Novelists deal in trouble. Perhaps there’s nothing more exciting on the page than the misadventures of a badly behaved cast of characters. We know when we encounter the gray, docile character who shies away from problems and conflict that they’re not likely to get up to much (don’t get me wrong, some of us also like that). In this month’s California Book Club selection, Colored Television, author Danzy Senna paints a decidedly not-passive protagonist, Jane Gibson, a novelist whose second novel is rejected. Jane’s setbacks and longing for the trappings of an upper-middle-class life lead her into a series of deceptions and problems in Hollywood.
Jane’s not alone. Earlier this summer, in Porochista Khakpour’s exuberant satire Tehrangeles, readers were introduced to a family of four distinctively sketched Iranian American sisters, one of whom, Roxanna Vanna Milani, has a predilection for flamboyant chaos. She has a TV dream, too: to star on a reality show. Even so, as the novel starts, Roxanna’s already regretting that her family is indeed going to be featured in such a show. The producers have encouraged the family to keep it “as real as possible,” and she comes to realize that her own longtime lie about being Italian American, rather than Iranian American, a lie that has extra credence because her father is the mogul of a pizza-snack empire, could come back to bite her.
Gen X Jane versus Gen Z Roxanna—who would win for most likely to stir up trouble? I’d like to see them in a scene together. Jane lies almost as a matter of course. Her deceptions are mostly work-related, and sometimes justifiable. Take her old friend’s TV show idea? Well, he’s not really qualified to make that show anyway. Tell her husband that she’s doing research for her novel when she’s working with a Hollywood producer? It’ll be a justified white lie—once the idea is in production. Meanwhile, Roxanna gets herself into a mess when she tosses out an offensive remark on Twitter, which proves not to be her first, alienating her gay sister. She hosts a pandemic super-spreader event with celebrities. In truth, however, she might be outshined in problematic outlooks by her MAGA sister, Haylee—as Roxanna puts it, “they were both born to be Main Characters.” This is a tough contest—probably a draw. (If you’ve read the books and have thoughts, email us!)
We’re thrilled to welcome Khakpour to the California Book Club as a special guest to discuss Colored Television with Senna and host John Freeman. Khakpour is the author of five critically acclaimed books. Her novels are Sons and Other Flammable Objects, The Last Illusion, and Tehrangeles, and she’s the author of an essay collection, Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity, and a memoir of chronic illness, Sick. She’s also a journalist who has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, GQ, and Condé Nast Traveler. Khakpour is the recipient of many accolades, honors, and recognitions. These include a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing and Yaddo, MacDowell, and Civitella Ranieri Fellowships, among many others.
Khakpour grew up in Greater Los Angeles, and while she now lives in New York City, both cities are important within her body of work. Khakpour was a student in one of Senna’s classes in 1999. Both writers are brilliant and fiercely intelligent. Both write striking, sometimes cutting satires featuring complex women of color. Both are keenly interested in and observant about aspects of Southern California life and are willing to inhabit other perspectives through fiction. Comedy can be challenging to write, and yet Senna and Khakpour seem to effortlessly find what’s sharp and funny within what’s also sometimes painful.
Don’t sleep on this exciting conversation among extraordinary and original contemporary writers—join us on Thursday evening!•
Join us on September 19 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Senna will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest Porochista Khakpour to discuss Colored Television. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
SOURCE OF STRENGTH
In his beautiful monthly essay, John Freeman writes that Senna’s novel is “one of the best modern L.A. novels.” —Alta
RELENTLESS
Read Jackie DesForges’s review of Colored Television. “Curious, driven, bored: this is the holy trinity of qualities for a writer, a set of reasons to stir things up,” DesForges writes. —Alta
APPLE BRANDY “BOOKTAIL”
Make Lindsay Merbaum’s unusual and lovely cocktail for Colored Television. —Alta
THREE BRIDGES, ONE TOLL
Novelist and Alta Journal contributor Vanessa Hua reminisces about her family’s car rides in the Bay Area and what her family valued about them. —New York Times
INTERGENERATIONAL CONVERSATION
JoAnna Novak interviews Katya Apekina, the Los Angeles author of what Novak describes as the “sprawling and very funny” new novel Mother Doll, in which a woman communicates with her great-grandmother’s ghost. —Air/Light
“MODERN HORROR STORY”
The San Francisco Opera is now running an intense adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with Irene Roberts giving what writer Lisa Hirsch calls “a courageous, vulnerable and gorgeously sung performance.” —San Francisco Chronicle
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