Category: In The Club

Genre chameleon Machado uses magical realism, horror, comedy, and science fiction in this collection of stories to examine what it’s like to have a female body: the entitlement others have to it and the feeling of disembodiment the owners of such bodies feel at times. Among the eight stories are: a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit tale with ghosts, a horror story about a woman who refuses— against her husband’s pleas— to remove a green ribbon from her neck, and the unfortunately timely tale of a woman who remembers her sexual encounters as an epidemic rages. In addition to having writing that is inventive, queer, and beautiful while being furious, Machado is also apparently clairvoyant. Reading that plague story now might hit a little close to home.

The Ecuadorian matriarch of the Montoyas has been through it. Now, she summons her descendants to distribute amongst them their inheritance. They hope to finally get some answers concerning the secrets that surround her. Instead, she is transformed, leaving a bigger shroud of mystery than before. Years later, Orquidea’s blessings are visited upon her descendants, but then an unknown entity starts to make its way through the Montoyas in this book about generational curses with Marquez vibes.

Enríquez brings the dark parts of Argentina to life in this collection of stories that feature macabre and grotesque explorations of life in a place ripe with inequality and violence. A young woman walks into an abandoned house and never returns; a fanged and feral boy is kept chained; and women set themselves on fire to protest domestic violence. Fans of Shirley Jackson will appreciate Enríquez’s dive into the terrors of everyday life.

Before her best friend Riley died, she and Mila were the somewhat outcast spooky girls of their small town high school who dabbled in witchcraft out of boredom and curiosity. Once a string of high school girls die— including Riley— Mila decides against her better judgement to use a mysterious grimoire that showed up randomly to bring her friend back to life to. She accidentally brings back the high school mean girls as well. Now, she has to keep three undead teenage girls together as she tries to be on her Olivia Benson ish and figure out who killed them all before the spell wears in a week. This also has a little in common with the reveal in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. If ya know, ya know.

A son writes a letter to a mother that can’t read. He writes of the details that make him different —a generational curse of abuse, life in Vietnam before immigrating, and an alienating otherness— building up the stories of himself until a great revelation. When You’re done with this novel, consider Vuong’s 2016 book much lauded book of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (or even read the poetry first).

At nineteen, as Tretheway set out to start her life, her mother’s was brutally ended. An abusive former stepfather first tried to kill her mother and was imprisoned. Once he was released, he tried again and succeeded. Tretheway examines all of her life leading up to that fateful moment, including recounting her happy childhood in the south as a child of a Black mother and white father, and traveling back to the place her mother was killed. With poetic precision, she reopens old wounds and wades through her grief. Tretheway won a Pulitzer for Native Guard and was appointed the United States Poet Laureate in 2012.

Smith takes the history of slavery and shows us where it exists in the physical. He does this by bridging the gap between historical fact and what some feel is present day relevance. He passes through Monticello, Angola Prison, and more, showing how each place tells of their involvement in slavery. In addition to being a poet, Smith is a staff writer for the Atlantic. His collection of poetry, Counting Descent, won a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award.

Book Club Bonus: Select a few poems of the authors’ to discuss alongside their novels.

This uptown caper from two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author Whitehead is an obvious choice, being set in 1960s Harlem and all. It follows Ray Carney as he tries to escape his heritage as a crook by supporting his family with selling reasonably priced used furniture on 125th street. Problem is it’s not quite enough to pay bills, or even keep his wife’s bougie parents from talking mess. To supplement, his cousin Freddie brings him side hustles…of the illegal variety. Freddie’s latest opportunity for Ray involves robbing the Hotel Therese, which is the nicest hotel in Harlem. That goes about as well as you’d expect, in this novel with a cast of characters that include everyone from gangsters to crooked cops and “pornographers.”

That S.M.G. reign just won’t let up. She manages to release interesting titles back-to-back and even in different genres! Similar to Harlem Shuffle, this is also a bit different from the author’s norm. This one is set in 1970s Mexico City, though. In it we find Maite, a secretary who, amidst the political upheaval of her city, seems to only live for the escapism that romance comics can provide (I feel you, girl). Maite suddenly finds herself trying to find out what happened to her beautiful and intriguing neighbor, Lenora, who went missing. As she’s looking for her, so is Elvis, an enforcer for a government backed anti-uprising team. He finds himself becoming more and more intrigued with Maite and the many things they have in common as he also tries to find out what happened to Lenora. Coming closer to unraveling the mystery of Lenora’s disappearance means surviving dangers, some of which come in the form of Russian spies and government agents intent on maintaining Lenora’s secret.

Side note, we actually see real-life examples of Maite’s desire for the happy endings that romance novels provide. This post by Trisha Brown shows how people read more romance during the pandemic.

Virgil is who victims of violent crimes go to on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota when they are failed by the U.S. government, and the Tribal courts. He suddenly has to turn his efforts to his 14-year-old nephew, who becomes wrapped up in the heroin trade that’s blossoming on the reservation. Virgil and his ex set out to stop the influx of drugs and chase down leads all the way to Denver as new tribal initiatives are enacted and Virgil must grapple with his Native identity.

Book Club Bonus: All three books deal with people of color who display seemingly shady moral character. They are also part of a group of people on the other end of privilege. They are the descendants of people whose communities and cultures were ravished in order to carve out a space for a protected class, free from the mire that comes from being them, essentially. Discuss if it is fair to judge them based on the same set of rules that is applied to those from higher socioeconomic classes who had more opportunity. Or, does criminality not allow for gray area? Are the main characters ultimately unredeemable?

Katherine grows up knowing she is different. She’s the child of a Chinese mother and white father in the mid-twentieth century, sure, but it’s more than that. Her parents are not exactly who they’re letting on to be. From the first sentence, we’re given an explanation– an apology of sorts, even– of the narrator’s womaness: “I suppose I should warn you that I tell a story like a woman, looping into myself, interrupting.”  Her otherness as a girl/woman is felt when she is discovered to be a math prodigy as a child as well as when she is one of the only female students at MIT. Her desire to solve one of the greatest mysteries in math, the Riemann hypothesis, leads her to theorems and equations that may help her also solve the mystery of her parents.

Book Club Bonus: The book opens with a story of the Muses of ancient Greek mythology and how they must sing into and through men. How does this relate to the current state of women being in certain professions? How does it relate to Katherine and what some of the men she encounters want from her?

Gifty is a on her way to getting her PhD at Stanford in neuroscience when her mother starts to experience severe depression again. She had experienced it before when Gifty’s brother, a 16-year-old gifted high school athlete, died of an opioid addiction that started with a prescription for an injury. Gifty hopes to find salvation for her family in the lab mice’s brains she examines as she finds herself turning back to her evangelical upbringing to cope with loneliness in this novel that grapples with depression, grief, addiction, and the juxtaposition of science and faith.

Book Club Bonus: Gifty’s pastor father sent her mother to her “folding her up the way you would a jumpsuit.” Discuss how women are often made to feel like they should take up less physical space. How does this relate to taking up space in other arenas of life?

Grace Porter has always done everything the right, Porter way and followed her father’s instructions on life. This includes getting a PhD in astronomy by the age of 28. Now, despite this great accomplishment, she’s finds herself unfulfilled. During a celebratory Las Vegas trip, her need to break free comes to a head and she drunkenly marries a stranger. When she sobers up, she realizes she doesn’t even know her name and, what’s more, the woman is on her way back to New York City. As the pressures of her father’s expectations and what it’s like to be the only queer Black woman in a mostly white field mount, she decides to leave the West coast for an opportunity to see if maybe this marriage is worth saving. She and Yuki get to know each other in a testament to good friendships in the queer community and finding your own way.

Book Club Bonus: Grace seems to have a community of people supporting her, but still feels alone. What does this say about the true nature of loneliness?

I’m just getting into Clark’s worlds, and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long. This very short story set in 1912 Egypt centers on Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi as she investigates the death of a Djinn, which is a kind of supernatural creature based on ancient Mesopotamian mythology. Magic had been brought to the land and history rewritten as the Egyptians used it to fight back against colonial rule. It’s a great start, but you’ll wish this story was longer as you see Fatma reconcile being one of few female investigators in this steampunk world with ghouls and mechanical angels. Luckily, there is a full length novel that comes after: A Master of Djinn.

When I tell you that Nigh Vo is THAT. GIRL. In this first of a series with surreal elements, Vo has cleric Chih meet an aging woman named Rabbit who was sold to the emperor for a basket of dye as a child. Rabbit’s world is sent spinning once she befriends the emperors new and lonely foreign wife, and the tale she has for Chih could mean ruin for the current empress. Vo is a master of concise, yet beautiful prose and Rabbit’s story had me in my feelings. Whew!

An agent finds a letter that reads “burn before reading.” What follows is correspondence between two time traveling agents who fight for opposite warring factions. As their rivalry expresses itself, so does a romance in this very unique story that features queer romance. El-Mohtar is also a poet, so expect beautiful writing, naturally.

Book Club Bonus: Another aspect of SFF I like is how it often discusses social issues in a nuanced (or sometimes very blatant) way. Discuss what parallels these foreign worlds have to ours. For instance, how does the role of women compare to women’s roles the world over? Given the advances, do you think these roles were realistic? Additionally, could you see any of the advancements making their way to our reality?

This is being adapted into a movie by Netflix called Distincia De Rescate. Amanda is dying in an Argentinian countryside hospital. A child, David, sits beside her, insisting that she tell the story of the trauma that led to her current condition. David is not her child. We’re led through an unsettling deathbed narrative, as we ponder the mystery concerning her hospital stay and just why this child David is there with her. It has been described as “a nightmare come true, a ghost story for the real word, an inquisitive tale and a love story” by its director.

The author herself has been commissioned to create a drama series for Channel 4. Queenie follows its namesake, a young British woman of Jamaican heritage, as she stumbles through her dating life. Emphasis on the stumbling part, because she seems to keep making some of the same mistakes, but at least has the support of her group of friends and some ultra traditional Jamaican parents. It has been dubbed a Black Bridget Jones, which was also adapted into a couple movies.

Passing will be on Netflix in November. It stars Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson *lightly squeals*. Passing is the classic 1929 story that shows the very real practice that some lighter-skinned Black and mixed people did to pass as white back in the day. Irene is living it up in Harlem with her doctor husband when Clare comes back into her life. Light-skinned Clare had left the Black community years ago in order to “pass” and enjoy the benefits afforded to white people. Turns out Clare is a hot mess, and Irene is shook. Chaos ensues.

Both Passing and Queenie give plenty of opportunities to discuss the intersection of race, class, and gender for the female protagonists. There’s also the chance to discuss how those aforementioned things are influenced by location (i.e. The United States vs. England). How are things the same and how are they different? Fever Dream gives opportunities to talk about gender as well, especially as it relates to motherhood.

Side note: I love that all of these adaptions are being or were written by women, with the Fever Dream and Passing adaptions having also been directed by women. The girls are outchea adapting! We love to see it.

This fictional account of what it’s like for girls and women is included because I’ve always felt like I learned more from fiction at times. I chalk this up to the immersive experience it grants. Here, in Kabul in 2007, young Rahima and her sisters can’t leave the house and can only occasionally go to school because they are girls. She finds out that a great-aunt used a custom to change her life around a hundred years ago called “bacha posh,” which allows one to live as a boy/man (so, pretty much to be free), and decides to do the same. With her new found freedom she can go to school and be a chaperone for her sisters. The only issue is, girls are supposed to go back to having women’s lifestyles once they mature, but how will Rahima be able to give up her freedom when the time comes?

To say that the timing of this book is impeccable would be an understatement. Good timing or not, though, this account of the war in Afghanistan by an investigative reporter from The Washington Post is scathing. Whitlock draws understandable parallels between the Vietnam war and the one in Afghanistan. Apparently, the U.S.’s efforts were a mess from the start in Afghanistan as well, and it was never set up to be a successful endeavor. The documents that The Washington Post unearthed and share here show all of the inadequacies that got us to where we are now.

This is it. This is the one. Qaderi writes of her extraordinary life where she survived a brutal Russian occupation of Afghanistan, only to have to suffer through the Taliban rule of the early 90s right after. As they took over the country, the Taliban immediately started their campaign of misogyny by closing girls’ schools and forbidding them to read. Engaging in these forbidden things might result in being whipped or worse. To put this more in perspective, if I had been caught writing this newsletter by the Taliban in the 90s (and now?), I would have been gravely punished. Lucky for those around her, Qaderi was a rebel and held private tutoring lessons where she taught boys and girls and even some Taliban members at home and at a mosque. She clearly has Mother Teresa-level forgiveness capabilities, because I could never. In this account, Qaderi also tells of the everyday dangers she faced simply for being a woman, what other women and girls suffered, and how she had to ultimately leave her son behind.

As we continue to get to know each other, I’m sure you’ll learn I love fantasy stories, especially involving witchy things and magic, so a Black teenager in Atlanta who can see ghosts and who’s medium powers are burgeoning will always be right up my alley. We meet Jake as he constantly deals with micro aggressions from students and teachers in his very white private school. I like how Douglass constructed the world here. At times it’s grotesque, but it’s also kind of lush and beautiful. Jake comes to be haunted by a white kid named Sawyer who shot up his school before turning the gun on himself. He has to figure out how to get rid of him before Sawyer ruins his life. Some reveals in the second half had me looking like shocked pikachu, and I liked how realistic Jake’s reactions to things were. Dealing with micro aggressions is real and gone are the days where we just grin and bear it. There’s also a cute romance that develops.

Book Club Bonus: Phew, there is a lot to talk about here. There’s a lot to say of child abuse and its long term effects on the child, but also of the parent’s state of mind during the abuse. Are they forgivable?

When I say I need to read more nonfiction, I’ve always been recommended books by Mary Roach. She is the reigning queen of taking obscure topics, researching them, and making them actually fun to read about. This one is about the conflict that arises when the human and animals worlds collide, but more specifically, when animals commit crimes. Apparently, a few hundred years ago, offending animals would be given representation and put on trial. I mean, that’s more than some people get now *side eyes the justice system*. Roach speaks of her travels across the globe where she consulted wildlife experts, as well as saw firsthand some of the animal offenders. It’s a great addition to the ongoing and needed conversation of humanity’s impact on the world and what we can do to prevent further damage.

Book Club Bonus: The United Nations released a rather damning report on the state of the climate. Discuss how Roach’s book factors into the report. Also, discuss why humans are considered separate from animals. Is there some inherent quality that makes us different?

First of all, I love this cover. And the title. And Nicole Perkins. Perkins is a pop culture and social commentator as well as a 2017 Audre Lorde Fellow, a 2017 BuzzFeed Emerging Writers Fellow, and a 2016 Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow for poetry. In other words, sis can write. Through her podcasts and writing, she explores pop culture and desire through a feminist lens. She lays herself bare in this memoir as she explores her life growing up as a Black girl in Nashville, TN and how she struggled with depression, as well as a drug-addicted father. She also talks about self-care and the show Frasier (which I also love).

Book Club Bonus: Discuss how the digital era has affected feminine desire. Has it liberated or stifled it by further objectifying women?

This is one that’s on my read-sooner-rather-than-later TBR list. This is because of her other book, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which I mentioned in last week’s newsletter. With Flights, the Nobel prize winner explores her love of travel after having been barred from it until the age of 28 because of Soviet isolationism. There are 116 nonlinear, existential vignettes here, both fictional and nonfictional.

These vignettes are all connected through travel– travel through space, time, memory, thoughts– and often seem to land in unexpected places. Within these tales there is a story of a flight that lands at the same time it takes off and one about how Chopin’s sister smuggled his heart into Warsaw in her skirt. The author actually took a class on the history of anatomy in Amsterdam as research for this collection, if that tells you anything about what you should expect.

Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé tells the story of the Salem Witch Trials through the eyes of Tituba, the enslaved woman who was among the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. TItuba was orphaned at seven as her enslaved mother dared to defend herself from assault. She goes on to be raised by Mama Yaya, a woman with a great understanding of nature and the invisible. Of course, she shares her knowledge of magic and healing with Tituba, and in doing so, one could say she passes her womanhood to her. There are themes that explore womanhood represented as magic and the unknown.

It was Tituba’s love for an enslaved man, John, that led her back into the maw of slavery, by which she would eventually be accused of being a witch. Sis was down bad for John, smh, but I can’t judge the decisions of a Black woman living in the late 17th century too harshly.

It’s interesting to think of the act of erasure and all the resultant lost stories. This ties nicely into what’s going on in public schools in some of the southern and western states.

M is a seven year old girl whose understanding of life seems to revolve around her father’s career as a traveling salesman. So much so that she eventually starts accompanying him during his travels. Their journeys from town to town are often humorous and filled with wonder. M’s innocence and ignorance of impending change is contrasted against the reality of life in Chile under Pinochet’s rule. When they meet a mysterious photographer who sees ghosts, M’s world gets turned upside down. This has been added to my TBR with the swiftness.

This is technically written by a wife-husband duo, but was translated by a woman. When the subject of books in translation come up, this one immediately springs to mind as I’m still waiting for the second in the series to be translated *grumbles*.

Sixteen year old Sasha Samokhina is vacationing with her mom when she notices a strange man following her. She finds out he’s there to recruit her by coercion for a magic school no one has ever heard of. Now, before you get it twisted thinking this is just another story of a magical high school, just know that the magic studied here is unlike anything you’ve read before. The students also have to do things that other magical high school students don’t (it gets dark, y’all). It flirts with metaphysical philosophy, teeters on the biblical, and is plum gibberish at times. This story has been described as what those popular wizard school books would be like if they were written by Kafka. It’s an all around darker take on the magical high school subgenre that’s definitely for adults.

Here, Millet explores climate change with the use of biblical allegory in what has been described as a Lord of the Flies-style story. One summer, a group of teenagers and younger kids are dragged to a vacation home by their parents. The parents neglect their children because of their greater interest in alcohol and the kids, in turn, are ashamed and unwilling to claim them. When there is a storm, the parents forsake their children in favor of Ecstasy and the kids are left to fend for themselves.

Book Club Bonus: What is the significance of the Bible throughout the story? Also, what is being said by how the dynamics between the two generations is shown?

This has been getting a lot of praise lately (it’s on Obama’s summer reading list!), and for good reason. Klara is an android, or AF (“Artificial Friend”) who seems to be a lot more observant and perceptive than other AFs, and sometimes even actual humans. She stands in a store display people watching before a sick girl and her mother pick her out to take her home. This is a world where the class structures we currently experience are still very present and the planet has been polluted.

Book Club Bonus: How can one reconcile Klara’s obvious humanity with the ending? What is it saying about consumerism and its effects on the individual?

The other two books have mostly focused on characters with means. This novel is more realistic and focuses on some of those who may suffer because of overconsumption by the wealthy classes. Salvage the Bones is about a Black family in Mississippi that lives in poverty and how life is for them as they await Hurricane Katrina. The father neglects his children as he medicates himself with alcohol, and his kids are more independent and resourceful as a result. Esch, the novel’s protagonist, is fourteen and pregnant, and often seeks to escape her bleak reality by getting lost in stories (she loves Greek myths). This story of survival is brutal and bloody at times, but it can also be redemptive.

Book Club Bonus: Discuss the significance of myth and biblical allegory in the presence of floods/storms. Also, what themes surrounding motherhood are presented throughout?

Janina is an aging astrologist that house sits for some of her neighbors, who usually only return to their houses in the small Polish town for vacations. She also translates the poetry of William Blake. When bodies of some of her neighbors, people she knew that did not respect nature, turn up dead, she assumes that animals are taking their revenge. This is a mystery that has possible supernatural elements, with a main character who is eccentric and just as passionate about the lives of animals as she is that of humans.

Book Club Bonus: Discuss how women are regarded once they enter old age. How did this hamper the main character, and how did it benefit her?