Category: True Story

In this anthology from Midwestern indie press Belt Publishing, Williamson has brought together Black writers from around the Midwest, Rust Belt, and the Great Plains. Some of the writers share their experiences living in Midwestern cities. Others share what it’s like being from the country. But whatever part of the region that they are from, each writer has a story to tell. Some pieces focus on cultural commentary, pushing back against cultural narratives that erase the Black experience from the Midwest. Some contributors share personal essays about their specific lived experience. This is a fascinating read full of so many new-to-me writers!

Also from Belt Publishing, Midwest Futures examines what the future holds for the region. Originally home to vast swaths of farmland and hundreds of factories, the Midwest is now struggling. Factories are closing and farming has become more and more monopolized. Christman takes a look into the heart of the Midwest and its possible futures. He explores Midwestern culture and identity, its past and how its history impacts its present and future. The book is made up of several essays, each looking at the region from a different angle, and together creating a complete picture.

Elliot Page came out as trans after struggling with his identity for his entire life. Assigned female at birth, Page made a career for himself playing women on the big screen, receiving a nomination for his role as the lead character in Juno. But behind-the-scenes, Page felt miserable as he was stuffed into expensive dresses and pushed to behave in a more feminine way. Page narrates the audiobook edition, bringing such a personal touch to his story.

In her Audie-winning performance, Viola Davis narrates her memoir Finding Me. We follow her childhood growing up in a poor family in Rhode Island. Many of Davis’ memories are of listening to the rats scurrying around her bedroom, and waking up to rat bites and the faces of her dolls being chewed off. But she found comfort in theater, pursuing her passion to college, an institution none of her family members had ever been to before. She performs her story with such an incredible connection with her text, refusing to shy away from the emotion she feels while performing her story.

I’ve been listening to audiobooks for my entire life, but I’ve never read a history of them! Rubery has compiled a detailed history of the “talking book,” as they were first known. From the very first moments of the initial invention of sound recording, people began to ask questions around what would happen if they recorded a book onto audio? For decades they didn’t have the funds or other resources to make recording widely available. Rubery covers the role disability played in pushing technology forward. I loved how detailed this history was, and think it’s the perfect choice for audiobook reading.

Samantha Irby is back with her fourth essay collection, Quietly Hostile. Like her previous essays, Irby uses humor to discuss the difficult things in her life. Chronic illness, the end of a dream, the pandemic — Irby approaches each one with a fresh quip or spot of dark humor. In one essay, Irby and her wife adopt a terrible dog that they definitely didn’t mean to keep. In another essay, Irby describes a major allergic reaction she has when she tries out one of her wife’s supplements. And if you love audiobooks, this is definitely one you need to check out on audio. Irby is a phenomenal narrator, using her sense of perfect comedic timing to create a laugh-out-loud performance that will have you being far too loud in quiet spaces.

I read A Fever in the Heartland for a book club with some friends, and we all couldn’t stop talking about it. We all agreed that when we think of the KKK, we typically think of the South. But Timothy Egan is here to remind folks that the KKK took a national approach, finding strongholds across the country. Egan focuses on Indiana, which had local clubs of the KKK in all but two of its counties. He describes the history of the organization in the region, how the KKK had many different goals of ridding the region of various groups that they felt weren’t “desirable.” This book clearly outlines that the KKK had control over a lot of local politics, which gave them great success in their heinous work to destroy any community they thought was not supporting their efforts in white supremacy.

Imani Perry’s family is originally from Alabama, but she moved North for her education and her academic career. In South to America, Perry returns to her home region with fresh eyes, seeing the South in all of its complexities. Each chapter looks at a different sub-region of the South, highlighting important events and histories. The whole reading experience feels like Perry is a docent giving readers a tour of the South, pointing out interesting places and things along the way. Perry argues that the South is the heart of America, that the South is the truest measure of where America is as a nation. She shares many incredible insights with readers, and her work is so well researched and laid out. She also reads the audiobook, so if you love listening to your books, this is definitely one to read with your ears.

When Christine Hyung-Oak Lee was in her early 30s, she experienced a stroke, which changed her life forever. For over a year, she had little to no short-term memory. She wrote details down in a notebook so her future self could reread the things that had happened earlier that day. She tried to take care of herself, making her own food and dressing herself, but she struggled to do everyday tasks. In her memoir, Lee describes herself as “Unstuck in Time,” referring to Kurt Vonnegut’s work, which she read and reread during this time. Lee’s memoir is such an important account of someone experiencing a brain-related illness.

Wang has lived most of her life with schizophrenia. As she’s moved through the world, she’s experienced a countless number of people who have made a lot of assumptions about her based purely on her diagnosis. But most people she’s encountered have little to no idea what living with schizophrenia is actually like. In her essay collection, Wang shares her experience with the condition, highlighting a lot of the lesser-known details of the disease. Her writing is stunning, with incredible prose and insightful observations. The Collected Schizophrenias is such a beautiful book that I love more every time I read it.

I had a different book in mind to talk about today, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this one. T Kira Madden has such a brilliant way of precisely writing the story of her life. She grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, the daughter of a Jewish father and a Chinese Hawaiian mother. While she came from a wealthy family, not all was well in her household. From her child’s eyes, she sees her parents’ struggle with their cycles of addiction. Madden has a brilliant way of communicating with the reader, choosing the precise details to include in each scene. Her writing is so entrancing, so moving. I’ve read and reread Madden’s memoir in essays, and I discover something new every time.

There’s something that I love about a good essay, especially essays about the South. Margaret Renkl is one of the best, and her regular columns are a breath of fresh air. She writes about the complex realities of the new South, with all of its difficult history and present day issues. But there’s also the joy of the successes, no matter how small. Not to mention the incredible nature writing — such descriptions she brings to the page! Each essay is self-contained, a bright, perfectly cut gem. You can read one or all of them if you like.

Winner of the IACP 2019 First Book Award presented by The Julia Child Foundation, Bottom of the Pot celebrates Persion cooking, highlighting the incredible wealth of flavors of the cuisine. Naz Deravian is a home cook based in L.A., and she shares recipes from her childhood and her takes on Persian classics. When she was just a girl, Deravian and her family fled Iran during the height of the revolution. Food has been a way that Deravian and her family have stayed connected to their culture. I loved these recipes, photos, and little snippets that Deravian shares about her past, connecting moments in her life with her recipes.

Victuals, a winner of a James Beard Award, is one of my newest cookbook acquisitions, and I fell in love with it from the moment I saw it. In the last several years, Southern Appalachian cooking has been making its mark on the literary world. Ronni Lundy looks at traditional heritage recipes from Appalachia, celebrating simple ingredients like beans and greens. The photos by Johnny Autry are gorgeous, and take me back to summers watching my grandparents eat salted tomato slices while relaxing on the back porch of their cabin.

Morgan Jerkins follows her ancestry, visiting the different places around the country where her family is from and where they made their home. I love the way she takes readers along on her journey, giving readers a front-row seat to her mental process as she learns new things about her ancestors. She visits places across the South, like South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. Each new place explores the history of her ancestors in that location, and she discovers both good and bad things about her family’s history. I feel like her writing is so intimate as she shares the many feelings she works through. This book is perfect for road trips or to travel the country through reading Jerkins’ story.

Last year, I finally read Patrick Radden Keefe’s incredible narrative nonfiction book Say Nothing, which follows the Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He begins his story with the disappearance of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten. From there, he jumps around to many of the characters involved in different aspects of the I.R.A., detailing how key events in Northern Ireland’s history impact these characters’ lives. It’s truly an incredible work of nonfiction, and I keep recommending it to everyone and their mother’s brother.

In 2019, Sarah M. Broom won the National Book Award for The Yellow House, which follows the story of her family and their connection to New Orleans. She describes her family’s history through the Yellow House, her childhood home that her mother owned for decades. We learn about Broom’s family history and the history of New Orleans. Through her vibrant and engrossing writing, you come to love her family and the Yellow House. This book is such a beautiful work of nonfiction, and I can’t recommend it enough.

As an Appalachian book lover who adores food writing, I was so thrilled to learn about Erica Abrams Locklear’s book on Appalachian Cuisine. Locklear examines the history of Appalachian food, its influences, and what it looks like today. I loved the way that she delved into the creativity of Appalachian cooks and the stigma against Appalachian food. She discusses chefs like Ashleigh Shanti and Sean Brock, both of whom have a national presence and discuss Appalachian food in all of its historical complexities. This book is perfect for folks with a love of American cuisine and the incredible food it brings to the table.

After Goldbach experiences a mental health crisis, she isn’t able to finish the last step of her graduate work. Instead, she gets a job at the local steel mill, writing down her experiences and the complex and very dangerous work she does everyday. Goldbach examines the realities of being paid very well for a job that is such high risk. She’s able to capture the blurry borders of being a person in academia from a working class background. Is the college debt, years of study, and poor job prospects worth it? How does the prejudice of “blue collar jobs” impact her decision? Goldbach does such an excellent job of balancing out all of these different questions while weaving in her own story.

Cornejo Villavicencio and her family have lived undocumented in America for decades. Her dad could only work “blue collar” jobs that didn’t pay well and took an intense toll on his body. Cornejo Villavicencio showed incredible promise, getting high grades, scholarship, and honors. But at every step, she worried about her and her family’s undocumented status. She also experienced suicidal ideation from an early age, her mind filling with intrusive thoughts and clouding her judgment. The Undocumented Americans is part Cornejo Villavicencio’s story and interviews with other undocumented Americans from around the country, showing the diversity of their lived experiences.