April Reads
1.The Storyteller’s Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal
Young girl receives gift of seeing dead family member’s memories. Coming of age between Jersey and Puerto Rico ensues.
2. Inciting Joy by Ross Gay 🔥
As the title says, it’s essays about the anti-capitalist and revolutionary capacity of inciting joy.
3. The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff 🔥
Women in Indian village who share membership in a micro-loan cooperative start murdering abusive husbands. Hilarity ensures. (Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2023)
4. The Island: Stories by Dionne Irving 🔥
Stories that follow female descendants of Jamaican immigrants to the US, Canada, Panama, and the UK. Clarified some thoughts I’ve been thinking about narratives that depict first and second generation immigrant descendants’ claims to Caribbean spaces as home. (Pen/Faulkner Finalist 2023)
4. The Book of Goose, Yiyun Lee
French village girls write a book about death that makes only one of them briefly popular. Meh. (Pen/Faulkner Finalist 2023)
5. Maame by Jessica George 🔥
Maddie is the primary caregiver for her father, who has Parkinson’s, while her mother lives another life in Ghana., Maddie is also tired of her abusive boss and being the only Black person in meetings. The novel is about how Maddie gets out from under all the things to start living her best life. This is my favorite kind of book. (Caribbean Girl Reading)
6. Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan trans Chi-Young Kim 🔥
Set in a remote village of South Korea, Whale is a multigenerational tale that mixes fable, farce, and fantasy. I loved weird this book is. (International Booker Shortlist 2023)
7. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov trans Angela Rodel
Dude has a friend, who may be an actual friend, but is more likely an imaginary friend, so maybe dude himself establishes a clinic with floors furnished and equipped with things from earlier decades to help treat people with memory loss. Scaling up ensues to multiple clinics, to Brexit-style referendum over which past decade European nations should return to. Jokes were mostly over my head. (International Booker Shortlist 2023)
8. (Repeat) The Trees by Perceval Everett 🔥
Set predominantly in Mississippi, the novel follows a series of bizarre and identical murders. Dark and discomfiting hilarity ensues.
9. (Repeat) Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison 🔥
Wherein Morrison talks about how Blackness gives definitive shape to the American literary canon.
10. Homesick by Jennifer Croft 🔥
Coming of age memoir that focuses on the relationship between sisters, and involves illness and other struggles that attends being a prodigy. (Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2023)
11. Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn Harlan 🔥
Haunting, gothic, and fantastical stories about mostly women and mostly queer characters who face various kinds of urgent change. So weird. So cool. (Pen/Faulkner Finalist 2023)
