Tag: memoirs

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Stare at the Same Fires

For Show Promotion Only
Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

The OWN series Queen Sugar has been knee-deep this season in driving storylines around the memoir by Nova, the middle daughter of the sugar mill-owning Bordelon family in Louisiana. In this episode, Nova’s biological sister and former sister-in-law of sorts are dealing with the aftermath of Nova’s memoir with controlled substances.

Nova (Rutina Wesley) helps her real sister, Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner), off a barstool in New Orleans, miles away from their hometown of St. Josephine. Charley had been drinking throughout the night at the bar with her sunglasses on, so her potential constituents won’t notice her since she’s running for office. Nova takes her sister to the hotel room and dresses Charley in her pajamas. The tender moment shows the distance they’ve been dealing with can be reduced so quickly. Under the blankets, Charley asks why Nova wrote her book and told the Bordelon family secrets. Nova says she thought it would help the family but now realizes it only helped her career. Charley begins crying, and Nova comforts her sister.

Once Charley returns home, she notices the front page of the local newspaper with the headline, “Charley Bordelon Is My Role Model.” It’s an op-ed by Nova about why her sister would make a great city councilwoman who will defend their farmer community. Nova adds in the op-ed that she regrets what she wrote about her sister in the best-selling memoir.

Charley’s son Micah (Nicholas L. Ashe) then brings his mother out to a get-together where family, friends, and mill workers have gathered to uplift each other after the mill’s fire from last week’s episode.

As the festivities are taking place under garden lights, Darla (Bianca Lawson) is at home taunted by a bottle of alcohol. Since she’s broken up with Nova’s brother Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) and lied about their son Blue (Ethan Hutchison)’s paternity, it’s striking to see her suffering no longer a concern for the Bordelons. She’s not considered family anymore. Nobody is checking on her as she deals with the impact of Nova’s memoir.

Darla’s depression in the episode starts with her visiting the musician she is dating at a practice. He approaches Darla to let her know he’s worried about what he read in Nova’s book. Since he’s working on his sobriety, he picks up on Darla’s slip. Darla becomes hard to contact like Charley.

The contrasting moments with Charley and Darla succumbing to their vices because of Nova’s book are eye-opening to the deeper impact the book has had on the family. The storyline keeps evolving every episode, where the pivotal moments are connected to the pain caused by Nova’s book. This week, the book didn’t seem to earn more awards as it seemed to in previous episodes while a character is having a breakdown. It’d be interesting to see how these characters will keep reacting to the book and how the book will keep rising on the charts.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Last Black Unicorn’ by Tiffany Haddish

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“The Last Black Unicorn” by Tiffany Haddish is the rising comedienne’s memoir that she tells in her playful tone on audiobook, but the simplicity in the writing and the lack of a sequence slightly diminish the lessons she wants the reader to take away from her story.

Growing up in South LA, Tiffany is the oldest of several siblings (they’re not really present in this memoir) and bounces between her grandmother’s home and foster homes after her mother suffers a traumatic brain injury that leads to mental illness. She doesn’t know where her father is most of her life until an ex-cop helps her find him. She eventually marries that ex-cop, who in her words becomes abusive and controlling with trying to take her away from her budding comedy career. She realizes that she felt safer dating an ex-cop because she never trusted her stepfather. When she was a teenager, Tiffany alleges her stepfather implied he was responsible for her mother’s brain injury that derailed Tiffany’s life and the lives of her siblings. Once she breaks ties with her ex-husband to stop the history of bad relationships, her career flourishes with her starring role in “Girls Trip” that carries her to stardom.

The chapters feel disorganized. The summary above seems more of a fleshed-out sequence than her book. There are rough periods in her life that readers can learn from, but they’re told in her comedic voice without the strong vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. The words didn’t hold as much strength as they could have. But it was interesting to see her comedic journey from being the class clown in school to copy other students’ work because she was illiterate until age 15 to becoming a nationally known bar mitzvah hype woman to performing in SoCal casinos and comedy clubs. She definitely highlights the ups and downs in the competitive world of entertainment and how she had found her calling at a young age (she attended comedy camp in high school where she met Richard Pryor) but strayed from the path due to toxic relationships. Again, these are the lessons that are glowing from the book, but they’re in pieces weaved into different chapters.

Overall, it’s nice that Tiffany voiced her own story on audiobook, but the writing and editing could’ve been better. It’s a memoir told in a very conversational tone, and some people like that and some like me don’t care for it.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Of Several Centuries + All the Borders

Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Natalie Baszile, Queen Sugar follows the Bordelons, a black family who owns a sugarcane company in Louisiana. As some of the members are experiencing a higher profile, it seems like the entire family is seeing the repercussions of their success.

The season has highlighted how middle daughter Nova (Rutina Wesley) wrote a memoir revealing family secrets—unbeknownst to her family. The tension grows by the episode.

Darla (Bianca Lawson), the ex-fiancee of Nova’s brother Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), arrives at her job to find Nova’s book facedown on her seat. The way the book is flipped open, it looks like it’s on the pages describing Darla’s journey in and out of drug addiction. She’s embarrassed that her past life has been made public and has followed her to work.

Nova runs into her police officer ex, Calvin (Greg Vaughan), who now owns a security company, and tells him over lunch how he’s mentioned in her book. Another ex now appears on the book tour since she was sleeping with her professor-mentor for the last two episodes.

There are bookmarks of destruction: The vandalism of Aunt Violet (Tina Lifford)’s restaurant in the beginning and the family-owned mill on fire in the end.

The second episode starts with Nova running to Charley and Ralph Angel as they watch the firefighters contain the mill fire. But her siblings are still unhappy to see her. After learning the fire most likely was caused by arson, Charley and Ralph Angel storm off to approach the nemesis sugarcane business family matriarch, Frances Boudreaux (Annalee Jefferies).

“They looked at me like I wasn’t one of them. They looked like I was a stranger. Not even a stranger, like an enemy,” Nova cries into the phone to Calvin. “I lost my family.”

Calvin runs over to Nova’s house to check on her. Micah comes over at the same time. Once Calvin goes into another room to take a call, Micah questions Nova on how she’s comfortable being with a white ex-cop who could’ve beaten the black and brown residents of St. Josephine. Last season, Micah had been mistreated by a cop during a traffic stop, creating distrust for him and his family over police presence. During that time, Nova’s profile rose as a result of her coverage on cops targeting unarmed black men, which led to her book deal. Nova later asks Calvin if he ever saw another police officer “abuse black people.” He says he looked the other way and he left the force since he had lost his relationship with Nova over the racial tensions in their town.

Nova’s book alone has destroyed her relationship with her family, but as she copes with that loss, she’s been gravitating to her toxic relationships from the past. The college professor she had an affair with turned up on the tour and now it’s her married cop boyfriend returning as divorced and retired from the force.

With her tour, Nova hasn’t really had the chance to mend the relationships at home like she thinks she has. She returns home over the mill fire, but it’s reminiscent of a few weeks ago when she ran to Violet’s home after noticing her aunt’s ex-husband, whom she had interviewed for her book, terrorizing her aunt.

The impact of the memoir is weaved brilliantly into the season with Nova enjoying the success of her book but feeling the fire of burning bridges.

“Queen Sugar” has new episodes on Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. on OWN.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: By the Spit

Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 -- "TBD" -- Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

OWN drama Queen Sugar is focusing this season on a main character’s evolution as a memoirist and how her memoir is impacting her family.

Nova (Rutina Wesley) has written a memoir spilling many unexpected family secrets, but as her family struggles with the secrets coming out of the shadows, she’s enjoying the limelight of having a best-selling, critically acclaimed book.

After reconnecting with her former professor-mentor Dr. Octavia Laurent (Cree Summer) whom she’s also started sleeping with again, Nova learns her book is being shortlisted for the National Book Award. Octavia, who went off on Nova for a measly mention in the book, tries to convince Nova that she doesn’t need accolades to prove her voice. It’s obvious this blast from the past is a hater, but Nova doesn’t see that yet, with even inviting Octavia to an interview about the book as part of the press tour.

During the interview, Nova is told by the reporter that her sister, Charley, is running for office to stop a highway proposal that would affect their family land. The sisters haven’t been speaking to each other since Nova put in her book that Charley paid off her basketballer ex-husband’s mistresses. When the reporter drops that bomb, Octavia interjects her wisdom. “Black girl magic is a continuum,” she says to detract attention, a quotable.

Later in the hotel room, Nova brings up her family. She is still bothered that she didn’t know about Charley running for office. Octavia says family members are “biological accidents,” advice Nova doesn’t care for at the moment. “Sometimes, we have to put family in the rearview to get to where we need to go,” Octavia adds, another quotable.

At a networking soiree, Octavia goes up to a woman she knows. The woman immediately praises Nova, who is left by the hors d’oeuvre table, in front of Octavia and proposes asking Nova to edit a collection of essays on race. Octavia says she would be a better candidate for the project since she’s been looking for one. But the woman says she would prefer emerging writers for the project. Then Octavia returns to Nova and lies about singing her praises. Nova looks at her mentor fly hungrily to one person to another.

Things later come to a head in the hotel room when Nova approaches Octavia about not telling her about the editing opportunity. Octavia tells Nova that she needs 20 years of prerequisites to complete such work. That she “made” Nova. The jealousy is palpable, and Nova thanks her mentor for opening doors but she will continue to walk in her path and reminds Octavia that she invited herself on the book tour. But Octavia retorts, “Emotional labor is still work. I refuse to be treated like an afterthought,” a third quotable. They part ways. Nova later calls Charley to congratulate her on the run.

The mentor storyline stuck out in this episode. What happens when you’re a mentor to someone who reaches the pinnacle of success you always wanted? What happens if your mentor doesn’t seem happy that you found success? These questions possibly come up for writers at times when their dreams come true as some people who worked alongside them throughout their careers may not continue with them.

Other storylines still have the imprint of the memoir’s effect. Charley goes to the Latinx section of town to get votes with her boyfriend and later deals with a brick thrown into her headquarters’ window. Seven-year-old Blue (Ethan Hutchison) gets a child psychologist to deal with learning that Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), the younger brother of Nova and Charley, is not his biological father. Violet (Tina Lifford) realizes that she may have post-traumatic stress disorder after Nova’s book brought back her violent ex-husband weeks ago.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth

More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are by Elaine Welteroth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a divine order, a divine flow to our lives. We don’t need to have all the answers. But our job is to keep on dreaming and trusting enough to put on foot in front of the other.

“More Than Enough” by Elaine Welteroth is a perfect snapshot of a biracial woman who reached such a historic career pinnacle at a young age and is willing to share her climb on the ladder, knowing based on race and upbringing that her climb is unique.

I found myself finding a lot in common with Elaine. I’m a Black woman editor with NorCal roots who had similar dreams but mine took me elsewhere and, like her, there were signs already putting me on a path that I didn’t see then. She starts her story from her childhood, pulling out certain memories that she now knows signaled her destiny. For example, she would make her own magazines for her fake beauty salon in her backyard with her friend. Like a lemonade stand, it made her realize her entrepreneurial and creative spirit.

By the time she gets to college, she’s in a toxic relationship with the boy she followed to Sac State (being from Sacramento luckily a rep from that college told me my grades were too good and I should go to my dream school). She mentioned it on her book tour and in her book that she regretted not applying for her dream school, Stanford, because she was following a boy, a common mistake. But in college, she meets a lifelong mentor, a professor whom she connects with over their similar parentage (Black mother, White father). On a trip, she shares with the professor and another student that she wants to be a magazine editor-in-chief at Essence. They praise her confidence to follow that dream.

When she does earn the Essence internship, the Ebony editor-in-chief she idolizes finally contacts her after she bombarded the editor with messages and asks her to work with her on a photo shoot in Malibu. There, Elaine suggests the model, tennis star Serena Williams, wear a blue bathing suit. She notices her faux pas, but it turns into an assistantship in which she lets go of her dream internship to pursue the opportunity. After being on the fast track, she’s let go at Ebony and worries about being pigeonholed in Black media. But because of her networking, she finds her way into Conde Nast, first at Glamour then at Teen Vogue, with eventually taking the top editor role at the now esteemed teen publication. Once there, she realizes being the first Black woman in charge holds a lot of responsibility, and that means navigating the direction of content to include all teen girls.

What I enjoyed the most about this book is the candidness. She admits to her stumbles, goes into details over those stumbles, and lets the reader know she thought it was the end until her life took another turn. Before every chapter, one of her quotes is highlighted, and it shows how carefully she chose her words to inspire others with her story. The book is on the long side with over 300 pages (like Michelle Obama’s Becoming), but it reads smoothly as you see her growth. Since I am in the same field and from the same area, I felt a strong connection with her and felt inspired by her moves, but it’s a memoir with a positive message that can transcend to women of all ages, but particularly those who are in college and their early 20s when they’re still trying to find their way when it comes to their careers.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘We Are Never Meeting In Real Life’ by Samantha Irby

We Are Never Meeting In Real LifeWe Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” by Samantha Irby is a hilarious collection of biographical essays that tell the craziest situations in the most verbose way.

Samantha is from the Chicago area and still lives there, so the first chapter is about how she’s never leaving her hometown, with adding that she still sees an elementary school teacher when she gets coffee. The title is an ode to her telling you everything, and being comfortable with that. She goes from her childhood, including her troubled family background; college, where she dropped out; liking men then liking women; adopting a sassy cat (probably similar to the cat on the cover); her irritable bowel syndrome (it does get gross); staying in the same assistant job for 15 years. The chapters that really stand out are the ones around her cat and her father.

The cat, named Helen Keller, gives her trouble the entire time, but the dialogue she puts in the cat’s mouth is funny. It’s like they’re constantly at war, and Samantha only got stuck with the cat because of her job at a veterinarian office.

Samantha doesn’t mention her late mother as much, but she mentions her late father a lot. She talks about her father, who was an alcoholic who would go missing days at a time and when he was home would bring illegal trouble into the home. Though she goes into detail about the unstable upbringing, it’s still in this upbeat, comedic tone. That’s what shines in this book is looking at life’s moments and having a sense of humor about it by describing every situation in the most exaggerated detail.

This book is great when you’re feeling down and need a pick-me-up. It’s the great comedic memoir you might be looking for if you’re open to reading about a black woman’s journey. Plus, she reads the audiobook in her awkwardly funny tone.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Face Speckled

Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 -- "TBD" -- Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

Still in the throes of Nova (Rutina Welsey) revealing family secrets in her best-selling memoir, the Bordelons are picking up the pieces as the book climbs the charts.

The episode opens with Nova having nightmares with her younger self, an image of how her memoir is impacting her as family relationships deteriorate.

Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner), Nova’s sister, gets a call from her ex-husband Davis (Timon Kyle Durrett) about his past affairs resurfacing in Nova’s book. Charley says she doesn’t want to be seen in public with him but knows her cleanup skills are impeccable, so she goes to help him.

Meanwhile, Nova is at a fireside chat for her book when a woman in the audience asks why Nova didn’t back her anecdotes with data. The woman argued the anecdotes as just Nova’s experiences are “self-aggrandizing” assumptions about the African-American community. She then calls Nova’s dismissal of data and theory a telltale mark of amateurism. Nova claims to be an “everyday black American,” and that is resounding with audiences.

It turns out the critical woman is Nova’s college professor (Cree Summer!). She was mad she got a sentence of nameless recognition in Nova’s book. She blames Nova for making a conscious effort to not mention her. Then they start making out on the table.

While packing up food from a catering gig, Violet tells Hollywood she’s scared again after Jimmy Dale returned in a previous episode.

Another kid told Blue (Ethan Hutchison) that Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) is not his father, the secret revealed in Nova’s book. Ralph Angel and Darla (Bianca Lawson) comforts Blue with saying he’ll never abandon him though he’s not his biological father.

One non-book reference that was a meaningful point in the episode involves immigration. Charley sees a thriving health care clinic for immigrants that her boyfriend doctor is running in the Bordelon warehouse. Until ICE shows up and families are separated. It could be said that Charley strives to be more charitable with the sugar cane business to prove its black ownership roots, something Nova criticized in her book.

In the next episode on July 24, Nova is shortlisted for the National Book Award.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Wrong End of the Table’ by Ayser Salman

The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit inThe Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in by Ayser Salman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“The Wrong End of the Table” by Ayser Salman is a funny outlook on American life via the eyes of an Iraqi Muslim transplant. It’s very light as in mostly the reader gets a view of dating obstacles rather than visits to the mosque, but the humor is well-constructed and the story is relatable.

The author moves to Ohio from Iraq at the age of 3 with eventually relocating to Kentucky then Saudi Arabia then back to Kentucky, where she wrestles with adolescence. Some of the events chosen to be highlighted are intriguing with her stint living in Saudi Arabia and connecting with a friend through the “Xanadu” soundtrack. Or how another friend there worked to escape the restrictive country to her mother who lived in the U.S. The Saudi Arabia chapters stick out since it’s rare to hear what it was like to grow up as a girl there in the 1980s, especially one who had come from America. Another event that stuck out was when the author lived in the college dorm in Kentucky and was accused by her African-American roommate’s cousin of racism over a Prince poster. It shows the growth during that young adult period when clashing with different people from different backgrounds.

Then some of the events were questionable to be plucked out for a memoir like her preschool experience of seeing sexual touching, which didn’t really open to another storyline though emphasized how America would be very different from Iraq. It fit with the theme of the story of not understanding what was going on while trying to be in the know, but it was awkward. At the end, she dives into dating in her 40s, which highlights multiple men who don’t really make an imprint in her life yet they’re mentioned.

Overall, it’s a light and funny memoir. I waited for moments such as her experiences jumping to so many different places and finding a mosque since her Muslim identity is in the title and a part of the book’s marketing, but it’s somewhat missing. The footnotes on almost every page may sound annoying, but they’re hilarious. To sum the memoir up would be it’s a collection of essays of experiences that may not be as life-defining but can induce laughs.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Skin Transparent

Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 -- "TBD" -- Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

The fallout from Nova’s (Rutina Wesley) memoir is still stirring up drama, but in this episode we get more insight on another family secret unbeknownst to most family members.

The episode starts with Nova’s nephew and her sister Charley’s (Dawn-­Lyen Gardner) son Micah (Nicholas L. Ashe) going to stay with Nova with plans to attend her upcoming book-signing. Sitting with his mother, Micah wonders how long the silent treatment will stay enforced among the Bordelons.

The family matriarch and aunt Violet (Tina Lifford) can’t sleep, claiming recipes are running through her head, but Hollywood pushes for her to talk about the situation with Jimmy Dale (guest star David Alan Grier), her abusive ex-husband who reappeared after communicating with Nova on her book.

Nova creeps around Violet’s restaurant since she had been banned from being around her aunt, but is turned away by an employee. Nova then calls her brother Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), who doesn’t pick up. News comes about her getting a six-week book tour due to her glowing The New York Times review. That news, of course, moves her attention away from the family and back on her success.

Charley tries to team up with the other female shareholder to go against the Landrys, the sugar cane empire family that had once owned her ancestors. But the shareholder tells Charley to back off because the Landrys are too powerful. So Charley sashays into a country club to approach a Landry about a highway proposal that would gut Bordelon land. The woman tells Charley that she had read Nova’s book with Charley clapping back on the book with a comparison to “sentimental dribble.”

While Charley recovers from her business-heavy moves, she gets home only to meet her ex-husband’s daughter from an extramarital affair. These affairs are described in Nova’s book with Charley paying off another mistress, so that drama haunts her with the publicity from the book and now a breathing part of evidence from an affair is right in her home.

At the book-signing for Blessing and Blood, Nova reads from a recently added chapter called “Buried Memories” about her father being beaten by three white men at a fishing trip to protect his daughter. She read she would wander the sugarcane fields at night, and on one night, she saw her father bury something into the ground. This is an addition to the book. Her ex-girlfriend comes up to her during the book-signing session and asks about Nova’s family not being there, visible with the empty chairs in the front. She gives Nova a kiss on the lips.

Darla (Bianca Lawson), Ralph Angel’s ex-fiancee and mother of their son Blue (Ethan Hutchison), receives Nova’s book and reads the details of her drug-fueled prostituting nights with baby Blue sitting in the corner. In a flash, she bursts into Nova’s door describing her shock that her past life is in those pages. Nova tries to clean it up; Darla’s name and identifying marks have been changed. This doesn’t sit well with Darla, who keeps telling Nova that she didn’t think of Blue’s feelings since he will eventually read about his mother’s past life.

Charley tells Violet and Ralph Angel at the restaurant that Micah asked about the added chapter in Nova’s book. Violet said she doesn’t know what her brother did that night Nova recalled when she was younger, but he had been worried about Nova getting sexually assaulted by those three white men until that night. Vehemently, Violet defends her brother about him and everyone else having the right to keep a secret between themselves and God.

Darla is hysterically crying on her porch about having to tell Blue the truth while Violet is doing the same in her bathroom with Hollywood hearing the muffled cries as the bathwater runs. As the family falls apart, Nova carries her heavy suitcases out the door for her book tour.

The depth of the secrets are felt in this episode. And Nova switches from concern about the book’s aftermath on her family to excitement when she receives good news from her literary agent and publisher. She still looks bad for unveiling her family’s secrets for money and success, yet she’s torn on what to do about it since her family blocks her apologies. More secrets will be revealed, or at least, there will be more coming out of the secrets we know now.

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experiences

Book Launch: ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth

Elaine Welteroth. Photo: Renell Medrano.

Elaine Welteroth, who reached prominence as the first black Teen Vogue editor and now as a Project Runway judge, stopped in Los Angeles Thursday for her book tour and discussed why she wrote the women empowerment memoir to an estimated 400-member audience.

What appeared to be a well-read black girl magic rally at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park started with the cheerful announcement that Elaine’s book had notched itself to the coveted New York Times Best Sellers list. She was then introduced by her former Teen Vogue colleague and friend Lynette Nylander, who conducted the fireside chat.

Right away, Elaine began reading from Chapter 16 in More Than Enough: Claiming Space For Who You Are (No Matter What They Say), which is dubbed “Disturbing the Peace,” which starts with a quote from Audre Lorde and describes how Elaine returned to work from a Christmas vacation from Rwanda for a surprise racial interaction. Her hair was braided into Senegalese twists down her waist—the first time she came to a corporate setting in an overly ethnic hairstyle—and a white female colleague in disbelief asked how her hair had allegedly grown feet over a short amount of time.

This question is sometimes posed to black women who decide to add synthetic or real hair to their braids for a new look to celebrate their heritage, so Elaine took it in stride after an inner dialogue berating the beauty industry for neglecting what is considered beautiful to women of color with telling the woman, “Oh, you of all people must know these are extensions.”

That set the tone for the evening: Elaine describing her humble background in the San Francisco Bay Area as a first-generation college graduate to a high-ranking editor in a magazine media empire. Starting her career in the beginning of the recession, she said she felt the weight of being “black, young, and female,” the trifecta of the media industry teeming with racism, ageism, and sexism.

“We all live in a 180-character world where we are scrolling each other’s success stories every day, and we’re only getting the shiny slice, we’re only getting the prettiest picture, we’re only getting the clearest caption,” she said. “I felt like I owed this community more than I can fit into a caption on Instagram about the most universal aspects of the success story. The parts that get left out from the messy relationships that so often intercept with how we show up in our careers.”

At 32, she said she feared her audience would doubt she was ready to write a memoir, even as her own brother echoed this sentiment soon after she submitted a manuscript questioning her reason to pen an “autobiography.”

“I wanted to throw the plate in his face,” she said of the interaction over a Christmas vacation while he was washing dishes in the kitchen. “I was so emotional because that was the very question that threatened to keep me from doing this and leave it to be my family—it’s always family—that are your harshest critics. At the time, I was so emotional I can only think to say, ‘They don’t even call it autobiographies anymore, you asshole!'”

A round of laughter erupted from the audience, but she continued with the true translation of that moment.

“Then later I really sat with it. I don’t blame my brother for asking that question. That’s the patriarchy talking. We’ve all been conditioned by this mindset that tells us, ‘Your stories are not valid if you look like me.'”

The two-hour event brought up more gems from Elaine’s book like her decision to attend a state university because the boy she was dating was supposed to be there but turned out to be in jail and how on her first Ebony photo shoot she had a serendipitous moment with the hairstylist who happened to be friends with her aunt.

Eso Won Books, the main black-owned bookstore in Los Angeles, was the official bookseller at the event.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Pleasure is Black

For Show Promotion Only
Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

Queen Sugar returned for its fourth season with Nova Bordelon (Rutina Wesley), the activist journalist of the sugarcane business family, preparing for the launch of her book and realizing her family might not be ready for it.

In the beginning of the episode, Nova is creating a video about Blessing and Blood, looking confident while vaguely describing her “American family.” But minutes later, she’s at a restaurant chugging wine and telling her agent that she’s nervous about the impact of her memoir because she failed to prepare her family for its contents, even though she’s learned the New York Times plans to review the book.

“They know it’s coming, but they don’t know what’s in it,” Nova says.

Back in Louisiana, in their summer attire with umbrellas, the family parades up to aunt Violet (Tina Lifford)‘s new restaurant, Vi’s Prized Pies & Diner, where Nova’s antisocial demeanor stands out.

“This is the last we’ll see her serve anybody,” a woman tells Prosper (Henry G. Sanders), who works with the sugarcane business, as they chat with Nova serving behind the counter. She goes on to add her sister saw a billboard in New York City advertising Nova’s book that’s being compared to the works of Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates. “What’s the book about? Can we get a little preview? Or a taste?”

Violet’s new husband, Hollywood (Omar J. Dorsey), overhears the conversation. As Nova turns to the kitchen, Hollywood whispers his thoughts on the book to her.

“When do we get to read your book?” Hollywood asks. “You ain’t been shy about nothing you did. Something not right about that book.”

Nova hesitates.

Hollywood adds the family should’ve been prepared for what the memoir would entail because he has a feeling that family secrets have been spilled without permission.

Outside in the dining area, Violet expresses her dislike for her nephew Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) passing his son Blue like “day-old bread” in his custody exchange between his ex Darla (Bianca Lawson), who recently revealed he’s not Blue’s father. 1990s teen R&B sensation Tevin Campbell made his high-profile appearance singing at the festive opening as a Bordelon cousin.

Guiltily, Nova ambushes Charley (Dawn-­Lyen Gardner) at work the next day while her sister, dressed impeccably in a taupe pantsuit ready to head to women’s conference panel, is confused by the surprise. Nova hands her sister a copy of the manuscript and later visits her brother Ralph Angel to leave a copy as she wipes a tear away.

At the conference, Charley is getting revved up during her inspirational speech while receiving a leadership award until a reporter bombards her with questions in the crowd. The reporter claims she received an advanced copy of Nova’s manuscript and it read Charley had secretly paid off one of her basketball player ex-husband’s mistresses, which happened two seasons ago. Once Charley gets home, she pops the cork on a bottle of wine and chugs as much as she can before laying her eyes on the manuscript.

In the morning, she calls Ralph Angel to warn him to not look at the manuscript until she talks to him. On the car ride to talk to her brother, Charley calls her lawyer to send her sister a cease-and-desist over the book.

Meanwhile, Hollywood picks up the manuscript on Violet’s desk and reads the first page to see it disparages Violet calling her a self-proclaimed “strong black woman” but saying how she lived her life doesn’t show that evidence.

Elsewhere, Ralph Angel, intrigued by Charley’s warning to not look at the manuscript, decides to look at the manuscript. He reads the paragraph about how he has a “fragile ego” as it criticizes his drama with Darla for never questioning Blue’s paternity when she is a recovering drug addict.

Nova visits her father’s mausoleum at the cemetery, laying a fresh bouquet of flowers.

“I’m afraid, Daddy, that everybody will not understand what I’m doing, but I’m offering up my work to see that, to be better,” she cries on the ground. “Because I grew up with too many secrets. You did, too. And it’s time for us to be as free as you wanted us to be. Please give me the strength to see this through.”

The episode ends with a telling preview for the rest of the season with the memoir tearing the family apart while the audience waits to see what these secrets are. It’s interesting to see a TV series based on a book have a storyline where a personal story could be destructive to a family. The impact of memoirs doesn’t seem to be brought up in the book world as authors most likely don’t touch on the subject with their families or generally say their families are supportive. Queen Sugar, with the vision brought to the forefront by main producers Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, will be a standout this season on examining the impact of a published book on a family.

“This is the last time I want to look at you,” Violet says to Nova in the preview.

Categories
experiences

Busy Philipps Says Memoir Prepared Her for Sharing Abortion Story

Author-actress Busy Philipps and author-CEO Jaclyn Johnson hold a fireside chat at Aerie REALtreat at Rolling Greens Nursery in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, June 8, 2019 / she lit

Actress-author Busy Philipps shared how her 2018 published memoir inspired her to share a personal story on TV at the Aerie REALtreat conference in downtown Los Angeles Saturday afternoon.

Arriving from an earlier event with BookSparks in conversation with Taylor Jenkins Reid and Abdi Nazemian in Hollywood, the This Will Only Hurt a Little memoirist spoke to about 150 attendees at a fireside chat at Rolling Greens Nursery in the Arts District with Work Party author and Create & Cultivate CEO Jaclyn Johnson about how her recently canceled late night talk show was another vehicle to share her abortion story. Though she told the story in her book, Busy said she hadn’t shared it publicly until last month in response to the Georgia abortion bill.

“It’s all crazy, but writing about it in my book prepared me for when the extreme abortion bans happened,” she said. “First of all, the Georgia ban was passed the Monday after I had found out that my show was canceled. We didn’t tell people for five weeks, so I knew my show was canceled, and that’s when the Georgia ban was passed through their Senate, but the governor hadn’t signed it in yet.

“So my initial feeling was that I wanted to do it that day. However, my husband and I talked about it, and he said, ‘I don’t want E! to think you’re going on television to talk about your abortion in some way because they canceled your show’… I just didn’t want any of the message to be convoluted.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, also known as the “heartbeat bill” on May 7. That same day, Busy aired her story on Busy Tonight, in which she said she didn’t let the network know about her decision to share her story because she felt it would lessen the potency or stop the story from being told. She said the show submitted a full script, which she wrote, while she personally placed it in the teleprompter, so the weight of the impact would be all on her. Her last show aired May 16.

Last Tuesday, she was a guest speaker at the “Threats to Reproductive Rights in America” House Judiciary Committee hearing.

“The timing of things with being able to go testify at the House Judiciary Committee; I wouldn’t have been able to do if my show on E! that 40 people watched was still on,” Busy quipped.

Busy is an #AerieREAL role model. Aerie is the intimate apparel lifestyle offshoot of American Eagle Outfitters. In partnership with Create & Cultivate (disclosure: I’m an insider), the event focused on tapping into women’s power for entrepreneurial success.

Regardless of getting an abortion at 15 years old, Busy said she’s felt the emotional toll on making the decision.

“It’s something I had never spoken about publicly, but I held a great deal of shame about for many many years,” she said. “When I wrote my memoir, I knew I wanted to talk about it. But I knew that it would be difficult for my family. I felt very strongly in sharing the whole story.”

She said her talk show was a creative vehicle for storytelling expression and hopes it can be revived via another outlet.

“It speaks to the other thing which was why I wanted even to do a late night talk show in the first place,” she said. “We know that diversity and representation in the media of all kinds makes a difference in our media and having a female voice in late night television is important, especially when our country is dealing with lots of different issues that affect women.”

Categories
what's lit

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Picks ‘From Scratch’ for May Book

Reese Witherspoon / Hello Sunshine

I only knew that after five years of widowhood, I had a story inside that gnawed at me. And that, if I didn’t commit it to the page, I would suffer another kind of grief..And I wanted to share all that through a prism of food, with the island of Sicily as a central character. Strange as it may sound, I also wanted to write about lentils.

Reese Witherspoon’s book club, Hello Sunshine, has chosen From Scratch: A Memoir of of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by actress Tembi Locke as its May selection along with publishing a personal essay from the author.

The memoir centers around the author’s grief of losing her Sicilian chef husband to cancer while returning to his homeland to feel his roots. She finds comfort at her mother-in-law’s dining table with a family that didn’t accept her at first as an African-American woman living in Los Angeles as an actress. But now as family and raising an adopted daughter, she narrates her journey through heartbreak and restoration.

Locke, according to her Simon & Schuster biography, has appeared in over 40 television shows and films, including NCIS: LA, Animal Kingdom and Dumb and Dumber To. She also delivered a TEDx talk on being a cancer caregiver. She lives in Los Angeles and summers in Sicily with her daughter.