Week of Friday, August 23, 2024
The tantalizing thrill of being trapped with no apparent escape features prominently in books reviewed this week. From the claustrophobic locked-room mystery at the bottom of the sea in Will Dean's "superb" and "breathless" The Chamber to the expansive plight of guests marooned at an island resort in MJ Wassmer's "hilarious, high-stakes social satire" Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend, the tension is sure to leave you gasping. But in cases like the "riveting puzzle" of Catherine Steadman's "sinister thriller" Look in the Mirror, some locked doors might be better left unopened--especially if they're in the basement!
Meanwhile, young readers are sure to shout for Adela's Mariachi Band, a "colorful, jubilant picture book" by Denise Vega, and illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina, about an exuberant girl finding her place in the family band.
Plus, in The Writer's Life, the authors of Gender Explained discuss the growing awareness of gender and identity. They offer healthy strategies for fostering personal discovery and creative expression with a thoughtful aim to reduce anxiety and increase curiosity.
Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
by MJ Wassmer
A young couple's relaxing vacation in the Bahamas descends into a dystopian nightmare when the sun disappears in MJ Wassmer's satirical, high-stakes debut novel, Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend.
Twenty-nine-year-old underachieving marketing drone Dan and his girlfriend, Mara, are several Miller Lites into their beach time when the sun explodes, in a surprisingly understated visual: "It was like someone had pelted Earth with an egg. The yolk dripped down the side of the sky and was gone." Their resort is left with backup generators, no way to contact the rest of the world, and no transportation off the island. Mara worries about her ailing mother. Dan, who often defaults to stereotypical male posturing when unsure of himself, promises to fix the situation and get Mara home, but has no idea how. A neighbor from their resort building tells Dan there's a plane on the island and that he can fly it, if Dan can help him get to it. But the plan is easier said than done after a megastar fitness influencer staying at the resort's VIP building crowns herself de facto dictator and turns the island into a labor camp controlled by the richest guests. Dan must decide whether to prioritize saving Mara or fight back for the good of everyone.
This light sci-fi thriller is a smart-talking and unexpectedly moving look at human nature. Wassmer hilariously pokes fun at lifestyle gurus and the mob mentality while exploring the fallout of an expectation-laden upbringing turning into a mediocre adulthood. As in all great satires, the humor here works because of its foundations in truth. Many stars, would recommend. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
A Pair of Wings
by Carole Hopson
Commercial airline pilot Carole Hopson's absorbing debut novel, A Pair of Wings, delves into the life of aviatrix Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license. Hopson traces Bessie's journey from picking cotton in the fields near Waxahachie, Tex., to becoming an accomplished flier who trained under noted pilots in France and Germany. Written in the first person, in Bessie's voice, Hopson's narrative also explores Bessie's deep bonds with her family, her years working as a manicurist in Chicago, Ill., and the racism and sexism she faced as she blazed a path through the skies.
The novel begins with an account of a near-fatal accident in 1923, which left Bessie with a broken leg and a determination to fly again. Hopson then flashes back to Bessie's Texas childhood, her migration to Chicago to join her older brothers, and her growing aspiration to build a flying career. Hopson populates her story with well-known Black people from history, including Chicago Defender publisher Robert Abbott and banker Jesse Binga, who supported Bessie's efforts. Hopson draws on her own experiences of flying to bring Bessie's time in the air to vivid life, explaining the principles of aeronautics (both the basics and the flashy tricks) so readers can learn alongside Bessie. As she gains confidence, Bessie dreams of opening a flight school for Black students. Hopson's narrative celebrates Bessie's success both as a woman and a symbol: a bold, resolute trailblazer who sought freedom above the clouds and inspired her fellow Black Americans to do the same. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
The Rich People Have Gone Away
by Regina Porter
Regina Porter's spectacular second novel, The Rich People Have Gone Away, deepens and widens the possibilities of storytelling about the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the heart of the multilayered, multiperspective novel are Brooklynites Theodore Harper and Darla Jacobson, a couple in an open marriage who are expecting their first child. One day early in the pandemic, the two decide to leave for a week at Darla's family's summer cottage in upstate New York. On a hike en route, they quarrel and Darla goes missing. The fight, which was ostensibly about Theo revealing that his great-great grandfather was Black and Darla wanting each of them to sell their apartments to buy a Park Slope brownstone together, touches on two of the novel's central themes: identity and real estate. To that end, Theo is a professional aesthetic adviser, and one of his lovers is a real estate broker. Porter (The Travelers) also divides the novel into three parts, and each opens with an epigraph that defines an architectural term: door, doorframe, and threshold.
Although Darla's disappearance propels the plot, much of the novel is concerned with relationships, especially parental ones, which are intricately detailed, including those of Xavier Curtis, a teenage relative of one of Theo's neighbors; Theo himself; and Darla's best friend, Ruby Tabitha Black. Black's is the only first-person narrative, and it's one of the widest ranging, following her from childhood to her college travails to her current 30-something self.
The Rich People Have Gone Away is deeply felt and marvelously heartbreaking. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator
The Palace of Eros
by Caro De Robertis
The tale of Eros and Psyche gets a queer update in The Palace of Eros, the lush and thoughtful novel by Caro De Robertis (The President and the Frog; Cantoras).
Psyche grows up in the shadow of her older sisters, but when she comes of age, her beauty becomes so great that her father's household is overwhelmed by suitors coming to stare at her, but not to offer marriage, because nobody wants to marry "this girl whose face and body had been scraped raw by glances from across the land." Aphrodite becomes jealous that Psyche is drawing so much attention from her. She sends her daughter, Eros, the deity of desire, who is "a woman and also, at the same time... more," to punish Psyche by making her fall in love with an unworthy man. But Eros is overwhelmed when she sees Psyche and devises a plan to make Psyche her wife instead. All Eros has to do is keep her hidden from the other gods, making sure they are never together in the light.
De Robertis adapts the Greek myth into a novel that is sensual and subversive. When Psyche can no longer tolerate the mystery of her husband's identity and she exposes her in the light, she unwittingly reveals their hidden sanctuary to the other gods. Then she doesn't only need to overcome the trials Aphrodite gives her, she and Eros must also heal their broken trust and forge the beginnings of a new world where those who defy expectations can belong. Fans of Circe by Madeline Miller and Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood will be enthralled. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library
The Registry of Forgotten Objects
by Miles Harvey
In his haunting first short story collection, Miles Harvey (The King of Confidence) inventively links 12 tales of life's transient nature through the unexpected reappearances of mementos across multiple stories. The Registry of Forgotten Objects, the title of both the collection and its final story, is a dystopian facility that embodies impermanence. It houses items from many eras, including "the Great Forgetting, that cataclysmic period when certain machines, now extinct, are said to have subsumed all human knowledge."
Although this story is unsettling, others include pathos and humor, and the recurring objects create a treasure-hunt ambiance. In "The Drought," a TV weatherman in a small city has an affair with a barber's wife. Environmental devastation underscores this story, but the ancient barber pole here reappears in ensuing stories. In "Four Faces," a bereaved father discovers it on the Florida beach where his son disappeared six years earlier, and his daughter recalls it resentfully. Later, it becomes a mysterious item at a Michigan estate sale.
Fittingly, "The Complete Miracles of St. Anthony: Definitive Edition with Previously Unpublished Material" marks an appearance by the patron saint of lost things. An archeologist says her impulse is for "crossing the divide of time to search for something lost, something missing, something that will make sense of everything else." Colorful ephemera recurs--a wedding-cake topper, counterfeit coins--and poignant symbols repeat. A German scholar who is eventually murdered in the Holocaust obsesses over a haunting refrain attributed to Sappho: "Remember us, remember us, remember us." Many years later, a mother hums to her colicky baby. She can't name the melody, but readers will know the song. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.
The Paris Gown
by Christine Wells
In her seventh historical novel, The Paris Gown, Christine Wells (The Royal Windsor Secret) weaves together the stories of three friends--skilled Parisian chef Claire, American journalist Gina, and Australian socialite Margot--with the luster of a glorious Christian Dior gown in 1950s Paris.
The novel begins when Claire receives two startling pieces of news: her widowed father has sold the family's brasserie, and her neighbor, Madame Vaughn, has left the country and asked Claire to care for her apartment--and to take possession of a stunning Dior gown. Flattered but unsure where she'd wear such a creation, Claire hesitates but accepts the gift at the urging of her old friend Gina, who has recently resurfaced in Paris, fleeing a broken engagement and her father's shady financial dealings. Claire offers to lend Gina the gown for an event and the two attend a fitting at Dior's atelier, where they are shocked to find Margot working under an assumed name.
Wells immerses readers in mid-20th-century Paris through lush details such as the hearty meals at Claire's restaurant and the glitter of Dior's couture headquarters. Each of Wells's protagonists falls under the gown's spell, but the dress is secondary to the tough choices they must make. Though all three women harbor ambitions regarding career and love, they must decide which to prioritize, and how to stay true to themselves and one another in a time that favors men at every turn.
With a trio of strong, creative women at its center, The Paris Gown is an engaging tribute to the power of an exquisite dress and enduring female friendship. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
The Princess of 72nd Street
by Elaine Kraf
Elaine Kraf's The Princess of 72nd Street is a novel that readers will find hard to believe was originally published in 1979. With impeccable vision and a vulnerability seldom seen in representations of mental illness in fiction, Kraf depicts mania so vividly that readers will feel dismayed the novel didn't find widespread fame five decades ago.
The protagonist's mother gave her a name, but she prefers to be called "Princess Esmerelda of West 72nd Street." She experiences euphoric periods of "radiance," which psychiatrists prefer to call "manic-depression." She can't grasp why so many people seem hell-bent on stifling her radiance; they "usually treat this lovely feeling with drugs." However, she's nevertheless determined to outsmart them and remain true to her state of being: "The floor is a beach and I am rolling on the sand and splashing in the water with a white heron. It turns gray and blue. No one can stop this. No one will take away my radiance even when it floods over me completely."
As Esmerelda bounces from one catastrophic relationship to another, the constants in her life are the conviction of her royal status and her devotion to her lovely subjects. It's by turns achingly sad to bear witness to Esmerelda's self-destructive behaviors and yet enthralling to see her thrive in her royalty. The novel is narrated in charmingly disjointed stream of consciousness that compels readers to surrender to the force of nature that is Esmerelda and gape in awe at Kraf's radical storytelling. Woefully unappreciated as a trailblazing feminist novel, this is a cult classic fully deserving a reprint and a second chance at mainstream regard. --Jess M., bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company.
Mystery & Thriller
No Road Home
by John Fram
Toby Tucker and Alyssa Wright barely knew each other before they married. But at the start of John Fram's harrowing second novel, No Road Home, they're on their way with Toby's son, Luca, to the Wright family's isolated Texas compound, which is called Ramorah. Toby receives a startling warning about his in-laws when they stop at a Cracker Barrel beforehand; the clerk warns that Toby "is heading into a brook of vipers." But Toby's already wary of Alyssa's grandfather, Jerome Jeremiah Wright, the country's wealthiest televangelist, as well as of the other members of Alyssa's extended family.
The clerk isn't far off: "awful" is the nicest thing one relative calls the Wrights. With minimal physical violence, Fram (The Bright Lands) skillfully captures an evil family intent on destroying one another, especially newcomers. Soon after arriving at Ramorah, Toby witnesses family members cruelly misgender Luca, who has long hair, wears "lots of pink and mauve" and identifies as a boy, but the family devise nonnegotiable plans for Toby and Luca. The next morning, Jerome, who's been spouting end-of-days predictions, is found stabbed on the roof as a powerful storm cuts off all communication beyond the compound. The family closes ranks against Toby, threatening to blame him for Jerome's murder. Someone paints cryptic threats around the compound, Luca claims to constantly see a strange figure he calls Mister Suit, and Toby has visions of his late sister. The Wrights' fortune has been built on religion and donations from viewers, but, as one character remarks, "There's more sins in this house than murder."
Fram nimbly matches terror with suspense as No Road Home depicts a ruthless family whose deteriorating home mirrors their soullessness. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer
Sacrificial Animals
by Kailee Pedersen
Kailee Pedersen's debut novel, Sacrificial Animals, is a lyrical and unsettling supernatural horror-thriller about the violent legacy of one Midwestern family. Second son Nick doesn't believe a deathbed reconciliation with his brutal father, Carlyle, is possible. But when Carlyle's estranged favorite, firstborn son Joshua, decides to return despite having been disinherited years ago for marrying an Asian woman, Emilia, Nick can't resist the summons. He's surprised to find Emilia is as young and beautiful as ever, and Joshua, whom his father seeks to reestablish as his heir, is still as easily swayed by his father's favor. The longer Nick stays, the more his childhood memories haunt him. And as his attraction to Emilia grows into an affair, he entangles himself further into the family history he wanted to escape. Emilia's ominous beauty simmers beneath it all, her eerie calm hinting that her seduction hides something menacing.
Pedersen's prose is both poetic and raw. Sacrificial Animals is extraordinary for its illumination of unexpected empathy, and it suggests that the catharsis of vindication is never simple. Based in part on the mythos of the American Midwest and in part on Chinese mythology, Sacrificial Animals infuses the fading, sepia-toned image of an American family saga with a more complex understanding. At first glance, Nick, Joshua, and Carlyle form a holy trinity of white male angst, but Emilia's magnetic presence disrupts their cycle of martyrdom. She becomes an agent of destruction, making their downfall less predictable if no less inevitable. This is perhaps the best part of this genre-bending literary novel: the experience of reading it is as variable as it is fated. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor
The Chamber
by Will Dean
A team of saturation divers enters their hyperbaric chamber for a routine 28-day stay, but not everyone will make it out alive in Will Dean's breathless thriller, The Chamber. From the coast of Scotland, the diving support vessel Deep Topaz sets off for the underwater oil-industry infrastructure of the North Sea, its crew of six divers ready for a lucrative but grueling month of work on the sea floor. Ellen Brooke, the sole female diver in the group, begins documenting life as a "sat rat" in the chamber with her camcorder, hoping to attract more women to enter the field. The chamber, which is the "size of a family bathroom," consists of three sets of bunk beds, a small table for meals, and an atmosphere mixed with helium and oxygen that allows the divers to work at pressure.
When Brooke returns from her first shift in the diving bell--attached to the chamber's "Wet Pot" (bathroom/shower area)--she finds one of the crew has mysteriously died in his bunk. Their job cut short, the divers must wait four days to decompress in the chamber, but before they can leave, another teammate dies. Dean shrinks the traditional locked-room mystery, and delivers both a well-researched primer on saturation diving (readers will never think of "raspberry jam" the same way again) and a chest-contracting novel with well-developed characters and dialogue. The Chamber is a superb thriller that invites readers inside to experience fear in a new way. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver
Look in the Mirror
by Catherine Steadman
Catherine Steadman's Look in the Mirror is a riveting puzzle of a thriller. The novel opens as Cambridge University English literature professor Nina Hepworth receives the news that her recently deceased father has left her a house in the British Virgin Islands--a house she never knew about. Nina flies to BVI, with all her travel expenses covered by her academician father's estate (how wealthy was he?), and finds a gorgeous home overlooking a private beach. It has tight security, automated control systems, biometric door-lock panels, and one locked room in the basement that Nina can't access. There's a glitch in the room's electronic lock, and no one can tell Nina what the room holds. When she eventually finds out, the terrifying ordeal makes her question whether she knew her father at all and if she'll emerge from the house alive.
Nina isn't the only person confronting the locked room; some of the novel's chapters are from the point of view of a nanny named Maria, who is staying at the house as part of a two-week contract for a family who eerily never shows up. Nevertheless, she's told she can enjoy all the luxuries the house offers--except for the room in the basement.
Steadman (Mr. Nobody), an actor whose credits include roles on Downton Abbey and The Tudors, effectively keeps readers in the dark about the room and Nina's and Maria's timelines, infusing the novel with dread amid all the beauty and sunshine. The eventual revelations are somewhat far-fetched and don't answer all the questions raised, but Steadman is a clever writer who knows how to hold readers hostage. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja
Romance
Love and Other Conspiracies
by Mallory Marlowe
Cryptid hunting and snappy repartee abound in Love and Other Conspiracies, Mallory Marlowe's debut romance about an unlikely connection between a supernatural devotee and an avowed skeptic. Hallie, a producer at a BuzzFeed-esque company called Skroll, is up late looking for inspiration for a new web series when she stumbles onto a late-night TV show hosted by Hayden, who also has a successful podcast. Intrigued by his ability to hold her interest despite her disbelief in the paranormal, she suggests that they team up to create the next Internet sensation by turning Hayden's cryptid- and conspiracy-focused podcast, The Out There, into a web show on which Hayden will talk viewers through the weird and fabled worlds of Mothman, Area 51, and Bigfoot--to name a few.
When Hayden's charismatic presence doesn't quite translate to screen on his own, Hallie joins him in front of the camera and on the road. Together, they visit haunted hallmarks such as the Winchester Mystery House and Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel, and face off against a competing show starring a company golden boy who also happens to be Hallie's toxic ex. As their show finds success, Hallie and Hayden's friendship develops into something more. Depicting grief, trauma, and healing with a light touch ("Someone wanting to love me sounds like a conspiracy theory I am not ready to relent to yet," Hallie confesses), Love and Other Conspiracies pairs its charm with depth and humor as Hayden and Hallie discover the joy of being fully known and loved--not in spite of their oddities, but because of them. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer
Graphic Books
Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe
by Ken Krimstein
Consider the times and places that have changed the world, and it's unlikely that Prague in 1911 comes to mind. Still, Ken Krimstein (The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt) makes an effective argument for its critical importance with Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe, a graphic narrative that blends theoretical physics and experimental fiction, along with references to Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Einstein in Kafkaland is an appealing contribution to conversations about these two undeniably significant figures, with its unexpected wit and its clever narrator--a skeleton adorning Prague's famed astronomical clock. Krimstein rightsizes these giants in their respective fields, reminding readers of their humanity. Despite the unquestioned genius of his findings, Einstein in 1911 is "a financially strapped 32-year-old father of three who's had to drag his family" to Prague, where he's struggling to cement his scientific standing and wrestling with the problem of gravity. Kafka, for his part, is "still living at home with his parents, and unless you count a couple press releases, virtually unpublished."
Einstein in Kafkaland's overall design is highly satisfying, due to its detailed illustrations and use of visual humor. Krimstein's art style works particularly well here, as the limited color palette and sketch-like line work evoke a dream state reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. Deep familiarity with theory is not required, though it may increase readers' appreciation. Krimstein's back matter, which includes notes, suggestions for further reading, and a timeline, will sate most readers' curiosities and send them down their own rabbit holes of discovery. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian
Biography & Memoir
Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home
by Chris La Tray
Montana Poet Laureate and bookseller Chris La Tray's third book, the graceful and determined memoir Becoming Little Shell, interweaves his experiences with the history of Indigenous peoples to craft a love letter to family and natural landscapes.
As he grew up just outside Missoula in the 1970s, La Tray (Descended from a Travel-Worn Satchel) was dimly aware of his paternal Chippewa ancestry, but he knew that his father had always rejected Indigenous identity. A series of family funerals prompted the author to delve into his genealogy and the history of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His quest was also inspired by historian Nicholas Vrooman's book about the Little Shell; Vrooman's presentation at a 2013 book festival, La Tray writes, "altered the course of my life."
Moving between past and present, La Tray enmeshes his own wanderings--rock-star dreams in Seattle, Wash., reservation life in the late 1990s, working in Ohio--with those of the Métis people, the "entire mixed-race culture and ethnicity" of descendants of Indigenous people who intermarried with early European explorers and traders. Métis people created vibrant fashion, food, and musical traditions, but like many Indigenous peoples, they, too, were "buffeted by generations of trauma," including genocide, cultural suppression, deportation, and insultingly paltry government compensation.
La Tray writes beautifully about Montana's vistas and wildlife. For him, nature, as much as a sense of community and belonging, has restored his mental health. Nineteenth-century Chief Little Shell fiercely advocated for his people's rights; La Tray's enrollment in the Little Shell Tribe and the tribe's successful 2019 campaign for federal recognition honor that legacy. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck
Men Have Called Her Crazy
by Anna Marie Tendler
In her frank memoir, Men Have Called Her Crazy, artist Anna Marie Tendler discusses her lifelong struggle with self-harm as well as her "sort of photographic memory for the ways men have asserted their power over me." Centering on Tendler's voluntary hospitalization for psychiatric assessment in early 2021, the memoir alternates between her past and present, which involves treatment and recovery. Tendler expresses a tendency to lose focus on that present due to her worry over the future or her anger about the past, linking every perceived failure--including a meandering career, unsuccessful relationships, and messing up homemade macarons--to "some greater personal deficiency." In deft, self-reflective prose ("I remained silent and still, my cells entombing the implosion of panic"), Tendler writes candidly about patriarchy and misogyny, their social impacts, and her lived experiences and "overwhelming feeling that all men are some version of problematic."
There's a slight dissonance between Tendler's acknowledgement of her own privilege in the quality of care she can access (both for herself and her beloved French bulldog, Petunia) and her expressed distaste for men who are unaware of their own advantages. Nevertheless, it's balanced by her refusal to hold back as she recounts her journey toward being comfortable with physical and emotional solitude and tries to "reach a place where I can face hardship... without trying to destroy myself."
Tendler avoids the "person-becoming-whole-or-new" trappings of the memoir genre, focusing instead on how she reconstructs herself, perpetually bandaging her wounds for an imperfect but ongoing healing--the kind that acknowledges the residual marks as she moves forward. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer
Social Science
Gender Explained: A New Understanding of Identity in a Gender Creative World
by Diane Ehrensaft and Michelle Jurkiewicz
Psychologists Diane Ehrensaft (The Gender Creative Child) and Michelle Jurkiewicz team up for this excellent introduction to the concepts of gender creativity and gender-affirming care. Gender Explained dispels myths about younger generations' ease with gender creativity and about approaches taken by physical and mental health professionals in the field, providing a clear picture of the truth, along with anecdotes, exercises, and pointers to help readers understand and act on this information.
In the first part of the book, Ehrensaft and Jurkiewicz focus on "what" and "why." What does gender creativity mean? What is gender-affirming care? Why do so many children and teenagers seem to be exploring their gender identities, and why are so many adults anxious about it? After laying this strong foundation, the authors turn to the misinformation surrounding gender creativity, including the mistaken assertions that it is more prevalent in young people who are designated female at birth because of internalized misogyny, and that transgender and gender-creative youth pose impossible challenges in spaces such as classrooms, school sports, and pediatric medicine. The final chapter, "Gender Evolution to Revolution: What's Next?," eagerly looks ahead to a future when--as the authors do throughout--adults listen to the voices of children and teens to the benefit of all.
The authors acknowledge that adults, whether they have children or not, might open Gender Explained with a sense of wariness. But readers will close it with a sense of excitement about the possibilities that gender creativity opens to everyone. --Dainy Bernstein, freelance reviewer
Loving Corrections
by adrienne maree brown
In Loving Corrections, the 12th installment in the Emergent Strategy series, adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy, Holding Change) explores how correcting--and being corrected--relates to social change and justice movements. Her series of reflective and compassionate essays consider "what it looks like to be steady in our offerings of love to each other, even as we learn together and learn from each other."
Loving Corrections is broken into three distinct but interrelated sections. The essays in "Ruminations" center on righting past and present wrongs (patriarchy, racism, ableism, family wounds, to name a few). In "Murmurations," brown offers a selection of essays originally written for her YES! column of the same name, shifting attention from the systemic inequities to the more personal and individual concept of accountability, and how an expanded understanding of it better serves humanity as a whole. The final section, "Solstice and Equinox Spells," weaves brown's reflections into the rhythms of the natural world.
Loving Corrections is placed in a modern context, one drenched in social media and call-out culture, yet deeply rooted in historic and systemic power struggles. Inviting a reframe toward self-reflection and mutual accountability, brown encourages readers to recognize that the personal and interpersonal are inherently political. brown shares her wisdom and curiosity on the page to invite, challenge, and encourage new ways of thinking and being. In an era steeped in division and hateful rhetoric, it's hard to imagine a more important or necessary reminder that learning and accountability are best wielded not as tools of punishment and power but as keys to remembering our shared humanity on an endangered planet. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer
Science
Devil in the Stack: Searching for the Soul of the New Machine
by Andrew Smith
If you are a typical person interacting with most technology, your only concern is that it "just works," as Steve Jobs liked to say of Apple products. But that simple metric wasn't enough to satisfy journalist Andrew Smith. The product of his curiosity is Devil in the Stack, a fascinating journey into the world of computer code, its history, the people who create it, some of its current controversies, and its implications for the future of society.
Smith's four-year odyssey in what he calls the microcosmos is so engrossing, in part, because he's not content to be a bystander in the coding process. Instead, with refreshing self-deprecation, he describes his halting steps toward acquiring proficiency in the art, a task that finds him settling on the language known as Python, whose creator, Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum, is one of a roster of key programming figures he interviews. Smith illuminates the beauty of open-source software's collaborative aspects and the frequent challenges to realizing them. He calls out the "staggering homogeneity within the profession," reflected in the fact that a mere 7% of coders are women, while less than 3% are Black, and describes the real-world consequences of this lack of diversity.
In taking readers on an intellectually stimulating guided tour of the sometimes exotic world of programming, Smith (Totally Wired) hopes to "open a broad discussion of what we want code to do for us and what we don't." Anyone who's curious about the why and how of what makes computers do what they do will find Devil in the Stack a fertile introduction. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Poetry
Cloud Missives
by Kenzie Allen
Award-winning Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist Kenzie Allen gives readers an incredible collection of work in Cloud Missives. With these poems, distributed in five sections, Allen questions what it means to structure an identity in the wake of colonialism's cruelty, while also grappling with finding new ways to heal in a bent and broken world.
The book's title is pulled from the opening poem, "Light Pollution," and in 12 lines sets the tone for the rest of the book with its stark imagery and evocative emotional plea: "We tried to obey, though muffled by order,/ though every scenic outlook was already gone./ We tipped our throats to night showers/ and tried to lick back the stars the city had obliterated,/ to resurrect anything at all by taste,/ their glittering signs and warnings."
Allen directly addresses the history and legacies that have helped to obliterate Indigenous identities as happens in the poem "A Date with the Ghost of the British Empire." The section "Manifest" interrogates and remakes stereotypes driven into popular culture, evoking figures such as Pocahontas, Tiger Lily, and Indiana Jones, while the "Love Songs" section considers love--romantic love, but also familial and platonic love, and what it might mean to find healing in and from a place of love.
Allen's probing keenness is further attested to in the endnotes, which address the many references, real and imagined, and crystallize the context for each closely observed poem. Whether savored silently to one's self or recited aloud, shared, and allowed to breathe in the air, these poems will stay with readers long after they have turned the last page. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer
What Can the Matter Be?
by Keith Taylor
In his perceptive collection What Can the Matter Be?, published as part of Wayne State University Press's Made in Michigan Writers series, Canadian-born poet Keith Taylor observes environmental decline and ponders how humans can live harmoniously with other species.
The title refers to the upheaval of the Covid-19 lockdown, but a section called "The Extinction Report" establishes that Taylor views the pandemic as but one symptom of climate crisis. Taylor (All the Time You Want) frets over changes in snowfalls and great horned owls that fail to return to a local nesting spot, and laments "a summer/ without monarchs." Still, unruly nature infiltrates domestic spaces, as when a bat flies around loose indoors or when Taylor impishly allows wildness to overtake his yard, indifferent to his neighbors' disapproval: "They probably won't expect the vines/ we'll plant or the elves and fairies// of rot we'll encourage, spreading/ slowly into their back corner."
In the prose poem "The Sickness That Comes from the Longing for Home" (named for the Greek etymology of the word "nostalgia"), Taylor remembers hitchhiking through Europe a half-century ago. Elsewhere, he also recalls disagreeing about religion and science with his pious father. "Let Them Be Left" relates wildlife sightings during an artist's residency at Isle Royale National Park, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. "On Beauty, Jackboots, and the Rain" contends that appreciating the natural world equates to an act of resistance to political oppression, while "Five Days After the Extinction Report" affirms that, even in the face of widespread catastrophe, rescuing individual animals is heroic.
Taylor's alliterative, allusive verse is scientifically engaged and frank yet tender in its depiction of the state of nature. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck
Children's & Young Adult
Adela's Mariachi Band
by Denise Vega, illus. by Erika Rodriguez Medina
A child yearns to join her family's mariachi band in the colorful, jubilant picture book Adela's Mariachi Band by Denise Vega (If Your Monster Won't Go to Bed) and illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina (And J.J. Slept).
Adela, a broad-faced girl with winsome dark eyes, brown skin, and a middle-parted ponytail, "loves everything about her family's mariachi band--except the fact that she isn't in it." Papá's trompeta only makes a "small, fizzly" sound when Adela plays it. Her tío's vihuela only squeaks for her. Her graceful mamá and sisters can make their folklórico skirts "flow like rainbows," but Adela's dance ends in a face-plant: "SPLAT!" Each failure is announced by Adela with a tiny, plaintive "oy," "iiieee," or "ahh," copies of her tía Evelyn's massive, soulful gritos ("shouts"). Adela realizes as she sits mournfully amid crayon-scribble recollections of her attempts that every skill in the band will take a long time to perfect. Her exclusion seems certain until Adela realizes she can do one thing, after all. At the end of the next show, Evelyn stands back, Papá places his hat on Adela's head, and she joyously shouts los gritos.
Culture and tradition take center stage as Adela struggles to find her niche, always surrounded and supported by the warm circle of her family. Vega's punchy voice and Medina's lively digital illustrations combine for an affirming reminder that age and size needn't be a barrier to following a passion. Backmatter includes an author's note on Vega's family history of mariachi music and a shortlist of web resources for the intrigued reader. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library
What Can a Mess Make?
by Bee Johnson
Just as life's lemons can be turned into lemonade, god-awful messes can make masterpieces. So demonstrates What Can a Mess Make?, Bee Johnson's expertly executed debut picture book in rhyme, in which two kids who appear to be sisters spend an entire day generating marvelous outcomes that more than justify the domestic havoc they wreak along the way.
Young readers probably already know that a topsy-turvy kitchen can lead to a superb meal, like the breakfast put together by these siblings. But what can someone make with "rubber bands/ and cardboard box.// Coffee tin and shiny rocks.// Funnel, hose,/ and tape in hand"? Answer: "A mess can make/ a marching band." On it harmoniously goes, each of several sets of perfectly metered rhymes concluding with the "A mess can make..." refrain, until an argument over an alluring dress-up item earns the kids a time-out administered by a largely off-screen parent. (For adult readers, the relaxed but not lax parenting on display will receive plaudits. After the kids maim a pillow during a pillow fight, they're depicted sweeping up the feathers.) The siblings make peace, and the purposeful untidiness resumes until the inevitable happens: "A mess can make/ a good night's sleep."
For young readers, the guessing-game aspect of this ode to creativity will hold special appeal: What will each fresh episode of disorder produce? All readers of What Can a Mess Make? should appreciate the spirited clean-lined art, for which Johnson softens the book's visual lawlessness with a law-abiding autumnal palette. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author
Read at Your Own Risk
by Remy Lai
Author/illustrator Remy Lai continues her playfully spooky streak (after Ghost Book) with another comically chilling, middle-grade illustrated novel, Read at Your Own Risk. "Once upon a time," Hannah introduces her ominous notebook, "I skipped assembly, snuck into the attic, awakened an evil, and now I'm h\a/unted." It was peer pressure (Mabel's, then Brian's, then Lisa's) that pushes Hannah upstairs for a game of Spirit of the Coin that goes terribly wrong. Day one ends with horrific nightmares and Hannah awakes on day two with an impossibly "blue, black, purple" ankle. Hannah has never been one to keep a diary, but she's also "never been about to be made to Rest In Pieces." Thus, she chronicles the next eight days of bloody accidents, brain worms, nosebleeds, avulsing teeth, and worse. The evil draws so near, it appears on the page: "I'm going to be TORTURED until I break the curse," Hannah writes. "Or until you meet your untimely end. Whichever comes first," scratchy red writing answers. Can she escape?
Lai cleverly and convincingly presents this account in a lined spiral-bound diary and fills the pages with eerily elongated black-and-white graphics, reminiscent of Tadahiro Uesugi's animated Coraline adaptation. The only added color is bloody red, strewn across pages in drips, drops, and in the threatening missives. Beyond the horror, Lai brilliantly interweaves romance, literary theory, and even can't-argue-with-that philosophy: "without the villain, there would be no OBSTACLES, no OPPORTUNITIES for the hero to become a hero." She delivers scarily good entertainment. --Terry Hong
Pearl
by Sherri L. Smith, illus. by Christine Norrie
Sherri L. Smith (American Wings) movingly imagines the complex life of a teen caught between two warring countries in the piercing historical graphic novel Pearl. Illustrator Christine Norrie (Rise) meticulously documents the girl's harrowing separation in pages awash in hues of blues, emphasizing the somber experiences ahead.
In 1941, 13-year-old Amy sails to Japan--where she's never been--to visit her "sick, maybe even dying" sōsobo (great-grandmother). She goes alone from Hawaii to Hiroshima, because her parents can't travel with new baby Henry. Amy meets her "new family... across the sea," spending her first three months on her uncle's farm outside Hiroshima. "But time changes all things" and Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. As war commences, Amy is conscripted as "a monitor girl," translating American radio broadcasts for the Japanese military. Meanwhile, her parents and baby brother are unjustly imprisoned by the U.S. government for being of Japanese descent; Henry dies and Amy won't return home for 11 years.
Smith's dedication cites the "research and stories" of friend Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, a Japanese American writer whose titles center the Japanese American experience. Smith excels in capturing Amy's liminal state, caught between conflicting Japanese and American identities. Norrie, who is of Thai and Scottish descent, wordlessly expands Smith's narrative with her insightful illustrations: most affecting perhaps is Norrie's 20 brutally realistic, near-textless pages documenting atomic destruction and its aftermath. Smith and Norrie's collaborative graphic title eloquently humanizes history with names, faces, and families, to create an intimate testimony of formidable challenges and resolute courage. --Terry Hong
Keeper of the Rend
by Lisa Maxwell
Keeper of the Rend by Lisa Maxwell (The Last Magician series) is a marvelously heartfelt ode to nature and self-love that follows a budding ornithologist and his tenacious friend as they protect the world from malicious invaders.
When 10-year-old Xavier T. Fletcher's father loses his job, the boy's family is forced to leave the suburbs and move to his Nana Susan's farm. The valley she lives in is one Xavier has always considered magical, where the land is "unbearably alive" and Xavier dares to explore. While out birdwatching, Xavier discovers the Rend--a rip in the air itself--and stops an intrepid girl named Clem from killing a bird that flies through it. Though the bird survives, Clem warns him that the birds "carry bits of the Nother's world into our world" where the "Crumbs" grow like seeds and banish light and warmth. Xavier, who already accidentally let a Crumb loose in the world, will now need to work with Clem to find the missing Crumb before it takes root.
Maxwell's poignant middle-grade debut reads like an endearing oral history with an enchanting third-person narrator who at times speaks directly to readers. The robust woodsy setting is as wondrous as it is uncanny, and Maxwell includes a great amount of humor through wry excerpts from Xavier's field guide, Notes for the National Society of Natural Things by Milton von Wimple II. The author tactfully depicts frayed family ties while still warming the heart through Xavier's enigmatic friendship with the "prickly-but-lovable" Clem. A charming celebration of naturalism and self-confidence. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer
Summer Getaways
The Writer's Life
Diane Ehrensaft and Michelle Jurkiewicz: Reducing Anxiety, Increasing Curiosity
Diane Ehrensaft is a developmental and clinical psychologist, and author of The Gender Creative Child and Gender Born, Gender Made. At the University of California, San Francisco, she is the cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center and an associate professor of pediatrics. She has been featured in the Los Angeles Times online and Wired online and has appeared on Anderson Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and TheToday Show.
Michelle Jurkiewicz is a clinical psychologist and gender specialist in Berkeley, Calif., providing therapeutic services to children, youth, and families since 2003. Jurkiewicz was an early pioneer in working with transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive youth. In addition to providing psychotherapy for people of all ages, she trains newer clinicians in using the gender affirmative model.
Ehrensaft and Jurkiewicz teamed up for Gender Explained: A New Understanding of Identity in a Gender Creative World (The Experiment; reviewed in this issue), an introduction to the concepts of gender creativity and gender-affirming care.
How did you approach co-writing this book, especially as authors from two different generations?
Michelle Jurkiewicz: We each took the lead on five chapters, and we had input into the other chapters too. We've had different experiences with gender and watching the gender affirmative model develop and grow, though Diane brings in more about her generation.
Diane Ehrensaft: Our childhoods were very different. I was born in 1946, when girls had to wear skirts to school in Chicago, no matter what the weather. And Michelle didn't have to deal with that. But more than differences, we have beautifully discovered similarities. We've worked together for a long time, so the perspective was not a surprise. We both identify as cisgender women, but for both of us, there's no way we take shit from anybody around sexism and women not having a voice.
Jurkiewicz: It was clear that even though we were born in different generations, we both see the progression throughout the last 100 years or so as contributing to where we are today.
Diane Ehrensaft |
The intended audience for this book is adults, but you seem aware that gender-diverse kids and teens might read it, too. How did you think about those two audiences?
Ehrensaft: An eight-year-old once came into my office holding my previous book, The Gender Creative Child, saying, "I'm reading it with my mommies!" So I always assume that kids might have their parents share this sort of book with them, or they might pick it up on their own.
Jurkiewicz: We're speaking about children's and teens' experiences and trying to include their voices as much as possible. They were always at the forefront of our minds, which is a big part of it.
Even though you are cisgender women, did you experience your own gender exploration?
Ehrensaft: Definitely! I was a late bloomer and geeky teenager who loved math and did ballet. I was completely confused about my gender. I never thought, "I must be a boy." I believed in God at the time, and I came up with the theory that God forgot to give me a uterus, so I was an in-between person.
Then in 2022, a close friend / colleague and I were exploring our gender histories. We asked: "If we were in high school now, would we identify as non-binary?" I've also done the experiment of "If I woke up tomorrow with a penis or with people calling me 'Mr.', how would I feel?" I liked pretending I was a little brother instead of sister when I was a kid. But how would I feel as an adult? It's helped me to do that exercise, and I ask parents to do it, too.
Michelle Jurkiewicz (photo: Ben Krantz) |
Jurkiewicz: I grew up in a stereotypically gendered family and region. I was very girly, and I didn't question that until I took my first women's studies class in college. It opened up this whole new way of seeing the world. It also made me start to question how I presented my own gender. At that point, identifying as a woman was important to me, but what it meant to be a woman and how to express being a woman--I was grappling and experimenting with all of that. Then, because of my interest in gender as well as my gender-diverse friends and colleagues, I got more and more excited and professionally involved.
I've also wondered about how I would discover or express my gender differently today than when I was growing up. Working with my clients, I hear about their experiences daily. I try to imagine myself in their shoes, what it's like walking around as a transgender or gender-diverse young person.
Can you say more about this idea of exploration and learning about gender as an ongoing process?
Jurkiewicz: Even if your gender identity doesn't shift, how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you is affected by gender. And that's always shifting. The way I experienced being a woman in my 20s is very different than in my 40s. And in the work I do with children, I watch their genders unfold and grow and develop. That's a delicate balance we're always holding: affirming a child's gender while also making sure there's space for them to explore if they want or need to.
Ehrensaft: The term "gender exploration" is sometimes read as "press pause and explore, because a child or teen couldn't possibly know now." That's not what we mean. We honor knowability, that a child or teenager can know their gender. They don't have to be asked to explore for five years to prove anything. What we do is a deep dive with the youth and their family to get the young person's gender in focus and develop a plan for them. And absolutely, it can change over time. It has to do with gender evolution for all of us.
You introduce terms like "gender web" and "Rapid Onset Parental Discovery." What do you think is the value of coining new terms?
Ehrensaft: They help us think about things in new gender-creative ways. I loved the notion of gender spectrum because it got away from gender boxes. But it was linear between two points: boy-girl, male-female. We needed something that doesn't keep those, so I made up the web. Others coined similar terms with the same intent. Rapid Onset Parental Discovery was different. I purposely meant it as a counterpoint to the erroneous idea of Rapid Onset Gender Discovery, to be provocative, because that's where the real issue is.
Jurkiewicz: Terms like gender web resonate with families because you can get a feel for it before reading the definition. A lot of adults feel like they don't understand what's going on. Offering more accessible terms invites people in rather than making them feel like outsiders.
Ehrensaft: I also coined "social gender dysphoria." It's not the children experiencing the primary dysphoria. It's the culture, which is then internalized by the children or parents. If we could dispel adults' confusion and treat social gender dysphoria, the kids will have a better go of it.
Jurkiewicz: Yes, there's so much talk about these young people having psychological problems as though they originate inside of them. That is not what we see.
What do you want readers to take away from this book, especially in regard to community responsibility?
Jurkiewicz: Gender diversity is a normal human variation, and the kids are doing something exciting by opening this space up. It's good for all of us because traditional gender roles and stereotypes really limit everybody. And the distress around youths' gender identity isn't because of their gender but how society responds to them. The adults--all of us--are responsible for their distress, which means we can shift that.
Ehrensaft: We hope to reduce anxiety and increase curiosity. We talk about being reflective rather than reactive about your own gender or your children's gender, and what you can do to help the country and the world. Because it isn't about a small group of children. It's about a whole society.
Right now in the United States, gender is weaponized as a political ax with great harm. It's an easy target, given certain values. But these children are ascending. The notion of gender not in two boxes isn't going away. Although the White House's stance about transgender care is still unclear and they haven't taken back their statement about surgeries, the Biden administration put out a statement--based on protests and pushback from major organizations--that they support gender care for minors. So I'm optimistic.
We hope we can move people toward working together, recognizing that we're in a transitional state that makes us all anxious. But there's new bedrock, and it's going to be okay. --Dainy Bernstein, freelance reviewer
Book Candy
Book Candy
"The alphabet explained: the origin of every letter," courtesy of Open Culture.
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Headline of the Day: " 'We all read like hell!' How Ireland became the world's literary powerhouse." (via the Guardian)
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"America's first board game was an idealized 'Travellers' Tour' through a young nation," Atlas Obscura noted.
This Ravenous Fate
by Hayley Dennings
In Hayley Dennings's visceral, haunting debut, This Ravenous Fate, two best friends-turned-enemies--one of them a vampire--must work together to investigate a spree of murders in 1926 Harlem. This queer Black YA fantasy simmers with tension and darkness as it explores grief, trauma, betrayal, and desire rooted in the Black experience during the Jazz Age.
North American colonists unethically experimented on Black and brown people in the 1600s. These victims of the "curiosity of the New World" were "prodded, drugged, bled, and tortured" to the point where some of them became vampires, or "reapers." Though the humans thought they had killed all the reapers, one--Valeriya--evaded their guns and bonfires. She created more reapers over the centuries, forming her own clan in New York City's Harlem, where she still rules during the Roaring '20s. This burgeoning reaper population has led to humans needing to protect mortal life. Tobias Saint, a steelmaker, began manufacturing and distributing bullets made from a special alloy that permanently eradicates reapers. He then expanded his business to include reaper-hunting services, forming the Saint empire.
Tobias's daughter, Elise, was sent to Paris after being attacked by reapers multiple times, including an assault by her childhood best friend and newly turned reaper, Layla Quinn. Five years later, Elise, now 18, returns to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of her family's company. Elise expects her father to name her heir to the business but is shocked when he hands the reins to her younger sister, Josi, whose noninteraction with reapers makes her less likely to be a target of the monsters.
Layla was greatly influenced by the Saints growing up, so she feared reapers and cursed them with the "same fury a Christian might condemn the devil." But her parents wanted to work with the reapers. Five years ago, they secretly planned to meet with Valeriya to help form a peace agreement. Elise, fearing for their lives, told her father about their plans, thinking he would convince them not to go. Instead, feeling threatened by the Quinns, he spread lies about their intentions, incensing the reapers. They attacked and killed Layla's parents and then turned Layla. Now, as a member of Valeriya's clan, she blames Elise's family for her "ruination"--every good part of her life has been stolen by her reaperhood and she is eager to exact revenge.
Elise and Layla are forced to come together, though, when two Saint associates and a 15-year-old boy are murdered, and Layla is the prime suspect. Elise convinces her father to install her as heir and let her take the lead on the investigation, sure she can get Layla to admit to wrongdoing. Layla agrees to work with Elise to prove her innocence, but also to show that something more sinister might be happening. The boy found dead alongside the associates had been a newly turned reaper Layla met just days earlier. Now, in death, he is human again. Could it be the result of a reaper bite antidote that one of the associates was working on? Or is something more dangerous lurking among them? Elise and Layla's investigation takes them all over town, including a cold and desolate morgue and a festive gala. The young women desperately try to uncover the evil spreading throughout the city, all while grappling with their deep attraction to one another.
Debut novelist Hayley Dennings deftly braids together vampire lore, anti-Black racism, and female rage in This Ravenous Fate, an immersive, atmospheric first book in a duology. The foundation of Dennings's story is its solid exploration of racism. She roots the dawn of reaperdom in slavery and uses reapers as physical representations of anti-Blackness and the spreading poison of racism. This fictional account of the Black experience is paired with smart commentary on the realities of being a Black person in the 1920s in the U.S., with discussions about the exploitation of Black entertainers, the minimalization of Black victims, and the lack of humanity afforded to Black people. This melding of fantasy and reality comes together to form a riveting, plausible world.
Through such worldbuilding, Dennings also creates an ominous and enveloping atmosphere with gruesome yet alluring imagery. Setting this story during the Harlem Renaissance is a smart choice, not only for the rich history the time period presents but also for the lavishness and chaos of the era, whether it be socialites gossiping behind feathered fans or politicians conferring with gangsters. Dennings skillfully contrasts this colorful spectacle of "twisted pearls" and "spilling cash" with macabre scenes filled with graphic depictions of violence: "Nails tore through fabric and flesh, separating ribs until they cracked beneath the force." The dichotomy of visuals is enthralling.
Dennings's characters are dynamic and complex. Elise experiences anxiety, guilt, and OCD stemming from familial pressures and past traumatic events. She witnessed violence and malice at a young age, and she is inherently vulnerable because she's Black in a "country where strength was expected of her, and anger made her a target." It's no wonder she finds "security in her numbers and rituals." Dennings masterfully treats Elise's emotional state with care and thoughtfulness, eliciting sympathy for and understanding of her panic attacks and compulsive episodes. Layla, a creature that doesn't inherently warrant tenderness or affection, maintains enough humanity to be an enticing character. Dennings infuses her with an understandable and relatable longing for love as well as a deeply rooted terror and aversion to being "damned."
Layla and Elise's shared experiences unequivocally draw them together, regardless of their mixed feelings about their connection. Whether it's the "thorny thrill" of Layla's words stirring in Elise or the buzz of Layla's skin from Elise's "essence of fatal attraction," Dennings creates a palpable tension between them that is bewitching and compelling.
This Ravenous Fate is a captivating, blood-soaked story centered on the Black experience in the early 20th century that glimmers with thrills and opulence. --Lana Barnes
Uncovering the Erased
An Interview With Hayley Dennings
Hayley Dennings |
Hayley Dennings's love of words and championing queer Black voices led her to study English and French at Loyola Marymount University with a focus on diversity and inclusion. She currently resides in the Bay Area. This Ravenous Fate (Sourcebooks Fire, August 6, 2024) is her first novel. Here, Dennings (@hayleyybaileyy) talks about miserable immortals, leaning into the darkness, and the necessity of the arts in shaping our culture.
What sparked the idea for this story? Why did you choose 1920s Harlem as its setting?
Funnily enough, I was having a conversation with my friend when the idea for reapers sparked in my mind. We were discussing what it would be like to be immortal and be totally miserable. That led me to wonder about immortal creatures that deteriorated as they aged, which made for a story that was impossible to romanticize. I think vampires came to me naturally from there, as well as the duality of having a human interacting with someone who was recently turned and still yearning for their humanity. I thought that contrast would be fascinating to explore, especially in an emotionally charged dynamic such as best friends turned enemies.
For the tiniest moment, I had This Ravenous Fate set in 1920s San Francisco. The time period was always the same because I had just read some books in my Black Women Writers class that took place in the 1920s and I found that era to be extremely interesting. I kept asking myself, "It's the Roaring '20s and a time of fun and partying, but was it really fun for everyone?" I knew there was so much Black history that had been erased to make the U.S. seem more palatable. I wondered what it would have been like if people literally could not ignore the consequences of anti-Black racism. That brought me to ask, "What if you could see anti-Blackness spreading like a poison?" It tied perfectly into my idea of reaperhood and mirrored the unethical experimentation that has occurred in history--also heavily erased. I wanted to uncover everything. Researching the Harlem Renaissance felt like connecting with a part of my own history and it was so fun to thread real life with the fantasy I'd created. Everything fell into place after that.
What makes your vampire story different from those that came before it?
I love this question because I was so afraid people would hate that I call the vampires "reapers" and that they can go in the sun. So, getting to explain my reasoning for changing things is fun. The main thing that's different is their lore. It's based on Black history--the atrocities that much of the U.S. has tried to ignore and brush under the rug. My vampire story is centered on Black people and their experiences. We've been left out of these types of stories for so long. I love the classic vampire traits like craving blood and being damned by their immortality, so I really built my own tragic creature around that, while leaving out the less convenient aspects, like not being able to go in the sun (that would have made the story much more difficult because Layla and Elise do most of their investigating during the day).
There are some pretty gruesome scenes in this story--"Blood covered the walls in chaotic sprays, half-eaten organs scattered around the floor." Talk us through how you came up with these descriptions.
I wanted to lean into the darkness because so much of the book is about these reapers feeling doomed by these violent impulses. Also, due to me being a horror fan, leaning into the darkness felt natural. I've seen some nasty things in horror movies, so those helped me come up with the gruesome descriptions. I also have no gauge when it comes to graphicness. A lot of people tell me this book is really dark and bloody, but it feels average to me because I'm so used to stuff like this in the movies I watch. Though I normally don't prefer gore--I prefer more psychological horror--the bloodlust and blood are a large part of the vampire genre, so it only felt right emphasizing those aspects.
Why did you choose to call your vampires "reapers"?
I knew I didn't want to call reapers "vampires" because there are so many preconceived ideas about vampires. I wanted people to go into the story with a fresh mind. Reapers are also meant to be physical manifestations of death, so the name felt fitting as it related to the Grim Reaper.
Is there a character you relate to the most? If so, why?
Elise, my poor girl--I dumped all my problems onto her. She was so difficult for me to write because of how similar she is to me. It's a little embarrassing--I did not mean to do that. But she's so anxious and focused on perfection. She deals with OCD and depression and beats herself up over every little thing--she's SO ME.
Layla was a ballet dancer when she was human and Elise is a piano prodigy. Are the arts part of your life? Is there a particular art you gravitate toward (other than writing!)?
The arts shaped a lot of my childhood. I played clarinet, I was in choir, I danced all throughout high school. I still really love dance, though I don't practice any of the styles I used to. Even though I never got super serious about any of it to consider them in a professional capacity, the arts have always been important to me. I understand the necessity of them in shaping our culture and our lives and connecting with others. Researching the Harlem Renaissance only further confirmed that for me.
You've chosen words from Langston Hughes and Phillis Wheatley to use as epigraphs for your novel. In what kind of story would you like your words to be used as an epigraph?
A queer Black book! Or a Black book, or a queer book. I have never imagined my words outside the context of their Blackness and queerness, but it would be an honor for them to be used as an epigraph in any story, truly. --Lana Barnes
Rediscover
Rediscover: The Power Broker
On the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, this fall the New-York Historical Society will host an exhibition dedicated to the making of The Power Broker, Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses that is in part a history of New York City in the mid-20th century. Drawing on Caro's manuscripts, outlines, and notes to himself in the Society's Robert A. Caro Archive, the exhibit will run from this coming September 6 to February 2, 2025.
The exhibition also includes articles, photographs, and other archival documents that together depict how Caro, a young reporter at Newsday, produced a detailed depiction of Moses's power and influence despite many roadblocks to finding out how Moses operated. The installation demonstrates how years of tenacious and meticulous reporting ultimately paid off. Documents on view illuminate Caro's working process, including how he combed through files and interviewed those in Moses's orbit to reveal the full story behind the creation of Jones Beach on Long Island, the many highways he built that brutally destroyed vibrant neighborhoods, and his other projects and plans over 40 years. Additional selections show interview notes with Moses himself.
The Society will host An Evening with Robert Caro on Monday, October 7. In collaboration with a special episode of the 99% Invisible podcast's mini-series celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker, Caro joins the podcast's hosts, Roman Mars and Elliot Kalan, on stage at the New-York Historical Society's Robert H. Smith Auditorium.
Robert Moses (1888-1981) was one of the most powerful men in 20th-century New York. He was a "master builder" of the Metropolitan Area, spearheading billions of dollars in major infrastructure projects that transformed transportation in and around the city. At the height of his power, Moses simultaneously held 12 titles, including NYC Parks Commissioner--none of which were elected positions. He wielded enormous influence over city and state elected officials, and could bypass legislative bodies for funding by issuing bonds or using the millions of dollars generated through his public authority tolls. Moses's many successful projects came at the cost of mass displacements of people and the destruction of whole neighborhoods. Public backlash, political pressure, and activists like Jane Jacobs eventually undermined Moses's power. The Power Broker is available from Vintage.
A LOVE LETTER TO HUMAN CURIOSITY |