The audiobook for Anita de Monte Laughs Last (2024) by Xóchitl González (author of 2022’s Olga Dies Dreaming) completely enthralled me with the alternating stories of both Cuban artist Anita de Monte in the early 1980s and 3rd year art history student Raquel in the late 1990s. There is some controversy that shows up inContinue reading “Anita de Monte Laughs Last”
Tag Archives: 1990s
America is Not the Heart
I thought Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now: Essays was so important that I needed to read her first novel, America is Not the Heart (2018). It was utterly absorbing and did what my favorite novels do–immersed me in a world that I could not otherwise experience as a white person. Castillo switches perspectives, specificallyContinue reading “America is Not the Heart”
Big Girl
I have complicated feelings about Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan (2022). First, I am glad that a novel about the coming of age of a fat, black, young girl in 1990’s Harlem was written. The author did an amazing job with the story of Malaya and her family (her mother, Nyela, is a professor,Continue reading “Big Girl”
Reading While Fat 