elle is marking the end of her Wings of Ebony duology about a Black teen girl from Houston who’s on a mission to understand her bloodline in the magical land of Ghizon.

Ashes of Gold, published by Denene Millner Books and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, came out last month continuing the story of Rue, raised in Houston with her younger sister by their late mother, who must follow her destiny in her father’s homeland of Ghizon and save her magic-possessing people from destruction.

But readers don’t have to wait long to read more of J. Elle’s work. Her middle grade fantasy YA duology, A Taste of Magic, will be published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books this summer.

The first book in the series will introduce us to 12-year-old Kyana, a Black girl who’s recently learned she’s a witch and becomes a student at the Park Row Magic Academy hidden behind a beauty shop. Once she realizes redistricting and gentrification will close the shop, she fights to keep it open.

J. Elle talks to she lit about anticipating the debut of her middle grade duology, owning the “inner city fantasy” subgenre in the increasingly diverse fantasy YA genre, and transitioning from a teacher whose book pitch was discovered by literary agents on Twitter to teaching books she’s written in the classroom. Check out the conversation below:

she lit: Your YA duology features Rue, a Black girl from Houston’s Third Ward, who travels to the magical land of Ghizon to fulfill her birthright. How did you come up with the subgenre of an “inner-city fantasy” and what inspired you to make this character bicultural struggling to exist between two worlds?

J. Elle: The aesthetic of the story honestly came to me as I tried to make a fantasy world I could see myself in. I wanted to craft a world that felt familiar to me and I grew up in an inner city community. I found when I left my community to attend college, the first in my family to do so, and get a job or move to other parts of the country, I felt like I was in an entirely different world sometimes. I wanted to parallel that dichotomy in this story and explore the many ways Black Americans might feel like they’re forced to live a double life when they’re in spaces that aren’t inclusive.

she lit: You’ve said Rue’s background has elements of your own. Without giving spoilers, is there a scene in Ashes of Gold that you wrote based on a particular experience?

J. Elle: Most of Ashes of Gold takes place on the magical island of Ghizon, but there is a moment in the book where Rue returns to East Row that is reminiscent of how it felt when I’d come home from college. It was nostalgic and quite special to be able to explore the ways being able to connect with home is an affirming experience.

she lit: How would you describe Rue’s character development in Ashes of Gold compared to Wings of Ebony?

J. Elle: Rue’s view of herself changes from the start of Ashes to the end. She has a definitive assumption about what she is capable of and the journey she goes on shows her she is capable of—and worthy of—much more than she thinks. It was a challenging book to write because book one, Wings of Ebony, leaves off with Rue seemingly unstoppable. But she had plenty of room to still grow. I just had to dig in to find it.

she lit: In both books, Rue has a longing to protect her Houston family and her fellow Ghizonis. What do young readers usually tell you about how they relate to this balance of supporting family and community?

J. Elle: I’ve had readers tell me the idea of not wanting to let family down really resonated with them. So many of us carry the pressures of supporting those who came before us. I was really glad to hear readers were able to see their lived experiences reflected here.

she lit: How would you describe the transition of being a teacher then becoming an author who is teaching through your books?

J. Elle: It was really interesting! I miss the way I could read kids’ faces as I stood in front of them teaching a concept. I loved seeing the light bulb click, hearing their opinions. When I write books, I’m sending my words out in the world for students to consume on their own. And so I miss hearing from them! Seeing their faces as they read! I try to do as many school visits as I can because I just love working with students so much.

she lit: With your passion in creating characters that kids can relate to, what are your concerns about more and more diverse YA books, many by Black authors, being banned from schools and libraries across the country?

J. Elle: Book banning is deeply grieving. When has the government trying to control the narrative of history taught in school ever gone well? Creating freethinkers is the purpose of education. Students who can reason and analyze and interpret with the rich perspective they bring to the table. The beauty of this country is “supposed to be” its freedom of ideas. But that grates against the actual picture of what’s happening with book banning all over the country. I am consoled, however, knowing that books in schools are only one way kids access books. I am hoping to see communities band together to exercise their constitutional right to read whatever they choose. There’s much more I could say here, but I’ll wrap up by offering this small encouragement: I believe in our kids. I believe in the relentless persistence of their curiosity, the connectedness they cling to nowadays via social media, and their spirit, their heart. Tell a kid in school something is forbidden, they’re only going to want it more. The banners will fail. Look at history.

she lit: What’s it like working with accomplished author and editor Denene Millner and having your duology under her imprint?

J. Elle: It was a true privilege to work with Denene. She brought such a needed eye to my story and helped me contextualize the themes I wanted to explore with the nuance I needed. I’ll forever be grateful for her seeing me in her inbox and saying, yes. It changed my life.

she lit: Your book series was discovered through the literary pitch competition #DVPit. What do you think was the secret sauce that made your successful tweet stand out for agents?

J. Elle: Strong comparison titles and a fresh hook help pitches stand out. My comps were The Hate U Give meets Wonder Woman, which aesthetically is incredibly fresh. There’s no guarantee with contests of course and what’s “fresh” is a bit nebulous at times to figure out. But running a pitch by a few people who don’t know what the story about can be a fun way to see if your tweet feels fresh and engaging.

she lit: You’re promoting Ashes of Gold and the end of the Wings of Ebony duology. What can you reveal about your next duology, A Taste of Magic, and how does the Park Row Magic Academy compare to Ghizon?

J. Elle: A Taste of Magic is about 12-year-old Kyana who must cook up some magic to save her magic school from the effects of gentrification. It’s a delightful middle grade story so the biggest difference is the age range and tone. Tonally it’s much more lighthearted and funny than Wings of Ebony. My YA tends to be a bit grittier and dark. A Taste of Magic is for any age, but I’ve tried to target 9-12 year olds with Kyana’s voice and sensibilities. I’m so excited for readers to meet Kyana!

book reviews

Book Review: ‘Linden Hills’ by Gloria Naylor

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date February 25, 2022

Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor explores the rise of a Black suburb and how the residents sacrifice so much to live at the lowest elevation to flaunt their wealth.

The community of Linden Hills was created by Luther Nedeed’s “double great-grandfather” who has the same name. The rumor around town is the original Luther Nedeed sold his wife and six children into slavery to get the money to buy the hilly land that nearby White residents found unlivable. But the original Luther Nedeed set out to build a community that lasted generations with the current Luther Nedeed approving all the residents with a contract. If the residents fail to live up to the terms in the contract, then they’re asked to leave the elusive Linden Hills. But residents keep coming to the master-planned community the moment they amass enough money. They also try to get closer to Nedeed’s grand cabin and the funeral parlor he owns. If their home is closer to the man who pulls the strings in town, then they’re considered the most important residents in town as well.

The story follows two twentysomething handymen, Lester and Willie. Lester lives in Linden Hills proper, but on the edge of town in a small home that doesn’t meet the standards of most of the homes in the area. Willie lives outside of Linden Hills with his family in low-income housing. They team up to fulfill jobs around Linden Hills to multiply their money for holiday gifts, with Willie opting to stay with Lester the week leading up to Christmas. But something doesn’t sit well with Willie. He’s noticing the quirks of the average Linden Hills resident.

Willie and Lester work the wedding of the year of Winston Alcott, a rising businessman who feels he must get married to succeed in Linden Hills. Or that’s what Luther Nedeed is telling him. When Willie and Lester listen to Luther Nedeed talk on stage at the wedding, Willie gets a bad feeling about the man who serves as the face of Linden Hills.

The more jobs the handymen do in the span of five days, the more they come across Luther Nedeed. As Luther’s eerie presence marks the scenes where they work, the situations with the residents Willie and Lester are helping seem to worsen. Willie tries to make sense of it as he and his friend witness the ultimate sacrifice residents take to live up to Linden Hills’ expectations.

With chapters split into full days from Dec. 19 to Christmas Eve on Dec. 24, the book becomes unputdownable with easing into the narratives of neighbors weaved together through the eyes of Willie and Lester. We meet characters desperate to keep their economic stature in order to move on up in Linden Hills. The higher on the hill, the higher the respect, but in this case, residents want to move down to the center of the hill where the Nedeed cabin and mortuary sits. They don’t realize they’re physically being dragged downward instead of upward.

The downward pull is supposed to represent hell for these residents. They’ve signed their names to contracts to keep homes until infinity, but if they break any rules, then the contracts are nullified by Luther Nedeed himself. The book adapts the 14th century epic Inferno by poet Dante Alighieri, which depicts nine circles of hell: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The Linden Hills residents are socially climbing so high that they don’t realize downfall is the only place left to go when the obsession for riches and power overcomes them.

A theme in the book is the absence of women. There are several references to funerals happening in Linden Hills of women and husbands who had lost their wives years prior. We meet Laurel Dumont, a successful woman separated from her husband. She summers in Linden Hills as a child who loves to swim with her grandmother. But the moment Luther Nedeed finds out Laurel’s husband has filed for divorce, he threatens to take away her home because it wasn’t in the contract for her to live in the home without her husband. Also an interwoven perspective is that of Luther Nedeed’s wife, who nobody ever sees because she’s trapped in the basement. Luther Nedeed carries on business in town and lies about his wife’s whereabouts, knowing that nobody will investigate further because of the power he possesses over the town and its residents. He creates a patriarchal society without anyone realizing it because they’re so consumed by their financial worth.

Overall, the novel gives us a chilling look into a fictional Black suburb built on wealth and how residents only care about accumulating more wealth to move closer to the most powerful resident. The characters are blind to their obsession with money and to their worship of Luther Nedeed. Author Gloria Naylor started writing this book for her master’s thesis examining the Black middle class at Yale University under the guidance of Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. Linden Hills is a stark difference from her award-winning debut novel The Women of Brewster Place but maintains the narrative of a community making sense of the socioeconomic elements that went into its creation. The way she describes Linden Hills as a haven for Black residents is in reality a different kind of hell shows the duality of how we see our communities. It could be safe, but your life could be in danger because of other circumstances that you may have overlooked in search of calling a place home.

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Tags african-american fiction, black fiction, black women authors, black women writers, book club pick, book club picks, book review, book reviews, fiction, fictional authors, fictional writers, gloria naylor, linden hills, she lit book club

what's lit

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

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date February 13, 2022

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.

Tags biracial women authors, biracial women writers, black women authors, black women writers, children's books, children's literature, fresh prince of bel-air, karyn parsons, kidlit, literary nonprofits, little brown and company, sweet blackberry

book reviews

Book Review: ‘Carefree Black Girls’ by Zeba Blay

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date February 12, 2022

Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture by Carefree Black Girls Zeba Blay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay examines how a viral hashtag focused on Black females living their truths forces the author to revisit periods of pop culture history where the notion of being a carefree Black girl actually comes with some hard truths.

Yet the culture that Black women pour talents and their creativity into, the culture that emulates Black women, steals from Black women, needs Black women, is the same culture that belittles Black women, excludes Black women, ignores Black women.

Culture critic Zeba Blay coined the phrase #carefreeblackgirl in 2013 as “a way to carve out a space of celebration and freedom for Black women online.” She studies how the hashtag evolved in the chapter “Free of Cares,” starting with a phrase of the early twentieth century: “I’m free, white, and 21!” This phrase became a Hollywood catchphrase between the 1920s and 1940s with Black journalists at the time criticizing the phrase as perpetuating White supremacy since being White equates freedom, which is the untrue experience to groups who are not considered White. Though the term falls out of vernacular, the author sees the phrase still play out today from Sex and the City to the modern-day Karens quick to call the police on anyone who’s Black. And even the phrase “carefree Black girl” takes a life of its own where it seems to easily be bestowed upon lighter-skinned, thin Black actresses such as Zendaya and Yara Shahidi while Black critics argue Black females will never have the comfort to be carefree in a Eurocentric society. The phrase even derives from fellow Black writer Collier Meyerson’s Tumblr blog called “Carefree White Girls” that featured White female celebrities from Taylor Swift to Zooey Deschanel who epitomize the “deification of white womanhood.”

The first chapter “Bodies” explores how the Black female body is berated constantly from the Middle Passage to the present. Lizzo and her body is the highlight of the chapter, particularly a moment in April 2020 when the pop star was twerking for a charity “dance-a-thon” hosted via social media by Diddy to raise money for people affected by COVID-19. Once Lizzo begins twerking, Diddy tells her to stop because the watchers need family-friendly entertainment, especially on Easter Sunday. Later in the Instagram live special, reality TV star Draya Michele, who’s thinner and lighter-skinned, begins twerking without any protest. Many think it’s fatphobic for Lizzo to be told to not twerk in public. Others berate Lizzo all the time for revealing her body on social media every chance she gets. The author also shows how Lizzo announced she would be participating in a smoothie detox and points out how White female fat-positive bloggers accused Lizzo of being fatphobic.

The conversation on Lizzo turns to the 1990s portrayal of Countess Vaughn on the hit show Moesha about a Black girl growing up in South Los Angeles. Countess played opposite pop star Brandy’s Moesha as best friend Kim Parker. Her weight becomes a constant punchline, many realize after reliving the show twenty years later when its August 2020 debut on Netflix alarms Black Twitter as tweeters share the collective disgust. The author even calls out the desexualization of fat Black women in entertainment. She points to the portrayal of Kelli, played by Natasha Rothwell, on HBO’s Insecure, where explicit sex scenes are a constant but never feature Kelli. The character talks about her sexual romps, but we never see them or meet her lovers. In the recent series finale, Kelli announces she’s having a baby with a character the audience barely knows because her romantic love growth is never shown on screen compared to the other three main female leads.

The author puts a recent moment like Lizzo’s twerking for COVID-19 relief under a microscope and another moment from a generation ago about Kim Parker’s treatment from her so-called friends on her weight. Then there’s self-reflection as the author views how hard it is to accept her own body thanks to the Eurocentric beauty standard where her body, Lizzo’s body, Countess’ body are unacceptable, and the fact that they are living in their body is too much for many people to accept.

In “Strong Black Lead” playing on Netflix’s name for Black programming, the author details her mental health struggles including suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts. (The book comes with a trigger warning in the beginning.) What she was going through materialized in her writings at the time as she pondered how she was really helping readers then with sharing her draining experiences. It makes her think of other Black women in her life who have struggled but are determined to “stay strong.” The strong Black female trope is examined with calling out somewhat beloved characters such as Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope on the Shonda Rhimes-helmed political TV drama Scandal to Viola Davis’ Aibileen Clark in the film The Help that many view as problematic with the White savior theme.

Overall, the book is like reading viral pop culture tweets coming from Black Twitter and getting the context that you may never think to reference as the reason why you would like such tweets. The content dives deeper with making comparisons between famous Black women living the height of celebrity now to those who lived at the height in yesteryears. The author shows how the battle is the same, rooted in underappreciation for the Black female’s talent whereas a non-Black female’s talent may receive better treatment over her weight, her age, her appearance. It’s amazing to see the author tie in so many current events with past events and pick them apart to study the relevance and the definition of being a carefree Black girl.

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Tags black women authors, black women writers, book review, book reviews, carefree black girls, essay collection, essay collections, essayists, memoirists, memoirs, nonfiction, pop culture book, pop culture books, zeba blay

book reviews

Book Review: ‘Bone Black’ by bell hooks

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date January 28, 2022

Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood by bell hooks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bone Black by bell hooks is a raw narrative of a Black girl navigating a world that seems to not be able to accept who she is.

bell hooks’ girlhood memoir starts in the countryside of Kentucky where the author is given a keepsake from her late grandmother and sensing the talk around why she gets the beaded purse when she wasn’t her grandmother’s favorite, nor her mother’s favorite. The book opens with a foreword emphasizing how the author’s behavior as a Black girl among six daughters and a son in a poor family came off as rebellious as she pushed against the frustration her family felt for not being able to understand her behavior.

She was sent to bed without dinner. She was told to stop crying, to make no sound or she would be whipped more. No one could talk to her and she could talk to no one. She could hear him telling the mama that the girl had too much spirit, that she had to learn to mind, that that spirit had to be broken.

The main theme throughout the memoir is the loneliness she feels within her family. She is considered the bad girl in the house, and that accusation eats away at her though she tries to conceal it through finding her comfort in raising her voice. She asks her family for a Black doll. Instead of happiness that she wants a doll that looks like her, she’s met with aggression; the White dolls are cheaper and easier to find. But somehow she gets her Black doll, Baby. This example shows bell’s young self fighting for what she wants, something that shouldn’t be a hassle, but her family processes her asking for a Black doll as a hassle. And those conflicting perspectives make bell look like the “problem child.”

She wants to express herself—to speak her mind. To them it is just talking back. Each time she opens her mouth she risks punishment. They punish her so often she feels they persecute her.

Backtalk is a cornerstone of one of her books, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black , that explores the concept as a way to silence people, especially people of color, who have been taught to stay quiet and not talk to others with equal authority. In her memoir, her family targets her for backtalk, but she feels she’s just expressing her thoughts. Because of her tongue, her family brands her in essence an “old soul,” or how she puts it as an “old woman born again in a young girl’s body.” How she speaks seems to scare her family, according to her, to the point she is believed to be a witch. That leads to her being given a book of fairy tales that describe old female characters as cannibalistic and evil. But a book in her hands transports her to another world, a world where she doesn’t have to be with her family. And reading so much inspires her to start writing.

Loneliness brings me to the edge of what I know. My soul is dark like the inner world of the cave—bone black. I have been drowning in that blackness. Like quicksand it sucks me in and keeps me there in the space of all my pain.

The color black is a recurring theme. Not necessarily about race, but more about the darkness she feels as being treated like she’s too different to understand. “Bone black” is a color she learns about in art class. She defines it as “a black carbonaceous substance obtained by calcifying bones in closed vessels.” To burn bones into ash is like disappearing altogether. Her art teacher allows her to paint with all the black she wants. Her mother doesn’t allow her to wear black because it’s a color only for women. bell rebels against this notion, but it becomes a point of contention between her and her mother. While her mother may not think it’s appropriate for a girl to wear black, bell thinks she should be able to express herself the way she wants.

Overall, the memoir, told mostly in third person, observes everyday acts and unpeels the trauma of a Black girl trying to use her voice when it’s restrained by others. The restraint becomes overwhelming, as in she knows her faith in believing her voice could be stomped out, and that conjures feelings of invisibility and unimportance. Instead of her voice being valued, it’s devalued with her family saying she’s too weird, incomprehensible. Though it’s set in the 1950s and 1960s in rural Kentucky, the pain points of being misunderstood, being silenced, being depressed, being poor, being female, being Black resonate beyond its time, unfortunately since these issues remain commonplace for many children in American households. The writing is simple, but every word conveys more meaning than what meets the eye.

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Tags bell hooks, black female authors, black female writers, black women authors, black women writers, bone black, book review, book reviews, cultural memoirs, memoirists, memoirs, nonfiction, she lit book club

what's lit

Sourcebooks, Ebony Publishing Partner to Distribute Books by Black Authors

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date January 24, 2022

Indie publisher Sourcebooks has teamed up with Ebony Magazine Publishing of the renowned Black media brand to produce adult fiction and nonfiction books.

Together, Sourcebooks and Ebony plan to publish four to eight books a year, first starting with Black Hollywood: Reimagining Iconic Movie Moments by photographer Carell Augustus. The photography book will come out in October and feature images of Black actors from Vanessa L. Williams as Cleopatra to Vivica A. Fox as Veronica Lake. Upcoming fiction includes the first book in the crime thriller Martyr Maker series originally self-published by actor Eriq La Salle.

“It’s wonderful to partner with the forward-thinking team at Sourcebooks,” said Lavaille Lavette, president and publisher of Ebony Magazine Publishing, in a statement. “This collaboration with our flagship imprint Ebony Magazine Publishing will celebrate the broad spectrum of Black voices through powerful fiction and nonfiction stories with authors who represent and speak to the full spectrum of our culture.”

Ebony’s publishing arm focuses on stories in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, culture, and children’s literature through its imprints Ebony Classics, Ebony 2.0., Ebony Voices, and Ebony Jr. It’s also home to the Ebony Book Club.

Helmed by CEO and publisher Dominique Raccah, Sourcebooks is one of the largest woman-owned publishers based in the Chicago area that specializes in young adult, fantasy, mystery and crime, thriller and suspense, diverse literature, LGBTQ+ literature, and children’s literature.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with EBONY to showcase the extraordinary work of Black authors and celebrate Black stories,” Dominique said in the statement. “Books change lives, and Ebony Magazine Publishing will be life-changing for authors and readers alike.”

Tags black female authors, black female writers, black fiction, black literature, black women authors, black women writers, ebony magazine publishing, indie publishing, publishers, publishing, sourcebooks fire

what's lit

Activist-Author Kimberly Jones Promotes ‘How We Can Win’ After Viral Speech

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date January 20, 2022

In summer 2020, author Kimberly Jones was known for her young adult novel, I’m Not Dying with You Tonight, co-authored with Gilly Segal. At a protest in Atlanta in the aftermath of George Floyd‘s murder, she broke down the racial inequities plaguing Black communities in a six-minute viral video that has now inspired a new book.

How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That’s Rigged, out this week, explores systemic racism and the economic disparities holding back Black Americans. Henry Holt and Co. is the publisher.

In the video that was viewed by millions across social media platforms, a quote about comparing the socioeconomic factors at play with the game of Monopoly resonated with viewers and contributed to the book’s title, she revealed in a CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil.

So if I played four hundred rounds of Monopoly with you and I had to play and give you every dime that I made, and then for fifty years, every time that I played, if you didn’t like what I did, you got to burn it like they did in Tulsa and like they did in Rosewood, how can you win? How can you win?
Kimberly Jones

Though some viewers stereotyped her as an angry Black woman for how she delivered her speech on camera in 2020, Kimberly called it “righteous anger.”

“I think sometimes in righteous anger you get to express to people your pain, and I think that’s what people saw,” she said on the news show. “Even though they saw an angry woman, they saw a hurt woman, so they felt that and they were like, ‘Omigod, the pain is visible.'”

She also explained that viewers had reached out to her and said her delivery in the video enlivened the argument well enough to the point they forwarded it to their loved ones in hopes they better understand systemic racism.

“There’s no way to nurture empathy in people if they don’t know the full story,” she said. I think one of the greatest mistakes that we have made is we talk a lot about the miseducation of the Black child, but it’s really the miseducation of the American child that has allowed us to live in a way that we don’t have empathy for each other because it’s in that education, it’s in that knowledge that you can empathize.”

Kimberly teamed up with Gilly Segal a second time for the YA novel Why We Fly that came out last October from indie publisher Sourcebooks Fire.

Tags 2022 books, anti-racism books, author interview, black female authors, black female writers, black lives matter, black women authors, black women writers, george floyd, gilly segal, henry holt and company, how we can win, i'm not dying with you tonight, kimberly jones, nonfiction, sourcebooks fire, why we fly

book reviews

Book Review: ‘Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be’ by Nichole Perkins

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date January 14, 2022

Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins is a meaty biographical essay collection following a writer through her family trauma, romance drama, and the pop culture threads that color every moment.

Images of white girls in love came easily, but everywhere I turned, Black girls were warned.

“Fast” examines the adolescent woes of being a girl labeled by her hormones and where they lead her. The author talks about the warnings that lurked around every corner, seeing the caution her sister Izzie had to take coming of age in the 1980s to their mother starting the family in high school. When the author’s classmates become pregnant barely out of middle school, she writes about seeking distance from her pregnant friends and desiring love like the White girls she noticed finding love onscreen in the films she watched with Izzie.

In another early chapter called “The Women,” the author illustrates her relationships with the main women in her life: Izzie, their mother, her great-grandmother Muh’Deah, and her aunt C. She paints these women with extraordinary detail of life’s mundaneness such as Muh’Deah brushing her hair “using a pink Goody brush with white bristles” and recalling the first time she saw the matriarch herself let her hair down for a male neighbor. Her aunt C drives with both feet in case she has to press the brake for an emergency, but when she takes Nichole to the bookstore, the author for once doesn’t feel judged by her book choices and that means the world to her amid her parents’ divorce.

I didn’t want to bring any more attention to my lack of breasts or whatever else I thought was the marker of moving into womanhood. So when junior high hit, and my parents finally divorced, about three years after Control came out, I started adding more and more black clothing to my wardrobe.

The author’s fashion evolution starting in black is inspired by Janet Jackson, according to the chapter “Janet Jackson and the All-Black Uniform.” Janet’s 1986 independence anthem Control becomes the soundtrack of her parents’ fights as her mother plays the eponymous album’s lead single constantly. The pop star’s all-black uniform choice catches the author’s attention, and she adopts it as her own uniform as she hides her changing body to feel comfortable. Then she notices Janet evolve as an artist via adding colors into her wardrobe. How the author goes over her family’s situation to her own situation playing to the tune of Janet’s iconic song stresses the pop culture impact in her life.

The television show Bones helped pull me from an especially aggressive depressive moment in my life, but Frasier is what I use as a regular antidepressant.

Bingeing TV is a theme in two separate chapters where she discusses how the two mainstream shows targeted to mainly White audiences—one a comedy and the other a drama—helped her through transitions that also include health issues from living with irritable bowel syndrome after being treated for a ruptured spleen. Even in “HBCUs Taught Me,” she absorbs lessons from the 1988 Spike Lee film School Daze and the 1987-1993 NBC sitcom A Different World that brings her to Dillard University in New Orleans, despite being a Nashville native growing up adjacent to HBCUs Fisk University and Tennessee State University.

As she revisits her family life and her home life in different stages, the author is honest about her misadventures of finding love and being afraid she’ll never find it. “My Kameelah-Ass List” examines the lengthy list of qualities she wants in a man, inspired by Real World cast member Kameelah Phillips in the reality show’s 1997 season in Boston. The author writes how Kameelah had 200 items on her list in what she wanted in a man, including his weight and not having children. So the author goes about making her own list, which eventually turns into an internet chatroom magnet for opinions on judging a man with a list when a woman may not live up to the man’s standards either. Kameelah, now an ob-gyn who recently celebrated her 10th wedding anniversary, may have been successful with her list, but the author, on the other hand, only got to 86 items she wanted in a man that she lists in the book.

Overall, the blend of topics are entertaining and eye-opening as she dissects what she learned from her experiences and how societal misconceptions affect those experiences like with her familial relationships, romantic relationships, and friendships in real life and online. The narrator expresses through the essays her fear of not getting everything she wants, but as she ages, that fear morphs yet doesn’t impede her growth. From a Black girl from Nashville who grew up to be a writer, the stories are relatable as they convey her growing pains.

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Tags black women authors, black women writers, book review, book reviews, essay collection, essay collections, essayists, grand central publishing, memoirists, memoirs, nichole perkins, sometimes i trip on how happy we could be

what's lit

Meena Harris Adds Phenomenal Book Club to Growing Multimedia Portfolio

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date December 28, 2021

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.

film reviews

Simon & Schuster Publisher’s Memoir Comes to Life in ‘Journal for Jordan’

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date December 24, 2021

Commercials for the Christmas opening of the film A Journal for Jordan shows a smiling Michael B. Jordan in Army fatigues and boasts Denzel Washington as the director, but many in the bookish community might not realize it’s the story of a literary industry executive.

Dana Canedy was named senior vice president and publisher at Simon & Schuster in July 2020 as U.S. companies focused on elevating their diversity and inclusion promises after the police murder of George Floyd. The New York Times 20-year veteran, former Pulitzer Prize administrator, and Pulitzer Prize winner wrote A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor in 2008 about her fiancé, U.S. Army First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, who died in combat in Iraq and left a journal for their son Jordan. The book is published by Penguin Random House’s imprint Crown Publishing Group.

The daughter of an Army drill sergeant, Dana and her family lived near the Fort Knox base in Kentucky. On Father’s Day 1998 while visiting her family, she meets Charles and is left smitten. But the feeling fizzles as she heads back to New York to work at the Times and live her single metropolitan lifestyle. Then her father tells her he gave her contact info to Charles. Once she and Charles connect, sparks fly. They spend years hopscotching the country for their jobs, as Dana works at other Times offices and Charles is stationed on other bases. After a few years, they are engaged and have a baby on the way. It’s the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom when Charles is called to duty. He dies after a bomb explodes underneath his armored vehicle in October 2006 when Jordan is six months old.

From the very first pages, Dana writes about the imperfection of her relationship with Charles. She does an excellent job describing their shortcomings with developing a relationship as a high-profile Black journalist with a dedicated military man. There is a frustration that Charles won’t leave his post in Iraq until his team returns safely home, and Dana describes that heartbreak that her fiancé won’t stay home for their newborn son.

“He was so devoted to his troops, many just out of high school, that he bailed them out of jail, taught them to balance their checkbooks, and even advised them about birth control,” she writes in the book. “But I struggled to understand what motivated the man who had for so long dreamed of your birth but chose to miss it because he believed his soldiers needed him more.”

The book, like the film, revolves around the journal Charles writes for his unborn son. Interwoven between Dana’s descriptions of their situations, Charles’ passages from the journal he leaves for Jordan tell the story from both sides with gems of wisdom the parents hope their son will understand someday.

Dana wrote an essay this week for the Times about the trauma reliving her grief onscreen. “So, yes, I have answers to the obvious questions about my life being turned into a movie,” she writes. “Ask me about the behind-the-scenes part and it’s harder to find the words to describe it. I am trying to take it all in and appreciate it. But as the movie rolls out nationwide, I am not sleeping well and am overwrought at times.”

She continues about her lack of sleep and the reenacted scenes affecting her. “While I am often so exhausted that my exercise bike has become an expensive clothing rack, some nights I fight sleep to keep the nightmares away,” she writes. “After Denzel sat with me for a private screening of our film, I dreamed I was fighting in the war alongside Charles and watched helplessly as he was shot dead in a hail of gunfire. Even the excitement of planning the premiere brought pangs of pain.”

Jordan is now 15 years old, and she says in the essay she worries about the impact of the story on her son and that he covered his eyes during the romantic scenes.

In the film, The Photograph‘s Chanté Adams plays Dana, and Michael B. Jordan plays Charles and serves as a producer alongside director Denzel.

A Journal for Jordan opens in theaters Christmas Day.

Tags a journal for jordan, black women authors, black women writers, book to film, crown publishing group, dana canedy, deep lit, journalist authors, journalist books, media memoirs, memoirists, memoirs, military books, penguin random house, simon & schuster

book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Pursuit of Porsha’ by Porsha Williams

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date December 13, 2021

The Pursuit of Porsha: How I Grew Into My Power and Purpose by Porsha Williams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

The Pursuit of Porsha by Porsha Williams takes us on the journey of what made one of the most popular real housewives who she is.

Entrapment in abusive and toxic relationships with men seems to be the main traumatic point of The Real Housewives of Atlanta star’s story from how her father treated her before his untimely death to how her ex-husband treated her behind the cameras.

Atlanta born and raised, Porsha Williams starts her story on how she always envisioned herself in front of the camera as a way to escape her lingering depression and suicidal thoughts. Growing up, she lives with her mother Ms. Diane, a familiar face on the reality show, and her older brother Hosea. Her father also named Hosea like her grandfather, the civil rights activist who worked alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., lives with his second wife and other family. Whenever Porsha and her brother visits their father, sometimes their father punishes them by forcing them into a basement or another room. Though she says the door would never be locked, Porsha feels like she can’t move. On one occasion, she tells her stepmother that her father has a girlfriend since her father would take her when he’d hang out with the girlfriend. This results in a punishment where she’s left in the car for hours. She says her father would forget he’s punishing her and her siblings, but that frozen feeling stays with her in future relationships with men.

When you’re that young, watching the man you love with your entire miniature heart give his love to someone other than your mom, it changes how you think about love and what you expect from it. It changes what you think is up and what you think is down, and suddenly life seems a bit more sideways.

The entrapment follows her when she becomes involved with the recently convicted sex trafficker R. Kelly. After being recruited from a nightclub, Porsha hops on the plane to the R&B singer’s Illinois estate for what she thinks is a recording session. Like the victims’ testimonies in the docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, Porsha describes being sold the falsehood of a singing career to becoming romantically involved with the manipulative man. He, too, leaves her trapped in bedrooms, where she’s not given food or water as a result of him forgetting about her.

Besides physical entrapment, Porsha discusses the highs and mostly lows of her two-year marriage to former footballer Kordell Stewart. Their relationship is first documented on the fifth season of RHOA, Porsha’s debut season. In her memoir, Porsha admits the TV opportunity appeals to her as a way to make her husband proud. A daycare center owner at 24-years-old, Porsha is convinced to let go of her business and be a housewife. But, she says, everything she does is never enough for her husband as their marriage falls apart for millions of viewers to see.

I thought the cameras would be a good distraction from the very real problems we were facing in our marriage, but they weren’t distracting at all. If anything, they magnified the façade we had built brick by unsteady brick.

Porsha relives her first season, realizing everything she says will be scrutinized to the max. Some famous slip-of-the-tongue remarks had viewers questioning her intelligence, and Porsha says she felt ashamed by her honest mistakes, especially while representing her family with civil rights advocacy roots.

After nine years on the show, Porsha has since left the Bravo series and now wears the title of civil rights activist in her own right. She documents in the book her journey from attending protests with her grandfather at six-years-old and witnessing racism firsthand to taking charge at the George Floyd protests last year that soon involved countless other Black people who had lost their lives to racist violence. She’s been tear gassed and arrested on her new crusade, but she says the strength she musters to go out and fight comes from protecting her baby daughter Pilar.

My daughter saved my life. I’ve dealt with depression on and off my entire life. I’ve never been clinically diagnosed, but I know what depression looks like. I know what it feels like. It’s almost like a wave drifting on the shore; I can see it out near the horizon, steadily coming toward me until it overtakes me and I have no choice but to give in to it.

Mental health is a topic that hits readers in the first several pages as a young Porsha says she has unexplainable suicidal thoughts and is taken to a therapist by her mother to discuss her feelings. She recounts a suicidal attempt as a preteen due to feeling out of place at school. The childhood depression evolves with her as she struggles to find relationships she can trust. Porsha emphasizes the pursuit of herself as discovering her self-worth and taking responsibility for her actions.

The toxic relationships with men dominate the book. In the audiobook version of the memoir, Porsha’s younger half-sister Lauren, who also appears on the reality show, takes the reins for two chapters describing some of the difficult relationships. In those situations, Porsha also narrates her uneasy path to motherhood from having an abortion to experiencing infertility due to fibroids. She says the men, who seem loving to her at first, flip on her into unrecognizable monsters, a recurring theme.

Overall, the book gives us a front row seat to Porsha’s World with her longing to be a star to her actually becoming a star amid the obstacles that forced her to recognize her self-worth.

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Tags black women authors, black women writers, celebrity authors, celebrity writers, entertainment memoirs, memoirists, memoirs, porsha williams, real housewives, the pursuit of porsha

what's lit

‘Adventures of Qai Qai’ by Serena Williams Has the Power to Elevate Black Doll Sales

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date December 6, 2021

Tennis superstar Serena Williams recently announced that she is releasing a children’s book next year based on the adventures of her daughter Olympia’s doll Qai Qai. Black doll sales have the potential to be positively impacted by this news alone as we approach another pandemic holiday season.

What started as cute photos of Olympia playing with her real-life version of Qai Qai, pronounced kway-kway, has evolved into an empire that digitally animates the milk chocolate-skinned, doe-eyed doll on social media and replicates the doll for buyers online. Now, the moneymaking doll will be featured in The Adventures of Qai Qai written by Serena, illustrated by Yesenia Moises, and co-edited by Foyinsi Adegbonmire at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group imprint Feiwel and Friends. The book will go on sale in September 2022.

“Since realizing @RealQaiQai’s ability to spread joy to our own family and also millions of others around the world, we’ve wanted to tell her story in every way possible,” Serena posted on Instagram. “We are so proud to announce Qai Qai’s first book, ‘The Adventures of Qai Qai,’ a story about the power of friendship and imagination.” The book is a story about the power of friendship and imagination, she adds in the caption.

Technology brings doll alive

Qai Qai has 3.2 million followers on TikTok, 353,000 followers on Instagram, and 25,500 followers on Twitter. Her interactive website sells merch from mugs to T-shirts and the reproduction of Olympia’s doll retailing for $30 exclusively on Amazon.com. She recreates your favorite memes and TikToks and roots for Serena on the sidelines of tennis matches.

Joining social media in 2018 a year after Olympia’s birth, Qai Qai was your average plastic doll abandoned in such places as on the sidewalk and between couch cushions, even sporting a purple cast for a broken leg. In November 2018, the doll became digitized and started to make more appearances than the real doll.

Alexis Ohanian, Serena’s husband and Olympia’s father, co-founded Reddit. His internet business connections have brought Qai Qai alive in a way we’ve never seen an independent Black doll be portrayed before.

The Black doll evolution

The doll industry in 2020 raked in $3.64 billion in the U.S., according to data from NPD Group, with nearly 11% growth from 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the toy industry overall since more families stayed at home and had to find more ways to entertain the kids.

Though data focused on the sale of Black dolls and other non-White dolls are hard to find, Black dolls have had a long history of being seen in a negative light.

In the 1930s, Black psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark handed Black children four dolls of varying light and dark complexions to choose which one was “nice” and which one was “bad.” Most of the children said the Black dolls were “bad,” and they saw themselves more in the White dolls. The infamous experiment showed that Black children were aware of the segregation and perceived inferiority impacting their communities.

The legacy of the experiment shows how racism in America affects girls who simply want to play with dolls. Today, Black dolls continue to evolve with more realistic Afrocentric features and accessories from Mattel implanting kinky hair into its Black Barbie dolls to the 1990s favorite Kenya doll that’s still available with her Kente outfits and hair lotion.

Serena’s family made the statement to not only have their biracial daughter play with a Black doll and share the fun with millions via social media but to create a character that’s building its own metaverse that now includes literature.

Tags black women authors, black women writers, children's books, children's literature, deep lit, feiwel and friends, kidlit, macmillan, serena williams, social media, the adventures of qai qai

what's lit

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

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 18, 2021

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.”

book reviews

Book Review: ‘Bamboozled by Jesus’ by Yvonne Orji

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 14, 2021

Bamboozled by Jesus: How God Tricked Me into the Life of My Dreams by Yvonne Orji

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

Bamboozled by Jesus by Yvonne Orji is a comedic memoir designed for the reader to recognize the little miracles that help you on your path.

The star of HBO’s Insecure, Yvonne Orji takes her love for Jesus Christ to new heights by sharing some of her profound moments that led her to Hollywood from growing up in suburban Maryland to Nigerian parents. She shares the wisdom she obtained from these minor and major blessings and how they kept her motivated to reach her dreams.

Being bamboozled by Jesus is low-key, the most frustratingly amazing thing you’ll ever experience. It ain’t always sexy, but it is always worth it. But don’t feel bad for wanting to tap out midway through. Even Jesus looked for an exit strategy. He straight up asked God, If there be any other way, let this cup pass me by. In other words, Fam, this ain’t it!

Her dreams of becoming a doctor are shaped by her parents’ medical careers but watching her aunt recover from an ectopic pregnancy motivated her even more. Until she fails organic chemistry in college. Yet college is also the place she realizes she isn’t as connected with Jesus the way she thought she was being raised Catholic. This stabilizes her religious path, where she famously promises to stay a virgin until marriage. Though she knew being a doctor was not in the cards, she still pursues a career in public health, which takes her to Africa for work. When she returns to the U.S., she is determined to break into entertainment with a move to New York City then to Los Angeles, where in both places she receives shelter and transportation from friends and acquaintances practically free of cost. She wins small screenwriting and stand-up comedy gigs that grow in momentum and leads to a tryout for her breakout role as Molly on Insecure.

The author’s religious schtick is sometimes entertaining and sometimes perplexing. Amid describing her transitions, she recounts Bible stories, more in a ratchet retelling that has you questioning if that’s what you read in the holy book or what she calls Da Good Book. But she’s trying to be funny and relate it to modern times, so it’s hard to fault her with that attempt. When she auditions for Insecure, she prays for the role but worries her prayers will clash with other actresses’ prayers since they too were Christian. But is it Christian to pray for others to be eliminated from the competition?

The cultural references take a backseat to the religious theme. Though she says she’s leaning into her “Nigerianness,” it would’ve been nice to get more of a setting of her upbringing in the U.S. juxtaposed with her family annual trips to Nigeria. And she makes a few wisecracks toward Ghana, which may be taken as funny or offensive depending on your ethnicity.

Overall, the book’s inspirational message gets tangled in the repackaged biblical stories and random references to drive her point home like that blurb about basketball player Jeremy Lin’s Linsanity phase. The concept is interesting, but it comes off as overdone in this case where the reader has to stay on their toes but may have lost the depth of the content. The book may be more enjoyable if you know your holy book stories à la the Bible versions and your pop cultural references to understand how the small steps lead to the bigger picture.

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Tags bamboozled by jesus, black women authors, black women writers, book review, book reviews, celebrity authors, celebrity writers, insecure, religious themes, self help books, spiritual books, worthy publishing, yvonne orji

film reviews

‘Passing’ Delves Into How Racial Identity Impacts the Life You Want

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 12, 2021

*Spoilers ahead! Read the book review on shelit.com and watch the film on Netflix or in select theaters*

Nella Larsen’s classic Passing is officially on the silver screen via Netflix telling the story of an ill-fated friendship between two fair-skinned Black women in 1920s Harlem that feels threatened with one woman assuming a White racial identity to fit in a racist society.

Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, and Alexander Skarsgård star in the film set in the Roaring Twenties amid the Harlem Renaissance, with Rebecca Hall making her directorial debut. Shot in black-and-white, the film emphasizes those colors in the racial context and how they threaten the lives of Tessa Thompson’s Irene Redfield and Ruth Negga’s Clare Kendry Bellew.

The story focuses on Irene and Clare reconnecting after they were separated as teenagers when Clare was sent away to live with her aunts after her father died. Living with her aunts, Clare learned how to pass as White and continued to do so in her marriage to international banker John Bellew while raising their daughter destined for boarding school in Switzerland. Irene is shocked Clare is living as a White woman, but she struggles with wondering what her life would be like if she passed. She’s decided to stay in Black Harlem with her Black family, her doctor husband Brian Redfield and their two sons. As both women wonder if the grass is greener on the other side, they realize the danger Clare has put herself in pretending to be what she’s not.

Tessa Thompson plays Irene Redfield, the main character we see struggle with the emotions of letting this new version of Clare back into her life. Clare was just a forgettable childhood friend when Irene runs into her at a fancy Chicago hotel. To escape scorching temperatures, Irene seeks refuge there, depending on her fair skin to pass as White, a tactic that works. It turns out Clare is passing as well but full-time.

Ruth Negga plays Clare Kendry Bellew, a Black woman hiding behind the visage of a White woman with her hard-to-miss dyed blonde hair and piled-on foundation to make her skin paler. When she spots Irene in the hotel’s tearoom, she sees an opportunity to connect with the Black community that she alienated long ago in an effort to forever live in carefree glamour. Except she knows she cannot be that carefree pretending to be White, yet she assumes the risk and sees if Irene could help her feel less lonely.

While the book spaces their run-in and their meeting with Clare’s husband, the film puts the two defining events together. Once Irene realizes she is talking to Clare, they head to Clare’s room to talk more in-depth about their lives thus far. In the room, Clare explains her life and entices Irene to start passing. She even mentions how pregnancy was so hard on her in fear her daughter would come out dark-skinned and her raising her daughter now in hopes she never finds out her ethnicity. Irene rebuffs, saying her husband is dark-skinned and so are her two boys. Clare apologizes, not realizing that her fellow fair-skinned friend did not take the same route. Then Clare’s husband, John Bellew, played by Alexander Skarsgård, comes into the room.

John calls Clare “Nig,” a shortened nickname from the n-word he bestowed upon her due to her tan. He claims Clare was “lily white” when they got married, but she’s been darkening ever since. To add insult to injury, he spews hate for Blacks and says Clare hates them even more. This, of course, makes Irene uncomfortable. She tries to get more answers for the root of this hate like if they know any Blacks, and the answers in the negative don’t satisfy Irene. She gets up and leaves.

André Holland plays Dr. Brian Redfield, Irene’s husband, who at first doesn’t want his wife to spend time with Clare because of the incident at the hotel. The conversation comes up again due to a letter from Clare that Irene doesn’t want to open. Brian opens it instead and mocks Clare’s cries of loneliness written on paper. But a few weeks later, Clare shows up at the Redfield residence in Black Harlem wondering why her letter went unanswered. There, Irene and Brian are forced to deal with Clare.

Though he did not want anything to do with Clare, Brian seems smitten with the charismatic Clare, who has heads turning everywhere she goes with the Redfields. Clare can finally be the socialite she wants to be since she’s with the Black elite and their White counterparts. Brian, on the other hand, can forget about his troubles of reading about lynchings in the South and educating his sons about the hatred toward their skin color. He wants to move out of the country to not be discriminated against for his race, but the idea hangs over him and Irene. To his wife, he seems unhappy in general, especially with Irene’s decision to avoid the lynching news at home, wanting to keep the boys innocent. With Clare, Brian looks like his frown has been turned upside down.

The pressure of dealing with Clare the “princess”—what White author Hugh Wentworth, played by Bill Camp, calls her at the social functions—gets to Irene, who confides in Hugh when Brian dances and converses with Clare. We first meet Hugh at a dance in a Cotton Club-like setting where Irene invites Clare for the first time. Clare is dancing with every Black man like Hugh’s White wife, and Hugh and Irene talk about exoticism, the reason these White women want to dance with Black men. Then he picks up that Clare is passing, as Irene doesn’t expressly say it, but they talk about why someone would pass. In another scene, when Irene is already distraught over her emotions of having Clare in her life, Hugh lies to protect Irene when she drops a porcelain teakettle. The disturbance stops the party momentarily, with Clare staring at Irene, taking a break from her conversation with Brian and other partygoers.

The more frustrated Clare becomes, the more depressed she is. While out shopping with her friend Felise, who in the book is described as having “golden” skin and “curly black Negro hair” and is played by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Irene bumps into John. He outstretches his hand, but Irene refuses and walks off. She tells Felise she met him the only time she passed as White. The details of Clare’s husband are omitted. But Irene knows that the jig is up for not only her but for Clare.

The ending that seems as rushed in the film as it is in the book shows the dire consequences following Clare at all times, and how she finally is found out by her husband, and that discovery leads to her demise. Irene opens the window moments before to smoke a cigarette when John is screaming to see his wife. Partygoers try to tell John his wife wouldn’t be there, but John sees “Nig” and goes after her. Clare positions herself in front of the window beside Irene as protection, but she edges even closer to the window. As John lunges toward Clare, Irene puts her arm across Clare’s waist. What looks like more protection also looks like a nudge. Either way, Clare tumbles stories down to her death. Clare is frozen while everyone else rushes outside. Having Clare dead in the snow is fitting; she was passing for White and now dies in a blanket of whiteness. The image of her body in the snow is the final shot from higher dimensions.

Ruth Negga plays Clare perfectly. From the piercing stares at Irene to the false upbeat attitude she exudes, Ruth gives Clare that mystery and that agitation the character feels in her life as a fake White woman alienating herself from her true identity, her true community. The first time we meet her reflects the scene of the book where Clare is staring at Irene. Seeing Clare onscreen compared to her description in the book is striking with the blonde hair and overdone face. Then, she calling Irene a nickname that sounds like it was bestowed upon her by Black folks shows an exuberant Clare who’s been looking for an outlet to her loneliness. The way Clare’s comfort and discomfort passes across Ruth’s facial expressions exhibits the emotional depth of not only pretending to be something you’re not, but feeling the pressure to pretend to be safe and still not feel safe in an era where Black people could not freely move around.

On the flip side, Tessa Thompson carries the Clare-induced uncertainty and anxiety in her facial features as Irene. Irene is scared she is going to lose her husband to Clare, her stature as a socialite to Clare, and her boys’ affection to Clare. Moments filled with these feelings in the film stick out, for example, with the boys, asking for Clare because Brian told them she’d be home. Irene is upset that Brian would tell them Clare would be there, seeing the excitement rev her family up so much for Clare, not her. In another scene, Clare befriends Zulena, the Redfields’ maid played by Ashley Ware Jenkins, and they bask in the wintry sunshine. Irene has to ask Zu a few times to take her bag of groceries when she walks in. Then, Irene heads upstairs with Clare following behind her. She tends to a flowerpot on her windowsill, but it falls from the second-story window and breaks outside. Irene is already feeling like things are breaking apart, but she has to pretend everything is alright to make sure Clare is comfortable.

Internet reaction shows some criticism over biracial actresses Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga playing the characters since for today’s standards they appear Black, and the characters are supposed to be fair enough to appear White. Others argue that the actresses’ complexions would’ve passed the brown paper bag test and allow them to pass as White. Either way, both the actresses performed superbly with showing the intricacies of race for Black women in particular who want to live their best lives in America. Though the story reflects a contemporary time from a century ago, the hardships remain today.

The film’s cast will be featured on Netflix Book Club‘s “But Have You Read the Book?” that will start streaming Nov. 16 on Netflix’s YouTube and Facebook channels and be hosted by Orange Is the New Black actress Uzo Aduba.

Tags black women authors, black women writers, book to film, book to tv, deep lit, film review, film reviews, nella larsen, netflix, netflix book club, passing, racial passing, ruth negga, tessa thompson

book reviews

Book Review: ‘Passing’ by Nella Larsen

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 12, 2021

Passing by Nella Larsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

Passing by Nella Larsen follows two fair-skinned Black women who reconnect as friends but sense danger every moment they spend together because one decides to pass as White and the other fears the consequences of her friend’s secret life.

White people were so stupid about such things for all that they usually asserted that they were able to tell; and by the most ridiculous means, fingernails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot. They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a Gypsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro. No, the woman sitting there staring at her couldn’t possibly know.

Irene Redfield goes into the Drayton in Chicago to escape the heat. She gets into the fancy hotel due to her complexion. She’s assumed White, so she keeps her head down and sips her tea. Until an unfamiliar woman comes up to her calling her by her childhood nickname ’Rene. It takes more conversation for Irene to realize she’s talking to Clare Kendry. They grew up together until Clare’s drunken father died and Clare was sent away to live with relatives. There, she began to pass as White leading her to have a White family who doesn’t know she’s Black. When Irene learns Clare is living her life as a White woman, she’s taken aback by the revelation. Irene lives in Harlem with her Black family, and walking into the Drayton is the only time she passed for White.

Catlike. Certainly that was the word which best described Clare Kendry, if any single word could describe her. Sometimes she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked.

As they try to rebuild their bond, they have trouble figuring out how each other fits into their lives. Irene can’t risk Clare being around her, her Black friends, and even her White friends in case someone realizes she’s passing. And Clare can’t risk anyone finding out she’s Black. The will-they, won’t-they friendship notches up when Clare shows up at Irene’s home in Black Harlem wondering why her friend hadn’t answered a letter she sent. That’s when Clare admits she misses the Black community and asks Irene to introduce her to the Redfields’ social circle. Irene obliges but knows Clare’s true racial identity could be exposed. She feels an inkling of guilt as opportunities open up for her to reveal Clare, whose charisma has sucked the air out of every room Irene is in. One major opportunity does open up, but as Irene wrestles with the idea to take it, she realizes Clare is already in grave danger.

The danger and fear rises in the portrayal of Clare’s marriage and Irene’s marriage. Clare’s racist husband John Bellew calls his wife Nig, a shortened version of the n-word he gave her in response to her tan. This repulses Irene and forces her to understand the danger not only outside in the world Clare has to deal with but the danger sleeping beside her at home. With Bellew’s temperament, the reader gets the assumed vision of Clare’s marriage that she purports as a perfect union.

On the other hand, Irene’s doctor husband, Brian, tells her to not get involved with Clare’s dangerous antics. We also see Irene’s desperation to read Brian’s distant emotions. He seems unhappy with their home life and the racist world they live in. When Clare enters the Redfields’ lives, Irene is hesitant to invite Clare to social functions whereas Brian, originally repelled by Clare, now is too eager to accompany Clare. This makes Irene even more fearful for her marriage and fearful for what she is capable of in imploding Clare’s life.

Sitting alone in the quiet living room in the pleasant fire-light, Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life, that she had not been born a Negro. For the first time she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was, she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one’s own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was a brutality, and undeserved.

Overall, the novel’s two main characters warring internally with themselves and each other over their racial identity brings other issues into the light. The story examines a friendship that isn’t meant to be reestablished as Irene, whose voice resonates more, and Clare, whose voice remains buried, question their race and the circumstances it has put them in. The novel, written in 1929, is in the same vein of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby yet doesn’t have the same stature in American literature. It shows two Black women instead striving for riches with Clare presenting herself as a White woman married to her White international banker husband as they prepare to send their daughter to boarding school in Switzerland; and Irene deciding to identify as Black in Black Harlem with her Black doctor husband and two sons and still having the means to afford a maid. Clare senses that Irene may not have as much money as her, but at least she has the freedom to be herself. It’s the themes of what is considered a luxurious life and what sacrifices have to be made in order to live that life that resonates a century later.

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Tags black fiction, black women authors, black women writers, book review, book reviews, contemporary novels, fiction, nella larsen, passing, racial passing

what's lit

Netflix Book Club to Discuss Nella Larsen Classic ‘Passing’ in Time for Film Release

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 10, 2021

Coining itself the home of the “world’s most talked-about book adaptations,” streaming giant Netflix is debuting a book club series hosted by a star of one of its first book-to-TV hits.

Orange Is the New Black star Uzo Aduba will host the Netflix Book Club‘s social series “But Have You Read the Book?” premiering Nov. 16 on streamer’s YouTube and Facebook channels. November’s book selection is Passing by Nella Larsen, which will also have a Nov. 10 book-to-film release on Netflix starring Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson.

The first book club episode will have Uzo interview the film’s stars and director Rebecca Hall.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked friends, ‘But have you read the book?’ So I’m excited to host Netflix Book Club and bring together loyal book fans, TV and movie obsessives and the creators behind their favorite stories,” Uzo said in a statement. “I can’t wait to dive deep into the creative process and what it takes to bring a book to life.”

Passing follows two Black women who are fair-skinned enough to pass as White. Clare Kendry sees her childhood friend Irene Redfield in a hotel, and they chat about what life has been like since their upbringing in Chicago. Irene quickly learns that Clare has been passing full-time as a White woman married to a White man who has no idea his wife is Black. With her complexion, Irene can pass, too, but she chooses to have her Black family and engage with the Black community she’s always known. Clare tries to convince Irene she is living the ideal life until Irene meets Clare’s bigoted husband and realizes the danger Clare has put herself in. Both women struggle to have each other in their lives in case anyone finds out their shared secret.

Nella Larsen, who was born in 1891 to a Black father from the Danish West Indies and a White mother from Denmark, was considered one of the most well-known female authors during the Harlem Renaissance. Passing, her second novel released in 1929 after her debut Quicksand, soon became a standout at the time in the elite arts community, rivaling the popularity of Zora Neale Hurston‘s 1937 classic Their Eyes Were Watching God. Nella received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a third novel in 1930, according to her current publisher Penguin Random House, but she couldn’t find a publisher. She died in 1964.

Passing also has enjoyed modern-day success thanks to the film and the best-selling gold of Brit Bennett’s 2019 literary fiction masterpiece The Vanishing Half about fair-skinned Black twin sisters who lead separate lives as one decides to live her life as a White woman. Brit, who recently had a book-signing cameo on HBO‘s Insecure, wrote the introduction to the newest copies of Passing. The Vanishing Half is being developed into a miniseries for HBO.

“From Bridgerton, To All the Boys and Sweet Magnolias to Queen’s Gambit, Unorthodox, Virgin River and of course Orange Is the New Black, Netflix loves bringing books to life on screen and creating conversation with passionate readers and fans,” said Netflix chief marketing officer Bozoma Saint John in a statement about the book club series. The marketing maven herself has a forthcoming book with Viking Books called The Urgent Life that will be focused on her life during and after her late husband’s cancer diagnosis.

Starbucks is partnering with Netflix to bring the book club to social media.

what's lit

Book Review: ‘You Got Anything Stronger?’ by Gabrielle Union

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date October 30, 2021

You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories by Gabrielle Union

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

You Got Anything Stronger? by Gabrielle Union picks up right where we leave off from her first autobiographical story collection and takes us on her adventure of learning from life’s most impactful moments.

Her 2017 memoir We’re Going to Need More Wine made headlines with the author’s admission of losing count of her numerous miscarriages. The second book begins with her fertility struggles and her decision to choose surrogacy. She takes us down the journey of selecting the right surrogate mother and how many women look for a surrogate by targeting Black and Brown women’s wombs to house their fetuses, which informs her decision of who will be the best vessel for her daughter Kaavia James.

The chapter highlights her continuous fertility struggles, including her adenomyosis diagnosis that comes after her in vitro fertilization attempts never worked successfully. And she addresses the hardship of trying to get pregnant while her basketballer husband Dwyane Wade had a baby with another woman during a time she calls a bad place in their relationship before marriage. She talks about the pain of not birthing a child as her partner can conceive a child—a topic she says she didn’t feel comfortable discussing in her previous book. We also revisit her rape in college when she was working at a Payless ShoeSource by following the aftermath and healing process as she stays glued to watching the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Surprisingly, one of the poignant chapters is a heartfelt letter dedicated to Isis, Gabrielle’s pivotal character in the 2000 cheerleader flick Bring It On. Isis leads the East Compton Clovers to victory after finding out the Rancho Carne Toros led by Kirsten Dunst’s character Torrance have copied the all-Black cheerleading team’s moves for years. The actress goes into the awkwardness of being the only Black person at the audition rehearsing stereotypical slang. Once she nabs the role along with Clover characters named Jenelope, Lava, and LaFred, played by the R&B girl group Blaque, Gabrielle finds herself every day editing the script to subtract the slang she knows wouldn’t come out of Isis’ mouth. She even reveals how she worked out a storyline for Isis to go to a top university, but it didn’t make the cut. Twenty years later, Isis is a mainstay on the top movie villains lists every year, a downer for Gabrielle who felt she let down Black teen girls by not making sure Isis deserved role model status. This motivates her to become a better role model for her daughters Kaavia and Zaya.

Her relationships with her daughters are interlaced in the stories. While she talks about her journey to mothering Kaavia, she also talks about her journey in understanding Zaya’s gender and sexual identity. She is a supportive stepmother with going to the school administrations whenever the family moves due to Dwyane’s basketball career to explain Zaya’s preferences. Those preferences evolve until Zaya realizes she is a transgender girl. And with that evolution comes the family’s evolution in creating a safe space for Zaya and asking others to do the same.

Stories with heartache sit between comedic chapters like when Gabrielle takes a laxative before going to the strip club that turns into a night in the strippers’ dressing room with a cold compress on her forehead to when her younger sister gets drunk off frozen limoncello at Thanksgiving that Gabrielle made after seeing Danny DeVito blame his televised drunkenness on the alcohol.

Overall, the memoir is another well-written collection of stories from different times and themes throughout the author’s life. Via the audiobook, her voice comes alive with the storytelling and the brilliant choice of words.

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Tags black women authors, black women writers, book review, book reviews, celebrity authors, celebrity bookwomen, celebrity writers, dey street books, essay collection, gabrielle union, harpercollins, memoirs, we're going to need more wine, you got anything stronger

what's lit

Tamron Hall’s New Novel ‘As the Wicked Watch’ Taps Into Her Crime Reporter Experience

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date October 29, 2021

TAMRON HALL - 9/29/21 - "Tamron Hall," airs weekdays in syndication on ABC. (ABC/Jeff Neira) TAMRON HALL

Talk show host Tamron Hall has the book of the week with her debut novel about a crime journalist seeking justice for Black female victims of a serial killer.

As The Wicked Watch, published by HarperCollins’ William Morrow and Company imprint, is the first of a series in which Tamron said she plans to write six books.

“For Jordan, she is a much braver reporter than I was at the beginning of my career,” she said at the National Black Book Festival recently held live on Facebook in conversation with author Rhonda M. Lawson. “First of all, she has a background that I don’t have; she is a forensic scientist who has found herself tapped to be a reporter… I wanted to created this protagonist who had this level of expertise that’s not often seen in thrillers.”

The book centers on Jordan Manning who arrives at a Chicago news station with her eye on the anchor chair. Jordan’s forensic science background blended with her journalistic prowess motivates her to cover murder victims, particularly Black women. But when she comes across the case of a Black girl abandoned in a parking lot, the lack of coverage elsewhere and the collective amnesia drives Jordan to seek who is responsible for the girl’s murder.

Timing of the novel’s release this week coincides with the national discussion around missing and murdered women of color falling out of the media spotlight. The conversation was sparked by the death of White blogger Gabby Petito that dominated headlines over the last month.

Pulling from her real-life experience as not only a reporter but also as the sister of a murder victim, Tamron said she wished she exhibited the boldness of her main character.

“She’s able to call things out in the newsroom and call out things when she goes in, for example, what appears to be a crime scene from this perspective,” Tamron said of Jordan at the book festival. “She also recognizes through something that happened to her in her past the sensitivity that family members of victims deserves. And in this case, she befriends a mother who is looking for justice and she does cross lines between what is the lane a reporter should occupy versus what is the lane a human should occupy.”

Covering crime impacts Jordan’s relationships and love life and stimulates distrust with others, Tamron said, also adding that a reporter’s support system and mental health may not be stable while they’re working on traumatic stories. The National Association of Black Journalists provides resources to Black journalists coping with everyday stressors inside and outside the newsroom.

Since the book festival mainly serves self-published Black authors, Tamron said she would like to highlight more of this population who wouldn’t be recognized in mainstream media. She also acknowledged that her ties with her talent agent who connected her to a literary agent then a publisher is a privilege many authors of color do not have.

“Like in any industry, I believe we are underrepresented on the agent level; I don’t see a lot of Black book agents,” she said, adding she is a newbie still navigating the publishing industry. “You have to have advocates in the room, and we need more advocates of power whether they are agents or publishers in the rooms to make sure Black content creators, Black writers are represented.”

Tamron is also planning a children’s book inspired by her infant son Moses.

The second book in the Jordan Manning series is in the works, she said.

Tags as the wicked watch, black women authors, black women writers, celebrity authors, celebrity writers, harpercollins, journalist authors, tamron hall, william morrow books