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NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoir

Ancestor Trouble

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

In 2014, the well-known literary blogger Maud Newton wrote a cover story for Harper’s Magazine titled “America’s Ancestry Craze.” Now, in her first book, Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, she significantly expands on that piece, blending a revealing family memoir with a well-researched and thoughtful exploration of heredity and genealogy.

Newton introduces a large cast of characters from her lineage, some of whom were accused of murder and witchcraft. The conflict-filled marriage of her parents—a father from whom she’s been estranged for two decades and who would welcome the return of slavery, and a mother who believes in demonic possession and once led a fundamentalist church in her living room—provides rich narrative material, as do Newton’s often moving reflections on her markedly different relationships with her Texas and Mississippi grandmothers.

Maud Newton, author of ‘Ancestor Trouble,’ shares how she’s working to acknowledge the sins of her ancestors.

In the most incisive and tough-minded chapters of the book, Newton confronts the twin “monstrous bequests” of her ancestors: their ownership of enslaved people and involvement with the dispossession of America’s Indigenous population. She was able to trace her father’s forebears’ slaveholding back to 1816, which she more or less expected. But in the process, she made the unpleasant discovery that there are also slave owners in her maternal lineage, and that she’s descended from Massachusetts settlers who expropriated the lands of native tribes through treachery and violence.

As absorbing as it may be, Newton’s family story is only one element of her account. Ancestor Trouble broadens into a much deeper excavation of the subject of ancestry that ranges widely across an abundance of topics, among them the allure and danger of websites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com and the spiritual practice of ancestor veneration. She also investigates controversies in cutting-edge DNA research, acknowledging that apparent scientific advances are not always unalloyed goods.

Newton’s family history is uniquely hers, but her book arms anyone who’s ever been tempted to visit their own ancestry in a serious way with a host of provocative questions to consider.

In her striking debut, Maud Newton blends a revealing family memoir with a well-researched and thoughtful exploration of heredity and genealogy.
NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoir

Maud Newton’s debut is much more than a conventional family memoir

Interview by Harvey Freedenberg

According to an article in the MIT Technology Review, by early 2019, more than 26 million people had added their DNA to the four leading commercial ancestry and health databases. That level of interest cries out for an in-depth examination of genealogy’s broad appeal, and Maud Newton gives us just that in Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, a thoughtful investigation of genetics and inheritance as viewed from the branches of her own family tree.

Speaking by FaceTime from her home in Queens, New York, the red-haired and bespectacled Newton is relaxed and cordial as she sits in front of a wall of glass-enclosed bookshelves. She speaks thoughtfully but with evident passion about a project that had its genesis some 15 years ago, when she started researching her family on Ancestry.com. But it wasn’t until 2010, when she received her 23andMe DNA test results, that her interest in the subject took off. Even then, she admits, she was “puzzled by my obsession with it. I wasn’t really sure exactly what I was trying to get at.”

Read our starred review of Maud Newton’s ‘Ancestor Trouble.’

A 2014 cover story for Harper’s Magazine on “America’s Ancestry Craze” led to a book contract and launched Newton, a writer and former book blogger who briefly practiced law before her literary career began, on a long and sometimes circuitous path through subjects like the heritability of trauma and the spiritual importance of ancestors in various cultures. “As a layperson, my ability to understand the deep science was limited,” she says, “but I really wanted to do my best.” The broad reading list reflected in her book ranges from ancients like Aristotle and Hippocrates to the work of contemporary writers such as Dani Shapiro and Alexander Chee.

At the core of Ancestor Trouble is Newton’s complex and often difficult family story. She describes her birth as a “kind of homegrown eugenics project,” writing that her parents “married not for love but because they believed they would have smart children together.” The union between her father, a Mississippi-born lawyer and unabashed racist, and her mother, a Texas native who later in life became a fundamentalist minister who conducted exorcisms in the family living room, lasted only 12 years but left Newton with a colorful, though at times painful, lineage to explore.

Among the most memorable characters in her family line are her maternal ninth great-grandmother, Mary Bliss Parsons, who faced multiple allegations of witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts, and her maternal grandfather, Robert Bruce, who reportedly married 13 times. (So far, Newton has only been able to document 10 marriages, though she’s still searching.) Another is Charley, Robert’s father, who was accused of murdering a man in downtown Dallas with a hay hook in 1916. He died in a Texas mental hospital, but Newton became so engrossed in his story that she purchased a tombstone to mark his previously anonymous grave.

“As a layperson, my ability to understand the deep science was limited, but I really wanted to do my best.”

For Newton, the most problematic aspect of her ancestry concerns her family’s connections with slavery and with efforts to expel Indigenous peoples from their native lands. On her father’s side, that history hardly came as a surprise; he was, after all, obsessed with the Confederacy. But Newton was dismayed to discover that some of her mother’s ancestors also enslaved people and participated in genocide against Native Americans. “It was an unpleasant surprise, but ultimately a healthy and useful one,” Newton says, “to recognize that it wasn’t possible for me to divide my family into the part that enslaved people and that I didn’t relate to as much, and the part that I related to more that didn’t have this history. It was on all the sides.”

Though her family history is rife with material, Newton wanted to write a book that was more than a conventional family memoir. “The only way I wanted to write it was if I could . . . look at it through these different lenses, both through my own family history and in the larger historical, sociological, scientific, philosophical and religious history context,” she says.

That broad perspective magnified Newton’s reservations about online DNA research websites like the ones that launched her investigation. “I am very skeptical and very concerned about the data those sites are collecting and the lack of control we have over what is done with that data,” she says. “And I also continue to use both of those sites regularly. I objectively think they’re highly problematic, and on a personal level, I continue to be seduced by the tools that they offer.”

“Making it personal is the most powerful force we have for change.”

Newton’s comprehensive approach also led her to explore different ancestor veneration practices, such as Tomb-Sweeping Day in China and the Day of the Dead in Mexico. As she studied these rituals throughout history and the world, she came to realize that “we in the contemporary West who do not venerate ancestors or minister to them in the afterlife are the aberration, not the other way around.” That intriguing and moving investigation, she says, provided her with “a spiritual connection now, a healthy connection to my ancestors, including to some of the ancestors who were problematic when they died, with whom I had difficult relationships in life.” In the end, she says, “it’s less important or interesting whether there’s some objective reality to this feeling that I have of connection to my ancestors. What’s important to me is the healing potential that this inquiry can have.”

Readers will connect with many aspects of Newton’s vivid story, but there’s one—what she calls “acknowledgment genealogy”—that she hopes will especially resonate. This encompasses, as she puts it, “personal harms that we can acknowledge within our own family or larger harms that relate to the systemic problems that we’re facing now as a country. . . . If each of us can feel a little more comfortable coming forward and recognizing these harms and thinking about them and feeling about them in a larger context,” she says, “we’ll move a lot further along as a country toward the kind of conversations and healing that we need.” Newton believes this and brilliantly reflects it in Ancestor Trouble. After all, she says, “making it personal is the most powerful force we have for change.”

Maud Newton author photo credit: Maximus Clarke

The essayist and critic has penned a thoughtful investigation of genetics and inheritance as viewed from the branches of her own family tree.
NonfictionSocial Science

Amanda Oliver considers what it costs librarians to be the saviors of society

Interview by Jessica Wakeman

We asked Amanda Oliver, author of Overdue: Reckoning With the Public Library, a few questions about how libraries become overburdened, why librarians burn out, and what effect this has on the health of our communities.

You write that Overdue will “push directly against the romanticization of what libraries are and who they are for.” Why do people romanticize libraries?
I think now, maybe more than ever, we need hope. And libraries, at least as we commonly understand them, are symbols of that hope—that we can share; that we can provide free, community-based items and care and space; even that we still love, read and uphold books. But there are more accurate truths, which I dig into extensively throughout the book, that I think will ultimately lead us to a more realistic version of hope around, within and from libraries. 

Did you romanticize libraries yourself at any point?
My relationship to libraries has fundamentally, since childhood, been based in warm feelings toward them as safe havens and quiet spaces of comfort. I still love libraries. I still find them comforting and recognize that they can be safe havens. But I am always touched by the whys: Why do libraries provide so much in America? Why do so few institutions like them exist en masse? Why not look a little more closely and critically at them? I can’t, and don’t ever want to, look at libraries without the whys.

Overdue uses your experiences as a librarian in Washington, D.C., to address societal and structural issues that affect libraries nationwide. Did you consider interviewing other librarians and incorporating their experiences into the book as well?
I’m not sure people realize that many public library systems have clauses in their contracts about what you can and cannot say publicly while working for them. I’ve had many private, off-the-record conversations with librarians that I didn’t include in the book out of respect for their privacy and need for job security. In many of those conversations, librarians said things along the lines of “I can’t say this stuff while I still work for my library system.” Meanwhile, I knew I could say “this stuff” because I had left library work and didn’t intend to go back.

“Why do libraries provide so much in America? Why do so few institutions like them exist en masse?”

You write movingly about how you operated with empathy while working with patrons facing poverty, racism, substance abuse and other issues. It led you to feel empathy fatigue and burnout. What do you hope readers, whether or not they’re librarians, learn about that process of burning out?
It has always been very interesting to me what happens when I explain to people the toll that working as a librarian took on me. Even the most socially conscious and empathetic people I know sometimes find it bewildering. I think it is deeply ingrained in American work culture and ethic that we should work and not complain, especially in professions where you are serving vulnerable and underserved people. I know that this was part of why I burned out. The idea that I was overreacting, that I was too sensitive and not tough enough, that I wasn’t working hard enough—this sort of deep-rooted self-flagellation, in lieu of looking more closely and critically at the system(s) I was functioning within, didn’t help me, and it didn’t help the people I was serving.

My hope is that people will recognize that you can’t pour from an empty cup (no matter how much you want to) and you also shouldn’t be asked to—by an employer, a co-worker or, as it ultimately comes down to, the perverse, inhumane, unimaginative and oftentimes cruel systems of capitalism in this country. 

Early in Overdue, you explore how libraries in colonial America were for wealthy white men and how racial segregation in libraries continued until the late 20th century. Why was it essential for you to include this history?
This is a key factor in all of American history, and yet it often seems to go missing from the narrative around libraries. That it was almost entirely wealthy white men who funded and founded public libraries (and so much else) means this was who determined libraries’ earliest roots, policies, procedures and so forth. It’s impossible to look at where libraries are today without looking at where—and how, and by and for whom—they were created. It was especially important to me to establish that our segregated past wasn’t that long ago, and that racism and systemic inequalities today still actively impact library patrons and employees in a negative way.

Read our starred review of ‘Overdue’ by Amanda Oliver.

Helping professions (such as nurses, childcare workers, etc.) can be seen as “feminized” labor and treated with less respect compared to more male-dominated fields. Do you think, in general, librarianship is viewed as “feminized” labor? How do you believe that impacts how society treats libraries and librarians?
Yes, I think librarianship is often viewed as “feminized” labor, and historically as well as statistically, it is. Something like 30% of librarians are men, with an unequal proportion of them in leadership roles. There are also still pervasive stereotypes of librarians—as either shrewish, unpleasant women or “sexy” women in skirts and unbuttoned cardigans—that I find debasing. Any type of gender stereotyping, inequality and discrimination negatively impacts everyone, of all genders, in innumerable ways. At the library level, it’s another way of preventing progress and an accurate understanding of the profession.

What are some of the reactions you would like to see from library administrators and local governments in response to the issues you raise in Overdue?
I’d like to see a bit more honest reckoning—as the subtitle of the book implies. Which is to say, a bit more of those in power acknowledging mistakes and missteps as well as facing up to more realities and failures on an institutional level. I’d like to see local governments looking to libraries for guidance on how they can establish community supports and services—not necessarily as resources for information on this topic (which, of course, they are) but as living, breathing, working examples.

I also hope my book gives people in leadership or decision-making roles some genuine insight into what is being asked of librarians, the immense weight that carries and the potential tolls it can take. My hope is that we will see better, more conscious, caring and community-minded decisions being made in the future. I think public libraries have a real opportunity to implement and model better work environments and better ways of caring.

“I hope my book gives people in leadership roles some genuine insight into what is being asked of librarians, the immense weight that carries and the potential tolls it can take.”

You mentioned how you like to visit a library in every place you travel. Is there one library that you especially love—either for its design, its people or something you did, saw or read there?
I have a particular fondness for the Seattle Public Library’s main branch. It’s a beautifully designed building. I also still go back to my first library sometimes when I am visiting Buffalo, New York, because it’s full of many warm memories for me. 

Do you have plans for another book, and if so, can you tell us what it’s about?
I do! I’ll be attending a six-week writing residency this summer to focus on my second book, which is quite different from Overdue. I am a stylistic prose writer at heart, which is not what readers will see in Overdue but is something they can find in some of my essays. I’m quite excited to get back to writing that is meditative, experimental and not based in heavy research. The book is, loosely, about living in the desert, the idea of Home with a capital H and the many ways it shifts and fragments in a life.

Author photo of Amanda Oliver by Justin Danks

The debut author draws on her experience in the Washington, D.C., public library system to explore how libraries became Band-Aids for American inequality.
NonfictionSocial Science

Off the Edge

Review by Deborah Mason

We all have one. That friend or relative who cannot hold a conversation without bringing up their pet conspiracy theory. The one who believes COVID-19 is a hoax or that a certain former secretary of state actually wore a mask made from the face of a dead child. The one who frightens and confuses you in equal measure, leaving you to wonder what happened to your dear friend or favorite uncle. The one you might be thinking about cutting off, because the mere thought of listening to one more lecture about the faked moon landing sends you around the bend.

Before you do, however, you really should read Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything by Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill. Since starting at The Daily Beast in 2016, Weill has focused on how conspiracy theories flourish on social media. In Off the Edge, Weill uses flat-eartherism as a case study, documenting its surprising roots in a 19th-century socialist utopian commune, its truly astonishing endurance and popularity, and its links to other conspiracy theories, including QAnon. In addition to conducting meticulous research for her debut book, Weill had searching and substantive conversations with flat-earth believers that informed her understanding of how conspiracy theories evolve, grow and converge. She is especially critical of the role YouTube and Facebook have played in this history, but she is equally clear that the mainstream media, including some of her own articles, are also at fault.

Weill’s investigation of flat-eartherism makes clear that adherence to a conspiracy theory is not intellectual but emotional. Fear and uncertainty about the world and one’s place in it fuel a desperate desire for clarity—even if that clarity is rooted in a nonsensical worldview that drives a wedge between the believer and their loved ones. But there’s still hope for these broken relationships. Weill shows that people can and do recover from their fever dreams, but not through intellectual argumentation alone. If the exploitation of fear can divide us, only compassion and openheartedness can lay the groundwork to draw us together again.

Before you cut off a loved one who won’t shut up about their pet conspiracy theory, you really should read Kelly Weill’s extraordinary debut book, Off the Edge.
NonfictionSocial ScienceFamily & Relationships

Matters of the heart

Feature by Julie Hale

Foreverland

Heather Havrilesky delivers a funny, forthright chronicle of modern wifehood in Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. As she recounts in the book, Havrilesky met and married her professor-husband, Bill, while in her mid-30s, and 15 years of marriage have disabused her of any fairy-tale notions about the institution. “A divine catastrophe” is how she now views the union. “Having someone by your side every minute of your life sounds so romantic before he’s actually there, making noises, emitting smells, undoing what you’ve just done,” she writes.

In Foreverland, Havrilesky considers the ups and downs of married life, writing with candor about its undeviating dullness and surprising upsides, about trading the high fire of early passion for the slow burn of long-term love. Havrilesky, a journalist whose beloved “Ask Polly” advice column now appears on Substack, has a gift for highlighting moments of comedy and absurdity in the midst of major life milestones. With Bill, she starts a family, buys a house in the Los Angeles suburbs and endures the COVID-19 lockdown, learning along the way to savor the mixed blessings of marriage. “It’s the hardest thing to do, sometimes: just to stand still and be loved,” she writes. Whether single or spoken for, readers are sure to fall for Havrilesky’s charming memoir.

From Hollywood With Love

Scott Meslow’s From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy pays tribute to a seemingly imperishable cinematic category. The romantic comedy is something of a hybrid, a mashup of moods and emotions that hold forth the promise of a happy ending. In his delightful homage to the genre, Meslow notes that a romantic comedy’s “goal is to make you laugh at least as much as the goal is to make you cry.” Through an insightful survey of modern rom-com classics, Meslow explores the durability of the form, which peaked in popularity during the 1990s and early 2000s. Along the way, he looks at the careers of some of the category’s standout stars, including Meg Ryan, Hugh Grant, Jennifer Lopez and Will Smith.

Meslow writes with sparkle and wit, and in recounting three decades of rom-com history, he brings fresh perspectives to old favorites like When Harry Met Sally, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Waiting to Exhale. Meslow also takes stock of the genre’s recent resurgence, with a new generation of movies cropping up on Netflix and other streaming platforms. As From Hollywood With Love proves, our love for the romantic comedy is here to stay.

If you aren’t exactly feeling the love this Valentine’s Day, check out Florence Williams’ ‘Heartbreak.’

Black Love Matters

For the anthology Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters, editor Jessica P. Pryde enlisted a stellar lineup of essayists to share their perspectives on Black love and the ways it’s portrayed in popular media. Pryde is a librarian, contributing editor at Book Riot and die-hard romance fan who has long been aware of the lack of romantic narratives featuring Black protagonists and blissful endings. As she notes in the book’s introduction, more than 90% of the titles produced by mainstream publishers in the romance category don’t focus on Black people’s experiences.

In “Finding Queer Black Women in Romance. Finding Bits and Pieces of Me,” novelist Nicole M. Jackson writes about looking for relatable figures in the romance genre. Author Piper Huguley explores the expectations and stereotypes surrounding Black leading men in her essay “In Search of the Black Historical Hottie Hero.” Other authors, scholars and critics who contributed to the anthology include Julie Moody-Freeman, Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Allie Parker and Carole V. Bell (who’s also a BookPage contributor). From astute cultural critiques to introspective first-person essays, these 14 pieces form a revealing mosaic that will fundamentally change how readers engage with love stories.

Conversations on Love

Love is the one thing most of us say we can’t do without, yet putting it into action—whether as a sibling, spouse or friend—can be one of life’s greatest tests. Journalist Natasha Lunn helps readers make sense of this important emotion in Conversations on Love: Lovers, Strangers, Parents, Friends, Endings, Beginnings. An offshoot of her popular Conversations on Love email newsletter, Lunn’s book features candid Q&As with authors and experts who provide guidance on the subject of love, including suggestions about how to find it, cultivate it and keep it alive.

Lunn’s roster of interviewees includes writer Roxane Gay, psychotherapist Susie Orbach and author Juno Dawson. While her book tackles topics that will resonate with committed couples, such as dealing with infidelity and working to maintain passion while raising kids, Conversations on Love also covers issues outside the realm of romance, such as sibling dynamics, self-love, identity and strategies for coping with the loss of a loved one. “Just as we change, our challenges in love change too,” Lunn writes. Her book is a thoughtful guide to meeting those challenges—and getting more love out of life.

If you’re searching for clarity regarding the elusive emotion of love (and who isn’t?), start with these four perceptive nonfiction books.
NonfictionSocial Science

Eating to Extinction

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

The terms endangered and extinct are most commonly applied to animal species, particularly as human activities encroach on wildlife habitats worldwide. But the global human population explosion over the past few centuries has also wreaked havoc on human nutrition, decreasing food diversity and threatening the global food supply and our environment in general.

Food journalist Dan Saladino spent over 10 years researching at-risk foods and food cultures, and his discoveries about the dangerous consequences of decreased food diversity are outlined in Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them. This decline in diversity isn’t necessarily visible to consumers now that food is shipped all over the world, seemingly providing more variety to many of our diets. However, in order to feed an ever-increasing population, major food crops such as rice, wheat and corn have become more and more homogeneous, making them more susceptible to disease and less nutritious.

Saladino traverses the globe to find out what scientists, conservationists and food experts are doing to dial back the increasing sameness in our diets. His journalistic skills are key as he interviews a wide range of people, from food corporation executives and government officials to botanists and farmers. Divided into 10 parts about topics such as cereals, vegetables, meat and fruit, each section covers food from many locations around the world, such as bere barley from Orkney, Scotland, and the Kayinja banana from Uganda. A map key in the front of the book pinpoints each setting, providing geographical context.

Fascinating and extremely well written, Eating to Extinction combines comprehensive history with science, culture and geography. At 464 pages, it’s a lengthy tome that undoubtedly could have been much longer, as it just scratches the surface regarding the number of foodstuffs affected by diminishing biodiversity. Saladino raises a serious issue that needs to be addressed with global urgency and cooperation.

Dan Saladino spent over 10 years researching foods that are at risk of going extinct, culminating in the fascinating and well-written Eating to Extinction.
NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoirBlack HistoryAmerican History

The many forms of a freedom fighter

Feature by Vanessa Willoughby

America may have abolished Jim Crow laws, but prejudice is a clever shape-shifter. Certainly, the black experience is not solely defined by injustices inflicted by white America. Regardless, the black experience in this country cannot be discussed without the ever-looming menace of racism and the complementary institution of white supremacy. These four recent releases offer a nuanced spectrum of views on what it means to be black in America.

For many Americans who believed in the concept of “colorblindness,” the election of Donald Trump abruptly shattered the myth of a post-racial America. Yet for many minorities, the unapologetic racism and bigotry that helped elect Trump served as a reminder that the institution of white supremacy is alive and thriving. At a young age, Patrisse Khan-Cullors learned that blackness functioned as a target and watched as racism chipped away at the humanity of her loved ones. Yet Khan-Cullors, who co-founded the Black Lives Matter movement with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, found strength within the unconditional love she held for her family, which provided a refuge from the dehumanization tactics of white supremacy. The title of her memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, co-authored with asha bandele, references the labeling of Black Lives Matter as a terrorist movement by conservative media outlets, politicians and government officials. According to a report leaked by Foreign Policy, the FBI’s counterterrorism division determined that “black identity extremists” were a violent group of domestic terrorists. Activists such as Khan-Cullors cite this assessment as an example of dog-whistle politics. For those under the banner of white supremacy, it’s deemed radical to say that black lives matter—because black people are rarely seen as human.

HARD TO SAY
Talking about race in America can feel like chatting with a mouth full of thorns. Even for the white Americans who vow to be allies, talking about race is taboo: If you’re not racist, then why are you noticing skin color in the first place? Equal parts an excavation of personal history and a piece of sharp political commentary, author Ijeoma Oluo inhabits a narrative tone that is neither condescending nor coddling in So You Want to Talk About Race. Racism in America can take the form of so much more than the “N” word, and here Oluo astutely dismantles issues such as police brutality, cultural appropriation and microaggressions, and the pervasive, poisonous power of racism and white supremacy. Balancing the intimacy of a memoirist with the dedication of an investigative journalist, Oluo recognizes that her offerings are a starting point. The work required to effectively battle racism can begin with conversation, but if these principles are not put into consistent practice, then lasting change has little chance. Systemic racism benefits from silence just as much as it thrives under white liberals who refuse to check their privilege—those who assume that proximity to their black friend, love interest or neighbor proves that they are not complicit. So You Want to Talk About Race argues that with the right tools, discussions about race in America can serve as bridges rather than battlefields.

FINAL WORDS
In 2014, the killing of 43-year-old Eric Garner, a black Staten Island resident and neighborhood fixture, was caught on video. The footage shows white New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo wrestling Garner to the ground and using what appears to be an illegal chokehold. Garner struggles, uttering those infamous last words, “I can’t breathe.” The medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide. Regardless, a grand jury chose not to indict Pantaleo on a charge of murder. In I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street, a carefully constructed and researched portrait of Garner, Rolling Stone staff writer and author Matt Taibbi utilizes the tragedy to hold a mirror to the degrading, demoralizing and crippling manifestations of American racism. I Can’t Breathe not only examines the wide-reaching effects of racism but also specifically breaks down how the ideas of “law and order” contribute to a system of racist, predatory policing. Although Taibbi recognizes that Garner had his flaws, he pushes beyond them to compile a rich, nuanced depiction of a devoted family man who became yet another victim of bad luck, unforgiving environmental circumstances and the racially fueled injustices of the country’s police forces. I Can’t Breathe demands readers ask: Who are the police really intended to protect?

AMERICAN GLORY
When we think of the black renaissance, we typically conjure images of bustling Harlem streets and flashy zoot suits alongside the black excellence of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. We may even think of Chicago and its cultural icons such as author Richard Wright and playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Memoirist and reporter Mark Whitaker’s Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance is a thoroughly researched celebration of the black community and culture in Pittsburgh from the 1920s through the 1950s. Pittsburgh’s black residents, Whitaker argues, offered cultural contributions that significantly shaped black history—and the nation. With the diligence of a seasoned anthropologist, Whitaker spotlights the city’s stunning feats of black achievement and resilience through the lens of his extensive cast of influencers and icons. While some of the names may be unfamiliar, each subject’s narrative is a nuanced portrayal meant to challenge our country’s often narrow, dismissive version of black history. Cultural heavyweights such as boxer Joe Louis are treated as historical catalysts rather than extraordinary oddities. Black history, as evident in the cultural renaissance of Pittsburgh, is not defined by oppression. Despite the setbacks of systemic racism and discrimination, black excellence flourishes regardless of the white gaze.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

America may have abolished Jim Crow laws, but prejudice is a clever shape-shifter. Certainly, the black experience is not solely defined by injustices inflicted by white America. Regardless, the black experience in this country cannot be discussed without the ever-looming menace of racism and the complementary institution of white supremacy. These four recent releases offer a nuanced spectrum of views on what it means to be black in America.

NonfictionAudioSocial ScienceMystery

Audio: Seeing double

Feature by Sukey Howard

Listener beware! Untrue is Wednesday Martin’s unvarnished, cogently argued, colorfully detailed take on women who are “untrue.” She’s talking about women’s sexuality, adultery, cheating and “stepping out,” and she doesn’t mince words or use euphemisms. So if you’re uncomfortable with sexual straight talk, this book is not for you. But if you’re perfectly OK with it, there’s much to shake up your perceptions. Martin sees the sexual double standard, with its misunderstanding of women’s hearts and libidos, as “one of our country’s foundational concepts” along with life and liberty. To explore female infidelity and sexual autonomy, she talked to and synthesized the work of experts—primatologists, anthropologists, psychologists and more—who challenge our received notions of female promiscuity and see it as a behavior with a “remarkably long tail.” Martin reads her own provocative, stereotype-slaying words with elan.

GILDED AGE GHOSTS
I’m not a big fan of paranormal fiction, but Rose Gallagher, the protagonist of Erin Lindsey’s Gilded Age thriller Murder on Millionaires’ Row, is so disarmingly charming and fabulously feisty that I happily followed the spectral happenings that swirl around her from the get-go. Though 19-year-old Rose grew up in the rough-and-tumble Five Points, a notorious Dickensian slum in Lower Manhattan, she’s now a maid in a Fifth Avenue townhouse owned by Thomas Wiltshire, an elegant, eligible young Englishman. Rose, of course, has a full-throttle crush on her boss, and when he goes missing, she uses all her grit and innate talent to solve the mystery of his disappearance. When that’s achieved, she finds herself in Thomas’ world, in which special Pinkerton operatives investigate supernatural events, work with witches and return errant shades to the afterlife. This engagingly fun first installment in Lindsey’s new series is delightfully performed by Barrie Kreinik.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO
The United States imprisons a higher portion of its population than any other country in the world, and roughly 130,000 inmates are in privately owned, for-profit prisons. Less than a decade ago, Shane Bauer, a senior reporter for Mother Jones, unknowingly crossed into Iran while hiking and was held for 26 months in an Iranian jail. In 2014, to investigate life inside a corporately run penitentiary, Bauer took a low-paying job as a guard at a facility in Winnfield, Louisiana, owned by the Corrections Corporation of America (now rebranded as CoreCivic). His on-the-ground reporting in American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment is powerful and disturbing. The conditions he experienced at Winnfield were horrendous, from dangerous understaffing that left prisoners with no classes and few activities, to subminimal medical care, unbridled sexual harassment and pervasive violence. And Bauer’s incisive examination of how the profit motive has shaped our prison system since the end of slavery amplifies his indictment. James Fouhey expertly narrates this vital exposé.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Get lost in two absorbing exposés, plus a delightful Gilded Age mystery in this month's Audio column.
NonfictionSocial ScienceReligion & SpiritualityPoliticsCrafts, Hobbies & HomeBusiness & Finance

Resolutions: New year, new you!

Feature by the editors of BookPage

You've got goals, and we've got the books to help you achieve them. Tackle your resolutions with these 10 books.

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Succes
By Albert-László Barabási

RESOLUTION: Work better, not harder, to reach your goals.
FRESH TAKE: If life were a fair fight, talent plus work ethic is all you’d need to succeed—but we’ve all been passed over for opportunities we’re qualified for. With this data-driven book, Albert-László Barabási explores the universal forces that affect our likelihood of success or failure.
GOOD ADVICE: The differences among top contenders in any category are so tiny that they’re essentially immeasurable—which means wine connoisseurs only know so much, and a nice Pinot can come at any price.

Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection
By Haemin Sunim

RESOLUTION: Practice self-love (beyond just buying bath bombs).
FRESH TAKE: In this gentle, kindhearted guide to inner peace, the Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim argues that if one begins with self-acceptance, one will have greater empathy for others and an easier time adapting to life’s trials.
GOOD AVICE: When beset with negative emotions, observe your own feelings and then try to trace them back to their roots. You might realize that a bad experience in your past or a subconscious insecurity is influencing your behavior.

How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—the Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life
By Sophie Hannah

RESOLUTION: Embrace your negative side.
FRESH TAKE: Novelist Sophie Hannah believes that nursing one’s grudges can lead to greater self-knowledge, personal growth and healthier boundaries.
GOOD ADVICE: By using Hannah’s hilarious grudge-grading system, you can channel your angry feelings into a deeper understanding of your own values and set necessary boundaries.

No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work
By Liz Fosslien & Mollie West Duffy

RESOLUTION: Feel great about your work.
FRESH TAKE: Two former tech workers offer a fresh, funny approach to handling workplace relationships. By leaning on emotional intelligence, you, too, can navigate the pitfalls of modern office life. 
GOOD ADVICE: Establish context and trust with colleagues by using “richer communication” channels like voice chat before relying on written, and often misinterpreted, methods like email and instant messages.

Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More
By Elizabeth Emens

RESOLUTION: Overcome invisible labor.
FRESH TAKE: From disputing bills to planning a vacation, Elizabeth Emens introduces readers to the concept of admin, our sometimes onerous daily to-do list. Through relatable anecdotes, she breaks down the types of admin in our lives and offers advice on balancing tasks and relationships.
GOOD ADVICE: Talk with your partner about how to divvy up household duties before moving in together or getting married.

Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age
By Mary Pipher

RESOLUTION: Chart the course for the next phase of your life.
FRESH TAKE: Women face many challenges as they age: misogyny, ageism and physical changes. Yet psychologist Mary Pipher shows that most older women are more content than their younger selves. Pipher offers warm, empathetic guidelines for navigating aging and for recognizing its unexpected gifts. 
GOOD ADVICE: Every life stage is filled with pain and difficulties. The challenges and changes presented by aging are different, but they also present new ways to learn about yourself and cultivate empathy. 

The Monkey Is the Messenger: Meditation and What Your Busy Mind Is Trying to Tell You
By Ralph De La Rosa

RESOLUTION: Finally get into mindfulness and meditation.
FRESH TAKE: Everyone knows we should be meditating, but what if your thoughts just won’t shut up? Ralph De La Rosa draws on Buddhism, neuroscience and psychology to posit that instead of growing increasingly frustrated with these intrusive thoughts, we should accept them as a part of ourselves and use them as a tool to understand ourselves better. 
GOOD ADVICE: Try not to allow circumstances to dictate your emotions. Instead, accept circumstances and view them as an opportunity for growth and learning. 

Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol
By Ruby Warrington

RESOLUTION: Be more mindful of your alcohol intake.
FRESH TAKE: Going without alcohol may sound like an extreme lifestyle change and, frankly, a really dull one. But Ruby Warrington is here to tell you, nonjudgmentally, that cutting out alcohol doesn’t mean you’ll become boring, and it can lead to a happier life, filled with better sleep, health and relationships. 
GOOD ADVICE: If you’re worried about all the fun you’ll miss out on while sober, remind yourself of the phenomenon known as “euphoric recall,” in which an experience is misremembered in a far more positive light than the reality. That epic bachelor party five years ago? It perhaps wasn’t as epic as you remember—but the hangover you’re forgetting no doubt was.

Craftfulness: Mend Yourself by Making Things
By Rosemary Davidson & Arzu Tahsin

RESULTION: Pick up a creative hobby.
FRESH TAKE: Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin have crafted (sorry) a well-researched guide to the meditative, restorative and mood-lifting effects of working with your hands on a craft or creative pursuit. Filled with advice on how to let go of the pressure of Pinterest perfection, how to make time for crafting in your busy schedule and even a couple of quick beginner projects to get you started, this book is as warm as the scarf you’ll be knitting.
GOOD ADVICE: For too long, we’ve all been focused on the finished product of our artistic pursuits, which can often lead us to abandon less than perfect-looking projects. But there’s joy to be found in the process of making and mending, regardless of our perceived abilities.

If You Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt
Edited by Mary Jo Binker

RESOLUTION: Sail through life with presidential aplomb.
FRESH TAKE: In 1941, the outspoken first lady Eleanor Roosevelt started an advice column. For 20 years, she doled out clever, pithy advice on love, etiquette and issues like gender and race equality. These lovely columns, collected and annotated by Mary Jo Binker, provide sound advice as well as a look into the life and thinking of a legendary first lady.
GOOD ADVICE: Roosevelt was adamant about gender equality in her personal life, writing that she thinks “people are happier in marriage when neither is the boss” and that all relationships are best built on “unselfishness and flexibility.” 

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

You've got goals, and we've got the books to help you achieve them. Tackle your resolutions with these 10 books.

NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoirLGBTQ+

Joy and love, resilience and strength

Feature by Liz Clayton Scofield

Queer communities can find healing through the sharing of stories, creating a web of common experiences that remind us that we are not alone.

These four books contain narratives of triumph, loss, trauma and healing, with optimism toward liberation and new understandings of gender, desire, sexuality, love and family. These stories are accessible and relatable even as they reveal how identity is far more complicated than what social rules or cultural expectations determine it to be. Encompassing a range of emotions and experiences, they declare that queer stories don’t have to end in tragedy, but can reign triumphant despite struggle. Pain and trauma are not glossed over, but also within these tales are the joys and love that are so often threaded into queer experiences.

Acclaimed essayist and editor-in-chief of the literary journal No Tokens T Kira Madden shares a story of incredible resilience in Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. In her debut memoir, Madden beautifully chronicles her journey to find herself while reckoning with the trauma, abuse and addiction that have surrounded her and emering with a deeper understanding of her experiences. Madden captures the complexities of loving those who wound you deeply, as well as the healing that is possible within those relationships. Through Madden’s achingly raw and honest prose, the extreme privilege she experienced in Boca Raton, Florida, the deep and complex bonds she finds in her adolescent friendships, the transformation of her relationships with her parents in addiction recovery and her queer awakening all become relatable, regardless of how far removed they are from the reader’s own experience. Within this necessary book, Madden weaves together an utterly human paean to belonging, to healing, and to loving and being loved.

Trans activist, writer and performer Jacob Tobia’s debut memoir, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story, refreshingly defies the typical trans narrative (“I was born in the wrong body, did these things to transition and now live as a boy/girl/etc.”). In their fabulous, fierce voice, Tobia tells their story of coming out as genderqueer. In adolescence, they found themselves falling into society’s familiar and static categories of what is assigned at birth or assumed (“gay” or “male”), but as Tobia came of age, they looked past the binary and began a fluid, exciting exploration of gender. Tobia’s story unfolds in the South, and they contend with their relationships with both family and religion. In particular, Tobia’s relationship with their father and with their childhood church evolve throughout the book, and these growing pains are detailed honestly but hopefully. Tobia is strong and confident (even calling themselves out as arrogant), and as a result of their strength, drive and overachieving nature, they have established themselves as a highly visible trans activist. What many may realize after reading Sissy is that expectations of gender affect not only those who identify outside the binary but also everyone who ascribes to it. There are creative and imaginative possibilities available to everyone through liberation from strict, patriarchal expectations.

By the end of the prologue of The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation, I was already in tears, overwhelmed by entrepreneur, social activist and former magazine ad executive Jodie Patterson’s empathy, acceptance and willingness to listen to her child, Penelope, when he reveals to her at 3 years old, “Mama, I’m not a girl. I’m a boy.” Patterson travels to Georgia to take a break, to heal, to figure out where to go from there, but even in her exhaustion, she wholly accepts Penelope as her son. Patterson begins the story in her own youth, as a quiet young black girl growing up in a wealthy family on New York’s Upper West Side, coming into her own strength and power as a black woman—in her words, becoming a “badass.” Patterson’s memoir is highly recommended for any parent raising a transgender or gender-nonconforming child. Her struggle is not with her transgender child but rather with a world that may not accept him as readily as she does. 

Robyn Ryle’s She/He/They/Me: For the Sisters, Misters, and Binary Resisters is a choose-your-own-adventure-style book that explores the intersections of identities and how gender impacts every aspect of our lives. There are over 100 ways you can read this book, with paths that lead readers into different societies throughout history. The journey, and the myriad options in how to move through it, reveal how gender affects every aspect of our culture and our experiences in love, sex, careers and more. Ryle empathetically explores the complications and intersections of gender, hopefully illuminating otherwise invisible structures in pursuit of new conceptions of power and being. She/He/They/Me is a recommended read for anyone living in a body in this world.

Queer communities can find healing through the sharing of stories, creating a web of common experiences that remind us that we are not alone.

These four books contain narratives of triumph, loss, trauma and healing, with optimism toward liberation and new understandings of…

NonfictionWomen's HistorySocial SciencePoliticsArt

Pride & progress

Feature by Julie Hale

We’re living in a time of transformation—an era defined in no small part by women who are acting collectively to create a more equal world. In honor of Women’s History Month, we’ve selected eight nonfiction books that are essential reading for today’s take-action women and their allies. By focusing on historic victories that led to the present day, these terrific titles provide direction for the future. 

The year 2020 will mark the centennial of the 19th amendment, which prohibits the U.S. government from denying citizens the right to vote based on sex—a major achievement in women’s fight for suffrage, albeit one that primarily benefited white women. In anticipation of that date, an important new anthology, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, brings together a wealth of writings related to the social crusade that changed the nation. Edited by renowned author and women’s history expert Sally Roesch Wagner, the collection features a diverse sampling of historical material dating back to the 1830s. The variety of perspectives and backgrounds represented in the volume is extraordinary. Letters, speeches and articles by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams and Victoria Woodhull give readers a sense of the visionary minds that shaped the movement, while pieces focusing on Native American and African-American women illuminate the experiences of minorities in light of the campaign. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem provides the foreword to the book. Capturing the spirit and purpose of a pivotal period in American history, this stirring collection honors the forward-thinking women who fought hard to win the vote.

That fighting spirit is alive and well today, as actor Amber Tamblyn makes clear in her book Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution. Tamblyn, whose show-business career began when she was 12, hit a wall as she approached the age of 30. An aspiring writer and director, she found few opportunities in the male-dominated entertainment industry and decided to take charge of her life. She worked hard to bring her own creative projects to fruition and became an outspoken champion of women’s rights, joining forces with like-minded activists to establish the Time’s Up movement. In this candid, unapologetic book, Tamblyn—now 35—reflects on her awakening as a feminist and discusses vital topics like workplace discrimination and sexual assault. Throughout, she weaves in anecdotes about marriage and the birth of her daughter, her participation in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the challenges of being a woman in Hollywood. An “era of ignition,” she explains, is a time “when dissatisfaction becomes protest, when accusations become accountability, and when revolts become revolutions.” Briskly written, earnest and honest, her book is sure to galvanize a new generation of women.

In She the People: A Graphic History of Uprisings, Breakdowns, Setbacks, Revolts, and Enduring Hope on the Unfinished Road to Women’s Equality, writer Jen Deaderick and artist Rita Sapunor paint a vividly compelling portrait of the women’s movement using rousing quotes and clever cartoons and illustrations. Throughout, they spotlight wonder women such as suffragists Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone, African-American activist Mary McLeod Bethune and modern-day role models Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Organized into 12 sections, the book covers more than two centuries of history, and Sapunor’s dynamic, comics-inspired sketches help bring the past into focus. Rewinding to the American Revolution, when Abigail Adams famously counseled her husband, John Adams, to “remember the ladies” at the Continental Congress, and progressing through the decades, Deaderick covers the ups and downs of the fight for equality in a style that’s lively and conversational. Her advice for women: “We shouldn’t look for leaders to save us. We make change together. We’re stronger together.”

Those are words to live by, and social-justice advocate Feminista Jones shows that women are doing just that in Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets. An update from the front lines of the fight for equality, Jones’ book explores how black women are coming together to make their voices heard. She explains that because the digital world has provided fresh, effective platforms for the expression of ideas, black women are now more visible and vocal than ever before. “Go to almost any social media platform today and you will see a gathering of some of the most important feminist thinkers of modern generations,” Jones writes. In this impassioned volume, she examines how black women are harnessing the power of the internet and using hashtags to bring awareness to issues such as self-worth, motherhood and sex. She also considers the roots of black feminism and takes a deep dive into the concept of black female identity. Featuring insights into her own story and conversations with other influencers, Jones’ book is a powerful call to action.

The ongoing need to move women out of the margins and into the mainstream lies at the heart of Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. In tackling the topic of big data, Perez makes some startling discoveries. The numbers that impact everything from healthcare systems to workplace conditions and public transportation—figures that affect the day-to-day workings of society in countries around the world—are inherently biased, because they use men as a standard reference. Since women are left out of the equation, Perez says, data is discriminatory. “Most of recorded human history is one big data gap,” she writes, because “the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall.” An activist, feminist and academic, Perez conducted scores of studies in Europe and the United States and presents an engaging account of her findings. By looking at the way women live today—as breadwinners and consumers, wives and mothers—she brings immediacy to what could have been a dry collection of figures. An invaluable study of a critical subject, Invisible Women powerfully demonstrates the dangers of biased data.

Female visibility is also emphasized in Women: Our Story, a comprehensive, impressively organized survey of the triumphs, achievements and differing ways of life for women across the globe. Organized by era, the book opens in prehistoric times and moves forward through the centuries. It’s an ambitious, far-reaching volume that takes stock of how women have shaped every aspect of society, from politics and religion to education and the arts. Along with standout graphics, the book is packed with photos, illustrations, vintage ads and other historical memorabilia. Featuring text by scholarly experts, it tells an epic story through brief sidebars and timelines, as well as substantive sections on the rise of feminism, women in the workforce, the lives of notable figures (Sojourner Truth, Maya Angelou, Simone de Beauvoir—the list goes on) and what the future may hold for tomorrow’s reformers. As journalist Rebecca Boggs Roberts writes in the book’s foreword, “When we neglect women’s stories, we aren’t only depriving women and girls (and boys) of role models and empowering lessons; we are getting history wrong.” This spectacular retrospective gets it right.

The importance of looking back in order to move forward is underscored in Pamela S. Nadell’s America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today. Spanning more than three centuries, it’s a compelling and well-researched chronicle of the women who worked behind the scenes and in the public eye to establish a place for Jewish women in this country. Nadell—a noted women’s history scholar—is the daughter of Jewish immigrants, and she imbues the book with urgency and personal insight. From the nation’s earliest Jewish women, who set up homes in Philadelphia, Charleston and New York in the 1700s, to groundbreakers like Emma Lazarus and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nadell looks at the shifting roles of Jewish women and their influence on American culture. As her research reveals, the meaning and significance of being Jewish has differed among women over the years, as some set their religious practice aside to pursue careers, while others maintained strict, orthodox households. Differences abound, Nadell writes, yet “one thing binds America’s Jewish women together: all have a share in the history of their collective American Jewish female past.” The contributions of these remarkable women shine in Nadell’s impressive book. 

The centuries are rich with inspiring examples of female empowerment, including many a madam president. All Hail the Queen: Twenty Women Who Ruled showcases these lady leaders—notable stateswomen whose accomplishments were often eclipsed by those of men. Writer Shweta Jha contributed the text for this intriguing book, which tracks the careers of Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I and Marie Antoinette, as well as those of less familiar figures, like Japanese ruler Himiko and Maya queen Lady Six Sky. Some were born monarchs; others achieved eminence through marriage. Nearly all of them—as is only fitting for a queen—led operatic existences filled with incident and spectacle. Jennifer Orkin Lewis’ lush, colorful artwork gives readers a sense of the time and place that produced each leader—and of what the lady herself might have looked like. “Had they followed the cultural norms of their times, they ought to have been quiet and unassertive,” Lewis writes of the female leaders. “Each and every one of them overcame those expectations and made her mark on the culture and people she ruled.” Perfectly suited to its subject matter, this regal volume has golden endpapers and a cover that sparkles. Here’s to the royal treatment—and here’s to women who make history.

Eight new books that celebrate female leaders and achievers.
NonfictionSocial ScienceMemoir

The wisdom of fathers

Feature by Jon Little

Four new memoirs—by fathers writing to their children and children writing about their fathers—show how a father’s love can temper personal and cultural sorrows.

Pondering the importance of fathers in our lives, philosopher Frederich Nietzsche said, “Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.” While the market for good fathers may be slim, and procuring a father at market may be less than legal, there’s a spate of great nonfiction coming out by and about remarkable fathers just in time for Father’s Day.

Take Canadian novelist David Chariandy’s I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, a slim but touching missive to his teenage daughter. It opens with three dramatic events: President Trump’s election, a fatal shooting at a Canadian mosque and the casual racism of a white Canadian who cut in front of the dark-skinned Chariandy with the searing words, “I’m from here. I belong here.”

Struggling to counsel his daughter as she begins to face these modern realities, Chariandy turns to story—in this case, his own. He walks his daughter through the precarious and nurturing places, both geographic and psychic, that have marked his life. But this is no self-seeking memoir of struggle. Chariandy recounts the taunts he faced as a child alongside the history of slavery and indentured labor that brought his ancestors to Trinidad from Africa and South Asia. The result is a remarkable story of place and relation, of ancestry and association. In turn damning and hopeful, I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You reminds us of the deep history and connectedness of all human life.

After twice attempting to row across the Atlantic Ocean, English journalist Jonathan Gornall had his second child. He was 58. With the specter of mortality looming, he struck upon an idea: He’d build his daughter a wooden boat. By hand. 

In the opening, and strongest, chapter of How to Build a Boat, Gornall addresses his daughter, explaining this decision. He muses on his love of the ocean, expounds on the open sea as a metaphor for the dramatic unknown that stretches out before us all and explains his boatbuilding as an exercise in perseverance, striking out with nothing more than grit and determination to guide him.

How to Build a Boat starts as a letter to his daughter but soon morphs into the story of the author’s yearlong battle to construct a clinker-built boat. Though Gornall’s prose is tight and he offers interesting historical asides on boatbuilding and rowing, the sheer density of boatbuilding detail may restrict this book’s appeal to boatwrights and woodworking enthusiasts.

In her memoir All That You Leave Behind, Erin Lee Carr, a video journalist and documentarian, traces her relationship with her father and mentor, the late David Carr. Best known as a New York Times journalist, Mr. Carr was also an addict. It wasn’t until Erin and her twin sister turned 8 months old that he checked himself in to a treatment center and got clean.

Even while we hear of the younger Carr’s own battles with addiction and her struggle to step out of her father’s shadow and make a name for herself, David Carr remains the star of this memoir. His instant messages, emails and letters are woven throughout, and every scrap of his writing is astounding. Even offhand texts are things of linguistic beauty, but more than that, it’s the wisdom, tender support and love found within them that make his words so powerful. Erin Lee Carr gives us an intimate view of a truly remarkable father and man.

Yousef Bashir, Palestinian-American author of The Words of My Father, grew up in Gaza on his family’s ancestral farm. Across a highway was an Israeli settlement, and an Israeli military base stood next door—a delicate situation, to say the least. Yet when other Palestinians abandoned their homes for fear of violence, Bashir’s family stayed. His father insisted upon it. When Israeli soldiers pounded at their door, demanding they leave, Bashir’s father didn’t waver. Rather, he opened the door wide, inviting the soldiers into his home as guests. 

In they came, and in they stayed. For five long years, soldiers occupied the top two stories of the Bashir family home. Yet Bashir’s father still preached peace and coexistence. Even when Bashir was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier, his father refused to recant or relent. Now Bashir is a peace activist in his own right, and The Words of My Father is the inspirational story of his struggle to understand and live up to his father’s singular example. His memoir is an absolute must-read.

Four new memoirs—by fathers writing to their children and children writing about their fathers—show how a father’s love can temper personal and cultural sorrows.

NonfictionSocial SciencePhotographyGraphic Memoirs

Gift books: For resisters & persisters

Feature by Alice Cary

Four books celebrate our friends who fight for justice, the right to love, the power to tell their own stories and the possibility of a better future. They’re also the perfect gift for a budding ally who wishes to learn more.

Activist by KK Ottesen
One can’t help but feel inspired by the over 40 interviews and black-and-white portraits compiled in Activist: Portraits of Courage, written and photographed by KK Ottesen, a Washington Post contributor and author of a similarly styled book, Great Americans. Ottesen’s powerful photographs immediately draw readers in, adding to the intimacy of these highly readable first-person interviews, all introduced by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

In content, layout and style, this is an engrossing, inviting volume, one that spotlights a wide range of figures, from age 21 to 94. There are well-known personalities like John Lewis, Ralph Nader, Angela Davis, Billie Jean King, Bernie Sanders and Marian Wright Edelman. Then there are relative newcomers to the scene, such as Jayna Zweiman, co-founder of the 2016 Pussycat Project; Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian American co-chair of the 2017 Women's March; and transgender actor Nicole Maines, the anonymous plaintiff in a Maine Supreme Judicial Court regarding gender identity and bathroom use in schools. Maines speaks of knowing from an early age, “I didn’t feel the need to hide who I was. Nobody else had to, so why should I?”

Seeing Gender by Iris Gottlieb
After reading last year’s Seeing Science and now Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression, I’ve become an incurable Iris Gottlieb fan. No matter what the topic, this graphic artist has a singular knack for presenting an imaginative array of art and text in an informative, exciting way.

Early on, this new book features a helpful spread of 24 gender terms, including agender, cisgender, gender dysphoria and intersex. “All of us are shapeshifters,” Gottlieb explains. In straightforward, vibrantly illustrated prose that is neither politicized nor reactionary, Gottlieb further explores these terms, while also discussing such varied topics as gender etiquette, gender biology, sex verification in sports, Frida Kahlo, Laverne Cox, Prince, gender violence, Stonewall, #MeToo and much, much more. Gottleib also includes her own story, noting that “she” is her pronoun of choice for the time being, that she identifies as a boy (“for now”), is asexual, has struggled with anorexia and in 2018 had both breasts removed, a surgical transformation she bravely describes with a series of “after” photos.

No matter your age or inclination, Seeing Gender presents an extraordinarily helpful discussion in a way that’s both personal and powerful. As Gottlieb concludes, “The process of learning about gender is never finished.”

Drawing Power edited by Diane Noomin
Many books have been born from the #MeToo movement, but perhaps none so comprehensively resonant as Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival. In vastly divergent styles, 63 female cartoonists—of different races, ages, nationalities and sexual orientations—tell their immensely varied, poignant stories here, demonstrating the power of their medium.

Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters) describes how she found her way back to cartoons decades after being sexually brutalized by a relative while watching a Mr. Magoo special on TV. As a result, her beloved cartoons felt suddenly poisoned, and for years she turned instead to fine art and illustrating. Finally, while working on the aforementioned graphic novel, Ferris noticed that she “found herself using a cartoonier style when I needed to talk about difficult things . . . especially those revelatory moments when a character confronts abuse, fear and shame.”

As Drawing Power so strikingly proves, cartoons do indeed provide the perfect forum for sharing these intensely intimate, painful stories. And editor Diane Noomin offers an important distinction, noting, “The artists in this collection present themselves not as victims but rather as truth tellers, shining light on the dirty secrets of abusers.”

How to Cure a Ghost by Fariha Róisín
As an Australian Canadian based in Brooklyn, Fariha Róisín knows all too well how tricky it is trying to navigate the world as a queer Muslim femme. “i was born to this sticky mess, this stark confusion.” she writes in How to Cure a Ghost, her powerful biographical collection of 50 poems, beautifully complemented by abstract illustrations from Monica Ramos.

In a sensual, evocative style reminiscent of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, Róisín acknowledges, “i am tied to this skin, although I may not always understand it.” She chronicles her father’s challenges as an immigrant and her mother’s struggles as a Muslim woman with mental illness. Róisín remembers being 7 and briefly taking a “white name”—Felicity Hanson—to try to gain acceptance from a neighbor. She describes watching 9/11 unfold on television from her home in Sydney, Australia, saying that as a Muslim, “this world was not built for us.” Her virginity was stolen by a man who got her pregnant, telling her “it’s not a big deal.”

Despite everything, Róisín writes of hope, boldly declaring, “i am better now. i gave birth to myself, a new beginning, a robust cycle. i rewrote the scriptures of my mother’s pasts, and her mother’s pasts. i am in the throes of survival, i am lived. i am living. it’s astonishing.”

Four books celebrate our friends who fight for justice, the right to love, the power to tell their own stories and the possibility of a better future.

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