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Memphis Reads: August

This month your favorite booksellers are back with recommendations, so you can keep up with your summer reading. Check them out below.

Anything That Moves by Jamie Stewart

Jamie Stewart is the creative force behind the experimental pop group, Xiu Xiu. Anything That Moves is the exact kind of book fans of Stewart’s music would expect them to write. A bizarre and painfully vulnerable exploration of desire, identity, and a desperation for human connection. An open wound of a book. It follows Stewart’s exploration of sexuality and desire from early adolescence onward. Reading it almost feels transgressive, like reading someone’s diary. This semi-memoir is exhibited in the form of a series of vignettes and essays. Making it not only as vulnerable as a diary, but very much structured like one.  

The extreme intimacy of Stewart’s book also feels expansive. They invite us to reflect on our own desires and vulnerabilities. Stewart’s voice is unique, lyrical, surreal, and heartbreaking. Anything that moves is one of the most compelling books I’ve read in years, and the grossest book I’ve ever read cover to cover. An absolute gift to the world of contemporary literature. — Kole Oakes, Burke’s Book Store

Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams

Blood at the Root was a hot topic on BookTok (the reader-friendly side of TikTok). The debut novel from Southerner LaDarrion Williams features a young man who is coming into his magic and whose life is shrouded in mystery. With new powers and a checkered past, Malik is given an invitation to a magical HBCU (historical Black college and university) where he’ll hone his magic and find clues to put the pieces of his past together. Blood at the Root explores not only the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting, but also introduces a new world of magic to fans of Harry Potter and other fantastical series. — Jeremee DeMoir, DeMoir Books & Things

Children of Anguish & Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

The third and final book in the Legacy of Orisha series, CAA returns us to Zelie’s journey! After all she’s done to return magic to Orisha, she’s facing a new and dangerous foe. However, she’s not alone. Joined by Amari, Tzain, and Inan, Zelie meets new companions who will help her fight to put an end to the war the new enemy is about to bring to the world. Written by NYT bestselling author Tomi Adeyemi, this final installment has been much anticipated and the team at DeMoir Books couldn’t wait to dive in once it was released in late June 2024! — Jeremee DeMoir, DeMoir Books & Things

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

In Ascension, is an import from Scottish author Martin MacInnes, released in the U.S. this year. A literary fiction that blurs the lines between speculative and science fiction, it’s set in the immediate future with the climate crisis we face now as it will progress as predicted.

The story follows a marine biologist from the Netherlands, a land recovered from and ever-contesting against the water. She studies ancient microorganisms, archaea, and the origins of life. One theory is that these first life forms originated in hydrothermal vents, and so when a trench in the ocean is newly discovered, she joins the research expedition to map and measure it.

From the bottom of the deepest depths of our ocean and planet, to where life started, what it can survive, how the findings can be used, and where that can take us, this eco-fiction spans a larger than human scale. — Dianna Dalton, Novel

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

An honest look into the world of therapy! This poignant story gives insight to how a therapist approaches their work while also showing what therapy can look like on the other side of the couch as the client.

You follow Gottlieb’s client’s through the lens of the therapist, learning what sort of intentional work one might do to help clients feel comfortable enough to trust the process and heal. Intermixed within chapters, you also get to experience Gottlieb’s journey as she goes through her own therapy after her personal life takes a dramatic hit. The perfect showcase that anyone can grow with therapy, even the therapists themselves! — Mandy Martin, Novel

Road Home by Rex Ogle

Once Rex’s father figures out Rex is gay, he is given an ultimatum: to become straight or get kicked out of the family.

This book shook me to my core. Rex is kicked out of his home by his parents, betrayed by the people who are supposed to love him the most. What follows is a life on the streets in New Orleans. As a gay teen experiencing homelessness, Rex constantly struggles for the basic needs of food, water, shelter, and sleep. The people he meets do not always have his best interests at heart and often cause more harm than good.

With no place to call home, no one to look out for him, no safety net, Rex barely gets by, and most of the time he hangs onto his dignity by a loose, fraying thread. This memoir is gut-wrenching and will break your heart. His future looks very bleak, and when it looks like he may not make it, a beacon of light emerges when he least expects it.

A true story of survival, Rex tells it all with honesty and grace.

Road Home is the third and last book in Rex Ogle’s memoir trilogy which also includes Free Lunch and Punching Bag. — Sheri Bancroft, Novel

There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America’s Biggest Catfish by Anna Akbari 

There Is No Ethan is a dark and unsettling read. Set in the early days of social media, the protagonist’s toxic obsession and self-delusion are both captivating and repulsive. Akbari’s writing is unflinching and raw, making it hard to look away from the train wreck. A haunting and uncomfortable exploration of the human psyche, but not for the faint of heart. This book will linger long after the final page is turned. — Blake C. Helis, Burke’s Book Store 

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.

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Tara Stringfellow’s Magic Enuff

Tara Stringfellow (Photo: Josh Looney Photography)

Tara Stringfellow was born a poet. 

She realized this at the age of 3 when her father read her Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” one night instead of a bedtime story. “I was instantly in love,” she says. “I thought it was the best thing I’d ever heard. It felt like almost like hip-hop, because it was a rap. It rhymed. … I asked him to read it again. I was so in love with it, and he did. I stopped him, and I said, ‘This is what I’m meant to do.’ I said, ‘I’m going to be a great American poet, like whoever this guy is’. And he said, ‘Okay, well then you’ll have to be three times as good because you’re Black, you’re a woman, and you were born into a country built to enslave you.’

“So I always knew that it would be a harder road for me as a Black American woman to get anything published, for anyone to even listen to me, let alone the biggest publishing house in the world. This country does not treat even Black little girls as if they’re worth much. I knew the road ahead of me would be a long and arduous one, and I might not make it.”

Yet she, arguably, has made it. Her debut novel Memphis, released in April of 2022, was a national bestseller and a Read With Jenna Book Club Pick. All the bookstores in Memphis carried her book. “Local businesses have made me who I am, put me on the map,” the writer says. “Women in Memphis found my book, especially Black women in Memphis. They have put me on a map.

“To break out into this industry has been a godsend,” Stringfellow adds. “I don’t think it’s just talent and hard work. This world does not give that many opportunities to unpublished people of color, so I’ve been very lucky. It’s nothing short of a miracle. I just wish there were more opportunities for writers and authors of color to be more widely read in this nation.”

This isn’t anything new, of course. Only 250 years ago Phillis Wheatley could not get her poetry published in the U.S., a fact upon which Stringfellow reflects after the June release her collection of poetry Magic Enuff (The Dial Press). “It’s a huge historical achievement, I think, for the literary canon,” she says. “I’m very humbled.” 

Poetry, after all, is some of the oldest literature we have — think of Homer, Sappho, Vergil. These are the works we’ve labeled as “classics.” “[Poetry] is, to me, the highest form of literary work,” Stringfellow says. “I think poetry is revolutionary. I think it has the ability to reshape nations. … In a novel, you have a whole chapter to get your point across — I’m not knocking novelists, and novels, I love them. I’m in the middle of a novel — but in a poem, you have not even a page to get your point across. You might only have a line or not even a whole word, a syllable.”

The verses might be fleeting, but their impacts are all the more striking, the smallest detail becoming a powerful source of imagery. In Magic Enuff, Stringfellow’s poems are deeply personal. “These were written from my experiences over the years. The narrative voice and the poetry is often just my voice. Some of these poems have taken a long, long time to come to light. This collection is my life’s work. My art speaks for herself, and she speaks loud and clear and proudly.”

There are vulnerable moments within the pages, moments where she talks about her dad leaving her mom and her own divorce from her ex-husband; there are haikus about love, poems about the bonds between women and living in the South. At its core, Stringfellow observes, the book is intrinsically and unashamedly political, even in the personal. “The simple act of a Black woman sitting down to write a sonnet is a political act,” Stringfellow says. “It’s a revolutionary act.”

Many poems, though, are explicitly political, like those dedicated to Breonna Taylor, Tyre Nichols, Trayvon Martin’s mother, and Gianna Floyd, all who were killed by or whose loved ones were killed by racially motivated police violence. 

“Until Black children aren’t being gunned down in America for simply ringing somebody’s doorbell; until Black children aren’t having the police being called on them by white women for just being outside, being loud, because all children are all loud; until we have basic civil rights in this country, my writing will always be political,” Stringfellow says. “It has to be. Nina Simone once said it’s the duty of the artists to reflect the times in which they find themselves. And unfortunately, I find myself in America in 2024 in some rather turbulent times.”

Yet Stringfellow also embraces the role of the writer as a bearer of hope. She notes how the other week, she saw a woman sitting at the Memphis Chess Club reading Memphis before Magic Enuff’s release. “It was so surreal to see my book out there [even two years later],” she says. “I hope the same happens with this poetry collection — that I see her, I see the cover, and a Black woman is reading her somewhere in Memphis. That is the ideal dream for me. That is the goal, to just bring a little bit of joy to Black women here in the South. Every book I write will be for the glory of Black Southern women.”

Indeed in her poem, “Hot Combs Catfish Crumbs and Bad Men,” she writes, “God can stay asleep/ these women in my life are magic enuff.” 

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Flyer Writer Toby Sells Wrote a Book!

Photo: Ansley Murphy

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.

An Evening of Ghost Stories, Memphis Made Brewing Co. (at the Ravine), Friday, July 26, 6 p.m.

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To Read, or Not to Read (April 2024)

(Photo: Canva)

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?

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, Hanif Abdurraqib

“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

Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein

“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 the Brave, Beverly Cleary

“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 

The American Daughters, Maurice Carlos Ruffin

“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 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride

“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 

Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace 

“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 

Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, Brad Gooch

“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 Brooks by 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.

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1666: A Story of Survival

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.

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While We Were Burning

Sara Koffi (Photo: CPearce Photography)

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?”

Sara Koffi celebrates the launch of While We Were Burning at Novel on Tuesday, April 16, 6 p.m., in conversation with Kristen R. Lee.

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To Read, or Not to Read? (March 2024)

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.

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To Read, or Not to Read?

Photo: Canva

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 Tenderheaded by 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.

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Book Features Books

Paperboy Trilogy

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.

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Book Features Books Music Music Blog Music Features

Inside John Michael McCarthy’s Teenage Tupelo

Over the past 30 years, Memphis comic book artist, sculptor, and filmmaker John Michael McCarthy, aka Mike McCarthy, has taken self-mythologizing to a level few others have matched, often weaving elements of his compelling personal history into fantastic scenarios drawn from the B movies, comics, and pop icons of his youth. That’s especially true of what’s arguably McCarthy’s greatest work, the film Teenage Tupelo, released in 1995 by Something Weird Video. 

Ostensibly telling the tale of a young, buxom single mother’s odyssey through Tupelo’s underground, circa 1962, as she comes to terms with an unwanted pregnancy, it’s chiefly an homage to the low-budget flicks (think Roger Corman or Russ Meyer) that captivated young McCarthy as he grew up in Elvis Presley’s hometown, echoing those films’ visceral impact via Darin Ipema’s pitch-perfect, mostly black-and-white cinematography and a sizzling soundtrack by surf rock-crime jazz kings Impala. 

The film became a cult favorite in the ’90s, championing the burgeoning garage aesthetic of that era. No prior knowledge of McCarthy’s personal history was needed to savor the raw shock of the film’s visuals and sounds. Its staying power was confirmed in 2020 when Portugal’s Chaputa Records revived Impala’s soundtrack on vinyl, then again last May when the film was remastered and released on Blu-ray. But if the latter’s bonus director’s commentary hinted at the many layers of influences behind the film, that was nothing compared to what came next: a coffee table tome which publisher Fantagraphics Books describes as “a mammoth volume dedicated to one of the last underground sexploitation films of the 20th Century.”

With more than 300 generously illustrated pages, this would be a monumental tribute to any film, yet in this case, beyond honoring McCarthy’s vision, it’s a tribute to the entire Memphis scene of the ’90s. The fact that it’s a compendium of “essays, reviews, articles, and interviews” rather than a single narrative is actually a strength, as the book offers many voices, some from the era, some looking back in hindsight. Impala’s Scott Bomar, for instance, writes movingly of recording with the legendary Roland Janes. There are also reminiscences by the star of the film, D’Lana Tunnell of Texas, and the three supporting actors from Memphis, Kristen Hobbs, Sophie Couch (Christine Gladney), and Dawn Ashcraft (who most Memphians know as McCarthy’s wife at the time, Kimberly Ashcraft). These essays — and accompanying photos — are especially “revealing” as the four women describe McCarthy cajoling them into performing topless, and the spirit of gonzo transgression in which they did so. One might thus consider both the film and this book as bold shots across the bow in the “free the nipple” movement. 

The introduction by the Commercial Appeal’s John Beifuss sets the context perfectly, and the Memphis Flyer is well-represented with writings by Greg Akers, Chris Davis, Susan Ellis, John Floyd, Andria Lisle, and yours truly. Also on display is a letter by McCarthy’s biological father, Terry Blair Carr, published by the Flyer in 2008, though no one knew of that connection at the time. 

And that is where the personal, emotional heart of the book resides. Most of the essays are by McCarthy himself, and while many of them, bursting with wordplay, concern the process of indie filmmaking, the director, an adopted child, also delves deeply into the private family history that obliquely inspired the film. As he ruminates on the parents who raised him as well as his search for his biological parents, the book becomes a profoundly moving detective story. A further essay by Tunnell, in which she reveals that she too was adopted, resonates with this, marking both the book and the film as expressions of very heartfelt histories. 

Part of the mystery and allure of these histories is where they overlapped with the mythic realm of Elvis Presley, and his presence throughout the book lends the proceedings an epic glow. The result is a rich tapestry woven from the families, friendships, fetishes, and fandom of the last century in the land that McCarthy calls “Mythissippi,” but also in Memphis itself. And, as a celebration of the latter, the milieu in which McCarthy’s vision took root, this volume is unparalleled. Far from being mere vanity projects, the film and the book are emblematic of an evolving community. As Bomar writes, “if I were to stumble upon a time machine, I would dial in Mike McCarthy’s Memphis, TN, in the ’90s.”