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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Colored Television’ by Danzy Senna

Colored Television by Danzy Senna ventures into the touchy subject of biracial identity through a protagonist desperate to share her story but finds it is considered indigestible in book form to a screen-obsessed society, which she figures would rather consume her story through TV. 

Jane, a biracial woman proud of her ethnicities, is a literature professor at a liberal arts college who can’t wait for her sabbatical. She plans to spend it finishing her epic novel that spans generations, decades, and centuries. It centers on biracial identity politics in the U.S. and is told through various characters. She feels her powerful novel will change America so much that it will become a classic. If she gets this sophomore novel published, then she will be granted tenure. But one of her female colleagues returned to campus without tenure because her epic novel was rejected. She pushes those negative thoughts as she submits her long-awaited book to her agent and editor. The book has to work for her as she and her family house-sit for her uber-successful TV producer friend in a Los Angeles mansion. They don’t have permanent housing, and she feels her talent should bring her a mansion as well. 

Weeks later, Jane learns that her agent and editor could barely read her work. It’s considered a complete labyrinthine mess. They drop her since they waited a decade for just the rough draft. The explanatory rejection authors fear when the publishing middlemen are unable to decipher your story is described on page 79 in the hardcover edition:

Later, Jane would only remember certain phrases. Josiah felt the book was “Frankensteinian.” Like the monster, he said, her book was an ungainly mishmash— and like the monster, it felt sloppily constructed, the stitches and scars showing. He said it was sarcastic, bracing and cruel at times, mawkish and purple at others. It bewildered him. He had no idea why she was cramming all these figures together. What did Zoe Kravitz have to do with the Melungeon people in nineteenth-century Tennessee? How did any of it connect to Sydney and Justin, O.J. and Nicole’s kids, or to Jane’s own creature — this fragile, trembling 1950s film actress who roamed the book in her negligee, barefoot and suicidal, worrying about the color of the baby growing inside of her. Josiah didn’t understand what Jane was attempting to do here, but he cared about Jane and felt that publishing this novel would be a kind of career suicide.

Not only are Jane’s literary dreams shattered, but her economic stability is uncertain. Her husband, Lenny, is a struggling artist obsessed with learning Japanese to have an exhibit in Japan. Their daughter, Ruby, would rather play with the White dolls as she makes more White friends in their temporary living status. Their son, Finn, is on the autism spectrum as they seek to understand his needs. Jane realizes that no book means no tenure. Out of desperation, she goes through her friend’s desk to find contacts in the television industry. She ends up meeting mega-producer Hampton Ford, who seems interested in her work. His assistants, Layla, the “Nigerian Valley Girl,” and Topher, the “perennially lost white boy,” are pathetic at pitching premises for shows. But Hampton likes Jane’s idea of having a biracial family sitcom akin to Black-ish, so he asks Jane to join the team. 

After pitching contemporary episodes, Jane feels proud about this new phase in her creative career. Except Hampton is not feeling any of the finessed ideas. Then, Jane tells him about her epic novel about biracial identity. Hampton is so intrigued that he offers to read her manuscript. Jane feels her fortune is finally changing, so she looks for a house in her ideal neighborhood she nicknamed Multicultural Mayberry. She prepares for a high-earning career like the friend who allowed her to house-sit. As she realizes all her dreams may not come true the way she hoped, she wonders if her stories will ever see the light of day. 

The story shows one’s racial and ethnic identities through stereotypical lenses. And these lenses are developed from stories by writers who do not have a connection to the said group or groups they are writing about. Jane and Lenny have thoughtful conversations on racial and biracial identities constantly throughout the story as they try to figure out how best to tell stories about the biracial experience. Lenny is Black, but because of this, he feels he understands the complexity of the conversation, while Jane wants to share her stories centered on biracial characters, real-life figures, and pointed moments in history. When she receives the opportunity to work with a powerhouse like Hampton Ford, she applies her deep intelligence and subject expertise to construct everyday sitcom episodes that will impact audiences of all backgrounds. She is so hungry to share her perspectives, outside of her pillow talk with her husband. This eagerness, which can also be interpreted as desperation, eventually harms her in the end. 

Another subject woven through the story is the high rate of rejection in creative industries. Jane is a debut novelist who hasn’t delivered her sophomore success. She feels the pressure to secure a book deal to secure her tenure as a professor and home as a mother. She appears lost in the mix, trying to take care of her children and support her husband’s art while looking for an avenue for her story to live. Her mind races back to a time when she chose her husband, moved from New York City to Los Angeles for a new creative start, and started having kids to understand her current situation. 

Overall, the book details the ups and downs of a creative career when someone feels ready for the next stage, and the stage keeps moving. It also dives deep into biracial ethnic studies. The main character struggles to share her lived experience as a biracial woman when her intellectual approach is dismissed. The question of how to bring her art forth to the public lingers throughout Jane’s story. 

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Book Review: ‘One of Our Kind’ by Nicola Yoon

*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon is a slow-burn psychological thriller set in a Black utopia where race is no longer a barrier, but when some characters seek to improve race relations outside the utopia, they notice their neighbors eerily avoid the topic of race. 

Jasmyn is a Black woman carrying the world’s weight on her shoulders. Besides being a wife to King, a former teacher, and a mother to six-year-old Kamau, she is a civil rights attorney worrying about her cases and the ones that make the news. Those cases, like the one involving a young Black girl named Mercy Simpson being shot by police, have her wanting to stay rooted in her Los Angeles community. But King wants to move to Liberty, California. 

Over the last few years, King has transitioned his career from public education to finance. This has elevated the family to a new income bracket. Now, they can move to Liberty, which is 100% Black and high-income. Located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Liberty is the brainchild of Carlton Way, a financial entrepreneur who happens to also be King’s mentor. Jasmyn is unsure about the mansion life, but King convinces her that it is the next step for their expanding family. Since she is pregnant with their second child, Jasmyn finally approves the move. She can’t wait to be around her own people and not worry about the weight of the world at home as a Black woman.

Right away, Jasmyn notices a coldness among her new Liberty neighbors. She brings up the developments in the Mercy Simpson case, and her neighbors don’t seem concerned. They may be too relaxed with their wealth and addiction to the wellness center atop the hill. She notices them meditating up there in their robes, and it doesn’t sit right with her. 

The only neighbor who shares Jasmyn’s concern is Keisha, who’s also Kamau’s teacher at the local elementary school. Keisha also detects the coldness and prefers to stay away from the wellness center, though her wife frequents the center. Together, they decide to start a Black Lives Matter chapter to raise awareness about the Mercy Simpson case and other future cases. They meet another neighbor, Charles, who wants to start the chapter based on his same interpretations of Liberty. He, too, doesn’t trust the wellness center that his wife loves. 

Then, suddenly, Charles changes his mind about starting a BLM chapter. He even cuts off his dreadlocks and sells his Afrocentric art collection. These moves bewilder Jasmyn and Keisha. They move forward with their plans. Then, Keisha changes her mind as well, now that she straightens her natural hair and wears neutral-toned business suits — a far cry from her Afro, colorful clothing, and large gold hoop earrings. 

Jasmyn is now the only one left standing. King won’t completely commit to opening the chapter with her or volunteering with Black youth like he used to when they lived in the city limits. Everyone seems to be addicted to the wellness center. Jasmyn has stayed away because she’s pregnant and doesn’t want any treatment to harm the baby. But King loves going to the wellness center. Things are not adding up. Using her court connections, Jasmyn hires a private investigator to see what happened to the last family who lived in her mansion. The family had only stayed for a year. Why buy a house for only a year? The more she finds out, the more she feels she’s in danger. 

The idea of a utopia was coined by Thomas More in his 1516 classic Utopia. He created the word “utopia” from ancient Greek, which translates to “not a place.” So, if a housing development or closed-off community boasts that it is a utopia, then there is already a reason to run in horror. The book garnered some online criticism for creating a story around a Black utopia that ends in giving in to the racism of the outside world. Without giving too many spoilers, the ending becomes a Get Out-esque situation. The utopia is flawed from the roots because it targets certain people and convinces them to be in a social experiment when reality seems too overwhelming. 

With the utopia, the novel taps into the monolithic definition of Blackness. One of the main examples is showing Jasmyn’s desperation to unite her neighbors to start a BLM chapter. The real-life controversial organization works to protect Black lives across the diaspora, but not every Black person supports the mission and its activities. Jasmyn assumes every Black person is in agreement with feeling upset over a police brutality case, and that’s not the case in Liberty. But that’s what makes the hairs on her arms stand up? In this politically charged society, it may feel safer for many Americans to live in communities that share their values, and Jasmyn is realizing she did not move into a like-minded community. Other examples emphasize the monolithic falsehoods within the African American community, such as Keisha wearing her Afro and hoop earrings, which means she’s down for the cause. And when her style changes, that is the telltale that she is not down anymore. While other characters seem cold for ignoring the Mercy Simpson case and straightening their African curls, it feeds into the stereotype that all Black Americans feel the same way about certain issues by their vocal expression and outward appearance. How the characters are constructed with simplicity may distract some readers expecting a complex racial thriller. 

Overall, the simplicity also speaks to the author’s transition from the young adult genre to the adult genre. In YA, character and story development must be easier for a young reader to follow. We see the same pattern in this adult book, though the tension between the characters and unfolding events still make it a page-turner. 

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Book Review: ‘Why Didn’t You Tell Me?’ by Carmen Rita Wong

Why Didn’t You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong follows the financial journalist’s life as she discovers family secrets that uniquely affect her. 

There was no family meeting to sit the kids down and prepare them psychologically for all these changes to come or to get them to weigh in on what they’d like to do and how they were feeling. Just as there wasn’t any discussion about the trauma of moving us away from all the family and friends we’d ever known in New York City and the people who looked like us. You go where your parents go and they’ll hear nothing of your unhappiness or fears or anxieties or, for god’s sake, your opinion.

Born in New York City, Carmen is raised as the daughter of a Dominican immigrant mother and a Chinese immigrant father. Her parents eventually divorce after a tumultuous marriage that leaves Carmen and her older brother, Alex, under the care of their mother, Lupe. After Lupe remarries quickly, the siblings are living with their White stepfather, Marty, in New Hampshire. Being a brown-skinned girl with a Chinese surname in predominantly White suburbia makes Carmen stand out. She feels uncomfortable with the microaggressions from her Catholic school teachers and classmates. As the family expands to adding four more girls, Carmen begins to see the pressure in the household with her mother spewing vitriol to her and her siblings.

As high school graduation approaches, she has to depend on her father to pay for college. Her tuition is expected to be paid by her father, who sells jewelry and other accessories to department stores in shady operations. Those operations lead to her father serving time in prison. With her father imprisoned and her stepfather unemployed, Carmen finds herself financing her college education and eventually finding her own independence. Her resourcefulness leads to an executive assistant position at Christie’s auction house back in her hometown of New York City. Her ambition eventually places her on the path to multimedia financial journalism.

After finding success in her career and heartbreak in a failed marriage, Carmen learns that her mother has been diagnosed with colon cancer. At this point, her mother and stepfather are divorced, and her stepfather has moved back to New York City. With her mother sick, her stepfather tells her that her father is not her father. She had noticed over the years that as her brother looked more Chinese like a Wong while her looks failed to head in the same direction. She brings the long-held family secret to her mother, who fights against the truth. After her mother dies, Carmen realizes there was more to the secret that defined her upbringing and forced her to question the past and present. 

My Spanish was being displaced by French, the only language offered in school. It became harder to understand my beloved abuela as both English and French squeezed space in my brain, burying my Spanish deep, one shovelful of New Hampshire at a time. My English pronunciation was East Coast newscaster, just as my mother wanted, no Dominican-NYC flavor like my extended cousins, who’d taunt me with “You talk white!” My clothes were prim, proper, pastel eighties “good girl.” I looked like a forty-year-old accountant, not cool like my cousins. Code-switching became my destiny whether I liked it or not.

Once she learns the truth about her genetic biology, Carmen finds herself questioning her racial, ethnic, and cultural identity. With the memory of being a little girl who loved dressing up to go to Chinatown, she is no longer Chinese. Her last name is no longer accurate. The alienation she felt in her New Hampshire home growing up as Dominican-Chinese, different from her younger siblings, resurfaces. Realizing that she doesn’t have the same exact DNA as her brother, who arrived with her in the new version of the family household in New Hampshire, is heartbreaking and frustrating.

Like many housewives at the time, her immigrant mother believed the American Dream could be brighter with a White husband in White suburbia. This recurring theme throughout the story shows how a person who identifies with a particular ethnicity or more ethnicities can experience a different reality from even other immediate family members. In Catholic school, for example, a nun credits Carmen’s intelligence to being half-Chinese. The nun assumes this by taking Carmen’s surname and believing the stereotype of all Asians being smart. When she gets older, other people of color confuse her for being White or being Black. Her multiracial and multiethnic identity makes her wonder how her journey would have differed knowing her true racial and ethnic identities. 

The theme of race, ethnicity, and culture resonates throughout her story with the truth about her DNA weighing heavily on every memory thread. If her mother was happy with the man believed to be her father, then would she have been removed from her diverse hometown of New York City? If her stepfather was her biological father, would she have been treated the same way as her stepsisters? How much of her life would have been different if she had known her paternity and ethnicity? 

Overall, the memoir hits on the notes of other memoirs by women of color who have had their lives stamped by their racial and ethnic identities. These memoirs examine how their intersectionality impacted their growth from childhood to adulthood. This memoir could be useful to readers interested in adapting to new environments, learning about family history and heritage, and persevering as an eldest daughter and a woman of color. 

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Book Review: ‘Black Cake’ by Charmaine Wilkerson

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson revolves around two adult siblings trying to decipher their mother’s deathbed confessions as they imagine her living different lives and identities. 

Eleanor Bennett is dead. But before she died from cancer, she had recorded her deep-rooted secrets with the help of her lawyer-boyfriend, Charles Mitch. Charles brings the recordings to Eleanor’s two children, son Byron and daughter Benedetta, or Benny for short. Byron and Benny haven’t spoken to each other in years. An oceanographer on the rise, Byron doesn’t understand his younger sister’s decisions to not stay on the straight and narrow path their Caribbean immigrant parents set them on. Benny, a college dropout, is still trying to establish roots in her career and love life after some heartbreaking moments that she tried to share with her family but felt she was rejected. As the two siblings feel awkward around each other back home in California, they have to sit with Mr. Mitch and listen to the hours of recordings their mother left behind.

Eleanor Bennett was born Coventina “Covey” Lyncook. In the 1950s and 1960s on a Caribbean island similar to Jamaica, Covey loves competitive swimming with her best friend, Bunny. Covey’s father, Johnny “Lin” Lyncook, a Chinese immigrant on the island, owns a general store. He’s also a gambler, so Covey tries to focus on her schoolwork. Her mother is gone and has failed to reach back out to the family. To ease the missingness of Covey’s mother, Pearl, a family friend and the housekeeper, takes it upon herself to watch over Covey. Pearl helps the family while maintaining a successful baking business. Her most requested dessert is the wedding treat of black cake, which Covey learns to make.

Covey’s life is turned upside down when her father promises her hand in marriage to a known moneylender and murderer named Little Man Henry to settle a gambling debt. At 17 years old, Covey knows she doesn’t want to marry this 38-year-old criminal but rather spend her life with Gilbert “Gibbs” Grant, her boyfriend who wants to study abroad in the U.K. for a more promising future. When Little Man Henry falls dead at the wedding with the black cake with lilac icing barely touched, Covey makes a run for it to the waves. The storm brewing above should make the swim precarious, so when Lin finds Covey’s weighty wedding dress on the beach, he believes his daughter is dead. 

With assistance, Covey gets to the U.K. to work as a nanny. She must keep a low profile, so she changes her last name since she is a suspect in the murder of Little Man Henry. But she wants more of a career. She enrolls in a nursing program with other Caribbean women. There, she meets a woman her age named Eleanor Bennett. A tragic turn of events forces Covey to become Eleanor to seek the career she wants. Feeling like she dodged another bullet, Eleanor arrives in a workplace where a violent incident and the aftermath change the trajectory of her life again bringing her to the U.S. with a husband and eventually a family. 

Black cake is popular in English-speaking Caribbean countries where it’s considered a twist on Christmas plum pudding. It’s usually served on special occasions such as weddings and holidays. In the book, Pearl makes a living with and later without Covey’s mother providing black cakes as Covey becomes an apprentice. With being forced to change her life three times, Covey as Eleanor brings the recipe to her new homeland and teaches the recipe to her daughter. Benny carries an old plastic measuring cup in light of her mother’s death because it gives her comfort. Byron finds a bowl of fruits marinating for the black cake while searching through the kitchen. Their mother would marinate dates and maraschino cherries in rum and port every five years to bake a layer of black cake for her and Bert to enjoy a slice on every wedding anniversary. The dessert becomes a symbol for Eleanor’s children as they bridge her past as a young woman to the mother they always knew. When they learn about another family member, the siblings are determined to bake the black cake to enjoy the dessert their mother always held close to her heart. 

Another theme in the book is the ocean. Though Covey leaves home to escape punishment for a crime, her best friend, Bunny, still defends her. Bunny eventually grows up to be Etta Pringle, a global swimming champion. Etta never forgot how Covey inspired her to take those long-distance swims on their island. When Covey as Eleanor becomes a mother, she instills her love of swimming into her children. While Benny loves to bake mainly because of the black cake tradition, Byron loves the ocean as he would surf with his mother. In the U.S., African Americans still deal with the stereotype of not being able to swim, mainly because of the country’s past of discriminating against them and other people of color by cutting off access to pools and waterways. But in countries where the population is predominantly of people of African descent, the waterways represent freedom and the residents are usually strong swimmers. This perspective of people of African descent who love swimming, and not only love the sport but also love the ocean, is refreshing to see as a part of Caribbean culture. 

Overall, the book builds up tension well as Covey aka Eleanor tells her autobiography through audio speakers and the events swirl into more events as her children examine her every word and imagine her every situation. More stories have used the theme of the deathbed confession, but some of the characters are considered famous, so their autobiography is worthy of listeners. But this story stands out by featuring a young Caribbean woman, who lacks wholeness without her mother and is forced into an arranged marriage, and how she overcame sexism and racism to get what she wanted in the end though it looked different than what she would have expected. The story has been adapted into a TV series on Hulu. The book would entertain readers who are interested in family secrets and dynamics, oceanic power, and Caribbean history and culture.

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Book Review: ‘Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm’ by Laura Warrell

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell is a literary fiction novel that introduces us to a womanizing jazz musician and the females who cross his path, including his daughter. 

It’s 2013, and Circus Palmer is a 40-year-old trumpet player who takes gigs across the country but doesn’t like to plant roots anywhere. In the first few pages, he learns that Maggie, the woman who enthralls him, is pregnant. He tries to convince her to end the pregnancy; he can’t be rooted down to anything. And she shouldn’t root herself down since she’s a drummer. A child can’t fit into their musician-touring life. Maggie says she wants the baby, and she returns to drumming while Circus heads home to Boston. We meet his 14-year-old daughter Koko, who’s trying to navigate high school and control her fluctuating hormones. With Circus back in the picture, Koko still harbors the emptiness she felt for years living without him and living with her regretful, depressed mother, Circus’ ex-wife Pia.

While Koko and Pia are constants in Circus’ life, the jazzman finds himself constantly attracted to other women. He falls for a twenty-something waitress at a bar where he plays for gigs, for a mysterious woman on the train, for a woman who will do anything for him when he visits her in nearby Providence, Rhode Island. He comes across a woman he wanted to marry years ago while he witnesses the decline of the woman he did marry by the weight of taking care of their daughter and desiring love from him. All these women still don’t make up for losing Maggie and the child she may be carrying. As he wonders about that child, he realizes the need to focus on Koko as his daughter falls for boys who remind him of himself. Though his dream of recording an album still lingers in the background, his womanizing cripples his ability to assume the fame he swears he can taste. 

Unpeeling the layers of the womanizer and the women hurt by the actions make for an absorbing story. It switches between perspectives with the trail of women Circus leaves in his wake. Even meeting the women who spend one night with him show how his carelessness can feel magnitudinous to the women he hurts. Koko detects the pain he is causing other women because her mother lives with the pain on a deeper level. So, the added thread of a teenage daughter hungry for love seeing her father also hungry for love gives the story more depth. And Circus, of course, doesn’t put two and two together about how his actions affect Koko or his career. He thinks his womanizing helps him stay away as a father in case he messes up parenthood and helps him stay creative with his music when a muse disappears. Yet, the dependence on women derails his future, as he lives in a pattern of unfulfilled opportunities.

Overall, the book introduces characters who are intriguing as they sift through their emotions after welcoming Circus or re-welcoming him into their lives. Watching the characters come into their feelings on the pages make the story memorable as if you know the characters. The smoothness of the details about their everyday lives also hops off the page.

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Representation Matters With New ‘Little Mermaid’

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The Little Mermaid is in theaters and in books during #Mermay 🪸

Cue hot mermaid summer with classic fairy tale returning as live-action Disney remake


With The Little Mermaid debuting this weekend, you know the obsession over merfolks will dominate the culture for the rest of the year, right?


Like most toddler girls, I was enthralled with Disney’s 1989 animated version of The Little Mermaid, the most famous fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen. Growing up in the coastal neighborhood of Rogers Park in Chicago, I imagined myself as a mermaid far too many times with beaches in walking distance.


But as much as I wanted to be Ariel, she didn’t look like me. She had long ketchup-red hair and over-animated blue eyes, and while under the sea she was just a mermaid, on land she was a young White woman.


This led to my parents looking high and low for Black mermaids. The search was fruitful with Sukey and the Mermaid. The 1992 book featured the first time I saw a Black mermaid.


The story is by children’s author Robert D. San Souci, who was known for bringing folktales to life. The book is beautifully illustrated by Brian Pinkney. In the story, a girl named Sukey has to do the back-breaking work on her family’s farm all day. Her stepfather is a “bossy, do-nothing” man, and her mother acts oblivious to Sukey’s suffering.


One day, Sukey seeks refuge by the sea. After singing a song about what she thought was a fictional mermaid, she realizes she summoned Mama Jo, a “beautiful, brown-skinned, black-eyed mermaid” adorned in gold jewelry along her seaweed green hair. Mama Jo notices Sukey’s sadness and offers to bring her undersea. Nobody is suffering there (except for Ariel, but that’s another story). So Sukey must decide if she wants to stay on land with her abusive family or find peace beneath the surface.


At the end, the author’s note reads that the folktale came from a recording called “The Mermaid” in Elsie Clews Parsons’ Folk-lore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina published in 1923 by the American Folklore Society. “It is one of the relatively few authenticated African-American folktales involving mermaids,” the note reads.


As you can tell, I have a deep interest in merfolk culture, particularly when it relates to the African diaspora. When Disney first announced Halle Bailey of Chloe x Halle fame would step into the fin of Ariel for the live-action film of The Little Mermaid, there was uproar because she was Black. At the time, I wrote a blog post about how the Disney film unintentionally perpetuated a White mermaid image that some people do not want to let go of, or acknowledge that communities around the world have similar legends.


The story was written by a Danish author, so the main character is presumably Danish, but it’s also a universal story that features the imaginary half-person, half-fish creatures who swim across the globe. Whether you like mermaids or not, the fact that this fairy tale has resonated for almost 200 years for generations is an extraordinary power for a story.

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What we’re highlighting


Penguin Random House joins lawsuit against school district

The largest book publisher in the U.S. partnered with PEN America, several authors, and several parents in suing a Florida school district over allegedly removing books from bookshelves that received public complaints. PEN America, the free speech foundation, claims Escambia County School District and School Board removed and restricted certain titles discussing race, racism, and LGBTQ identities, “some of which have been on the shelves for years—even decades.”


Indie publisher Brown Girls Books announces new CEO

The boutique run by authors ReShonda Tate and Victoria Christopher Murray has hired a new CEO. In an Instagram video, the founders introduced CEO Tanisha Tate, who is also ReShonda’s sister, as she promised to boost the business on behalf of the still-active authors. The publisher boasts a roster of over 40 authors, including reality star Gizelle Bryant and TV producer Stacey Evans Morgan.


Here are some summer reads featuring merfolks:

American Mermaid by Julia Langbein: An English teacher is surprised when her feminist novel becomes a best-seller. She soon finds herself in Los Angeles to capitalize on the book’s potential in becoming a screen adaptation. As her main character morphs from an “androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clamshell bra,” karma seems to follow the teacher who tried to bring a mermaid to life.


The Pisces by Melissa Broder: Lucy is a doctoral student finishing the thesis she’s been working on for nine years when her boyfriend breaks up with her. To get back on track and nurse her broken heart, she accepts an invitation to dog-sit in Venice Beach. There, she falls in love with a merman and debates whether she should escape reality and follow him into his oceanic world. Book review on shelit.com.


Shallow Waters by Anita Kopacz: This story shows Yemaya, an Orïsha or a deity in the religion of Africa’s Yoruba people, as an enslaved woman in 19th century America not yet knowing her superpower. She searches for a man who sacrifices his own freedom for her to see freedom. On her journey, she grows into the powerful woman she was destined to become.


Skin of the Sea and Soul of the Deep by Natasha Bowen: These books focus on Simi, who serves as Mami Wata, the water goddess who collects the souls of those who die at sea and blesses their journeys back home. But she saves a living boy from the water, breaking the ancient decree. She has to make amends, but that journey becomes dangerous.


You can find book reviews on other mermaid-themed books such as:

Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

What we’re reviewing

Nikki Giovanni Talks About Libraries Supporting Readers on Earth and Mars


Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni joined Books in Bloom in Columbia, Maryland, to discuss the importance of libraries, including one in outer space.


The book festival’s headliner was introduced as someone who identifies as an “earthling” by Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallat. This led to a conversation with Nikki discussing her work with libraries and her curation for a library on Mars.


A library was established in 2008 by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, thanks to the funding and development from The Planetary Society, where TV scientist Bill Nye is the CEO. The space shuttle left an encoded archival silica-glass mini-DVD on Mars and called it the Visions of Mars digital time capsule.

Check out the full blog post here

What we’re watching

Merpeople on Netflix follows the people who have turned cosplaying as a mermaid, merman, or merperson into a career or an expensive hobby. I’m on the fringes of the mermaid cosplay world, so please support my friends as they explain their transformations into the merpeople of their dreams.

What the plans are


The Mountain Words Festival in Crested Butte, Colorado, takes place during the Memorial Day weekend from May 25-28 with readings, workshops, kids’ events, panel discussions, and live theater. Ticket prices can be found here.

Where the opportunities are


Library of America is looking for someone interested in a publishing career for its Diverse Voices Editorial Fellowship. The full-time, two-year program will have this fellow work closely with the editorial and production team to develop and publish 20 new titles and dozens of reprints each year.

“Because I feel like, if I would have had a Black mermaid, that would have been insane, that would have changed my whole perspective, my whole life, my confidence, my self-worth. You’re able to see a person who looks like you, when you’re young? Some people are just like, oh, it’s whatever, because they’ve had it their whole life. It’s nothing to them. But it’s so important.” – Halle Bailey, the star of The Little Mermaid, on representation in media

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Investing in the Success of Black Authors

SHE LIT: Investing in the Success of Black Authors💰

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Searching for books by Black female authors this month? Take a look at authors we’ve featured

Black woman writing on a pad in front of a computer.

Lower financial investment remains a hurdle in publishing industry’s diversity pledges

We are in our third Black History Month since June 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement ignited over the murder of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis by a police officer. The publishing industry responded, like many other industries, by examining the statistics of their employees as well as the contributors including the authors, illustrators, and translators.

Three years ago, publishers hired nearly 75% White employees and represented 75% White authors. Those numbers are still about the same because of money.

The percentage of White employees hasn’t changed much since publishers have revealed their diversity statistics, according to PEN America, the nonprofit dedicated to speech freedom. Its latest report finds Penguin Random House’s employees are 74% White, Macmillan’s 70.5% White, and Hachette’s 64.6% White. They lead the Big Five alongside Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.

The nonprofit ultimately blames the historical practice of having an overwhelming White employment and how it correlates to an overwhelming amount of White authors being signed to publishing contracts. Though more Black authors are getting publishing contracts since 2020, the cracks in shattering this glass ceiling are not yet visible.

Shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement boomed in 2020, young adult author L.L. McKinney started the #PublishingPaidMe campaign that set Twitter on fire. She asked White authors to share the advances. Some Black authors shared their advances. The discrepancy in thousands of dollars surprised readers. The White authors made tons more money, even hundreds of thousands of dollars more, when Black authors who seemed as well-known as them barely received a fraction of their advances.

In the report that was released last fall, Black publishing employees and executives expressed their concerns of obtaining titles by Black authors and being pigeonholed into a marketing ploy to sell “Black books.” And sometimes those Black authors are expected to just produce books about race and ethnicity when they may have ideas outside of those subjects.

“Such typecasting is not only presumptuous but also creatively limiting,” the report reads. “What if, say, a Black editor wants to work on books about cats, or cars, or science, or electoral politics? Or a Hispanic publicist wants to promote a book about classical music?”

That means a Black author’s earning potential could be diminished over the expectation of what a publisher thinks they should write compared to what they want to write. After all, the publisher has the power to reject a project on any basis it chooses.

Every book needs money to make money. The marketing and publicity budgets are calculated based on the viability of a book’s shelf life upon release. The books that have more promise receive more money, and most of the time that means books by celebrities. They are considered an automatic cash cow, especially when they have thousands and millions of social media followers expected to buy the books.

Now that the celebrity has built-in power to sell a book, the publisher invests more to make sure even more money could be made. So, the average author at an imprint may not receive what they need for proper marketing and publicity when competing with celebrity authors. And if that author is Black, then they may be shortchanged the most.

Advances, which are payments to signed authors in advance of their books being published, are tied to the marketing and publicity budgets. An advance is paid against future royalties. That means for every dollar an author receives in an advance, they must earn a dollar from book sales before they receive any additional royalties. Black authors could take longer to earn out their advances. If it takes too long, then their chances of being published again could be impacted.

“A budget is a moral document… When we talk about diversity, we need to understand what that means financially and in terms of decision-making power,” says Elizabeth Méndez Berry, vice president and executive editor at One World, in the report.

In the last year, we saw a cyberattack cripple Macmillan’s ability to sell books and a still-unresolved union strike rock HarperCollins. The authors who didn’t have the best resources in place are suffering the most with these unfortunate events in publishing. HarperCollins’ union is striking over alleged failure by the publisher to pay cost-of-living salaries and focus on diversity and inclusion. They are fighting for investment in their talents as well as in the talents of authors of color and LGBTQIA+ authors.

This Black History Month we must examine and appreciate Black literature but also think about the literature we’re missing because the publishing industry is early in the process of dismantling its historical structure to mainly uplift and invest in the literary talents of White people.

shelit.com blogger Kibby Araya.
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What we’re highlighting

Penguin Random House U.S. CEO steps down

After the failed attempt to acquire competitor Simon & Schuster for $2 billion last year, Madeline McIntosh plans to leave her position as the U.S. chief executive of Penguin Random House. She served in the position at the largest U.S. publisher since 2018. A departure date was not shared.

Her former boss and global Penguin Random House CEO, Markus Dohle, left the publisher in December. Nihar Malaviya has since assumed the position of interim global CEO.

HarperCollins announces layoffs amid union strike

The largest unionized book publisher will lay off 5% of its staff in North America by June, according to HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray. Some workers were laid off this week as well as last fall. Since November, the HarperCollins Union has been on strike, taking to social media and to the streets of New York to protest mostly low wages.

The publisher started mediation with the union this week after the announcement of the rolling layoffs.

Phenomenal Media partners with Hachette to diversify books

A year after launching its book club, Phenomenal Media recently announced its partnership with Hachette Book Group to create Phenomenal Media Books. The partnership will contribute to the development and acquisition of literary works written by underrepresented authors in the nonfiction and fiction genres.

The media company that started as a political and cultural merch brand by Meena Harris, the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris, will have its book division publish works across Hachette imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

“We were thrilled to see the positive reaction to our launch of Phenomenal Book Club — clearly people are looking for more stories from authors who, too often, do not receive the spotlight from the publishing industry,” said Meena, Phenomenal’s founder and CEO. “Phenomenal Media Books will provide new avenues for discovering those authors and positioning their works for success.”

New York town seeks to be a literary destination spot

Hobart, New York has eight indie bookstores on its Main Street and hosts several book festivals a year, according to a story by The New York Times. One of those bookstores is unstaffed and depends on the honor system for cash from customers. With a population of 400, the town in the Catskills of upstate New York has been known as Hobart Book Village since 2005. Beside book festivals, the town also holds semiannual book sale events each year, making it a place perfect for literary tourists.

February book club selections illuminate Black stories

What we’re reviewing

Brandy and Maya Angelou in Moesha.

When Maya Angelou Shared Her Wisdom on Moesha

The Vanishing Act by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half Dominates the Charts Amid #BlackStoriesMatter Movement

What we’re watching

The 1619 Project on Hulu

The 1619 Project on Hulu

The award-winning literary journalism project brought to us by Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times is a must-see docuseries on Hulu. The 1619 Project has six episodes with four streaming available now. Oprah Winfrey also serves as an executive producer.

Want your book and bookish news to be featured? Write us at shewrites@shelit.com.

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Cuffing Season Is Writing Season

SHE LIT: Cuffing Season Is Writing Season 🔏

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Celebrate National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month by reading works from these authors 📚

Photo by Element5 Digital: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-book-from-shelf-1370298/

As the weather gets colder, writers start to cuff themselves to their own book projects

“Cuffing season” is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary describing how single people find a partner and attach themselves to that partner to stay warm during the colder months. Well, writers are doing the same thing, except cuffing themselves to new writing projects.

I recently completed the Black Creatives Revisions Workshop with We Need Diverse Books, the nonprofit organization working alongside the publishing industry to diversify the industry on the publisher level and the creator level. The summer-long workshop included monthly discussions with successful traditionally published authors and literary agents of color and meetings with Black editors to help us hone our manuscripts.

For the workshop, I had put forth my most promising project: a social justice, historical fiction, young adult novel. I came up with the idea for the book in February 2020, and when that weekend in mid-March that year came along with warnings to stay inside, I began researching and writing with all the time I was forced to hunker down to avoid contracting the unpredictable COVID-19.

Now with the manuscript on its way to industry insiders, I can start querying agents and outlining the next book. Like thousands of writers around the world, I usually spend October plotting a book in anticipation for National Novel Writing Month in November. Known as NaNoWriMo, the movement that interferes with Thanksgiving plans motivates us writers to craft 50,000 words within the month to call ourselves “winners.” That means laser focus. I win almost every year—I “lost” in 2016, traumatized by the presidential election.

That being said, I’m spending most of my days after I clock out of my real job, wrapped up in my blanket on my loveseat with my laptop. Cozying up to my next book. Also cozying up with a published book, or two, or three, or five. The to-be-read list never goes down, despite all these efforts.

With the slower months, content on shelit.com may come out slower. This newsletter will take hiatus in November aka NaNoWriMo. But hopefully the book and book-to-screen selections below will entertain us enough to keep us warm during the seasons like a piping pumpkin spice latte.

she lit editor + chief content creator

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What we’re highlighting

Well-Read Black Girl opening festival, chapter in D.C.

The preeminent festival celebrating Black female authors and readers is heading to Washington, D.C. this year. The Well Read Black Girl Festival has tickets on sale now for the Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 event. Tricia Hersey, the founder of The Nap Ministry, will be the keynote speaker discussing her new book, Rest Is Resistance, forthcoming from Hachette Book Group’s Little, Brown Spark. The book club is also starting a new chapter in D.C.

Jada Pinkett Smith to write memoir on road to Hollywood

Actress, musician, and host of Red Table Talk Jada Pinkett Smith plans to release her memoir with Dey Street Books next year. The book will cover her journey dealing with suicidal depression to tapping into her “authentic feminine power,” according to media reports. The publisher says Jada will touch on growing up in Baltimore to drug-addicted parents, becoming a theater kid with promise, and breaking out into Hollywood with her friend Tupac Shakur before marrying one of the biggest stars, Will Smith, and starting her own family and path of self-discovery.

Celebrity-helmed book clubs select October picks

Kick back and chill with these fresh book-to-TV shows, films

What we’re reviewing

"The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School" by Sonora Reyes

Carrie Soto Is Back and the Problem of White Authors Creating Main Characters of Color

What we’re reading

Tamera Mowry-Housley Describes How Making Friends Is Like Drinking Wine

Celeste Ng Says Latest Novel Incorporates Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, Book Banning

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‘Carrie Soto Is Back’ and the Problem of White Authors Creating Main Characters of Color

Coming off the heels of the historic US Open where we saw tennis legend Serena Williams bid goodbye to the sport, Penguin Random House and its Ballantine Books imprint was in the throes of promoting Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new novel, Carrie Soto Is Back. The publisher even had a pop-up at Wimbledon over the summer.

The novel focuses on a retired tennis champion who sees her record about to be broken by a younger player, so she feels she must come back to defend her record. Book influencers expressed concern about these characters being women of color trying to defeat each other. Many of these influencers say it’s problematic that a White author pit a Latina title character against an Asian character.

“Carrie Soto Is Back is a story of a Latina tennis player written by a White woman, which we’ve been here before many times,” Tomes and Textiles book influencer Carmen Alvarez said in a reel published on Instagram and TikTok to her combined nearly 60,000 followers. “You’d be surprised to find out that Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto Is Back has more untranslated Spanish than any book I ever read, even by Latinx authors.”

White authors who center stories around Hispanic and Latine characters tend to get higher paychecks and more marketing dollars compared to Hispanic and Latine authors who write authentic stories about their communities and cultures, she adds. She likens the tennis novel to the American Dirt controversy in 2020 where Jeanine Cummins, who later identified as White Latina, wrote a immigration novel that performed well in sales despite the lack of immigration stories by Hispanic and Latine authors getting the same publishing attention.

Book influencers brought up the issue of Taylor giving voice to another Latina main character in her popular 2017 novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. This half-historical fiction novel follows a Latina actress, who passes as White by dying her hair blonde, as she becomes a Hollywood legend. At the end of her life, she plucks a biracial journalist, who is half-Black and half-White, to write her tell-all. It turns out Evelyn and her husband each carried their own queer love affairs in an agreement to not reveal their sexual orientation.

Though the well-paced book gained prominence and favorable reviews, the criticism started to surface since the author, who is White, created a secretly queer Latina main character, a biracial character, and other characters who are queer and non-White. Those allegations are resurfacing with the recent release of Carrie Soto Is Back, featuring another Latina main character.

BookTuber Jesse Morales-Small is the voice behind Bowties and Books and identifies as an “Afro-Chicano book nerd.” They created a video about not being excited about this book despite the major marketing push and voiced concerns about the racial dynamics in the novel.

“You came out of retirement because an Asian woman broke your record. You’re like, ‘I must come out and uproot my life.’ Bitch, just sit down and relax,” they said in a video from March.

“I’m worried about how the story might go,” they continue. “This narrative of this White woman coming out of retirement, so that she can reassert her record over an Asian woman, I don’t know…It’s just with the story being written by a White woman, it makes me feel weird.”

This is before readers realized Carolina “Carrie” Soto is Argentinian American and the opponent threatening her record is Nicki Chan, who is British Chinese. Carrie’s manager during the comeback is Gwen Davis, a Los Angeles-bred Black woman.

Another problem associated with mentioning women of color is White female authors tend to emphasize these characters’ beauty, which they do not do with their White female characters. Because White women are considered the standard gold of beauty and attraction, it becomes a problem when the author brings up the issue when describing a character of color.

Here’s an example of when we’re introduced to Gwen, again a Black woman who is living in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Uprising and currently dealing with the racially tense O.J. Simpson murder trial as the city is reeling from the January 1994 Northridge earthquake. These impactful events are not referenced except a small O.J. trial mention in a fake media report, which is a huge oversight in relation to the characters with LA roots. Carrie’s comeback and perception of women are all that matters:

“I turn toward Gwen as she sits down on the sofa next to me. She’s in her late fifties, dressed in a red pantsuit and mules. Sometimes I wonder if she’s in the wrong field; she’s too striking, too glamorous to be the one behind the scenes… Something about that Gwen doesn’t care what her assistant wears in the office while she, herself, looks like a runway model makes me like them both even more.”

So, Gwen is a Naomi Campbell-type because any other Black woman wouldn’t fit the narrative of a tough manager. At this racially turbulent time in Los Angeles, a native-born Black woman would have been impacted by these events to some degree, as well as a Latina like Carrie. They wouldn’t be so worried about their looks unless those looks were under a criminal attack.

Nicki, Carrie’s sworn enemy, is also said to be beautiful on more than one occasion. Here’s a scenario where Carrie meets Nicki’s eyes as they sit in the audience of a match before they spar in the French Open. All Carrie can think about is how Nicki looks:

“Her long, broad body is unmistakable. Her strong, muscular arms. Her wide shoulders. Her long black hair. Nobody ever talks about it much—which is telling—but Nicki Chan is gorgeous. Showstoppingly gorgeous. A round face with high cheekbones, full lips.

“Other women in tennis—blond women with big boobs and long legs—often get modeling contracts at age seventeen. They show up on the cover of men’s magazines within a year or so of hitting the court for the first time.

“But not thicker women, like me. Or dark-skinned women like Carla Perez or Suze Carter. Not women who are British Chinese, like Nicki, or downright scary in their intensity like her either. Not the women who aren’t skinny and white and smiling.”

When characters of color are central to a book, some type of struggle tied to racial and cultural identity has to come up because for people of color that’s everyday real life. So, not receiving an adequate background on Carrie Soto only that her father came from Argentina for tennis opportunities and her mother died young shows the lack of deeper understanding of representing an Argentinian American woman who becomes one of the top athletes in the world in the 1980s.

To Tomes and Textiles’ Carmen’s point, there is a lot of untranslated Spanish interweaved with English. This is to make sure the reader gets what’s going on without translating the Spanish. If you’re around enough nonnative English speakers like myself, they usually do not weave English with their native language so often, especially when talking to a family member, because that’s not natural. English will come up for words that are only in English, such as a brand name like Kleenex or Starbucks. So, the use of Spanish looks gimmicky.

Overall, the book is unfortunately a snooze. Authors put themselves in their characters’ shoes by doing extensive research, but in this case Carrie’s story is not entertaining enough. It takes place on another timeline, but tennis stars Gabriela Sabatini, who is Argentinian, and Mary Joe Fernández, who is Dominican, would be able to tell us eye-opening stories about competing in professional tennis as Hispanic and Latine women in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Congresswoman Cori Bush, Ibram X. Kendi Discuss Empowerment Factor in Banned Books Movement

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (Image: Penguin Random House / Janice Checchio)

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and anti-racism intellectual Dr. Ibram X. Kendi discussed the magnitude of banned books in Washington, D.C., for one of the busiest Banned Books Week observances in recent years.

Holding their conversation at the Anacostia location of the Busboys and Poets bookstore on Thursday, the congresswoman and the author of anti-racist thought focused on the history of banned books, particularly for Black Americans. The event was hosted by The Emancipator, a vertical of The Boston Globe focused on racial justice and equity founded by Ibram.

Earliest censorship in this country began with beating and killing enslaved people for learning to read or being suspected of knowing how to read, they said. That legacy continues with readers now seeing books that share accurate histories and personal narratives of experiences with race and gender being banned, they added.

Banned Books Week is held every year in mid-September, but over the last few years, book bans have been making headlines over more school districts and local libraries removing books, primarily targeted to kids, due to complaints from parents and other adults. Many of these books contain themes surrounding race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Almost half of distinct titles banned are young adult books at 49%, followed by picture books at 19% and middle grade books at 11%, according to PEN America‘s recent report on banned books.

Book bans occurred in 138 school districts in 32 states, meaning 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students have been impacted by a book ban, PEN America found.

Cori and Ibram sat in front of bookshelves with books by authors of color as they emphasized the importance of books giving young people the ability to see worlds different from theirs and how removing access to books is hurting that freedom.

“Some people don’t want to speak about their story, and that’s OK,” the St. Louis congresswoman said. “For those who feel compelled to, when we tell our stories, other people are able to see themselves. Just like you, I didn’t see myself when they made us read Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t see myself when I was made to read The Odyssey, and books like that. I didn’t see myself, and there weren’t books presented before me where I did.”

Cori will tell her own story in The Forerunner: A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America, which will be on shelves Oct. 4. Knopf of Penguin Random House is publishing the political memoir.

Ibram is the author of How to Raise an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby, published by Penguin Random House imprints Kokila and One World. The power of readers seeing themselves in books brings equity in itself, he said.

“Books are treasures. And they’re not just sort of treasures that reveal wisdom,” he said. “They’re treasures for that person who isn’t able to, or doesn’t have the ability to, travel around the world. But they can travel around the world into time through books. It’s a democratizer.

“But I also think as you mentioned that there’s something beautiful about the power of seeing your own story in the mirror through a book, and I also see the differences,” adds the humanities professor and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. “There’s just something affirming. There’s just this connective tissue that allows human beings to connect.”

The conversation is available on YouTube.

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Authors Argue B&N’s Stocking Policy Hurts Sales

SHE LIT: Authors Argue B&N’s Stocking Policy Hurts Sales 💸

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Bulk of middle grade, YA fiction must prove profitability for placement at bookstores

Authors are fighting back against a Barnes & Noble stocking policy that they say hurts the sales of debut novels by people of color.

Middle grade author Kelly Yang shared a viral video of her daughter in a Barnes & Noble bookstore reacting to how her new novel Key Player in her Front Desk series was not going to be stocked at stores with other books in the same genre.

The rest of the video shows Kelly tearfully explaining that Barnes & Noble plans to stock only the top two books per publisher per season. She said her publisher told her that Barnes & Noble had decided to not stock the fourth book in her series, and many others in the middle grade and young adult genres, until the first editions sell successfully elsewhere.

Other authors and supporters replied to Kelly’s video to share their concern over the stocking policy they perceive as discriminatory.

The middle grade and YA genres are getting flooded with books by marginalized authors representing groups that have been grossly underrepresented in the literary industry.

In many cases, these authors, like Kelly Yang, have a large social media following that includes other similarly situated authors. So word spreads. If readers are not able to access these authors’ books from a highly visible chain bookstore, then that can spell trouble for overall sales.

Barnes & Noble boasts itself as the No. 1 book retailer in the U.S. and as the “internet’s largest bookstore” on its website.

CEO James Daunt views Barnes & Noble’s three-year-old stocking policy in a different light. “By allowing proper bookselling to take place at the store level, good books will have more space and better presentation, as well as genuine support from the booksellers of each store,” Daunt told NBC News.

“When we just took what was imposed by publishers, approximately 80% of the books were ultimately returned unsold. In effect, the bookstores were filled with books customers had no interest in reading. Now we sell most of what we buy,” he added.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Daunt said, “What we are doing—with middle grade and adult, fiction, and nonfiction, alike—is to exercise taste and judgment. This is to buy less but, if it is done with skill, it is to sell more.”

Authors took issue with the CEO’s words with phrases such as “good books will have more space and better presentation,” “books customers had no interest in reading,” and “to exercise taste and judgment” when referencing the wide variety of kids’ books.

Those already operating on smaller marketing budgets will have to prove their books are saleable in order to attain the coveted spot on a Barnes & Noble bookshelf. As for those unsaleable books, I wrote a blog post recently about how these books circulate to dollar stores and contribute to literacy access for consumers who cannot afford new books from Barnes & Noble.

Access is key here. Many consumers don’t think twice about buying a book from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com because these marketplaces are in their neighborhoods or online. Mindful book buyers have to go out of their way to seek books from an indie bookstore, so if these titles by authors of color solely depend on the indie bookstore market, then their sales are sure to plummet, unfortunately.

Even getting on best-sellers lists is at risk, but more importantly, potential readers—we’re talking kids here—don’t have their eyes on these books. That could be the greatest travesty of all for these authors who feel the Barnes & Noble stocking policy punches them in the gut. It’s not all about the money for these authors while Barnes & Noble, one of the only bookstore chains left, is about the money.

she lit editor + chief content creator

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What we’re highlighting

Penguin Random House trial comes to a questioning end

Oral arguments ended this week in the antitrust trial of the moment between the Department of Justice and Penguin Random House in its bid to buy rival Simon & Schuster.

The federal government wants to prevent the potential Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster behemoth from dominating the book industry and putting authors at financial risk. The two publishers and Simon & Schuster’s parent company ViacomCBS, which put the Big Five publisher up for sale in 2020, vowed they would put authors first, but when it comes to book sales, that all depends on consumers (and bookstores).

The trial seemed to focus on authors who made six-figure advances and higher, according to media reports, such as Stephen King. As we wait for the verdict this fall, whatever the outcome, it will shake the industry to its core.

If Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are allowed to go ahead with their merger, the Big Five of the top five publishers, which also include Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins, may go down to the Big Four. The impact on employees, authors, and literary agents will remain to be seen if the merger goes through.

Taylor Jenkins Reid accused of racial insensitivity with new book

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid is getting criticism for being a White author and featuring yet another Latina main character in her new novel. In Carrie Soto Is Back, the title character is Latina and looking for a comeback in professional tennis, which means competing against an Asian player who is experiencing racism.

Fellow book blogs like Bowties and Books and Tomes & Textiles, which are headed by bloggers who identify as Latine, say this is the second indiscretion from the author. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo also had its title character identify as Latina, though she was passing for White and straight for Hollywood success.

As we enter US Open season with all eyes on Serena Williams, Carrie Soto Is Back has conveniently received marketing dollars with pop-ups that started at Wimbledon in July. The bloggers argue this is an example of letting a White author tell stories about characters of color without investing in authors of color at the same level.

Brit Bennett manifests American Girl book deal

The best-selling author of The Vanishing Half shared a tweet from 2016 saying she wished she could strike a deal with American Girl. That dream now came true as Brit Bennett’s book Meet Claudie: An American Girl is a reality via an audiobook out this week.

A new American Girl character, Claudie is a Black girl living among creatives in 1920s Harlem. When her family gets an eviction notice for their boardinghouse, Claudie hatches a plan to save the day that incorporates her own creativity.

Robinne Lee’s ‘Idea of You’ book-to-film casts leading role

Anne Hathaway will star in the Amazon Prime Video film adaptation of actress Robinne Lee’s romance novel The Idea of You. Centered on a 40-something French American divorcée who falls in love with her daughter’s favorite boy bander, the 2017 novel will also be produced by Robinne, Anne, and Gabrielle Union, known for her book-to-screen works as well as her best-selling essay collections.

What we’re reviewing

"I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jennette McCurdy

Book Review: Acne by Laura Chinn

What we’re reading

💞August is National Romance Awareness Month. Here’s some novels to curl up with💞

What we’re watching

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When Book Banning Turns Violent

SHE LIT: When Book Banning Turns Violent

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Safety concerns for writers of banned books take spotlight amid Salman Rushdie attack

The freedom of speech through writing is being examined this week after award-winning novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times at an event where he was speaking about his work.

A week ago today, The Satanic Verses author was stabbed while on stage at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education center in western New York that regularly invites authors and other creatives to provide lectures. Currently jailed, the assailant reportedly planned the attack after reading two pages of the author’s controversial 1988 novel. The novel provoked the Iranian leader in 1989 to deliver a fatwa ordering anyone the right to kill the author and his publishers.

Despite feelings toward the book’s content and the author’s alleged behavior toward his ex-wife Padma Lakshmi detailed in her memoir, the literary community is shocked by the violent attack over a banned book as freedom of speech seems to be increasingly under threat for writers.

Organizations such as PEN America came out in support of Salman Rushdie. Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, wrote in a statement: “We can think of no comparable incident of a public violent attack on a literary writer on American soil.” The statement also revealed that the author had emailed the organization that day to “help with placements for Ukrainian writers in need of safe refuge from the grave perils they face.”

PEN America pushed the hashtag campaign #StandWithSalman, which has so far included messages of support from Stephen King and Jeffrey Eugenides. The organization held an event Friday morning with writers reading Salman Rushdie’s works on the steps of The New York Public Library.

Meanwhile, The Satanic Verses reached top spots on the Amazon.com and USA Today best-sellers list. I bought the Kindle version of the novel on Amazon after seeing the long library waits on my Libby app. Raised in a Christian and Muslim household, I wondered about the Islamic themes in the novel, a work of fiction that takes a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses.

Historians who study religion believe the Islamic prophet Muhammad took the advice of these goddesses believing they were messages from God and preached those messages to his followers. Then the archangel Gabriel appeared and told Muhammad those were not messages from God but from Satan. This religious story is disputed, hence the global controversy around The Satanic Verses that has led to deaths and injuries for many of the novelist’s translators and publishers since the declaration of the fatwa.

When news of the attack broke, some social media users pointed out Padma Lakshmi’s account of her marriage to Salman Rushdie, a short-lived union out of a longtime relationship that many people are learning about now. After seeing Padma speak at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2016, I audio-read her memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate and recall how her endometriosis diagnosis contributed to their divorce.

Padma, the Top Chef host who brilliantly interweaves her love for food into her life story, shares her thoughts on the famous author, calling him an Indian Hemingway who attracted her “in the soul-sucking intellectual desert that L.A.” was for her.

“Recently I could remember my husband complaining that I rarely wanted to make love, and when I did it was only after we had been drinking. He felt justifiably rejected,” she writes. The second chapter brings up their decline in intimacy due to her reproductive disorder but paints the respected novelist Salman Rushdie as an inconsiderate spouse frustrated by the lack of sex.

Yes, intimate details about two renowned individuals spilled onto the pages of a memoir, but those passages were also brought up in the discussion of last week’s attack. Her tweet revealing her ex-husband’s improving condition almost gained 20,000 likes.

The Satanic Verses shooting up best-seller lists 34 years after it was published shows readers still stand by freedom of speech. At the time of its publishing, the novel had been banned in multiple countries with significant Muslim populations including Iran.

The trend of buying banned books is happening to more recent releases like Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Baby that peaked on best-seller lists after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz decried its antiracism message during the confirmation hearings in March for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

When people want to attack books, readers are more likely to buy the books. The purchase can be out of curiosity for the content that’s being banned. Why don’t they want me to read this? In the case for The Satanic Verses, it takes a story from a holy book and reimagines that story in a fictional way interwoven with magical realism.

How the book is classified as fiction must be reiterated since the three-decade upheaval makes it seem like the book is nonfiction. There has been debate about how to approach religious texts classified as nonfiction that can be considered anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, or against a particular religion and be misconceived by readers for truth when there are inaccuracies. But this isn’t the case here.

Because Salman Rushdie had a fatwa on him, his safety has been a concern for over 30 years. But with so many books being banned, we have to wonder how high the concern is for other authors’ safety that could be at risk over their decisions to openly discuss their works in public.

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Penguin Random House, ViacomCBS execs testify at trial

The latest in the blockbuster antitrust trial between the U.S. Department of Justice and Penguin Random House in its bid to buy Simon & Schuster featured the Penguin Random House CEO and ViacomCBS corporate strategy officer taking the stand this week.

Penguin Random House CEO Madeline McIntosh explained at the trial how the publisher gives advances to authors and how it doesn’t have the power to grant which books become best-sellers, according to Publisher’s Weekly. She calls the publishing process about selecting books based on profit and loss reports “highly subjective.”

Alex Berkett, chief corporate development and strategy officer at ViacomCBS, testified that the parent company of Simon & Schuster wanted the publisher to go to a good “home.”

Elizabeth Acevedo shares title page of first adult novel

Young adult extraordinaire Elizabeth Acevedo, who has received acclaim for her first three novels, announced she submitted her first adult novel for editing. The author behind The Poet X, With the Fire on High, and Clap When You Land posted on Instagram a photo of a Word Doc on her computer screen with the title Family Lore.

In the post, she says she spent the summer focused on finishing the book that required her to tap into a “creative force on another level” in order to enjoy “crafting and blossoming a new self and a new body of work.”

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"I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jennette McCurdy

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Book Review: ‘Zyla & Kai’ by Kristina Forest

*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

Zyla & Kai by Kristina Forest is a young adult romance bringing together two teens who think they are too different but find enough common ground to develop a relationship that always seems threatened by outside factors. 

The story starts with the title characters going missing from a school ski trip, but it really starts the summer before where the two are lowly amusement park employees trying to earn extra cash for college. 

Hezekiah “Kai” Johnson is working at Sailor Joe’s Amusement Park over the summer when he and his on-and-off-again girlfriend Camille start arguing in front of customers. Camille approaches Kai over his alleged flirtatious behavior with other girls on the job. Kai denies the allegations, but the hullabaloo has almost cost them their jobs. Once Kai gets home to Aunt Brenda and Uncle Steve, they tell him he needs to swear off girls until he graduates high school and matriculates at the family alma mater Morehouse College, the historically Black men’s college in Atlanta. His father and Uncle Steve are college alumni while his mother and Aunt Brenda attended the Black women’s college next door, Spelman College. The dream to continue the HBCU legacy keeps Kai motivated, especially since he lost both of his parents in a car accident. Even when he catches up with his therapist, he doesn’t seem to understand why he keeps getting entangled with the wrong girls.

Zyla Matthews is the opposite. She’s afraid to commit to any relationships. Her mother constantly curling herself up in a ball and crying over her latest boyfriend is enough relationship drama for Zyla to handle. Since Zyla, her mother, and her sister live with her great-aunt, Zyla wants to add more money to her college stash. She has her eyes on fashion school in Paris. So, she’s spending her summer at Sailor Joe’s. When a rowdy customer threatens Zyla at a booth, Kai inadvertently comes to the rescue.

Sparks fly between the two employees even as summer fades and they attend their separate schools. Morning text message exchanges kindle the flame. Once Zyla and Kai start getting serious, they fret over introducing each other to their respective guardians. Kai’s uncle and aunt had already banned him from dating while Zyla’s mother and great-aunt have track records of making mistakes with men. 

Despite their families’ reactions to their budding romance, they get the blessing to continue seeing each other. Zyla goes to parties with students who go to school with Kai, including his trail of ex-girlfriends. This worries Zyla, who has never been in a relationship and fears she’ll get hurt like her mother does every other week. Kai, who’s still battling the overwhelming grief of losing his parents suddenly, tries to reassure her that he only has eyes for her. Then on Valentine’s Day, when they shed all their insecurities, the night is ruined to the point they have to face their fears again about their relationship. 

What stands out in this book is how both characters are dealing with their inner demons and letting those demons get in the way of their relationship. With Kai growing up without his parents and Zyla still facing the post-divorce reality within her family, they are trying to figure out how to define love for themselves. The hormones are telling them one thing, but their brains are forcing them to think further on their gravitational pull. Kai is known as a player when in actuality he’s looking for love in all the wrong places. He tries to live down his reputation as Zyla becomes insecure about being thought of as another one of Kai’s girlfriends, mainly when they’re around Kai’s crew. 

The family dynamics also play a large role in the story. Kai is close to Uncle Steve and Aunt Brenda, but he feels he is failing at being his best for them. They’re the ones who took him in when he became an orphan, so he feels he’s letting them down when he prematurely commits to his promise of not dating any more girls. In the beginning of the book, we see Zyla comforting her mother in the car after another breakup. Zyla is the one who lets her mother rest in the backseat and drives them to their destination. She has to be mature beyond her years for herself and her younger sister Jade since her mother doesn’t have it together and that’s why they live with Aunt Ida, a curmudgeon always muttering about how bad men are. 

If you’re interested in reading the audiobook, narrator Tashi Thomas does a fantastic job of switching up the characters’ voices. When she returns to the story narration, sometimes her voice comes off as mechanical, but the audio recording is a smooth listen.

Overall, this YA romance dives deep into how family dynamics can interweave into a blossoming relationship. The mental health aspect ties into the family dynamics as we see Kai attending therapist sessions that contribute to his character development of trying to be more self-aware about his relationships. Zyla, an aspiring fashion designer, uses retail therapy as her outlet instead finding pieces at the thrift store to create her own designs. They are teenagers looking for ways to cope with their environments, and once they bond together, they start to question their stability as a unit and as individuals. The ups and downs to get to the happily-ever-after feels like a pleasant ride on the Ferris wheel.

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Simon & Schuster Loses Publisher to Book Deal 

<![CDATA[SHE LIT: Simon & Schuster Loses Publisher to Book Deal 📚]]> SHE LIT: Simon & Schuster Loses Publisher to Book Deal 📚

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📚 Join the #shelitbookclub on July 31 as we discuss the novel Red Clocks by Leni Zumas amid the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Details can be found here.

Film poster for "Where the Crawdads Sing"

The most high-profile Black woman in publishing leaves post to write second book

Simon & Schuster announced this week that its senior vice president and publisher Dana Canedy is leaving the position she’s held for two years.

After her 2008 memoir was turned into a film last year, she says she plans to write a follow-up. But with her hiring coinciding with the racial unrest of 2020 and coming into question in last year’s controversy over the acquisition of former vice president Mike Pence’s memoir, Dana’s departure still feels like a blow to diversity and inclusion in book publishing.

Directed by screen legend Denzel Washington, A Journal for Jordan opened in theaters Christmas Day 2021 starring Michael B. Jordan playing the late U.S. Army First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, Dana’s fiancé who died in 2006 in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Their son, Jordan, was only six months old. Dana’s narration of their relationship and their decision to have a family along with letters from father to son is reflected in A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor published by Penguin Random House’s imprint Crown Publishing Group.

Though Dana hasn’t tweeted much since President Joe Biden’s inauguration, there are a flurry of tweets supporting the film that grossed close to $6.6 million in global box office sales and received bad press for its low performance during a high-volume holiday weekend. The positive feedback contributed to her decision to leave her lofty publishing position to write a follow-up book expected to be released in 2024 under Simon & Schuster.

Dana’s short-lived stint at the top of a major publishing house also came with criticism. When news broke that Simon & Schuster will publish Mike Pence’s memoir, outsiders as well as insiders attacked the move, pushing that Trump administration officials should not have their books published especially when the Jan. 6 insurrection and claims of illegal actions from the onetime administration were still coming to light.

Simon & Schuster at the time, like most publishers, have been trying to add more BIPOC, short for Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and LGBTQ+ authors to their rosters. Hence Dana’s appointment. More than 200 members of Simon & Schuster staff members signed a petition calling for the publisher to cancel the seven-figure book deal with the former vice president, The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2021.

“What I don’t want to do is what the industry does. It has to diversify. We need much more range. Through the people I’m hiring and the books we’re acquiring, I’m already trying to do that,” Canedy told the audience at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. last October. “I didn’t make the decisions for the wow factor. I’m not the Black publisher, I’m the publisher.”

A Pulitzer Prize winner, Dana worked in several positions at The New York Times over a 20-year span and eventually served as the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. She has a deep-seated journalistic mindset, so nabbing Pence’s book would not only be a potential goldmine for the publisher but also would let readers know the selection was unprejudiced.

On the other hand, like readers and staffers who protested against Pence’s book deal, the move looked like it went against diversity and inclusion efforts since most voters who identify as BIPOC or LGBTQ+ didn’t vote for Trump or agree with some of the administration’s most controversial actions. But the publisher sees the book as still supporting diversity of thought.

Jonathan Karp, who held the publisher position prior to Dana’s appointment, will reassume the title in the interim. He says in the memo announcing the job change that Dana will still consult on Pence’s memoir and books by Eugene Robinson, a Black columnist for The Washington Post, and Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a Black historian.

The question remains if Simon & Schuster will hire another person on the diversity spectrum who can boost diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and in the book market. Also, if the next permanent publisher identifies as “diverse,” then they may also have to deal with the decision and the criticism over acquiring a blockbuster book from a prominent White figure.

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Michelle Obama helps us navigate change in new book

Still profiting from the success of Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama announced Thursday that she has a second book coming out in November. The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times will offer reflections about how to change amid changing times. The book will be published by Crown.

HarperCollins union raises $40,000 for strike workers

The strike the publishing industry had its eye on happened Wednesday as HarperCollins Publishers’ union closed its online fundraiser after it received $40,000 from supporters.

The only union at a major U.S. publisher tweeted that the 200+ strikers will receive $200 each as a payment of “hardship money.” The union, which boasts 250+ members, marched the streets of Manhattan demanding a fair contract.

Earlier this month, the union scheduled the strike after it accused HarperCollins of failing to reach a contract promising to pay a predominantly female workforce a livable wage for New York City standards and to put into diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in practice.

Actress Freida Pinto plans to adapt Huma Abedin’s memoir

Both/And by longtime Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin will get the book-to-screen treatment. Frieda Pinto, who is currently starring in the book-to-film Mr. Malcolm’s List based on Suzanne Allain’s 2009 novel, was confirmed by multiple reports to be adapting the memoir for a TV miniseries via her production company Freebird Films. The book was released late last year.

Huma made headlines this week also for being rumored to be dating actor Bradley Cooper. Frieda first gained fame in her breakout performance in 2008’s Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire that was loosely based on a novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup.

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"Shine Bright" by Danyel Smith book cover

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Henry Louis Gates, Oxford Working to Publish African American Dictionary

Proud Boys Crashed Drag Queen Story Hour at a Local Library. It Was Part of a Wider Movement

Texas Youth Read Banned Books at Summer Camp

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Book Review: ‘Shine Bright’ by Danyel Smith

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith explores how Black female music artists have impacted the world and in particular the author’s world as she navigates her unstable childhood in 1970s California. 

Were there champagne toasts with Mariah Carey on a private island off the coast of Antigua? Yes. Was I backstage with Beyoncé in Philly, in Paris, in Cleveland, in Brooklyn? All of it. Have I cruised the Upper West Side in a vintage Cadillac convertible with Queen Latifah? Yes, indeed. But, though I chalked it up to not wanting to get too close to creatives, I would have to cover as a writer or an editor—I actually did not feel worthy of such friendships.

Danyel Smith is a music entertainment journalist titan who’s most famous for her editor in chief stint at Vibe magazine at the height of hip-hop domination. With the quote above from the book, her work has sparked friendships with the Black celebrities forever shaping our culture. (Mariah Carey describes Danyel’s 2005 novel Bliss as such on the cover: “The music business can be an enchanted snake pit, but Danyel tells her heroine’s story with an insider’s knowledge, with power, and most of all, with emotion.”) 

The author’s upbringing in Oakland, the city in which she reps with her whole heart, wasn’t always shiny. Her parents split when she and her sister are in elementary school, and her mother engages in a toxic relationship with a violent lawyer named Alvin who rages against the family. Her mother stays for the questionable financial stability, but when Danyel starts fighting back, that’s when she realizes what she wants the most is threatened by Alvin.

But the radio is on in Alvin’s car, and Danyel’s mother is still playing her albums. The music speaks to Danyel, even when she’s eating her free breakfast at school where the morning care teachers double as vocal trainers showing the kids how to croon to The Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly, Wow.” The Black artists singing through speakers in different places influence Danyel. She will take her writing talents from her personal diary dedicated to getting rid of Alvin to media platforms describing the impact the artists had on pop culture, though sometimes unappreciated, she makes it her mission to ensure they are appreciated. 

People wonder why I have been able to stand up to men in this business of music. To go to shows—glamorous and grimy—by myself. To negotiate with the worst of the promoters, the performers, publicists, security guards, police officers. To, on behalf of any given media organization, but mostly on behalf of Vibe, and on behalf of myself, not stand down. I just wasn’t that scared of men, not for a long time. “Step to me” was my front. “If you want this smoke.”

The don’t-back-down mantra happens to be how many of the artists she writes about are handling their livelihoods. One chapter is dedicated to the “Drinkard Family Dynasty.” The rich branch that produced Leontyne Price, the first Black woman to gain international fame as an opera singer. Leontyne’s cousin, Dionne Warwick, is the pop singer who reached a pinnacle of success in the 1970s and 1980s and whose impact surpasses generations with her “Twitter auntie” status regularly updating almost 600,000 followers. Dionne’s aunt, Cissy Houston, is the gospel singer who started touring with her group then with Mahalia Jackson and Elvis Presley before her solo debut. Cissy’s daughter, Whitney Houston, is arguably one of the greatest singers of our time, or as the author writes: “But—their problematic relationship notwithstanding—Cissy’s training of Whitney Houston is one of the most important accomplishments in the history of American music.” This familial connection between some of the greatest singers we ever known should be acknowledged more, and the author breaks down their roots and their personal histories to show the anguish they must have had for not always being appreciated for sharing their talents. 

The chapter dedicated to Diana Ross examines how her departure from The Supremes and solo success branded “Miss Ross” as a diva in a negative light when she used to be a little girl from Detroit who had unfathomable dreams that by chance came true. Gladys Knight also gets her own chapter starting with how she became one of the hardest-working kids in showbusiness already performing with her cousins and friends, “The Pips,” so she can help her divorced mother put food on the table. We learn LaDonna Adrian Gaines would drop out of her high school she had said were full of “pretty violent people” straddling the racial lines in Boston to eventually head to Germany where she christens herself as Donna Summer. The shock and disappointment lies on the page when Mariah Carey, the queen of the ’90s pop who also released her own memoir, doesn’t get a single Grammy Award for her 1995 Daydream album that still produces the soundtracks to people’s lives to this day. The ups and the many downs of Black women breaking barriers in music are palpable. 

The big stars get the props. Sprinklings of Phyllis Hyman, Millie Small of “My Boy Lollipop” fame, and Lisa Fischer whose performance of the 1991 hit “How Can I Ease the Pain” is pure magic, feel like they needed more recognition as they are singers who deserved the riches and stardom, but they remain “unsung” à la the popular TV One docuseries. Reading stories of Black women in pop reminds you of the many artists who changed the cultural landscape, sometimes as a one-hit wonder, but their achievements get lost in the mix. That’s where the author fills in those gaps with her Ringer podcast “Black Girl Songbook.” Episodes focus on artists like Deniece Williams, Angela Bofill, and Karyn White—all Black women who had defined music during a moment in time but now have fallen out of public discourse. 

Overall, the author brilliantly tells her story in a poetic rhythm and how music saved her. The love for music she has is on the storytelling side, so she can promote the Black women who turned their love for music into a career beyond their imaginations. Published by Jay-Z’s literary imprint Roc Lit 101 under Penguin Random House with the title deriving from Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” this book serves as a reminder that music history is heavily influenced by Black women, but they unfortunately don’t always receive flowers for their immeasurable contributions.

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Controversy Mars ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Film 

SHE LIT: Controversy Mars ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Film 🎬

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📚 Join the #shelitbookclub on July 31 as we discuss the novel Red Clocks by Leni Zumas amid the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Details can be found here.

Film poster for "Where the Crawdads Sing"

Delia Owens’ alleged involvement in killing resurfaces as movie aims for box office gold

Where the Crawdads Sing became a runaway hit in 2018. Now, it’s getting the book-to-film treatment with its theater-only premiere this Friday. But the author’s past is creeping back into cyberspace while the filmmakers including celebrity book club queen Reese Witherspoon are getting the side eye for supporting the book after the allegations came to light.

Delia Owens wrote nonfiction books about wildlife conservation with her now-estranged husband Mark Owens. They lived and worked in different African countries with Mark’s son Christopher Owens. Their second book focused on their battles against elephant poachers. In 1995, an alleged poacher or trespasser was killed while the Owens lived in Zambia protecting elephants, according to media reports. And the killing was taped by ABC News, but the shooter was offscreen.

Zambian investigators say the Owens family members are still wanted for questioning in the killing, including the Where the Crawdads Sing author, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic broke this week, also tweeting that ABC News should also be considered involved for failing to report the killing. The same week Where the Crawdads Sing opens in theaters.

The Owens couple and their work to protect wildlife against poachers gained ABC News’ attention at the time, which turned into filming the family for the Turning Point newsmagazine show. Critics have accused the couple of acting as White saviors with taking the dangerous issue into their own hands and blaming African poachers and African officials for the decrease in the elephant population. The person who was killed has never been identified.

The novel about a “Marsh Girl” living on North Carolina’s coast turned murder suspect drum up similarities with the author as Delia has told media outlets that it’s pure fiction based on her experiences living in remote areas.

"Where the Crawdads Sing" book cover

In the current media circus around the Where the Crawdads Sing film, Delia is posting on Instagram official and behind-the-scenes promotional images from the film.

Reese Witherspoon and her Hello Sunshine company are credited as a producer. Via Reese’s Book Club, the actress/producer/celebrity bookwoman is promoting a giveaway for the film in partnership with Anheuser-Busch that includes four movie tickets, a book club tote bag, a Budweiser T-shirt and hat, and a Stella Artois lunch bag and bandana.

The book is reigning at number one on The New York Times best-sellers list for paperback trade fiction.

The publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons under Penguin Random House knew at the end of the day the target audience of White female readers would overlook the author’s alleged ties to poaching and a killing in Zambia.

Screenwriter Lucy Alibar was asked about the killing by Time, but she said she was not familiar with it. Sony, the film’s distributor, canceled scheduled press interviews with Delia, Reese, and the film’s star Daisy Edgar-Jones after the interview with the screenwriter, according to Time. Even Taylor Swift is feeling the heat from fans for recording a song for the movie’s soundtrack.

A similar phenomenon happened in 2020 with Jeanine Cummins. The author, who identifies as White Latina, saw her runaway hit American Dirt receive harsh criticism from Hispanic and Latine literary communities as they argued the story was an inaccurate, offensive portrayal of Mexican life and immigration to the U.S. The novel still zoomed to number one on best-sellers lists with backing from the original celebrity book club queen: Oprah Winfrey.

The publishing industry is dominated by White women, according to recent reports tracking diversity, equity, and inclusion in publishing, so the average readers in mind for many acquired books tend to be White women.

Even at Penguin Random House, 75% of the publishing giant’s contributors identify as White, reveals the company’s recent audit. That means the majority of its authors, illustrators, and other creatives are White like 74% of non-warehouse employees at PRH, a workforce demographics report breaks down.

So, while the drama in Zambia is being portrayed by some as a Black-and-White issue, an author like Delia Owens can still be published and see unfathomable success as she remains at-large for questioning in an unsolved killing and in connection to other possible criminal activities abroad.

To unshroud this controversy from your name, wouldn’t you want to comply with authorities to end the doubt, or would your freedom be too much at risk? It seems like the author is doing just fine with the decades-long distance from her and the controversy, but it remains to be seen how moviegoers will be influenced by the old revelations.

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THE PROUD FAMILY: LOUDER AND PROUDER - “New Kids on the Block” (Disney)

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

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HarperCollins schedules one-day strike over unfair wages

The union at HarperCollins Publishers in the U.S. announced this week its 250+ members plan to strike on July 20. In a tweet, the union wrote its members are “striking for fair wages, stronger diversity commitments, and union rights.”

Last week, the union publicized its plan to coordinate a strike after it accused HarperCollins of not paying mostly women livable wages, especially in New York where most employees reside, and not delivering on its promise to boost diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.

Singer Ashanti debuts her kids’ book about loving your name

Marking 20 years since her eponymous debut album, R&B singer Ashanti is on a book tour discussing her new book for early readers. Published by HarperCollins and illustrated by Monica Mikai, My Name is a Story celebrates Ashanti’s unique name and shows the struggle of explaining the meaning of her name as a child.

Earlier this year, the singer was accused of plagiarism by author Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow who wrote a book titled Your Name Is A Song under Innovation Press. That story is also about a young Black girl whose name is constantly mispronounced and how she learns to love her name.

Romance novelists team up for weekly newsletter

Georgia Clark and Hannah Orenstein have launched “Heartbeat,” a Substack newsletter featuring original romance fiction from the “best romance writers authors today.” All types of love will be recognized from familial to platonic, according to the message on the newsletter’s landing page. Both writers, who have had their books published by Simon & Schuster and live in New York, designated Friday mornings for the curated newsletter to drop into inboxes starting July 22.

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Some Surprising Good News: Bookstores Are Booming and Becoming More Diverse

A Small Bookstore Was Scammed. The Local Community Stepped in to Save It.

New Mobile Bookstore Drives Interest in Black Stories

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In Female-Dominated Publishing Industry, Pay Gaps Persist

SHE LIT: In Female-Dominated Publishing Industry, Pay Gaps Persist

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📚 Join the #shelitbookclub on July 31 as we discuss the novel Red Clocks by Leni Zumas amid the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Details can be found here.

Photo by Lara Jameson: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-riding-a-train-8898911/

HarperCollins employees say diversity and inclusion is not prioritized at publisher

Unionized employees of HarperCollins Publishers voted to strike earlier this week, citing concerns with low pay as a result of the book industry leader not promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion the way it promised.

Returning from the three-day July 4 holiday weekend, the Local 2110 of the UAW union said its 250+ members voted to authorize a strike as it negotiates a “fair contract” with the publisher.

Members include employees in editorial, sales, publicity, design, legal, and marketing departments. They say they want higher pay, better family leave benefits, stronger union protection, and a real commitment to staff diversity and inclusion.

The average female employee at HarperCollins earns an annual $55,000 with a starting salary of $45,000, according to the union’s press release announcing the potential strike. That doesn’t cover the cost of living in New York City, the release notes.

“Our compensation doesn’t reflect our education and skills, or our contributions to the financial success of the company,” said union chairperson Laura Harshberger, a senior production editor in children’s books, in the release.

Not only is the gender pay gap in the spotlight with this news, but so is the racial pay gap with the union saying the lack of racial and ethnic diversity at HarperCollins has contributed to the “historically low wages.” The publisher had “record profits” in 2021, parent company News Corp. mentions in a press release last August.

The union says HarperCollins is the only major book publisher in the U.S. to be unionized. The contract negotiations with HarperCollins management have been ongoing since December 2021.

The publishing industry is about 74% cisgender women and 23% cisgender men, according to a survey released in 2020 by Lee & Low Books, a family-run, minority-owned, independent publisher.

Women may dominate the industry, but men tend to better rise in the ranks with 38% of cisgender men holding executive and board member positions.

For the race and ethnicity breakdown, the industry is 76% White. “The field is overwhelmingly White women,” the survey says.

No date has been set for the strike since negotiations are still not done. Whether they strike or not, the publishing industry as a whole has a long way to go with closing the gender and racial pay gap. If a strike happens, we may see more major publishers dealing with employees wanting to unionize in an effort to not only raise wages but to diversify the industry.

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Macmillan still recovering from cybersecurity attack

Macmillan Publishers is back up and running after a debilitating data breach that slowed down operations for at least a week. The publisher announced it was functional again on July 4. Media reports say the publisher is working through a backlog of orders from booksellers.

Scholastic recalls kid’s book over choking hazard

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of Scholastic’s “Shake Look Touch” books. The books have pom poms attached, and Scholastic received two reports of the pom poms detaching, causing a choking concern for young children. The federal agency says roughly 185,700 books are on the market with an additional 1,500 sold in Canada. Scholastic is offering $10 gift cards to consumers who show a photo of removed pom poms and affirm they will be thrown away. The books are still usable without the pom poms.

Book club picks highlight Black female experience

Reese Witherspoon’s book club and Meena Harris’ book club selected two titles by Black women about Black women. Reese’s Book Club will read Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola this month that features a college radio talk show host who questions her love life after telling listeners to avoid situationships. The Phenomenal Book Club chose Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, a semi-autobiographical debut novel first set in 1990s Harlem focused on a “morbidly obese” girl who moves through life with that diagnosis.

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Both these authors have new books out now. Check out these book reviews on their previous best-sellers!

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With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack

‘There’s Obviously a Market’: Why Are There So Many Children’s Books About Anxiety?

‘Disgusted’: Parents Slammed for Donating Daughter’s Books As Punishment

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Book Review: ‘Juliet Takes a Breath’ by Gabby Rivera

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera is a coming-of-age novel that has been miscategorized in the young adult genre since it focuses on a college student on an unconventional ride to self-acceptance.

Juliet Palante is discovering herself. On summer break from college, she’s at home in the Bronx about to embark on a journey to Portland, Oregon, to serve as an assistant to a feminist writer. But before she leaves, Juliet notices her sorta girlfriend Lainie has doubts about their relationship while she’s deciding how to come out to her family. She tells her family that she’s a lesbian at the dinner before her flight to Portland. The aftermath makes her look forward to Portland, where she lives with her new boss, Harlowe Brisbane. Once she’s inside Harlowe’s home, she’s quickly learning about the preference of pronouns to the range of sexuality. Where does she belong? Especially as a Latina in the very White-centered world of Portland. Her race, ethnicity, and culture intertwine with her sexual orientation as she meets young women like herself who seem so sure of who they are. 

As far as we know, this book has been banned by at least one school district. First of all, the book is about a college student. That’s the “new adult” genre that the book publishing industry barely uses. The new adult genre is supposed to be for readers between the ages of 18 to 30, but many of these books are still classified as either young adult or adult. The issue is this book has been categorized as a young adult novel, meaning it’s for youth between the ages of 12 to 18, but the material, especially to a parent or a teacher, is definitely not for that age group when it comes to literature. And the age of eighteen is overlapping between the YA and NA genres, so when the protagonist is in that age group, it gets even murkier on how the book should be marketed. 

Right off the bat, the book’s inside flap calls Juliet a “self-proclaimed closeted Puerto Rican baby dyke.” The d-word is usually an offensive word, though it may be embraced by some lesbians like the author and the character. Harlowe writes about women’s bodies and is known around town as the “pussy book lady.” When Juliet wakes up on her first morning at Harlowe’s home, she comes face-to-face with a naked man. Harlowe reminds the naked man, her friend Phen, that he must ask Juliet if she’s OK with his nakedness. Confused, Juliet says yes. But the reader knows Juliet and any other young woman in that predicament would be uncomfortable to find a strange, naked man in the home of someone who’s supposed to be caring for them. The scene is small but can be confusing for the average maturing teenage girl who most likely was taught to stay away from naked men they do not know and depend on their supervising adult to prioritize their safety and comfort. The book has numerous parentless, college-girl adventures, which again can be viewed as inappropriate by high school administrators and parents, because that’s another life when you cross the eighteen-year age threshold and wander into the real world on your own. 

On the other end of the spectrum, there are girls, boys, and nonbinary teens who yearn to read a book like this to see how their worlds can open up after high school, either in college and/or in the real world off campus. Meeting characters like Juliet and Harlowe through the pages may inspire them to craft their own journeys like venturing off to an unknown place, exploring their identity and creativity, or looking for their communities of support that may not be visible where they are in their guardians’ home and at a high school where books featuring queer teens can be banned. 

Overall, the book is entertaining with showing the White cultural mecca Portland has become over the years and juxtaposing that setting with a queer Latina character’s Bronx-driven culture as she comes to terms with who she wants to be. 

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LGBTQIA+ Books Are More Banned Than Ever

LGBTQIA+ Books Are More Banned Than Ever

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June is Pride Month! Join the #shelitbookclub with reading the recently banned young adult novel Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera 🏳️•

Why banned books are disappearing from library shelves

The most banned book in the United States right now is Maia Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer. Maia, who uses the pronouns e/em/eir, illustrates eir experience growing up in rural San Francisco Bay Area in a graphic book where e undergoes traditional gendered events from getting eir first bra to developing crushes on boys and girls.

Published by Simon & Schuster’s Oni Press in 2019, the author’s autobiographical coming-of-age story held the top spot on the most banned and challenged books list compiled by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. The group says the book has been “banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit images.”

Most books are banned from libraries and schools without much media fanfare, as in up to 97% of these books that are challenged will never be covered by the news. That means Americans, especially children, may never know why they can’t find a particular book at their local library.

Banned books have become a priority over the last few years since many of these works are by LGBTQIA+ authors as well as authors of color describing racial, ethnic, and cultural experiences like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas being famously banned and challenged for allegedly promoting an “anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda,” the ALA’s list notes.

I recently attended Books in Bloom, a so-called progressive book festival in Maryland, which celebrated banned books this year by adding panels with authors and experts discussing freedom of speech, including Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin and literary civil rights group PEN America. The partner indie bookstore Busboys and Poets mostly sold banned books, such as Gender Queer.

More people are taking action to support the sales of these books. Students are starting banned book clubs in their high schools. They’re even filing lawsuits against their schools for removing books. In retaliation of the increase in book censorship, Margaret Atwood modeled with a flamethrower to show off a fireproof version of her 1985 Hulu-adapted novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was auctioned off for $130,000 this week with proceeds going to PEN America.

As 2022 becomes a year of giving banned and challenged books a spotlight, the annual Banned Books Week will take place in September. That’s three months of really surveying the impact of banned and challenged books and hearing more authors speak about the freedom of speech. And maybe we’ll get more fireproof books…

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June book club picks promise addictive summer reads

Oprah’s Book Club has chosen Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley. The debut novel centers on a young woman in Oakland who starts working on the streets at night to keep up with rising rent and the costs to support her family. But when she gets picked up by the police one night, she finds herself fighting to protect her freedom. The 19-year-old author, who’s also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, will sit down with Oprah in a livestream conversation June 30 on Oprah Daily.

Reese’s Book Club is reading Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen. Jenna’s Book Club is reading These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany. GMA Book Club is reading More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez. Noname Book Club is reading The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

Best-selling memoirist gets spotlight in food docuseries

Coming off of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, you can catch the HBO Max docuseries Take Out with Lisa Ling about the stories of how Asian communities weaved their cuisines into the fabric of America. One episode follows Michelle Zauner aka indie recording artist Japanese Breakfast as she ventures the aisles of the Korean grocery chain H Mart and talks about her award-winning book Crying in H Mart

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LeVar Burton Calls ‘Bulls- -t’ on Recent School Book Bans: ‘It’s Embarrassing’

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Book Review: ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters explores the complexities of parenthood between two women and a man who unite in an effort to take care of a baby, but the closer they get, the more they convince themselves they’re making a mistake. 

Reese always wanted to be a mother. In fact, she acts as a mother figure in the New York City transgender community, taking in young trans women who remind her of herself when she first came to the city from the Midwest. Upon her arrival, she quickly became a go-to caretaker for children on the Upper East Side. She has the natural gift of taking care of others. One of the trans women she had taken under her wing was Amy, who returns in her life in a form she’s unfamiliar with. 

Ames is a marketing executive having a sultry fling with his recently divorced boss, Katrina. They soon realize they are expecting a baby. Katrina had a miscarriage during her marriage, so she’s nervous about the pregnancy. She’s also at the top of her game at work, and she’s unsure how a baby she’s having with a subordinate fits into her career plan post-divorce. Ames can’t believe he even impregnated a woman, but now that he has, he suggests bringing in an old friend to help parent the baby. 

When Reese sees Amy again, Amy is now known as Ames. Amy detransitioned from a trans woman back to a biological man. Ames explains how he thought years of taking hormones to live as a female would decrease his fertility. But now that a baby is coming, Ames wants to tap Reese to be a secondary mother and assist Katrina to raise the child. Reese always wanted to be a mother, and she feels her chances were dashed when she and Amy broke up. Now, who Reese still can’t believe is the Amy she used to love is offering the opportunity of motherhood.

Skeptical of the idea of becoming a mother by playing a third parent in raising another woman’s baby, Reese starts hanging out with Ames and Katrina to see if she can get onboard with the proposal. Katrina has questions and misconceptions of how Reese lives as a trans woman and how Ames lived as a trans woman. The clashes melt away once Reese and Katrina realize they are simply women who want to be mothers. It takes a village to raise a child. But when Katrina realizes why Reese and Amy broke up, she starts to rethink the concept of letting Reese play a mother and herself become a mother.

This is an eye-opening novel exploring a part of the New York City trans community rarely seen in mainstream media. Reports say that this book is one of the firsts written by a trans author to be distributed by a “big five” publisher. It’s refreshing to learn about how these fictional trans women feel they are competing with biological women to demonstrate their femaleness, including their capability and desire to become mothers. The author, who is a trans woman, spent time in the community to nail down the intricacies of the characters, their backgrounds, and their desires. 

The spectrum of characters represent different people who interact in the community. There is the trans person, the former trans person, and the cisgender, heterosexual person fighting their biases to accept someone they actually meet in real life who is trans. For Reese, her sex life is complicated with having committed lovers and secret lovers. The emotional struggle of identifying as female in a world that deidentifies her as not female makes her feel like she could never commit to a monogamous relationship long enough to raise a child with someone. For Ames, he detransitions soon after ending his relationship with Reese but still struggles on pinpointing what made him want to live as male again, especially when Reese pushes for answers. For Katrina, she is wrapping her brain around the fact she is having a baby with someone she didn’t know had lived as a woman for years, but her open-mindedness forces her to shake the anger and accept the perceived affection she’s receiving from Ames and now Reese. 

Overall, this novel again shows a community rarely magnified in the literary world. Pushing the boundaries that women who have penises also have desires to be mothers, and though it could be difficult to produce that child biologically depending on the partner, they will make a way to be mothers. Humankind, regardless of identities and circumstances, wants love, and this story shows the road for these characters finding that love unexpectedly with each other, though their inner demons try to destroy what they have. By the way, a TV series adaptation is in the works.