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NonfictionMemoirFood & Drink

4 culinary memoirs will bring flavor and festivity to your book club

Feature by Julie Hale

Dwight Garner’s The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is an irresistible blend of memoir, literary history and culinary journalism. Garner, a longtime New York Times Book Review critic who is married to chef Cree LeFavour, shares memories of meals from his Southern upbringing and food-related anecdotes from a host of famous figures, literary and otherwise, including Toni Morrison and David Sedaris. As he contemplates his favorite pursuits (yes, those would be reading and eating), he highlights the wonderful idiosyncrasies of personal taste. For Garner, the two pastimes nourish each other—with rich results.

In her moving memoir, Tastes Like War, Grace M. Cho looks back on her childhood in Washington state, where she lived with her Korean mother and American father after the family migrated from Korea. Grace was a teenager when her mother began to show signs of schizophrenia. As a doctoral student researching Korean history, Cho started cooking for her mother, drawing on recipes from the family’s past. Themes like colonialism and the unifying power of food will inspire spirited book club discussions.

Anya von Bremzen investigates the role that place plays in food culture in National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home. Over the course of the book, von Bremzen visits foodie dream destinations like Turkey, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Italy and France. Along the way, she talks with chefs and influencers, historians and scientists to find out why particular dishes—pizza, rice, ramen—end up representing a country’s culture. An acclaimed food and travel writer, von Bremzen whisks up a brisk, lively narrative that’s brimming with culinary history.

Kwame Onwuachi’s Notes From a Young Black Chef chronicles the author’s remarkable journey from the flavor-packed but dangerous streets of the Bronx to the heights of the culinary world. As a youngster, Onwuachi suffered at the hands of his violent father and flirted with gang life. But he learned about cooking from his caterer mother and went on to become a James Beard Award-winning chef, even as racism in the culinary industry threatened to derail his dreams. Written with Joshua David Stein, this invigorating memoir offers many talking points, including the value of failing and getting up again.

Gather ’round the table to dish about these mouthwatering memoirs.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

When fiction felt out of reach, Amy Tan turned to birds

Interview by Stephenie Harrison

For renowned author Amy Tan, writing fiction has historically been a refuge, a space where she can step away from her life and let her imagination run wild. But in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, the bestselling author of books such as The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter found that fiction offered little relief from a divisive campaign that inspired “a great deal of overt racism, of the kind I had not really seen before,” Tan says. “It was as if people had now received permission to say what they thought. And it was so ugly.”

So, at the age of 64, Tan put down her pen and picked up a pencil and sketchpad, enrolling in a nature journaling course with a focus on drawing to try to get some perspective and clear her mind.

What Tan thought would be a “momentary diversion” soon morphed into something much greater: Rather than being consumed by the 24/7 news cycle, Tan found her attention held captive by her new hobby.

“I thought it would be something I would do occasionally. But being in nature, especially among birds, has become a major part of my life. It’s an obsession,” Tan confesses during a video call from her Sausalito, California, home, which features floor-to-ceiling windows. “I discovered that beauty—enormous magical beauty—is an antidote to hideous emotions from others.”

Because Tan does not drive, she decided to turn her own backyard into one that would attract birds by hanging feeders, providing fresh water and researching the best food (even storing live mealworms in her fridge). In 2017, she began drawing and writing about her wildlife visitors in private journal entries that she jokingly referred to as “The Backyard Bird Chronicles.” In these pages, Tan shared colorful musings on the rich avian activity and social dynamics she witnessed, each entry accompanied by lovingly rendered drawings.

“When you have a beginner’s mind, you’re open to everything. You’re open to asking questions.”

This was a project Tan undertook solely for herself, with no thought of sharing it with the public. However, when she showed some sketches to her long-standing editor, Daniel Halpern, he had other ideas. Despite her protestations that The Backyard Bird Chronicles was a mess, Halpern was adamant that it should be published, telling Tan that what she had created was “authentic.”

“I love that word because it’s something that applies to everything in life,” Tan admits. “And that is what the mess of my nature journal is: It’s absolutely authentic. It’s spontaneous. It’s not one of these things I’ve revised a hundred times as I do with my fiction.”

For a self-professed perfectionist, the thought of putting out something so candid and unpolished might have once been unthinkable. But Tan shares that her experience watching birds has taught her things more valuable than simply being able to distinguish an American tree sparrow from a juvenile white-crowned sparrow.

“As I get older, I’m very much more aware of the importance of experiencing as much as I can,” Tan explains. One of her primary takeaways from writing the book is to “remain the beginner,” she continues. “When you have a beginner’s mind, you’re open to everything. You’re open to asking questions. . . . So I can be like a child. . . . I can not feel like my ego is at stake, or like I’m considered an expert in this area. I’m not.

“That’s part of being in nature for everybody. Being in nature is about discovery. . . . You’re in a space that’s oftentimes not the space that you’re used to: You’re used to being indoors on a sofa watching a television. So you’re outside and you’re bound to see something new. You’re set up to discover.”

“There could be one bird the whole day, and I’d be happy.”

Tan may have been initially unsure of how The Backyard Bird Chronicles would be received, but her and Halpern’s gamble has paid off: The book is a number one New York Times bestseller and has topped the independent bookseller charts as well. When asked about the enthusiastic response to the book, Tan can’t conceal her grin. While she admits that she doesn’t normally have intentions for the response to her books and “writes them for [her] own reasons,” this book is different: “When I hear people saying that . . . they’re now looking at birds, and they’re so fascinated by birds, and it’s brought them joy? I’m thinking, ‘We’re going to be united in our talking about issues having to do with saving the birds!’ ”

Tan now serves on the board of American Bird Conservancy, but her aspirations for the book extend beyond expanding environmental awareness and preservation. Although she continues to experience racism directed at herself and people she loves, she hopes increasing appreciation for birds can help to cultivate a more compassionate and tolerant society.

“There are a little over 10,000 species [of birds] in the world—and they’re so amazing, they’re so different, so many of them are unusual in their shapes and plumage,” Tan gushes, the strap of the binoculars she wears as part of her daily uniform jerking in her enthusiasm. “And I love that people appreciate the differences. . . . There are people who are intolerant, and they only want to see the same thing. . . . What a desolate world [that] would be!”

Although Tan has no plans to stop chronicling her backyard birds any time soon, she admits that Halpern is eager for a new novel, and she’s finally back at work on the book that was derailed in 2016. She allows that writing fiction requires a focus that looking at birds does not, so to be heading into another election year is unfortunate timing. But eight years later, Tan knows exactly what to do to handle the stress: “There’s no pressure in the backyard,” she says, her eyes softening as her lips curl into a tender smile. “There could be one bird the whole day, and I’d be happy.”

Read our starred review of The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

Author photo of Amy Tan by Enmei Tan.

At 64, the acclaimed author of The Joy Luck Club discovered a passion for birding, which led to her latest bestseller, The Backyard Bird Chronicles.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Review by Stephenie Harrison

It’s been over a decade since Amy Tan published her last novel, but there’s a good reason for that. In 2016, while hard at work on her next literary endeavor, Tan found her psyche and creative drive overwhelmed by the political turmoil consuming the country. When writing fiction failed to provide refuge, Tan sought it elsewhere: Making good on a long-held promise to learn to draw, she began taking nature journaling classes and found herself captivated by the birds she observed. Soon, the hobby turned into a full-on obsession, leading Tan to transform her backyard into an ideal sanctuary for local birds so she could document and sketch the fauna that visited her yard.

Written in her hallmark heartfelt and lively prose, The Backyard Bird Chronicles curates excerpts from Tan’s personal birding journals from 2017 to 2022, sharing anecdotes about her hunt for the perfect squirrel-proof seeds and feeders, the awe she felt sighting her first great horned owl, and the comedy of baby birds learning to feed. Each entry is complemented with Tan’s own drawings.

Tan’s childlike wonder at the birds she observes is contagious, but the book goes beyond a compendium of avian observations: You’ll also find introspection and rumination on universal questions about mortality, empathy, racism and our connection (and responsibility) to nature. Because her journals were written without any intention of publication, there is something truly exhilarating about the candor of Tan’s thoughts; her unguarded presence on the page sparkles with cleverness and compassion. It is the rare reader who will be immune to her unbridled enthusiasm and her message that sometimes life’s sweetest pleasures are its simplest.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles showcases a master novelist in a new light. These pages will be a buoyant balm to the soul for inquisitive readers.

Read our interview with Amy Tan about The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

There is something truly exhilarating about the candor of The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a curated collection of excerpts from novelist Amy Tan’s personal birding journals that sparkles with cleverness and compassion.
NonfictionMemoir

Raised by a Serial Killer

Review by Alice Cary

Although the title Raised by a Serial Killer sounds provocative, the memoir by April Balascio, daughter of Edward Wayne Edwards, is sensational only in terms of its excellence.

Edwards was a man of contrasts: an outgoing, life-of-the-party figure to outsiders, but a physically and emotionally abusive tyrant to his wife and five children. Balascio, the oldest, “never felt safe under his roof—ever.” And yet, she writes, “Because he was impulsive, playful, and fearless, we had adventures that other children could not have had.” 

By age 11, Balascio understood that her father was not only “a really, really bad father” but a “bad man.” Her childhood haunted her as an adult, “like a jigsaw puzzle I couldn’t put together because there were too many missing pieces.” Balascio writes, “We were poor, often hungry, moving from one dilapidated and filthy rental house to another, sometimes living in tents and campers and, once, in a barn.” They moved all the time—Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—sometimes cramming suddenly into a U-Haul truck with no warning. 

Long before being convicted of murder, Edwards published his own memoir, Metamorphosis of a Criminal, about the time before marrying Balascios’ mother. During his book tour, he appeared on TV and talked, “looking bashful and sweet,” about robbing a bank, escaping prison twice, being on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and spending five years in a federal prison. He claimed to have left that life behind, portraying himself as a reformed family man. 

Balascio left home as soon as possible, but her father “never ceased to be the center of my universe, even as I tried to get out from under his control.” In 2009, Balascio, now a wife and mother, was surfing the internet when she realized that her father may have been responsible for the “Sweetheart Murders” of two 19-year-olds in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1980. After she called the cold case hotline, Edwards was eventually arrested and imprisoned, found responsible for at least five killings between 1977 and 1996, possibly more. 

Balascio delivers page-turning tension as she describes her childhood, her later realization about her father’s crimes and finally, her search for additional victims. Like Tara Westover (Educated), she is a savvy survivor and a courageously skilled narrator. And as with Edward Humes’ The Forever Witness—another unputdownable book about solving a cold case—readers will find themselves utterly immersed.

 

The daughter of Edward Wayne Edwards tells how she helped put her father behind bars in the unputdownable Raised by a Serial Killer.
NonfictionMemoir

Ingrained

Review by Priscilla Kipp

As Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman opens, Callum Robinson and his father are trekking deep into a Scottish forest on a quest for timber. As we follow them, we are newcomers in this unfamiliar territory of dappled sunlight, damp air and still silence, surrounded by “hulking Scots pines [that] lurk in their own long shadow.” Along with his woodworking tools, Robinson brings his skills as a wordsmith; his writing is startlingly sensual and as vibrant and lush as the terrain he walks. He evokes the smell and feel of the “dry, earthy, fungal miasma” among the “woodland behemoths” that surround him.

Ingrained is as much the story of these woodlands as it is Robinson’s own journey from wayward teen to impassioned master woodworker. But he didn’t fully understand how much his virtuosic father had taught him, and how much he had, albeit reluctantly, learned, until he left home to find his own way. With his indomitable wife and business partner, Marisa, Robinson opens a storefront in Linlithgow, and business grows quickly—too quickly. Robinson finds himself frustrated behind a desk, fretting over near calamities and financial cliffhangers, instead of a workbench. When he comes to realize he prefers a workshop in the woods over paperwork and corporate bosses, Robinson finds his purpose.

The details are everything here, and in his own devotion to craft, Robinson leaves few out. On that trek deep into the woods, he goes “treasure hunting” at a mill and sorts the sought-after boards by their grain, look and feel. Robinson invites the reader into his workshop to smell the sawdust and wince when learning how a lathe can wreak havoc.

Best of all, thanks to the self-deprecating sense of humor in Robinson’s impressive storytelling, readers come to understand that you don’t need a crafty bone in your body to appreciate and celebrate the work of a master craftsman, or, as Robinson’s father taught him, to respect the creative mind at work. Ingrained makes an excellent case for doing exactly that, whether working with wood, words or, as so beautifully exemplified here, both.

In his sensual, vibrant memoir, Ingrained, Callum Robinson shows off his skills as a woodworker and wordsmith.
NonfictionMemoir

CABIN

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

In his mid-20s, Patrick Hutchison felt adrift: Despite his “dream of becoming a gonzo journalist travel writer-type person,” he worked in a Seattle office as a copywriter. He was embarrassed by his dearth of “proof-of-responsibility milestones” and seeming lack of purpose compared to those around him.

What’s a stressed out guy to do? Well, as he describes with quippy humor and refreshing honesty in his debut, CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures With a Clueless Craftsman, Hutchison decided to buy real estate. The year was 2013; the property, a 120-square-foot cabin in tiny Index, Washington, listed on Craigslist; the price, $7,500, paid to a tugboat captain named Tony.

If you’re thinking that sounds pretty gonzo, you’re not wrong—and Hutchison’s story only gets more interesting, funny and inspiring as he recounts how he threw himself into home ownership and, over the course of several years with help from friends and neighbors, slowly but surely turned the cabin into a charming Cascade Mountains retreat.

At first, it was “the sort of place where you wish your shoes had shoes,” a dirty, diminutive box with no Wi-Fi, cell service, electricity or plumbing, let alone a stable floor. But ignorance was bliss (“Like a new parent with a hideous baby, my eyes glazed over the flaws”), and Hutchison figured out things as he went along: He conducted endless research, made countless supply purchases and experienced the joy and pain of a complicated long-term DIY project. 

Anyone who’s desperately wanted a chainsaw (even if they don’t know how to use it) will relate to Hutchison “half expecting balloons to fall from the ceiling in celebration of such a rad purchase,” and anyone who’s dealt with a mudslide or other natural disaster will empathize with his anxiety at being cut off from the cabin for months. But less specifically, those who dream of shaking things up will find motivation in CABIN and Hutchison’s dogged determination to create the adventurous life he’d always wanted: “Even when required by circumstance, the road less traveled is often the way to go.”

Quippy humor and refreshing honesty abound in CABIN, Patrick Hutchison’s memoir about his journey to restore a filthy, dilapidated cabin in the Cascade Mountains.
NonfictionMemoirHumor

Lifeform

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

The work of award-winning actor and comedian Jenny Slate—whether her stand-up comedy, voice performances (Bob’s Burgers, The Great North), acting (Parks and Recreation, It Ends With Us), or beloved Marcel the Shell With Shoes On multimedia universe—leaves an indelible impression. Unsurprisingly, the prolific creator’s first memoir-in-essays, 2019’s Little Weirds, had the same effect thanks to its inventive language and poignant, poetic takes on her life thus far.

In Lifeform, Slate again beckons readers into her wonderfully idiosyncratic, colorfully kaleidoscopic mind as she recounts her latest adventures in five pivotal phases: Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby and Ongoing. Of course, fans know that despite Lifeform’s organizing principle, the author isn’t inclined to stick to prescribed formats or expectations. Instead, she dances through multifaceted, playful musings that tip over into surrealism, and dwells in quiet spaces alongside her insecurities and fears.

Fabulist inner monologues abound, as in “Stork Dream: Scroll,” wherein the mythical baby-deliverer embodies “how bizarre this experience is of making a lifeform while being a lifeform. I woke myself up laughing, and the laughter was like a string of bells being pulled from inside of me.” Slate tackles waking-hour concerns in her series of whimsical yet pointed “Letters to a Doctor.” In one, she expresses her frustration with traditional dinner-party seating: “Why would you split a couple up against their wills? It is already so incredibly hard to come together and become a couple.”

Intimate and vulnerable revelations simmer throughout, too, such as the bittersweet experience of watching her ailing grandmother and baby Ida “sip soup together, two beings with caretakers who make sure that they stay clean and can get the food into their mouths.” Birth and death, beginnings and ends, are on Slate’s mind (and in her dreams) as she assumes the new role of mother and ponders how she has changed as the phases of her life have unfurled. Fans old and new will revel in Lifeform’s self-effacing humor and imaginative writing style. It’s a delightful, memorable immersion in the lifeform that is Jenny Slate: “Mother/New Wife/Jenny/Wart-Gobbler Goblin/Bad Visual Artist/Fine Clown.”

Read our starred review of the audiobook of Lifeform.

In her new memoir, Lifeform, Jenny Slate beckons readers into her wonderfully idiosyncratic, colorfully kaleidoscopic mind as she recounts her latest adventures with signature whimsy.
NonfictionMemoir

No One Gets to Fall Apart

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

We meet Sarah LaBrie in 2017, when her grandmother calls to tell her that LaBrie’s mother is experiencing delusions and paranoia. Brie is living in Los Angeles, writing commissioned opera libretti that explore generational and racial trauma on a broad scale. Since she eagerly left her childhood home in Houston, Texas, her education and career as a TV writer and librettist have carried her from coast to coast. Now, LaBrie’s focus must shift from her career in California to her mom’s well-being back in Houston. In her poignant debut memoir, No One Gets to Fall Apart, LaBrie faces her own generational trauma, and her work gets personal. 

LaBrie has often been the subject of her mother’s ire, finding herself banished to a closet as a child and subjected to incessant questioning as an adult. Her family has a history of men leaving, and women and children fending for themselves. As a result, her female relatives have developed a pattern of disassociating or isolating themselves when faced with difficult situations. As LaBrie enters her 30s and life with a partner, she fears that marriage and motherhood will be opportunities to repeat her family history.

As she tries to untangle how her mother’s deteriorating mental illness—she is eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia—and her own environment, family history and socioeconomic status have shaped her, LaBrie also writes of her equally tangled unpublished novel. “I’ve become so fixated on not allowing myself to go crazy, I’ve lost touch with the feelings that the story needs to work,” she writes. Her agent suggests, instead, that LaBrie try writing about her mother. But she resists: “Her illness is unfolding according to no rules at all, and no matter how I try to hold it together, the structure falls to pieces.”

She leans into that feeling in the memoir, which ranges widely, leaping across locations and ideas, and threatens to come apart just as the author’s life seems ready to detonate. But thanks to LaBrie’s remarkable intellect and frankness, these multifaceted streams of thought coalesce. Ambitious in scope, No One Gets to Fall Apart examines family dynamics, mental health, Blackness, literature, friendship, the #MeToo movement and more as LaBrie illustrates her desire to embrace her own emotions, even as the temptation to suppress them looms.

 

With remarkable insight and frankness, TV writer and librettist Sarah LaBrie mines her family history of mental illness in her ambitious debut memoir, No One Gets to Fall Apart.
NonfictionMemoir

Roman Year

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

With incandescent prose and vibrant imagery, André Aciman evokes the rich, kaleidoscopic and sensual experiences of his coming-of-age in his memoir, Roman Year.

Just before the Six Years War broke out between Israel and Egypt, 16-year-old Aciman fled Egypt with his deaf mother and younger brother. Packing all their belongings in 31 suitcases, the once prosperous family moved from an Egyptian mansion to a former brothel on an ill-lit, noisy Roman street. During their first afternoon in that shabby apartment in a strange place, “waves of gloom” wash over the family, and the young Aciman feels a “persistent, undefinable numbness that eventually overtakes you and won’t let go.” Aciman doesn’t like the street, Via Clelia, nor does he like Rome: “I belonged elsewhere, but I didn’t know where.” 

While his brother and his mother adapt to their new lives, Aciman buries himself in books and spends much of his year reading: Proust, Woolf and Joyce are among the authors who enchant him. Eventually, as he and his brother explore Rome, Aciman’s affection for the city starts to develop. After he spends Christmas break in Paris, wandering the streets of the City of Light, whiling away time in cafes, visiting Shakespeare and Company and doing research for a study of literary existentialists, Aciman feels as if he might have found his elsewhere. He reluctantly returns to Rome, where he is surprised to find that his love for the Eternal City blossoms, in part because of his intimacy with several women and his connection to the texts that he reads.  

The Call Me By Your Name author glories in the little moments when “there were colors everywhere, everything and everyone was beautiful.” At the end of the year, as he and his family prepare to move to New York City, he finds that “Rome never asked to be loved . . . and I wouldn’t know that I loved it or wanted to love it until I was about to lose it.” Roman Year is a gem of a memoir that sparkles with light that reflects off every facet of Aciman’s pivotal year.

Call Me By Your Name author André Aciman recounts his pivotal coming-of-age in Rome in his sparkling memoir, Roman Year.
NonfictionMemoir

Gather Me

Review by Priscilla Kipp

It all began with a T-shirt. On her 32nd birthday, Glory Edim was surprised by a gift from her ex-partner, a custom-made T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Well-Read Black Girl.” When she wore it on the streets of Brooklyn, she was again surprised: People stopped her to talk about books.

Thus began an evolving conversation, first with her fledgling book club, Well-Read Black Girl, which soon attracted acclaimed authors like Tayari Jones (An American Marriage) and Angela Flournoy (The Turner House); then with her premiere virtual literary festival, attended by more than 800 people. Her podcast, Well-Read With Glory Edim, followed. Now, in her plucky, intimate memoir, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me, Edim offers her own story, tethering the books and authors she has found and loved to her own rocky journey of self-discovery. It’s reader catnip. 

Edim begins each chapter with a list of the authors and books that most influenced her as she came of age, from childhood (My Book of Bible Stories, The Berenstain Bears) through experiencing romantic love for the first time (Romeo and Juliet, Beloved) to her fraught relationship with her aging mother (Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River). She finds solace, wisdom, grace, humor and, especially, support in these tomes as she navigates hard times, and her own writing grows more poignant. 

Yet Gather Me is more than an ode to writers spun from a respectful distance: This is a hands-on guidebook to getting by in good (literary) company. Through reading, Edim found stable ground within her fracturing Nigerian immigrant family, and later as a single mom. Writers like Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, bell hooks, James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston became her community. 

The title borrows a quote from Toni Morrison’s Beloved: “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. . . . It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.” Edim writes, “I am never alone. The T-shirt, the books, the authors, the club, the community: Those things are now my bright and roaring fire, my blessed and beautiful universe.” Gather Me is a powerful invitation to join her there.

In her plucky, intimate memoir, Glory Edim, the creator of the Well-Read Black Girl book club, tethers the books and authors she has found and loved to her own rocky journey of self-discovery—it’s reader catnip.
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.
NonfictionMystery & SuspenseFictionChildren's & YAYA FictionYASocial ScienceMysteryMemoirLiterary FictionHistorical FictionFamily SagaEssays

9 new books to read for Native American Heritage Month

List by the editors of BookPage
STARRED REVIEW
November 4, 2024

9 new books to read for Native American Heritage Month

Celebrate some of the best Native authors writing today with these absorbing titles.
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Book jacket image for Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

Fire Exit

Morgan Talty follows up Night of the Living Rez with Fire Exit, a beautifully written novel that is sometimes funny, often heartbreaking and hopeful against ...
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Book jacket image for Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Wandering Stars

This remarkable novel is both a prequel and a sequel to Tommy Orange’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, There There, picking up with his unforgettable characters Orvil ...
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Book jacket image for Sheine Lende by Darcie Little Badger

Sheine Lende

Sheine Lende focuses on a girl who must use her experience finding missing persons with ghost dogs to track down her own mother.
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Book jacket image for Thunder Song by Sasha LaPointe

Thunder Song

Thunder Song is an essay collection full of sensitive meditations and powerful observations from Coast Salish author Sasha LaPointe.
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Book jacket image for Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer

Where Wolves Don’t Die

In Where Wolves Don’t Die, Anton Treuer delivers an unflinching yet healing story that showcases Ojibwe culture while exploring themes of forgiveness and reconciliation.
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Celebrate some of the best Native authors writing today with these absorbing titles.
NonfictionNatureMemoirEnvironmentCrafts, Hobbies & Home

4 gift books for nature lovers

Feature by the editors of BookPage
Night Magic book jacket by Leigh Ann Henion

Night Magic

Leigh Ann Henion is the bestselling author of Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World (2015), a lyrical memoir of seeking a fulfilling life. Her second book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, is just as personal and personable, this time focusing on the wisdom she has found in darkness. 

We are, unfortunately, obsessed with illuminating the night. Henion explains that 99% of people in the U.S. live under the influence of “skyglow—diffuse, artificial brightening of the night sky,” and she shares data about how light pollution causes health problems for humans and destroys ecosystems and the migratory patterns of birds. “Darkness is often presented as a void of doom rather than a force of nature that nourishes lives, including our own,” she writes.

Henion’s nocturnal investigation takes her to Appalachia for synchronous lightning bugs, Ohio for a moth festival and soggy, foggy Grandfather Mountain for glowworms. She hunts for migrating salamanders with a professor and his class, and she describes the harm that streetlights cause to owl habitats. She meets with specialists and scientists, and in her cheerful, thoughtful style, she shares all she learns about bats, bioluminescent mushrooms and more.

Readers who choose to follow Night Magic into the dark may find the courage to turn off that backyard floodlight, allow their eyes to adjust and see something spectacular.

—Cat Acree

Book jacket image for The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

★ The Backyard Bird Chronicles

It’s been over a decade since Amy Tan published her last novel, but there’s a good reason for that. In 2016, while hard at work on her next literary endeavor, Tan found her psyche and creative drive overwhelmed by the political turmoil consuming the country. When writing fiction failed to provide refuge, Tan sought it elsewhere: Making good on a long-held promise to learn to draw, she began taking nature journaling classes and found herself captivated by the birds she observed. Soon, the hobby turned into a full-on obsession, leading Tan to transform her backyard into an ideal sanctuary for local birds so she could document and sketch the fauna that visited her yard.

Written in her hallmark heartfelt and lively prose, The Backyard Bird Chronicles curates excerpts from Tan’s personal birding journals from 2017 to 2022, sharing anecdotes about her hunt for the perfect squirrel-proof seeds and feeders, the awe she felt sighting her first great horned owl, and the comedy of baby birds learning to feed. Each entry is complemented with Tan’s own drawings. 

Tan’s childlike wonder at the birds she observes is contagious, but the book goes beyond a compendium of avian observations: You’ll also find introspection and rumination on universal questions about mortality, empathy, racism and our connection (and responsibility) to nature. Because her journals were written without any intention of publication, there is something truly exhilarating about the candor of Tan’s thoughts; her unguarded presence on the page sparkles with cleverness and compassion. It is the rare reader who will be immune to her unbridled enthusiasm and her message that sometimes life’s sweetest pleasures are its simplest.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles showcases a master novelist in a new light. These pages will be a buoyant balm to the soul for inquisitive readers. 

—Stephenie Harrison

Read our interview with Amy Tan about The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

Book jacket of Atlas Obscura: Wild Life by Cara Giamo and Joshua Foer

Atlas Obscura: Wild Life

Atlas Obscura got its start as a community-driven website about the weirdest destinations around the globe, but it has expanded into a podcast and books such as the bestselling Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura. The latest book, Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders by Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer, is a monumental tour through the world’s most interesting organisms, with heaping piles of facts, stories, photographs and illustrations.

Divided into chapters based on habitat, the book begins with a section on humans that emphasizes the positive aspects of our relationship with Earth. “We are of course bound to [plants, animals and organisms] with every breath of air and every bite of food. But we also learn from the species around us, using our observations of them to build new understandings of how life on Earth has been, is, and could be,” the authors write. This sets a curious and optimistic tone for the book, which is true to the overall Atlas Obscura vibe.

Wild Life is for people who say things like “Nature is metal!” when a lion kills a gazelle and are thrilled about the fact that platypuses glow under black light. Did you know that slime molds were able to replicate the Tokyo railway system? Did you know that moss balls travel as a pack in the Eurasian tundra, and no one knows why?

Along with facts about more than 500 organisms, the book also includes Q&As with such people as a grass weaver, a walrus watcher and “a crow-human conflict mediator,” suggesting that our own lives can be almost as wild as those of these incredible creatures.

—Cat Acree

Book jacket of Leaf, Cloud, Crow by Margaret Renkl

Leaf, Cloud, Crow

In Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows (2023), the third book from the bestselling author, Tennessee naturalist and New York Times contributing writer, readers were invited into a weekly communion in her Nashville backyard, with 52 essays coinciding with brilliantly colorful collages by her brother, Billy Renkl. With her new guided journal, Leaf, Cloud, Crow: A Weekly Backyard Journal, Renkl extends her invitation further, drawing us into a yearlong commitment to seeing the world more clearly and, in doing so, knitting ourselves closer to it.

In her introduction to Leaf, Cloud, Crow, Renkl explains that her praxis of observation is one that she has cultivated for three decades, but even now, “It isn’t always easy to give myself over to the timeless beauty outside my window.” To help get you into the right mindset, she offers her essay “How to Pay Attention,” a clear and declarative list of things to do and be as a backyard naturalist. “Silence and stillness are your greatest tools,” she writes. “Take care not to frighten anybody. Sit quietly and let the world come to you.”

From there, Renkl puts your powers of observation and evaluation to work. Organized by seasons, the journal begins in winter, during the week of December 21-27, when the user is encouraged to go find something in the natural world—a dead leaf will do—and then make a metaphor from it. From there we learn about birding, the pain and glory of seasonal changes, the willingness to be completely perplexed by something we’ve seen, and so on, each prompt coinciding with an excerpt from The Comfort of Crows.

If you despair at the loss of ecosystems and the damage that we have done to the wild world, Renkl’s words and the lessons she imparts are a balm. For those who wish to do better, see better and (of course) write better, it’s an excellent gift.

—Cat Acree

Looking for a holiday gift for a birder, tree-hugger or civilian scientist? We’ve got just the thing.

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