[cw: body horror, child abuse, death, descriptions of blood and gore] Background When I was in fourth grade, my father told me the legend of La Llorona, a vengeful ghost. According to the story, which dates all the way back to at least 16th-century Mexico, the woman forever roams waterfront areas at night, crying and […]
Book Review: Our Shadows Have Claws Read More »
Yami is not your typical Catholic school student. She is Mexican-American, has two immigrant parents (one of whom was deported to Mexico), and is gay. After her brother, Cesar, kept getting harassed and bullied at their previous public school, Yami and Cesar’s mother, Maria, transferred them to Slayton, a preppy Catholic school. Slayton is primarily
Book Review: The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes Read More »
Ashley, Rah, Mariquita, and Alana Amore discuss the memoir, I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy. The conversation gets into thoughts about how Jennette wrote her experiences including her relationship with her siblings, going to therapy, and healing after her abusive relationship with her mother. There are spoilers in this conversation. There are also
I’m Glad My Mom Died: A Discussion about Jennette McCurdy’s Memoir Read More »
Meghan Gilliss’s debut novel, Lungfish, left me reeling. Experimental in form and told in flashbacks and fragments with vivid descriptions that verge on poems, Lungfish is disjointed and sometimes chaotic, like the tumultuous and precarious life of its protagonist, Tuck. Its language, like its landscape, is lush and vibrant with a razor-sharp edge. While it
Book Review: Lungfish by Meghan Gilliss Read More »
I’m one of those people who reads books with a pen in hand. I underline large chunks of text at a time, scrawl notes in margins that I can’t even read later, and like to draw hearts or exclamation points as a passage warrants. But Tracy Dawson’s Let Me Be Frank: A Book About Women
Book Review: Let Me Be Frank by Tracy Dawson Read More »
I think I would immediately have to quit my job if I accidentally hooked up with my boss. Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory is a wine-buzzed ride through Napa Valley. A you-never-know-when-you’re-going-to-fall-in-love story, Margot and Luke meet at a local bar in Napa Valley and they instantly click. After a night of a passionate
Book Review: Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory Read More »
In Jasmine Guillory’s By the Book, Isabelle landed her dream job as an editorial assistant at Tale As Old As Time (TAOAT) right after college. But at 25, she’s still living at home, and on top of being the only Black employee at TAOAT, she has not been promoted. Izzy has almost given up on
Book Review: By the Book by Jasmine Guillory Read More »
Near the end of the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp defamation trial, I started reading Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste. It tells the story of Lucy and Bertha, victims of two iconic men: Dracula and Mr. Rochester. Lucy and Bertha are living in Los Angeles in the 1960s, in a world in which their abusers
The Strength of Grief and Joy of Rage Read More »
The episodes begins with Mariquita reviewing one of her new favorite young adult books titled Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson. Piecing me together is a beautiful coming of age novel about a young Black girl in North Portland. Then in the second segment, Ashley speaks with Iman Hariri-Kia about her debut novel, A Hundred
Heather Havrilesky’s Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage is more than just a memoir about marriage. As its title suggests, the book is a no-holds-barred deep dive into what really happens in that slow stringing together of day-to-day life that is the reality of “happily ever after.” Outrageously hilarious and deeply vulnerable, Foreverland is
Book Review: Foreverland by Heather Havrilesky Read More »
GOODREADS DESCRIPTION: An urgent, vital manifesto of intersectional, internationalist, abolitionist feminism, from leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth E. Richie. As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment, halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape
Book Review: Abolition. Feminism. Now. Read More »
Do you ever get to the end of the year and wish you had read just a few more new releases? Sally’s here to help! She’s read over 50 releases from 2022 and has sifted through her reviews to pull out her top five new releases (so far). Then, in honor of our Women in
Best New Releases + Women in Music with Dr. Susan Rogers Read More »
Want to get a heads up on the book of the month before anyone else? Want to be on the VIP list for special offers and deals? Well, get on the list and you’ll be officially in the FBC loop!
