Tag: deep lit

‘Wildblood’ Writer Lauren Blackwood Brings Magic to the Jamaican Jungle in Historical Fantasy Novel

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date February 8, 2023

⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below mention sexual assault.

Following the success of Within These Wicked Walls, Lauren Blackwood returns with another vibrant story, this time set in a magical Jamaican jungle.

Wildblood, which is out now from Macmillan’s Wednesday Books, takes us to the late 19th century and builds a unique story that serves as an extraordinary sophomore novel after weaving the thread of the Charlotte Brontë classic Jane Eyre into an Ethiopian retelling with her debut novel. Within These Wicked Walls earned the recognition of being a Reese’s Book Club Fall 2021 YA Pick.

The new young adult book centers on Victoria, an 18-year-old woman who was kidnapped at a young age and forced to serve as a guide within a tourist company that specializes in venturing into the jungle. Except the jungle has creatures that could be dangerous to mortals such as spirits that can snatch souls without remorse. Victoria is a Wildblood, meaning she has the magic to communicate with the creatures and, in her professional standing, can ensure the safety of tourists.

When a well-known Black gold miner named Laertes Thorn becomes a client with his rather large party, Victoria is tasked with her fellow Wildbloods to bring these foreigners to a mountain allegedly full of gold. The gold is a legend since survivors have never exited the jungle to tell the story of reaching the treasures.

On the trip like back at home, Victoria tries to remain a motherly figure to Bunny, a young Wildblood who cannot control his magic, and a girlfriend to Samson, a Wildblood who was kidnapped by the company after her. But new emotions arise as she finds herself falling for Thorn and battling her former love Dean, the main Wildblood in charge who seems like he’ll do anything to keep their abusive boss happy like saying yes to such a dangerous trip.

The fight for survival underlies the story that places Victoria in a spot where she’s trying to understand love from different angles and trust in her inherent magic.

Author Lauren Blackwood talks to she lit about how she came up with the story and the art of making sure the characters, the plot, and the tension remain engaging until the very end. Check out the conversation below:

she lit: The story’s main character, Victoria, is a Wildblood who possesses the magic to communicate with the precarious jungle. Her touring company kidnapped her at a young age to take advantage of her magic. How did you come up with this story and figure out how to convey the difficult subject of abuse?

Lauren Blackwood: I wanted to write a book about a girl finding her strength. Anytime I portray an issue or trauma I want it to be done sensitively and respectfully, but also honestly. I don’t think showing SA* on page is ever necessary—there are ways to get the message across without that type of triggering imagery. So with that in mind, I then let Victoria guide her own journey on the path that felt right for her.

she lit: While on the dangerous tour, Victoria finds herself tangled in a love cube with her partner Samson, her ex Dean, and her new client Thorn. Can you describe your writing experience with creating the tension between these characters?

Lauren Blackwood: You’re the first one to ever describe their situation as a love cube, haha! Writing relationships is my favorite thing, and I purposely wanted to use this book to explore different kinds of love. But I think the issue is that all three boys have different intentions for Victoria, which puts them in conflict with each other and with Victoria herself, who’s really just learning to live her life on her own terms.

she lit: Victoria takes it upon herself to be a mother figure to Bunny, a younger Wildblood who rages with his magic. How would you describe this source of love for Victoria as a counterbalance to the love she’s getting from Samson and Thorn?

Lauren Blackwood: Victoria’s relationship with Bunny is more of that of a mother and child—she’s extremely protective of him, which is a love he doesn’t necessarily appreciate. It’s the opposite of her relationship with Samson, who in his own loving way tries to look out for her but ends up being a bit overbearing. So you have those two opposites of the spectrum, and then you have Thorn, who sits right in the middle. They have mutual respect and love for each other, and they don’t doubt each others’ abilities but look out for each other equally.

she lit: Greed is an overwhelming theme with Thorn and his team endangering their lives to mine gold in the Gilded Orchard that has never been mined by survivors. Can you explain the historical significance of making the team members Black and their desire to gain riches before the turn of the 20th century?

Lauren Blackwood: If you’ve read my debut Within These Wicked Walls, you’ll know I love writing about wealthy Black guys who have the freedom to do as they please. I suppose the historical significance is that when Black people owned business, all the staff would be Black because they weren’t welcome in white spaces—whatever business ventures white people were up to, Black people were usually doing it too and just not getting any credit for it. But honestly, I just wanted to write about Black people, regardless of history.

she lit: The book’s cover is vibrant, featuring Victoria in the jungle. Victoria looks a lot like you. How much input did you have in the cover design and the way the character is portrayed on the cover?

Lauren Blackwood: I wanted to write a character who looks like me (who’s Jamaican like me) because growing up there were never any fantasy novels about girls who shared my heritage. So, the only thing I really requested was to feature the Jamaican flag colors—black, green, and gold. The rest of the genius design was handled by my amazing cover designer Kerri Resnick and brilliant artist Colin Verdi. They interpreted Victoria perfectly, so I really didn’t have to say much.

*SA is an acronym for sexual assault.

what's lit

‘Proud Family: Louder and Prouder’ Reboot Champions Black Literature

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date July 11, 2022

If you’re not looking closely, you may be missing the parade of nonfiction and fiction titles by Black authors being shown to the next generation of Proud Family viewers.

Originally debuting in 2001, The Proud Family became a fixture on the Disney Channel and ABC’s One Saturday Morning featuring an African American 14-year-old middle schooler named Penny Proud as she navigates friendships and family in the Los Angeles area. Disney+ rebooted the cartoon this year with 10 episodes streaming now under the title The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. And this is giving the creators more freedom to get their racial justice message across screens to a wider audience witnessing the Black Lives Matter and the #BlackStoriesMatter movements.

The voice of Penny Proud since the show’s inception, Kyla Pratt is the star, with her cartoon doppelgänger, but for the new series Keke Palmer joins the cast to voice Maya, a social activist who’s a new transfer to their Willy T. Ribbs Middle School. The school is named for the first Black driver to qualify and race in the Indianapolis 500. The Easter eggs of activism are really hidden in Maya’s book choices throughout the episodes.

We’re introduced to Maya in the first episode “New Kids on the Block” where she and her brother KG, voiced by rap artist A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, move into the old home of original character Sticky, who was voiced by Orlando Brown. That character was written out most likely due to Orlando’s legal troubles over the years, but Penny and her group now have two new friends. Or so they think.

Maya detects she and Penny are not compatible based on Penny trying too hard to make a connection. After all, Maya is carrying a copy of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, a 2019 nonfiction book by sociologist and Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin that examines how society’s focus on technology can reinforce White supremacy and push racial inequity.

Later in the premiere episode, Maya is in her school hallway, armed with a copy of Parable of the Sower, the 1993 post-apocalyptic climate fiction classic by Octavia E. Butler that is set in our current time period. A24 last year announced it secured the rights via Deadline to the Parable of the Sower and its sequel Parable of the Talents for a plan to turn the titles into two motion pictures with Garrett Bradley tapped to direct.

In second episode “Bad Influence(r),” Maya is carrying the civil rights graphic-novel memoir March: Book One by the late congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell in different scenes throughout the episode.

“It All Started With an Orange Basketball” is the third episode that explores how Penny’s love for basketball is squashed by the ambition of her father, Oscar Proud, hilariously voiced by comedian Tommy Davidson. This episode will be distributed in book form for early readers by Disney Press in September under the same name. Game scenes occur in the Bubba Wallace Recreation Center, named for the only present-day Black race car star who pushed for the ban of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events in 2020.

The episode also features Maya and LaCienega, Penny’s frenemy who’s a namesake of the famous South LA boulevard and voiced by Alisa Reyes of 1990s Nickelodeon’s All That fame, chatting in the Wendell Scott Regional Branch Library, named after the first Black race car driver to win a race in NASCAR’s Grand National Series.

LaCienega rips a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ Between the World and Me out of Maya’s hands to use as a prop to bump into Kareem, Penny’s sorta boyfriend voiced by Asante Blackk, to get his attention. He notices the selection and says it’s his favorite book, and LaCienega lies and says it’s her favorite, too. They walk into the sunset.

Masquerading as the woke reader, LaCienega holds the book in other scenes while Maya is now reading James Baldwin’s 1963 nonfiction essay collection The Fire Next Time.

Another literary reference is in the episode “Home School” where Maya is reading Maya Angelou‘s 1969 autobiographical debut I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. (Perhaps, this character is named after one of our most influential Black female authors?) Even in the “Snackland” episode starring an animated Lizzo voiced as herself as the musical guest for the Proud family’s amusement park venture, Lizzo’s bodyguard character is reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, but she rips it into shreds proving she can destroy Oscar for skipping on Lizzo’s payment.

The book choices, along with the intentional naming of the buildings the characters frequent, demonstrate the ability to educate children and adults on important, sometimes underappreciated Black literature and Black figures via a kooky cartoon centered on a Black family and a racially diverse cast of characters.

Some of these books, such as Race After Technology, do not appear to have a mass marketing campaign. So, if you’re interested in the intersection of race and technology, for example, this book may not end up in your web, library, and bookstore searches.

Then for classics such Parable of the Sower and The Fire Next Time that are usually not on young adult reading lists, they can be left out of searches for books covering their topics. Along with highlighting the obscure and classic works, the cartoon gives props to the more recent best-sellers by Black authors that have dominated charts over the years like Between the World and Me and The Vanishing Half.

Disney+ renewed The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder for a second season.

what's lit

Jenny Han Talks Asian Representation in Books on ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Tour

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date June 29, 2022

Lola Tung as Belly in 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'

Best-selling young adult novelist Jenny Han has another series in the book-to-TV limelight. After finding success on Netflix with the three film adaptations of her To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series, she now has her first YA series The Summer I Turned Pretty getting the screen treatment with its recent premiere on Amazon Prime Video.

Not new to advocacy for having more Asian and Asian American stories represented in books, Jenny spoke about the issue on her press tour while a mention made an appearance on the new TV show.

On CBS Mornings this week, anchor Gayle King asked if Jenny was hurt when she wasn’t able to sell her early works featuring an Asian character. Jenny says her feelings weren’t hurt “because it was so matter-of-fact.”

To be able to sell her first YA novel, she made her main character Belly Conklin, played by Lola Tung onscreen, appear White.

Jenny Han in ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ (Peter Taylor/Prime Video)

“I had tried to sell a book with an Asian main character before this one, and people weren’t really interested in it,” says Jenny, who’s also the executive producer of the show. “The thing I would hear is we already have a book with an Asian. I thought with The Summer I Turned Pretty, it was a story I hoped would kind of have an effervescence to it that people can lock onto. After that, I wrote To All the Boys, and I was able to write my own ticket once I had garnered trust from an audience that might not pick up a book with a cover with someone who didn’t look like them.”

The character of Belly became half-Asian, half-White, and is now depicted as biracial on the updated media tie-in cover issued by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was the first best-seller to have an Asian girl on the cover, according to the author. The fight for representation even spilled onto the choice to have her headshot on the back cover.

“Even with my first book, it was important to me to put a picture on the back of it because at first they were like, ‘Hmm, we don’t really need it.’ It wasn’t really done at the time,” she says. “I want other young Asian women to see that and think it’s possible.”

The Summer I Turned Pretty follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin who’s on the verge of turning 16 when she heads off to Cousins Beach in Massachusetts with her mother and older brother for another summer with the Fishers, her mother’s best friend and two sons.

The foursome who grew up together every summer are now teenagers, and Belly feels the energy shift between her and the oldest Fisher son Conrad, played by Christopher Briney, and the younger Fisher son Jeremiah, played by Gavin Casalegno. Belly always had a crush on Conrad when she was considered too young and nerdy. Now that she’s blossoming into womanhood, heightened by a debutante ball, she becomes entangled in a love triangle that stretches beyond her and the two brothers.

In one scene in the fourth episode “Summer Heat,” after a conflict reaches a fever pitch in the Fisher summer home, Belly’s author mother, Laurel, played by Jackie Chung, heads to a bar to cool off. There, she sees the local author she’s been competing with in the beach town’s bookstore. Once they start chatting, the state of their careers comes up.

“When we went out with my first novel, everyone said, ‘Uhhh, there is no market for a book about a Filipino main character, and now it’s all they want from me,” says author Cleveland, played by Alfredo Narciso, about his treatment in the beginning of his fictional publishing career.

The show also stars Rachel Blanchard as Susannah Fisher, the mother of Conrad and Jeremiah. Rachel starred as the ’90s TV version of Cher Horowitz, the main character of Clueless loosely based on Jane Austen’s classic Emma.

The second season of the series has already received the green light for production.

experiences

Book Festivals Highlight Diverse Works Amid Banned Books Movement

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date May 22, 2022

Two book festivals in Maryland have kick-started the summer off in a year when literary diversity is under attack in the form of book bans.

Books in Bloom and Gaithersburg Book Festival held family-friendly community events that featured a number of authors who either identify on the diversity spectrum or are passionate about freedom of speech in literature. Over the last year, more parents nationwide are asking school libraries to take books off shelves they deem inappropriate for their children to read while some libraries are reactively subtracting books to avoid controversy.

This movement of banning books is sparking opposition as authors and readers alike are going out of their way to support not only freedom of speech but support the variety of books meant to be read by children. The political divide was felt at these book festivals and may become a theme for other similar events in the U.S. throughout the year.

Banned books gain spotlight

Books in Bloom calls itself a progressive book festival in the master-planned city of Columbia, Maryland. To show support for banned books, the festival dedicated one of its soundstages to authors who discussed freedom of speech.

A vibrant setting in Merriweather District’s Color Burst Park, the book festival had a giant book-shaped display describing some of the top banned books in history from Toni Morrison‘s Beloved and Song of Solomon to Alice Walker‘s The Color Purple. With Busboys and Poets as the independent bookstore for the event and a location in the park, most books for sale were books by authors who are Black and/or LGBTQIA+.

Queer memoirs All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe had notable stacks on the tables with other titles that have become the face of many bans though they were created for the middle grade and young adult audiences. The bans are usually due to racial and cultural content, sexually explicit content, and offensive language.

Headliners included a panel with PEN America, the nonprofit organization advocating in the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland’s 8th congressional district and author of Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. Raskin also attended Gaithersburg Book Festival to sell and sign his latest book.

The book festival’s keynote speaker was Carl Bernstein, the well-known The Washington Post reporter who co-headed the news coverage on the Watergate scandal in 1972. On the festival’s main stage, he marveled at his time growing up around Columbia and how he first became a cub reporter as a high school dropout in his new memoir, Chasing History: A Kid In The Newsroom.

The last Books in Bloom was held less than a year ago in-person in October with The New York Times reporter and The 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones serving as the keynote speaker.

Diverse works lead way

Reminiscent of a large outdoor book festival such as Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Maryland marked its 12th year as an event supporting the greater community with inviting traditionally published authors and offering seminars on book publishing and creative writing for children and adults.

Authors such Dhonielle Clayton, who has a new middle grade release with The Marvellers, and Kimberly Jones, who is promoting her social justice young adult novel Why We Fly with co-author Gilly Segal, discussed their works at the annual event. Dhonielle, a Gaithersburg native, and Kimberly are some of the top YA Black authors who have been outspoken about diversity in literature and social justice matters.

Asked about some of her summer read recommendations, Dhonielle mentioned Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter by Zoraida Córdova; the Track series by Jason Reynolds; and The Devouring Wolf by Natalie C. Parker, in which Dhonielle says there’s a wolf character named after her.

Another author at the event was Jeanine Cummins, who gained notoriety with her immigration novel American Dirt, interviewing Reyna Grande about her book A Ballad of Love and Glory. American Dirt follows a Mexican woman trying to escape to the U.S. with her young son after her family is murdered.

Some high-profile Hispanic and Latine authors spoke out about the White Latina author’s seven-figure advance because they said the publishing industry would never offer them such a sum for centering stories on Hispanic and Latine characters. They also claimed the book had inaccuracies in the culture and language that wasn’t native to the author. On the other hand, there were Hispanic and Latine authors and celebrities who supported the Oprah’s Book Club selection.

Since American Dirt came out in 2020, Jeanine, like many authors who had released their works at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, now have the chance to work the promotion circuit in-person.

Social justice and historical nonfiction were the focus of many authors’ works at the book festival. Gayle Jessup White talked about her lineage connected to former slave-holding president Thomas Jefferson in her book Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s Search for Her Lasting Legacy. Kristin Henning shared her experience representing Black youth in the D.C. court system and how she conceived the idea for her book The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth.

Along with Raskin, Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff for California’s 28th congressional district visited the event to chat about his book Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.

D.C. area indie bookstore chain Politics and Prose served as the event bookseller.

The pre-summer book festivals helped usher in the first literary events for authors and readers to enjoy as society emerges out of the pandemic and the world of book publishing remains volatile in the wake of book bans.

Tags #banned books, a ballad of love and glory, alice walker, all boys aren't blue, american dirt, author event, author events, book festivals, books in bloom, busboys and poets, covid-19, dc metro book events, deep lit, dhonielle clayton, diversity and inclusion, events, gaithersburg book festival, gayle jessup white, gender queer, george m johnson, gilly segal, indie bookstores, jason reynolds, jeanine cummins, kimberly jones, maia kobabe, natalie c parker, nikole hannah-jones, pen america, politics and prose, reclamation: sally hemings thomas jefferson and a descendant's search for her lasting legacy, reyna grande, the 1619 project, the devouring wolf, the marvellers, the rage of innocence: how america criminalizes black youth, toni morrison, track series, valentina salazar is not a monster hunter, why we fly, zoraida cordova

deep lit what's lit

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!

what's lit

Black Women Are Transforming the Literary Scene in Los Angeles

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

For a 2021 literary lookback, we noticed Los Angeles is evolving into a haven for Black female-run literary ventures amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. But the evolution started years ago for many of the women taking up space physically and consciously in the LA literary scene.

California’s most populous city only had one renowned Black-owned bookstore with Eso Won Books founded by James Fugate and Tom Hamilton in 1990. The bookstore, located in the Leimert Park Village, recently had a cameo along with The Vanishing Half author Brit Bennett in HBO’s Insecure since star Issa Rae is a producer of the upcoming book-to-TV series for the network.

Years of Black women building safe, conscious spaces for readers of color and allies came into fruition in 2021 through indie bookstores, libraries, and book club festivals.

Issa Rae and Amber Dancy, holding The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, outside Eso Won Books in “Growth, Okay?!” episode.

The new Black woman-run bookstore in the greater LA area is The Salt Eaters Bookshop that had a soft opening earlier this month. Named after Toni Cade Bambara’s 1980 novel, the bookstore was funded through GoFundMe after the George Floyd protests erupted nationwide. One of the main conversations that came out of the 2020 protests were the lack of Black-owned bookstores to supply anti-racist and diverse reading material to local communities and beyond.

Asha Grant, director of The Free Black Women’s Library LA chapter, started the fund online in July 2020 and has since raised $84,500 out of her $65,000 goal to renovate a brick-and-mortar and maintain it for a year. The bookstore is located in downtown Inglewood on Queen Street.

“We did it, ya’ll,” reads the bookstore’s Instagram post after the Dec. 18 and Dec. 19 opening. “There aren’t enough words to describe how blissful this opening weekend was with you all. It was so incredible meeting SO many of you who donated to help make the dream a reality and have been following us and rooting us on from jump. We thank you for your support, all the shared stories, laughs, tears, and sweet messages.”

Already serving the LA area, Reparations Club doubles as a cultural space and a bookstore. Jazzi McGilbert opened the space in 2019 near the Crenshaw area. This year, the bookstore debuted on its new block in the same neighborhood. Reparations Club even hosted socially distanced, in-person Noname Book Club meetings in the last year.

Reparations Club

Indie rapper and literary activist Noname aka Fatimah Warner unveiled the Radical Hood Library in October under her namesake book club. The mission of the library is to make rare works by authors of color available to interested readers. It correlates with the mission of the book club to bring works by underrepresented authors to readers via social media and to incarcerated readers advocating for books.

Two of the largest Black female book clubs center around LA with growing virtually beyond the city during the pandemic. Well-Read Black Girl, known for its New York roots, has more of a bicoastal presence with founder Glory Edim spending time in LA. Based in Inglewood and founded by Alysia Allen, Mocha Girls Read boasts over 9,000 members via Meetup.com across 14 chapters nationwide.

WRBG hosted its fifth annual book festival virtually in late October exploring the theme of Black girlhood to complement Glory’s new anthology On Girlhood. The festival featured a message from former First Lady Michelle Obama and a keynote conversation with Gabrielle Union who recently released her second collection of autobiographical essays in You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories.

Glory will headline a podcast with producer Pushkin Industries debuting in February 2022.

Marking a decade of existence in 2021, the original LA book club for Black women celebrated its milestone with a conference also held on the last weekend of October. Mocha Girls Read co-hosted its first Black Readers Conference with Black Men Read that featured authors Kalynn Bayron, Christina Hammonds Reed, and Kimberly Latrice Jones.

The book club is looking for book reviewers in the new year.

With so many developments happening in the last year, LA will be a place to watch for the bookish community in 2022.

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

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

Alice Sebold Apologizes to Exonerated Man She Had Accused of Rape

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date December 1, 2021

The Lovely Bones novelist Alice Sebold released a statement a week after the Black man she accused of rape was exonerated by a New York court.

The author set the literary industry ablaze with her 2002 debut novel and eventual film The Lovely Bones about a girl who is raped and murdered in the 1970s and trying to satisfy her teenage longings in the afterlife. The novel rips a page from the author’s memoir Lucky, detailing her 1981 rape as a Syracuse University student.

In Lucky, she describes the sexual assault and the justice system navigation while also obsessing over her rapist’s race that foreshadows the recent exoneration of Anthony Broadwater, a Black man who was convicted for Alice’s rape and served 16 years in prison. The pseudonym of Gregory Madison is used in the book. Coincidentally, Anthony was released in 1999, the same year Lucky hit shelves.

Alice wrote in her statement posted Nov. 30 on Medium that she is “truly sorry” to Anthony for her role in him being “another young Black man brutalized by our flawed legal system.”

“40 years ago, as a traumatized 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system,” she wrote. “My goal in 1982 was justice—not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.”

The letter does not mention if Alice said this apology directly to Anthony over her role in his wrongful conviction. There isn’t any mention of what she plans to do with profits she made off Lucky.

“It took a lot of courage, and I guess she’s brave and weathering through the storm like I am,” Anthony told The New York Times. “To make that statement, it’s a strong thing for her to do, understanding that she was a victim and I was a victim too.”

Though Lucky was published in 1999, the memoir was recently being turned into a film for Netflix. The exoneration occurred after screenwriter Timothy Mucciante questioned the script’s authenticity during the court proceedings compared to the book, according to media reports. Then Timothy hired a private investigator who worked with Anthony’s lawyers to prove his innocence.

The Lucky film project has since been killed due to losing financing months ago, according to Variety. Timothy is working on a documentary about the case titled Unlucky with his production company, Red Badge Films, and Red Hawk Films, according to media reports.

Publisher halts Lucky distribution

Simon & Schuster‘s Scribner imprint, the publisher behind Lucky, tweeted Dec. 1 that it will no longer distribute the memoir.

Following the recent exoneration of Anthony Broadwater, and in consultation with the author, Scribner and Simon & Schuster will cease distribution of all formats of Alice Sebold’s 1999 memoir LUCKY.

[1/2]
— Simon & Schuster (@simonschuster) December 1, 2021

The publisher’s website appears to have removed Alice’s book and author page.

Tags alice sebold, deep lit, lucky, memoirists, memoirs, scribner, sexual assault memoirs, simon & schuster

what's lit

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Transports You Back to the Time of ‘Little Women’

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

A restored home in Concord, Massachusetts, serves as the former residence of renowned author Louisa May Alcott and her family and revives the spirit of what made Little Women a phenomenon spanning over 150 years.

The Orchard House is where Louisa took a page from her family life to write the 1868 classic about the four March sisters coming of age in New England. The home serves as a museum featuring the “shelf desk” where Louisa wrote Little Women to artwork created by her youngest sister who inspired the character of Amy March.

Nov. 29 marks Louisa’s 189th birthday. Born in 1832 in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, she was the second daughter of Transcendentalist philosopher and educator Amos Bronson Alcott. The family moved to Concord, known as the home of post-Revolutionary War American literary and philosophical greats including Louisa and her father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Feminism and financial freedom

The Orchard House welcome sign

The house features the desk Louisa wrote Little Women. The desk, according to the curators, was built by her father at a time when desks were not considered appropriate for women to use. Louisa sat at the desk, day in and day out, to write her children’s classic while her mother, Abba May Alcott, brought tea to her bedroom occasionally, the curators said. She trained herself to be ambidextrous, using both hands to write her book.

I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!
Louisa May Alcott

Already the writer of several short stories and novels mainly for adults, Little Women was a book that Louisa’s publisher wanted to satisfy the young adult audience, especially the girls. She was told a story about four girls would rake in money. An introvert with a mood pillow still intact in the family room of the Orchard House, Louisa couldn’t draw inspiration from any friends, so she looked at her sisters to mold the characters and storylines that continued in subsequent books such as Little Men and Jo’s Boys.

Once Little Women was published, it became a windfall for the financially struggling family. Though Bronson was a well-known educator and philosopher and Abba a social worker, the Alcotts seemed to still be considered impoverished. A Civil War nurse who battled illnesses on the battlefield, Louisa’s experiences as a seamstress, teacher, and governess are reflected in her novel, Work: A Story of Experience, one of the rare works available through the Orchard House gift shop.

The pullquote from the house’s website shows how Louisa promised herself to support her family and that also meant she wouldn’t marry in order to support their makeshift home that was originally built almost 200 years before the Alcotts bought it in 1857. Named for the over 40 apple trees that were on the property at the time of its sale, the Orchard House was a fixer-and-upper that experienced additions in later years to accommodate the growing family needs.

Artistry and abolitionism

The last flowers in bloom in the Little Women Garden at the Orchard House

With the Little Women profits, Louisa sent her youngest sister, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, to Europe to study art because it was impossible for May to receive training in the U.S. as a woman. May would draw on the walls; her work revived by artists and historians in the Orchard House through tracing over a plastic sheet to reveal her original traces that had been damaged by age. Upon her European art tour, May wrote the book, Studying Art Abroad: And How to Do It Cheaply. Her real-life love for art is reproduced via Amy March, as the bulk of May’s artwork is featured in the house.

May’s most famous work, “La Negresse,” was viewed as her ticket to stardom if she hadn’t died at the age of 39 following childbirth. The portrait features an enslaved Black female, which was considered a complex work of art conveying the gloom of being a slave with a so-called good master.

The inspiration may have stemmed from the Alcotts’ strong belief in abolitionism. In the winter between 1846 and 1847, the Alcotts hosted a runaway slave traveling through the Underground Railroad to Canada. The area near the Orchard House is recognized as a part of the Underground Railroad network.

Heart and home

The Orchard House

The house is located near Concord’s historic downtown that includes the Nathaniel Hawthorne estate. Because 80% of the artifacts in the Orchard House were owned by the Alcotts, photography of any kind inside is prohibited. Yet the items displayed creates the timeline of the family’s historical footprint.

Louisa’s burgundy mood pillow sits up on the sofa in the family room, a sign that she was open to socializing, the curators said. Her shelf desk is still intact, small and rounded wrapped across the wall near a floral watercolor piece by May. Dolls created by the sisters for the sons of the oldest daughter Anna Alcott Pratt when they moved back to the home after the sudden death of her husband are parked in a box in their added bedroom. A portrait of the third daughter, Elizabeth Sewell Alcott, sits on the piano, the only known image of the sister who died before the family moved into the Orchard House and inspired the character of Beth March.

For any Little Women fan, the house serves as an awe-inspiring literary adventure full of interesting facts about Louisa and her family.

Tags abigail may alcott nieriker, deep lit, experiences, literary events, little women, louisa may alcott, novels set in 1800s, orchard house, studying art abroad, young adult, young adult authors, young adult book, young adult novel, young adult writers

what's lit

Alice Sebold’s Fixation on Accused Rapist’s Race in ‘Lucky’ Forecasts Overturned Conviction

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 27, 2021
1 Comment on Alice Sebold’s Fixation on Accused Rapist’s Race in ‘Lucky’ Forecasts Overturned Conviction

*Update post available on Alice Sebold’s apology and publisher Simon & Schuster’s response*

The man accused of rape by best-selling author Alice Sebold had his conviction overturned by the New York Supreme Court this week due to missteps in the case decades earlier. The author tells the story of her 1981 rape as a Syracuse University student in the 1999 memoir Lucky that unnecessarily fixates on the race of her perpetrator.

As a young White woman raped by an individual she identifies as a Black man, Alice pinpoints other experiences with Black men that come off as cringeworthy today in light of the recent news.

Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison for the rape and was released in 1999, the same year Lucky was released to critical acclaim. The memoir eventually led to the success of Alice’s most famous novel, The Lovely Bones published in 2002 by Little, Brown and Company, loosely based on her own experience about a teenage girl who is raped and killed by a predator in her neighborhood. The Lovely Bones was turned into a film in 2009 starring Saiorse Ronan and Susan Sarandon.

Lucky, available from Simon & Schuster’s Scribner imprint, was in the midst of becoming a film on Netflix. Screenwriter Timothy Mucciante was working on the project, according to multiple reports, when he realized the script wasn’t matching the book, especially during the court proceedings retold by Alice in the book. Timothy hired his own private investigator to look into the case. In an exclusive, Variety reports Lucky the film, which would’ve starred You actress Victoria Pedretti, was dropped after losing financing months ago.

Alice hasn’t commented publicly about the overturned conviction.

Constant emphasis on Black men

I knew the old men hadn’t raped me. I knew the tall black man in a green suit, sitting on a bus-station bench, hadn’t raped me. I was still afraid.
Lucky, Chapter Four

The book starts with detail of the rape: how she’s accosted and attacked by a stranger in a tunnel near campus, how she walks back to her dorm bloody and shaken, how she undergoes the post-assault medical examination. When she returns to her dorm, a friend’s boyfriend offers a hug. But she’s apprehensive. That’s when the boyfriend, who is Black, asks Alice if her assailant was Black. Alice confirms the assumption.

This exchange is problematic, reinforcing the stereotypes of criminals usually being Black. It says it’s OK if someone Black makes that assumption. Even if the event took place, it shows the lack of racial diversity in publishing overall with that passage allowed to run in the millions of book copies sold.

The above pullquote references later on when Alice is driving with her mother to the University of Pennsylvania to see her father and sister. Outside the window, she sees Black men living their lives, and it scares her. She even tells her mother that she feels like she had been “lain underneath” all these Black men. Her mother says that’s “ridiculous.”

What led to the overturned conviction is in the memoir. Alice has a run-in with a Black man, who claims she looks familiar. It spooks her because she believes he’s her rapist. She notifies authorities about the run-in. After a police lineup, officers tell her she picked the wrong man. Later, a hair analysis is traced back to Anthony Broadwater, who has the pseudonym of Gregory Madison in Lucky. That analysis has since been discredited by the Department of Justice and the FBI as a lone method to identify suspects.

Anthony Broadwater did not know that Alice was profiting from the incident that put him behind bars, according to the Daily Mail.

Race, class lead to perfect conviction

My rapist was poor, black, and uneducated, and came from a family with an entrenched criminal record. I was a middle-class white girl attending an expensive university and I was raped not on property owned by the college, but in a public park on the edge of it… And, like the victim in the Stanford case, I knew that my words mattered.
Lucky, “Afterword”

In a 2017 afterword, Alice brings up Chanel Miller’s story of being the unidentified victim in the Stanford rape case that is chronicled in the best-selling memoir Know My Name. Using race and class, Alice compares her case where her accused rapist was imprisoned for 16 years to Chanel’s case where the Stanford swimmer who raped her only served three months in jail.

Race comes up in Chanel’s story but her own race as a young woman who is half-Chinese and how that surprised some supporters when she revealed her identity. Class also becomes an issue because she accused a White male, Olympic-level swimmer of raping her while she was unconscious. A book review can be found on shelit.com.

The Lucky afterword acknowledges in the above quote that the racial and socioeconomic dynamics created a perfect storm for a conviction that we now know is another exoneration of an innocent Black man in America.

Alice’s story could be compared to Tricia Meili’s story as told in her memoir, I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility, published by Scribner in 2004. Tricia’s horrific rape dominated the news in 1989 and led to the arrest of five boys who happened to be in Central Park at the time she was jogging. Tricia, who is White, worked as an investment banker while the boys, known as the Central Park Five, were Black and Latino from low-income families. Now, those men who served time and have had their convictions overturned in 2002 are considered the Exonerated Five, after they told their story through Ava DuVernay‘s lens in When They See Us.

A Black prisoner serving time for sexual assault is 3½ times more likely to be innocent than a White sexual assault convict, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, because of the high likelihood of cross-racial misidentification by White victims involved in violent crimes with Black assailants.

Tags alice sebold, book to film, chanel miller, deep lit, i am the central park jogger, know my name, little brown and company, lucky, memoirists, memoirs, scribner, sexual assault memoirs, simon & schuster, the lovely bones, tricia meili, when they see us

what's lit

‘Love Life’ Examines the Underappreciated Black Editor Experience

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 17, 2021

*Spoilers ahead! Watch the series’ second season on HBO Max*

The Good Place star William Jackson Harper leads the HBO Max series Love Life as a Black editor in a White-dominated publishing world who evolves his approach to diversifying the field.

The first season of the series starred Anna Kendrick as an art dealer stumbling through relationships. In this new iteration, we meet Harper’s character Marcus Watkins, who is also stumbling through relationships with the show emphasizing race and culture in his romantic and career choices via pitch-perfect narration by Keith David.

Marcus Watkins in the beginning of the series is married to Emily, played by Maya Kazan, but he’s starting to feel she doesn’t understand him as a Black man in America since she’s White. He makes this realization after meeting Mia Hines, played by Jessica Williams, at Anna Kendrick’s character Darby’s wedding reception at a bar. Marcus and Mia hit it off, though he’s married and she’s in a relationship with who we soon learn is no other than basketballer Amar’e Stoudemire playing himself. Marcus’ emotional affair is discovered by Emily via iPad messages, and they get a divorce. Marcus blames Mia for the divorce, which of course starts a fight that separates them. They reunite after a few relationships, then another mishap happens in their budding love that forces them to separate.

In the end, they finally get together and stay together with a marriage and baby. As an editor, Marcus struggles to get Black voices heard through the book projects he picks up because his publisher, the fictional Sutton Court Publishing, and boss Josh, played by Steven Boyer, are not supportive of his vision. After Marcus quits his job, Mia convinces him to pursue his own novel. He becomes a full-time author and finishes his novel within two years. And they live happily ever after.

Uplifting Black authors

The first episode “Mia Hines” starts off with Marcus poking fun at his new client, a social media influencer who wants to add an insane amount of words in a subtitle of an instructional book. He wants to take on more serious projects, like an Afrofuturism manuscript he found from a Black grad student at Columbia University.

Josh asks about an update on the social media influencer’s book, and Marcus pipes up about the Afrofuturism book. Josh isn’t interested because the sales projections on that type of book is unpredictable while the social media influencer’s book will become an instant best-seller with her built-in audience.

We see Marcus fighting through the frustration of trying to push more works by authors of color. He decides to invite student-author Trae, played by Jordan Rock, into his office. With Marcus’ notes, Trae is not having it. After ridiculing Marcus’ posters of Black authors from Toni Morrison with cigarette in hand to James Baldwin with cigarette in hand, Trae calls Marcus a “safe, nonthreatening” Black editor voicing the opinions of a White editor. Marcus argues no publisher would take on the thousand-page manuscript. They agree to disagree.

It’s not until the season finale “Epilogue,” Marcus reunites with Trae to get feedback on his novel. Trae, who appears to have sold his book, tells him that Marcus’ Black character trying to maneuver through the White publishing world lacks personality. Marcus takes the note, and it motivates him to improve the book that eventually sells to a publisher. After not seeing eye to eye, they become beta reader brothers.

Celebrating a legend

Marcus visits his University of Michigan professor parents in episode “Destiny Mathis.” His distant father Kirby, played by John Earl Jelks, and mother Donna, played by Fresh Prince of Bel-Air “first Aunt Viv” Janet Hubert, seem to be disappointed that Marcus married Emily too soon out of college and now is divorced. Marcus feels like his happily married parents who are celebrating 35 years together don’t understand the complexities of his modern-day relationships.

In episode “Becca Evans,” Marcus is given an invitation to The Paris Review dinner from Josh as a consolation prize of sorts for receiving a promotion without a raise. The dinner honors poetry legend Nikki Giovanni. It’s the perfect way to lure his father to Manhattan from Ann Arbor for a night of bonding out on the town with their favorite poet.

The fact that the show writers and HBO managed to book the legend and have her on TV is amazing in itself. At 78 years old, Nikki Giovanni takes the stage as the living legend she is, reciting “Autumn Poems.”

the heat
you left with me
last night
still smolders
the wind catches
your scent
and refreshes
my senses

I am a leaf
falling from your tree
upon which I was
impaled
Nikki Giovanni, “Autumn Poems”

Taking a stand

The season finale “Epilogue” makes several time jumps, starting with New Years’ Day 2020 to March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold of society. As Marcus adjusts to working on his laptop from his couch, he realizes his live-in fling is not taking precautions seriously and breaks up with her. But as soon as he grows accustomed to his stay-at-home routine, the murder of George Floyd forces him to examine his role in society as a Black man.

Due to the pandemic, his job furloughs almost the entire staff, leaving Marcus the only employee of color. Via videoconferencing, Josh asks Marcus to review Sutton Court’s message on George Floyd and its commitment to diversity and inclusion. As much as Marcus had to fight to bring on authors of color that he still wasn’t able to bring on, the ask is too much. And Marcus demanded a proper promotion with a salary bump and didn’t get an answer. The missteps spark an expletive-laden explosion of how Sutton Court fails to have any commitment to diversity and inclusion whatsoever. Marcus quits on the spot by slamming his laptop screen down.

He soon reunites with Mia, who texts him out of the blue. They meet up masked up and commit to give their relationship another try. Then there’s marriage, a baby carriage, and the book Marcus always wanted to write.

The series packs in some Black Hollywood heavy-hitters like Blair Underwood and Kimberly Elise, both playing Mia Hines’ parents. Every episode is named after a person, mostly the woman Marcus is seeing, but under the romantic stumbling is a character of color also looking for his footing in the current publishing landscape.

Tags black female poets, black women poets, bookish tv, deep lit, female poets, george floyd, hbo, janet hubert, jessica williams, love life, nikki giovanni, poetry, publishing, tv review, tv reviews, tv series, tv shows, william jackson harper, women poets

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

deep lit

Why ‘Beloved’ Stole the Spotlight in Politically Charged Books Debate

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date November 8, 2021

The Virginia gubernatorial election placed the Toni Morrison classic Beloved in the crosshairs of the conversation on race entering American classrooms. As the concept of parental choice becomes a voting concern, the banned books movement will continue to grow, resulting in the elimination of authors telling diverse stories from classrooms and libraries around the country.

As for Virginia, the banned books movement has the potential to cement itself in a bill that successfully passes and becomes law based on the incoming governor’s stance.

Beloved enters political conversation

In the last Virginia gubernatorial debate on Sept. 28, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin touched on the topic of two bills McAuliffe had vetoed twice during his time as governor. The bills would have allowed parents to receive notification of any literature assigned to students that contained sexually explicit content.

McAuliffe had been asked by a reporter about his most recent take on transgender bathroom policy for schools in the education budget portion of the debate, where he said he now preferred local school districts making the decision.

In his rebuttal, Youngkin brought up McAuliffe’s veto of the “Beloved” bill twice in 2016 and 2017.

“In fact in Fairfax County this past week, we watched parents so upset because there was such sexually explicit material in the library they had never seen—it was shocking,” Youngkin said. “In fact, you vetoed the bill that would have informed parents that they were there. You believe school systems should tell children what to do, but I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”

After calling Youngkin “clueless” about the legislation, McAuliffe said the bill would have given parents the right to take books off school library shelves.

“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,” McAuliffe said. “I stopped the bill… I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Youngkin, who ran his campaign on parental choice especially focused on the law school-level critical race theory curriculum that is not taught in Virginia schools, won the election on Nov. 2.

Bills target books with ‘sexually explicit content’

The original bill, HB 516, was introduced in the Virginia Legislature in 2016. The proposed bill’s text only makes up a fourth of a page, but its goal was to have local school boards notify parents of any instructional material that contains “sexually explicit content.” It was proposed by Republican delegate R. Steven Landes.

A 2013 Washington Post article features Northern Virginia mother Laura Murphy, who approached state lawmakers about Beloved and its contents. Media outlets reported that she and her husband are Republican activists and their son, who was assigned Beloved in his high school English class, eventually worked a short stint in the Trump administration.

“When my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine,” Murphy said in the Youngkin campaign ad that was released after the debate. “I met with lawmakers; they couldn’t believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment.” The bill was bipartisan, she added.

The bill passed the House and Senate awaiting approval by McAuliffe, the governor at the time. He vetoed the bill.

“Open communication between parents and teachers is important, and school systems have an obligation to provide age-appropriate material for students,” he wrote in his veto message. “However, this legislation lacks flexibility and would require the label of ‘sexually explicit’ to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context.”

House members voted to override the veto, but the 66 yes and 34 no vote failed because 67 yes votes were required. So the bill died by one vote.

The next session the bill’s purpose is reintroduced by Landes in HB 2191 that adds local school boards should develop policies and procedures to address sexual abuse complaints from students by teachers and other school staff. This version fills up one page.

Again, the bill’s reincarnation passes the Legislature and arrives on the governor’s desk. And again, McAuliffe successfully vetoes it, with the House two votes short of overriding the veto.

A detail news outlets picked from the WaPo article mention how Murphy said her son suffered from night terrors when reading Beloved as a high school senior.

Banning a book in essence can be a nightmare, Toni Morrison wrote in the introduction in 2012’s Burn This Book: Notes on Literature and Engagement published by HarperCollins Publishers, in which she served as the anthology’s editor.

The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, cancelled films—that thought is a nightmare.
Toni Morrison, Burn This Book

Learning the traumas of slavery via literature

Beloved centers around Sethe, a former slave woman living in Ohio, who had killed her baby daughter after being discovered as an escapee. Years later, the dead daughter returns as Beloved, a visible young woman obsessed with getting Sethe’s attention. The paranormal activity that grips Sethe and her family eventually stretches beyond their control and outside their haunted home.

In the first chapter alone, there are references to the infanticide and subsequent haunting, rape, lynchings, and stolen breast milk in relation to Sethe’s traumatic journey of living as a slave. Because of themes interlaced in slavery and violence, the book has been banned or challenged in school districts since the 1990s, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom that tracks the removal attempts of books from libraries, schools, and universities.

Beloved, Toni Morrison’s fifth novel, won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature in 1988, along with other notable awards such as the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the Melcher Book Award. Five years later, Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature as an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality,” the foundation’s website notes.

What has been missing from the latest news coverage is how the award-winning novel is based on a true story.

“The Modern Medea” by Thomas Satterwhite Noble 1867 based on the story of Margaret Garner. Library of Congress.

Sethe is inspired by the real-life Margaret Garner, a slave from Kentucky who escaped to Ohio with her husband and four children. Then one night in 1856, slave catchers and U.S. marshals acting on the Fugitive Slave Act surrounded her free cousin’s home and demanded she turn herself and her family in. Instead, she slit the throat of her two-year-old daughter before she was subdued. She had plans to kill her other children then herself rather than return to the abuse of her owner.

Scholars have studied infanticide as a form of resistance to slavery; one less person to be considered property to the slave owner and the mother believing she saved her child from the horrors of the institution. This type of violent reality is usually left out of the average K-12 curricula, where a book like Beloved fills that gap in knowledge.

Margaret Garner’s case may have attracted more attention because historians believe she was a mulatto and so were two of her children suspected to have been the children of her owner produced by rape. She stood trial for her baby’s killing, where she was indicted on charges of damage to property. Her family was returned to their owner who sold them to his brother. She died of typhoid fever in 1858 at around 25 years old.

Toni Morrison would later write the 2005 opera, Margaret Garner, based on the woman’s life that inspired Beloved.

Amid the election popularizing Beloved again, Toni Morrison’s debut novel The Bluest Eye was recently removed in Virginia Beach City Public Schools’ libraries, according to the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Tags #banned books, #the bluest eye, anthology, beloved, burn this book, challenged books, deep lit, glenn youngkin, national coalition against censorship, toni morrison

what's lit

Well-Read Black Girl Festival Recognizes Works Centering on Black Girlhood

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date October 31, 2021

Well-Read Black Girl marked five years with its annual book festival on Saturday centering on the theme of Black girlhood.

On Girlhood is the name of founder Glory Edim‘s second anthology released this week from the W. W. Norton & Company imprint Liveright featuring works from the literary organization’s library by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Rita Dove.

The daylong event started with a prerecorded surprise message from former First Lady Michelle Obama, who opened up about the support she received from the Black female audience for her record-shattering memoir Becoming.

Keynote speaker Gabrielle Union discussed in-depth the themes underlying her latest autobiographical story collection You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories with Glory in a prerecorded conversation.

The collection is a follow-up to Gabrielle’s 2017 best-seller We’re Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True. She said she learned from the “overwhelming” response from readers that there is a “desperate need for community and to be seen and understood and to be embraced by one another.”

“I left out a lot in the first book,” she said. “And as brave as folks thought I was and as revealing as folks thought I was, I knew that there was a lot I hadn’t healed enough from to include in that first book.”

Brene Brown’s podcast and TED talks on shame and vulnerability along with therapy helped her cope with the stories she wanted to share in her new book, she said.

“It logically just clicked; it made perfect sense. Then to see a shaman who said very similar things, and he was like, ‘Yo, Gab, what if what if your vulnerability is actually your superpower?” she said, adding, “You associate vulnerability with being weak and you feel that it is counterintuitive to just expose your full self to challenges, struggles, joys, all of it, random feelings. You feel like that’s giving the opposition the ammunition to take you out but really it’s sharpening your sword to tackle the world.”

Feeling more comfortable with the situations that made her who she is, Gabrielle said she has adopted a “zero fucks given” philosophy with age when it comes to sharing her stories and battling the haters. She turned 49 on Friday.

“When the chatter gets little louder and the folks around me are like, ‘Did you hear what so-and-so said?’ No one with a hot take on my family or me has ever been anyone I’ve admired or whose life I wanted to emulate,” she said.

She discusses in length the backstories behind some of her new book’s chapters. The she lit book review can be found here.

On Girlhood

For the On Girlhood panel, WRBG scholar-in-residence Bianca Williams moderated the conversation with Glory and Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature published by W. W. Norton.

“Nikki Rosa” a poem by Nikki Giovanni in the The Black Woman: An Anthology and Sula by Toni Morrison were the titles Farah said became inspiring Black girlhood works. Toni and Zora Neale Hurston defined the Black girlhood subgenre, she added.

“They both handled girlhood so well. They both gave us unforgettable Black girls,” she said. “Toni gave us Pecola and she also gives us Claudia and Frieda [The Bluest Eye] and Denver [Beloved], all of these Black girls. Janie [Their Eyes Were Watching God] is a girl, so we see ourselves as girls for the first time, fully dimensional in the work of Black women writers.”

Zeba Blay was the featured author for the On Carefree Black Girls panel. Her book Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture came out Oct. 19 from Macmillan imprint St. Martin’s Griffin. In conversation with Marjon Carlos, Zeba said she had to revisit her younger self who depended on the internet to collage images of Black women and inform her cultural understanding that led to her pop culture writing career.

“In writing this book, I was thinking a lot about my childhood, that younger Z who created the life I am living now and didn’t even know it,” she said. “I went through my old LiveJournal because that Live Journal was my life and I was astonished to see I was posting very similar mood boards in a different format.”

#BlackGirlMagic creator CaShawn Thompson discussed her children’s book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real-Life Tales of Black Girl Magic edited by Lilly Workneh in partnership with edutainment publisher Rebel Girls. The book features stories for girls ages six and up on groundbreaking Black women like singer Aretha Franklin, tennis player Naomi Osaka, and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm.

“Girlhood is a universal experience, but even in that, it happens in so many ways, so I had a real keen understanding after doing the work of putting this book together is that girlhood, much like womanhood, looks like a lot of different things, but it all leads us to who we eventually will become,” CaShawn said. “I felt like having a book that exposes the girls to the many ways that we show up would give them a wider and deeper breadth of what they can possibly become when they grow up.”

Festival sponsors include Rebel Girls, 4 Color Books, The New York Times, and HarperCollins Publishers along with partner indie bookstores Reparations Club in Los Angeles, Mahogany Books and Loyalty Bookstores in D.C., Café Con Libros in Brooklyn, and Semicolon Bookstore & Gallery in Chicago. Brooklyn-based Center for Fiction provided the space for the festival events.

WRBG announced this week it has partnered with podcast and audiobook producer Pushkin Industries for a podcast to debut in February 2022.

what's lit

Singer Solange’s Saint Heron Curates Rare Black Books With New Library

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date October 20, 2021

Another artist has created an online library featuring rare works by Black and Brown authors. Two weeks after indie rapper Noname announced the opening of her book club’s Radical Hood Library, singer and songwriter Solange Knowles’ platform opened the Saint Heron Community Library on Monday.

The library will have a guest curator per season with Rosa Duffy, the founder of Atlanta-based For Keeps Books, handpicking the first round of works. This season’s selections include Audre Lorde’s 1976 poetry collection Coal, Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry collection Children Coming Home, Ntozake Shange’s poetry collection A Daughter’s Geography, Octavia E. Butler’s sci-fi novel Clay’s Ark, and Rita Dove’s story collection Fifth Sunday.

“The digital Library will spark new conversations about the breadth of rich artistic expression and the impact of black identity in creative innovation throughout history,” reads a post on Solange’s Instagram account.

In an interview with Saint Heron Community Library’s editorial manager Shantel Aurora-Pass, Rosa said she took particular interest in elevating the access to books that have become less and less accessible to Black readers.

“When people ask the purpose or mission of the space, it’s true accessibility because all of this stuff has existed for all of these years, it didn’t just pop up out of nowhere,” she said. “But the truth is that it’s either hoarded, or we just don’t know much about it. The folks that know its value sometimes are the ones that are keeping it from the people that it’s made for.”

The library went live via Saint Heron’s website on Oct. 18. As of Oct. 19, all 50 books are unavailable. Books are free to be borrowed by U.S. residents for a maximum of 45 days. Physical books are being sent to borrowers via Worldnet, which will provide shipping and return postage costs, according to Saint Heron’s Instagram.

Earlier this month, Noname announced the opening of Radical Hood Library, a brick and mortar in Los Angeles with a mostly rare collection of books by Black and Brown authors that’s also available for online borrowing through the library catalog app Libib.

Tags audre lorde, black female authors, black female writers, black women authors, black women writers, deep lit, for keeps books, gwendolyn brooks, library, noname, ntozake shange, octavia e butler, radical hood library, rita dove, rosa duffy, saint heron community library, solange

experiences

‘Books in Bloom’ Literary Festival Lauds Progressive Voices

Post author By SHE LIT EDITOR
Post date October 11, 2021

Annual literary festival Books in Bloom on Sunday marked the grand opening of a multifaceted bookstore chain and welcomed a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to its main stage.

Based in a mixed-use cultural center called the Merriweather District in the master-planned community of Columbia, Maryland, Books in Bloom has become one of the D.C. metro area’s most well-known progressive book events. In its fifth year, the festival hosted several authors at Color Burst Park throughout the day with The 1619 Project creator and The New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones serving as the featured author. Over 150 spectators roamed the park’s grounds to eat, drink, and be bookish.

The festival also highlighted the soft opening of the new location of Busboys and Poets, a popular D.C. bookstore chain known for its added restaurant, bar, café, and venue concept. Dozens lined up at the bookstore-eatery after the festival, where the business had a pop-up stand. Beside its tent was the Howard County mobile library.

With past headliners such as White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo, political journalist April Ryan, and award-winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this year’s headliner Nikole Hannah-Jones was joined by the following authors:

Amy Argetsinger, author of There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America

Milagros Phillips, author of Cracking the Healer’s Code

Jake Tapper, author of The Devil May Dance

Maureen Corrigan, author of So We Read On

Ram Devineni, Ashley A. Woods, and Yusef Komunyakaa of Jupiter Invincible

Laura Lippman, author of Dream Girl

Stacey Vanek Smith, author of Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace

Aparna Verma, author of The Boy with Fire

In anticipation of the Penguin Random House Nov. 16 release of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story and the children’s version The 1619 Project: Born on the Water with Piecing Me Together novelist Renée Watson, Nikole sat in an hourlong conversation with Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallat. She broke down the pivotal year of 1619 and how the conflicting nature of events fails to be taught in our schools.

“Two things happened in 1619: the arrival of the White Lion and the beginning of African slavery in the thirteen colonies, but it’s also when the country took its first step towards democracy,” she said. “It’s when the English colonists took a vote on this land for the first time. Democracy and anti-democracy are birthed in the same moment. The idea of freedom and slavery is birthed in the same moment in this country, but we’re not taught that.”

Tweeting under the user name Ida Bae Wells, Nikole also explained why Ida B. Wells is her role model, especially when the newspaper she works for now once called the groundbreaking Black investigative journalist a “slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress,” also referenced in Nikole’s Twitter bio.

“What Ida B. Wells means to me personally is she was the first example of a Black woman doing what I hoped to do, which shows you a lot about our field, right?” she said. “That I had to go to a woman born right at the Emancipation Proclamation to see a model of a Black investigative reporter who was a woman, who was a feminist, who was a civil rights activist, who was doing the type of reporting that I wanted to see.”

“But also that legacy of lineage matters,” she continued. “To understand that there were badass Black women who were doing things at a time when there was no help that was going to come to protect Ida B. Wells when she was investigating lynchings.”

She added the actions of Black female writers before her sets the tone for her work:

It gives you courage. It gives you strength. It helps you understand what you’re doing, and it gives you humility that you didn’t create this. There are a lot of folks who came before you. There are a lot of folks who had to sacrifice and suffer for you to do the work that you do and that, to me, gives the motivation for the work that I’m trying to do because I have to repay this debt that I owe.

Besides the literary content, the park’s atmosphere was filled with Instagrammable features, including a welcome arch made from books, light-studded signs, and pumpkin-and-hay stacks, splashed with the festival’s lavender-hued branding. A chalkboard requested attendees write down what they’re reading. The district also had restaurants with outside seating like Dok Khao Thai Eatery, The Charmery, Clove & Cardamom, and Cured and 18th & 21st.

The event was free with tickets available on Eventbrite. Almost all attendees followed the mask mandate. Street and garage parking around the Merriweather District was free for the festival.

what's lit

One World Authors Mark Banned Books Week With Conversation on Self-Education

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

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

One World hosted an event Wednesday featuring some of the most celebrated and debated authors of our time for a conversation on what they wished they had learned during their youth.

In honor of Banned Books Week, the Random House imprint invited authors via pre-recorded video interviews such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, and Bryan Stevenson to mark the “annual celebration of the freedom to read” from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2.

“Banning books is something that’s happened for many, many years and then there’s also the long-standing practice of omitting entire histories and identities from school curriculum around this country, as well as the fact that many books simply never get published,” said event co-host Elizabeth Méndez Berry, the One World vice president and executive editor. “One World authors, many of them have actually dedicated their lives to writing the books that they were not able to read coming up.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, said she learned how histories and cultures were wiped away from her schooling when she was younger.

“I didn’t remember if there were certain books my schools were prohibited from teaching us when I was a child, but I do know that there were entire histories, and peoples, that were simply erased,” she said. “I was taught about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and how they were men who made their living off of human bondage, and that their primary occupation was that of being a slave owner.”

The New York Times journalist and Howard University professor also mentioned how Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption and other books have been banned from prisons. Helping place books in prisoners’ hands has become a growing civil rights issue with groups such as Noname Book Club starting a program to send books monthly to incarcerated readers.

Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, said she didn’t learn about Bacon’s Rebellion until she was learning about labor history in her twenties. The rebellion, which occurred in 1676 ignited by colonists’ failure to steal Native American lands, resulted in the burning of Virginia’s capital of Jamestown and united White indentured servants and Black slaves.

“Once the rebellion was crushed, the colonial plantation elite decided they needed to drive a permanent wedge between White and Black workers to keep them from ever joining forces against them,” she said. “Again, the post-Bacon laws in large part created the system of racial hierarchy that we take for granted as part of our history.”

For modern history, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning author Cathy Park Hong said she didn’t recall learning in school about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Japanese Americans living in World War II internment camps seemed like a “footnote.”

“In all of my English classes, I don’t recall reading a single novel or short story, or even a poem by an Asian American author,” she said. “Because of this, it took me a long time to realize I had permission to be a writer, because for so long, I didn’t think I had a place in American literature because I had no role models. In my history classes, too, I learned very little, if anything, about Asians in America.”

Race and ethnicity in America wasn’t the only theme. Golem Girl: A Memoir author Riva Lehrer discussed her experience growing up disabled in the 1960s. She said though she went to a top school that wouldn’t put her on the path to becoming a sweatshop worker, there weren’t many discussions on what path she should take.

“What we didn’t get was any idea of what we could be in the world,” said Riva, a queer painter. “We got no encouragement to dream, to think about wanting be an engineer or a doctor or a botanist or all the things that would have been open to people back then at a normal school.”

Banned Books Week started in 1982 after the surge in more books being challenged by schools, libraries, and bookstores around the U.S. The top 10 challenged books of last year can be found here. The event is on YouTube.

Tags #banned books, banned books week, bryan stevenson, cathy park hong, deep lit, golem girl, heather mcghee, ibram x kendi, just mercy, minor feelings, nikole hannah-jones, noname book club, one world, penguin random house, random house, riva lehrer, ta-nehisi coates, the 1619 project, the sum of us