Xandra

Mother Ersatz

In 1993 Anne Lamott published Operating Instructions, about her first year as a single, sober mother. It started a publishing trend of sorts: the authentic mother memoir. At their baby’s birth, mothers were stamped with the expectation of perfection and it took real courage to admit your missteps. Lamott was successful enough that she spawnedContinue reading “Mother Ersatz”

Twister

The promise of a twist in domestic suspense is the marketing equivalent of a shirtless hunk on an erotic romance cover. If you are going to move books, you have to deliver what you are selling. Suspense fans expect the unexpected. That said, there is nothing new under the sun. I have been reading inContinue reading “Twister”

Lagos, Lagos

Armchair travel is one of the pleasures of reading. Recently I discovered two books set in Nigeria, a country I know almost nothing about. It is the seventh most populous country in the world, an oil rich nation with a GDP of $568 billion. Over half its citizens live in poverty. By coincidence, the storiesContinue reading “Lagos, Lagos”

Descent from Donahue

Growing up in the ’80s I watched a fair number of daytime talk shows. The genre has almost completely disappeared, as rare these days as a soap opera, replaced by chat shows, cooking demos, and DIY home projects. The emphasis in the last twenty years has been on selling: actors hawk movies, lifestyle gurus sellContinue reading “Descent from Donahue”

Adaptation

A certain number of movies released each year start as books. There is a segment of readers who view movie adaptations with disdain, quick to point out how the nuanced, interior experiences of reading are lost when translated to cinema. There is a flip side, too, when movies require a certain tension and palpable transformationContinue reading “Adaptation”

Trapped In A History

“You were born where you were born and faced the future you faced because you were black and no other reason. I know your countrymen do not agree with me about this… they do not know Harlem, and I do. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped inContinue reading “Trapped In A History”

For The Defense

There is a subset of suspense in which a protagonist is asked to solve a crime involving someone they know. Often this is the premise for an amateur sleuth: a loyal friend is motivated to do a separate investigation when the police seem stalled. There are also books where the protagonist is a defense attorneyContinue reading “For The Defense”

Lenses

With the exception of a daytrip to Harlem when I was nineteen, my first experience of a black-majority community was a class I took in grad school on the theologies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. The instructor and half the class were African-American. The teacher, a Baptist minister, recontextualized the Christian religionContinue reading “Lenses”

Origins

I once knew a woman who hadn’t spoken to her family in twenty-five years. She described the death of her father as the greatest blessing of her life because it had allowed her to sever all ties with her abusive mother and her miserable childhood. When she talked about her origins, she was often vagueContinue reading “Origins”

Window Gazing

The picture perfect age of social media has resulted in a literary backlash of sorts. There is a plethora of books centered on pulling back the curtain on all the curation to reveal the dark side of domestic perfection. I’m not sure that any character is as widely used these days as the casual stalker.Continue reading “Window Gazing”