Author: Erica Ezeifedi

I’ve never heard of an Earl Grey pie, but it honestly makes so much sense. I love tea-flavored things, and am itching to try this. If you do, let me know how it is!

In addition to typical pie ingredients, you’ll need:

Pastry Cream

Earl Grey standard tea bags

Whole milk

Vanilla paste

Chocolate Ganache

Susan Burton’s life was turned upside down when her 5-year-old son was killed by a car in South L.A. Without access to professional mental health care, Burton turned to self-medicating with drugs. Because her struggles with addiction took place during the War on Drugs, she eventually landed in prison, and was in and out for the next 15 years. In all that time, she was never offered any kind of rehabilitation or help with her illness. She sought out a rehab facility on her own, underwent recovery, and set out to help women with similar challenges. In this memoir, she speaks about her experiences with addiction — including the systemic issues that lead to more incarceration rather than education and true recovery — and her organization A New Way of Life. This book, and Burton, have been recognized as vital to prison reform and social justice overall.

“Let’s deflate something monstrous, / and take its air inside us.”

From Ghana to Tuskegee, this debut poetry collection by award-winning Xan Phillips follows the Black body as it is subjugated to the horrors of enslavement and other atrocities across different settings and time periods. But through it all, they also illuminate the ways that joy is reclaimed in intimate and queer spaces.

Beautiful cover aside, I’ve seen this described as a fantasy novel that is perfect for frequent and infrequent fantasy readers alike, as its magic and world building feels a little easier to get into. Here, Kiah, who is essentially adopted by the queen of Alfajiri, sets out on a journey to discover more of her past. Accompanying her are her two close friends, and as the three journey on and learn about Kiah and the true nature of things, the structure of Alfajiri is threatened. Now the people of their country must choose between following the heir, or contending with an empty throne.

It’s the mid 1900s in the south, and 16-year-old Nell is married off and whisked away to Boston. Though she likes the idea of being independent, shy Nell lives in a time when the weight of the world rests on women’s shoulders, and opportunities are few. Once she has three children, her body feels the consequences, and her emotionally abusive husband Henry withdraws from her. She seeks comfort in another man, Charles, who she meets at church, and who she becomes pregnant by. Child Bride follows Nell as she does the best she can in a harsh and segregated world.

I’ve been feeling more domestic lately (I made bread from scratch the other day!), so I may just get a mortar and pestle to make this fresh pesto. I also may not, because…time, but I bet this would still be delicious with store bought pesto. Between the burrata and roasted garlic, I know this will have me acting up.

All you need is burrata, pesto (or pesto ingredients, if you’re fancy), lots of fresh garlic, a little fresh parmesan, bread, olive oil, salt, cherry tomatoes, and lemon (I think).

There’s a Goodreads review that kind of sums up the book and gave me a ki:

“i too am 1 octopus best friend away from a full mental breakdown.”

If that sounds odd, I will say that it is basically what this book is about. Ro is newly in her 30s and mentally stuck. She’s estranged from her mother, her boyfriend just left on a mission to Mars, and the only thing left of her father is Dolores, the giant octopus he brought back from an expedition before he died. As her best friend starts becoming distant because of wedding planning, Ro starts drowning herself in sharktinis (Mountain Dew plus gin and a lil jalapeño), and seeking companionship in Dolores whenever she’s at her dead-end mall aquarium job. But Dolores gets sold to a wealthy investor, and is set to live a new life in a private aquarium, and now suddenly Ro is confronting childhood traumas and trying to regain some connection to the rest of herself and the people around her.

This one takes place in New York and follows Bobby Singh, an immigrant and single parent who is trying his best to achieve the American Dream. When his introverted daughter Angie finds one of her wealthy classmates stabbed in a football field, police think Chiara Thompkins, a Black runaway, is responsible. But we already know things aren’t always quite what they seem, and what gets revealed about the community, families, and even Angie’s own part in things is shocking.

Native Hawaiian poet Brandy Nālani McDougall’s latest collection will be out this June. In it, her words flow from mountains to sea, from mother to child, using Ōlelo Hawai‘i and English in a way that feels effortless. She shows the fight for her native land, which is strongly tied to her fight for native bodies, as both are at risk for destruction as a result of American imperialism. She speaks out against the environmental crisis caused by tourism as she does the harmful medical system that disregards Native Hawaiian treatments in favor of apathetic care.

Gothic horror, family dynamics, and the horrors of colonialism all merge in this YA novel. When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam, she realizes she’ll have to continue pretending to fit in. But as she tries to be the straight enough, Vietnamese enough daughter to her estranged father, she also starts noticing odd things about the French colonial house he’s restoring. And the five weeks she has to survive in the house may be too full of bug body parts, ghost brides, and paralysis for her to keep her sanity.

I am super intrigued by this cream cheese garlic bread, which has a whole sweet and savory thing going on. I’ve never tried it, but I love stepping outside of my usual, food-wise and tend to like the flavor combinations in Korean food, so I’m looking forward to trying this. Plus, it’s a perfect kind of hand food for book club meet ups. Let me know if you like it!

For it, you’ll need the usual bread ingredients, like flour, yeast, and salt, as well as powdered milk, egg, butter, garlic, honey, sugar, and cream cheese. For a full list of ingredients and instructions, check out Taste of Home.

Ah Boon is born in beautiful coastal Singapore just as British rule on the country starts to lessen. His main concerns are simply to impress Siok Mei, a neighbor girl his age. He gets his chance once he realizes his innate talent for locating islands with plentiful fish, but it’s this talent that becomes an obligation for him as his village — and his entire country — is brought into a new era of Japanese invasion, World War II, and the longstanding effects of colonialism. Through it all, Ah Boon and Siok Mei must contend with coming of age in a quickly changing and grief-filled world.

Follow a Black American family through the years and across states as they contend with a father that goes missing. In the ’70s, as his teenage daughter Trinity and wife Deborah prepare to celebrate his 37th birthday, Oz Armstead disappears. The family have a funeral with an empty casket, and the narrative bobs and weaves through the ’60s all the way to the ’90s, as Trinity and Deborah begin to understand that Oz was not exactly the husband or father they thought he was.

Gorgeous covers aside, I’m looking forward to this one because I always appreciate these reconsidered narratives where certain characters — especially female characters who were previously thought of as villains — are given their own stories. Here, Clytemnestra, Helen of Troy’s twin sister, takes center stage. We see how the Spartan princess contends with Agamemnon killing her husband, forces her to marry him, and then sacrifices their daughter to the gods. It’s the loss of their daughter that starts the gears of revenge, and I don’t know about y’all, but I love a good “they had it coming” tale.

It’s 1915, and a big steamer trunk full of dangerous secrets follows around young Adelaide Henry. She leaves her California home in flames after her secret kills her parents. The new life she tries to make for herself in Montana, courtesy of the government’s homesteader program in which she’ll become a “lone woman,” is promising, but the territory she must conquer is very cold, both personally and literally. Soon, she finds her new neighbors are harboring secrets of their own, and she may have to do some things she doesn’t want to to survive.

Yes, you read that correctly. The YouTuber got the Filipine dessert recipe from Mayumu by Abi Balingit, a book that just came out this February. I’m all for experiencing new flavor combinations in desserts and am looking forward to trying this one. The NYT also has the recipe from the author of the cookbook. A part from the usual ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, you just need soy sauce, bay leaves, and apple cider vinegar.

Award-winning poet Jones builds on the idea of his own identity, showing how to carve out one’s own space means to constantly adjust and kill the old selves. Starting in the south, we read vignettes of Jones’ life as a Black gay boy turned man, and his struggles with familial and romantic relationships. With a blend of poetry and prose, Jones shows how the dynamics of gender, race, sex, and power converge on a Black boy coming-of-age.

In poetic stories, Smith examines the dissolution of her marriage and its effects on her and her children. While at first focusing on the personal, she eventually expands to larger discussions of gender roles, which can be pervasive, even in seemingly progressive households.

Harjo was the previous United States Poet Laureate and has been a poet for 50 years. In Catching the Light, she distills her experiences as a poet living through the ’60s, as a mother, and as a Native American into poetic episodes that show the importance of the art form. She honors the brokenness that has led to the most beautiful poetry, and details how it has aided the fight against erasure.

Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who writes her coming-of-age story in Ordinary Light. When she was a girl, Smith spent a summer in Alabama that forever altered her view of the world. Up until that point, she’d grown up with California comforts, but hearing her family’s history with picking cotton and their involvement in the Civil Rights movement created another version of Blackness for her. It’s by considering these contradictions, as well as her new positions on faith and her mother’s illness, that Smith paints a picture of a girl becoming herself.