Carla Jean Whitley

NonfictionSocial Science

Waste

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Something was wrong in Lowndes County, Alabama. Sewage was backing up into people’s yards, and the county was threatening to arrest residents who lacked a proper septic system. But buying and installing a new septic system was cost prohibitive for many residents of this rural county, where the systems are prone to failure because of the soil’s high clay content.

Environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers brought senators, activists, media and other public figures to her home county to show them the conditions people lived in. She wanted to bring awareness and funding to people who couldn’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” because they didn’t have any boots to begin with, she writes in Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. Flowers pressured the state to stop criminalizing poverty, and as awareness grew, she was able to coordinate new septic systems and sometimes even new homes for people in need.

In Waste, Flowers recounts a lifetime of advocacy that has culminated in the battle for one Alabama county. Flowers was raised by Civil Rights activists, with others in and out of her home, and so advocacy has been a theme throughout her life. And though Lowndes County is at the heart of her work, Flowers writes about similar conditions across the United States.

Known as “the Erin Brockovich of sewage,” Flowers shares many insights into America’s need for environmental justice. “I believe we will find solutions if we can direct the energies of academics, business, government, and philanthropy toward finding them," she writes, "and that’s where public policy comes in: to make this issue a priority, set standards for how we will live in the United States, and provide incentives for innovative solutions.”

Her direct, easy-to-follow prose offers a plain look at the challenges that face many people in poverty and the value of activism. The lessons she takes from seeking wastewater solutions may inspire advocates nationwide. 

Something was wrong in Lowndes County, Alabama. Sewage was backing up into people’s yards, and the county was threatening to arrest residents who lacked a proper septic system. But buying and installing a new septic system was cost prohibitive for many residents of this rural…

FictionPopular Fiction

Cobble Hill

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

When a person chooses a new home, it’s rarely a decision based on the people who live nearby. The homebuyer’s focus is typically on the property and the neighborhood surrounding it. But once the person moves in, their life will invariably intersect with those of the neighbors.

Roy, Wendy and their daughter, Shy, draw a crowd when they move into Cobble Hill, an upscale neighborhood in Brooklyn. Roy is a bestselling British novelist, but the family is ready for a change. They move across the ocean to Wendy’s native New York City, where Roy’s desire to blend in quickly becomes impossible. He’s struggling with his next book, and though she doesn’t admit it to her husband, Wendy is also having trouble with her new magazine job.

Soon, Roy is pulled into his neighbor Tupper’s marital drama when Tupper asks Roy to catsit. Tupper’s wife, Elizabeth, is an artist who comes and goes on her whims, and Tupper is anxious and eager for her return. Nearby, Stuart and Mandy face challenges of their own. The couple fell in love in high school, and Stuart found fame as a rock star. But those days are over, and now Stuart works a stable but boring job. Mandy is frustrated with her body’s changes as she enters her mid-30s, and she lies about a medical diagnosis to cover her inertia and grab her husband’s attention, which has recently become divided by Peaches, the elementary school nurse, ever since he met her while picking up his sick son, Ted. Meanwhile, Peaches and her husband, Greg, were longtime fans of Stuart’s band, and she indulges her crush. Peaches and Greg’s son, Liam, doesn’t know what to make of the tension between his parents.

In Cobble Hill, the residents’ lives intersect and tangle with one another as school dramas unfold and neighbors host social gatherings. As the couples examine their significant others’ relationships with the neighbors, author Cecily von Ziegesar (creator of Gossip Girl) spins a fast-paced, funny tale of the sometimes confusing but often entertaining ways neighbors relate to one another.

When a person chooses a new home, it’s rarely a decision based on the people who live nearby. The homebuyer’s focus is typically on the property and the neighborhood surrounding it. But once the person moves in, their life will invariably intersect with those of the neighbors.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Down Along With That Devil’s Bones

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

The Civil War ended in 1865. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate army general and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, died in 1877. But a bust made in his likeness was installed in a park in Selma, Alabama, in 2000, days after the inauguration of the first Black mayor of a city known for its critical role in the civil rights movement.

Down Along With That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning With Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy by Connor Towne O’Neill examines Forrest’s life and how people still seek to preserve his legacy through monuments, buildings and markers bearing his name. When Pennsylvania-raised O’Neill first arrived in Alabama, he didn’t think he had any connection to the Confederacy. But as he began to examine not only Forrest’s life but also his lasting influence, O’Neill acknowledged, “I can reject every tenet of the Confederacy and yet the fact remains that, in fighting to maintain white supremacy, Forrest sought to perpetuate a system tilted in my favor. Forrest fought for me.”

Though O’Neill doesn’t go too deep into his own experience, sharing his inner monologue serves as an invitation for white readers to likewise examine the ways they have benefited from systems built by and in the interest of white people. Along the way, O’Neill offers all readers a lens through which to examine their relationship to the past.

The monuments O’Neill writes about were erected long after Forrest’s death. In this way, the Confederacy isn’t just history. It’s a foundation for how our present-day society functions. In recounting the ways Nathan Bedford Forrest’s legacy shows up in contemporary life, Down Along With That Devil’s Bones points to the oppression these monuments seek to preserve. This book is a well-researched history and a call for reformation in America.

The Civil War ended in 1865. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate army general and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, died in 1877. But a bust made in his likeness was installed in a park in Selma, Alabama, in 2000, days after the…

NonfictionMusicEssays

She Come by It Natural

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Dolly Parton doesn’t call herself a feminist. She’s made that clear in interviews over her six-decade career. But it doesn’t matter what label she embraces: Parton is an icon, and she’s a hero to many women who hear their lives reflected in her extensive song catalog.

Sarah Smarsh knows Parton’s influence well. Smarsh is the author of the bestselling Heartland, a National Book Award finalist that details her Kansas family’s life in poverty. She was raised by passionate, hardworking women who stood up against the men and systems that often held them down. These women paved the way for Smarsh to pursue her education and then a renowned writing career, though not without challenges.

Along the way, the soundtrack of her life has been populated with songs by Dolly Parton and other female country singers. Smarsh’s mother urged her daughter to listen to the words, and in those lyrics Smarsh heard women speak about survival and making their own way.

She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs is a feminist analysis of not just Parton’s words but also her physicality and business decisions. The essays were originally published in 2017 as a four-part series in No Depression magazine. It was the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, just before the #MeToo movement took hold on a national scale. But the essays still retain their relevance, as this book enters the world in a tumultuous year just before another presidential election.

Smarsh seamlessly weaves her family’s experiences with Parton’s biography—triumphs and shortcomings alike—and cultural context. She Come by It Natural is, as a result, a relatable examination of one of country music’s brightest stars and an inspiring tale of what women can learn from one another.

Dolly Parton doesn’t call herself a feminist. She’s made that clear in interviews over her six-decade career. But it doesn’t matter what label she embraces: Parton is an icon, and she’s a hero to many women who hear their lives reflected in her extensive song…

NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoir

Conditional Citizens

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

“Being a citizen of the United States, I had thought, meant being an equal member of the American family, a spirited group of people of different races, origins, and creeds, bound together by common ideals,” writes Laila Lalami. “As time went by, however, the contradictions between doctrine and reality became harder to ignore. While my life in this country is in most ways happy and fulfilling, it has never been entirely secure or comfortable.”

Lalami is an American citizen. She earned that title in 2000, eight years after she came to this country to earn her doctorate at the University of Southern California. She is also a Muslim woman and a native of North Africa. She may have passed the United States’ citizenship test with ease, but because of the markers that identify her as an immigrant, Lalami’s citizenship is often treated as conditional.

In Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, Lalami examines the ways in which people of color and people who live in poverty are often treated as less than. It’s the first work of nonfiction for Lalami, a novelist who won an American Book Award and became a Pulitzer finalist for The Moor’s Account. In this new work, Lalami blends analysis of national and international events with her own personal narrative. For example, a woman at one of the author’s book events asks Lalami to explain ISIS. Would a white writer of a novel set in an earlier time be asked to explain the Ku Klux Klan, she wonders. Conditional citizenship means being seen as representative of a monolithic group, rather than as an individual. These citizens are often asked to explain their entire ethnic groups to white people, Lalami writes.

Conditional Citizens is thoroughly researched, as evidenced by its detailed source notes and bibliography, but in this gifted storyteller’s hands, it never feels like homework. Lalami braids statistics and historical context with her lived experiences to illustrate how unjust policies and the biases that feed them can affect individual lives.

“Being a citizen of the United States, I had thought, meant being an equal member of the American family, a spirited group of people of different races, origins, and creeds, bound together by common ideals,” writes Laila Lalami. “As time went by, however, the contradictions…

NonfictionMemoir

The Smallest Lights in the Universe

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Sara Seager has a hard time connecting with people. Despite a meaningful relationship with her father, she often feels a bit removed from others, a bit challenged by social norms. Instead, Seager feels at home when she’s gazing upward. The night sky has held her attention since she was a child and a babysitter took her and her siblings camping several hours away from their Toronto home. When she saw the stars, Seager was certain she’d discovered a new world.

As an adult, this continuing desire to discover new worlds propelled Seager’s professional life, but she remained less gifted in social relationships. So she was surprised when she found a connection with Mike, a fellow member of the Wilderness Canoe Association in Toronto. As the pair paddled the Humber River, Seager realized they were in sync. Off the water, their interests seemed divergent—he was an editor, she was an astrophysicist—but they complemented each other. He understood the day-to-day concerns of living, while she dreamed of grand possibilities. 

When Seager and Mike moved to Massachusetts for her academic career, she found herself torn between two loves: the stars and her growing family. Seager’s work as an astrophysicist was demanding, and Mike supported her stargazing. But when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Seager recognized the personal cost of searching the universe for planets that could sustain life. After Mike died, she was left to reconcile her thirst for discovery with her grief and the concerns that occupy everyday life.

In The Smallest Lights in the Universe, Seager shares a passion for the universe so deep that even this reviewer, a physics dunce, could grasp why she would spend her life gazing toward other planets. Analytical yet lyrical, Seager’s memoir is an examination of the parallels between searching for new life in the multiverse and starting over with a new life on Earth—the sort of connection only an astrophysicist might make.

Sara Seager has a hard time connecting with people. Despite a meaningful relationship with her father, she often feels a bit removed from others, a bit challenged by social norms. Instead, Seager feels at home when she’s gazing upward. The night sky has held her…

NonfictionNatureEssays

World of Wonders

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s writing often praises the earth and its bounty. In her first nonfiction work, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Nezhukumatathil expands her reflections into essays accompanied by illustrations by Fumi Nakamura.

Nezhukumatathil’s delight in the world isn’t dulled by the world’s racism, but she doesn’t shy away from sharing her experiences of being on the receiving end of discrimination. In third grade, for example, Nezhukumatathil drew a peacock, her favorite animal, for the class animal-drawing contest. She had just returned from southern India, her father’s native country, and she was elated by its colorful animals. Her teacher was less enamored. “Some of us will have to start over and draw American animals. We live in Ah-mer-i-kah!” the teacher declared after spotting Nezhukumatathil’s drawing.

Both of Nezhukumatathil’s parents are immigrants (her mother is from the Philippines), and throughout World of Wonders, she describes the foundation they laid for her and her sister. As their family moved across the country, her parents encouraged their daughters to experience the outdoors. No matter their ZIP code, Nezhukumatathil followed her curiosity and found a home in the natural world. 

That childhood connection to nature echoes through her adulthood, where plants and animals connect Nezhukumatathil’s present to her past. The catalpa tree offered shade for Nezhukumatathil and her sister as they walked from their home in Kansas to the hospital where their mother worked. When Nezhukumatathil moves to Oxford, Mississippi, to teach at the university, she expects to need the catalpa tree to provide shelter from people’s curiosity about her brown skin. But no one stares at her in Mississippi. Instead, the trees provide shade as she rushes to class, just as they did years ago.

By examining the world around her, Nezhukumatathil finds an ongoing sense of connection to that world, signaling to her like a firefly: “They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again.” World of Wonders is as sparkling as an armful of glass bangles and as colorful as the peacocks that first captured Nezhukumatathil’s imagination. 

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s writing often praises the earth and its bounty. In her first nonfiction work, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Nezhukumatathil expands her reflections into essays accompanied by illustrations by Fumi Nakamura.

Nezhukumatathil’s delight in the world…

FictionComic Fiction

Anxious People

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Fredrik Backman’s gift for portraying the nuances of humanity is well known to his many loyal fans. With Anxious People, Backman once again captures readers’ hearts and imaginations.

An armed, masked robber attempts to hold up a bank in a Swedish city. But as the thief approaches, the apathetic young teller is unmoved. It’s a cashless bank, the teller says. Doesn’t the would-be robber know that? Well, no. The robber doesn’t. As police arrive, the robber rushes into the street, through the nearest open door, up a set of stairs and into an apartment’s open house. When the potential buyers and real estate agent see the thief, they assume they’re being held hostage.

Backman describes these events with a light touch, making clear early on that, though there’s a crime at the heart of this story, his novel is much more than this series of events. Father and son police officers Jim and Jack try to understand how a bank robber slipped, unnoticed, from an apartment full of people. As the officers interrogate the witnesses, Backman reveals glimpses of each character’s past.

Anxious People could reasonably be called a mystery, but it’s also a deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together. Backman reveals each character’s many imperfections with tremendous empathy, reminding us that people are always more than the sum of their flaws.

Anxious People could reasonably be called a mystery, but it’s also a deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together.
FictionDystopian Fiction

The New Wilderness

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Bea hunches over the earth, burying her stillborn daughter. She’s broken with grief, even for this child she did not want, whom she couldn’t envision bringing into such a hopeless world. But there’s no time to linger, as Bea lives in the wilderness. Animals are circling, hoping to find food for their own young, and Bea’s community is about to move on. She must redirect her attention to her living daughter, 8-year-old Agnes.

“They had seen a lot of death. They had become hardened to it. Not just the community members who had perished in grisly or mundane ways. But around them everything died openly. Dying was as common as living.”

In The New Wilderness, Diane Cook deepens her study of the relationship between humans and the earth, which she previously explored in the short story collection Man V. Nature. Bea and her husband, Glen, are part of a nomadic community in a wilderness state. Life in the City was untenable, especially after Agnes became so ill that Bea was prepared for her daughter’s death.

“The Community” starts out with 20 people, though its numbers fluctuate as members die and others procreate. There isn’t a lot of privacy—even young Agnes is aware of the adults’ copulation—and community members know they must stick together, even with those they dislike. Community members submit to being fingerprinted, having their cheeks swabbed and other tests. They’re being studied, but for what, they can’t say.

The wilderness feels dystopian to Bea, but it’s nearly all Agnes can recall. As they navigate a changing terrain and their own emotional landscapes, Cook incorporates the whole of human experience. The New Wilderness examines our relationships to place and to others as the Community considers its right to be on the land and whether others have any business sharing the space.

The New Wilderness examines our relationships to place and to others as the Community considers its right to be on the land and whether others have any business sharing the space.
NonfictionMemoir

Notes on a Silencing

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

One night in October 1990, a young Lacy Crawford took a phone call at her dorm, surprised to hear an older boy pleading for her to come help him. Crawford was mystified but convinced there must be a reason, so she slipped across her boarding school campus and met the boy at his dorm window. When she climbed inside, she was confronted by the boy and his roommate, both stripped down to their underwear. That night would haunt her for decades to come.

In Notes on a Silencing, Crawford emphasizes that the sexual assault she experienced was not unusual. “It’s so simple, what happened at St. Paul’s. It happens all the time,” she writes. “First, they refused to believe me. Then they shamed me. Then they silenced me.” She describes St. Paul’s as a lauded, sometimes lonely place where privileged teens were obsessed with their academic futures. (The author, when faced with the possibility of not returning for her senior year, pleaded with her parents: But what about Princeton?)

Crawford, a novelist, uses her storytelling skill to illuminate the myriad ways female students were taught that their desires and bodies were less valuable than—even subject to—those of their male peers. She’d had other sexual experiences as a teenager, a fact her teachers later used against her. When she began to experience physical ailments because of her assault, Crawford was certain it was a result of “what she had done.” She was so wrecked by the experience that she saw herself, not the boys, as the one to blame.

Crawford’s detailed account of her assault and its aftermath relies on an indelible memory as well as careful research. Medical reports and other documentation help her piece together the school’s reaction when she revisits it decades later, after other victims began holding the school accountable.

Notes on a Silencing is a ghastly account, beautifully told, of a teenage girl learning that people in power often value reputation above all else.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Love audiobooks? Check out Notes on a Silencing and other nonfiction audiobook picks.

One night in October 1990, a young Lacy Crawford took a phone call at her dorm, surprised to hear an older boy pleading for her to come help him. Crawford was mystified but convinced there must be a reason, so she slipped across her boarding…

FictionLiterary Fiction

The All-Night Sun

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Lauren Cress has been drifting through life for the 10 years since she became an orphan. Her relationships with men are often perfunctory. She’s slow to open up to her colleagues at the college where she works as an adjunct instructor, teaching writing to international students. But in the classroom, Lauren comes to life. She’s a dazzling teacher who connects with her students, even when they don’t understand why they’re required to write personal essays.

“Knowing how to express yourself to one another in real ways . . . it can help with loneliness and distance,” Lauren explains.

Lauren’s insatiable but hidden desire to be known and understood thrusts her into an all-consuming friendship with Siri Bergström, a student from Sweden. Siri also knows the pain of losing a parent; her mother died when Siri was 5, though no one knows exactly how. When Siri invites Lauren to come home to Sweden with her, Lauren dives headfirst into the friendship, though she knows it’s unwise.

As the Swedish summer celebration of Midsommar draws near, Lauren finds herself swimming in the complexities of her relationships with Siri and the friends and siblings who welcome her. But when her friendship with Siri threatens to unravel, Lauren withdraws into herself, blocking out all signs of life around her.

In The All-Night Sun, author Diane Zinna displays her deep understanding of the writing craft, born in part of her experience as a creative writing teacher and former executive co–director at AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Her stunning debut novel is a twisting tale of grief, hope and self-deceit, a story as mesmerizing as the young women at its heart.

Lauren’s insatiable but hidden desire to be known and understood thrusts her into an all-consuming friendship with Siri Bergström, a student from Sweden. Siri also knows the pain of losing a parent; her mother died when Siri was 5, though no one knows exactly how. When Siri invites Lauren to come home to Sweden with her, Lauren dives headfirst into the friendship, though she knows it’s unwise.

FictionFamily Drama

My Kind of People

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Sky is only 10 years old, but she’s experienced as much pain and confusion as someone three times her age. Although she was abandoned at a fire station as a newborn, she found a home with her adoptive parents. Now she’s starting over again, and this time she’s old enough to be aware of the pain. Sky’s adoptive parents have died in a car crash, and their will designates that Leo, Sky’s father’s best friend from childhood, would become her guardian.

Leo is torn up at the loss of his friend, and now he must create a loving home for Sky. Her presence sends Leo and his husband, Xavier, into a tailspin. The couple never wanted children, and Xavier is committed to their life in Boston. Leo doesn’t understand why he was named Sky’s guardian, but he loves the girl and the Massachusetts island where he was raised. He relates to her; they are some of the only dark-skinned people on the island, and they’ve both worked to find the people whom they can call home.

In My Kind of People, novelist Lisa Duffy paints a portrait of a community of people trying to find out who they are—and with whom they can be themselves. As neighbors jump in to help raise Sky, or to weigh in on what Leo could do better, Sky and Leo wrestle with their understanding of their changing circumstances. What caused the crash that killed some of the most important people in their lives? And can they form a new family with each other?

Duffy’s story is sweet but never cloying, and she’s unafraid to depict uncomfortable circumstances as the tale unfolds. My Kind of People is an emotionally complex tale that leaves some threads dangling—much like life—but still comes to a satisfying and hopeful conclusion.

In My Kind of People, novelist Lisa Duffy paints a portrait of a community of people trying to find out who they are—and with whom they can be themselves.
FictionPopular Fiction

Happy and You Know It

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

On its surface, Laura Hankin’s debut is a quick read, a novel that could be categorized as a beach book. Certainly, Happy and You Know It is the sort of novel that can suck a reader in and hold them until a whole day has passed, but it’s also a multidimensional story with riches revealed through close attention.

After Claire is fired from her band, she’s trying to pay her way through New York City life, and a gig as a playgroup musician will have to do. The mothers in the group are wealthy and wellness-obsessed, leading lives far more polished than the existence Claire is eking out. But Claire finds herself drawn to them anyway. The women incorporate Claire into their lives, and she welcomes the inclusion.

But proximity also reveals the chinks in the armor of their carefully styled lives. When one of the women’s husbands gets sick and is forced to work from home, he pushes the women to hold their playgroup elsewhere. Claire recognizes his belief that his activities are more important than his wife’s. “Back in Claire’s hometown, the church drummed into girls at Sunday school that they were special, meant to be cherished, but that ultimately, husbands were the boss. Apparently you could get a degree from Harvard and a fancy New York apartment, and still, some things would stay the same.”

As the playgroup moms work out their insecurities—within themselves and within their friendships—the metaphorical masks they wear begin to slip. With a light hand and a touch of mystery, Hankin’s debut explores feminism, class and the expectations placed on mothers. This is a romp with substance, consumed easily as a beach read but offering ample opportunity for self-reflection.

On its surface, Laura Hankin’s debut is a quick read, a novel that could be categorized as a beach book. Certainly, Happy and You Know It is the sort of novel that can suck a reader in and hold them until a whole day has passed, but it’s also a multidimensional story with riches revealed through close attention.

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