We hope you’re planning to read writer and professor emeritus Cherríe Moraga’s affecting memoir, Native Country of the Heart, which explores the relationship between her and her mother, Elvira, who was unlettered. “Her inability to read and write well remained an open wound for Elvira her entire life,” writes Moraga, “as she believed it was the single thing that separated her from that coveted other life of an office job where women wore skirts and stockings to work each day, and used their minds instead of their hands to bring home a paycheck.”
When you’re finished with Native Country of the Heart, you’ll have the following titles to get started with as summer heat gives way to what’s predicted to be this year’s autumn cool.
NATURE POEM, BY TOMMY PICO
October brings with it an absorbing book-length poem. Queer Indigenous poet Tommy Pico has forged his own exhilarating path through the thicket of language, and in Nature Poem, the second in a tetralogy featuring Teebs, an alter ego for himself, he swirls together social media–speak and urban vernacular with pop references, postcolonial critique, witty observations, and arresting images (a jelly bean moon, a dampening Christina Aguilera shirt) as he explores his Kumeyaay heritage and his relationship to nature. The poem is both vibrant and surprising.
THE COLOR OF LAW, BY RICHARD ROTHSTEIN
In November, we present to you Richard Rothstein’s seminal work of nonfiction, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein explains that while societal bigotry did have an effect on residential segregation in the country, it would have had far less of an impact if not for policies and acts of federal, state, and local governments. Through a comprehensive examination of local, state, and federal history; legislation; and judicial decisions, Rothstein persuasively argues that African Americans were denied the right to integrate into middle-class neighborhoods, in violation of the Constitution—and that since the state sponsored the conditions for this, a remedy by the state is required.
THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS, BY INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS
Our December selection, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, tells of how Ingrid Rojas Contreras and her mother separately experienced accident-related amnesias earlier in their lives. In her hypnotic nonlinear memoir, Rojas Contreras closely attends to what led up to the memory loss, as well as what the loss itself was like. Amnesia, of course, erases stories—and storytelling, particularly the stories we tell ourselves about what happens to us, is an important theme of her book. This critically acclaimed work was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; once you come under its spell, you’ll understand why.
Join us on September 17 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Cherríe Moraga will sit down with host John Freeman and a special guest to discuss Native Country of the Heart. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
EXCERPT
Read the opening of Cherríe Moraga’s Native Country of the Heart. —Alta
EVENT RECAP
In case you missed our Susan Orlean event, here's the video and a recap. —Alta
10 STEPS AHEAD OF US
Victor LaValle introduces the 50th anniversary reissue of past CBC author Ishmael Reed's 1976 novel Flight to Canada writing that it, “is a dressing-down, a dismantling, a reenvisioning, done in a way few authors would attempt even now, fifty years later.” —Bookshop
FOR BOOK LOVERS
Consider bidding in the Bibliophile’s Bazaar, a fundraising auction to raise money for the Bay Area Book Festival with numerous literary offerings from writers, editors, and others. —Give Butter
NEVER TOO LATE
A man who shoplifted from an Old Town Eureka bookstore 40 years ago mailed the book back with a $100 bill and an apology. —Lost Coast Outpost
INTERNATIONAL CLUBBING
Among many other things, Imogen Willetts’s new book, Up All Night, examines how early-2000s Los Angeles celebrity culture influenced global after-hours aesthetics. —Los Angeles Times
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