It’s that time of the year when I take a closer look at 2020’s reading plans and shuffle some of the reading that I was sure I’d have finished by now into the coming year instead. Nothing seems impossible yet, because I still think of December as an incredibly
Betty Smith gave simple advice to writers: “First: Be understanding always. Keep the understanding you have and add on to it.” As the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)—a best-selling novel that challenged the myth of poverty as a choice, and allowed low/no-wage characters to demonstrate courage
For those MARM participants who have already turned the last page in a novel you chose for MARM, I’m so impressed. I’ve only read a few more chapters in Cat’s Eye after starting last weekend. They’re remarkably short chapters, so they fit in between page refreshes (I’ve never spent
A few summers ago, I got hooked on playing dominoes. I’d had a set since I was a girl but I’d never learned how to play. Back then, I thought dominoes were things you lined up in a pattern on the floor, flicking the first one so that each one
Taiye and Kahinde are twin sisters, daughters of Kambirinachi: Butter Honey Pig Bread alternates between their perspectives, each woman narrating their contemporary experiences through the lens of key events in their pasts. The sister’s mother is Yoruba and their father is Igbo, something they often have to explain when
