If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need
Synopsis: Rebecca Carroll grew up the only black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed… Continue reading Review: Surviving the White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll
Synopsis: The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives… Continue reading Review: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Synopsis: Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki’s song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini’s star rises and Neela’s stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes,… Continue reading Review: The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya
Synopsis: In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a… Continue reading Review: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Synopsis: Jericho Brown’s daring new book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown… Continue reading Review: The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Synopsis: How do you honour blood and chosen kin with equal care? A groundbreaking memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories, Lindsay Nixon’s nîtisânak is woven around grief over the loss of their mother. It also explores despair and healing through community and family, and being torn apart by the same. Using… Continue reading Review: nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon
Synopsis: In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love,… Continue reading Review: A Mind Spread Out On The Ground by Alicia Elliott
Synopsis: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled… Continue reading Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Hello and welcome back to Monika tries to diversify her reading list! Something else that I want to be cognizant of, especially when it comes to reading Black authors, is that I don't only read books about slavery or anti-racism. I think those books have a lot of important and should all be read, but… Continue reading Diversifying my Bookshelf: Black Authors
With everything that has been going on in the United States and essentially the world (aka. the calling out of racism both in police brutality, systemic structures and our everyday lives) I thought that it would be a good idea to try to actively learn more about how I can combat racism in my life.… Continue reading Diversifying my Bookshelf: Indigenous Authors
Synopsis: Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold… Continue reading Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Words, Pages, Books 