Author: Stephanie

2024 Pulitzer Prize Winners

- Stephanie Leave a comment

The winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced! You can watch the announcement video on the Pulitzer Prize website or read the media release. To celebrate the winners, we decided to highlight some of the winners and finalists. Below you will find the fiction winner and finalists, the biography winners, and the general nonfiction winner and finalists.

Reminder: what is written about below is not the complete list of 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners. For more information about the other 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners as well as past years’ winners, please check out their website.

Descriptions are provided by the publishers.

Fiction

Winner

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution. – Knopf

This title is also available in large print.

Finalists:

Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today.

But what if the KPG still existed—now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? Same Bed Different Dreams weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images, and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives come together in this extraordinary and unforgettable novel.

Soon Sheen, a former writer now employed by the tech behemoth GLOAT, comes into possession of an unfinished book seemingly authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a riveting revisionist history, connecting famous names and obscure bit players to the KPG’s grand project—everyone from Syngman Rhee and architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London and Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, as are the Moonies and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Reagan-era downing of a passenger plane that puts the world on the brink of war. – Random House

Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li

A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In the stories of Wednesday’s Child, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and the grand mysterious forces—death, violence, estrangement—come to light. Even before such moments, everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details: a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many years, until it must be seen.

Yiyun Li is a truly original writer, an alchemist of opposites: tender and unsentimental, metaphysical and blunt, funny and horrifying, omniscient and unusually aware of just how much we cannot know. Beloved for her novels and her memoir, she returns here to her earliest form, gathering pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker, Zoetrope, and other publications. Taken together, these stories, written over the span of a decade, articulate the cost, both material and emotional, of living—exile, assimilation, loss, love—with Li’s trademark unnerving beauty and wisdom. – Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Biography

Winners

King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.

In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. – Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.

But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher. – 37 Ink

General Nonfiction

Winner

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall

Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge.

In A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall—hailed for his “severe allergy to conventional wisdom” (Time)—offers an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine and a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth. – Metropolitan Books

Finalists

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated. – St. Martin’s Press

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant

Full of Myself: A Graphic Memoir About Body Image by Siobhán Gallagher

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“To be a girl is to go from being an observer to being observed.”
― Siobhán Gallagher, Full of Myself: A Graphic Memoir About Body Image

Content warnings for this book: anxiety, depression, self-harm, and eating disorders/bulimia, fatphobia, sexual harassment

Siobhán Gallagher has had a complicated relationship with her body since a young age. She explores this relationship in her graphic memoir, Full of Myself: A Graphic Memoir About Body Image. Her journey to self-acceptance and self-love goes through many highs and lows, a roller coaster of emotions and actions that all influenced the person she has become today.

As a teenager, Siobhán struggles with anxiety and diet culture. Constantly comparing herself to others, Siobhán decides all her issues will be solved if she could just be beautiful and smaller. She struggles with her body for years, feeling alone and unwanted, slipping into long periods of depression and anxiety. As an adult, Siobhán isn’t any nicer to herself, but eventually realizes that the person her younger self wanted to be isn’t possible. She starts an arduous process of self-reflection, self-love, and understanding that she acknowledges will never fully end.

This book was eye-opening.  Seeing Siobhán put all of her emotions, inner thoughts, and experiences out for the world to read was heartwarming, helpful, and accessible. She takes readers through the mind of her teenage self, laying out her desperate thoughts and wishes to be tiny, happy, and not alone. While Siobhán’s story is unique to her, some readers may still find content to relate to as they read. This graphic memoir was engaging, the writing was frank, and the illustrations’ cartoon style was cute. The ending tied the book together as Siobhán spoke gently to her younger selves, giving them hope, while also being realistic that her body issues will never fully disappear. Anyone who grew up surrounded by diet culture will relate to Siobhán’s journey in some way.

“i’m proud of the person i’ve become because i fought to become her.”

June’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

- Stephanie Leave a comment

It’s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Reminder that if you join Simply Held, you can choose to have their selections automatically put on hold for you.

_________________________________

Jenna Bush Hager has selected Swift River by Essie Chambers for her June pick.

Curious what Swift River is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.

But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key elements of Pop’s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future?

A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us and heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent. – Simon & Schuster

__________________________________

Reese Witherspoon has selected The Unwedding by Ally Condie for her June pick.

Curious what The Unwedding is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Ellery Wainwright is alone at the edge of the world.

She and her husband, Luke, were supposed to spend their twentieth wedding anniversary together at the luxurious Resort at Broken Point in Big Sur, California. Where better to celebrate a marriage, a family, and a life together than at one of the most stunning places on earth?

But now she’s traveling solo.

To add insult to injury, there’s a wedding at Broken Point scheduled during her stay. Ellery remembers how it felt to be on the cusp of everything new and wonderful, with a loved and certain future glimmering just ahead. Now, she isn’t certain of anything except for her love for her kids and her growing realization that this place, though beautiful, is unsettling.

When Ellery discovers the body of the groom floating in the pool in the rain, she realizes that she is not the only one whose future is no longer guaranteed. Before the police can reach Broken Point, a mudslide takes out the road to the resort, leaving the guests trapped. When another guest dies, it’s clear something horrible is brewing.

Everyone at Broken Point has a secret. And everyone has a shadow. Including Ellery.  – Grand Central Publishing

Join Simply Held to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!

Gaytheist: Coming Out of My Orthodox Childhood by Lonnie Mann, art by Lonnie Mann and Ryan Gatts

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Gaytheist: Coming Out of My Orthodox Childhood by Lonnie Mann with art by Lonnie Mann and Ryan Gatts is a coming-of-age graphic memoir about discovering that you are gay while growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community.

Lonnie has always been told that it’s not okay to be gay in his Orthodox Jewish community. This was never an issue for Lonnie until one day it was. Lonnie grew up in a devout family. He went to school at a yeshiva, a traditional Orthodox Jewish school. As a result, he learned the rules of the Orthodox Jewish community, at times even loving and strictly following them.

Eventually, Lonnie realizes that he likes boys. This puts him into a crisis of identity and religion, as he has always been told that being gay is a sin. When he learns that ‘having those feelings’ is fine but acting on them is the sin, Lonnie is even more confused. He’s lost. He wonders about what kind of life he will be able to live within the Orthodox Jewish community, which turns to him wondering if he even wants to stay within the community as an adult. Once Lonnie expands his life beyond yeshiva and his family, the world and more possibilities open up. He attends a theater camp, takes college classes in the city, and has movie nights with friends he meets. These new experiences open his eyes to the type of life available to him. The caveat: the life he wants isn’t possible within the world of his parents or his religious community. Not wanting to deny his identity, Lonnie embraces his true self, builds his own chosen family, and defies everything that he has been told his entire life to find his true happiness. This struggle to separate identity and religion consumes Lonnie, something that still lingers.

This graphic novel memoir was great, leaving me hoping for a sequel. The ending was a bit abrupt. I was left wanting to learn more about Lonnie’s experience separating himself from his Orthodox Jewish community. How did attending college influence him? How did his friendships and romantic relationships shape him? How did he become an atheist? I was also interested in hearing about his relationships with his parents and other family members, if he has any at all. While I have all of these questions, I recognize that the author doesn’t owe me any answers. They shared what they are comfortable sharing. What helped bridge this gap for me was the list of resources available at the end. In the author’s note, he lists books, documentaries, television shows, and websites where readers can learn more about other people who have escaped from Orthodox Jewish communities, as well as resources for people who may need help or a welcoming community.

Online Reading Challenge – June

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels back in time to the 1970s. Our Main title for June is Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

Nora Lopez is seventeen during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora’s family life isn’t going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only on holidays. All Nora wants is to turn eighteen and be on her own. And while there is a cute new guy who started working with her at the deli, is dating even worth the risk when the killer likes picking off couples who stay out too late? Award-winning author Meg Medina transports us to a time when New York seemed balanced on a knife-edge, with tempers and temperatures running high, to share the story of a young woman who discovers that the greatest dangers are often closer than we like to admit — and the hardest to accept. – Candlewick

Looking for other books set in the 1970s? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from.

Online Reading Challenge – May Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in the 1950s & 1960s that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

I had already read our main title Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo last year for book club, so I decided to read Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen, the first book in the Evander Mills series. Lavender House has similar themes to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, hence my picking this title. Lavender House is the first in a new queer historical series that begins in the early 1950s in California. Let’s get into this book!

It’s California in 1952 and the family that lives at Lavender House has been rocked by tragedy. The matriarch Irene Lamontaine has been found dead in her scent library. Her recipes for her signature soaps are a well held family secret, but as readers learn, those are not the only secrets hidden at Lavender House. Lavender House is unique – none of the staff or family hide who they are. They are free to love who they want and be themselves behind the gates and on the grounds. In order to keep their lives secret though, outsiders must be kept at a distance. Irene’s widow is worried that there may be a murderer on the loose at Lavender House, so she seeks someone to help.

She hires Evander Mills, also known as Andy, to find the killer. Andy has recently been fired from the San Francisco police after he was caught in a raid at a gay bar. Not having any work lined up, Andy accepts and is thrust into the secretive world of Lavender House as he looks for reasons why someone would have killed Irene. What he finds is a complicated mess of family history, old money, jealousy, and lies. As much as the family works to keep their lives insulated and safe, everyone at Lavender House has secrets that could have lead to death. A queer family that lives honestly and openly behind the walls and on the estate of Lavender House is shocking to Andy, but he quickly realizes that they aren’t as honest and open amongst each other as they pretend to be. It’s dangerous to be queer outside of Lavender House. Those at Lavender House may think they live in a utopia, but keeping the real world out forever isn’t feasible.

This title is narrated by one of my favorite audiobook narrators, Vikas Adam, so I was excited to get started. As I mentioned earlier, Lavender House shares similar themes with Last Night at the Telegraph Club. Both titles are character-driven, feature queer characters, are historical, and take place in California in the 1950s. How queer people were treated in the 1950s features prominently as well. Lavender House has older main characters and is a historical mystery, while Last Night at the Telegraph Club is considered a young adult historical novel with romance.

I enjoyed the mystery in this book. While I didn’t have the killer figured out immediately, I did quickly figure it out as I was reading. There is a large cast of characters in this book, but the author doesn’t overwhelm you with details about each at the start. You learn about the characters as Andy’s investigation progresses. All in all, I enjoyed this title set in the 1950s and am excited to see where the next books take me!

I hope you all enjoyed reading, watching, or listening to something set in the 1950s or 1960s this month. Next month, we are traveling to the 1970s.

Evander Mills series

  1. Lavender House (2022)
  2. The Bell in the Fog (2023)
  3. Rough Pages (2024)

The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser

- Stephanie Leave a comment

What would you do when your life falls apart around you? Your relationship is over. You lost your job. You have no idea what you’re going to do next, but you receive word of an inheritance from a great uncle, so you decide to visit where he lived. This is the plot of Jackie Fraser’s The Bookshop of Second Chances.

Thea Mottram is not doing well. She has been let go of her job. Her husband of nearly twenty years has left her for one of her friends. She’s lost and confused. While contemplating what to do next, Thea is sent a letter from a great uncle in Scotland. He has passed away and has left her his home and his sizable antique book collection. Desperately needing an escape, Thea decides to head up to Scotland for a few weeks to start clearing out the house and to get a sense of what to do with his books.

When Thea arrives in Scotland, she is instantly at ease. No one knows her – well if they know her, it’s tangentially through her great uncle, but most importantly no one knows about her relationship imploding and her job loss. Her new home is a quaint cottage with comfortable rooms and an adorable lawn covered in tulips. The locals in the nearby town of Baldochrie are inviting, warm, and just a little bit odd. She could get used to living here if she decides to stay. The only person in town that doesn’t like her is the owner of the local bookshop Edward Maltravers. This is inconvenient as she wants to sell parts of her uncle’s book collection to him. He tests her patience the more time she spends with him. When Thea lands a job at the bookshop, their relationship evolves as she learns more about Edward, his contentious relationship with his brother who is the local lord, and the longstanding family feud that everyone in town knows about. Thea eventually thinks that she would like to stay in Scotland forever. Her interactions with Edward greatly impact her decision. Staying in Scotland could prove to be just as messy as the life she left behind, so Thea has to figure out what exactly she wants to do.

This is a closed-door romance that is very low stakes. While there is some romance on the page, the private moments happen behind doors and off page. While I enjoyed The Bookshop of Second Chances, I found myself slightly annoyed with some of the main characters. They gave off emotionally immature vibes and were constantly trying to explain away bad behavior as happening because they didn’t know any better. As a result, I had to remind myself that the characters in this book were in their mid 40s or older and not in their early 20s. The scenery and the side characters helped me get over my icky feelings, leaving me happy I had read this book and hoping that everything would work out positively for involved in the end.

Library Closed for Memorial Day

- Stephanie Leave a comment

All three Davenport Public Library locations will be closed Monday, May 27th in observance of Memorial Day. All three buildings will reopen with regular business hours on Tuesday, May 28th: Main (321 Main Street) 9am to 5:30pm, Eastern (6000 Eastern Avenue) 9am to 8:00pm, and Fairmount (3000 N Fairmount St) noon to 8:00pm.

Even though our physical locations will be closed, you can still access free digital content for all ages. Your Davenport Public Library card gives you access to free eBooks, digital audiobooks, magazines, movies, and music through Libby, Freegal, TumbleBooks, QC Beats, and Kanopy!

Have a safe and happy holiday!

Jewish American Heritage Month

- Stephanie Leave a comment

May is Jewish American Heritage Month. Each May, we celebrate and learn more about the varied experiences of American Jewish life from the start of the United States to the present. The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History has put together a website full of resources focused on Jewish American Heritage Month.

All descriptions are provided by the publishers.

Nonfiction

American Baby: a mother, a child, and the shadow history of adoption  by Gabrielle Glaser

____________________

Exploring American Jewish History Through 50 Historic Treasures by Avi Y. Decter

Exploring American Jewish History through 50 Historic Treasures offers students and general readers new perspectives on the rich complexity of Jewish experiences in America. As one of America’s most fascinating and enduring minorities, American Jews have played key roles in every era of American history and every region of the country.

The 50 treasures are depicted in full color and range from a family cookbook to a college campus and include items that are iconic, ordinary, and whimsical. Each of the treasures is described in historical, material, and visual contexts, offering readers new, unexpected insights into the meanings of Jewish life, history, and culture. – Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

____________________

Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael Twitty

The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.

In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. 

The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.

As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul. – Amistad

____________________

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman

A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. 

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history’s most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma. – Pantheon

____________________

Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark Oppenheimer

A piercing portrait of the struggles and triumphs of one of America’s renowned Jewish neighborhoods in the wake of unspeakable tragedy that highlights the hopes, fears, and tensions all Americans must confront on the road to healing.

Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, is one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in the country, known for its tight-knit community and the profusion of multigenerational families. On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven Jews who were worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill–the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history.
 
Many neighborhoods would be understandably subsumed by despair and recrimination after such an event, but not this one. Mark Oppenheimer poignantly shifts the focus away from the criminal and his crime, and instead presents the historic, spirited community at the center of this heartbreak. He speaks with residents and nonresidents, Jews and gentiles, survivors and witnesses, teenagers and seniors, activists and historians.
 
Together, these stories provide a kaleidoscopic and nuanced account of collective grief, love, support, and revival. But Oppenheimer also details the difficult dialogue and messy confrontations that Squirrel Hill had to face in the process of healing, and that are a necessary part of true growth and understanding in any community. He has reverently captured the vibrancy and caring that still characterize Squirrel Hill, and it is this phenomenal resilience that can provide inspiration to any place burdened with discrimination and hate.  – Knopf

____________________

The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American inheritance by Rebecca Clarren

An award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors’ land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government

Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family’s origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story.

What none of Clarren’s ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly taken from the Lakota by the United States government. By the time the Sinykins moved to South Dakota, America had broken hundreds of treaties with hundreds of Indigenous nations across the continent, and the land that had once been reserved for the seven bands of the Lakota had been diminished, splintered, and handed for free, or practically free, to white settlers. In The Cost of Free Land, Clarren melds investigative reporting with personal family history to reveal the intertwined stories of her family and the Lakota, and the devastating cycle of loss of Indigenous land, culture, and resources that continues today.

With deep empathy and clarity of purpose, Clarren grapples with the personal and national consequences of this legacy of violence and dispossession. What does it mean to survive oppression only to perpetuate and benefit from the oppression of others? By shining a light on the people and families tangled up in this country’s difficult history, The Cost of Free Land invites readers to consider their own culpability and what, now, can be done. – Viking

____________________

The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are by Libby Copeland

A deeply reported look at home genetic testing and the seismic shock it has had on our culture and on individual lives

You swab your cheek or spit in a vial, then send it away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or, the report could reveal a long-buried family secret that upends your entire sense of identity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, a relentless drive to find answers to questions at the core of your being, like “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” Welcome to the age of home genetic testing.

In The Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. She explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story. Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject. – Abrams Press

____________________

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew by Emmanuel Acho

From two New York Times bestselling authors, a timely, disarmingly honest, and thought-provoking investigation into antisemitism that connects the dots between the tropes and hatred of the past to our current complicated moment.

For Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby no question about Jews is off-limits. They go there. They cover Jews and money. Jews and power. Jews and privilege. Jews and white privilege. The Black and Jewish struggle. Emmanuel asks, Did Jews kill Jesus? To which Noa responds, “Why are Jewish people history’s favorite scapegoat?” They unpack Judaism itself: Is it a religion, culture, a peoplehood, or a race? And: Are you antisemitic if you’re anti-Zionist?

The questions—and answers—might make you squirm, but together, they explain the tropes, stereotypes, and catalysts of antisemitism in America today.

The topics are complicated and Acho and Tishby bring vastly different perspectives. Tishby is an outspoken Israeli American. Acho is a mild-mannered son of a Nigerian American pastor. But they share a superpower: an uncanny ability to make complicated ideas easy to understand so anyone can follow the straight line from the past to our immediate moment—and then see around corners. Acho and Tishby are united by the core belief that hatred toward one group is never isolated: if you see the smoke of bigotry in one place, expect that we will all be in the fire.

Informative and accessible, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew has a unique structure: Acho asks questions and Tishby answers them with deeply personal, historical, and political responses. This book will enable anyone to explain—and identify—what Jewish hatred looks like. It is a much-needed lexicon for this fraught moment in Jewish history. As Acho says, “Proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear.” – Simon & Schuster / Simon Element

____________________

For more information, I recommend you check out the Read, Watch, Listen part of the Jewish American Heritage Month website as well as the Jewish Book Council website.

Transitions: A Mother’s Journey by Élodie Durand; translated by Evan McGorray

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“I thought I was open-minded… The news of my child’s gender change hit me like a tidal wave, sweeping away all my certainties. Sweeping away the comfort of my tidy little life.” – Anne Marbot, Transitions: A Mother’s Journey

Élodie Durand has created an informative story about understanding identities in their new book, Transitions: A Mother’s Journey, translated by Evan McGorray. When Anne Marbot learns that her 19-year-old child is a transgender man named Alex, she is shocked and overwhelmed. What happened to the child she raised as ‘Lucie’? She has so many questions, wondering if she has failed as a parent and if Alex has thought this life-changing decision through. Initially Anne puts her feelings, thoughts, and emotions ahead of Alex’s, not caring what he thinks or feels. Anne’s journey to self-discovery is long and chaotic, full of tears and anger and strong emotions. Alex and Anne’s relationship goes through rough patches, but through it all Alex stays strong for himself, not letting Anne push him around, while offering resources for Anne to learn more about gender, sexuality, and trans people. After some time, Anne goes through a transformation of her own. Watching her change into a stronger mother and ally was hard yet meaningful, especially seeing how Anne thought she was well-meaning in her initial reaction, but was instead hurting Alex and destroying their relationship.

This story is a must-read for families and friends who are struggling to reconcile their old assumptions about gender identities with new truths. Élodie Durand has taken Anne and Alex’s stories and shown them to readers with grace and sensitivity. They take care to include research and to draw as much as possible from personal experience. There is a list of resources at the end of the book, plus ample footnotes and resources mentioned throughout.