Category: In The Club

In the Club – 8/5

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date August 4, 2020

Sponsored by With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt, now available from Algonquin Books.

New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt returns with With or Without You. Stella and Simon’s marriage is tested when Stella unexpectedly falls into a coma. She awakes months later to an estranged relationship with Simon and a newfound ability to draw portraits in which she captures people’s innermost feelings. Stella has the chance to form a new life, one she never realized she wanted, if only she accepts it.

With or Without You is a page-turner that asks the question, What do we owe the people in our lives, and when does the cost become too great?

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. It’s August (I know, I know, deep breaths) and that means it’s officially Women in Translation month! I have three thrilling reads for you to explore in book clubs that I promise you’ll have lots to say about.

To the club!!

Nibbles and Sips

I just finished the audiobook of Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material, a delightful fake relationship romance with a splash of enemies-to-lovers that I simply loved to pieces! The main character’s (hilarious) French rock star mom makes a special curry that sounds quite, err, “special” indeed! It put a curry craving in my head though, so I whipped up what I’m calling my Lazy Curry while listening. It’s a pressure cooker recipe and not very authentic (don’t at me!), but it’s quick and packed full of flavor.

Throw 1.5 pounds of chicken breast (or thighs if you prefer) into the Instant Pot, then dump in a can of coconut milk and the following seasonings and spices:

1.5 teaspoons of salt
3 teaspoons curry powder,*
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon ground ginger
Black pepper to taste (I use about 1/4 teaspoon)
Cayenne to taste

Cook on high pressure for five minutes; if desired, take the chicken out of the liquid and chop or shred, then add back to the pot and toss in some veggies of choice. I use half an onion, a red bell pepper, and a green bell pepper, all sliced into strips, then cook for one more minute to soften the veggies. Top with some chopped cilantro and boom! Quick and easy meal. Goes well with a heaping bowl of jasmine rice.

*Didya know curry powder isn’t an authentic Indian spice? Not even a little! Curry is a pre-made spice mix that includes “Indian” spices and it’s basically a thing British people made up. It is however tasty and comes in handy for stuff like this. I use this version here, more or less: adjust to your taste buds.

Get Lost in Translation

All of these books come to you from my TBR (and in one case my DNF file, but not because the book was bad). They’re all thrilling reads written—and in some cases also translated—by women. They each explore big themes like class, misogyny, homophobia, marital discord… I’m talking meaty, folks. Dive in and celebrate women in translation!

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogowa, translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder – On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, everyday objects disappear at random. Then the disappearances escalate in severity, and the draconian Memory Police are committed to ensuring that what’s lost stays that way. When a young novelist discovers that her editor may be the Memory Police’s latest target, she offers to hide him under the floorboards of her home. As despair closes in around them, the pair cling to her writing in a desperate attempt to preserve the past. This book won or was shortlisted for so many awards last year and comes highly recommended from several Rioters.

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes – Listen, this book is not for the faint of heart—I had to put it down because it just contains all the triggers, but want to spread the word about this rising star in Mexican lit. After the death of the town witch, the investigation that follows reveals some dark truths about the unreliable inhabitants of this small Mexican village. Fernanda Melchor does not look away from the ways this community has been ravaged by drug abuse, poverty, alcoholism, homophobia, and misogyny, but rather looks them straight in the face and calls them out by name. If you can handle dark, violent content, and I know many of you can, pick up this gut-punch of a book.

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell – I added this psychological thriller to my TBR when I saw it on this list of Korean lit in translation for fans of the movie Parasite. A man named Oghi wakes up in the hospital after a violent car accident kills his wife and leaves him both paralyzed and disfigured. His mother-in-law assumes responsibility for his care and takes him home, then basically abandons him to go dig a giant hole in the yard where her daughter’s garden used to be. Then she digs another hole, and another, and yet another, providing no explanation other than that she’s finishing what her daughter started. Totally normal! Oghi becomes obsessed with finding a way to escape and is forced to grapple with some very uncomfortable truths about his troubled marriage—and the toll it took on his wife.

Suggestion Section

Because sometimes you really, really need this: an email template to break up with your book club.

Here are the latest book club picks from Oprah, Vox, and Good Morning America.

Pair your book club read with recipes based on genre!

These books well on their way to becoming feminist classics would make excellent book club selections. I see women of color, celebrations of female friendship, romance—not your mother’s feminist reading list.

Disclaimer: this one’s behind a paywall (unless you haven’t yet maxed out on your free NYT views like I have): a look at Black book clubs then and now.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter and catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

In The Club

In the Club 7/29

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date July 28, 2020

In the Club 07/22

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date July 21, 2020

In the Club 7/15

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date July 14, 2020

Sponsored by In the Neighborhood of True by Susan Kaplan Carlton

After her father dies, Ruth Robb and her family move in the summer of 1958 from New York City to Atlanta —the land of debutantes, sweet tea, and the Ku Klux Klan. In her new hometown, Ruth quickly figures out she can be Jewish or she can be popular, but not both, so Ruth decides to hide her religion to fit in. But when a violent hate crime brings the different parts of Ruth’s life into sharp conflict, she will have to choose between all she’s come to love about her new life and standing up for what she believes.

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. This week ya girl has education on the brain as our country contemplates the safety of sending students back to school in the middle of a pandemic (so many feelings). Betsy DeVos: may your marinara sauce never cling to your pasta! Fifty points to you if you get that reference.

While none of these books are specifically about schools + pandemics, they are all wonderful examinations of education that I think more people should read.

To the club!!

Nibbles and Sips

We’re sticking to summer vibes again this week, so let’s talk paletas. Paletas are Mexican popsicles, first popularized in Tocumbo, Michoacan in the 1940’s by a family business called La Michoacana. They come in water and milk-based varieties of both traditional fruit flavors (strawberry, coconut, lemon, etc) and less conventional ones like corn, avocado, cheese, and arroz con leche. Side note—I was SO confused when someone offered me a popsicle as a kid and handed me a hunk of blue ice on a stick. I wasn’t used to blue, I was used to fresh strawberry, mango, and rompope (Mexican eggnog)!

It’s hard to pick just one favorite flavor, but one I’ve been craving lately is pepino (cucumber) con chile. They’re easy to make and are such a perfect, cold, refreshing treat in the sweltering summer months. Try them out and let me know what you think!

An Education on Education

Two of these books are more about educational theory and one is a memoir. There is so, so much to discuss in these books: how the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality ignores systemic inequality, how racism is embedded in our education system, how impactful a role early education (or the lack thereof) plays in molding young minds.

When Grit Isn’t Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-for-All Promise by Linda F. Nathan – Back in 2013, a University of Pennsylvania professor named Angela Duckworth gave a TED Talk about grit as the great predictor of success. I remember having feelings about it even then, mainly the icky feeling that the emphasis on grit, though not entirely flawed by any means, leaves out an essential examination of systemic inequality. This book immediately jumped at me then when it came out in 2017; it investigates five assumptions that inform our ideas about education and how those beliefs mask the systemic inequity that makes the educational playing field far from even.

Educated by Tara Westover – Now, speaking of grit: you gotta give credit where credit is due and Tara Westover is basically grit defined. She was raised in rural Idaho by survivalist and fundamentalist Mormon parents who homeschooled their children and denied the validity of modern medicine. She decided she wanted to go to school and sneakily found a way to get into BYU, meaning she walked into an institution of higher learning for the first time at age 17. Imagine for just a second what that must have been like: getting dirty looks when you ask what the Holocaust is, or having your roommates sit you down to chide you for not washing your hands after you using the bathroom. Tara not only graduated, but went on to earn a PhD from Cambridge. That is all impressive enough on its own, but even more so when you throw in the verbal and physical abuse she endured. This isn’t a read specifically about the education system, but is a fascinating read about education in general and one person’s truly inspiring story.

For White Folks Who Teach In the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too by Christopher Emdin – While working as a bookseller, I worked a big educational conference in San Diego where Christopher Emdin was a keynote speaker. When this man walked into the building, I thought Beyoncé had arrived. I watched hundreds of teachers go full fanperson for this guy, and speaking to him for just a few moments as he signed books showed me why. In addition to having a truly effervescent personality, his book is a challenge (and guide) for white teachers to check their privilege, understand and connect with their students, and examine the flaws in a universal approach to education.

Suggestion Section

Our roundup of personalized book club gifts, because we could all use a little gift right now.

Meet the beautiful young ladies of the Reading Riders Book Club in Collin County, Texas. In addition to creating a space to share a love of reading, they’ve also partnered with local nonprofits to collect more than 200 books for children in need. Those faces gave joy today.

Virtual book clubs to join now—reach out, make a bookish connection!

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

In The Club

In the Club 7/8

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date July 8, 2020

In the Club – 7/1

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date June 30, 2020

Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

In 1933 Louisville, Kentucky, even the ongoing economic depression cannot keep Piper Danson’s parents from insisting on a debut party. After all, they’ve picked out the perfect suitor for their daughter. The only problem? This is not the man—or the life—she really wants. When Piper gets the opportunity to volunteer as a horseback Frontier Nursing courier in the Appalachian Mountains for the summer. The work is taxing, the scenery jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and the people she meets along the way open up a whole new world to her.

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. Summer is officially upon us and thus, for most of us, warmer temperatures. As I began to dig around my closet for bathing suits recently and then panicked over how I’d look in them, I thought this might be a good time to discuss body image in book club. I have a fiction read, some powerful nonfiction, and then a couple of lighter essay collections that tackle this topic from different angles.

Let’s do it to it, mi gente. To the club!!.

Nibbles and Sips

I started watching Nadiya’s Time to Eat on Netflix and now want to try so many of her quick-and-easy recipes! She makes a gorgeous tarte tatin with bananas and tops it with ice cream that she whipped up in a flash and I’m wondering what I’ve been doing with my life all this time to not make my own ice cream more often. As the weather warms up for many of us, why don’t we all indulge and make ourselves this cool, creamy, delicious treat?

All she does is combine a can of sweetened condensed milk (amen) in a bowl with 500 ml of double cream (or 2 cups + a splash of heavy cream for us American folk) and five crushed cardamom pods, then whips it all together with a hand mixer until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Do this, transfer to a freezer-safe container, level off the top, place inside a ziplock bag and freeze.

Other mix-ins I’m interested in trying: chocolate chips, rose petals with a tiny bit of rose syrup, crushed peppermint candies… possibilities!

We’re Talking Body

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha – This story set in contemporary Seoul tells the connected stories of four women: one whose many cosmetic procedures have landed her a job at one of Seoul’s “room salons” where wealthy men seek drink and the entertainment of women; a New York art school graduate who’s returned to Seoul and now has a super rich Korean boyfriend; a hair stylist obsessed with K-pop and her best friend’s plans for extreme cosmetic surgery; and a newlywed trying to conceive who’s unsure if she can actually afford to raise a child. Dive deep into this examination of class, patriarchy, inequality, and crippling beauty standards.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (TW: rape, eating disorders) – Let’s get one thing straight right away: this is not going to be an easy read. Roxane Gay experienced a horrifying act of sexual violence that changed her life when she was twelve years old. This memoir exposes the red, raw wound of that trauma, examining Gay’s subsequent relationship to food, body hyperconsciousness, and tendencies towards shame and self loathing. There is a lot to discuss here about the relationship between not only trauma and body issues, but also diet culture and how our society handles obesity. Whew. Have the tea or whiskey at the ready!

F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me by Chloé Hilliard – I added this to my TBR based on that title alone, as I too have heard similar messaging from my thighs. Chloe was a size 12 shoe and wore size 12 clothes when she was 12 years old, and she stood over six feet tall. Cursed with “the fat trilogy” of “slow metabolism, baby weight, and big bones,” young Chloe went down what too many of us will recognize as the familiar path of dieting, food limitation, and extreme exercise to get her body down to a more “appealing” size. Then one day she woke up and basically said, “eff all that noise!” and decided to love herself in a world constantly telling her she needed to change to be desired. I’ve heard from numerous people that the book is hilarious and insightful, a combo I will take any day of the week.

Gross Anatomy by Mara Altman – I love, love, love this book so hard, it’s so funny and just so damn real! It’s a challenge to find “greatness in our grossness,” holding up a magnifying glass to our twisted beliefs and biases and policing of women’s bodies. Why do we feel like we have to pluck, tweeze, and wax every surface of our skin into smooth submission? Why is boob cleavage hot but a camel toe an embarrasment? Why do we hate sweating like it’s not a completely normal and healthy bodily function? Mara asks all of these questions and then attempts to answer them with hilarious personal anecdotes.

Fun fact: The Russian translation of this book is called “Body Trash” and that fact never ceases to tickle me.

Suggestion Section

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen is PBS’s latest book club pick.

For a laugh, check out this Doubleday Book Club ad from 1999. Who else remembers that 7 books for 99 cents thing!?

The Vox Book Club will discuss Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham in July.

In morning show book club announcements, here are July picks for Good Morning America and Today with Jenna Bush Hager.

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine book club has selected two books in one month for the first time. I cynically wonder if one of one of these titles was thrown in there sorta last minute for optics, but Reese does have a decent inclusion track record so I’ll calm myself. I’m also not going to knock the effort if it gets more people to read Austin Channing Brown.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

In The Club

In The Club 6/24

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date June 23, 2020

Sponsored by Ocean Front Publishing. Bad Karma eBook just $2.99 for a limited time only!

In the summer of 1978, twenty-one-year-old Paul Wilson jumps at the chance to join two local icons on a dream surf trip to Mexico, unaware their ultimate destination lies in the heart of cartel country. Having no earthly idea of where he’ll get the money, and determined to prove his mettle, he does the only thing he can think of: he robs a supermarket. If karma needed more reasons to doom the trip, he soon learns one of his companions is a convicted killer on the run, the other an unscrupulous cad. Soon enough, mere survival takes precedence over surfing.

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. This week’s club agenda is inspired by a fact that’s always been true but feels especially important to remember as publishers and editorial sites appear newly interested in hiring Black writers: writers from marginalized communities can—and do!—write all of the things. They can write “issue” books and columns, yes. They can also write heart-pounding mysteries, swoon worthy romance, wildly inventive SFF, and more. So today, I have a few genre titles to share with you by authors from one or more marginalized communities and invite you to consider how this same idea of inclusion can and should be applied to all spaces.

Before we dive in, we have favor to ask! We’re running a reader survey and would love it if you’d take a few minutes to fill it out. As a thank you, you’ll be entered for the chance to win an ereader!

Okay, now to the club!!

Nibbles and Sips

I’m bringing back this section in case anyone out there would like a little comfort food recipe. I recently made the decision to shelter in place with family so I’m currently back in San Diego and was reminded of the simple goodness of my sister-in-law’s tacos dorados de papa (hard shell potato tacos).

Ingredients:

Potatoes, peeled and sliced into thin rounds or slices (one to two small potatoes per person)
Lettuce, chopped
Cotija cheese, grated (This is a salty, hard, Mexican cheese that’s a little like feta. Another cheese could work, but the saltiness really makes a difference!)
Salsa of choice- I recommend a simple blended salsa versus a chunky one for this recipe
Corn tortillas (a thin variety works best here)
Oil for frying (avocado, canola, etc)
Salt

Peel the potatoes then slice into strips or rounds; they should be on the thinner side, no more than 1/4 inch thick. Fry up the potatoes until they’re just golden brown, then drain/pat dry their excess oil and toss with a little salt. Now begin to assemble your tacos: fold a warmed corn tortilla in half and stuff with some potato slices—the amount is up to you, but I don’t overstuff. Fry the tacos up, just enough for the tortillas to get nice and crispy. This happens quickly, so keep an eye on them! For the perfect taco, add lettuce, some salsa, and a heap of the salty cotija cheese to each shell.

Tip: thread a toothpick through the tortilla to keep it folded while frying. You could also go more traditional and choose to boil and mash the potatoes and use that as the filling instead, and could also roll the tortillas instead of folding them before frying.

Enjoy!

Genre: Awesome

A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell – Oh look, it’s a whole bunch of Black girl magic in one convenient volume. Huzzah! This stellar list of contributors includes Elizabeth Acevedo, Dhonielle Clayton, L.L. McKinney, Ibi Zoboi, and Justina Ireland. Do yourself a favor and check out these gorgeous stories that center Black women and gender nonconforming individuals through tales of fantasy, science fiction, and magic.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey – Private detective Ivy Gamble is only just getting by when her luck appears to change: the headmaster at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages hires her to solve a grizzly murder, a job that pays mucho dinero and will finally give her a shot at a homicide case. Buuuut the magically gifted Tabitha teaches at the school, the sister she’s always been a little jealous of and hasn’t spoken to in years. Ivy will have to weed her way through secrets, lies, “chosen one” prophecies, and (eek!) teenagers to determine who split another teacher in half with forbidden magic.

The Cutting Season by Attica Locke – This thriller is one hell of a page-turner and also tackles big topics like race and generational trauma. It weaves together two mysteries from two different timelines: a murder on a historic plantation in Louisiana’s Sugar Cane country in present day and another involving a missing slave more than a hundred years earlier. It’s so suspenseful and brilliantly plotted!

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang – Stella has Autism Spectrum Disorder and has always felt more comfortable with math and numbers than people. Applying the age old mantra that practice make perfect, she decides there’s only one way to get over her discomfort with kissing and sexy times, and that’s to hire a male escort. Michael can’t afford to turn her down and agrees to help Stella with her (literal) to-do list. Then their “no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic.”

Suggestion Section

Oprah’s next book club pick is James McBride’s Deacon King Kong.

Vox’s book club has assembled a pretty sweet panel for its next live discussion of The Princess Bride.

Pardon the paywall, but this piece from The Washington Post is a must-read. It will make a lot of non-Black people feel uncomfortable, and may even seem ironic to include in a newsletter about book clubs that urges you to read anti-racist lit. The message is an important one though: reading the books, discussing them, and patting yourself on the back for doing so is not nearly, not even a little bit enough.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

In The Club

In the Club 6/17

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date June 17, 2020

Sponsored by our 1-year Audible subscription giveaway courtesy of Macmillan Audiobooks.

We’re giving away a 1-year subscription to Audible to one lucky winner, courtesy of Macmillan’s Audiobooks Newsletter.

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. This week I’ve seen a lot of folks on Twitter honoring this week’s celebration of Juneteenth by flooding the timeline with Black joy. I love this so much and want to talk this week about amplifying Black voices while also making time for that joy.

To the club!!

I’m still skipping Nibbles and Sips for now and instead bringing attention to more ways to make an impact. Here are a few organizations doing great work to protect and uplift the LGBTQ community (and all Black-led according to Marie Claire); consider throwing a few dollars their way if you can and/or spreading the word.

The Okra Project sends Black trans chefs to the homes of Black trans people experiencing food insecurity and provides cooking lessons and other resources.

The Marsha P. Johnson Institue was founded in honor of activist and drag queen Marsha P. Johnson. It focuses on the protection and defense of the human rights of Black transgender people and provide fellowships for transgender artists.

The LGBTQ+ Freedom Fund helps post bond for LGBTQ+ people in jail or immigrant detention. They’re also work to raise awareness about LGBTQ over-incarceration in the US.

Joy to the World

You may have seen this image going around (more info here). I love this initiative to amplify Black voices! Two things:

A. Antiracism lit is essential, but don’t forget to supplement that reading with all the rest of the work that Black authors write (i.e. general fiction, kidlit, romance, etc)

B. You can and should support Black authors any ol’ time and not just this week.

That being said, I thought I’d hit you all with three reads full of Black joy.

You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson – Phoebe Robinson is a standup comedian, writer, and actress who you may know from the comedy podcast-turned-HBO-show Two Dope Queens. She is absolutely hilarious and a person you should follow on Instagram for some of the most delightfully ridiculous captions your eyes ever did see! While this collection of essays and observational humor definitely examines issues like racism and misogyny, it’s also full of Bono thirst (yes, that Bono) and gratuitous hashtags. This is one of the few books I can remember making me laugh out loud to the point of tears in the last few years.

The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon – Black romance is an obvious choice for readers searching for Black joy; you get some love, maybe some sexy times, and a happily ever! When Samiah’s live Tweets of a terrible date go viral, two other women show up to the date and reveal that this garbage dude was three-timing them all. The three women dump the guy and form an almost immediate sisterhood, making a pact to take a break from dating to focus on themselves. As luck would have it though, there’s a new hottie in the office and Samiah can’t help but look his way. I picked this recent release because on top of being a really fun romance, it also gives us an amazing portrayal of female friendship while also diving into the struggles of being a Black woman in STEM.

Pride by Ibi Zoboi – Remixes of classics are a thing I enjoy very mucho and this reimagining of Pride and Prejudice set in Bushwick with a cast of Black characters is one of my favorites. It gets into some deep stuff, of course–cultural identity, class, gentrification–but it’s just so lovely to see a young Afro-Latina centered in this kind of story. The joy is multiplied exponentially in the audiobook, which is narrated by the so-beautiful-and-talented-it’s-like-how-dare-she Elizabeth Acevedo. She breathes such life into main character Zuri, her four wild sisters, and really the entire cast.

Suggestion Section

Introducing Tor.com’s Terry Pratchett Book Club!

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas is BuzzFeed’s July book club pick.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

In The Club

In the Club – 6/10

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date June 9, 2020

Sponsored by The Secret Women from Amistad Books

After a yoga class, three women realize they share a devastating experience: all three of their mothers have recently passed away, leaving behind a lifetime of items that neither woman can bear to handle alone. Making a pact to help each other sort through their mothers’ belongings, the women dig deep into their mothers’ pasts, building a better understanding of both their mothers and themselves.

A story about the power of female friendship, family dynamics, and the importance of the bond that is, or isn’t, shared with a mother

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. How’s everyone doing this week? Are we all staying fed, hydrated? Remember that you can’t fight the good fight without taking care of your bodies. So here’s your Book Club Mom reminding you to take a moment to breathe, especially if you’re out on the front lines.

Today I’m honoring Pride with a list of book club picks by queer authors, with several titles by Black queer authors to start because Black lives matter and we’re all about the intersectionality here. Ready? To the club!!

Skipping Nibbles & Sips again this week to encourage all my club peeps to consider giving as a group (if it’s within your means) to an organization doing important work in support of Black and queer causes. If you’re not sure which one to give to, may I suggest this big ol’ list of bail and legal defense funds, policy reform organizations, queer advocacy groups, mental health resources, and more. Start there and remember that it’s okay not to be able to help them all at once.

Celebrating Pride

Do the work here to ask tough questions in your discussions about bias, internalized racism and homophobia as brought up in the pages of these reads. It’s time (been time?) to get uncomfortable with it; admit to your shortcomings and times you’ve gotten it wrong, and share what you’ve learned to do better.

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson – Liz has always felt too Black, poor, and awkward for her small, rich Midwestern town. But she has a plan to get the heck out of dodge: she’ll attend an uber-elite college, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor. Boom! When her financial aid package falls through and her plans come crashing down, Liz remembers her school offers a scholarship for the prom king and queen. If she can just endure the trolling and cattiness of the competition, she might still have a shot. But Mack is also in the running for queen, the new girl that Liz is increasingly drawn to…

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock – This memoir won so many awards and I’m a little ashamed to admit I still haven’t read it. Mock relays her experience growing up multiracial, poor, and trans in America. She shares her struggles and journey towards self-actualization and calls for greater acceptance of one another and of ourselves.

Homie by Danez Smith – This interview at Them contains my favorite description of this book, calling it a book “hellbent on envisioning a world where queer Black joy exists not as a release but as a constant reality, while still recognizing the current state of affairs.” Read that sentence back a few times, I implore you. This powerful, hilarious, heart-wrenching love letter to Black queer friendship is also superb as an audiobook, which Smith narrates themself.

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn – As a girl, Margot was taught to trade her sexuality for survival and now works at an opulent Montego Bay resort to shield her younger sister from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees an opportunity for financial independence and to finally make known her attraction to women. As the sisters face the impending destruction of their community, they each fight “to balance the burdens she shoulders with the freedom she craves.”

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi – In their debut novel, Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi tells the story of Ada, a young girl who develops multiple selves as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” The selves begin to grow both in power and agency after she moves to America for college, then a traumatic assault precipitates the forming of two very distinct alternate selves. Ada’s life takes a dangerous turn as those selves assume more and more control, but she emerges from the darkness as she begins to understand the beautiful complexity of her identity.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson – My go-to pitch for this book is always some version of, “How can such a small book pack such a punch??” Two families from different social classes are brought together by an unexpected pregnancy in a story that flashes back and forth between 2001 and 1985. I highly recommend this as an audiobook, which is narrated by an ensemble cast of Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Peter Francis James, Shayna Small, Bahni Turpin, and Jacqueline Woodson herself. It’s only four hours long and it had me sobbing in my car.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas – This work of paranormal YA is full of magic, mystery, and Day of the Dead folklore with a trans teenage boy protagonist and I cannot wait for more people to read it! My Mexican American heart was just so moved by the witchy story, the romance, the use of Spanish, the homage to so many beautiful Latinx traditions. Also, Aiden is a trans author who lives here in Portland and I may or may not be stalking his Instagram. One more thing: this one isn’t out yet, don’t be mad at me! Its pub date was moved to September, so you have plenty of time to get those preorder and holds in.

All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad – A queer 20-something returns to her hometown when her homophobic mother passes away. When she finds five letters to five men in her mother’s will (none of whom is her father), she goes on a mission to deliver each one in person and discovers how little she knew of her mother’s life.

Mostly Dead Things by Kristin Arnett – All I’m going to say is this: queerness, grief, and lewd taxidermy. Look this one up, you won’t regret it.

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston – I finally read this book after it made the Book Riot rounds and hoped it wasn’t overhyped. ‘TWAS NOT! I laughed, I sobbed, I loved every page of this friends to lovers romance between the Mexican American son of the first woman President of the United States and an English prince. Sexy and smart with some amazing banter.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado – I couldn’t not include this genre-bending memoir by the inimitable Carmen Maria Machado. This is one you need to sit with both for it’s gorgeous, haunting prose and the often heavy subject matter; it examines cultural representations of psychological abuse and stereotypes about the “safety” of lesbian relationships as she relays the details of her relationship with a volatile partner.

Suggestion Section

I know a lot of us have Zoom burnout, but Vox shares why for some it’s the perfect, honest, and vulnerable way to keep book club going strong.

Speaking of Vox: The Princess Bride is their next book club pick.

Have you heard of the Byzans app? I’ll admit I had not until this Rioter shared how it helped her find connection in quarantine. This is probably the lowest barrier to entry I can think of to finding a book club.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

In The Club

In the Club 6/3

Post author By Vanessa Diaz
Post date June 2, 2020

Sponsored by The Yield from HarperVia Books

A celebration of language and an exploration of what makes a place “home.” A young Australian woman searches for her grandfather’s dictionary, the key to halting a mining company from destroying her family’s home and ancestral land. The Yield is a story of a people and a culture dispossessed, and a joyful reminder of what once was and what endures—a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling, and identity, that offers hope for the future.

“A beautifully written novel that puts language at the heart of remembering the past and understanding the present.”—Kate Morton

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.

Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.

To the club.

No nibbles & sips today. Stay healthy and try to carve out time to take care of your bodies and minds.

Antiracist Lit

Today’s newsletter is completely dedicated to antiracist literature. I want all book clubs to take the time to read at least one book on the subject, and I do mean all book clubs. I don’t care if you consider yourselves progressive, liberal, if you have Black Lives Matter signs on your lawns. We all have something (read: lots) more to learn, teach, or both.

I’m highlighting the three books that I have on my immediate TBR pile. Start here, but please don’t stop.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi – This is the title you’re probably seeing recommended a ton right now, along with a call to not only not be racist, but to be anti-racist. That is precisely what it boils down to; passivity won’t cut it, activism is essential. Educate yourself on what antiracism looks like and what meaningful action can achieve. Side note: Ibram X. Kendi authored that wonderful Antiracist Reading List in the New York Times that I’ll link in Suggestion Section.

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall – I’ve talked about this one a few times and I am the most not sorry. I’ve been thinking a lot about it in the context of the Women’s March; Black women show up for literally everybody; do we show u for them? Feminism must be intersectional. Period. The sort of prettily photographed stuff you so often see in your Instagram feed leaves Black women behind, concerning itself not with basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. If your approach to feminism ain’t inclusive, it’s trash.

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad – The idea behind this book began as an online call for accountability. In 2018, Layla Saad hosted a free month-long Instagram campaign wherein she asked folks to share the ways in which they, knowingly or not, had upheld white supremacy. She expected resistance and reluctance and was blown away instead by a worldwide outpouring of self-examination and admission. That then turned into a workbook which eventually lead to the book, a manual for understanding white privilege and participation in white supremacy so that we might stop stop our harmful actions against BIPOC and help others do the same. This right here: essential.

Suggestion Section: Reading Lists + Black-Owned Bookshops

Lists – Many of these lists contain overlapping titles—and good, because they’re important ones. I hope you will take the time to read and discuss thoughtfully, uncomfortably, urgently.

Book Riot: 35 Must-Read Books About Racism
The New York Times: An Antiracist Reading List (yes, it’s behind a paywall if you’ve maxed out your free views of the NYT, but I couldn’t leave it out of this mix)
Esquire: If You Want to Learn About Anti-Racism, These 10 Books Are a Start
BuzzFeed: An Essential Reading Guide For Fighting Racism
Libro.fm: How to Be an Antiracist: Audiobook Picks
Bookshop.org: Antiracist Reading List – a fantastic list + easy way to support indie bookstores
Newsweek: Books About Race That Everyone Should Be Reading Right Now

Support Black-Owned Bookstores – I’m giving you locations so you know where they are, but support now through online ordering. You may find some popular titles are backordered (a sign of hope?); if you run into this issue, consider purchasing other titles, or support an Indie with an audiobook purchase or membership from Libro.fm.

The Lit. Bar in The Bronx, NY – Noelle and her team even made it easy for you with a Dear White People reading list.

Loyalty Bookstores in Petworth, DC and downtown Silver Springs, MD – While you’re there, check out their events page; upcoming events include Date Night with Alyssa Cole and discussions for the Agatha Christie + Sherry, Too Lit to Quit, and Antiracist book clubs.

Mahogany Books in Washington, DC – The book bundles under Featured Products on the main page are chef’s kiss!

Marcus Books in Oakland, CA is the oldest independent black bookstore in the country! They were forced into temporary closure due to COVID-19 (and by that I mean closed altogether, even for online ordering), so I’ve linked to their GoFundMe page. I’m seeing tons of donations pouring in with BLM hashtags! Donating as soon as I wrap up this newsletter.

Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, MN – Come for the pizza-eating, wine-drinking sloth on their main page, stay for their call to action.

Semicolon Bookstore in Chicago, IL – Consider supporting their now ongoing #CleartheShelves campaign to provide free books to Chicago kids!

Uncle Bobbie’s in Philadelphia, PA – There are lots of antiracist reads to choose from on their online order page.

For more Black-owned shops, please see this Twitter thread from Third Place Books.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa