Tag: grief memoirs

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Book Review: ‘The Woman in Me’ by Britney Spears

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears pulls the curtain back on the making of one of the biggest pop stars the world has ever seen and reveals how her superstardom eclipsed her familial trauma.

Taking the title from the lyrics of the 2001 hit “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” from the Britney album and Crossroads soundtrack, the long-awaited memoir made headlines with the sordid details of Britney’s relationship with fellow pop star and Mouseketeer Justin Timberlake during the turn of the century where tabloid articles and paparazzi photos overtook the media landscape. But there’s more to Britney’s life story starting in Kentwood, Louisiana. Born 25 miles away in McComb, Mississippi (also R&B pop star Brandy’s birthplace), Britney is a little girl who loves singing and dancing.

The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time. I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life—those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human. They wanted to take away that specialness and keep everything as rote as possible. It was death to my creativity as an artist.

Her father, Jamie, transitions through jobs as a welder to a construction worker to a gym owner, while her mother, Lynne, runs a daycare center raising Britney and her brother, Bryan. Britney scores opportunities to audition for The All New Mickey Mouse Club and perform on Star Search. Like many future stars at the time, once these opportunities end, she is back home. Her family eventually welcomes her younger sister, Jamie Lynn. The family dynamic is volatile. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother smokes and yells constantly. She feels the most in power when she is performing. 

“Tragedy runs in my family,” Britney writes when telling the story of her paternal grandmother, known as Jean, who was committed to an asylum by Britney’s grandfather after losing a baby. Her grandmother was 31 years old when she shot herself with a shotgun over her infant son’s grave. New York Magazine covered this story in November 2022 in a longform piece that explores Britney’s ancestral tree on the Spears side to set the background for the conservatorship that ended in November 2021. Like her grandmother, Britney suffers from mental health issues after having her two sons a year apart. She says she had been forced to take Prozac for years. She had been hospitalized, where she says she was given lithium instead. Lithium was the drug her grandmother had taken as well. And like her grandmother, the reason why her mental health had destabilized is misunderstood. 

I was a little girl with big dreams. I wanted to be a star like Madonna, Dolly Parton, or Whitney Houston. I had simpler dreams, too, dreams that seemed even harder to achieve and that felt too ambitious to say out loud: I want my dad to stop drinking. I want my mom to stop yelling. I want everyone to be okay.

One aspect that seems to have been dominated by the Justin Timberlake headlines is the mistreatment Britney endured being married to backup dancer and wannabe rapper Kevin Federline. The father of her two children, Kevin disappears into recording studios and industry parties while Britney is breastfeeding one son and is pregnant with another one. As her marriage is falling apart and her custody arrangement goes against her, paparazzi stalk her more than ever to capture photos of her in disarray. Then in 2007,  she shaves her head at a barbershop with camera lens catching the moment outside. A few weeks later, she strikes a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella. The media salivates over these incidents and brands them as erratic, but Britney blames the stress on her postpartum depression, her divorce, the death of her aunt, and her family’s failure to help her properly through the grief. Throughout the book, she clarifies her emotions during events that dominated tabloids because her voice was misconstrued or silenced when it came to defending herself. 

The memoir serves as further defense for her sanity, post-conservatorship. Now, Britney makes headlines strictly with her Instagram usage. She often tapes herself dancing and modeling clothes with smoky eyes. In the book, she explains she finally has the right to express herself through photography. She owns the images and reels she shares on social media and poses for the camera of her volition. 

I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begun to think in some ways like a child.

As for her infamous relationships, she was 24 and 25 years old when she had her sons. She married Kevin at 22 years old in 2004. That was only 2½ years after her unexpected breakup with Justin. When a girl falls in love with a boy at eleven years old and reconnects with him in a relationship plastered on every tabloid page, it’s natural for judgment to lead to soul mate talk. The raw emotion on the pages of Britney’s memoir just shows how she had to grow and move on from a relationship that seemed like it could last forever. Showbusiness had gotten in the way of both her major romances, which both ended disastrously with her receiving the weight of the judgment as the woman. 

Though she discusses her most memorable tours and appearances, Britney uses the memoir to give us a picture of the life she tried to make private until it was forced into privacy with her 13-year conservatorship. She describes the loneliness of performing while under a conservatorship like serving as a reality show judge and headlining a Las Vegas residency. A conservatorship is defined in legal terms as the designation of a conservator by a court to manage the financial and personal affairs of an incapacitated or incompetent individual, minor, or older adult with limited capacity. Britney was under a conservatorship when she shouldn’t have been classified as incapacitated or incompetent since she worked under extreme pressure. When the legal battle to gain back her independence started in 2020, many fans didn’t realize what a conservatorship entailed. Now, that her father is no longer her conservator, she is free, but she lost many years of her adulthood not having the freedom to control her wealth, decide on what to put in her body, or even drive her car. 

Looking back, I think that both Justin and Kevin were very clever. They knew what they were doing, and I played right into it. That’s the thing about this industry. I never knew how to play the game. I didn’t know how to play the game.

Overall, the memoir gives Britney a chance to explain her side of the story, which was largely ignored or misconstrued by the media machine. The book is written in her voice (think her lengthy Instagram captions), where you can tell she is sorting out her feelings and emotions during difficult times of her life. She chose Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams to record the audiobook on her behalf, which is unusual, especially for a celebrity who uses her voice to opt out of recording her own story. How you use your speaking voice can vary greatly compared to how you use your singing voice. The way the entertainment industry took a young Southern girl who loved to perform and transformed her into a robot to sell millions of albums and concert tickets took an insurmountable toll on the pop star. Now, that her story is out in the open, it seems like she is setting the parameters for her life.

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what's lit

‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Aftertastes

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

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

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

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

FINDING HOME IN SICILY

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

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

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

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

TOWN GOSSIP

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

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

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

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

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

SANT’ANNA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CARING FAMILY

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

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

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

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

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

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‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Bread and Brine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

coffee break

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

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

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

IT COULD GET WORSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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what's lit

‘From Scratch’ TV Review: Bitter Almonds

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

Delivering a cake to a Sicilian baker’s third cousin leads to a new job opportunity for Amy, played by Zoë Saldaña, in From Scratch as Amy’s husband Lino, played by Eugenio Mastrandrea, fulfills his dream of being the head chef in his own restaurant.

The Netflix drama is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by actress Tembi Locke about her relationship with her late husband Saro, who succumbs to cancer, and her journey through the grief in Saro’s homeland of Sicily.

In the limited series, Amy starts volunteering at the Watts Tower with teaching kids art. She feels more of a purpose as a volunteer compared to her job at an upscale art gallery. When her boss calls her to convince a client to keep their work in the gallery in the middle of a volunteer session, Amy realizes she would rather make the community gig full-time.

Meanwhile, Lino loses his job. The greasy Italian restaurant he had been working at since he moved to Los Angeles is closing over loss of business. The owner says he’ll keep the building, but operations will cease. Lino asks if he could finally cook his own authentic Sicilian cuisine in an experimental dining experience. The owner agrees, making Lino the head chef of the new iteration.

Amy wrestles with her decision for the lower-paying job, so she calls her father Hershel, played by Keith David, for advice. Hershel reminds her that she’s a married woman who needs to discuss the life-changing decision with her husband.

When Amy and Lino come together to talk through their career moves, they convince each other to follow their dreams.

ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK

A banner for L’Isola, Lino’s test run of a dining experience, hangs over the old restaurant’s signage for opening night.

Amy’s sister Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler, brings her former NFL boyfriend Ken, played by Terrell Carter, to the new restaurant. Zora is acting on Amy’s advice to introduce her boyfriend to their mother Lynn, played by Kellita Smith.

Frenzied by serving patrons, Amy tells Zora that she did not expect the introduction to happen on the opening night of her husband’s restaurant. But Zora explains that they would all be under the same roof, so it makes the most sense until Lynn rebuffs Ken every time he shares information about himself. The introduction is a fail, especially without Amy being able to sit down with her family to be a mediator. Zora becomes upset with Amy for the bad advice.

A DREAM DEFERRED

One day, Lino comes home after a long day at work complaining about pain in his knee. Amy checks the knee and notices it’s swollen. Noting the hardened texture, she suggests Lino should see an orthopedic doctor.

Amy reaches out to Zora for an orthopedic doctor since Ken would know one with his professional football background. Zora becomes enraged; she feels she’s being used by her needy younger sister again. She gives Amy the information but warns her about her dependence.

At the doctor’s office, the scan of Lino’s knee leads to a referral to an oncologist. Lino eventually gets diagnosed with a rare soft-tissue cancer. Right away, Lino is rushed to chemotherapy, as Amy suddenly becomes a caretaker.

Though L’Isola is getting rave reviews, the trial restaurant closes immediately without Lino being able to be on-site as the head chef. Amy must convince her former unfeeling boss at the art gallery to give her contract work in order to keep her health insurance policy. She doesn’t share Lino’s diagnosis, but her sobbing convinces the boss to help her.

Zora comes by the house to see what happened to Lino’s restaurant. As soon as she’s at the door, Lino collapses behind Amy. They rush Lino to the hospital, where he has to stay. Amy reveals to her family Lino’s cancer diagnosis and how it has already upended their lives.

THE BITTER AND THE SWEET

The name of the episode, “Bitter Almonds,” is also the name of a chapter in the memoir. But the book focuses more on life in Sicily after Tembi’s husband Saro dies from cancer. During her time of grief with Saro’s mother, Tembi receives a heavy bag of almonds from a neighbor in the town who said the almonds were from a cousin of Saro’s mother. When Tembi brings the almonds to the home, she realizes she brought another chore to the kitchen. Cracking the nuts open becomes a worthwhile experience to taste authentic Sicilian almonds.

“Bitterness, Sicilians understand, is an essential flavor both in food and in life. It has shaped the island’s culinary identity. There is no sweet without bitter. The poetry of island tells us that the same is true of the Sicilian heart.”

Saro’s cancer diagnosis is first detailed in the chapter “At the Table,” where Tembi describes the hardship of becoming a caretaker while still working as an actress. They are exhausted from the medical situation until Saro suggests Tembi should “take a lover.” They can’t enjoy their time together as he gets sicker. The swift transition came with her husband’s chemo rounds and knee surgery. The cancer is still a secret to his family.

“Many rounds of chemo, three hospital stays, and a major surgery later, Saro still had not told his parents about his diagnosis,” Tembi writes. They soon have to notify his family, who fly to LA. Like in the next episode where Amy must pick up Lino’s parents at the airport stateside and prepare mentally on how to deal with the parents who have failed to build a relationship with her.

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what's lit

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

Tembi Locke’s memoir about her love journey with her late husband is getting an onscreen adaptation with fictional characters similar to her and her family members.

From Scratch became a best-seller in 2019 when the actress opened up about meeting her chef husband Saro in Sicily while studying abroad in college and how they built their lives in Los Angeles in order for her to pursue her Hollywood dreams. When her husband succumbs to cancer, she finds herself as a single mother to an adopted daughter as they venture through Sicily to engage with her husband’s family and homeland without him.

The Netflix series debuts Oct. 21.

In the eight-episode miniseries, Zoe Saldaña plays Amy, a character like Tembi who’s a Black woman from Texas in Italy for her dramatic studies. Eugenio Mastrandrea plays Lino, a character like Saro who’s a Sicilian chef who falls for Amy and follows her to the U.S. where they build their family until his untimely death.

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

“When the book club was going to pick ‘From Scratch’ as its May ’19 book club pick, every day literally I wake up and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how, but thank you, just thank you,’ because it has been such a gift,” Tembi said at a Netflix sneak peek event. “They have been incredible collaborators. They have believed in every aspect of this story, every frame of it, everything that we wanted to do, and they have really given us as sisters this platform to put this book on a bigger canvas.”

Attica Locke, who’s an award-winning mystery novelist and screenwriter who worked on Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere based on Celeste Ng’s novel, joined her sister Tembi to bring the family love story to the screen.

“I think there is a beautifully absurd family dynamic at the heart of it, and it touches on everybody. And all of our families has some element of the absurd to them underneath our love,” Attica said. “There’s love of food. There’s love of my culture. There’s love of music. And we wanted to show kind of every aspect of it. I don’t think there’s any dyad. I don’t think there’s any relationship between two people that doesn’t hit a bump over the course… including the sisters hit a bump that they have to kind of have to get through and decide in the time that we have left, how do we want to spend it together as a family?”

The miniseries covers a yearslong journey of a character falling in love then learning to preserve that love, Tembi said.

“We wanted to render life in its fullest sense, and here’s a woman coming into her womanhood and all that that means with it and owning all of who she is and the arc of her journey of self-discovery,” she said.

Due to her proximity to the true story, Attica said she’s learning how to tell stories more authentically through book and TV projects.

“I would hope that, and what I think is happening in my life, is that through the books and through the television shows that I’ve worked on, that I’m getting closer to and more comfortable with telling the truth,” Attica said. “What telling stories that have fundamental truth in them. And whereas I may have been more shy as a younger writer about saying something that is clearly my point of view that I believed to be the kind of truth of something in the world.”

As for a non-spoiler, Tembi said the first time the character based on her goes to the restaurant owned by the character based on her late husband and receives a cooked meal is pure magic. “You cannot have a series called ‘From Scratch’ without that moment.”

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Book Review: ‘Acne’ by Laura Chinn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ by Jennette McCurdy

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy is an eye-opening memoir examining the abuse the Nickelodeon star said she endured from the mother who forced her into Hollywood. 

Jennette McCurdy starred in the Nickelodeon series iCarly (currently in reboot mode on Paramount+ without her) for five seasons from 2007-2012 as Sam Puckett, the supportive, food-loving friend of Miranda Cosgrove’s Carly whose internet show is a viral success. She even scored a spin-off with fellow Nickelodeon star Ariana Grande called Sam & Cat that only lasted a season from 2013-2014 with Ariana being on the brink of pop stardom. Despite finding herself famous at a young age, Jennette never wanted it. 

Acting in Hollywood is her mother’s dream. The McCurdys live in Garden Grove, an hour and a half away from the entertainment epicenter in nearby Orange County, but they’re living the low-income life in Jennette’s father’s family home with Jennette, her mother Debra, sometimes her father, her mother’s parents, and her three brothers. By the time Jennette is two years old, Debra is battling breast cancer. As the family copes with the grim diagnosis, they start going back to church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints becomes the sanctuary Jennette connects with. Now that they’re practicing Mormons again, the family feels blessed when Debra goes into remission. But her mother is still not happy, especially with Jennette’s father who seems unable to provide what they need. Frustrated, Debra would complain that her parents wouldn’t let her go to Hollywood, again a short distance away. Then one day six-year-old Jennette says she’ll go to Hollywood for her mother. She knows this will make her mother happy.

They go on casting calls, where Debra is already upset that the untrained Jennette isn’t getting speaking roles right away. Like most actors, Jennette is starting out in the background. She transitions to higher-level background work when she appears gloomy in a film’s photo shoot; that’s what the director wanted from another child actor who couldn’t look as gloomy as Jennette. By this time, Jennette has her gloominess down pat as she feels too old for her overbearing mother to be going to the bathroom with her to clean her up and showering with her. 

To help her stay small for child acting roles, her mother tells her about “calorie restriction” and how she can eat 1,000 calories a day or less. Together, mother and daughter are barely eating full meals. At eleven, Jennette starts losing weight at a rapid pace. A casting director warns her mother that Jennette may have an eating disorder. But her mother waves the concern off. Even Jennette’s doctor advises her mother to help Jennette with her eating issues. Again, her mother ignores the advice. 

After a series of TV and film appearances, Jennette scores her first leading role as Sam Puckett in iCarly. The pilot episode airs when she’s fifteen years old. Right away, her mother is discouraging a friendship between Jennette and Miranda, the show’s star who already made a name for herself on the Nickelodeon sitcom Drake & Josh, because she sees Miranda as troublesome, accusing her of not believing in God. Jennette feels conflicted about wanting to be friends with her co-star and being a good Mormon daughter. It’s like the two versions of her can’t coexist. She befriends Miranda anyway through secret AOL instant messages after spending days on set with her. 

As the show grows in popularity, the more famous Jennette becomes. That translates to more opportunities for the rising teen star like heading to Nashville for a country music recording contract that doesn’t last, being introduced to alcohol by iCarly’s creator Dan Schneider who is unnamed but was investigated for similar on-set abuse allegations last year, and running off with a thirty-something show producer who guilts her for him breaking up with his girlfriend of five years. Jennette’s quick introduction to adulthood forces her mother to disown her. Her mother again is battling breast cancer and looks for a way to edge Jennette out of stardom due to her bad behavior by trying to steal her mostly tween fanbase. 

The book starts with Jennette whispering to her unconscious dying mother that she finally reached their goal weight of eighty-nine pounds. By this time, the anorexia and bulimia has ravaged Jennette’s body to the point she doesn’t know how to eat and enjoy a meal. The “calorie restriction” her mother taught her to keep up with Hollywood standards still has a hold on her, so much so that boyfriends encourage her to seek therapy in order to establish healthy relationships. In therapy, she learns about how abusive her mother was by not only teaching her dangerous eating habits but controlling her every move in order for her to be a success in Hollywood. Even after Debra’s death in 2013, Jennette learns that her mother hid a secret that forces her on another journey. What may have been out of love was toxic, so toxic that Jennette realizes she never knew who she really was, just the version of her that wanted to make her mother happy. 

The comedic yet heart-wrenching title of the memoir helps normalize the mother-daughter relationship that isn’t as rosy as a lot of portrayals in the media. We see more stories where mothers dote on their daughters, and daughters call their mothers their heroines. But for many daughters, their mothers push their ideas of perfection, especially about their bodies, onto their daughters that creates self-loathing that morphs into mental illness. In the author’s case, her mother’s constant critiques on her body and her acting skills forced her into a downward spiral of eating disorders. 

The mothers with their ideas of perfection usually feel they can’t be as perfect as they want to be, so their daughters have to be that perfect. We see Jennette’s mother become disappointed about her life path, feeling she was unable to take on Hollywood herself because her mother told her not to. Jennette details the frustration of dealing with her mother’s mother after her mother dies. The drama-queen antics seem hereditary when her grandmother is upset that Jennette wants to quit acting and undo financial decisions that no longer serve her as a former actor. The generational trauma of these women not feeling able to fulfill their dreams falls onto Jennette as she realizes she never had a chance to figure out her own dreams. Her formative years are gone; they had been spent on making Debra’s dreams come true as Debra read Woman’s World magazines in on-set trailers and networked with other celebrity momagers like Barbara Cameron, the mother of Full House star Candace Cameron Bure and Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron, who becomes Jennette’s onetime agent. 

Overall, this memoir explores the complex ties between a daughter and her mother with the backdrop of Hollyweird contributing to their dysfunctional relationship. It’s also a memoir where the author has come to terms with her feelings about her mother, hence the controversial title that should be seen as honest. In abusive relationships, once the abuser is gone, then the person who was abused can heal. This book, which was born out of the author’s one-woman shows, is about the healing process of self-discovery.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Speak’ by Tunde Oyeneyin

Speak: Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Tunde Oyeneyin is a memoir about discovering body positivity and navigating a purposeful journey that’s vividly told by the popular Peloton instructor.

Growing up in Katy, Texas, Tunde is the only daughter out of three children of her Nigerian parents. At a young age, she’s considered overweight, and the shady comments she would hear about her prettiness being dimmed by her size marks her upbringing. A hard worker, she takes on multiple jobs in college, including one behind a department store makeup counter. This leads her to gaining clients who take note of her makeup application skills. She eventually moves to Los Angeles for a chance to groom her budding career until tragedy strikes.

She loses her younger brother, and a few years later, her mother, then her father. The back-to-back deaths of her immediate family send her into a depression. But opportunities keep coming her away that pull her out of the abyss and bring new urgency to live her life with purpose.

As she focuses on her mental and physical health, she develops a passion for cycling after taking a class. The inspirational shouting to keep moving forward sends her on a new career path. After trying out for Peloton more than once, she finally nabs a spot and quickly rises to the top of being one of most popular cycling instructors on the fitness platform. She takes the moment to inspire others, such as the time she decided to shave her head and the time she made an impromptu speech on why Black Lives Matter amid the 2020 racial justice movement.

The book’s title comes from her acronym S.P.E.A.K., which stands for Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge. The subtitle is Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. The lessons Tunde learns from her life, especially around being comfortable within her own body, weave together nicely as she narrates her story via audiobook. Her voice is melodious in expressing the emotion she felt at different moments.

There is an examination of her luck. She has been given a lot of opportunities, but some are inextricably tied to the tragedies she has endured. She wins a prize, for example, but the prize contributes to her brother’s death. The blame sits heavy on her soul, but she realizes that her only option is to live her life to the fullest.

Overall, her memoir doesn’t necessarily give action steps on how to take control of your life as the title may entail, but it’s more of how she took those action steps that undoubtedly resonates with a wide audience beyond the Peloton cycle seat.

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book reviews

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

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Netflix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Marketing Maven Bozoma Saint John Teases New Memoir

Bozoma Saint John, the chief marketing officer of streaming service Netflix, announced she has officially joined the author family at Penguin Random House.

In an Instagram post, she shared a snapshot of an email from the publisher welcoming her to the author portal, where she will access information such as her sales and royalties. She revealed her book, The Urgent Life, is coming out next year courtesy of Viking Books, a Penguin imprint.

“I’m really writing y’all,” she wrote Wednesday. “And then one day, you’ll see my vulnerable words in print 🤯 This is truly one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.”

On a recent podcast episode with broadcast journalist Catt Sadler, Bozoma says the book will focus on her journey of grief after losing her husband to lymphoma within six months of his diagnosis in 2013. She tells Catt that she used social media to share the journey with loved ones until they told her she should piece the content together for a book after her husband’s death. But she wasn’t ready.

“He’s been gone for seven years, and I feel like the time is right now,” Bozoma says. “I’m in a really great place spiritually, where the mantra that I live my life with now is to live life urgently, so the book is called The Urgent Life, which is really about the pace at which he lived his last months and we lived it together… It’s not about speed, it was about the intention, the intentionality of how we did it.”

The book does not have a public title page yet on the Penguin website, but comparative titles include actress Tembi Locke’s From Scratch, also a forthcoming Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana, and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s Option B.

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Reese Witherspoon Set to Bring Memoir ‘From Scratch’ to Netflix

Reese Witherspoon with "From Scratch" by Tembi Locke. Her production company, Hello Sunshine, will make the memoir into a Netflix limited series / Instagram

Actress Tembi Locke shared via Instagram that her best-selling memoir, From Scratch, will come to Netflix as a limited series with help from the queen of bringing books to the screen, Reese Witherspoon, and her production company Hello Sunshine.

In an Instagram post in which she shared the Variety article as the exclusive, Tembi also noted that she will be working with her sister, award-winning mystery novelist Attica Locke, who has earned TV producing credits in Netflix’s When They See Us and Fox’s Empire as well as the other major bookish Hello Sunshine project in the works, Little Fires Everywhere based on Celeste Ng’s best-selling novel. Tembi added she and Attica will be working alongside the series’ star, Zoe Saldana, and Zoe’s sisters.

Hello Sunshine’s Instagram post said the project will be done in partnership with Cinestar and 3 Arts.

Zoe will play Tembi’s role in the book that follows Tembi from her college semester abroad in Italy where she meets her future Sicilian husband Saro, their lives as a married couple in Los Angeles building their careers, and then Saro’s cancer diagnosis which leads to his untimely death and a reawakening for Tembi and her daughter trying to find purpose amid the loss. Read the she lit book review.

From Scratch was Hello Sunshine book club’s May selection.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘From Scratch’ by Tembi Locke

“From Scratch” is a beautifully written memoir showing the elements of grief when dealing with the loss of a spouse while nurturing the delicate relationships with that spouse’s homeland, culture, and family.

Tembi is studying abroad in Italy when she meets Sicilian native Saro after he tries to help her get her stolen bike back. There’s instant chemistry between them. Tembi, who returns to the U.S. to finish her studies, keeps a long-distance relationship with Saro, who’s in his 30s and ready to become a chef. They convene in New York City later where they marry as Tembi builds up her acting career on Broadway. Her career then takes her away from the stage to the silver screen in Hollywood. Saro follows and begins his culinary career in Los Angeles. They’re living an ideal life until they want children. Biologically, they are having trouble conceiving, so they soon adopt Zoela. During the adoption decision, they learn Saro has liver cancer. Though he’s in and out of remission for years, he succumbs to the disease when Zoela is 7 years old. The overwhelming loss hits Tembi as she has to deal with matters such as distributing Saro’s ashes – some interred in LA and the rest she takes to Sicily. Saro’s parents never approved of their son marrying an American black woman, so in Siciliy Tembi is also still in relationship-building mode with her in-laws with her young daughter in tow. Tembi and Zoela feel a stronger sense of family in Sicily as they bond with Saro’s aging mother and realistically make plans in time of her impending death.

The way this memoir is written is extraordinary with detail, including the details of Tembi handling her husband’s cancer treatment, their adoption process, her husband’s death, and her obsession to make sure she grieves healthily with her daughter. She talks about the moments when she misses her husband the most like picking fava beans in their garden in the Silver Lake neighborhood in LA, creating meals with Saro’s favorite utensils and pots. The memoir also shines a spotlight on how stressful a loved one’s death can be with all the checklists and how one person may bear most of the burden of crossing everything off. On audiobook, Tembi reads her story perfectly.