Oprah’s 103rd Book Club Pick and Indigenous Books

I’m in my comfort food era. Can y’all tell? I think the algorithm knows because it’s basically all that I’m getting recommended food-wise on my socials. But listen, I’m not complaining!

For this particular recipe, you’ll need:

Self-rising flour, baking powder, baking soda, light brown sugar, milk, vinegar, yogurt, vegetable oil, and cinnamon for the sponge cake.

For the filling: Granny Smith apples, sugar, cinnamon, cornflour, water, and brown sugar.

Finally, the glaze gets: powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract.

For a full list of measurements and instructions (plus a video), visit Rosie’s page.

Council of Dolls, by PEN Award-winning Power, follows three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women and the dolls that have guided their lives. Cora, born in 1888 during the “Indian Wars,” gets sent to a school by white men to have her identity stripped from her. The teachers burn her beaded buckskin doll Winona, but the doll’s spirit may live on. In 1925, Lillian is born, and she too will suffer through a residential school but resists the abuse of the nuns there. Her doll, Mae, defends her and her sister, Blanche, when they need it most. Finally, there’s Sissy, a child of the ’60s, whose doll Ethel may actually save her life.

The unsettling stories in this collection begin with the belief that many Indigenous people share — that whistling at night can not only summon evil spirits but invite them to follow you home. The stories of these evil spirits, ghosts, curses, hauntings, and more are told by an amazing cadre of both well-known and emerging Indigenous authors, from Rebecca Roanhorse to Cherie Dimaline to Richard Van Camp, and more. Monstrous manifestations from Indigenous mythology intermix with social horrors like the effects of colonialism to paint a viscerally terrifying picture.

These classic remixes have been amazing so far. Before this retelling, there was My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore, and others. Here, Dimaline writes a queer and Métis take on The Secret Garden. Mary Lennox is orphaned at 15 and sent to live with an estranged uncle in the Georgian Bay. Where she expects to find a cold, aloof household, she instead finds one with welcoming people, many of whom are Indigenous. She also finds her cousin, Olive, who has been kept away in an attic for years because of her “condition.” Once the two girls become besties, Mary will go up against Olive’s ill-tempered stepmother as she tries to free her cousin from something that seems sinister. She realizes that to do so, she may need to explore the locked away and overgrown garden that she found.

If the phrase “battle of the brujas” resonates with you, this is one for your TBR. When Damien’s brother Kai vanished, swallowed by the river, Damien was swallowed by grief. He literally tries to run from his despair by traveling as far away from his small town as he can until he reaches a village totally new to him. But the day he arrives, another’s sibling was being laid to rest, and Damien’s status as an outsider leaves him ignored by all except the mother of the dead girl, Ana Maria. Now, Ana Maria has her own darkness hovering over her — there are those who suspect that she was involved somehow with her daughter’s death — and soon, the tension between her remaining daughters and her will result in that battle of the brujas I mentioned earlier.

This big, beautiful book is one of the ones I saw on display in the children’s section. It’s so eye-catching. It’s a middle grade collection of poems and illustrations that introduces readers to Indigenous leaders through the ages. We learn about everyone from Peacemaker, who lived in 1000 A.D., to current-day Maria Tallchief and Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller.