We, the writers of the Flyer, report the news, and sometimes we make the news. Case in point: Our reporter Toby Sells wrote a book. (Yay, Toby!) It’s called Haint Blues: Strange Tales From the American South (available on Amazon), and it’s about, well, strange tales from the South — UFO abductions, ghosts, Bigfoot, psychic horses, you get the gist. It’s the stuff that Sells just doesn’t stop talking about and now he’s written 20 chapters of it for anyone to read.
“I’ve been into unexplained and folklore stuff since I was in third grade,” he says in an official interview (not during an off-the-record office gossip session, for the record). “I won’t go into the whole story, but a friend of mine showed me the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek when I was at his house for a sleepover in third grade. I think I told you this before [Yes, Toby, you have]. That was my paranormal gateway drug. And I just started consuming every bit of media that I could find after that.”
Yes, that meant watching Unsolved Mysteries but that also meant digging into the archives and doing good old-fashioned research that eventually led him to creating the scripted podcast Haint Blues. “The show got, literally, dozens of listeners,” Sells says (brags?), adding that he recorded his last episode in 2020. “Those scripts kind of sat on the shelf for a little while, and then I was reading one day about average word length of books, and I was doing the math and thinking about how many scripts I had. Those were about 3,000 words each. And I thought, well, it’s getting pretty close. … I thought maybe that’s a way I could share these stories with people. And so I went back to the scripts and rewrote everything in a more nonfiction, prose style, but it still sounds really conversational and still sounds folksy. It’s really laid-back and Southern and comfortable.
“You know,” Sells continues, “all these stories, somewhere down the line, if they’re not just completely fabricated, involved real people at one point, and you want to treat that as respectfully as you can, and that’s what I tried to do. But I think what I really wanted to do is put these stories out as a collection of Southern culture. We all know about Southern food and Southern music, and what I hope I’ve done in the book is let everybody know that we have our own folklore traditions, too. … I think that stuff is as important to Southern culture as any other thing.”
This Friday, you can meet Sells at An Evening of Ghost Stories with Stephen Guenther, paranormal investigator and owner of Historical Haunts. They’ll both share paranormal stories and do a Q&A, and Sells will sign books after. “If you’re ready for an evening of spooky stuff, even before Halloween, come on out and join us, grab a beer,” Sells says.
Ron Hall with his 1977 ticket stub. Elvis died before he could use it.(Photo: Shangri-La Projects)
There are record collectors, and then there are record collectors. Holding strong against the tides of time, which have rendered recorded music as weightless as a cloud, streaming past us like raindrops and just as ungraspable, Memphis is yet home to many mini-librarians. We curate our own collections of vinyl, tapes, and CDs, still attached to those miniature works of art and the ritual of listening that they require. Yet, among this haven of gatherers — raging, raging against the dying of the vinyl — there once walked among us the ur-collector, and the ultimate documentarian of the history behind his stacks of wax.
His name was Ron Hall. There was no one more committed to the history and lore of local music than he, and no bigger fan of Memphis wrestling.
When Hall passed away in March at the age of 73, after suffering a major stroke two months earlier, the city lost not only a gifted private archivist but a gifted author. Shangri-La Projects, who published his entire oeuvre, posted this on social media as a response to his death:
“Ron was a savant in shining a light on what it meant to grow up in the middle of the post-war pop culture explosion in one of the most influential pop culture, music, and professional wrestling cities in the world. Ron’s three books, two CD compilations, documentary film, and Memphis music calendar solidified him into being one of the craziest chroniclers/fellow fanatic travelers of all that is wacky in Memphis’ creative cauldron of the ’50s/’60s/’70s/’80s.”
Here, then, is a recap of Hall’s important body of work.
Playing for a Piece of the Door: A History of Garage and Frat Bands in Memphis, 1960-1975
This was the book that started it all, and it remains a constant reference source for this writer and many others in Memphis. Tellingly, the introduction begins with Hall’s memories of actually performing with a band, when “the 13th Muse took the stage at a home for unwed mothers in the Oakhaven area of Memphis, Tennessee,” in late 1969. Though they only played the one show, Hall recounts, “I was doing what hundreds of other kids in Memphis wished they could do.”
That everyman spirit informs this look into the stories of over 500 local bands that cropped up in the title’s 15 year span. Some went on to stardom, others were only locally celebrated, and some weren’t even that. Yet all are cataloged with an inclusive, democratic zeal by Hall, who not only collected the sometimes obscure 45s that made these bands immortal but saw many of them performing in their prime. This lends crucial historical context to the groups. Take The Embers, for instance, “one of the top bands in the Jackson/Humboldt, Tennessee, area in the mid-to-late ’60s.”
Starting in 1964, many (most?) of these groups were inspired by The Beatles. This is, after all, an undeniably partial collection of groups, centered on the largely white ensembles that sprung up in The Beatles’ wake. But Hall reaches back before the Fab Four’s heyday as well, as with his entry on The Monarchs, who, starting in 1959, were “one of the few surf bands in the area.” Hall fills out his archival research with interviews with some of the players, making this book a kind of oral history as well. “The Beatles killed us,” recalls Charles McAllister of the Monarchs.
And, as the book takes us into the ’70s, we see the post-Beatles groups flourish as well, with power pop and California rock-tinged groups like Big Star, Target, and Cargoe hitting their stride. In all, it’s one of the most important chronicles of how sounds morphed through a decade and a half of the city’s golden years at the top of the music industry.
The Memphis Garage Yearbook, 1960-1975
When Playing for a Piece of the Door came out in 2001, it sparked a new surge of demand for all that was obscure and garagey in Memphis music, and soon after Shangri-La Projects released two CDs compiling the best tracks from Hall’s and others’ vinyl collections. Concerts were held on the Shangri-La Records porch, featuring onetime ’60s artists like Jim Dickinson, B.B. Cunningham, and the Castels. Ultimately, a second book was released which covered much the same ground, but through a different lens. Put together like a high school yearbook, and relying more heavily on rare photographs and show bills collected by Hall, it’s a stunning visual accomplishment. The book being organized chronologically (rather than alphabetically, as the first book is) sheds a different light on the evolution of the groups and the various players who shuttled between them. And the live performance photos underscore that this book, as well as its predecessor, doubles as a chronicle of the era’s key venues as well as its bands.
Sputnik, Masked Men, and Midgets: The Early Days of Memphis Wrestling
Hall was not only fascinated with local music, as this 2009 volume made clear. If many, like me, first became aware of the connection between early pro wrestling in the city and rock-and-roll by reading Robert Gordon’s It Came from Memphis, Hall seems to have gotten it organically, from being a dedicated fan of the sport since his youth. Rare 45s by more sonically ambitious wrestlers like Jackie Fargo, Sputnik Monroe, and (of course) Jerry Lawler are featured in photographs and on the book’s accompanying CD. Moreover, Hall called on some key fellow collectors for the visuals here, namely Robert W. Dye Sr., a local amateur photographer; Jim Blake, owner of the record label that released Lawler’s musical ventures; and many others. The result is a galvanizing compendium of eye-gouging action shots, tough guy poses, screaming show bills, and detailed write-ups from Wrestling, King of Sports, a local wrestling rag from the era. Not long after this book appeared, Shangri-La Projects released the film Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’, which relied heavily on this book by Hall, who also served as the film’s executive producer.
Memphis Rocks: A Concert History, 1955-1985
While retaining much of Hall’s fascination with all things Memphis, this book expands the scope of his research, documenting more than local bands. In a photo-heavy format closer to Hall’s wrestling book than Playing for a Piece of the Door, it collects concert photos, ticket stubs, show bills, and print media ads for practically any major concert in the city over a 30-year span. This includes both national and local groups, with a focus on the former: the big concerts that music fans flocked to, now cherished in the memories of those who attended. Yet smaller shows make the cut as well, and this, like Hall’s other works of music history, serves as an important chronicle of now-forgotten venues. Contrary to the subtitle, for example, the book actually begins in 1954, devoting a page to every local live performance by a certain Elvis Presley that year. Many of them were at Eagle’s Nest. Who knew?
It’s also a de facto celebration of the Mid-South Coliseum, charting the many stellar shows there over three decades, from James Brown in 1965 to The Beatles the next year to Iron Maiden in 1985. Resonating with any fan savoring the experience of such shows are the “Concert Memories” compiled by Hall, where local musicians and others recall the power of seeing pivotal performances in their lives. As such, this, like all of Hall’s painstaking works, is a compendium of not only Memphis music and Memphis memories, but key moments in the history of American culture as a whole.
Books are and always will be the best part of summer. Assigned summer reading? No, never. But when you get to choose, ah, there’s the sweet spot … until you realize there are just too many books to read and not enough time. That’s why we put the question to Memphis’ booksellers to see what they’re recommending to help make those choices a little easier.
Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop by Alice Faye Duncan (Children)
A historical picture book for students by local award-winning author Alice Faye Duncan, Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop focuses on the 1968 sanitation strike that took place here in Memphis. — Jeremee DeMoir, DeMoir Books & Things
Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams (YA)
Blood at the Root is a new release that’s taking over TikTok and seems to be an instant book of interest. Its author says it is his version of “If Harry Potter was Black and went to an HBCU.” The book explores the supernatural and the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting. This heart-pounding fantasy series opener is a rich tapestry of atmosphere, intrigue, and emotion. — Jeremee DeMoir
Black Shield Maidenby Willow Smith
The singer of “Whip My Hair” is back with new music and a book for fans of mythology, high fantasy, and historical fiction. The newly released title follows Yafeu, a defiant yet fiercely compassionate young warrior who is stolen from her home in the flourishing Ghanaian Empire and taken as a slave to a distant kingdom in the North. — Jeremee DeMoir
Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby
A wild ride of 21 short stories from the unbridled imagination of writer Gwen E. Kirby. Anchored by bold female bad-assery, each story instantly demands the reader’s attention.
The whole journey of reading this collection is like a food processor. You are chopped, stirred, pulsed, and crushed. You are shaken up and down and all around and then at book’s end, you are left howling and wanting more.
Funny, tragic, unreal yet real simultaneously, crazy, and savory, every bit of this book is delicious. — Sheri Bancroft, Novel
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
dread (n,v): from the Old English drædan, to shrink from in apprehension or expectation; to fear very much.
One of the definitions used in the book. You don’t have to read horror to get dread. If you don’t have enough home made on your own, here it is store-bought. Etter captures that feeling when you have existential burnout in your work, but it turns your senses off enough to not be able to quit.
This chronicling of the Believers (a perfectly apt name) in the tech world is all too accurate. Having worked in corporate America (though not tech, science, or engineering, but tech-adjacent), this is exactly how it feels to be surrounded by the brand attire-wearing masses who are more company cult than culture. — Dianna Dalton, Novel
Two Minds: Poemsby Callie Siskel
Callie Siskel doesn’t miss a beat. Her debut volume, Two Minds, masterfully weaves a thought-provoking exploration of the human psyche, while discreetly grieving her father’s early death. This pulchritudinous elegy delves into the intricate dance between creativity and criticism, and the delicate balance between self-expression and self-doubt. Siskel crafts a narrative that is both deeply personal and universally relatable. Two Minds is a triumph of storytelling, a testament to authenticity, and a shining example of the transformative potential of contemporary poetry. — Blake Helis, Burke’s Book Store
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / James / The Audacity
My summer reading assignment is to reread Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (not read since 7th grade) and then Percival Everett’s James, a retelling of Twain’s novel from Jim’s point of view. Currently I am reading The Audacity by Ryan Chapman, a comic novel about the implosion of an Elizabeth Holmes Theranos-type company. — Cheryl Mesler, Burke’s Book Store
As April comes to a conclusion and with Independent Bookstore Day tomorrow (Saturday, April 27th), it’s time for our favorite local booksellers to share their recommendations for what to read — because who else knows better?
“This week was my first time reading the work of the celebrated author Hanif Abdurraquib, beloved son of Columbus, Ohio. This book is a treasure trove of longing, hope, and the author’s personal quest to define what really makes a place ‘home.’ Abdurraquib once described his love for Columbus, Ohio, like this: ‘I’m not in love with the bridges. I’m in love with the people. The people are the architecture of the place.’ As a Memphian consuming this mind-bending and beautiful book in three days, I could relate. His affection for his gritty hometown will resonate with many local readers who see the soul of a city as more than just a skyline.” — Angie Doherty, Novel
“Every time I open a new book from Hanif Abdurraqib, I think I’m ready. I never am. His latest masterpiece is definitely a book about basketball, but also about life, and love, and home, and hope, and anything and everything not even basketball at all. There is not a word wasted, and the way he observes the world, unpacks it, then sharply and tenderly delivers it back to us always manages to crack my heart and my mind wide open. Hanif is a brilliant poet, and just seems to see the world differently. I encourage everyone to take a moment to sit with him and see things differently, too.” — Nicole Yasinsky, Novel
“Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World navigates our polarized society with sensitivity and depth. Using the mix-up between herself and former third-wave feminist turned far-right darling Naomi Wolf as a launching point, Klein delves into contentious topics such as vaccines, climate change, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The narrative is both captivating and witty, weaving together personal and cultural anecdotes of mistaken identity. Klein’s analysis compellingly argues for acknowledging our collective responsibility in today’s dysfunctional political climate and striving to enact positive change. This book is a must-read, skillfully combining scholarship and storytelling.” — Alexandra Farmer, Novel
“Ramona Quimby is a hot mess. She has family problems, friendship issues, and troubles at school, but she manages to work through whatever life unexpectedly throws her way with her spunk and pluckiness. All books about Ramona were written by librarian Beverly Cleary who passed away in 2021 at the age of 104.” — Sheri Bancroft, Novel
“It is a historical novel based in New Orleans (one of my favorite cities) centered around a spirited young woman who joins a sisterhood. This story highlights the sisterhood and community of Black women whose efforts played a significant role in the Civil War.” — Jasmine Settles, Cafe Noir
“A mystery of master storytelling. Questioning faith and newly discovered skeleton bones. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community — heaven and earth — that sustain us.” — Jasmine Settles, Cafe Noir
“Keep an eye out for the release on May 14th. ‘To return, to be made whole again. This is another word for love,’ writes Carvell Wallace. In Another Word for Love, Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in America.” — Jasmine Settles, Cafe Noir
“I typically am a 99 percent fiction reader but lately have been immersed in reading about art and artists (both fiction and nonfiction). I am currently reading the new biography of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch, Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring. It’s a wonderful overview of his short time in the art world as well as a vivid snapshot of New York City in the 1980s. I am also reading the Keith Haring Journals, which adds an extra layer to his life and art. A bit of trivia I learned: Haring’s father attended the Aviation Electronic Technician School in Memphis in 1957, where he stayed for six months. The high point of his stay was spotting Elvis joyriding around town in his white Lincoln. — Cheryl Mesler, Burke’s Book Store
Jeremee DeMoir, owner of Demoir Books & Things, has four books of poetry in mind for National Poetry Month. He’s broken them down into age categories for us:
Children’s — Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooksby Suzanne Slade: A picture book biography about Gwendolyn Brooks, the influential poet and the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.
YA — Black Girl Evolving by Diana Townsend (a Memphian): Black Girl Evolving is a powerful and evocative poetry collection that delves into the complexities of the Black community, mental health, and the vital role of Black women in society.
YA — Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman: Amanda Gorman’s remarkable new collection reveals an energizing and unforgettable voice in American poetry.
Adult — Counting Descent by Clint Smith: Clint Smith’s debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming-of-age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition.
All books mentioned can be purchased at the respective bookstore locations. For upcoming book events, including book clubs and author signings, visit the Flyer’s event calendar.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Lora Chilton’s historical novel 1666 may be the task of keeping the phonetically spelled names of people and places straight.
The story, based on a combination of what author Chilton refers to as “historical records and oral tradition,” is an inspired imagining of the struggle for survival of two members of the Indigenous Patawomeck (PaTow’O’Mek) tribe of Virginia (TseNaCoMoCo) following the attempted annihilation of the tribe by white colonial authorities in the year indicated by the novel’s title.
The primary characters, based on two women who may actually have existed, do indeed survive (though just barely), as, in the long run of history, has the tribe itself via surviving descendants, one of whom is Chilton herself. Her fellow Memphians may recall her as a prominent school board member and political activist (as Lora Jobe) of a few seasons back.
The aforementioned matter of phonetic spellings is really no obstacle to an immersion in the tale, functioning rather to ground one in a gripping sense of Being There in a present-tense reality. (And there are welcome recognitions, as when one of the story’s ultimate locations turns out to be a teeming place called MaNaHahTaAn (Manhattan).)
The main characters themselves have a variety of names. Ah’SaWei (Golden Fawn) is also Twenty-nine (her number as a freshly enslaved prisoner) and Rebecca (while serving in a Barnados household). And, similarly, NePaWeXo (Shining Moon) is Eighty-five and Leah.
To repeat, none of this gets in the way. For each of the characters, the identities are both discrete and overlapping. Each stands for a different phase of the characters’ destinies — Alternately horrific, heroic, and (relatively) mundane.
Those destinies occur within a meticulously outlined span of historical time in which the terrors and atrocities of the colonial era, described unblinkingly, are a basic part of the background and essentially define the course of events. But so, too, are the natural circumstances of life — love and sex prominently among them.
What did people of that milieu eat and how did they cultivate it? In what ways were their domestic tensions, coupling rituals, and emotional realities like or unlike our own? Chilton has researched it all and knows it in depth and can tell you.
And she does so with a dramatic, thriller-like sense of urgency that has us turning pages compulsively.
Some advance readers of the novel, whose blurbs are included with the text, focus on the story as “tragedy.” That’s a way of saying that terrible things happen and are accounted for graphically.
But what the story really is about is humanity’s unquenchable spirit and, as such, is the furthest thing imaginable from being a downer.
For years, decades even, Rachel Edelman avoided writing poems about Memphis, the place she was raised. “I wrote a lot of very detailed nature poetry and poetry that engaged with climate change, catastrophe,” she says, “and while I think that certainly prepared me craft-wise for writing these poems, I, for a long time, didn’t want to write about the South or Memphis or my upbringing.”
As Edelman shopped around her first collection of poems, there was not a mention of her hometown in those verses. Instead, she explored a re-envisioned Exodus and the Jewish diaspora, with poems like “Palinode after Pharaoh’s Decree,” “What I Know of God,” and “The Tether” about Miriam, Moses’ sister. She revised and revised, but something was missing: Memphis, her own diasporic relationship with the city, and her relationship with her own family.
She titled the series of poems that came to be “Dear Memphis,” and their addition to her pre-existing collection made it complete, made it something new, something that connected her ancestors’ past to her present. This new collection would be titled Dear Memphis as well and was released in January of this year.
This weekend, Edelman, who’s now based in Seattle as a teacher, will return to Memphis to discuss and sign Dear Memphis at Novel (Friday, April 12, 6 p.m.) and Temple Israel at Crosstown (Saturday, April 13, 6:30 p.m.). In anticipation of her homecoming, the Flyer asked Edelman some questions about Dear Memphis and her poetry. See her answers below.
Memphis Flyer: You said that you avoided writing about Memphis previously. Why is that?
Rachel Edelman: In writing — at least in formal writing education settings — I was always taught to avoid sentimentality. And not to write — literally — not to write poems about your grandma. And [the writings in Dear Memphis] are poems very deeply engaged with that generation, with my grandparents’ generation, and the way that I have become a culture-bearer of theirs, and so I avoided it because I was told academically that it wasn’t high-class, quite honestly.
But then, in reading much more widely, there’s this poet — Aracelis Girmay — and reading her, “The Black Maria,” it showed me a way of incorporating archival research history, alongside personal story really, and it really moved me. It was both incredibly cerebral and incredibly embodied. And reading a work like that showed me you don’t have to choose. … And then speaking to other poets, who were writing gorgeous work that didn’t fear sentimentality, that didn’t fear emotion, I kind of opened up to writing these more personal poems. And while I don’t think that we necessarily need to lay all of our trauma on the page, I think it’s okay to welcome the more fallible and the more sticky moments as they come. … I think that there’s a lot of strength in veering into emotionally fraught territory.
What was the initial spark for your “Dear Memphis” poems?
I wrote those after doing the Tin House Summer Workshop, which was virtual in the summer of 2020. … [We were given a prompt to] write to somebody you’ve never met. You could write to someone who passed, you could write to a place or an idea, and I started writing “Dear Memphis” poems. And then I wrote them for a few months and they felt really intimate to me in a way that was important for the rest of the book. And they are probably the poems in the book that are revised least; they’re closest to their first draft.
Have you been back to Memphis since the collection has been released?
I haven’t. My family doesn’t live there anymore. My parents moved away in 2015, and grandma died in 2012. So the last time I was in Memphis was in 2017 for a residency at Crosstown.
But I am excited. And I also feel the distance that I’ve had from Memphis really acutely. Like, this is a book titled Dear Memphis, and for it to address Memphis, it requires a separation.
Does coming back to Memphis and living in Seattle feel like a diasporic experience on its own?
It does feel diasporic. [Memphis] feels like a diasporic home. My family lived in Memphis for five generations. I don’t know where else in the world my family has lived for that long because we are a diasporic people. And I firmly believe that Jews are a diasporic people, that we thrive in diaspora. And so, I don’t believe in a Jewish homeland, and I think it’s exciting to have many stops along our way along my lineage.
I think that these poems all engage with a vision of commitment to diaspora, … so that is really a thread that lines up for all of these poems. I also think that it’s an ethos that requires risk. It requires rejection of Zionism. And it requires a willingness to make overtures and alliances that may not work out, or that may require a lot of trust-building. So I think all of these poems are like gesturing at the complexities of that work.
Sara Koffi began her novel in the summer of 2020. It wasn’t a pandemic project, born out of boredom, but rather seeded from the racial reckoning that stemmed from the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
“It was a concern about if these people and their families will actually achieve justice. A stress that these cases weren’t going to have a resolution that matched the justice needed,” she says. “And I kind of took the seed of that paranoia and put it toward the book essentially — that was like the seed of the beginning of While We Were Burning.”
The novel, Koffi says, is “first and foremost fun — fun is not the right word — but it is a fun, fast-paced, twisty read. And then secondly it’s exploring important themes.”
For her debut novel, Koffi puts two women’s stories into counterpoint: Elizabeth, a woman on a downward spiral as she questions the mysterious circumstances surrounding her friend’s death, and Briana, who is hired as Elizabeth’s personal assistant to help her pick up the pieces.
But Briana has questions of her own. The Memphis police have killed her son, and now she’s on the search for who called the cops on her child on that fateful day that took him away.
Together the women rush towards finding their answers as their relationship blurs the line between employer and friend, predator and prey.
“The thriller genre is very good about exploring justice outside of the usual justice system,” Koffi says. “So I thought for a story like this, it’d be fitting.”
The story begins in Elizabeth’s first-person perspective, which switches with Briana’s third-person narrative throughout the novel. “I often joke that Elizabeth thinks she’s the main character. She’s like, ‘This is my story.’ And then Briana, who arguably is actually the main character, does not center herself the same way.”
Even so, the prologue depicts Elizabeth lamenting her crumbling marriage. “She doesn’t know what book she’s in,” Koffi says. “She cannot conceive of Briana entering into her life. You know, this woman’s very concerned, kind of a borderline obsessed with her husband, like a domestic thriller trope. And then you keep reading. You’re like, ‘Oh, I think that’s a different book. That’s not what’s actually going to happen.’
“That was the first thing I wrote,” Koffi adds of the prologue, “and it has not changed from editing, drafting, to now. That has remained the same, untouched. … Once I got a good grasp of [Elizabeth], it’s like the story started to unfold.”
And, always, Koffi knew, this story was going to unfold in Memphis, the city where she grew up. “I also know about the city’s history, its involvement in the NAACP and Civil Rights Movement as well. And I thought it was interesting because the city also has a history of seeking justice on its own, so that was an interesting parallel to what’s happening in the story.
“For me personally,” Koffi says, “to have a book set in Memphis be the first book I put out, it feels like a major responsibility. But it’s a good one because I’m gonna have a lot of readers who have not been to the city and this book is gonna be their gateway to what the city is like without actually having visited there. I’m hoping — outside of the thriller background — that I capture the city. This is a good city. [Elizabeth and Briana are] having some drama, but the city itself is fine.”
But Koffi doesn’t just want to promote Memphis. She wants to create “a thoughtful moment for the reader as well. For me, I want that moment to kind of be a reflection on, like, are there are other things that I’m doing without thinking about it? That might be affecting other people? Do I have my own blinders on when it comes to certain things in my life, and may that be affecting other things?”
Once again, the Memphis Flyer has taken to the streets (read: email) to ask Memphis’ booksellers what on Earth we should be reading this month. And, thank goodness, they’ve answered with recommendations that’ll fit on anyone’s bookshelf. Check them out below.
Black Roses: Odes Celebrating Powerful Black Women, Harold Green III Black Roses is a beautiful collection of odes crafted by poet Harold Green III and pays tribute to all Black women by focusing on visionaries and leaders who are making history right now, including Ava DuVernay, Janelle Monae, Kamala Harris, Misty Copeland, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Robin Roberts, Roxane Gay, Simone Biles, and many others. The collection features full-color illustrations by Melissa Koby. We recommend this book because it’s a powerful expression of love for women during Women’s History Month! — Jeremee DeMoir, owner at DeMoir Books & Things
Dance of Thieves, Mary E. Pearson Dance of Thieves is a fantasy duology with a strong female main character. The book contains enemies to lovers, forced proximity, found family, and multiple plot twists. It is masterfully written as the reader is entirely captured by the plot and never bored with what is happening. Although it is set in a fictional world, it is an easily followed story and the characters are realistic. This duology is similar to Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, and I would definitely recommend it to any fantasy readers. — Maya Zelinski, bookseller and co-founder/co-leader of the Teen Writing Group at Novel
James, Percival Everett I only discovered Percival Everett last year and I’m now trying to catch up and read everything. He’s one of our finest and most versatile writers, and this new one is one of his best. Witty, wise, joyful, painful, important, and highly readable. I predict this will finally win him the Pulitzer. — Corey Mesler, owner at Burke’s Book Store
The Other Valley, Scott Alexander Howard The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard came out in February to glowing reviews, but hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention at the store if you ask me! Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro is an obvious and faithful comp, but while I have started NLMG more times than I can count and could never finish, I fell for this one immediately. It’s speculative fiction, sort of literary sci-fi, set in a world made up of a series of valleys — the same place, with the same people, duplicated over and over 20 years ahead of or behind the next, depending on whether you’re going west or east. Does this sound convoluted? I hear it, too. But trust me when I say it does not require any kind of mental mastery of its bent laws of physics to enjoy. The writing is so good I found myself rereading some sentences three or four times, just to soak them in. It’s a quiet, atmospheric novel full of big ideas that manages to double as a page-turner. Basically, my favorite kind of book. — Kat Leache, Social Media & Promotions at Novel
Thicker Than Water: A Memoir, Kerry Washington Award-winning actor, director, producer, and activist Kerry Washington shares the journey of her life so far in this bravely intimate story of discovering her truth. We selected this as it comes from the woman who changed television. Best known for portraying Olivia Pope on the ABC hit Scandal, when it premiered, a Black woman hadn’t had the lead role in a network drama for nearly 40 years. Kerry Washington changed the game and Scandal decimated the idea that a Black female lead would alienate audiences, proving, instead, that it would energize them. Why not celebrate such a powerful figure and share this powerful book during Women’s History Month? — Jeremee DeMoir, owner at DeMoir Books & Things
All books mentioned can be purchased at the respective bookstore locations. Support indie and support local. For upcoming book events, including book clubs and author signings, visit the Flyer’s event calendar.
I don’t know about you, but my TBR (“to be read,” for those not keeping up with the lingo) list keeps on growing and growing and growing, and yet I’m out here acting like I just don’t know what to read. Because I don’t. There are just too many choices. So, like any good journalist, I took advantage of my power, wielded my press badge (which doesn’t exist), and went to the source (Memphis’ booksellers) to ask the age-old question, “What should I read?”, and have someone else make the choice for me. It’s important work, I know. And I don’t do it just for me. I do it for the people. For you.
Jasmine Settles, owner of Cafe Noir, whose brick and mortar is slated to open at the end of this month, has two suggestions for me — I mean, us — The Mayor of Maxwell Street by Avery Cunningham and Tenderheadedby Olatunde Osinaike. Of Tenderheaded, she says, “That was actually selected as a winner of the [2022] National Poetry Series. The book focuses on masculinity, Black male identity. And I love how the work is so gentle, but it has also kind of like a music rhythm to it. Just like how his work kind of expands with language and he will take a word and kind of build around it. And he is a coder, like a computer coder. I truly, really admire his work and his style.”
“I think The Mayor of Maxwell Street is a really good one as well,” Settles says. “[The author] is from Memphis. I think her work is brilliant.” Within The Mayor of Maxwell Street, the daughter of the “wealthiest Negro in America,” Nelly Sawyer, finds herself the premier debutante of Black society after the sudden death of her only brother, and immediately, she is whisked off to a number of social engagements as part of her coming-out, much to her chagrin. She has her secrets, though — for the past year, she’s written as an undercover investigative journalist, reporting “the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow.” Nelly’s latest assignment: to identify the head of an underground crime syndicate, the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street. Soon, she enlists the help of the mysterious low-level speakeasy manager, Jay Shorey.
Settles isn’t the only one recommending Cunningham’s debut novel; so is Jeremee DeMoir of DeMoir Books & Things. For younger readers, though, he recommends Jason Reynolds’ Stuntboy (Children’s) and Keith F. Miller Jr.’s Pritty (YA). And for a more classic read, DeMoir has been reading Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.
“He’s just a classic author, with a really amazing touch,” the online bookstore owner says. “He breathes fresh life into a romantic mystery. Giovanni’s Room is a classic queer novel that follows two characters in Paris as they’re going through discovering their identity within the queer community in Paris in the 1950s. So it’s a book definitely ahead of its time, but super refreshing and super current despite being written in the 20th century.”
Lastly, Corey Mesler of Burke’s Book Store gives his two cents on what’s in this month: “Claire Keegan’s outsize bandwagon is worth jumping on. I don’t mind being the hundred-thousandth reader to marvel at her spare, shimmering prose, and recommend her to all and sundry. Her latest, So Late in the Day, a collection of three short stories (two appeared in previous books) is more evidence that she is one of our best writers, despite her limited output. Quality over quantity. My favorite is her novel, Small Things Like These (the title might be a statement of purpose). You can read it in one sitting but you will savor its reverberations long after setting it down.”
All books mentioned can be purchased at the respective bookstore locations. Support indie and support local. For upcoming book events, including book clubs and author signings, visit the Flyer’s event calendar.
I worked with Vince Vawter at the old Memphis Press-Scimitar when it was in the now-demolished Memphis Publishing Co. building (what we veterans still call “the old building”) at 495 Union Avenue.
It looked like those old newsrooms in the movies of the 1930s and ’40s. And it was full of characters that rivaled any character actors in those old newspaper movies.
Vawter brings that old newsroom — and the Memphis of another era — to life as part of the background of his latest book, Manboy, which is part three of his Paperboy Trilogy.
Vawter’s 40-year career in newspapers includes publisher and president of the Evansville Courier & Press, managing editor of The Knoxville News Sentinel, and news editor of the Memphis Press-Scimitar.
Vawter, who lives in Louisville, Tennessee, will be at a book signing at 2 p.m. on February 10th at Novel.
I recently asked Vawter some questions about the book.
Vince Vawter at the Blount County Public Library (Photo: Betty Vawter)
Memphis Flyer: Were you ever a copy boy? I seem to remember you telling me you weren’t.
Vince Vawter: I was never a copy clerk. I started my newspaper career as a sportswriter at the Pine Bluff Commercial in Arkansas. My first job at The Press-Scimitar was on the copy desk. I thought that placing the protagonist, Victor Vollmer, as a copy clerk was a good way for him to enter the newspaper business, just like somebody else I know.
What was it about the old Memphis Publishing building that made it so special?
The Memphis Publishing Company building was once owned by the Ford Motor Company and was re-adapted for newspaper publishing. It had the openness and feel of a newsroom with its 20-foot ceilings and desks jammed together with pneumatic tubes running hither and yon. I liked to feel the concrete floors rumble when the giant presses would crank up to full speed. I wanted readers to experience the feel of a genuine newsroom in the heyday of newspapers and explain how a newspaper was actually produced on deadline. All the newspaper headlines in Manboy are verbatim from The Press-Scimitar and The Commercial Appeal.
How much of your lead character is like you?
Victor Vollmer is certainly based on my early life in all three books of the trilogy, especially the portions dealing with my stutter. … Some readers question the naivete of the protagonist, but you have to remember this was the ’60s and another world from what we have now.
I love all the history of Memphis that I can relate to because I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s.
Of the three books in the trilogy, this is the one that treats the city of Memphis as almost a character in itself. When Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, I rushed back to Memphis from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
I spent that weekend in April 1968 just watching the city and listening. I remember those four days like it was yesterday. My most vivid memory is watching the Downtown march on that Monday after the assassination and then being swept up in it. I can still hear one of the parade marshals telling everyone “not to chew gum” while they were marching. The march was orderly and personally inspiring.
Will there be another one of these? Maybe the lead character becomes a newspaper reporter or an editor.
Paperboy introduces Vic when he is 11. In Copyboy, Vic is 17. He is 21 in Manboy. I envisioned the trilogy after the publication of Paperboy when literally hundreds of readers emailed me questions wanting to know what happened to the characters in the book. I decided to bring readers along on the complete journey. I doubt there will be another Paperboy book because a four-book set is known as a “tetralogy,” which seems a little off-putting and Jurassic.
What kind of feedback do you get from readers of these three books?
Readers say they appreciate that I shared the entire journey from adolescence to adulthood with them. This is rarely done in literature these days. Although most of my readers seem to be older than the “young adult” label, I did want the narrative to grow along with my readers.
The books were published over a 10-year period, just as the narrative encompasses 10 years of Vic’s life. Close readers, especially speech-language pathologists, say they admire how Vic’s attitudes about his stutter change over the 10-year period. After the success of Paperboy [Newbery Honor, quarter-million in sales, translated into 18 languages], I was a little taken aback that Penguin Random House chose not to continue with the story. The reason given was that the publisher did not like popular protagonists to grow older. That’s not life, I said, and my books are my life. My publisher said that it may not be life, but it’s publishing.
Any news on the musical made from Paperboy? Anything else happening? A movie maybe?
The musical’s creative team entered Paperboy and its 22 original songs in two musical theater competitions this spring in New York City. We hope that this will result in another production besides the one we had at the Manhattan School of Music last year. We continue to hear rumblings from movie types, but nothing to report so far. I think the trilogy itself and the boy’s 10-year journey would make a more complete movie narrative and satisfy more viewers, but we’ll just bide our time.
