Category: In The Club

I recently discovered Ms. Shi on YouTube, and I have to say that she makes some seemingly complicated recipes seem more accessible. This is one of those recipes. There are plenty of steps to making these crème brûlée donuts, but each step is fairly simple (depending on your ability and experience, of course) and the ingredients are what many bakers already have in their pantry and fridge: milk, eggs, flour, cornstarch, yeast, butter, sugar, cooking oil, and salt. Seriously, I barely bake and already have most of that. For a full list of ingredients and written instructions, you can visit Ms. Shi’s page.

In this lyrical debut, readers try to piece together the remnants of a family torn asunder by the imperialist-driven corporate greed of an American banana plantation. It’s 1968 in Costa Rica when a devastating fire takes hold of the American Fruit Company’s most valuable banana plantation, killing many and destroying evidence of its wrongdoing. Lyra’s father, José María, seems to be among those who perished. Twenty-seven years later, Lyra and her family have left Costa Rica and are in shambles — she’s estranged from her mother and is raising her nephew after his mother died by suicide. An encounter with someone who used to work at the American Fruit Company sets Lyra on a course that travels through different times and puts her up against different spirits as she tries to suss out the truth of what happened that day at the plantation.

*Beautiful cover alert!* Here, we follow Alejandra, who wears her usual roles of mother, wife, and adopted daughter, even as she slips into a familiar darkness. The same darkness that she learns plagued her biological mother. And her mother’s mother. Once she starts learning more about her biological family, she finds out that the women in her family were tied together through the years by tragedy, specifically tragedy brought on by the Mexican mythological La Llorona, or the weeping woman. The murderous apparition wants to cover Alejandra’s life in despair, but she, like the women before her, is not so easily conquered.

When the French invade Mexico in 1862, Ana María Luna Valdés and her sisters get sent to London for their protection. While they are originally meant to lay low, their uncle convinces them to socialize in high society, with the hopes that the neutral Queen will become sympathetic to their plight. While there, Ana María meets the stoic Gideon Fox, who has worked hard all his life to achieve his current status as a member of Parliament. Fox is on the brink of permanently abolishing slavery — and its loopholes — as he begins to (reluctantly) fall for Ana María. But the two know that their social statuses are precarious in Victorian England — hers as a foreigner, and his as the descendant of a formally enslaved woman. This is an interesting break from the usual historical romance setup.

With this collection of essays, Gurba is snatching edges. She looks in depth at creeps — the actions and people who we actively label as “creeps,” as well as things that we maybe should. Instead of looking just at the more offensive, overt actions, Gurba also looks with nuance at things that are taken less seriously, but are on the same spectrum. People who commit sexual assault and get away with murder are creeps, but so is the society that lets them. But Gurba also makes this collection personal, weaving in pieces of her own story throughout, including her experiences with sexual assault. She even reckons with sources of inspiration and how they’ve missed the mark (specifically Joan Didion and how little she’s had to say on Indigenous populations as a California writer).

Acevedo is the National Book Award-winning author of The Poet X, With the Fire on High, and more, and Family Lore is her adult debut. In it, Flor Marte has a gift that lets her predict when someone will die. It’s because of this gift that, when Flor tells her family she wants to have a living wake for herself, they’re worried. Has she seen her own death? Someone else’s? She keeps her sisters Matilde, Pastor, and Camila in the dark. Meanwhile, in the three days leading up to the wake, we learn of the rich inner lives of the Marte women — Matilde’s marriage issues, Pastora’s drive, and Camila’s need to stand out. We even learn of their cousins, Yadi and Ona, one of whom is being reunited with their love, who’s been imprisoned since they were young, and another who is struggling with the decision of having a child.

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Have you ever heard of cinnamon crunch banana bread? Yeah, me neither, but I now know that I 100% need it in my life. The video @healthfulradiance posts on it makes it look so comforting!

In The Fraud, bestselling and award-winning author Smith gets into some Victorian-era messiness. As The Tichborne Trial — in which a poor Australian butcher claimed he was heir to the Tichborne family fortune — takes hold of England’s attention, we follow the lives of a few of its citizens. There’s Scottish housekeeper Eliza Touchet, who knows that her employer, washed-up writer William Ainsworth, can’t write to save his life. And then there’s Andrew Bogle, the formerly enslaved man from Jamaica whose testimony may very well decide the entire Tichborne case.

Does your book club ever read horror? Here, the author of Cackle brings us a supernatural cult tale just ahead of spooky season. Vesper left her oddly religious family’s community when she was 18, even though she was told doing so would mean she couldn’t return. But now she’s been invited back to attend her friend and cousin Rosie’s wedding, and she is curious why the rules are being broken for her. She’s also wondering what happened to her father and why everyone seems uncharacteristically happy to have her back…

She of Scandal fame is publishing her memoir! Washington details her life as an actor, director, mother, daughter, and activist, showing how she’s overcome setbacks and even kept traumas from the public view. She shares more of her private world and everything — including the mentors and journey to self-discovery — that has led to all her success.

The smog that covers the city where an unnamed chef is still trying to eke out a living means that the fresh ingredients the land once produced have turned into canned products. That is, until the chef takes a job at a mountaintop colony where the privileged have been able to escape many of the negative effects of the climate disaster. Finally, she’s experiencing a clear sky, and she’s able to make recipes with some of the world’s last fresh ingredients. She’s also isolated from her clientele, and learns that the purpose the unseen investors have for her goes beyond just cooking.

Another question for you and your book club activities: do you prefer to have snacky, appetizer-like items or more substantial dinner-type things? I could personally go for either, so today I’m hitting you with my latest food obsession: Rose tteokbokki. It’s basically just tteokbokki with cream/milk added. I have to admit that I “cheat” and use the frozen pack from Trader Joe’s and just add the dairy component, but if you want a more detailed recipe, click here.

In the ’80s in a national forest in New Mexico, bodies are found that belong to two children and a young woman. How they got there remains a mystery for 30 years until two women try to figure out what happened. Now, each woman — librarian Laura and detective Jean — has their own reason for solving the cold case. Laura is trying to keep busy as a way to keep her mind off her cancer treatments, and Jean is trying to prove that she shouldn’t retire yet. Even with their baggage, they’re both willing to risk it all to give a voice to the slain.

This collection of essays from different writers looks at Black history, nature, and Black folks’ relationship with the outdoors. Starting with an archival object — like Benjamin Banneker’s 1795 almanac and a statue of Haitian revolutionary François Makandal — each of these essays reaches back generations and crosses thousands of miles to tell the story of how Black people have related to the land they’ve lived on, even as that relationship has been marred by colonialism.

The structure of this one is interesting. It’s basically a collection of flash fiction pieces that come together to make a novella. Each miniature story shows another aspect of the apocalypse in a ridiculous way that juxtaposes things like pop culture with the trappings of the end of the world. *Bonus points for the inclusion of Barbie as a character.*

Here’s another collection of stories, this time from the author of the bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo. In these eccentric tales, Kawakami explores the very human need for love and wonderment. A goddess uses her spiciness to control followers, a con man shape shifts, a woman has a string of husbands until she’s able to return to the sea, and more.

Though @lifewithmarq made this video for Cinco de Mayo, it can, of course, be made at any time and I think it’ll come in clutch in the (hopefully) last days of this heat.

All you need is fresh strawberries, water, condensed milk, and regular milk.

Blend the strawberries and water to make a puree, strain the puree into a pitcher with the condensed milk, add the regular milk, and that’s it!

Here is a more exact recipe with amounts included.

Hsu writes of the friendship he had in college with Japanese American Ken. He and Ken became close friends despite their seemingly immense differences — Ken was mainstream, while Hsu was more of a rebel. Their friendship came to an abrupt end when Ken was killed during a carjacking only a couple years after they met. Stay True is a tribute to this relationship — it’s about coming of age as an outsider and finding where you belong.

Cooper has lived a life! He broke ground at Marvel Comics as the writer who introduced the first queer storylines and has long advocated against racism and homophobia. Once he discovered his love for ornithology, it led him to birding expeditions in the Americas, Africa, and beyond. It was an incident that took place in New York City that put him more in the public eye recently, though — he was the Central Park birder who a white woman called the police on during one of his routine birding excursions in 2020. The video went viral, and while Cooper explores that incident here, he also explores the other avenues of his life that have made him who he is — from the relationships with his father, mother, and grandmother, to his experiences as a Black queer, nerdy kid growing up on Long Island.

Poet Felix weaves her childhood dyscalculia, a disorder that influences how numbers are understood and interpreted, into her miscalculations in her adult life. This is a clever and raw memoir that will have you in your feelings, even as it makes you laugh.

In Starstruck, El-Badry Nance shares a love for space that started with gazing up at the stars with her father when she was a child. But the field of astrophysics isn’t the most welcoming for A) women, and B) people of color. Nevertheless, El-Badry Nance fought her way through misogyny, racism, and personal issues — like family-induced trauma and a cancer diagnosis — to make a space for herself within the field of astrophysics. And here, she weaves illuminating lessons on the cosmos with her own personal history to tell a unique story.

The payoff for this seems way too big for how easy it is to make.

You just need: sugar, butter, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice, flour, baking powder, milk, and blueberries. @lovevivvv shows how to do it on her Instagram, as well as in print on her Substack.

The Sealey Challenge is named for Nicole Sealey, the award-winning poet who started the challenge in 2017. This collection looks at the ways Black lives have been erased — both literally and physically, as well as in public records — by honing in on what happened in 2014 to Michael Brown in Ferguson. And I have to say, the way she goes about it is striking: she uses the Department of Justice’s official report — which described the policing and justice system of the city as racist — and redacts it. The contents of the report are visible just past the words that Sealey has bolded, which gives an entirely new interpretation of the text.

This collection has won the Whiting Award and the Alice James Award. Lush and rich, these poems look at how Brown bodies are nourished, by food, language, and wherever they call home. Cariño looks beyond trauma, instead focusing on community, bonds, and how those across the diaspora connect to each other.

The publication date has shifted a bit with this one, so just make sure to keep an eye out for it. James looks at the body, and how one connects to their own. How the dynamics — between self and body and body and society — change, as well as how the world relates to Black queerness.

Tibble dives into the many aspects of her identity. She looks at how Indigenous Māori traditions fit into her modern reality, discussing everything from the Kardashians to Twilight with lyricism and humor. Mythologies, stereotypes, pop culture, and the effects of colonization are all broken down and looked at, and Tibble shows where you can find her in them.

I think I’ve recommended a few recipes by @kimmyskreations1 already, but I feel like y’all see why. I don’t do much with baking + fruit, but it’s still peach season and I’m looking forward to trying something out of my ordinary.

She doesn’t include printed instructions, but Creole Contessa does here.

You’ll need:

– 2 cans of peaches

– butter

– empanada wrappers

– white sugar

– cinnamon

– brown sugar

– nutmeg

– vanilla bean gel/vanilla extract

You can add amounts by eyeballing @kimmyskreations1’s video (and stopping when your ancestors say to), or just follow Contessa’s listed-out instructions.

This takes place during the Rwandan genocide and is partially fictional, partially autobiographical. Hunger has such a constant presence in characters’ lives that it’s personified as Igifu, “a cruel guardian angel.” A child searches for nourishment at the bud of a flower, a woman recounts her life before the war and after, and a young man remembers his father and the wealth that cattle promised in another time. Zadie Smith has said the collection “rescues a million souls from the collective noun genocide.”

Is “talk to my back” the Japanese version of “talk to the hand?” I personally think so, and if it really is, then this title is serving an extra bit of life. Especially considering its subject matter: it follows Chiharu as she struggles with the state of her marriage and mothering two teenage daughters. As her husband’s disregard for her — he sees her as a domestic servant and cheats on her — becomes apparent, so too does Japan’s failing of its female population. Murasaki was the first manga artist to use manga as a medium to explore the lives of Japanese women in such an honest way, and Talk to My Back was originally published serially in the influential alternative manga magazine Garo from 1981-84.

Janina is an aging astrologist who house-sits for some of her neighbors, who usually only return to their houses in her small Polish town for vacations. She also translates the poetry of William Blake, which is an interesting combination of activities (listen, get you someone who can do both). When the bodies of some of her neighbors, people she knew not to 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.

This was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and follows two homegirls and their ever-changing views on motherhood. Since forever, Laura and Alina have thought that becoming mothers wasn’t for them, instead structuring their lives around careers. So much so that when they reach their mid-30s, Laura has her tubes tied. But then Alina does a 180 and announces her decision to have a child. This, understandably, rattles their friendship, but what starts off as shaky ground turns into sympathy for a damning diagnosis for Alina’s unborn child. As Alina contends with what may happen to her baby, Laura begins to see motherhood in a new light, courtesy of her widowed neighbor’s young son.

I have never heard of watermelon fries, but I’m so intrigued! It’s essentially just watermelon cut into fry-like shapes, and @Feelgoodfoodie made a delicious-sounding dip to go with them.

All you need is: a watermelon, crinkle cutter (if you want to be extra cute), and yogurt, honey, and strawberries for the dip. Cut up the watermelon and blend the dip ingredients together and there you have it.

Bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo makes her adult debut with Family Lore. In it, the women of a Dominican American family prepare for a living wake. Flor Marte can see when other people will die, and so it worries her sisters when she requests a living wake for herself. But whether she will die soon or not she keeps to herself — and she’s not the only secret keeper. From a secret attraction to an old lover recently released from prison — the Marte women’s rich, complex, and magical lives are brilliantly brought to life here.

A dead body is discovered in a small town of Black, Jewish, and other European immigrants in Pennsylvania in 1972. To fully understand what happened, McBride takes us all the way back to 1925, when Moshe and Chona ran both the only integrated dance hall as well as the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store in the Chicken Hill community. It’s the Moshes who help their friend Nate, the leader of the Black community, when he needs to hide his deaf nephew to stop him from becoming institutionalized. But then racists interfere and something terrible happens. But the community comes together to protect its own. (Aug. 8)

I really loved Cañas’ The Hacienda and am super excited for this one. It’s the 1840s, and Mexico has long been threatened by invaders from the north. But there’s another kind of monster that threatens the country’s borders. And when Nena and Néstor were young, it was one of these monsters that attacked Nena and caused Néstor to flee. He’s been fleeing ever since, and doing his best f-boi impression to drown out the guilt of having abandoned his best friend. The two are united, though, when Néstor is part of a militia to fight off the Americans, and Nena is that militia’s curandera, or healer. She (understandably) feels some type of way about how he bolted nine years ago, but the real threat soon takes precedence over any long-held grudges. (Aug. 15)

This is part whodunit, missing persons case, meditation on race, philosophical exploration, and more. And it’s delightfully twisty on top of all that. The patriarch of the Parksons goes missing, and it’s only Eugene — one of the Parksons’ kids who has a rare condition that prevents him from speaking — who saw what happened. We follow the investigation, yes, but we also see how the family relearns how to communicate with each other and how they define what it means to be happy. (Aug. 29)

This is a simple dish/technique if you like tobiko/fish roe. You just need the fish roe, steamed rice, butter, fried egg, rice seasoning (like furikake), sesame oil, soy sauce, scallions, and a little bit of sesame seeds.

In this second chance romance, Jana is set to attend a destination wedding in Tanzania and ready for the reset it’s sure to provide. But then she finds out her ex, and child’s father, Anil will also be there, and suddenly her plans are ruined. Even though he’s a good father, she can’t forgive him for what he did years ago. To distract herself and show that she’s not sweating him, she comes up with a list to get her juices flowing. She’ll perform karaoke, do dance routines for strangers, and generally let her guard down. But that makes her more susceptible to her still-lingering attraction to Anil.

Main character Tatsu provides a good portion of this manga’s comic relief as a former member of the yakuza who now spends his days as a loving househusband to his wife Miku. Turns out you can take the husband out of the yakuza, but you can’t take the yakuza out of the husband. Tatsu’s natural aesthetic and demeanor are just a little too gangster-adjacent and still reflect his time as the much-feared “Immortal Dragon.” And, his facial expressions still make people sweat. They’re also just a little out of place in the clearance section of the grocery store. Tatsu brings a hilarious intensity to the most mundane and everyday househusband chores, and it’s fun to watch him interact with his neighbors.

“Get you a man who can do both! “—Miku, probably

Tell me you wouldn’t read this cover in a bookstore or at a library and have to pick it up. And the title is pretty spot on. Cinnamon is drunk when she saves the shifter demon Fallon, and after he follows her home and tells her of the evil goddess that has reduced demons to zombie-like states, she accompanies him to free his people. She helps him free some other things, too, if you know what I mean. This is a fun, funny, steamy monster romance with a Black female lead (in other words, you should read it ASAP). Bonus points for Cinnamon’s siblings being named Chili and Cumin, and for the fact that the paperback cover is fuego.

This queer YA retelling of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is the last entry to Price’s Jane Austen Murder Mystery series. Fanny is living at her uncle Sir Thomas Bertram’s estate, where she suffers at the hands of her mean relatives. Then her uncle dies. Now, against the advice of her crush Edmund, aspiring artist Fanny is trying to get to the bottom of what really happened to her uncle and will uncover blackmail, art fraud, and more.

This is one of those sweet treats that I think you’ll love, but also be good with just one serving. It seems pretty rich. Also, it’s basically just fresh Rice Krispie treats, but with crushed Oreos instead of cereal. Here’s a video to follow along with.

You’ll need:

– a big pack of Oreos

– a pack of mini marshmallows

– 4 ounces of unsalted butter

As with Rice Krispie treats, melt the butter at a medium-low temperature, add the marshmallows and stir until they’re melted as well. Add the melted marshmallows to a tray that you’ve already added nonstick spray + crushed Oreos to. Mix together and spread across the tray/pan evenly, then let it sit in the fridge for 30 minutes and cut into squares.

Now for the books!

The official blurb for this book mentions how Ndopu, a global humanitarian with muscular atrophy, wrote this memoir with “one good finger.” And it’s with that one good finger that he excelled in school when told he wouldn’t make it past age 5, became a highly requested speaker on disability justice in his teens, and got accepted to Oxford University. But it’s also been a struggle — Ndopu speaks on how, while he has the opportunity to do things like sip on bubbly with the world’s leaders, he’s also had to fight that much harder for his success because of the ableist world we live in. Case in point, Ndopu has struggled to get accommodations from Oxford, with all their money and resources. Which is just shameful, honestly.

Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about how living through COVID has been as a disabled, queer femme-presenting person. The fact that the world was made for nondisabled people was made even more clear since the onset of the pandemic, but in this book, they imagine a world where the majority of people are disabled. They posit that disability justice and disability culture is vital to overcoming things like fascism, the environmental crisis, and other issues. They also talk about the care crisis, and how disabled people have supported each other, and how they can continue to.

O’Connell actually stars in Queer As Folk and Special, and has a few things in common with the main character of Just by Looking At Him, Elliott, who is a TV writer, gay, and has cerebral palsy. Elliott is super-duper going through it, though. Behind his seemingly Instagram-perfect life, he’s struggling with alcohol addiction, being unfaithful to his boyfriend, and issues with internalized ableism. There are quite a few laughs to be had as he tries to get his ish together.

CW: nasty ableist language

When I mentioned this poetry collection in this newsletter a while back, I mentioned Ted Hughes, and I feel like I should again. Antrobus features a Ted Hughes poem titled “Deaf School” where he crosses out each line. Why? Because Hughes wrote things like “the deaf children were monkey nimble” and how they had “faces of little animals.” Antrobus actually won the 2018 Ted Hughes award (the irony) for poetry with this collection, in which he explores his identity as a d/Deaf person, a British Jamaican, and society’s failings where d/Deaf children are concerned.

Side note, but when I tried to look up the poem by Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s husband for those unawares), I could only find stuff having to do with Antrobus, which was…interesting. The original poem is so gross to me, I can’t imagine how Hughes has a poetry award in his name, but here we are.

This is like top-tier-level comfort food. And looks super easy to make. For exact measurements and directions, click here. For a video, click here.

You’ll need:

baby gold potatoes

parmesan

Garlic and Herb Sauce:

unsalted butter

olive oil

parsley

garlic

parmesan

salt

black pepper

dried oregano

red pepper flakes

For dipping sauce, Moribyan used Sweet Baby Ray’s chicken sauce.

Hyacinth and Ezra Kindred are two Black sisters who have a very loving upbringing in a coastal town in Maine. But in the summer of ’57, everything changes. Suddenly, it feels as though their adolescence has brought about a change in how their white neighbors — some of whom were their friends — view them. Around the country, the Civil Rights Movement is gaining steam, and the sisters have to reevaluate where they fit into everything.

The horrors of capitalism are on full display in Ripe. Cassie has gotten her dream job at a Silicon Valley startup but is also seriously regretting it. The people she works with are toxic, entitled, and downright criminal — and once her bosses start requiring she engage in illegal activity, too, the black hole that’s always been with her, that gets stronger through her depression and anxiety, feels closer than ever. 

In time for Disability Pride Month — and beyond, of course — Alshammari has written a memoir sharing her experiences as a Kuwati Palestinian English professor. A diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at 18 makes her come face to face with mortality, as she is told she only has a short time to live. Years, later, having outlived the lethal warning, she completes a graduate degree in the UK and returns home to become a professor. One of her students becomes a confidante and encourages her to put her experiences on the page. The result is an intimate weaving of Alshammari’s life as a professor of English in Kuwait, as a disabled person, and as a woman.

Nelson’s follow-up to the award-winning Open Water sees Stephen, a natural-born dancer, as he tries to navigate the tricky waters of being a first generation Ghanian in England. He dances to find joy — in church, with friends, in basements, with his band, and even to his father’s music as a way to bond with the man he doesn’t know. But then the dynamic between him and his father turns sour, and he has to readjust and figure out how to repair things — or not.