Book of the Day Roundup: June 19-23, 2023
J is for Juneteenth
Jamariah Cross
Kimani Prince
Ariyah Webster
Planting People Growing Justice Press
Hardcover (36pp)
978-1-959223-22-1
“J is for Justice” and “E is for Emancipation” in this primer on the origin and current celebration of the Juneteenth holiday, observed in the United States every June 19th. Simple illustrations and bright colors make this board book accessible to very young readers, while summaries and resources for further reading at the end provide supplementary information for their helpers to answer any questions the book may provoke.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (June 16, 2023)
My Mother Says
Stine Pilgaard
Hunter Simpson, translator
World Editions
Softcover $17.99 (160pp)
978-1-64286-126-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In Stine Pilgaard’s novel My Mother Says, an eccentric woman who faces roadblocks in her academic career and relationships uses humor to sidestep her pain.
After breaking up with her zookeeper girlfriend over their age gap and their conflicting takes on motherhood, the heroine moves back in with her father, a pastor who’s obsessed with Pink Floyd, and her stepmother. Her mother visits often, nagging her to finish her thesis (and to write a song and a speech for her upcoming sixtieth birthday party). She leans on her doctor and her best friend, Mulle; they keep her from tipping into ill mental health.
The line between the heroine’s conversations and her internal thoughts is thin: “Why do you always have to be so strange, darling, my mother asks.” She perpetuates family habits of fabulism: her mother impersonates a cancer survivor to solicit charity donations, then a restaurant critic to enjoy a boozy lunch. Likewise, her daughter entertains impulsive fantasies of running away to India or opening a breakfast restaurant.
Still, the heroine doesn’t brood on her heartbreaks or her parents’ divorce; instead, she is sarcastic, focused on the present, and light in her approach. She indulges in absurd conversations, wielding comedy to deflect her sadness. Her ex summarizes her misbehavior thus: “you’re just such a bad advertisement for yourself sometimes.” From her mansplaining doctor, she learns that the brain’s hippocampus is named for its seahorse shape. This inspires “Monologues of a Seahorse,” interludes of stream-of-consciousness association in which she addresses an unnamed “you”—at various times representing her mother, her ex-girlfriend, and a new partner.
Experimental and whimsical, My Mother Says is a quirky gem of a novel that delivers a deadpan narration of everyday woes.
REBECCA FOSTER (April 27, 2023)
Tar Hollow Trans
Stacy Jane Grover
University Press of Kentucky
Hardcover $21.95 (144pp)
978-0-8131-9755-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Made up of nine interdisciplinary, creative personal essays, Stacy Jane Grover’s Tar Hollow Trans is about being poised between worlds. It makes the ordinary nowhere of Grover’s experiences into a place worthy of habitation.
Growing up in rural southeastern Ohio as the child of an evangelical minister, Grover had no sense of herself as either Appalachian or transgender. What she did know was her connection to the land, her idyllic rural community, and a phantom shame that made her shy and created distance between herself and others.
A college education in the state capital introduced a new lexicon for her experiences. But when trying to find herself in these new structures, Grover became more aware of how legibility as an Appalachian transgender person relied on negation and the determination to create authority through rigid, prescriptive narratives and definitions of what’s urban and Appalachian, queer and trans.
The book takes a while to find its footing, often directing explicit attention to the ways in which Grover could tell the story versus a more unwieldy, truer experience. Instead of the past being a site of inherent meaning that proves her identities, Grover muddies the waters, pivoting between personal recall and academic research. Musing on the ways she’s learned to conceive of Appalachian and trans stories, she unearths a murkier personal account, lending a sense of discovery to this blend of social science and memoir.
In Tar Hollow Trans, structures crumble in service to authenticity, which exists beyond easy, expected narratives. “If there’s any hope in identity as a project,” Grover says, “it might be found in being bewildered, in forgoing knowability to bestow upon ourselves a complex interiority and wondrous possibility.”
LETITIA MONTGOMERY-RODGERS (June 13, 2023)
Pomegranates and Artichokes
A Food Journey from Iran to Italy
Saghar Setareh
Interlink Books
Hardcover $35.00 (288pp)
978-1-62371-740-7
Pomegranates and Artichokes is a cookbook, a travelogue, and a master’s class in foodways.
As seen through Saghar Setareh’s transition from her childhood in Iran to her adulthood in Italy, three distinct regions—Iran, the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean, and Italy—form a Venn diagram that transforms the monolith of food culture into a gradient of discoveries and felicitous reinterpretations, tracing the movements and mingling of people into a common language: deliciousness. Setareh’s experiences give her the ability to perceive this world that’s hiding in plain sight: one where people ebb and flow across borders, and cultural distinctions are merely ingredients in a recipe that spans time and place.
One of the book’s best examples of regional cross-pollination is the eggplant. Setareh notes that it is a prized ingredient in all three cultures—introduced to Italy by Arabs in the Middle Ages and initially disliked. Today, it’s the base of eggplant parmigiana, a recipe that bears more than a passing resemblance to Turkish Imam bayildi. By way of the Levant’s baba ghanoush, it becomes a cousin of the Iranian dish mirza ghasemi. Although technically very different dishes, “what brings them together … are the ingredients and cooking methods that have migrated through these territories over centuries, appearing in different forms and with different condiments.”
A delight for the senses, Pomegranates and Artichokes‘s photographs are jewel-toned images of abundant tables, finished dishes, and phenomenal cultural backdrops. Setareh also uses space, as with the recipes’ headnotes, as a place to muse on personal identity—a territory that transcends concepts of singularity or nationality. Whether she’s discussing the origin of an ingredient or the invisible lives of migrants, her intellectual curiosity chips away at the idea of rigid barriers and borders.
LETITIA MONTGOMERY-RODGERS (June 16, 2023)
Mage and the Endless Unknown
SJ Miller
Iron Circus Comics
Hardcover $15.00 (160pp)
978-1-63899-119-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A young mage battles horrific monsters in the graphic novel Mage and the Endless Unknown.
In an idyllic scene, a child wakes and uses their magic to grow flowers. But a monster comes from the sky and swallows them—the first of many trials they’ll face. There are friends to be found, however, and working with them, Mage manages to overcome an array of challenges and better the world—at a cost.
Told over a series of single-panel pages, the story is wordless except for a few key moments. This puts a heavy responsibility on the art, which generates excitement with its flair and a pervading sense of danger. From Mage’s first encounter with magic, which costs them an arm, it’s clear that the stakes are high; the cartoon style in which the main characters are rendered is not indicative of the book’s tone. Mage’s realm is beautiful, but on their adventures, they encounters corpses suspended on hooks, bird-wizards who remove a heart from someone’s chest, and other gory terrors; the extreme contrasts heighten the tension of the story.
Each foe is some combination of fantastic, scary, and disgusting, but they are also imaginative visual treats, as are the book’s landscapes and settings. Although the story at first seems to be a simple good versus evil scenario, its turns are unpredictable.
Unusual and unforgettable, Mage and the Endless Unknown is an immersive graphic novel covering a child’s magical adventures.
PETER DABBENE (June 16, 2023)
Barbara Hodge
