Natalia Berry

NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

Resist

Review by Natalia Berry

From the Scottsboro Nine to Black Lives Matter, Black youth have positioned themselves at the center of the battle for civil rights for the past 100 years. In Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America, award-winning Nigerian American journalist Rita Omokha makes an unwavering push to put these young Americans’ stories at the forefront of the public record. 

Omokha’s research was spurred partially by the tragic murder of George Floyd and the unprecedented wave of protests around the country. A master of storytelling with a knack for thoughtful investigative journalism, Omokha has created a shining reexamination of history through a Black lens. For example, most of us learn about the Scottsboro Nine—the nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931—by reading the outlines of their case and legal proceedings, but how many of us see the ordeal from the Nine’s perspectives, or realize how thousands of students organized for charges to be dropped? It’s here where Omokha excels, providing a ground-level look at how young people were often thrust into organizing for civil rights. “Crucially, the most illuminating insights from history were not solely defined by actions but by the fervent optimism of the young. . . . Young ones who have intentionally learned from history, cautious of its perils, ready with their folded chairs at the table.” 

Omokha draws a clear line from these young people to the Black youth activists of today, exploring how technology has helped resurrect Black liberation movements in the past 20 years. When George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder for killing Trayvon Martin, three Black women—Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Ayo Tometi—“declared what seemed spiritual, a sacred psalm in three simple words preceded by a hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter.” Resist includes the stories of Darnella Frazier, the woman who videotaped George Floyd’s murder, and Johnetta Elzie, a co-creator of the Mapping Police Violence project, who launched into action after the shooting of Michael Brown. With the help of Omokha’s meticulous reporting, their stories go beyond the headlines and hashtags.

Ultimately, Resist is a must-read for anyone looking to dive into the collected history of Black youth activism and its immense impact on America—and perhaps learn how to take action themselves.

Rita Omokha’s Resist is a must-read for anyone looking to dive into the history of Black youth activism and its immense impact on America.
NonfictionMemoirEssays

My Pisces Heart

Review by Natalia Berry

Born in the American South to a banking family, Jennifer Neal has been traveling across continents, reinventing and reimagining herself for most of her life. Her migration story spans the American South, Japan, Australia and Germany in My Pisces Heart: A Black Immigrant’s Search for Home Across Four Continents. Neal (Notes on Her Color) is both a lyrical writer and an astute historian, studying the complexities of race and Blackness with tenderness and reverence in each place she has lived. 

Neal unpacks imperialism through a queer, Black, American lens as she navigates love, friendship and career. Some of the best essays in My Pisces Heart describe her college years in Japan and her search for solidarity among Black and Japanese people. She finds allies and mentors in academia, connects with a coalition of Black studies enthusiasts and visits the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. She explores how racist Western philosophies were brought to Japan, yet doesn’t shy away from Japan’s problematic history of colorism. Other heartbreaking and nuanced essays follow her time in Australia, where she battles casual racism and experiences a difficult romantic relationship. Here, she explores how the Aboriginal people of Australia keep their communities alive through protests and demonstrations. While white Australians often sought to isolate Neal from this community, she felt a kinship with them due to the similar histories of Australia’s and America’s anti-miscegenation laws. 

In lovely astrology interstitials that appear as vignettes before each section, Neal analyzes her birth chart to provide a framework through which to view the world beyond herself, without borders. These sections inspire the reader to look outward—and up—in search of their own guiding light. 

Throughout, Neal is quick to direct the reader to the hidden histories of Black people all over the world. Though racial homogeneity is accepted as the norm in places like Japan and Germany, Neal proves that Black people exist everywhere and, in many cases, always have. In an age when we can see the devastating impacts of colonialism on devices in the palms of our hands, My Pisces Heart is an essential read for anyone curious about cultural differences and eager to explore what it means to be in solidarity with those oppressed across the globe.

Jennifer Neal’s essential memoir and travelogue, My Pisces Heart, proves that Black people exist all over the world and, in many cases, always have.
NonfictionEssays

Magically Black and Other Essays

Review by Natalia Berry

Jerald Walker, the highly decorated author of the National Book Award finalist How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, proves in his latest triumph that he’s also a bona fide comedian. Magically Black and Other Essays captures how the political upheaval of recent years has multiplied the anxieties of American life and made it particularly fraught for Black Americans like Walker and his family. Bite-sized and deceptively funny, Magically Black’s impactful essays unfurl poignant cultural critiques sure to make you think.

Walker’s humor sprouts from situational absurdity. He riffs on the merits of keeping a racist contractor around, teaching Hannah Crafts’ The Bondwoman’s Narrative to well-meaning but misguided white college students, navigating the generational divide between him and his children and more. One of the most hilarious and smartly executed essays is “Crisis,” in which Walker makes his maiden voyage to a cannabis dispensary in a suit, drawing the suspicion of other customers and workers alike. Comically self-effacing, he wonders if being there is yet another symptom of the midlife crisis he has denied having, and his awkwardness sets in motion a comedy of errors. But beneath this facade, he is disoriented. Black Americans have lost generations of community members to incarceration thanks to the war on drugs; now, white people wait in long lines to buy weed legally.

Still, one essay takes a more serious tack: In the tender “Lost,” Walker waits three hours after curfew for his teenage son to return home from theater rehearsal. As tension builds, he examines what is at stake when Black families achieve economic success and move into white neighborhoods. At any time, his child can be othered into criminality or death. Shouldn’t Black boys be allowed the freedom to roam? Walker and his wife, Brenda—a wonderful addition to every essay she appears in—talk over parenting and racial anxiety. Conversations like this happen in many Black households, but Walker manages to capture how prevailing opinions shift throughout generations without ever indicating any viewpoint is wrong or foolish.

Walker is an erudite observer of America in all of its dangers and faults, and extracts the sum of its parts with a wink and a nod. Magically Black and Other Essays is a gift.

In Magically Black and Other Essays, Jerald Walker unfurls poignant cultural critiques about parenting, Blackness and American life with laugh-out-loud humor.
NonfictionTrue Crime

Reap the Whirlwind

Review by Natalia Berry

Peter Houlahan’s Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice, and the Story of Sagon Penn recounts a historic 1985 crime that would irrevocably change Southern California. At its swirling center is Sagon Penn, a 23-year-old Black Buddhist, martial artist and community mentor who had never been in any legal trouble until two white patrol cops, Donovan Jacobs and Tom Riggs, followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men, some of them teenagers, up a dirt road.

The setting is a growing San Diego in flux. A progressive new police chief hoped to calm the city’s simmering racial tensions and address the disproportionate number of cops killed in the line of duty. Both crises came to a head when Jacobs incorrectly fingered the young men in the truck to be gang members—including the driver, Penn. An argument escalated into a brutal physical altercation, during which the cops reportedly used racial slurs. Within three minutes, Penn grabbed Riggs’ service weapon and fatally shot him. Then Penn shot both Jacobs and a civilian who was riding along with him, and fled the scene in a squad car.

Reap the Whirlwind’s novelistic narrative style delivers emotional weight as Houlahan, a master storyteller, plots out the cataclysmic event and its aftermath. Houlahan covers all angles, from skewed news reporting on the shooting to the inner workings of the judicial system to the messy interpersonal drama that followed Penn, whose psyche suffered devastating consequences. Though Penn is undoubtedly the focus of the book, Houlahan offers textured characterizations of significant players, like Penn’s lawyer, Milton Silverman Jr.; defense investigator Bob McDaniel; and Sara Pina-Ruiz, the only credible witness. When the story develops into a full-fledged courtroom drama, Houlahan remains an impartial, careful observer and rarely offers his own opinion, which allows readers to form their own conclusions and develop a personal investment in the case and those closest to it.

A topical, piercing story about how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are, Reap the Whirlwind shows how police brutality and racial profiling impact Black victims far beyond the actual incident—even when they make it out alive.

The piercing Reap the Whirlwind chronicles a historic 1985 homicide, and shows how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are.
NonfictionLifestylesBody, Mind & Spirit

Blame the Stars

Review by Natalia Berry

Spurred by illustrator and “accidental astrologer” Heather Buchanan’s popular Instagram account @Horror.Scoops, Blame the Stars: A Very Good, Totally Accurate Collection of Astrological Advice is a hilarious journey through astrology, a subject that is, Buchanan writes, “stuffed to the glittering gills with practical, utilitarian functions.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with it. “In such a bizarre universe,” she writes, “the most logical response is to get bizarre right back at it.” 

With colorful, offbeat drawings and handwritten captions, Buchanan gives classic signs silly names and outrageous descriptions: The corresponding animal of Splattitaribus (Sagittarius) is “a skunk haunted by the ghosts of her past;” a Lehbrah (Libra) is “the last push of breath that blows up a pool toy.” Buchanan is a joke factory, but Blame the Stars never feels mean-spirited. She balances out her playfulness with a palpable admiration for each sign, and, despite the absurdist claims, traditional astrology buffs will recognize kernels of wisdom. The book really shines with absurdist journal prompts: “What if everyone who hated cilantro had their teeth turn into cilantro? . . . Discuss.” 

Blame the Stars is beautifully constructed with quality paper and a well-thought-out jacket that manages to include illustrations of all the signs without feeling too busy. That impressive attention to detail continues throughout the book, with art included on almost every page. If you’re a lover of astrology, or if you’re perhaps looking for some silly direction among the stars, you’ll certainly find solace, laughs and maybe even some inspiration in these pages.

Blame the Stars, by the creator of popular Instagram account @Horror.Scoops, provides offbeat takes on astrology that will keep readers giggling and contemplating their next steps in life.
NonfictionSocial Science

Black Pill

Review by Natalia Berry

The last decade of American political terror isn’t some accidental phenomenon. As award-winning journalist Elle Reeve intimately conveys, the “alt-right” movement is the result of several racist and misogynistic hate groups born in the least moderated parts of the internet, who have aligned with powerful Republicans and whose primary focus is white supremacy. Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics is Reeve’s investigation into the network and ideologies of the alt-right’s most key players. Some of them have left the extremist organizations that once consumed them; others are still pulling the strings. 

Her profiles of Matt Parrott and Matt Heimbach, the neo-Nazi co-founders of the Traditionalist Worker Party and one of the driving forces behind the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, are among the most illuminating. The men lament their middle-class upbringings, their feelings of alienation, their crumbling personal and professional lives, their hatred of their dads and even their diagnoses of autism. But these qualities, Reeve contends, are not an excuse for facism and hatred. 

Rather, Reeve shows, QAnon followers, Proud Boys and other extremist groups share the opinion that they’re somehow being cheated out of what is “owed” to them—money, women, sex, power, respect—and that failure to obtain their desires is the failure of the nation. It’s not just that they think they’re losing to minorities, women and leftists: They think the soul of the nation is lost, too. This fear is not new, but the digital space has made white supremacist content easier to access, build community around and impact the political landscape in dangerous ways.

Reeve is a phenomenally skilled interviewer, able to motivate her subjects to reveal more than they probably should. She offers what they went online to find in the first place—an open ear to share their unbridled opinions, no matter how bigoted. Some of the people Reeve interviews distance themselves from the hate groups they called home—Parrott, Heimbach and Richard Spencer among them. But Black Pill also makes clear that once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. “The movement,” Reeve writes, “will get you punched, sued, jailed, divorced, bankrupt. But it will never let you go.” 

“You get to a certain point where everything is just like that Springsteen song, ‘Glory Days,’” a rueful Heimbach tells Reeve. “You just sit around like, Man, remember 2015?” Still, Black Pill doesn’t ask for our sympathy—just a willingness to peer into the dark. 

Elle Reeve’s powerful Black Pill brings members of the internet's most vicious, infamous hate groups out of the shadows, exposing the roots of extremism.
NonfictionMemoir

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This

Review by Natalia Berry

In her memoir-in-essays, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: (But I’m Going to Anyway), Emmy-nominated comedy writer Chelsea Devantez recounts her rise to success through a series of moments that range from comical to harrowing. She came up in Chicago’s highly competitive improv club The Second City, whose alumni list boasts everyone from John Belushi to Tina Fey. Eventually, Devantez became the head writer of The Problem With Jon Stewart, but the road there was not easy. She toiled for years in the grueling improv/comedy industry. Often when opportunity knocked, like one to create a television show, things never quite panned out. According to TV execs, she was too ethnic or not ethnic enough; too funny or not funny enough.

Devantez is no stranger to finding humor in the absurd and traumatic around us. Growing up in a family that was often tumultuous, and at the mercy of her mother’s romantic partners, Devantez learned how to make even the most difficult situations comedic. There were bright spots amid her personal and career woes: other women. Throughout I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, Devantez shows how she couldn’t have made it in the business or in life without the complicated women and girls who surrounded her. From Devantez’s mesmerizing comedy partner who broke her heart, to the gossipy adversary she aptly names Shitbitch, to her ever-supportive mother who often struggled to free herself from abusive men, each taught Devantez something critical about the world and herself.

Devantez excels at exploring the interiority of her mind while conjuring a colorful cast of characters. As her career and life develop, she’s inspired by drag queens, evangelizing Mormon girls, cruise ship theater troupes and the memoir of comedy legend Rachel Dratch. Readers will also appreciate her frank discussions about money. In the memorable “Roger Roger,” Devantez proudly calls herself “glamorous trash” and examines the true cost of not benefiting from nepotism. Her adept critique extends beyond her lack of “a cousin who had a cousin who had a cousin who knew the accountant for Jennifer Aniston” but truly considers the reality of how race and gender play into comedy success. How does one “make it” in Hollywood—or anywhere—when you aren’t the type of person who usually does?

In I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This, Devantez answers this question and many others with acute honesty as she romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs, often proving that success is not only measured by what you do, but by who joins you along the way.

Comedy writer Chelsea Devantez romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs in her memoir, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This.
NonfictionMemoir

Another Word for Love

Review by Natalia Berry

“They say love is patient and kind, but they never say what else is true: that love is also anxious and fearful, desperate and forever on unsure footing,” award-winning journalist Carvell Wallace writes in his debut memoir, Another Word for Love. Known best for his intimate celebrity profiles, Wallace now turns his pen to exploring his own childhood as the son of a single mother. With honesty and candor, Wallace reveals how the poverty and abuse of his youth impacted his views on masculinity, desire, sex and love. Another Word for Love is an excavation of his personal history that asks and answers questions about living and loving as a queer, Black man.

Wallace is a brilliant storyteller and masterful student in the language of love. But what about the things that get in the way of loving and being loved? Wallace has a lot to say here, too. For many Black Americans, like Wallace’s complicated mother, the act of loving is often superseded by the pursuit of survival. As Wallace becomes a parent himself, his essays chronicle the history of police brutality and racial violence in America, frequently asking, How can we teach our children to love in the face of fear and death? It’s here, in Wallace’s frank examinations of family and community building, that his writing truly dazzles.

Wallace’s tumultuous childhood meant he was always on the move, setting down in cities across the country without planting roots. Throughout his travels, he traversed different parts of his identity and uncovered messy, tender truths about himself and other men. From discussing the importance of Solange’s When I Get Home to unpacking letters between Pat Parker and Audre Lorde, navigating a kink space and sharing harrowing stories about the harm he’s caused others, Wallace’s prose is always sharp, witty and honest. Ultimately, though, Another Word for Love offers this radical declaration: Pursuing love is an act of defiance. No matter what trauma or complexities fill your story, love is all of our birthrights.

In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace’s dazzling debut memoir, love is an act of defiance.

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