Page 401 – Electric Literature

Helen Oyeyemi’s Dark, Delicious Fairy Tale

Posted on April 2, 2019April 2, 2019 by Jennifer Baker

Award-winning and acclaimed author Helen Oyeyemi has been dubbed a wunderkind, having published her first novel, The Icarus Girl, at 19. Several books later, she’s solidified herself as not only a picturesque storyteller but one who weaves the imagination in new ways, with no limitations on the scope of the story nor the paths of her characters.

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi — Purchase the novel

In Oyeyemi’s new novel, Gingerbread (Riverhead), she brings readers into the life of Harriet Lee: a single mother to Perdita, doting daughter to Margot, an isolated figure in some respects but one who can make people’s emotions erupt in unexpected ways with her special gingerbread recipe. While the Lees live a relatively average life in England, the story of how Harriet and Margot got there includes some twists and turns, evolving into a multilayered story of friendships, family, money, and the risks of keeping secrets—all shot through with the currency of gingerbread, a family staple for Harriet and her mother.

Oyeyemi balances this captivating read with jocularity and an open-hearted fondness for her characters and the places they inhabit. The bonds of love, admiration, and even jealousy surface—all relatable emotions in any reality. Harriet’s story takes the reader from her childhood home in Druhástrana—a place many do not believe exists—to the capitalist clutches of a distant family member hoarding young girls to play parts in a kind of warped Disneyland, and from there to the home of the dysfunctional and wealthy Kercheval family, another branch on her family tree, who have an estate where rooms can actually be moved at will.

With the elements of the fantastic as well as nods to the Brothers Grimm Hansel and Gretel story, Gingerbread remains utterly unique, utterly spellbinding, utterly Oyeyemi. She and I sat down to talk about the distinctions of this novel as well as her methodology in her creation of a new story.

Jennifer Baker: When it comes to the reaction to Gingerbread and your previous work, where you’re melding in kind of surrealist elements, do you find people focus a lot on the fantastical?

Helen Oyeyemi: They do. I don’t really know what to say about it. For me it’s just a style or mode. It’s just a way of telling the story. So separating out the elements like “this is strange and this is normal” doesn’t make sense to me. It’s sort of like going through your soup saying “this is a pea and this is a carrot.” It’s all together. It’s all part of the same thing. So I don’t see a need to comment on it particularly.

JB: For me, this book, and I don’t like to project this on authors, it’s such a family story. I’m completely into generational stories. That’s pretty much my hook. And I really related to the overarching idea of protection. If I’m using these kinds of thematic identifiers with the 3 women: where Perdita is trying to find the truth, Harriet’s searching for a subsection of another truth. And even Margot’s knowledge of a kind of truth and family being a mysterious entity. It really seems like this amalgamation of people trying to protect the people they love and then ends up hurting people.

Separating out ‘this is strange and this is normal’ doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like going through your soup saying ‘this is a pea and this is a carrot.’

HO: I see the family story, but for me, honestly, it was about Harriet. It was kind of this story of what was happening to her; I just sort of made a pact that I was going to get her through to the end and that she was going to be okay. I didn’t know if she was gonna be able to find the sort of acceptance she was searching for with her gingerbread. But I wanted to not leave the story until she was in some way able to move on to new questions. It wasn’t about resolving all of her issues, but shifting her attention towards the future. Because she’s always in some kind of anticipation of some future.

I guess the turning point in the book for me is when someone asks her if she has a future and she has no idea. And she thinks maybe she doesn’t, but she says, “Of course I have a future.” But she spends most of the book looking into the past so deeply that she doesn’t notice her present. [Her childhood best friend Gretel’s] role is definitely a reminder to Harriet to try and keep going forward. And to kind of enlarge her presence. And it’s as if [Gretel] doesn’t appear because she knows that if she did Harriet would just be stuck.

JB: I was literally writing about this, about my family living in the past. And you know, part of that is the trauma of the past. I don’t meant to project trauma onto this story at all. But I wondered if Harriet and the past: Is it a way to kind of try to resolve mistakes made if you just keep thinking about in a way? Or is it just this methodical way to stay in stasis and feel safe?

HO: I don’t know that she associates the past as safety, but I think that she does associate it with certainty, which is in some context the same thing or very similar. It’s that she knew what was going on even though as she tells it it may feel like “What is going on?” But Harriet knows. Even if we as readers and listeners don’t really get that. Druhástrana was a very strange place, but it was a place that made sense to her. And then she’s in this new place with this daughter who does all these things that she completely can’t understand.

JB: And there’s the members of the PTA she can’t immediately win over—

HO: —And she’s like, “Why don’t you like my gingerbread?” It’s very confusing to her. It’s very very confusing to her in the present. The past is at least this place where she knew that Gretel loved her gingerbread. She knew this was the role her family played in society—-even though it was a terrible role. At least she knew what was going on.

JB: Plus there’s this readability that Harriet always seemed to have. She kind of prides herself on being able to read these moments and also read the Kercheval family. I can kind of see that safety in it and that knowledge-base going. So how do you start with a character like Harriet and then bookend her with Margot and Perdita as you’re writing?

HO: It’s as if they kind they came to me imaginatively to try and support her or protect her. It comes back to protection again. To try and protect her. Even though it causes so many problems and they bully her. She’s trying so hard to take care of them. It’s this kind of difficult sort of scrum that they’re in. I honestly don’t know how those three make sense, but somehow they do. Maybe that’s the story of my family. These people are connected. And it’s broadly at that.

JB: Do you feel like with your writing family dynamics become a necessary element in the storytelling?

HO: Family does appear. I feel like it appears in different guises. I don’t know, if you asked me off the top of my head I wouldn’t say it’s the primary thing that I’m interested in. With every book I really stuff a lot in there and it’s definitely one of the things that I stuff in there. I wouldn’t say that it would come out on top. If I was talking about what was topmost, I think the questions about value got sort of attentive especially when Harriet’s money turned out not to be real. What are things worth to people and why some things seem more valuable for being homemade or for being personalized and others don’t. You know, just sort of weighing up those kind of matters. That would be topmost, but then there is so much in there as well.

JB: It’s so interesting you say that because then my mind goes back to all these scenes: The value of Harriet keeping her baby. The value of the Lees extracting themselves from the Kerchevals. The value of Margot and Harriet having their own place in the U.K.

HO: Right, like trying to buy dignity: what it costs and whether you can actually afford it. These kind of things or transactions that you make without physical currency.

JB: It feels like Harriet kind of sees things in the world as transactional though.

HO: She does and it’s all about being tied into her past. I mean she’s kind of raised as a unit on this farm for value. And so yeah there was a lot of “What can I add?” “What is my role here?” “How can I be valuable?”

JB: And that hits home in the beginning, too, because it’s about the transaction of what you can get from gingerbread. What her mother got from gingerbread and also her great great-grandparents got from it.

HO: Yeah, it’s just always been used that way. It is kind of sad. I’m not feeding people out of sheer generosity but feeding people to be fed in some way yourself.

JB: Wow, I’m reading it a whole different way.

HO: Well I’m thinking about it in a different way.

JB: May I ask if the consistency of discussing your books for a period of time affect you on a creative level? Is it “Okay, Gingerbread is done. I’ve talked about Gingerbread for six months. Next!”

HO: I have a whole bunch of notes and I’m actually about to start writing the new one. I’m so excited. I’m so looking forward to it. I’m not affected by it. Looking at the reviews is interesting. I always hope to see some perspective on what I’ve done is interesting. But for the most part it’s not that helpful, it’s like “She did this and this and that and I liked it or I didn’t like it.” And it’s like “Oh well, but it’s done.” And with the next book it’s gonna a whole different thing again.

JB: Considering how many books you’ve written have you been able to compartmentalize that as you’ve gone on? Or have you been able to do that from the outside?

HO: This is my seventh [book]. Every time that I start it kind of feels like it’s going to be impossible to finish.

JB: And you do it.

HO: Somehow, right? And time goes weird. Because all I do is write the book. That means that I don’t really have a sense of days and months and weeks and things.

JB: I wonder if that’s somewhat gratifying?

HO: It kind of feels as if you’re about to go into a trance for an indefinite period of time. You just don’t know what’s going to happen or who you’re going to be afterwards. But I’m also looking forward to it. It’s like a disappearance, like a transformational one.

JB: So that’s why you’re effective. The rest of us are on Twitter and Helen’s writing books.

HO: I [use Tumblr] a lot. What I like about Tumblr a lot is it’s very very very focused. So if someone has an art Tumblr it’s just full of art. There’s nothing about their life. It’s just these things. And same with books.

JB: So how are you feeling in general about Gingerbread and going out in the world and talking about it? I personally hope people don’t focus on the racial aspects. Jordan Peele’s movie is coming out and everyone keeps asking him, “So is this about race?”

Helen: Oh really?

JB: Yeah, because it’s a Black family. And he says “It’s not Get Out.”

HO: Get Out was a unique story, and I love that when he goes into the chamber and finds all of her pictures. I was like oh! But it’s so much more than that and it’s so much bigger than that. So far nobody has, but it’s very early days. We’ll see. I obviously don’t think it should be a thing. Based on how I’ve written it, it’s just like here’s just some people doing what they do.

JB: It’s so refreshing to read this and enter the story. I do think it’s not just a difference in cultures, but also perspectives of you’re going into the story and people are brown and that’s just what it is.

There’s no kind of description of “brown skinned Harriet” or emphasis on her skin tone.

HO: But it’s also not my conception of character. I would just prefer to work from the inside out. The things that I’m interested in about people… the things I find most real about people [are] the things that they hate. It’s weird. I always have a moment with my friends where they said something that shows how bad-tempered they are. And then I feel like I actually know you. And I’m working from there.

I always have a moment with my friends where they said something that shows how bad-tempered they are. And then I feel like I actually know you.

JB: That tone makes sense because I think Harriet focuses on those pieces. And it doesn’t become, “Oh, you’re a terrible person.” It’s “Oh, you always seem to placate to certain people.”

HO: Yeah, it’s all kinds of patterns of behavior are the way to know what’s going on with people. It’s a way of reading people. I’m not saying it’s the way but at least it’s a way.

JB: Do you think that’s a writerly trait? Reading people?

HO: Some writers. My favorite kind. I’m thinking Barbara Comyns is one of my favorite’s ever and I think that’s kind of her way. But also it’s a kind of strange sympathy for, not bad behavior, I just think she casts this view on all of the slightly underhanded things people do and she kind of looks at what they were trying to do, which is ultimately actually not bad. They were just trying to survive. Or trying not to hurt another person. It doesn’t excuse or forgive the dodgy behavior, but it just kind of gives you a broader arc.

7 Novels by Forgotten Women Writers

Posted on April 2, 2019April 2, 2019 by Jo Lou

I generally prefer to read older fiction, novels published anywhere from the late 18^th century onward, books people are no longer talking about. Something about blowing the dust off a forgotten book makes me feel special, chosen, as if the author and I are the only people in on the same secret; that a good book long forgotten is, in reality, timeless. What may have started in my youth as a vain preoccupation with looking “smart,” with toting around a copy of Jakob Von Guten rather than, say, Bridget Jones’ Diary, has evolved into a genuine appreciation for reading both our dead literary giants and the quieter talents that nobody quite remembers.

I’ve come to realize (without any intention) that most of my very favorite books are written by women, about women.

Nearly all of the women listed here enjoyed varying degrees of success in their lifetime. Some won prestigious prizes; nearly all wrote multiple best sellers. And yet, every one of these writers, of these books, can be considered forgotten. By ignoring these books we aren’t just ignoring our debt to what our female ancestors in this business did, but depriving ourselves of some of the smartest, funniest, most intelligent fiction to be read. Critics agreed, the public agreed, and yet good luck finding a copy. These novels, certainly these writers, deserve another reading. In this loud, politicized literary landscape, there is a real pleasure in curling up with a novel about our inner lives, about the way we lived then, and about how little of substance has really changed.

Sudden Rain by Maritta Wolff

In 1972, the seventh and final novel from Maritta Wolff was literally put on ice. In a fit of anger, the critically celebrated and widely read author shoved the manuscript into her refrigerator and left it there for the last thirty years of her life. Wolff blazed onto the scene at twenty-two-years-old with Whistle-Stop; a novel Sinclair Lewis called “the most important novel of the year.” She went on to produce four more bestsellers over the next two decades. So what happened? Wolff despised publicity. When her publisher insisted she go on a promotional tour for Sudden Rain, Wolff refused, froze the manuscript and never wrote again. A strange story to be sure but what remains is a sort of time capsule, published posthumously to much acclaim, chronicling the inner life and domestic mores of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The novel follows three married couples over the course of one stormy weekend in Los Angeles. With a stunning ear for dialogue that echoes Dawn Powell, and an even keener grasp of human nature that recalls Theodore Dreiser, Sudden Rain is a novel ready to be re-heated and served.

Good Behavior by Molly Keane

Good Behavior opens with fifty-seven-year-old Aroon St. Charles politely killing her sick mother by feeding her a rabbit mousse. Is it murder, or good behavior? The magic of the entire novel lies in the disparity between what the reader knows, and what the reader thinks Aroon knows. This is no easy feat, and one that Keane pulls off with effortless grace.

Aroon, the “plain,” unmarriageable daughter of a devastatingly cruel Mummie and a “distracted” Papa, resides in her crumbling, Irish ancestral home, where bills have been “pushed into the drawer where they always went,” animals are treated with more deference than people, and the servants are tolerated with a contemptuous familiarity. If Aroon takes pride in anything, it is her manners, her good behavior. She knows how to behave because no matter what indignity she is forced to endure, good behavior must be maintained. The book is told from Aroon’s perspective, and she relays the brutal details of her upbringing with such shocking remove that the book, much like Our Spoons Came From Woolworth’s, or more recently, The Patrick Melrose Novels, draws its power from tiptoeing that delicate line between the nightmarish and the devastatingly funny.

Rejected as “too dark” by a publisher, Molly Keane did not enjoy the success of her eleventh novel (the first written under her real name) until she was in her late seventies, when the book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Keane lost to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children and the book, along with its author, have since slipped into obscurity.

Someone At A Distance by Dorothy Whipple

After a wildly popular writing career in the thirties and forties, Dorothy Whipple’s exceptional last novel, published in 1953, bombed. “Editors are all mad for action and passion now,” explained her publisher, when the book failed to get reviewed. Whipple gave up writing and died thirteen years later, believing her work was all but forgotten.

Someone At A Distance is a timeless story of the systemic destruction of a happy marriage by adultery. The magic here lies not in what happens, but how Whipple portrays what is lost. Much like Evan Connell’s Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, every pride, shame and humiliation the family endures can be felt as if it were a personal blow. Whipple’s meticulous depiction of the inner lives of her characters seems effortlessly drawn. Though Someone At A Distance was re-issued in 2008, I’m always surprised that more fans of Elizabeth Gaskell and Barbara Pym haven’t happened upon this absorbing novel.

Frost in May by Antonia White

Drawn from White’s own childhood experiences at convent school, this literary gem is a detailed portrait of a world as seductive as it is horrifying. Originally published in 1931, the power of this novel lies in its details and its paradoxes. Nanda, the nine-year-old protagonist, is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds by her beloved Catholic convert father. Obedient and clever, Nanda quickly adapts to the schools rigid conformity but is forever marked by the abuse she is forced to endure there. As you read, it slowly becomes clear that this is not a book about school or even Catholicism, but about human cruelty, mean and calculated, crushing innocence in the name of religion. In a piece written for The Guardian, Tessa Hadley explained “Something happened to (White) at that school, by all the biographical accounts, which marked her for life – obsessed her and damaged her. The experience prevented her from writing for years, but in the end it also gave her this small masterpiece of a novel, exquisitely poised between a condemnation of the school and a love letter to it.”

Evelina by Frances Burney

Before Jane Austen, there was Frances Burney. Evelina, published in 1778, is an epistolary novel; the drama told through the first person letters of the many characters involved in a young woman’s debut into London society. Much like Austen’s heroes (and those of the Bronte sisters after her), Evelina learns to navigate the complex layers of society and earn the love of a distinguished man. Sentimental? Possibly, but the dizzying, dark side of Georgian London has never so deftly illuminated the vulnerability of female innocence in a male-dominated culture.

Though Burney published the novel anonymously (to avoid censure from both her father and a public that disapproved of women who read and wrote novels) her identity was swiftly revealed and the book went on to achieve well-deserved success. Sadly, the book has fallen away. Burney’s gift for strongly delineated characters and satiric humor foreshadow such novelists of manners as Thackeray and Trollope.

Rhoda by Ellen Gilchrist

I first met the character of Rhoda Manning in Gilchrist’s Victory Over Japan, which won the National Book Award in 1984. What a thrill to discover an entire collection devoted to Gilchrist’s most beloved character. Arranged in chronological order of Rhoda’s age—from eight to about sixty, the stories detailing Rhoda’s childhood and adolescence, when Rhoda is young and growing up with her brother during World War II, are certainly the strongest. Nonetheless, readers will delight in following this brassy redhead into an adulthood filled with pathos and gothic humor. With echoes of Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor throughout, Gilchrist’s writing sparkles and comes to life. Rhoda may not be the most likeable character, but her quest for freedom (or at least happiness) outside the prescribed roles for women is an addictive journey well worth taking.

The Tortoise and The Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

Jenkins mid-century tale of domestic drama and female sexuality is quietly heart breaking. The novel details the marriage of pretty and admiring Imogen Grosham to her older husband, Evelyn, a successful man of intimidating presence and authority. With the intrusion of their closest neighbor, the sporting Blanche Silcox, an elderly spinster, stout and capable, the marriage begins to unravel. Though Imogen seems to understand that her beauty and devotion never quite satisfied her husband, she, along with the reader, can’t possibly believe that Evelyn would be attracted to Blanche. But Evelyn discerns Blanche’s concealed sexuality, the presence of a serious woman who might be a true companion. When Imogen’s friend asks her if she’s sure she knows what men want, it’s quite clear that she does not.

The slow erosion of Imogen’s self-esteem as she comes to realize, too late, that Evelyn loves Blanche, is shattering. Perhaps the most astonishing achievement is that Jenkins manages to make us feel that Evelyn’s impatience with his wife, along with Blanche’s artful encroachment on their marriage, are somehow justified by Imogen’s wistful, passive suffering. Hailed by Hilary Mantel as being “as smooth and seductive as a bowl of milk,” this is a novel not to be shelved but to be savored and re-read.

The Funniest Writing You Haven’t Read

Posted on April 1, 2019April 2, 2019 by Jo Lou

I have a bit of a defect as a reader. I tend to judge all works solely on whether or not they’re funny. My favorite moment in Moby Dick comes fairly early on when Ishmael starts making fun of famed microbiologist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek:

Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

Ha! Take that, father of microbiology, you dumb clown! Later on in the book we get this line about a mysterious sailor, “He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard.” I’m not even sure if that line is supposed to be funny, but it always gets a chuckle out of me. There are lots of other funny bits, but for me those two lines alone secure the novel’s status as a masterpiece. Other classics haven’t fared as well under my unwavering demand for jokes. A Farewell to Arms is pretty solidly a bummer except for the moment when Frederic tells his doctors to saw his leg off so he can wear a hook on it. And don’t even get me started on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I doubt I laughed once.

I think I speak for all discerning readers when I say that it can be frustrating when otherwise great books fall down on the giggle front. In fact, when I express this thought to other readers, I hear a lot of them bring up similar concerns. They say things like, “That book wasn’t trying to be funny” or “What’s the matter with you?” or “Please, stop shouting.” For all these reasons and more, I’ve decided to gather together a list of some of my favorite funny writing. These are all works that make me laugh without sacrificing quality or their status as high art. I’ve also tried to focus on pieces you may have missed, since I’m guessing we’ve all already read that Mark Twain story with the frog. I think it’s called something like “The Leaping Toad of Catsmooch County.” I’m not going to Google it and you shouldn’t either. But with any luck, there will be some fun surprises below.

“Ron” by Joy Baglio

Writers and readers everywhere recently mourned the planned shuttering of the beloved literary journal Tin House. This brilliant and absurd piece by Joy Baglio is a perfect example of why this loss has been so keenly felt. Baglio’s “Ron” appeared in issue 75 of Tin House. In this story, the universe keeps sending a young woman lovers who are all named Ron. What at first seems like a coincidence quickly develops into a half-cosmic, half-magical conspiracy. Baglio leans into the hilarious premise in an earnest, thoughtful way that both accentuates the humor of this story and gives it depth.

“Note to Self” in Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu

Few writers mix heart, spiraling creativity, and hyper intelligence as well as Charles Yu. So it almost seems unfair that he’s also funny. This short story from his collection Sorry Please Thank You is among my favorites. Yu gives us a correspondence between an individual and different versions of himself across parallel worlds. It starts as a casual interaction and soon kicks off into an echo chamber that questions the underpinnings of identity and existence. Yu tackles all of these issues while maintaining the familiar and funny tone of an email thread getting out of hand.

“Einstein and Capone” in What I’d Say to the Martians by Jack Handey

You might already be familiar with Jack Handey from his classic contributions to Saturday Night Live or his Deep Thoughts anthologies. You might be less familiar with his collection of stories and essays titled, What I’d Say to the Martians, which features some of the greatest and most ridiculous humor writing of all time. In the story “Einstein and Capone,” Handey chronicles a friendship between Albert Einstein and Al Capone with charming anecdotes like this one:

Their favorite joke was to have someone ask them which one was Capone and which one was Einstein, and they would both point at each other. They were a couple of slaphappy kids, going around slapping people. If you got slapped by Capone, there wasn’t much you could do about it. And if Einstein slapped you, you’d go, ‘Wow, slapped by Einstein.’

If you find that excerpt funny, then I agree with you. If you don’t find it funny, I’d probably grab this one from the library before buying your own copy.

“In the Current” in The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard

This flash memoir is the opening piece of Beard’s celebrated collection, The Boys of My Youth. In this piece, Beard manages to capture all the awkwardness of preadolescence in under two pages. She describes being ten-years-old on a vacation with her family when she sees a group of teenagers start to drown in a river. In the moments before the teenagers are saved, Beard explains that she is frozen with embarrassment over the fact that teenagers are shouting at her. She details the event with her characteristically amazing prose and a self-effacing wit that elevates the memory of her own awkwardness until it’s universal.

“Jeeves and the Song of Songs” in Very Good, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse was probably one of the greatest English prose stylists of the 20th century. He’s rarely credited as such because his prose was also funny and most of the people who publicly rate prose stylists are physically incapable of laughter. The complicated farces of Wodehouse’s stories are also half the fun, so I won’t spoil the plot of this classic Jeeves and Wooster tale. However, I will share this quick excerpt in which Bertie Wooster observes his friend being heckled at a music hall:

I don’t know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be a potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wiser heads than mine. . . . The moment I saw that banana splash on Tuppy’s shirtfront I realized how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.

Not that the potato school of thought had not also its supporters. As the proceedings warmed up, I noticed several intelligent-looking fellows who threw nothing else.

Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet is a genius and all of her books are worth picking up if you’re interested in the heights and possibilities of contemporary fiction. But out of all her books, Mermaids In Paradise, in which a couple on their honeymoon discover a lost race of mermaids, feels like the perfect delivery system for Millet’s amazing sense of humor and grand sense of adventure. The narrator, Deb, possesses a warmth and relatability that causes her incisive observations about our world to read like so much more than just satire. Mermaids in Paradise is an urgent communion with a voice that immediately feels like that of an old friend.

Letters to Wendy’s by Joe Wenderoth

Do you wish Rimbaud had been funnier and had hung out at Wendy’s more often? Same here, friend. Same here. Enter Joe Wenderoth, whose novel chronicles the thoughts and obsessions of a nameless narrator memorializing his thoughts on Wendy’s comment cards over the course of a year. The narrator lives in a world of Sudafed, whiskey, Biggies, and Frosties. The resulting comment card prose poems are brilliant, hilarious, and occasionally (just a warning) shockingly pornographic.

Have You Patted a Bodega Cat Today?

Posted on April 1, 2019June 6, 2024 by Halimah Marcus

How to Placate the Gods of New York

Click to enlarge and scroll.

“Besharam” is a Survival Guide for Shameless Brown Girls

Posted on April 1, 2019November 13, 2019 by Jo Lou

Shameless. This is a word every brown woman knows intimately. From my British home in Brighton to my Indian home in Goa, from Toronto to New York to Lahore, brown girls everywhere are constantly called “besharam.”

It doesn’t have the same ring in English, shamelessness shorn of its cultural specificity. Besharam is an accusation that cuts deep, in all directions. It means that you haven’t just brought shame upon yourself — through your choice in clothes, your too-loud laugh, your music taste — but also upon your family, your community, a sense of cultural honor. In 2011, when Delhi women organized a slut walk, they called it a besharmi morcha [protest]. They didn’t march as sluts, they marched as women without shame. The exact opposite of what a “good” brown woman is supposed to be.

Priya-Alika Elias isn’t having any of it.

Elias’s debut book is a brown girl’s survival guide disguised as a memoir. Besharam: Of Love And Other Bad Behaviours covers far-ranging topics spanning rape culture, heartbreak, “aunties,” eating disorders, and the impossible weight of a brown body in a sea of whiteness. Set between America and India, Besharam is equal parts hopeful and heartbreaking, and despite its tenderness, calls forth the kind of rage that makes you want to set the world on fire. And I hope it inspires brown girls the world over to do just that.

In the run up to Besharam’s publication, Priya and I met over the internet to talk about white boys, self-love, Twitter, Asian parenting, and why it’s important for brown girls to stand up for each other.

Richa Kaul Padte: Priya, let’s start with white boys! Like you, I became an adult in a white country, and young men trying to chat me up would often say, “But you don’t look Indian.” They meant it as a compliment, and the worst part is that over time, I began to take it as a compliment too. In Besharam you write: “How can I describe the specific wound left left…by white men who say, ‘You’re attractive, for an (X ethnicity)’?…We know what happens to a wound when it festers.” What do you think is the result of these festering wounds? Because damn, do they fester.

Priya-Alika Elias: For me, it meant that I tried to shed my Indianness. Since white boys didn’t think Indian girls were attractive or cool, okay fine, I would no longer be Indian! Obviously I couldn’t rid myself of my identity so easily, but I stopped wearing Indian clothes or accessories. I made a conscious effort to not have any Indian friends. I never talked about India or Indianness. I was absurdly pleased when people mistook me for any other ethnicity.

It took me a long time to understand that white boys were not the universal arbiter of attractiveness.

It took me a long time to understand that white boys were not the universal arbiter of attractiveness, or to see any desirability in myself. I imagine it’s just as difficult for many brown girls abroad. As women, we are already so aware of our looks — and what role they play. As brown women, white boys can be immensely damaging to our self-esteem, to the point that we wish to cast off our fundamental identity.

RKP: Please let’s talk about Rupi Kaur. Clearly so many white people (and men of all ethnicities) resent her success. Like you point out, she outsold motherfucking Homer. And I love that you tie this success to how she constantly preaches self-love to brown girls. You write, “What do we brown girls know about self love? Who is teaching us to love ourselves?” What is it, do you think, about a self-confident brown woman that poses such a threat to the world?

PAE: The ideal brown woman is meek, restrained, “good.” From birth we are taught how to behave around other people, aren’t we? Even how to sit. There is a compliment in my native language, Malayalam: adakkam odakkum. It means “a good woman sitting in the corner, occupying as little space as possible.” We are designated a bother, a headache. “Shrink yourselves!” we are told.

Kaur’s poems defy that dictate. They tell young brown girls to be confident, and not to be afraid to take up space. Her poems speak freely about unruly bodies and taboo desires. Most importantly, they convey to young women that they do not need to seek approval from anyone besides themselves. This poses a tremendous threat to a world whose foundations are built on policing brown women. If we love ourselves, if we are convinced of our worth, what tools do they have to control us with?

RKP: In an essay titled “Wolves,” you and a friend are getting into a car at nighttime when two men come down the street. One approaches your friend, and is persistent even after she refuses to talk to him. You write, “For that moment, I am not myself. I walk forward…I push him. It is a hard push that says I am not afraid. I know at that moment I am not…I see fear in the man’s eyes and am delighted that I have the ability to cause fear.” Priya, I cried and cried from pride and joy when I read this story. And it makes me wonder: is this where systemic, unending violence at the hands of men has brought us? Delight at a rare and precious moment in which a woman can physically intimidate a man?

PAE: It was one of the more complicated moments of my life, emotionally speaking. I have never been an advocate for violence or physical aggression. However, in a world where women are targets of so much violence, there is an aching desire to make men see our fear. Even share it. I was completely, unabashedly proud of my ability to intimidate another human being, because he was a man.

Rape-revenge narratives, horror movies in which the Final Girl survives by killing men, these are all manifestations of that desire. So often, we feel powerless. Reading the news each day feels like an act of masochism (so many women being hurt by men). If only, for once, we could be the ones with power. It’s sad that the prospect is so intoxicating.

RKP: You’ve written a wonderful fable of sorts in the form of the essay “A Cautionary Tale for Brown Women,” in which a selfless, caring woman keeps giving away parts of herself to those in need. I think many of us have grown up seeing the women in our lives doing just this — wearing themselves thin, for children, husbands, in-laws, communities. It’s what you describe in a later essay as “an endless wellspring of care, love, and attention.” Should we be teaching selfishness to brown girls instead? Or is there a middle path somewhere, a caregiving that doesn’t suck us completely dry?

PAE: Hmm, I feel like we shouldn’t be teaching anyone to be selfish. My feminism is not “Let’s teach women to be more like men.” A world in which we all act like selfish men would be unsustainable. That being said, we do need to teach women that their needs take precedence. I think you said it — there needs to be a middle ground!

So many young brown women don’t think they have a right to put themselves first. They need to hear: “Please don’t sacrifice yourselves to make your communities happy. Nurture the people in your lives, but not at your own expense.” Equally important, brown men need to learn nurture. Young brown men have to shoulder some of that burden — that’s the only way forward.

So often, we feel powerless. If only, for once, we could be the ones with power.

RKP: Desi comedians often joke about how they’ve disappointed their parents by not becoming doctors or engineers. But this joke is often an unfunny cover story for the reality that you explore so unflinchingly in the essay “Counting Black Sheep,” which is about the countless South Asian teenagers who commit suicide under the weight of their families’ demands for “excellence.” Is this some sort of cultural disease infecting essentially all of Asia, and where do you think it stems from?

PAE: It’s the worst disease. It has such a high mortality rate across — as you say — all of Asia. Even when it doesn’t take lives, it breaks hearts. Pearl S. Buck once wrote, “Stories are full of hearts being broken by love, but what really kills a heart is taking away its dream, whatever that dream might be.” Think of all the aspiring artists, the singers, the young people who want to pursue anything slightly unconventional. We simply don’t allow them to do it. Why?

I don’t know, but I’m guessing part of it comes from a deep fear of difference. We aren’t individualists — Asian culture doesn’t value being “different” in the same way Western culture does. We are taught to respect tradition, and to endeavor to fit in. I think Asian parents genuinely believe there is only one path to success, and only one mode of “excellence.” They force their children into believing the same.

RKP: Priya, you and I went to school together for a while (!), but we only really got to know each other as adults — thanks to Twitter. And it made me smile that you listed your Twitter friends in Besharam’s acknowledgments page, because I did the same in my book. For me, the internet has been a crucial place to grow into myself. Do you think this is the case for many women of color, whose offline spaces are often tightly controlled and surveilled?

PAE: People meet me sometimes and say, “Wow, you’re so different from your online presence.” I think maybe they expect me to be as sharp and unforgiving and bold as I am online? But that’s why Twitter has been so great for me and for so many other women of color — it gives us a space to be who we can’t be IRL.

In real life, I can’t be irreverent to aunties. I can’t be sexual and unrestrained (even though I try!). For the longest time, I didn’t know who I was, because I didn’t have the space to experiment. I imagine it’s the same for many women of color — we get the chance to be free online, to try out things and personalities until we understand ourselves better.

As brown women, we are constantly exhorted to live for other people, and not for ourselves.

RKP: You write of A Little Stranger by Candida McWilliam, a novel featuring acute eating disorders, “I closed the book. It was too real; it made me feel sick.” This is very much what reading Besharam was like for me — and I mean that as a compliment! I felt a simultaneous relief and terror at knowing that if your book made me feel so seen, it would do the same for other brown girls. Am I right in saying that Besharam itself speaks from within this dichotomy — a sense of gratitude at not being alone, but also a sense of heartbreak that other brown women suffer similarly? Where do we go from here?

PAE: Thank you, I am so moved by your kind words. That’s exactly what I was trying to do.

I wrote Besharam because I felt a profound loneliness for so long. There was nobody to tell me “I feel this way too; this is why being a brown girl is hard.” Our culture encourages silence in women. We hear the eternal, pernicious, “What will people think?” Well, I’m tired of silence.

You are absolutely right: the book is written from that dichotomy. So many of us carry similar burdens, and that is heartbreaking. But the ultimate goal of speaking out is change — I think that once we feel a sense of sisterhood with each other, we can then try to make these burdens lighter for each other. As brown women, we are constantly exhorted to live for other people, and not for ourselves. Well, maybe we can subvert that teaching, and use it to help and stand up for other brown girls. That is my hope.

8 Horror Novels that are Based on Real Historical Events

Posted on March 29, 2019March 29, 2019 by Jo Lou

I have always gravitated toward works of horror, even at a young age. At first, I read whatever I could find on my parents’ bookshelves. John Saul. V.C. Andrews. Stephen King. They lit a fire in me, made me curious about all the things that might be out there. All the things we cannot prove. Ghosts hiding around corners. Monsters lurking in shadows.

As I got older, I began to appreciate a different sort of horror. Horror that made me interrogate the greater dangers we encounter in our day-to-day lives. The deeper evils that lie within us. What could be more terrifying?

If there is anything to inspire an even deeper dread within me, it’s stories that take already terrible events from real life and make them even more monstrous using the traditional elements of horror. Perhaps it’s because these stories hew so closely to reality, they almost seem to confirm the potentiality of dark magic and demonic creatures and other supernatural manifestations.

Here are 8 books that manage the balancing act of normalcy and impossibility in a way that is creepily satisfying.

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons is known for the brand of horror that takes an event in history and twists it just slightly so that it becomes even darker. His most well-known work in this vein is The Terror, which takes the story of a ship on a doomed expedition through the Arctic in the mid-1840s to find the Northwest Passage—a story already filled with disease, starvation, and death—and adds in the possibility of something else unseen, something stalking them across the ice. The Terror was so popular, it was adapted for the small screen.

The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

The myth of the changeling—a fairy child left in place of a stolen human child—ran rampant throughout medieval Europe. Perhaps it was so popular because it was such a convenient scapegoat for the afflictions that often beset children, diseases and disabilities that parents and medical professionals did not understand at the time. In some cases, even adults were accused of being changelings. One of the most well-known cases is Bridget Cleary who was killed in 1895 by a group of people that included her suspicious husband. In The Hidden People (a reference to the fairy folk), a man learns his cousin has been burned alive because her husband thought she was a changeling. When he arrives in town to investigate, he comes to wonder if there’s more than just silly superstition at play.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle has a knack for taking old folk tales and making them new. I adored his take on the changeling myth, in which he tracks trolls on their journey from Europe to America, from the past into the present. In explaining how changelings have come to be in America, he digs into the “why” behind their existence, and also suggests a level of complicity in the humans that had previously been assumed to be victims alone.

Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias

More than anything else, this novel is about la frontera, the U.S.-Mexico border. Rather than focusing in on a single historical moment or figure, this book uses six characters to tell the story of a shared Southwestern experience—with a dark twist. Among the six main characters are a child who turns cold-blooded after seeing his father killed; a young woman who progresses from performance art to murder; and a mother who begins to fear that the child in her womb may be something more sinister.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu’s latest book takes one of the deadliest occurrences in Western history—the catastrophic wagon train journey of the infamous Donner Party—and adds a supernatural twist. Starvation and eventually death causes the body count to rise. Members of the party are pushed to the brink, inevitably turning against each other. But as people begin to disappear, they start to wonder if something even more malevolent is at play.

Black Fire by Hernan Rodriguez

In this graphic horror novel, Rodriguez places us in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars when, after an unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Russian army, his own military is forced to retreat. One unit is attacked by Cossacks during their journey homeward, but two survivors are able to elude the military warriors by fleeing toward an abandoned Slavic town—a place the Cossacks are unwilling to approach. But why? These men eventually come face to face with the Czernobog, a Slavic demon who proves to be a much more formidable opponent than the bloodthirsty warriors they only just barely escaped.

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

This classic horror is one of those books I can’t believe my parents let me read. At that point, having made me way through most of the books on their shelves, they’d probably resigned themselves to having a weird and morbid child. What difference would a bit of adult content make? As you likely already know, Blatty’s novel is about the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl, and the attempted exorcism undertaken by two priests. What you may not know is that the book is based upon the true story of an actual exorcism. Wherever you stand on the legitimacy of demonic possession, by the end of Blatty’s novel, you’re forced to believe.

Perfume by Patrick Süskind

Once upon a time (the early- to mid-1800s), a Spanish serial killer known as the Wolfman killed several women and children so he could extract their body fat and use it to make soap. Some postulate that Süskind’s novel—about a perfumer’s apprentice who is obsessed with possessing the particular scent that exudes from virginal young girls—is based upon this monstrous true tale. Whatever the origin, Süskind pushes the story further, imbuing the scents his serial killer acquires with outsized powers.

Lilliam Rivera Writes Young Adults As the Face of Resistance

Posted on March 29, 2019April 2, 2019 by Jo Lou

As I write this, right up the road, students from my alma mater are leading the largest student-led occupation in the college’s history in protest of the school’s lack of support of low income students and students of color. A few weeks ago, on the other side of the world, thousands of teenagers gathered to protest government inaction regarding climate change. And years ago, in a town in the Midwest that the country had largely forgotten, young people started a movement to resist police brutality that changed the world.

Image result for dealing in dreams by lilliam rivera — Purchase the book

Lilliam Rivera’s Dealing in Dreams, then, is set in an environment that doesn’t seem so unlike our own. In a near-future dystopia, a people are ruled by a megalomaniac with seemingly unchecked power, whose narcissism is fueled by a lifetime of wealth and access. There are gross disparities in housing, employment, education and opportunity that allow a privileged few to thrive, but only at the expense of the most vulnerable among them. And young people must take to the streets to protect their people in ways that the adults around them have failed to do.

Dealing In Dreams explores violence, privilege and the complicated nature of power, and what it means when the future of a community rests in the hands of history’s most fearless radicals: young people.

Leah Johnson: You’ve said that you wanted Dealing in Dreams, to be a book like the ones you loved when you were a kid (violent and fast-paced), but to have girls be at the center of it. In knowing that, where did the book come from and grow to?

Lilliam Rivera: I wrote the book six years ago. I wrote a draft of it and it was because I just given birth to my second daughter, and at the time I didn’t have an agent or even my first book—none of that. So I was still in that process of trying to get published, and trying to be a published author. And when I had my second daughter a lot of people were like: “Oh, you’re going to have to shelve that dream!” And a lot of that was coming from women. So out of rage I wrote this book.

It was the kind of book that I would have wanted to have read when I was in high school. I wanted something violent, I wanted something that [felt like] The Outsiders. And I wanted it from the perspective of a young Latina. So I wrote a draft six years ago and I put it away, I didn’t look at it. And then I looked at it again two years ago when I signed my two-book deal. And I saw that it was still pretty relevant—a lot of the anger I had in there was still pretty palpable. In the last year it’s been through a lot of changes, drafts, rewrites, but it still made a lot of sense. Very of this moment, even if it was set in the near future.

When I had my second daughter, people said: ‘Oh, you’re going to have to shelve that dream of becoming a published author!’ So out of rage I wrote this book.

LJ: The book is also doing a lot of work in terms of radical feminism, race, class—the whole nine yards. These aren’t topics that a lot of people normally associate with YA—which I think is a gross, gross undersell of the genre. When you were writing, how did you think about tackling these issues, while also making them accessible to a young audience?

LR: For me, when I’m writing a young adult book, I’m always thinking about the bigger thing. For my first book, The Education of Margot Sanchez, I was obviously thinking about gentrification but also colorism within the Latino community. So then with this book, again, I felt that things were even bigger, or even more complicated.

I was really thinking about government-run medical experiments that have been done in Puerto Rico. I was reading about how they use medical trials in Puerto Rico on women when they were trying out their drugs. There were little lines that would be put in these newspaper articles that were dropped in there and no one is saying: “This is insane!” Like, it’s still happening.

And I thought about during that time it was the Women’s March going on, and it was all about the patriarchy, and down with the system, and men, and all this stuff. And I’m all about that too, but there aren’t any easy answers to any of this. I feel like for most of the time the women of color who are leading on the front lines are usually cast away at one point during that revolution. So all of those questions were circulating when I was revising the book.

LJ: I found it so radical that the defense of Mega City is in the hands of these badass young women. I don’t know that I even have a question except to say that that particular choice feels so powerful and so timely right now.

LR: I feel like we saw that, right? When I think of Black Lives Matter, I think of all those young people who were on the front lines. Even in Florida, after the shooting, all of the kids became the spokespeople for that. But before that, it was Black Lives Matter. It was the young leading that. I think people forget that it’s true that they have way more power.

I’m reading about the walkouts in LA in the ‘70s and ‘60s—all of the Chicanos who led those walkouts—and they were all high school students. It’s really powerful. It should be, it makes sense, for young people to be owning the city, owning the streets. Even if it is a little bit misguided at first, for Nalah and Las Mal Criadas they do have that power.

LJ: That sort of goes back to the last question as well, that it’s not super foreign that we’re going to make these topics “appropriate” or palatable to young people—because these are topics that young people are taking on in the streets everyday. So it feels fitting.

LR: Yeah, there’s definitely like this thing in young adult where people think: “Oh, we can only handle one issue in a book!” And I’m like, that’s not even realistic for anyone who’s living. Young people are dealing with multiple things on a daily basis. While also finding joy and also falling in love and all of those things. But also just dealing with major stuff. And so I was just trying to formulate that in a futuristic world where these girls really do have power, really do have unbridled violence, in a way where they don’t see much that’s like the “[traditional] girl.”

Most of the time women of color who are leading on the front lines are cast away during that revolution.

LJ: And this violence is not just tolerated by the matriarchy, but kind of similar to The Hunger Games, it’s encouraged by this power structure.

LR: I grew up loving to watch live boxing, and I follow a lot of the Puerto Rican fighters. So, to me, it’s tied to that type of performance. I can see the beauty of boxing, and the talent and skill, but I can also see how it’s so tied to poverty and also to uplifting someone and all of those things. And it’s disturbing. And all of that is tied into how I wanted to write about violence.

LJ: This whole book is upending stereotypes. One of my favorite choices of yours was to make men props in the way that women often are. Were the papi chulos sort of a middle finger to all of the male writers who’ve constructed nameless, faceless, attractive women over the years? I might be projecting.

LR: That’s amazing! I didn’t think about that, but maybe subconsciously? Honestly, the idea of boydegas and papi chulos came to me from this documentary I watched a long time ago and it was based in Japan and it was about these young, professional women who are able to rent out men. You go to a club and you can rent them out, and it was very specifically geared to young women. So I was totally fascinated by that, and I always thought about how I grew up a Menudo fan. And Menudo was like the boy band that always had new, fresh boys so that [the members] would stay forever young. So I thought about what that would look like in the future, when guys are put in that type of subservient role, and just become eye candy for the gangs. So yeah, I had a lot of fun writing those scenes.

LJ: I want to say how important this book feels to me. Even the way language functions here was something special. There is a lot of Spanish, but the book never slows down to explain it to non-Spanish speakers, it just expects us to keep up.

LR: It felt really important. For my first book, I described words and meanings more, and for this one I was just like no. I feel like I’m just going to do that from now on. This is the world, and you should either know the words and the lingo or you don’t. It felt really liberating to be able to do that. You’re entering this world, some of it’s familiar and some of it’s not, and that’s okay.

Black Women Novelists You Should Be Reading

Posted on March 29, 2019August 15, 2019 by Jennifer Baker

I’m incredibly thankful to live in a time when Black artists continue to carve out their voices in the field, making waves through self-publishing and traditional methods. While the percentages of our representation still leave much to be desired, these days it’s not uncommon to find Black women writers paving their own way and using a voice that speaks to the multiplicity within our culture. There are the legends whose names come up, deservedly, time and again, and those who are establishing themselves in the canon with each story, essay, poem, or novel including Dorothy West and Octavia Butler, Elizabeth Nunez and Toni Morrison, Beverly Jenkins and Candice Carty-Williams. There are a slew of Black women writers to add to your shelves and your reading is incomplete if you leave out this list of Black women novelists.

Black women, especially, have been a crucial part of my upbringing and solidifying my own sense of self and of the stories I want to tell. In their lives (and creativity) Black women encouraged deep levels of introspection and contemplation needed for me to recognize that there’s really no limit to what we can do. It’s with that in mind I wanted to list Black women authors who, if you didn’t know about them before, now you do. From crime to horror to historical tales, these women have established a new scope, a different way of thinking, and also mentored many upstarts, be it through their prose or through their work within the industry. Again, I am thankful to live in a time to be exposed to their work and am equally happy to share some of these powerhouse artists with you in the hopes you’ll add their work to your shelves, if you haven’t already.

Eleanor Taylor Bland

Establishing herself in the crime genre with books following the life of Black woman detective Marti MacAlister, Bland became prolific within the genre, editing an anthology Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors and numerous short stories. Her work drew from her experience in a Midwestern town mirroring the one she wrote about in the MacAlister series, which also reflected the hardships for a woman in this type of position while pushing against the ways Black women were typecast in fiction. The organization Sisters in Crime created an award in Bland’s name to support unpublished writers within the genre.

Alyssa Cole

Cole’s work is not tied to one genre. The experiences of Black characters are always prioritized in her novels, which range from historical to romance to science fiction (and sometimes two or more of those genres mixed together). She may be best known for her award-winning An Extraordinary Union books, which take place during the Civil War—complete with spies, the looming Confederacy, and forbidden love. Cole’s stories do not ignore the travesty of war and provide agency to the enslaved, and formerly enslaved, in deciding their own destiny.

Nora DeLoach

DeLoach first pursued writing in her 50s, winning contests that encouraged her to keep going. She went on to pen the Mama Detective books featuring paralegal Simone Covington and her social worker mother Grace (aka Mama Candi) in Atlanta. For some reason mother and daughter always get entangled in a murder mystery ultimately working together to set things right. Written in a voice that is as warm as the honey Mama Candi’s complexion is compared to, this series pulls readers in with suspense and holds us with the family dynamics between mother and daughter. Their frustrations with each other are evident, but there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for and with each other.

Tananarive Due

Due is not only a well-known author within the speculative/horror realm; she’s also a filmmaker and the co-producer of the documentary Black Noir. (And I believe we have some new nonfiction from Due to look forward to.) Her filmmaking background may account for the cinematic nature of her writing, which draws us to her characters while weaving a larger story around place, history, and culture. Her most recent collection of prose, Ghost Summer, is a must-read, as is her novel My Soul to Keep among many others. Due has not remained pigeonholed within any one way of storytelling, yet has never separated Black experiences from the aspects of horror, fantasy, or thrillers, capturing the humanistic and relatable threads of life within a larger scope.

Nalo Hopkinson

Hopkinson’s name is often said in the same breath of legend Octavia Butler and award-winner bestseller NK Jemisin for a reason: over many books she has firmly established herself within the speculative genre having tapped into Caribbean folklore and sci-fi/fantasy. Metaphors and symbolism have larger implications in the worlds Hopkinson constructs be it in stories where nations are divided quite literally by class to characters bonding over the promise of freedom with the aid of a goddess. Her prose showcases a diverse reality and an alternate perspective. It would be hard to suggest a definitive book to introduce yourself to Hopkinson’s style, so just read all of them.

Attica Locke

Locke is one of the most renowned Black contemporary mystery writers, having won an Edgar, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, and the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, among many other accolades. She’s worked with Ava DuVernay and on the show Empire. Even with her busy schedule, we have more novels from Locke to look forward to, including the next installment of the Highway 59 series, Heaven, My Home, publishing this fall. Locke’s work tends to be centralized in the South, specifically Texas. Her upcoming novel and the award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird take on white supremacy, red tape within law enforcement, and the ties that bind family through the viewpoint of Texas Ranger Darren Matthews, who has a dark past he’s trying to reckon with.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

A 2018 recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, Makumbi has been praised for her unique writing and searing depictions of East Africa and East Africans. Her debut novel Kintu was a sweeping narrative reimagining the history of Uganda through the Kintu clan. The perspectives in her novel didn’t only seek to survive but to break the chains of a brutal history. Next up for Makumbi is a short story collection, Let’s Tell This Story Properly, publishing in April.

Bernice L. McFadden

Like many of the women listed here, McFadden is prolific, with a number of novels you can enjoy. You can even purchase the Bernice McFadden collection, a package of several novels, to hold you over while waiting for her next novel. McFadden’s work has fictionalized moments in history from The Book of Harlan to Gathering of Waters, exploring the harsh truths and vivid experiences of those who navigate reinvention, sometimes at a price. McFadden’s stories have consistently taken readers into the heart of not just the land but the people, reflecting base instincts and our truest selves.

Nadifa Mohamed

Named a Best Young British Novelist by Granta in 2013, this Somali-British writer has written two novels. Her debut, Black Mamba Boy, was a fictionalized account of her father’s life, taking place in Yemen in the 1930s, and her second follows several women in 1987 in the town of Hargeisa, part of the Republic of Somaliland on the brink of war. Using the personal to project larger discussions on race, class, and political upheaval, Mohamed’s fiction has tapped into a history that deserves a wider audience.

Stacey Abrams. (Photo via her Instagram)

Selena Montgomery (aka Stacey Abrams)

While many of us wait in anticipation to find out whether or not Stacey Abrams will declare her candidacy for president in 2020, many may also know her under her pen name as romance novelist Selena Montgomery. (Abrams has also written nonfiction with her most recent out in March.) Montgomery’s books aren’t strictly romance though: they include mystery and murder. Will the girl get the guy and help find the real culprit of a crime? It’s a recipe for success in the novels she’s produced over the years, centering Black love and personal growth in each one.

Nisi Shawl

In addition to contributing to and editing anthologies, Nisi Shawl has written the novel, Everfair, that explores a speculative history of colonization in the Congo, imagining how this historical atrocity might have played out in an alternative universe. In addition to her creative writing Shawl is committed to the teaching of better writing. Shawl composed, with Cynthia Ward, Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a guide to recognizing and executing the responsibility of representing others outside a writer’s background. With K. Tempest Bradford and other marginalized artists, she established a workshop series, also called Writing the Other, for folks to get in the know and work towards equity and responsible representation.

Lola Shoneyin

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is Shoneyin’s only novel to date, and it’s one to be savored. Baba Segi’s Wives follows the participants in a polygamous marriage via the perspectives of, you guessed it, his four wives. The arrival of Baba’s new, young wife, Bolanle unraveled not only her life but those within the family she’s just married into. Shoneyin’s debut gives the women the chance to tell their tales; each wife has a fully-realized and unique personality that goes beyond cliché, showing their fullest desires and also the limitations of the choices they’ve made.

Trisha R. Thomas

You may be familiar with Thomas because of her popular Nappily Ever After books, the first of which was adapted into a movie for Netflix. While Thomas’s books are full of humor, the ongoing series is also rife with real-life circumstances ranging from relationship troubles to larger expectations of femininity in the workplace and outside of it. What Thomas’ books offer is a contemporary look at the professional and personal side of a Black woman’s journey through adulthood.

Stephanie Powell Watts

Another winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for her short story collection We Are Taking Only What We Need and an NAACP Image Award for her novel, No One Is Coming to Save Us, Watts has already established herself as a voice to be admired and observed. Her work has been hailed for the multifaceted explorations of Black identity on a macro- and micro-level, always embedding her characters and readers in a singular reading experience.

Mira Jacob’s Graphic Memoir “Good Talk” Makes Awkward Conversations Beautiful

Posted on March 28, 2019July 16, 2019 by Jennifer Baker

There are many—and I mean many—incidents where I’ve stood agog at comments thrown my way; remained frozen after a backhanded (or full frontal) insult presented like a compliment and considered whether or not I was thinking clearly as I was left to debate what had just happened. These experiences always left me questioning myself: perhaps I was being too sensitive, not thoughtful enough, or, maybe, just maybe, I needed to be more considerate even when I felt myself on the cusp of breaking. When I heard about Mira Jacob’s new book—that it was memoir, that it was graphic memoir, that it was called Good Talk—I knew I’d be drawn to it as a fan of her work. But I didn’t realize how much this book, from start to finish, encapsulated and perfectly illustrated in a unique comic-style the ways in which these encounters had thrown me. I would see and read firsthand that I was not at all alone.

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, Jacob’s second book, isn’t an instructional guide. Rather, it reveals a bevy of experiences for Jacob from childhood to the most recent U.S. presidential election and a bit thereafter. At times direct conversations, divulging how one really feels can feel like a losing battle depending on who we’re engaging with, especially in discord where the divisiveness of politics becomes evident along with the assumptions made about marginalized people by people in passing let alone within actual relationships. None of us are incapable of causing pain and, when we do, do we consider the other party or protect ourselves from these realizations? Good Talk doesn’t shy away from these uncomfortable questions; we’re forced to bear witness to these moments via satire, heart, and introspection. Jacob doesn’t speak for everyone—she speaks for herself—but oh how relatable her individual experience is. I was so glad to talk with Jacob about how this book came together and where the good (and difficult) conversations had may lead us.

Jennifer Baker: You’ve been publishing essays and pieces about your family, about yourself and other people, for years. Do you feel like with Good Talk people are still going to be surprised because they know you through your fiction?

Mira Jacob: I think people are gonna be more surprised by the graphic parts than the memoir parts. Because Good Talk doesn’t function the way the other memoir pieces that I’ve written function, where I feel like I kind of take a subject and really carefully lay it out. It was the opposite with this book. I was working with the opposite impulse, which was to not too carefully lay things out for people, but just to quickly put it down. Get it down and get it drawn and don’t make it into something unspeakably beautiful and refined.

JB: Really?

MJ: It just needed to come out the way it was coming out. And my aesthetic is kind of like a ‘90s zine and I didn’t want to make it prettier. I designed my own font. There are so many different ways to prettify something and I did not want to. And in that same way I didn’t want to have to use the tools of metaphor to say what I wanted to say.

My aesthetic is kind of like a ‘90s zine and I didn’t want to make it prettier.

JB: But there is a structure, because things really do seamlessly weave into this conversation and these emotions through conversations. Which leads us to harder parts of the story, which isn’t exactly linear, the election.

MJ: Exactly. With anything that I do I pay attention to structure, always, and pacing. I think America was surprised when Trump, like really surprised.

JB: Oh yeah!

MJ: And I would say, I wish I were one of the super “I wasn’t surprised at all! I knew this was gonna happen.” But I didn’t. I was surprised but not in the way I think in the same way a lot of my White friends were surprised. My surprise was the heartbreak of “Oh this is who we really are.” Their surprise was “This is not who we are!” And it was different. It was a really different way to go through that moment.

JB: We grew up in a “different time.” I mean that in terms of the digital era. I feel like things could be better hidden in terms of the accessibility of it. I was an ‘80s baby so I was very unaware of Reagan and how much his and Nancy’s whole rhetoric of “Say No to Drugs” affected my community and other communities.

MJ: Right.

JB: So the first thought I had was, “Man, this sucks.” But also, “What are the people I know with children going through right now?”

MJ: You know, Tanwi [Nandini Islam] and I talk about it. Because she and Kaitlyn [Greenidge] were both over the night of the election. And then I put [my son] Z to bed. When he went to bed I feel like everybody’s mask just slipped off. I think we were all sort of holding it together for the kid in the room. The minute he was out of the room we were just grief stricken. And falling apart. And I remember sitting on my steps outside. And it was such a sharp contrast, obviously, [with] 2008 and 2012. And I remember saying, “What do we say to him?” And we didn’t have a great answer. We never have great answers at moments like that. Even in hindsight I think to myself, “What would you say now?” What practical advice would you say going forward? And the truth is I really don’t think there is any. My practical advice is: Daddy and I are here. We’re trying to sort through this too. We are wide awake and we’re doing everything we can to help turn the country around. We’re talking to each other. We’re talking to our family.

JB: That concern can look like anxiety definitely comes through here. Especially in text, if we’re talking about formal text. We see a break but it comes off very different. I think we’re meant to kind of hypothesize how the break happens. In Good Talk we’re actually seeing so much of the narrator’s life before/during/after that it makes complete sense these questions being asked.

MJ: It was kind of a good place to channel that. It felt like a good place to kind of put it down and to let it have the space to live. In the moment that it’s happening you have to remember half of our White liberal friends were saying, “This identity politics is really what’s the problem.” In the moment that we’re feeling the anxiety for real things that are happening, our friends are saying “Part of the problem is that you’re feeling the anxiety.” I mean what the fuck is that? How the fuck do you look at someone and say that?

JB: Good Talk spoke to so many things that I know a lot of us are going through. Especially marginalized people. What happens when it’s actually close to home now? Because there’s no finality to this. This is your life and there’s no finality to any of this. Z is still a kid. He loves his grandparents. You love them too; it’s complicated. In art we see it’s complicated, but we still need that ending right? I really appreciate and respect the fact that it was open-ended here.

MJ: I’m glad to hear that. I think that is one of the things that I’ve been sort of anticipating most in this age of “people canceling people” when they crossed a line. Because they need to have a hard stop within themselves. Like, that’s enough. You’ve done enough. I no longer have to interact with you. And I understand and respect that place very much. I don’t have that. I don’t think there are many people that have that choice and go about their days feeling like failures because they’re not taking a moral high ground that isn’t accessible to them in the first place. If I’m gonna say that, I’m going to say “They’re cancelled.” I’m saying to my son, your White family, “Half of you is cancelled.” I would never say that to my child.

Mira talks to her son Z who is about six.

Z: I am not asking Daddy about it.
Mira: Why not?
Z: Because I don — From *Good Talk* (click to enlarge)

JB: This is all very grown up. I’m not used to this. This is all logical, I’m not used to this world.

MJ: Let’s be clear: in the moments of tremendous anxiety I’m not feeling particularly logical, but I do feel like there is a way. And people who have this fantasy of interracial relationships, the fantasy is that if people who are a different race marry it’s because they’ve reached some sort of epic nirvana to which they truly understand each other in a way that reaffirms everything this country is about. And I think the truth is much more complicated. The thing that I hate about the truth getting buried, the truth being that we fight and we don’t understand each other and we have to say things 20 times, both of us, and fight to re-understand each other because we are enormously disappointed by each other and sometimes we’re completely seen by each other.

The problem, when you don’t ever look at the truth of what it is, is that you don’t ever see how it really works and what about that faulty process is very beautiful. And I think that, to me, has been a little bit of a heartbreak from the fallout from the idea that we somehow have to sanitize all of our interracial relations in a way where you’re on the right side or you’re on the wrong side and that’s it.

JB: A lot of what happens in Good Talk is superimposing on those things that people are just making assumption of. The interracial relationships, like you said, and the assumption that you’re “self-hating.” The fact that you are dating various people means you’re “confused.”

MJ: When you actually talk to anyone individually you find out that the monolithic thinking is not really monolithic. Everybody has exceptions. Everybody has weird congealed parts of themselves that do and don’t make sense at different times. But I think for me it just felt very important. Like, I knew when I was writing it, I thought, “Oh there’s gonna be stuff that you write down that you’ll regret later.” I mean not right now. The whole point is my thinking is going to evolve. The whole point is it’s better. And of course, if we’re doing anything right in this world, of course I’m going to look back on something and think “Wow, I sucked on that one.” Of course that’s true, but what does it mean to stand in that moment anyway? What does it means to hold all the complication at once? To know you are not your most evolved self in this moment and you’re gonna write the truth of it.

JB: And one cannot always have an immediate response. I find myself being kind of dumbfounded and that causes paralysis. Realizing “Oh that was horrible.” I don’t see that a lot. It’s witty comebacks. It’s water thrown at your face. But it’s not that kind of paralysis of “Wow, this is something I’m thinking about” and therefore we move into another moment that kind of signifies what is learned or what is felt. I hope that when people read Good Talk it’s causing this kind of self-analysis. With Good Talk I thought, “Oh crap, I’m that type of person. Maybe I need to think about what I’m doing.”

MJ: Obviously I feel like one of the things that this era has pushed us into is this real invulnerability where it’s just considering the hard line of “I’m right and I’m not going to look at this anymore because I know I’m right.” Everybody’s got different moments where that could be the right thing for them, but what I mention I’m looking for is to reach the people that are not in that moment. That are often doing the slower thing and don’t know the immediate thing to say, and don’t have the kind of movie moment under their tongue. And to say I’m right there with you. This is what it looks like.

JB: And you’ve made mistakes?

MJ: Yes, of course. Big ones. I mean, so many. So many.

JB: We all have.

Often there were scenes in the book where I cringed, I cringed reading them.

MJ: Often there were scenes in the book where I cringed, I cringed reading them. You wanna unzip your skin and put it on somebody else and say, “You be me for a little while so I don’t have to feel out what moment was or why I lived it in that particular way.” But I do feel like part of that is to combat what is, I think, one of the things is that I’ve lost, probably like many people, many White friends over the last few years. What it all boils down to is usually due to this simple moment where I try to discuss something but why what they’ve done is hurtful to me and the only discussion they want to have is whether or not they are racist. They don’t even want to have a discussion about it. They want me to tell them they’re not racist. And that’s the only part of the discussion they want to pay attention to. Part of me always just wants to shake them and be like, “Of course you are! Of course I am!” How are we not going to be? In what bubble do you think you grew up where you just somehow escaped— Or what level of thinking do you think you have done that requires you to not think about this anymore and not to question this anymore? Because I feel like there’s this idea they’ve latched onto. They respond to the idea of being woke and this particularly insidious thing where it only happens once. You are woke and then that’s it! And then you are transformed from the frog into the prince. “Now I am the prince, I am no longer the frog.” Don’t you know we’re only ever in the process of waking? It took me a while to figure that out.

JB: As of this conversation, the book isn’t out yet. I don’t know if people felt automatically inclined to make the assumption or project your life into your debut novel whereas now it is your life.

MJ: They definitely did. They did to the point where they thought “I’m so sorry your brother died when you were young.” I said “My brother’s alive. That was a novel. My family is okay. Thank you for asking.” With this I really haven’t had a lot of interaction around it. I’m just sort of geared up for the hell that it will probably be because I think America’s in such a dark place and writing something vulnerable about race is, it’s risky. I think that being a woman, being a brown woman, being a mother—boy, there’s no one people love yelling at more than a mother. I feel like I’ve sort of prepared as well as I can. But what I’m hoping is that on the edges of all of that there will be people that feel seen and heard in ways that are real and matter to them.

Tim Maughan Recommends 5 Near-Future Books By Women

Posted on March 28, 2019April 8, 2019 by Jess Zimmerman

Does cyberpunk have a women problem? Let’s put it this way: not long ago, editor Aisling McCrea tweeted a photo of a sentence on her Kindle: “He lay on his side and watched her breathe, her breasts, the sweep of a flank defined with the functional elegance of a war plane’s fuselage.” “Men are temporarily banned from writing until we figure out what the hell’s going on,” she said, to nearly 50,000 likes and 12,000 retweets. Some self-published trashy sex book? Nah: Neuromancer, by William Gibson, the defining text of the cyberpunk movement.

But there’s nothing about cyberpunk, or other near-future science fiction that makes us think about the potentials and perils of our current trajectory, that that has to be sexist. Case in point: Tim Maughan’s book Infinite Detail, a compelling techno-thriller with a chilling premise: what if the internet ceased to exist? Five more cases in point: the near-future novels by women that Maughan recommends below. Turns out you don’t have to compare women to sex planes in order to offer an incisive vision of where technology and class stratification are taking us.

Read More Women is Electric Literature’s series, presented in collaboration with MCD Books, in which we feature prominent authors, of any gender, recommending their favorite books by women and non-binary writers. Twice a month, you’ll hear about the five non-male authors who most delight, inspire, and influence your favorite writers.

Moxyland – Lauren Beukes

Moxyland came out about the same time I first started seriously writing fiction, and as such it was initially conflicting: it was so thematically and stylistically similar to what I was trying to do that I didn’t know whether to be happy that I was on the same page or dismayed that I’d been beaten to it. None of that mattered by the time I’d actually finished reading it though —Moxyland is just too damn good. Beukes’ near-future debut follows four misfits—an artist, an activist, an internet streaming celebrity, and a corporate executive—as they hustle to make a living, political waves, or both. But it’s the setting that feels like the book’s real protagonist—a divided Cape Town that’s saturated with high-tech advertising and where gated communities, corporate campuses, and slums all sit anxiously next to each other. Moxyland was arguably the first novel to fully capture the inequality and digital chaos of the now all too familiar global mega-city, as Beukes skillfully picks apart everything from our obsession with smartphones through to gentrification and corporate surveillance.

Synners – Pat Cadigan

Pat Cadigan was there right at the beginning of the cyberpunk movement, unleashing a string of short stories and novels that helped define the genre’s merging of politics, technology, and street culture. Synners is her third novel, released almost a decade after the movement’s conception, allowing it to both consolidate and question cyberpunk’s most common tropes. And they’re all here: oppressive corporations, body hacking, media saturation, and low-life hustlers forced to become rebellious heroes. Through its expansive cast of characters it drops the reader into a near future Los Angeles where the eponymous Synners are individuals able to turn people’s raw, sensory experiences into packaged, consumable digital entertainment. Often heralded for making its predictions about the future of technology and networks so accurately, from a 2019 perspective it’s the book’s depiction of digitally distorted reality that rings the most true. As the narrative bounces between chemical hallucinations, virtual reality, networked media, and “real life,” the boundaries between them all blur, and it’s hard not to feel that Cadigan has captured the existential panic we all face when trying to feel our way through our post-consensus, post-truth present.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree Jr.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In – James Tiptree, Jr

With this 1973 novella Alice Sheldon—writing under a pen name—didn’t just predate cyberpunk by nearly 20 years, she also predicted Instagram influencers 40 years before they happened. Set in a future where advertising has been outlawed and corporations use celebrity product placement to drive consumerism, it’s the story of a depressed and deformed teenager that awakens from a suicide attempt to find that she’s been fitted with cybernetic implants. Now the property of one of the corporations, these implants allow her to remotely control Delphi, the brainless, genetically modified clone of a stereotypically beautiful 15-year-old girl as she becomes a global media sensation. With its explorations of identity, corporate controlled networks, celebrity brand influencers, mainstream definitions of beauty, and the fetishization and exploitation of female bodies, it’s a book that feels more essential now than at any point in the 46 years since it was written.

The Race – Nina Allan

Allan’s The Race is actually four novellas woven into one novel, each told from a different character’s perspective, that reinforce and contradict each other in sometimes dizzying but always stimulating ways; to say much more would be to spoil much of the joy of reading the novel. What I can talk about, though, is the book’s setting—or at least the setting for some of it. Allan presents a fascinatingly convincing view of near-future Britain. Ravaged both by economic collapse and aggressive fracking that has turned the English countryside into a post-industrial wasteland, Allan’s narrative largely avoids large cities to focus instead on small towns and abandoned edgeland spaces. It’s a decision that makes the book feel all the more convincing and alive, and gives it a working-class, almost mundane, day-to-day ambience that is sorely missing from so much contemporary near-future fiction. Into this setting Allan drops smartdog racing, an illegal version of greyhound racing where the dogs are genetically modified to contain human DNA, supposedly giving them a special empathetic bond with their owners. It’s this blend of the everyday with the weird that makes The Race an essential read for anyone looking for a fresh perspective on literary science fiction.

Wolf Country – Tünde Farrand

A last-minute addition to the list, as I only just finished reading Farrand’s stunning debut novel last week. Set in London in 2050, it’s an excellent example of taking existing social phenomena and divisions and formalizing them into a dystopian setting—in this case, class and inequality. Future British society has given up trying to solve wealth disparity and instead has turned it into a formal, official structure, with everyone being put into a social class based on how much they consume: Non-Profits, Low-Spenders, Mid-Spenders, High-Spenders, and Owners. Everyone now lives in the cities —the countryside apparently now little more than a nature reserve that is off-limits to everyone apart from the Owners—with your housing being allocated by the government based on your spending bracket, and those with no money being dumped in The Zone to fight for themselves. All of this seems fine at first to protagonist Alice, until her architect husband disappears and she loses her school teaching job and her Mid-Spender status, leading her to confront not just the injustices of the new society but also the secrets of her family’s past. Farrand’s real skill here is in drip-feeding the reader with details until the true horror of the book’s setting is revealed, and the skin of consumer capitalism is slowly peeled back to reveal the dehumanizing fascism that really lies at the heart of free market neo-liberalism.