Book of the Day Roundup: May 5-9, 2025
Beyond They/Them
20 Influential Nonbinary and Gender-Diverse People You Should Know
Em Dickson
Cameron Mukwa, illustrator
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Hardcover $21.99 (96pp)
978-1-5248-9399-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Em Dickson’s stunning biographical collection Beyond They/Them, nonbinary, gender-diverse, and two-spirit trailblazers are honored for their groundbreaking impacts across various media.
This dynamic book highlights twenty influential figures whose contributions span film, literature, music, sports, politics, and activism. From ND Stevenson’s creative genius in animation to Janelle Monáe’s “dazzling radicality” in music, the book details each individual’s ascent toward embracing their identity in societies that often demand conformity. The profiles are enriched by short lists of accomplishments, fun facts, trivia questions, and quotes from the subjects.
The standout illustrations feature bright, vibrant colors, making bold use of color-blocking techniques to capture each person’s physical likeness and essence. For example, American drag queen and politician Maebe A. Girl is illustrated holding a “Trans Rights” sign. Such visual storytelling complements the profiles well, conveying queer joy alongside people’s achievements.
Though honoring each person’s humanity, “this book is a snapshot of the lives of twenty people. Just twenty people.” This acknowledgment underscores the vastness of gender-related experiences. Still, the profiles serve as entry points into broader, ongoing conversations about nonbinary identities rather than definitive representations. In this way, the book invites continued discovery, urging, “Turn the page. Come on in.” The sensitive back matter includes a glossary of gender-related terms, a guide of referenced media, and a list of gender-diverse identities not mentioned in the biographies. These elements are educational, inclusive tools for engaging with the absorbing realities of nonbinary individuals.
Profiling twenty nonbinary innovators, Beyond They/Them celebrates the power of authentic self-expression and the courage required to sustain it.
BROOKE SHANNON (April 21, 2025)
The Paper Bridge
Joëlle Veyrenc
Seng Soun Ratanvanh, illustrator
Floris Books
Hardcover $18.99 (28pp)
978-1-78250-907-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The village of Paperlee is made entirely of paper, including the people; when the seasonal winds blow, they tie down their houses and carry stones in their pockets. When the winds begin to blow sporadically, Anya suspects the people of Forestlee can help; with her guidance, the villagers build a paper bridge to cross the chasm between their mountains. The enchanting scenes were composed using kirigami (the Japanese art of paper cutting and folding) and then photographed; the result is an unmatched work of art.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (April 21, 2025)
The Dad Rock that Made Me a Woman
Niko Stratis
University of Texas Press
Hardcover $27.95 (240pp)
978-1-4773-3148-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Infusing the art with the weight of the feelings it elicits, Niko Stratis’s scintillating personal essay collection The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman surveys the last few decades of indie rock while reflecting on life as a trans woman.
This confessional, clear-eyed book blends cerebral music criticism with candid memoir elements. It is structured like a mixtape, with each chapter tackling one song in depth, contextualizing it in terms of its personal meaning to Stratis. Disparaged by some critics as too earnest, dad rock afforded Stratis an escape from the harsh, macho, and often close-minded Yukon Territory. The book pays homage to the unvarnished emotionality of bands like REM and Radiohead that helped her find herself and shares the stories of bands including Wilco, the National, and the Mountain Goats while analyzing what their work means.
Mirroring the tone of its subjects, the book is a heartfelt tribute to the tenderness of dad rock and caring fathers, intertwining high-minded rock criticism with personal stories about Stratis hanging out with her father, working grueling jobs, enduring bigotry, and struggling with addiction. The poetic prose also evokes landscapes both physical and emotional in a pitch-perfect manner, as with observations of hoarfrost blanketing stretches of solitary Yukon highways. And wit animates the book further, as with a playful apology to Stratis’s father, who may not be comfortable being written about.
A transcendent personal essay collection, The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman ruminates on music, life, trans identity, and fatherhood. It executes its mixtape conceit to perfection and ends with poignant lyrics from a tearful, album-ending song. By the time it reaches the end of the tape, the curated compilation had already crescendoed to sonorous heights.
JOSEPH S. PETE (April 21, 2025)
Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation
Sarah Yahm
Dzanc Books
Hardcover $27.95 (347pp)
978-1-938603-28-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Centered by radiant parent-child relationships, Sarah Yahm’s exquisite novel Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation is about chronic illness and defiant love.
Louise and Leon meet at a friend’s Shabbat dinner. She’s just fled sitting shiva for her mother; he’s a therapist in training who has more in common with Louise than they know at first. After a sultry night gives way to cold words in the morning, Leon learns to navigate the barbs that conceal Louise’s pain and to see her ferocity as beauty. Their daughter, Lydia, arrives soon after, followed by a move to the country.
Escaping the city doesn’t mean escaping the troubles of their pasts, though. Before long, Louise starts showing signs of the disease that killed her mother. Not wanting Lydia to watch her suffer, she calculates her choices:
x=Good Parenting
y=Unforeseen Future Traumas
z=Lydia’s Health and Well-Being
x-y=z
When she feels the time is right, she flees, leaving heartbreak, and her troubled genes, in her wake.
An extraordinary novel about the inescapability of family patterns—some of which can be reversed, but all of which leave indelible marks—the story holds Louise and Leon’s love for their daughter, and her love for them, at its incandescent center. Lydia’s parents make sure her life is awash with evidence of their devotion to her, still feeling the lack of that parental warmth in their own lives. They cradle her through sexual abuse and her childhood feelings of not belonging; their methods include magic and magical thinking. Even in her mother’s absence, Lydia feels her glow; it carries her through a funeral in Israel, her own diagnosis, and another reversal of established paths.
Devastating and unforgettable, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation is a celebration of unabashed family love.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (April 21, 2025)
Brunch Season
A Year of Delicious Mornings from the Buttermilk Kitchen
Suzanne Vizethann
Kelly Berry, photographer
Gibbs Smith Books
Hardcover $35.00 (208pp)
978-1-4236-6563-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The flavors of Atlanta’s Buttermilk Kitchen—famed for its dazzling breakfasts and lunches—shift to coastal Maine in Suzanne Vizethann’s Brunch Season, an inviting cookbook.
Puzzled by brunch’s unpopularity at culinary school, Vizethann sought out a restaurant apprenticeship where her favorite meal was given five-star status by “chefs with striped aprons, tweezers, and tattoos.” This training and passion for culinary experimentation is exemplified in her elevated takes on brunch staples, like fruit salad zhuzhed up with vanilla-bean syrup and oven-crisped candied bacon. There are approachable instructions for making delectable baked goods from scratch, eggs for a crowd, and standout cocktails and mocktails. Seeking out top-caliber ingredients is stressed as the key to recreating these intermediate-level dishes.
The recipes are organized by season and shimmer with fresh produce and flavor vibes. Spring’s tender vegetables are well represented by Asparagus Grits cooked in asparagus-bottom broth and garnished with butter-sauteed tips. Tart rhubarb stars in a cobbler, and frizzled green garlic and radishes top focaccia. Summer’s bounty features in Vizethann’s favorite recipe, Pancake-fried Squash Blossoms with Blueberry Compote (others may fancy a pairing of peach hand pies and basil sugar). Swapping crispy eggplant for the traditional English muffin in the book’s take on Eggs Benedict is also hard to resist.
Suggesting that brunch is coziest and most decadent in the cooler months, the book introduces layered and complicated creations like Short Rib Hash with sweet potatoes, ginger mayonnaise, and a fried egg crown. Still, all seasons can be brunch season with this soulful, satisfying cookbook, and Indulgent Chocolate Crepes with homemade raspberry jam and whipped cream are also featured. Buttermilk Kitchen’s flagship dishes have cameo roles in these comfort foods, too, whether their elements are folded into dressings or baked into golden sweets and savory biscuits.
RACHEL JAGARESKI (April 21, 2025)
Kathy Young
