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On this episode of the Books and Bites podcast, we discuss the sixth prompt in the Books and Bites 2022 Reading Challenge, books that include Black joy. These books celebrate the richness and fullness of Black lives.
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
[Carrie]: Welcome to the Books & Bites podcast. Each month, we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to share with them. I'm Carrie Green.
This month's podcast is a little different, as I was out sick on our recording day and our co-host, Adam, has left JCPL to become a teen librarian at the Chicago Public Library. We wish Adam good luck in his new position!
Many thanks to Shantel Richardson, our Customer Technology Librarian, for filling in for Adam. Shantel and co-host Michael Cunningham sat down to chat about their book selections for the sixth prompt in the Books and Bites challenge, books that include Black joy. You can hear my selection at the end of the episode.
[Michael]: Over the past few years, one genre that is quickly becoming one of my favorites, rivaling horror, is a relatively small, but growing subgenre I like to call Appalachian Noir. A year or two ago, I covered Donald Ray Pollack�s The Devil All the Time and earlier this year I read David Joy�s Where All Light Tends�To�Go. These books usually involve the darker and more tragic side of Appalachia.� One of the exciting new voices of this genre is S. A. Cosby, with his crime novel Blacktop Wasteland,�which�happens to be my selection for this month.�
This book follows Beaureguard �Bug� Montage. He is a loving father to Darren, Javon, and Ariel, and husband to Kia. He owns a garage, making an honest living as a mechanic with his cousin Kelvin.� But that wasn�t always the case. Bug has a past. In a previous life, he was known as the best wheel man money could buy in the criminal underworld in and around Red Hill County, Virginia.� Even though Bug is on the straight and narrow and owns his own business, he�s barely able to his head above water, with bills piling up around him. His daughter needs money for college, his mother, who�s living in a retirement home is about to be put out on the street. And then to add insult to injury a new garage in town opens up, cutting deep into his once reliable pool of clients.���
That is until one day a couple of lowlifes named Ronnie and Reggie Sessions show up on his doorstep to help them out with a job: an easy, low-risk heist at a jewelry store with a big payday. All they need is a wheel man. Bug decides 80 grand is too much to pass up with all the bills coming due.��He plans out the job to a T, even busting out his prized �71 Plymouth Duster, but you�can�t�plan for everything. Once they�get�there, the lady behind the counter had been ready for something like this and after the shots ring out one of them is dead and they are speeding away before the�cops�can catch them. Unknown to them the store was owned by Lazarus �Lazy� Mothersbaugh who sends his two henchmen after the thieves. And�once�he catches�them,�he has his own plans for repayment.�
Cosby�s writing is tense yet cinematic, with some amazingly vivid chase scenes that�ll put some movies to shame. While Bug is put through the ringer, his joy is on full display. The main driving force of Bug throughout the novel is his fierce love for his family and his willingness to sacrifice anything for them, even if it puts him directly in harm�s way.� Everything Bug does is done for them.��Making his boys their favorite �daddy dinner�, putting them to bed, carrying his wife to bed after a hard day�s work. There�s even a conversation with his son, where he tells his son Javon to worry about only keeping his head in the books and he�ll take care of everything else. I also highly recommend his follow-up, Razorblade Tears, about two fathers who begin a�quest�vengeance after they discover that their sons who recently wed were executed in broad daylight.�
I paired this with a delicious Richmond, Virginia staple called a Sailor Sandwich, a city located near Red Hill County and mentioned several times throughout the story. This grilled sandwich calls for rye bread, spicy brown mustard, knockwurst, pastrami, and Swiss cheese and is as delicious as it sounds. You can find the recipe at�tasteofthesouthmagazine.com�
[Shantel}: My suggestion for a book that includes Black Joy is Seven Days in June by Tia Williams. It is from Reese Witherspoon�s book club. The two main characters Eva Mercy and Shane Hall fell in love 15 years ago when they were seventeen. They spent 7 days together before he broke her heart. Now, Eva is a 32-year-old bestselling vampire/witch erotica writer and Shane is an award-winning literacy author. Shane is the kind of writer Eva originally had wanted to be. Eva did not expect for her �fluff� genre to take off, but now she is a fan favorite among upper class white women. Eva�s on her 15th novel from the Cursed series vs. Shane usually writes one novel every 4 years. Both are experiencing writer�s block for varied reasons (addiction, cutting). Shane was in foster care as a child and now is in Alcoholics Anonymous. Shane has been clean for two years. Eva is a divorced, single mom of a 12-year-old named Audrey. When Eva met her ex-husband, Troy, an animator, they dated for 6 weeks and then were married. Audrey was born 7 months later. Pretty soon after, Eva�s migraines worsened. Troy said, �I wanted a wife not a patient.� Eva chose to divorce Troy when Audrey was 19 months old.
During his breaks from writing, Shane has been teaching at various schools one semester at a time. He prefers the underprivileged areas to the elite, private schools. He deeply loves and looks out for his troubled students. He teaches Ty a mantra to recite the eight planets every time he feels the urge to fight. From Ty to Diamond to Marisol to Rashaad, there is a kid in every city. He promises himself to always follow with them even when moving to the next school. His love will not vanish with them like how he did with her (Eva).
But this week, they are both surprisingly back in town (Brooklyn, New York) for a literary event. Now will they have 7 days for a second chance at love? Will Eva have her questions answered? When they first meet again at the panel, they pretend that everything is fine, but their chemistry is undeniable. It turns out that they have been writing to each other through their characters in their books.
Seven Days in June tells an excellent story of Black life, mental health concerns, womanhood, the passion to write, and modern motherhood. Eva wears Wonder Woman panties. One chapter is titled �Single Mom Superhero.� There is a fine line between romance and heartache. It explores how childhood trauma can linger into adulthood. As a result of an attempted sexual assault from her past, Eva sometimes self-harms. Eva grew up with her beautiful mom Genevieve bouncing from man to man providing for them. As her mom got older, the gifts became less and less, and more of the men became meaner and abusive to Eva. I felt inspired by hope, while reading how the characters cope. It is refreshing how psyches can mend and relationships can resolve pain. I do enjoy stories of star-crossed lovers and artistic fulfillment. In the Chapter �Fun Black Shit,� the panelist discuss how Black authors are expected to write about trauma, oppression, or slavery because these are marketable black tropes. Publishers struggle to see them as having the same, funny, whimsical experiences that every human has. There is no room for fun, black topics.
Eva has an �invisible disability� that she hides from her fans. She has been suffering from migraines since she was young and now struggles to manage them without revealing her chronic pain to the public. Eva finally finds a doctor who properly medicates her. Seven Days in June exemplifies Black Joy on so many levels: From Eva�s wonderful relationship with her daughter, to celebrating her Creole ancestry (matriarch lineage with Clotilde and Delphine), to her witty friendship with her book publisher CeCe, to her mature reconnection with Shane. Eva and Shane prove to truly be soulmates.
To pair with this romantic tale, I suggest snickerdoodles. At the Cursed fifteenth anniversary book gig, guests enjoyed snickerdoodles from the �Cuffs + Cookies� menu.
[Carrie]: My book is Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo. I've had the audiobook of Mr. Loverman bookmarked on Hoopla for quite a while--probably ever since 2019, when Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. I'm glad I finally listened to Mr. Loverman. It broke the audiobook drought I'd been experiencing and actually made me look forward to my commute.
Like Shantel, I usually think of Black Americans when I think of Black joy, but Mr. Loverman is about British Black joy. The main narrator is Barrington Walker, a dapper 74-year-old man who, in 2010, still wears suits and sock garters most days. Barry, as he's usually called, is originally from Antigua but moved to Hackney, London, with his wife Carmel when they were young.
Early on in the novel, we learn that Barry and his wife are not on the best of terms, to put it mildly. She harbors deep-seated rage at him because she thinks he's been having affairs with women all through their marriage. However, the truth is that Barry is monogamous--just not with Carmel. Or with another woman. Barry has been having an affair with his best friend Morris since they were both schoolboys back in Antigua.
Morris has been trying to convince Barry to leave Carmel for years, but Barry has been afraid of his wife's, two daughters', and community's reactions. His wife is a conservative Christian, as are most of their friends from Antigua. His oldest daughter, Donna, is a single mother who disapproves of everything Barry does and is jealous of his fondness for her younger sister, Maxine, a fashion designer. But despite all that, Barry thinks he may finally be ready to divorce Carmel and live his remaining days with the love of his life.
This book has its fair share of family drama. Barry experiences racism from white British people, and he experiences homophobia from his own family members and community. However, Barry and Morris share a deep love and a sense of humor that carries them through life's difficulties. I laughed out loud as they bantered back and forth, teasing each other. There is also joy in the tender sex scenes between the two men--scenes that are even more subversive because they involve senior men. When's the last time you read sex scenes between people over 65 years old?
Although the book is mostly narrated from Barry's point of view, we hear Carmel's side of the story as narrated through the voice of her dead mother. It turns out that Carmel has some secrets, too, though she hides them behind her religion and the bitterness she feels over her relationship with Barry. In the audiobook, Robin Miles narrates Carmel's mother while Ron Butler narrates Barry. I can't speak to the accuracy of their Antiguan accents, but I certainly enjoyed listening to them.
Carmel is an excellent cook, and Barry praises her skills throughout the novel, even suggesting that she open her own restaurant. One Sunday dinner sounds especially delicious: "She�s already baked the macaroni cheese that just needs to be warmed up," Barry says. "Coleslaw is chilling in the fridge, all crunchy with apples and carrots to temper the spices of the curry. And when she comes back from church, she will probably fry some plantain just the way I like it: browned, crisp, slightly burnt at the edges, but soft and succulent inside."
Learn more about the food of Antigua and Barbuda in the library database AtoZ World Food. The database provides information about the country's food culture, and it includes recipes for some of the dishes Barry mentions, such as ducana, a boiled sweet potato dumpling. The seafood salad with shrimp, scallops, lobster, sweet potato, papaya, and avocado sounds particularly yummy. And, of course, any get-together with Barry and Morris would not be complete without some rum to spice things up.
[Carrie]: Thanks for listening to the Books & Bites podcast. For more information about the Books & Bites reading challenge, visit our website at jesspublib.org/books-bites. Our theme music is The Breakers by Scott Whiddon, from his album In Close Quarters With the Enemy. Find out more about Scott and his music on his website, adoorforadesk.com.