For Michaele Weissman, the attraction to John MeIngailis was instantaneous: “He was tall and slender, with blond hair and a shaggy mustache. His face was angular. Nordic. With slate-blue eyes. He spoke English with a barely discernible accent. I thought he was gorgeous.” Yet even after 40 years of marriage, Weissman is mystified by her husband’s moods, their fights and his obsession with all things Latvian.
Weissman and MeIngailis are quite different, or so she thinks: She’s eight years younger, Jewish, American and a journalist, while MeIngailis, who escaped Latvia with his family as a child during WWII, is an MIT scientist, ardently attached to his native folklore and his refugee community. His devotion to Latvian rye bread (a dark, chewy, sourdough) perplexes her. “You wake up married to a rye-bread-loving stranger, and slowly you realize that your husband doesn’t want to be like you. . . . in fact he wants you to be like him!” she writes in an early chapter. “From this nexus of unresolvable difference the decades-long battle is engaged. . . . in time you realize this whirling dervish of mixed emotion, of love and fury, of compatibility, attraction, tenderness and contention: this is your life and your marriage.”
The Rye Bread Marriage: How I Found Happiness With a Partner I’ll Never Understand offers multiple stories: of Weissman’s growth as she seeks to understand MeIngailis’ eccentricities and her own; of their marriage, parenthood and stepparenthood; and of Latvian rye bread and its singular place in Latvian history and culture. This voicey, often funny memoir is comprised of 125 chapters of varying length, some just a page, some even shorter. Here’s the entirety of chapter 41, “Marriage: Second Definition”: “Marriage: An intimate relationship existing on a continuum between love and hate, with partners perpetually suspended between the two.” Some of the chapters form short, lyrical essays; some are more journalistic. The memoir really shines when Weissman recounts research visits to Latvia and Germany (where MeIngailis’ family took refuge at the end of the war) that led her to a deeper understanding of MeIngailis’ family history and the trauma of war and exile, as well as Latvian history and its unique bread.
The Rye Bread Marriage brings to mind two other quirky, memorable memoirs: Julie Klam’s The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters, and Amy Kraus Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. “How I Found Happiness with a Partner I’ll Never Understand” may be its subtitle, but by the time we reach the book’s lovely, life-affirming ending, it is clear that both partners do understand one another.
Even after 40 years of marriage, Michaele Weissman is mystified by her husband’s moods, their fights and his fixation on all things Latvian—but she still loves him.
Certain memoirs are easily devoured, practically in one sitting, leaving the reader breathless. Such is the case with Meg Kissinger’s While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence. Like Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road, it sheds light on the vise-like grip that mental illness can have on generation after generation. In this case, however, Kissinger—an investigative reporter and a Pulitzer Prize finalist—writes from an insider’s point of view, describing how mental illness ripped her family apart.
Born in 1957, Kissinger spent most of her childhood in Wilmette, Illinois, in a large, rollicking family whose zany anecdotes are at first reminiscent of Cheaper by the Dozen. The many scrapes, mishaps and family tales are entertaining and often poignant, such as Kissinger’s description of how much she enjoyed an eye doctor’s appointment because it afforded a great rarity: one-on-one time with her mom. Kissinger gradually ups the tension, noting that her mother was taking medication “for her dark thoughts” before she was married, and that throughout Kissinger’s childhood, her mother would disappear from time to time for hospitalizations that were neither discussed or explained. Kissinger explains her family’s situation in a nutshell: “Take two alcoholics—one with bipolar and the other with crippling anxiety—and let them have eight kids in twelve years: What could possibly go wrong?”
Plenty, of course. A number of Kissinger’s siblings began having difficulties in high school or college, especially her older sister, Nancy, who, at age 24, shortly after having her stomach pumped for taking too many tranquilizers, slipped out of the house and ended her life in front of a train. Kissinger’s father instructed his family to tell others that Nancy’s death was an accident. Kissinger recalls her devastated and stunned thoughts at the time: “More secrets, more lies, just like when my mother disappeared years earlier. Why couldn’t we just tell the damn truth? By hiding what really happened, we’d not only be dismissing Nancy’s suffering but fortifying the notion that her mental illness was a choice, one that we should all be ashamed of.”
In 1987, Kissinger wrote an essay for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Nancy’s suicide. “Meg needs to tell this story,” her mother told her horrified father. Indeed, she did—especially when, 19 years later, a similar family tragedy happened once again. Kissinger then spent 25 years traveling across the country to explore the state of mental health issues in families like hers.
While You Were Out is a spellbinding account of one woman’s experience living through family trauma and a thoughtful attempt to reckon with the past. Kissinger asks tough questions and freely admits her own regrets while pointing out systemic problems with no easy answers. Her best advice comes from a letter from one of her siblings, a piece of wisdom that became her mantra: Only love and understanding can conquer this disease.
In a thoughtful attempt to reckon with the past, Meg Kissinger delivers a spellbinding account of how mental illness and addiction ripped her family apart.
With the rise of the body positivity movement, many parents have asked, “How do I raise my child to love their body, eat healthy foods without demonizing sweets and navigate all of the negative talk about the sizes of bodies?” Most parents don’t know, because they’ve also grown up in a fatphobic society swarming with confusing advice and thin privilege. That’s where journalist Virginia Sole-Smith’s new book, Fat Talk comes in.
‘Fat Talk’ gives tons of helpful advice for navigating food and provides conversation starters to help unpack fatphobia with your child, no matter their size.
Sole-Smith presents research about how diet culture is promoted by Instagram influencers, doctors and pharmaceutical companies, all seeking to make a dollar. She also uncovers ample evidence that proves dieting doesn’t work, except as a strategy to blame the individual instead of society’s marginalization of larger, fat bodies. Rebalancing the narrative, she argues, will target the real problems, instead of shaming and harming children. It even helps the parent resolve complications they have with their own bodies.
In addition to its science-based debunking of diet culture, Fat Talk gives tons of helpful advice for navigating food and provides conversation starters to help unpack fatphobia with your child, no matter their size. It also includes a list of resources for parents including picture and middle-grade books, memoirs, podcasts, newsletters, movies and television shows and other resources.
Calm the Chaos
Pulling from her own experiences as both a mother of a child who doesn’t quite fit the mold and a teacher, Dayna Abraham’s book, Calm the Chaos is about empowering parents of children who need extra emotional, physical and developmental support. Abraham presents a five-stage framework that helps parents navigate and quell the storm. Each stage has been broken down into manageable chunks, often with illustrations; Abraham knows the parents who need her help do not have a lot of free time.
In a conversational and relatable way, Abraham helps families create safety through love for their high-needs child so each member can move from surviving to thriving. Every chapter includes lists of questions that help assess your current needs, actionable steps to put into practice based on where you are with your child and notes that relieve any shame that may come up as you assess your family’s needs.
Abraham knows the parents who need her help do not have a lot of free time.
Abraham provides real stories about real children who have benefited from her approach, giving the reader examples to draw from as they begin implementing the strategies in the book. Calm the Chaos will be a fabulous tool for anyone seeking to give their child the power to be who they were born to be.
Erasing the Finish Line
Most parents have worried about how to prepare their children for leaving the nest and finding a successful life of their own. In Erasing the Finish Line by early career development expert Ana Homayoun, parents are encouraged to let go of the made-up finish line at high school graduation and college admissions. As an academic advisor, Homayoun has helped countless young people figure out a new blueprint for success by building core competencies that will benefit them throughout their lives. Though they may lead to academic success, these core competencies aren’t structured around test scores and GPAs. Instead, Homayoun’s method crafts a blueprint based on the individual child’s goals. She encourages parents to instead teach their children how to organize, plan, prioritize, adapt, start and complete tasks. These skills will get older children through young adulthood and are important for long term success in any job or role.
Young people in their teens and early twenties are experiencing anxiety, depression and adjustment disorders at alarming rates, a fact that Homayoun says is contributed to by the intense focus on admissions to the “right” school. Erasing the Finish Line is a delightful read that functions as a handbook for loving and accepting your child just as they are. Only when our children feel an unconditional sense of acceptance can they find real success.
Growing Up in Public
Many parents struggle to have healthy boundaries around technology, let alone help their children navigate the complex landscape of social media, texting and access to potentially harmful content. Growing Up in Public by Devorah Heitner, Ph.D. offers a wealth of relatable information, and will steer parents away from simply monitoring the ways children use technology, arguing instead for a mentorship approach that will guide children through the many landmines it can create for us.
Readers will walk away with a wealth of proactive strategies to prevent potential harm for their children who are engaging in the digital world.
From strategies rooted in trust versus surveillance, character building versus shaming and consent versus boundary crossing, Growing Up in Public gives parents a gentle guide on how to keep lines of communication open between them and their child.
Heitner’s gentleness shines in her writing. Her style puts the reader at ease, while also giving them permission to support tweens and teens through compassionate care. Readers will walk away with a wealth of proactive strategies to prevent potential harm for their children who are engaging in the digital world, as well as gentle guidance on what to do when the worst happens. This is an important guidebook for all parents as they seek to give their children the skills they need to navigate our brave new world.
Four parenting books on body positivity, neurodivergence and responsible social media use will ensure this remains the case.
The top 10 books for September include the latest from Angie Kim & Zadie Smith, plus a compelling mystery from William Kent Kruger and a helpful guide for talking about food with kids.
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Family & Relationships
In a thoughtful attempt to reckon with the past, Meg Kissinger delivers a spellbinding account of how mental illness and addiction ripped her family apart.
Zadie Smith writes eloquent, powerful and often quite humorous novels with social issues at the fore, and The Fraud is no exception. Its firm grounding
Angie Kim’s suspenseful follow-up to Miracle Creek follows a family that lives in a quiet and even bucolic neighborhood near Washington, D.C. They try to
Lucy Parker’s breezy and winning new rom-com, Codename Charming, follows a reserved royal bodyguard and the perky personal assistant of the prince he protects.
Natalia Shaloshvili’s finely tuned visual humor in Pavlo Gets the Grumps dovetails nicely with her comforting, uplifting message to any reader who’s ever been a bit cranky (aka all of us).
Read by Cynthia Nixon, Anna Montague’s moving and surprisingly humorous debut, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? shows grief’s potential to lead to reconciliation and hope.
Nuanced, hopeful and insightful, Ava Robinson’s Definitely Better Now is an endearing portrayal of a young woman redefining herself after one year of sobriety.
The top 10 books for September include the latest from Angie Kim & Zadie Smith, plus a compelling mystery from William Kent Kruger and a helpful guide for talking about food with kids.
In 2016, New Yorker cartoonist Navied Mahdavian and his wife needed a change, so they packed up their lives and fled—with their dog—from San Francisco to a cabin in rural Idaho. Despite not knowing what wood best keeps houses warm in frigid winters or how to stop a car from freezing during snowstorms, Mahdavian couldn’t help but want his version of the millennial American dream: living off the land in a house you own while building a career as an artist.
Most of Mahdavian’s debut graphic memoir This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America takes place on the six acres around his family’s cabin. There, Mahdavian wanders with his dog, tends to the garden and learns the history of the land—both the stories maintained by his white neighbors and the deeper Indigenous history. Mahdavian’s minimalist illustrations convey how large and rural Idaho can be, and they make it hard not to fall in love with that sort of hopeful landscape. Swaths of blank pages are populated by only the horizon and the plants and animals Mahdavian loves. If Idaho were simply gooseberries and black-billed magpies, it would be impossible to leave.
As Mahdavian settles into his cabin and tries to revel in the slow day to day of his life, he begins to fall in love with the natural world around him, even as his gun-toting neighbors remind him that people like Mahdavian—who is Iranian American—are considered outsiders. Beneath the big blue sky, Mahdavian struggles with their small-minded thinking and wonders if this place he loves can become home–and what choosing to make this place home really means.
It’s the surrounding people that leave Mahdavian feeling disconnected from the land whose history he seeks to understand. Mahdavian’s candid anecdotes showcase neighbors who welcome him and help during crises—even while slinging racial slurs and perpetuating stereotypes. Despite the serious and occasionally threatening nature of these exchanges, Mahdavian’s humor and thoughtfulness honors the kindness contained in these strange relationships while refusing to gloss over the harm that such insular thinking can cause.
Both poetic and personal, This Country meditates beautifully on what it means to create a home in the pockets of America where not everybody is wanted, due to their race or other aspects of identity. This Country is a must for fans of graphic memoirs like Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, and it’s not one to miss for anybody interested in insightful explorations of America’s heartland.
Both poetic and personal, This Country meditates beautifully on what it means to create a home in the pockets of America where not everybody is wanted, due to their race or other aspects of identity.
You want to be a great mother. But how do you care for yourself without neglecting your kids needs, feeling overwhelmed by guilt, or succumbing under the pressure to be perfect?
Dr. Morgan—a psychotherapist and relationship expert—has helped over 100,000 moms regain their sanity and prevent burnout through her popular courses, coaching, and social media wisdom. In her debut book, Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself, she offers a proven step-by-step plan that any mom can follow. In this powerful book, she reveals how to rid yourself of mom-guilt for good, identify your needs and express them with confidence, create a self-care plan that goes beyond pedicures and bubble baths, and thrive as a woman after being on the back burner for too long.
Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself is a must-read book for modern moms. You don’t have to choose between self-abandonment or child-abandonment. You can love yourself and love your kids. Discover how to flourish as a mother, know exactly how to care for yourself in ways that actually make a difference, and finally feel joy in motherhood.
Loving your kids isn’t supposed to mean you completely disappear or get swallowed up by the demands of motherhood.
In Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars, author Rick Louis tells the story of losing his baby son to a rare neurological illness in 2013. “This is not a story about grief,” Louis writes. “It is just the story of a little boy who was only here for a short while and what he meant to us.”
It spoils nothing to tell readers that Ronan dies; this is revealed at the book’s beginning by showing present-day Louis next to a baby-size vacant space, populated by twinkling stars. The book then moves backward in time, starting with the day Ronan was born and the joy Louis and his wife, Emily, took in him. (Emily published a bestselling memoir about Ronan in 2013 called The Still Point of the Turning World.) However, Ronan’s parents soon began to notice some health concerns, such as Ronan’s difficulty focusing his eyes, and sought medical attention. An ophthalmologist revealed that Ronan had signs of Tay-Sachs disease, a lethal condition that prevents the breakdown of lipids in the brain and nerves. When the diagnosis was confirmed, Louis and Emily had to confront their child’s mortality as they did everything in their power to enrich his life. As Ronan’s health deteriorated due to seizures and breathing difficulties, the uncertainty and strain also deteriorated his parents’ relationship.
Louis imbues this mostly tragic narrative with earnestness, quirk and even humor, paired neatly with (often silly) illustrations of what’s going on in characters’ minds. All the while, Louis holds true to telling the story of his time with Ronan with profound sincerity, reverence and honesty. Never does Louis speculate about what Ronan may have been thinking or feeling, nor does he graft personalization onto Ronan’s suffering. Instead, Louis simply recounts the horror of watching his child suffer while also expressing the pure joy of being a parent to a beautiful and unique person.
This is the first book for both Louis and illustrator Lara Antal, and they make good use of the graphic memoir form by pairing a cinematic, moving tale of family and loss with expressively drawn faces. Viewing the pain in Louis’ and Emily’s faces as they contemplate their child’s death is almost as haunting as watching the life drain from Ronan’s eyes as his disease progresses. Recurring abstract images, such as gently coiling swirls of black and sheets of ombre static, populate backgrounds, faces and even trees. These convey emotional heft in a way that is more gut-centered than paragraphs of prose about a character’s feeling.
In a culture where grief is treated as something to avoid at all costs and dispose of quickly, this book provides a valuable counterpoint. Carrying an eternal love for someone who has died is, for Louis, as vital as it is excruciating. For those who have known profound grief, or those willing to expand their understanding of its nuances, Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars will be a valuable read.
In his debut graphic memoir, Rick Louis tells the story of his son Ronan, who died of Tay-Sachs disease, with profound sincerity, reverence and honesty.
“Having your child die is so brutally humbling I struggle to describe it,” writes comedian and “Catastrophe” actor Rob Delaney. And yet he does manage to describe it, and does it well, in his unspeakably admirable memoir A Heart That Works. The comedian’s first book was memorably titled Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. This second, decidedly different, book describes the life of his 2-year-old son, Henry, who died from a brain tumor in 2018.
Life seemed practically perfect for Delaney and his beloved wife, Leah, with their “beautiful little clump of boys”—three under the age of 5. However, Henry became ill at 11 months from an apple-size tumor right next to his brainstem. Instantly, their lives were thrust into another dimension as Henry faced surgery, chemo and 14 months of hospitalization, only for his cancer to eventually return without any safe options for treatment. Delaney recounts the ordeal in searingly honest terms, conveying the intricate cobweb of emotions he experienced, often simultaneously: grief, rage, gratitude, grace and, most of all, love for Henry, their family and the many people who supported them during this time.
“It often felt like we were falling down a flight of stairs in slow motion,” Delaney writes, “with each successive piece of bad news.” Still, they were able to savor sweet moments with Henry and his brothers, even in the face of an additional family tragedy: Delaney’s brother-in-law died by suicide during Henry’s hospitalization. This unexpected death struck hard, especially since Delaney has wrestled with suicidal ideation himself, and since he wasn’t able to reach out as he normally would have because his son had been so ill.
Despite this tsunami of tragedies, there is humor, often black humor, throughout Delaney’s account. “If you can’t have fun dressed as a family of skeletons in a pediatric cancer ward,” he writes, “I don’t know what to tell you.” There are parcels of advice amid his frank, razor-sharp writing as well. Delaney digs deep on every page, baring his soul and sharing a remarkable range of emotions while relating the worst moments of his life. His is truly a heart that works.
Comedian Rob Delaney digs deep in his second memoir, baring his soul and sharing a remarkable range of emotions while relating the life and death of his son.
In their first book on racism, late-night talk show host Amber Ruffin and her sister Lacey Lamar primarily wrote to each other, exchanging stories in a comedy-infused back-and-forth. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey emerged from the phone calls, texts and stories they shared from their respective positions in New York and Nebraska. (Let’s just say that Lamar’s experiences in the predominantly white city of Omaha were quite different from Ruffin’s in New York City.) They weren’t trying to persuade resistant readers about the ills of racism with their first book. They merely offered their own perceptions of people and incidents, whether it was an overzealous security officer from J.C. Penney or a rude doughnut maker—and the book was a huge success.
Now Ruffin and Lamar are back, and they’ve broadened their scope. “People honestly thought we didn’t have more stories,” Ruffin writes in the introduction. “So, it’s kinda like a dare.” In The World Record Book of Racist Stories, the other members of the Ruffin family—mom, dad, brother and two more Ruffin sisters—are brought into the fray. Their stories range from lighthearted misunderstandings with racist undertones to frightening instances of unchecked bias, and everything in between.
What’s super valuable here is reading how Ruffin and Lamar perceive these instances: how they frame them, connect them, share them with each other and, when they’re able, laugh about them. Each of these new stories is “the best” (or worst) of something—”Most Racist Bus Driver,” “Worst Reaction to a Nice Car,” “Worst Celebrity Look-Alike”—and as you’d imagine, it’s not an award you’d want to win. Readers do win something, though: They get unvarnished straight talk about racism from a Black family that has lived in predominantly white communities for decades. To read stories you won’t soon forget, told in a totally memorable way by some very funny and generous writers, check out The World Record Book of Racist Stories.
To read stories you won’t soon forget, told in a totally memorable way by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar, check out the very funny The World Record Book of Racist Stories.
It’s difficult to have a conversation with Ross Gay and not think of a moniker he’s picked up over the years: “the happiest poet around.” Gay is relaxed, genial and clearly excited about his second essay collection (and sixth book overall), Inciting Joy. With its 14 chapters, or “incitements,” covering subjects as disparate as death and losing one’s phone, Gay hopes his new book is proof that he can write—and in fact has always written—about subjects other than delight. “I feel like this book could also be called The Book of Rage,” he explains over our Zoom call. “Connection and holding each other through each other’s sorrow, to me, feels like an inciting force.” This is the premise of Gay’s powerful book, which begins with an imagined party for people and their sorrows, then segues into an exploration of sites where joy and solidarity defiantly abound.
In many ways, Inciting Joy feels emblematic of Gay’s most pivotal works in both poetry and prose, highlighting the beauty of everyday experiences such as communal gardening and enjoying music and the arts. For instance, Luther Vandross’ cover of Dionne Warwick’s “A House Is Not a Home” gets some well-deserved space, as does the comedic genius of Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor and Gay’s late father, Gilbert, affectionately known as “Poochie.” Meanwhile, other chapters explore equally familiar subjects but in surprising ways. For example, in “Insurgent Hoop (Pickup Basketball: The Ninth Incitement),” Gay discusses the necessarily anti-capitalist nature of the neighborhood court, which can only be reserved for one game at a time and where you might find yourself on the same team as someone you beat only moments before. “There’s never a spot or a time or a reason to have a fixed enemy,” he tells me. “We’re just here together for now. How do we decide at this moment, this group of people, how we’re gonna be together?”
This question serves as a throughline for the book, manifesting itself in some of the most inhospitable places, such as the author’s father’s hospital room as the elder Gay was dying from untreatable liver cancer; on the makeshift skating ramps of his youth, where skaters were expected to share tools and protect one another from the wrath of cops and property owners; and most surprisingly, in the football locker room, where off-color jokes were plentiful but so, too, was tenderness. Players often shaved and administered balms to broken (and broken-out) bodies, even as they hurled insults and sexually violent threats to their opponents and to one another. In the longest and perhaps most moving chapter, “Grief Suite (Falling Apart: The Thirteenth Incitement),” Gay explores both the brutality and the brotherhood made possible in such spaces, and he doesn’t shy away from his own complicity in toxic masculinity as a young man.
“How do we decide at this moment, this group of people, how we’re gonna be together?”
These transparencies, says Gay, are not only par for the course but sit at the heart of what he hopes to achieve in Inciting Joy. It was only a few years before the publication of his first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, that Gay realized prose writing could be pleasurable for him—as long as it wasn’t about showcasing some sort of absolute wisdom. “Instead, it could be about leaving an artifact of my thinking and making that as beautiful as possible,” he says. “But ultimately, [I wanted to see] if there was some way to make the residue of my thinking available . . . the residue of my thinking also being the evidence of my changing.”
As a poet, Gay has always been keen on taking the reader on an ever-evolving journey of thoughts and images, and this feat is prominently displayed in the footnotes that populate Inciting Joy. Some of them are so carefully written that Gay himself describes them as “discrete essays.” He says he understands if folks are reluctant to read them, but he insists that readers will miss quite a bit of information if they choose not to. In fact, he likens the footnotes to pauses in conversations between friends, where one person stops the other to ask for more information, or where the storyteller pauses to offer information they feel is crucial to understanding what’s being said. In other words, the marginalia of Inciting Joy share communal knowledge by offering the bounty of the backstory, much in the way gardeners might share seeds or skateboarders might share bolts from their personal buckets of spare parts. “The footnote is like, I’m serious about this,” says Gay. “I want us to know something about each other.”
“Books that I love make me feel regarded. If anyone feels that way, I would be very happy.”
Perhaps the highest praise I can offer for Inciting Joy is that, for Gay and for me, it sparked a delightful conversation about the wealth of stories, characters, memories and subjects the book undertakes, building upon one another to create such a rich biodiversity on the page that I often found myself reading passages multiple times just to make sure I’d absorbed every detail. We chatted about everything from my anxieties about teaching and house hunting in a new city to the generosity of Mr. Lau, the father of one of Gay’s childhood friends who is briefly mentioned in the book and whose donation of clippings from his backyard garden in Pennsylvania now live as fully grown fig trees in Bloomington, Indiana, where Gay lives and teaches.
As we end our call, Gay admits that he’s curious about how Inciting Joy will be received, but his hope for it is a generous one. “Books that I love make me feel regarded,” he says with a grin. “If anyone feels that way, I would be very happy.”
Poet Ross Gay’s powerful sixth book and second collection of essays, Inciting Joy, opens with an imaginary house party to which people bring their sorrows as plus-ones. Soon the living room becomes a raucous dance floor, and in the middle of this unexpected mirth, Gay poses two central questions: What incites joy? And more importantly, what does joy incite in us?
Early on, Gay offers his own hypothesis that joy is “an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity.” By holding each other through a range of emotions—grief, anger, curiosity and even hilarity—we co-create manifestos for survival, and we refuse to allow capitalistic ills like proprietorship and unbridled ambition to make our lives narrower and lonelier. During an interview with BookPage, Gay explained that the book’s goal is essentially “to study the ways and the practices by which we . . . care for one another. Probably with a sort of firm conviction that institutions do not do that.” He also mused that Inciting Joy could just as easily have been called The Book of Rage for its exploration of his own life at desperate moments, from the impending death of his father from liver cancer in 2004, to a period of deep emotional and physical distress that Gay, often called “the happiest poet around,” feared he wouldn’t survive.
Yet, in the final chapter, joy reigns supreme, and the book ends with a very different kind of party: a potluck attended by members of the Dessalines Brigade, a group of Haitian farmers who, in the wake of the devastating earthquake in 2012, burned seeds donated by the agrochemical company Monsanto. These farmers’ joyful refusal of the gift, because it could have potentially introduced harmful chemicals into Haiti’s food supply, also speaks to the heart of Inciting Joy: that by regarding one another, and considering not only one’s own good but that of the greater community, we do more than incite joy. We save ourselves.
Poet Ross Gay’s powerful sixth book poses two central questions: What incites joy? And more importantly, what does joy incite in us?
The name Rabia Chaudry is back in the news following the September 2022 release of Adnan Syed, the subject of 2014’s “Serial” podcast, from prison. Syed had been imprisoned since 2000 for the alleged murder of his ex-girlfriend, and Chaudry is a family friend who has long maintained his innocence. She even published a book in 2016 about it called Adnan’s Story. But Chaudry’s second book, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family, is about a more private pain: her lifelong struggle with overeating and fluctuating weight.
Chaudry unabashedly relishes food. Over many chapters detailing favorite meals enjoyed by her extended family in Pakistan (recipes are included at the end of the book), as well as her favorite American fast foods, the reader will understand why. But this isn’t a simplistic narrative in which the narrator loves to eat and just won’t, or can’t, stop. Much of the memoir explores how colorism and sexism—specifically the fear that Chaudry, born dark-skinned and scrawny, would never attract a husband—put her under the microscope for constant improvement, beginning when her mother put her on a super-high-calorie diet as a newborn. Raw buffalo milk and bottles of half-and-half caused Chaudry’s body to grow at a rapid rate, but once she reached a size that her family deemed unacceptable, their relentless psychological abuse (the book’s title is a nickname her relatives taunted her with) and the accessibility of America’s tastiest junk food ensured that her weight continued to increase.
Chaudry skillfully narrates how overeating was a savior and a curse. Greasy, salty, fatty food made her feel good when nothing else did. Her skill at describing flavors and mouthfeel, and the intricacies of food preparation, suggest that if Chaudry weren’t an attorney, she might be a food writer. She also captures the exquisite pain of being treated as a disappointment by her family and the lifelong fight for their love.
Fatty Fatty Boom Boom never reaches an “and then I loved my body!” resolution, and that is the point. That particular happy ending was never coming, and only in adulthood did Chaudry understand that “it’s normal not to love your body. It is also healthy not to hate your body.”
Rabia Chaudry’s skill at describing flavors and mouthfeel in her memoir, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, suggest that if she weren't an attorney, she might be a food writer.
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Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
“Family vacation” takes on a new meaning for grown children without kids of their own—like the couple trying their best to keep both sets of in-laws happy in Weike Wang’s Rental House.
