Category: True Story

It’s a collection of BIPOC writers from Minnesota! Such a cool project. Indigenous, Black, and writers of color share essays and poems focused on the year 2020, from the pandemic to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officers. Contributors include people from an array of cultures, including “Indigenous Dakota and Anishinaabe, African American, Hmong, Somali, Afghani, Lebanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Mexican, transracial adoptees, mixed race, and LGBTQ+ perspectives.”

Love nonfiction aimed at kids. This is for children ages 9-12, and focuses on twenty-six contemporary artists from Africa and of African descent. These include “American artists Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, portraitist to Michelle Obama Amy Sherald, and Kehinde Wiley; British Turner Prize–winning painters Lubaina Himid and Chris Ofili; renowned South African visual activist and photographer Zanele Muholi; Nigerian sound artist Emeka Ogboh” and more. Are there amazing images of the art? Yes, there are.

Part of Melville House’s Last Interview series, this (short!) book contains interviews of civil rights activist and decades-long congressman John Lewis. Honestly, this feels like an amazing end of year read: “From a young activist testifying in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday to recounting the violence he met as a Freedom Rider to an elder statesman inspired by today’s civil rights activists, this collection forms a portrait of a man whose life was spent fighting for a better world and never lost hope.” It’s the right kind of inspiration to end 2021 with.

The winners of the National Book Awards were announced on Wednesday! This is one of my favorite awards to follow – I feel like the winners always suggest something interesting about what is happening in the world at any given time. This year’s winner in nonfiction is All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles. I am so jazzed about this – and I happen to have it checked out from the library right now. Weekend reading, here I come!

This week I want to highlight an episode of author Adam Grant’s podcast WorkLife (or maybe it’s called Taken For Granted – I can’t totally tell). Anyway! In this episode, he interviews Lin-Manuel Miranda and his father, Luis Miranda, about “finding harmony between creativity and productivity.” The interview is from back in July, around the time In the Heights was entering movie theaters, but it’s all evergreen content about creative process, family, and advocacy.

Professor Abdur-Rahman’s parents were both Black Power–era converts to Islam, who left their mosque when they divorced in her adolescent years. Her memoir recounts her father’s history and her own, going from “the Christian righteousness of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.’s 1950s Harlem, through the Malcolm X–inspired college activism of the late 1960s, to the unfulfilled potential of the early 1970s Black American Muslim movement.” A look at the Black Power movement and American Muslims from the mid-20th century to today.

I talked about this in the nonfiction preview for 2021 and it’s now out! Jessup White is the Public Relations & Community Engagement Officer at Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. In her book, she talks about her discovery that she was related to both Jefferson and Hemings and “explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors—both the enslaver and the enslaved.”

To find out how and why Americans eat the way they do, Fielding-Singh — a sociologist and ethnographer — looks at dozens of families, and does a deep dive into four: “the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas, a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family.” What is the meaning of food and how does it change depending on your context? Really excited about this one; I haven’t seen a lot of books like it.

Until two years ago, I had seen no Supernatural. Then I had a really gay moment on Tumblr where I saw a gifset of Ruth Connell who plays the season ten witch Rowena, and I decided to just watch all the way through to get to her. So I have now seen ten seasons of this show. Which is still only 67% because the show ran for fifteen seasons whattt. This history goes through the show’s “predecessors, characters, major storylines, and fan activism.” This show and its fandom are something else, and if you like it, you’ll probably like this.

This week I started reading The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson. I love her approachable but critical histories about race in the United States, and this book is no exception. In it she explores “the history and impact of the Second Amendment” and how it’s been used to “keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.” It’s a fascinating look and citizenship and how laws are applied unequally, resulting in deadly consequences.  

Did you know that in 1969, the Black Panther Party was feeding more children every day than the state of California? And in the early ’60s in Mississippi, a woman named Aylene Quin provided her restaurant to fellow civil rights activists (like members of SNCC) for their necessarily secret meetings. Cope’s book illustrates “how food was used by women as a potent and necessary ideological tool in both the rural south and urban north to create lasting social and political change.” So cool.

The story of Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, Countess of Bristol, who in 1776 (yes, that 1776), went on trial for bigamy. The case drew an immense amount of public interest during a time when America was pretty sure it was supposed to be the most popular topic in the UK.

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei writes about growing up in “Little Siberia,” where his father (acclaimed poet Ai Qing) had been sent in exile by former friend Mao Zedong. Ai went to America to study art, where he met cultural figures of the ’60s like Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. His political activism “has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011.” Check it out if you’re interested in art, freedom of expression, or activist history.

Bryan Stevenson is a civil rights lawyer who specializes in defending “those most desperate and in need” through the Equal Justice Initiative. This book is a memoir about his time as a young lawyer and closely follows the story of Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit. It’s a fascinating story and a deep look into injustices of the justice system. I love this book so much, and the movie starring Michael B. Jordan is pretty great too!

This memoir is truly a classic of the genre, a look at a family that was both dysfunctional and deeply loving. Walls’ father was charismatic and inspiring while sober, but truly dysfunctional when drunk. Couple that with her mother’s free spirit, and you get a childhood full of love and neglect. This is a difficult book to read, but I absolutely tore through it. Although the 2017 movie adaptation got mixed reviews, I remember enjoying it – Brie Larson is a great addition to any movie cast. 

At this point, I think more people are familiar with the tv series Friday Night Lights (SO GOOD) than the book it’s based on… but I’m here to tell you that the book is a real treat too. Written in 1990, this classic of the sports nonfiction genre follows the 1988 Permian High School Panthers, a team from Odessa, Texas, as they compete for the Texas state championship. I read this one quite a while ago, but I remember it being a great portrait of football, family, and community in a small town.

Alice and I are both on record on our podcast, For Real, as being fans of the nonfiction trend of telling the hidden stories of the women behind the scenes in history. There have been a lot of books like that coming out, but I think Hidden Figures was one of the first. The book tells the story of Black, female mathematicians at NASA – known as “human computers” – who did the math helping get astronauts into space. The movie adaptation is good, but also flattens down the edges of some of this story. I highly recommend the book if you haven’t picked it up!

I am not sure where my nonfiction reading is going to take me this weekend! I’m feeling the pull to memoir, which may lead me to a book I purchased a few months ago, The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson. Henderson grew up “Black, weird, and overwhelmingly uncool” in a white neighborhood in New York, raised by her grandparents after being abandoned by her mother. Everything I read about it makes it sound intense and emotional, which I hope means it’ll be unputdownable.

The Women’s Professional Football League existed from 1965-1973, originally conceived as a publicity stunt by a businessman from Cleveland. The story is set “against the backdrop of second-wave feminism and the passage of Title IX, these athletes broke new barriers and showed adoring crowds what women were capable of physically.” Like A League of Their Own! But in the ’60s and with football. Yay.

Howard professor Harrison looks at the role enslaved Black men and women played in creating the United States. Harrison argues for a national memorial to honor “enslaved, Black-bodied people” and discusses those forced to build historic buildings like Jefferson’s home Monticello and Washington’s Mount Vernon. History!

I feel like we’re getting more and more culinary history these days, and I am here for it. I don’t even cook! But, y’know. I eat. So it feels relevant and interesting. Sen covers the 1940s to today, looking at seven immigrant women “who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today.” These women include “Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.” I love the phrase “the deity of Italian cuisine.” Well done, people.

Jerusalem is so old! And so much has happened there! Also, there are so many things under the ground everywhere that we don’t know about, which is fascinating, and here is a book about the stuff under one particular location. Lawler’s book “takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City” and “brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape.” Super neat.

I get to tell you about an actual nonfiction book I am actually reading right at this very moment! The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA by Jorge L. Contreras is an account of AMP v. Myriad, a case brought to the Supreme Court by the ALCU about the idea of gene patents. Contreras follows the case through the entire process, clearly explaining both complex scientific concepts and intricate legal maneuvering in ways I’ve found very engaging – no small feat! This book is great.

A gift item for you or a loved one! Or for an enemy if you really wanna CONFUSE them. This is a coffee table book with behind-the-scenes info, chit-chat, and illustrations of David’s sweaters and Moira’s wigs I cannot emphasize this enough. So exciting. Wow.

Author Contreras is an authority on human genetics law (again I say — there’s something for everyone). Here he dives into the case where an attorney “discovered that women were being charged exorbitant fees to test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, tests they desperately needed—all because Myriad Genetics had patented the famous BRCA genes.” They patented genes! So this attorney (Chris Hansen), the ACLU, and a whole team took the case to the Supreme Court. I do love a book that gets real into one court case.

Okay, so we know about the weirdo Brontës and their graveyard house, but what about their mother! This is a biography of Maria Branwell (yes! Branwell! like their ne’er-do-well brother), who died at 38 (Charlotte was six at this time) and moved from Cornwall to Yorkshire, which was probably pretty tough. What do we know of her? How did she influence her children? True questions we should get into in this bio.

This cover is so spooky! This is cool because we only hear about Salem or sometimes the witch trials in England during the 1640s, but not during the Spanish Inquisition (you probably didn’t expect that) or in Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas. This features ten essay portraits of women, which “study their subjects’ social status, particularize their motivations, determine the characteristics of their prosecution, and deduce the reasons used to justify violence against them.” And again — please look at that spooky cover.

His book explores how musicals are assembled, starting from the overture and concluding with the curtain call. He uses the structure of a musical to explain theater history, musical theory, and how hit-making musicals lead from one to another. I’ve never studied theatre officially, so this book was eye-opening for me. It helped me appreciate and feel more confident dissecting the shows I’ve loved and hated.

You may know Leslie Odom Jr. from a little-known musical called Hamilton. For his portrayal of Aaron Burr, Odom Jr. won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, but that role wasn’t just magical. In this book he shares the story of his hard work as a singer and actor and asks questions about how you can unlock your potential and achieve your goals. His stories are inspirational, motivational, and empowering. I bet this one is great on audio!

This book offers a history of Black performance from the Civil War through the 1960s, when performers like Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier started to find their voice on stage. Lane chronicles the popularity of minstrel shows, Black performers during the Jazz Age, and early musicals of the 1930s that helped push the door open for other performers. We obviously still have a long way to go in helping Broadway reflect the diversity of our country, but this is a good look at some of the early changes.

In this book, Wolf dives deep into the female contributors of Broadway musicals – performers, creators, and characters. She starts during the Cold War and moves through the present, exploring assumptions about gender and sexuality, then moving on to deep dives to find feminist moments in many famous shows (with a special emphasis on Wicked, one of my favorite musicals!).

I’m on a real YA fantasy kick lately (I have thoughts about the Throne of Glass series that I don’t know what to do with), but I’m hoping I can get myself in a nonfiction headspace this weekend. The book that seems like it will do the trick is Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall by Heather Demetrios. This YA nonfiction book is a funny and smart look at one of the most dangerous Allied spies of World War II. I can’t wait!