I loved loved loved this book.
A beautiful exploration of love, loss, finding one self, mental health, healing, and care.
I want to stay home and read it all over again.
A timeless piece of writing, with reflections on battling cancer, lesbian motherhood, Black American womanhood, community organizing, and love. An important voice to familiarize yourself with now, as Audre Lord's wisdom and vision carry lessons that could help us traverse our most persisting social issues if only we would listen.
Essayist and poet Ni Ghriofa writes a loving autofiction of the sheer physicality of mothering and milk, along with an assay into the life of Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill, AKA Eileen O'Connell, a well-born poet in 18th century Ireland who composed a traditional lament after her husband's murder. Ni Ghriofa pursues connection with this Eibhlin Dubh that goes beyond literary scholarship into something like love. Ni Ghriofa's prose is rich and layered, while magically direct and concrete.
Consider the audio version available from Libro.fm to hear the poem in Gaelic.
Perfect for any Janis fan or someone into the 60's music scene. A good slow burn toward fame from a Texas girl who just wanted to paint but then discovered Bessie Smith. And like the cover says, it's about her life and her music, not harping on her death which already takes up too much space when she was such a fantastic vocalist and songwriter that inspired many.
Yes!!! So real and honest on topics like sex, relationships, being black, how a slightly picky list of must-haves in a partner has changed over the years, did I mention sex? Normalizing conversations about pleasure, normalizing not being partnered at a certain age, all from the female perspective, really brought things to the forefront and I enjoyed how fun she could be while still taking it seriously. I know she wouldn't make me dinner but I'd love to be there when she had leftovers.
One of the best books I've read about what it means to be a mother and an artist. I still think about this book and the emotional ride it took me on. I found so man answers in these pages. Simply put, I ADORE this book.
Concept: Write a letter to a stranger. Maybe you caught their name, maybe they will forever be a mystery but essentially a person who passed by your life only fleetingly. Yet they haunt you, you've never forgotten them. What would that letter say?
Product: This book!
A Memoir of facism, childhood, and then motherhood in early 20th century Italy, written in a unique, pointillist style made famous (relatively speaking) by the stylings of Annie Ernaux or the fiction of Renata Adler. Jarre's speciality is writing the unspoken peculiarities of childhood. Read the first paragraph and tell me you wouldn't read 200 pages of Jarre's work. An immense story of a life.
We all know who Marin Luther King, Malcolm X and James Baldwin were, but little has been written about their mothers. The women who raised them and instilled in each an unwavering passion to raise their voices against injustice. Each woman and their lives were different, but they were all instrumental in their sons lives. This book is a tribute to them and all mothers.
At her absolute lowest, Lulu Miller becomes obsessed with early president of Stanford and famed ichthyologist David Starr Jordan. This part-memoir-part-biography is a touching story about struggling with mental health and how we cope in the face of chaos. It's a scientific history lesson on how fish taxonomy influenced the imagined hierarchy of human genetics. It's also a murder mystery. And if you're wondering if fish exist, I promise your question will be answered (they definitely don't)!
