Queenie: Godmother of Harlem by Elizabeth Colomba and Aurélie is a bio-graphic novel following the life of Stephanie St. Clair. A woman, who during the time of New York’s mob scene, ran Harlem through her creation of the underground numbers racket. We learn of Queenie’s origins from Martinique through to her control and protection of […]
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I want to read more utopian fiction–fiction that imagines that another, better world is possible, and considers the ways that we might get there. In literature and TV, dystopias abound, and I can see their appeal. I find them too often relatable, and regularly riveting. Our way of being so often feels imperiled. Climate change
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This episode starts off with a review of IDA IN THE MIDDLE by Nora Lester Murad. This book follows Ida, a Palestinian-American girl, as she eats a magic olive that takes her to the life she might have had in her parents’ village near Jerusalem. In the second segment, Niba sits down with Liz Weinberg.
Ida In the Middle: Book Review + Queerness & Solving the Climate Crisis Read More »
Colleen Hoover did not have the greatest idea when she wanted to adapt one of her best selling books It Ends with Us into a coloring book. Fans took to TikTok to voice their outrage. As a domestic violence advocate, I am constantly hyper aware of things in our society that glorify and glamorize domestic
CoHo Scraps her Coloring Book Read More »
The Opposite of Loneliness collects the essays and short stories of Marina Keegan, writer, journalist, and playwright, who attended Yale back in the early 2010s. Keegan was an avid writer and was set to work at The New Yorker after she graduated from college. Her future was bright with the promise of published works in
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Neda Toloui-Semnani has had anything but a normal life Neda’s parents, Farahnaz Ebrahimi and Faramarz Toloui-Semnani, were vocal and enraged activists fighting to instill a revolution in Iran and shift the power back to the people rather than a monarchy under the Shah. Their work was primarily done in the United States, but they made
Book Review: They Said They Wanted Revolution by Neda Toloui-Semnani Read More »
Thanks to money, celebrity, and enticing ads with unfulfilled promises, wellness and self-care have become dominant industries. Journalist Rina Raphael has written a compelling book about these ever-growing industries in The Gospel of Wellness. I asked Rina about how wellness can be about curiosity, how wellness depends on location, celebrities’ influence on wellness, and how
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In The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care, Rina Raphael takes an in-depth look at the myriad ways wellness has infiltrated contemporary American life and how women, in particular, are under immense pressure to subscribe to ever-evolving and expanding definitions of “healthy” and “well.” People turn to this giant
A Healthy Disbelief in the Gospel of Wellness Read More »
Contributors from the team talk about their favorite books of 2022. Books and Resources mentioned: Mentioned by Sally: FBC Podcast Segments: Non-Fiction Graphic Novels; Best New Releases (so far); Frisky Faves Near the Bone by Christina Henry The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by
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In the novel Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds, Shira enlists her “nemesis/former crush” to teach her how to flirt. Shira is 16 years old and determined to get a boyfriend during Hanukkah. But during their snowed-in time together, Shira learns there is more to Tyler than she thought. She learns to trust her
Learning How to Flirt During Hanukkah with Hannah Reynolds Read More »
In Wanda the Brave by Sihle-isipho Nontshokweni and Chantelle And Burgen Thorne, a young girl’s natural hair is challenged at a hair salon. And in just 32 pages this children’s book perfectly breaks down gender dynamics in beauty, microaggressions, prejudice, and the at times difficult relationship between black people and the natural state of our hair,
Wanda the Brave and a Manifesto on Black Hair Read More »
Making A Scene by Constance Wu is a memoir that showed what it means to fight to be seen in a world that renders you invisible. I don’t mean this in the sense that Constance Wu is seeking attention, and this is why she became an actress. What I got from this book is that
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