Book of the Day Roundup: October 2-6, 2023
Colorful Palate
A Flavorful Journey through a Mixed American Experience
Raj Tawney
Empire State Editions
Hardcover $24.95 (160pp)
978-1-5315-0457-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Considering himself fortunate to have multicultural roots—Indian, Puerto Rican, and Italian—each with its own special blend of flavors, colors, scents, and passions, Raj Tawney brings a bit from each culture to his engaging memoir Colorful Palate.
As a child, Tawney wasn’t aware that he didn’t fit in. But when he moved to the New York City suburbs, his differences were pointed out to him. His olive skin, curly dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and different name made him an outsider and an easy target for bullies. But instead of trying to conform, he adopted his own radical style in clothing, music, and friends, embracing his identity. Still, he felt lost.
The conversational, energetic narrative points to the sources of Tawney’s noncompliance with conventionality: his grandmother and mother, two strong women who refused to make themselves small to fit into traditional boxes. Playing “sous-chef to their culinary wizardry,” he absorbed not only the secrets of their cuisine but the stories they told around the table, guaranteeing that hearts were filled as well as stomachs, and that souls were satisfied as well as palates. Balancing out this tribute to his family’s heritage, Tawney credits his father and brother with teaching him what it means to be a man—strong, vigorous, and uncompromising.
Infused with passion and brio, the book highlights the pros and cons of being a multiracial nonconformist in a society that values fitting in. Tawney’s rearview-mirror look at his formative years leaves him grateful—for strong family role models and small moments shared with his loved ones. And the book includes a family recipe at the end of each chapter in remembrance of the gustatory pleasures it recounts.
Colorful Palate is a memoir about rejecting conformity to lead a colorful, authentic life.
KRISTINE MORRIS (August 27, 2023)
Empty and Me
A Tale of Friendship and Loss
Azam Mahdavi
Maryam Tahmasebi, illustrator
Parisa Saranj, translator
Lee & Low Books
Hardcover $21.95 (48pp)
978-1-64379-622-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
After her mother’s death, a little girl is joined by Empty, a large translucent creature, in this English-Persian picture book about moving through and growing with grief. Muted gray illustrations gradually gain color as the little girl and her father learn to live with Empty; they adopt a cat, she plays with friends, and they all eat dinner together. Powerful while still sensitive to the target audience, this picture book follows the gradual journey of loss.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (September 29, 2023)
Savage Her Reply
Deirdre Sullivan
Karen Vaughan, illustrator
Little Island
Softcover $15.99 (256pp)
978-1-912417-67-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A woman immortalized as a villain fights to tell her story in Deirdre Sullivan’s scintillating, lyrical novel Savage Her Reply.
Aife, one of three sisters “fostered” by the druid-warrior Bodhbh to solidify his power, grew up hungering for love. One sister a warrior; one a wife; Aife was the sorceress among the girls, who “liked to walk in the wilderness, and barefoot. …listening to the land until it spoke to me.” But her magic couldn’t protect her when she was called to take her deceased sister’s place beside Bodhbh’s rival, Lir. He loved his children; he laid with, but only tolerated, Aife.
Aife narrates. She admits that the myths got some details right: she grew jealous of the children. She grew mad with want of love. And so she performed a transformative act that reverberated for three three-hundred year periods. Forced to articulate her nightmare punishment, she was condemned “to be alone, alone with who I am and what I have done, for ever”—an unseen, unheard specter on the wind.
For more than a thousand years: Aife suffered. She listened as her story was bent; she became a vicious character, stripped of her humanity. She also watched over the swans who had been children. And she learned to fight back—to command the voice that was stolen from her.
Ferocious and illuminating, this retelling of a classic Irish tale is steeped in folklore and revitalized with feminist nuances. Calligrams that “mimic the characters [of] Ogham” come between its chapters, whispering lessons from Aife’s broken and rebuilt state: “if you don’t stop to question them / stories people tell / have a way of winding / inside the brain and / round the heart.”
Sister, daughter, wife, villain, savior: a complicated queen takes her legacy back in the stunning novel Savage Her Reply.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (August 27, 2023)
Corn Dance
Inspired First American Cuisine
Loretta Barrett Oden
Beth Dooley, contributor
University of Oklahoma Press
Hardcover $34.95 (264pp)
978-0-8061-9078-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Corn Dance is Potawatomi chef, television host, and Corn Dance Café founder Loretta Barrett Oden’s inviting cookbook; it explores Indigenous ingredients and foodways.
After raising a family in Oklahoma, Oden traveled to research traditional Indigenous foods and understand their connections to physical and mental healing. These foods, she says, can restore balance within communities and the natural world. Thus, the book focuses on pre-European contact ingredients and recipes for healthy, low-glycemic, and plant-centric dishes.
These recipes, designed for home cooks, are elegant creations that rely on quality ingredients and careful attention to preparation and cooking techniques. Vegetables, fruits, and grains dominate the plates, though fish and meats are here too, including elk and quail that can be sourced through Oden’s lists. Artful, composed photographs and family snapshots accent the text.
There are delightful twists on familiar recipes, as with fragrant Spicy Sage Popcorn and Creamy Grits with Roasted Squash, which is frisked up with hot honey and toasted squash seeds. Southwestern flavors dominate, including nopales, nutty Tepary beans, and pinon nuts studding Cornmeal Pinon Cookies. Ingredients from more verdant regions appear too, including wild rice, persimmons, and pine needles, intriguingly used to scent simmering shellfish stews and ice cream.
Popular dishes from the Cafe and other creative recipes are tempting highlights. Curvy Roasted Corn Ribs drizzled with cilantro oil and Cotija cheese crumbles were a restaurant favorite, and Oden offers her versatile Little Big Pie Dough recipe too, which can be baked with a variety of sweet or savory toppings, or piled high with her numerous salad and vegetable iterations.
With its motivational personal stories of a midlife career shift, Corn Dance is a rare and inspiring cookbook filled with Indigenous cuisine.
RACHEL JAGARESKI (August 27, 2023)
Alebrijes
Donna Barba Higuera
Levine Querido
Hardcover $18.99 (416pp)
978-1-64614-263-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Donna Barba Higuera’s distinctive novel Alebrijes, an impoverished boy defies a realm of fantastical totalitarianism.
Leandro is a crafty, compassionate thirteen-year-old who lives with his younger sister, Gabi, outside of Pocatel. Leandro and Gabi are orphans of Cascabel heritage. Though the Pocatelans claim superiority, Cascabeles maintain subdued pride. Named after rattlesnakes, Cascabeles are tenacious and protective of each other.
Both Cascabeles and Pocatelans inhabit a postapocalyptic, parched land. Dragon-like “wyrms” emerge from the earth to devour the unfortunate, while the Regime government enforces a climate of fear. Used as laborers, the Cascabeles pick potatoes in the fields. Leandro struggles to help Gabi meet her daily potato quota; failure to do so will sentence her to the dreaded Center of Banishment.
When Gabi steals a strawberry from a market vendor, Leandro insists that he committed the crime. After his arrest, he becomes part of a secret experiment devised by a Regime doctor, Dolores. Leandro’s body remains in a laboratory, while his mind and memories are transferred into a small drone. The drone is then given the ability to escape Pocatel. In defiance of the Regime, Dolores is using the drones to find hope beyond Pocatel’s dwindling resources. Leandro’s drone resembles a hummingbird, while other exiled youth take on varying mechanical animal identities. Collectively, they are the Alebrijes, or magical creatures.
This engrossing, complex world features ravaged subsistence, domination, and the triumph of communities. Pocatel’s miseries are contrasted with the verdant landscape of La Cuna, which has trees, vegetation, and a winding river. In both human and drone form, Leandro is an intrepid hero who fulfills the words inscribed upon his metal hummingbird body: “The smallest flap of wings can change the course of history.”
The captivating novel Alebrijes combines humanity and technology with imaginative splendor.
MEG NOLA (September 29, 2023)
Barbara Hodge
