In the 300-room Sagar Mahal, the Ocean Palace built by her great-times-four grandfather on the Arabian Sea, 13-year-old Trisha Raje is coached by her father not to be overwhelmed by the sorrow she sees at a school for the blind but instead find a solution, so she doesn’t feel badly.
And so, she does. Before long, Trisha has created a global charity that performs eye surgeries on the needy and then becomes San Francisco’s premier neurosurgeon, a woman with immense skill but so lacking in social graces that many in her family are not talking to her, as she once inadvertently jeopardized her older brother’s fast-track political career.
But that isn’t Trisha’s only difficulty in Sonali Dev’s newest book, “Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors,” an Indian take on Jane Austen’s classic, “Pride and Prejudice.”
Dev switches up the focus between Trisha and DJ Caine, a rising-star chef whose cancer-stricken sister is a patient of Trisha’s. Trisha is a descendent of Indian Royalty, while Caine, a Rwandan/Anglo-Indian, belongs to a much lower social class — the classic Austen-style mismatch.
To paraphrase Austen, Dev writes, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian-American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep,” and the book reflects classic Austen, with its subtle ironic humor and the structured setting required in any well-to-do aristocratic English or Indian milieu.
Trisha has broken the three ironclad rules of her family: Never trust an outsider, never do anything to jeopardize your brother’s political aspirations and never, ever, defy your family.
Trisha must cope with falling in love with Caine, saving his sister and ensuring that she will not somehow disgrace her family again.
Dev, who is married with two teenagers and lives in Naperville, says she’s been entranced with Jane Austen’s book since watching the Indian TV adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice,” called “Trishna,” in the 1980s when she was a middle-schooler.
“I went straight to the library and checked out “Pride and Prejudice” and read it over and over,” she says.
As for writing, Dev says she wrote before she could even read, making up stories and characters, noting she wrote and acted in her first play when she was 8. “Writing has always been with me,” she says.
She grew up in Mumbai though the family traveled a lot as her father was in the military.
“I was always the new kid on the block with a book,” she says.
She continues to read and write at an amazing speed.
“I am in fact waiting to get the edits back for my new book,” she says, noting that writing is an escape, a way of putting yourself in the shoes of someone not like you.
Sandy Stern is a fragile 85 after surviving several devastating bouts of cancer, dealing with several other ailments and the deaths of his two wives. But when his longtime friend Kiril Pafko asks Stern, a noted defense lawyer to represent him on charges of inside trading and murder. Stern though doubtful as to whether he has the physical strength and mental acuity to do so. But Stern owes Pafko, a brilliant medical doctor, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and one of the creators of g-Livia, touted as an amazing breakthrough in cancer treatment. Stern knows the latter firsthand as Pafko successfully treated him with g-Livia putting his aggressive cancer into remission.
But Stern was one of the lucky ones. g-Livia also can have deadly side effects, a fact that Pafko is said to have tried to hide by altering test data. He also sold off great amounts of stock in his company that is making the drug, hence the insider trading charge.
And so begins the opening of The Last Trial (Grand Central Publishing), Scott Turow’s latest courtroom thriller. Turow, who is retiring from his legal practice next month, has worked as a lawyer in Chicago for decades. He also is the bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Innocent and other novels, several of which have been made into movies and in all have sold more than 40 million copies. Turow, who isn’t afraid to throw his characters into dark places where all appears lost, is also credited with inventing the modern legal thriller and it’s easy to see why when reading this absorbing story which delves into drug research, development, testing and FDA approval of pharmaceutical drugs. Though none of these subjects sound fascinating, Turow, who did what he calls a “daunting amount of research,” writes about it in such a way that the process becomes a page turner.
“It also obviously has a weird relevance about rushing pharmaceuticals to market like we are today,” he says, referring to the vaccines said to be on the horizon to treat COVID-19. This being a Turow novel, there are twists and turns, ups and downs and surprises. Even when you think you’re keeping up with the plot twists, he usually manages to stay a step or more ahead. And yet in the end, it all makes sense.
“If you want to get philosophical about it, some of twists and turns stems from graduate school,” says Turow who received an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship to Stanford University’s Creative Writing Center where he attended for two years before entering Harvard Law School where he graduated cum laude. “I’ve always been aware of the artifice of the novel where there is, to some extent game playing with the reader—cat and mouse—which I enjoy doing. I also enjoy reading those stories too.”
Though Turow is retiring he’ll still do a lot of pro bono work, always a passion for him. And he is currently working on another novel. This one is centered around Pinky, Sandy Stern’s granddaughter and paralegal, a bright but erratic young woman who is working at solving the hit and run accident that severely injured Stern several months earlier. Was it an attempt to kill him? Unfortunately, Pinky also has penchant for indulging in illegal drugs. A definite break-out personality, Turow says he’s committed himself to Pinky as his major character but he worries about recreating her inner voice. But it’s a problem he will solve.
“I looked at Pinky from the outside in this book,” he says. “I’ll find my way inside in the next.”
Booksellers Select the Top Ten Titles from the First Half of 2020
Barnes & Noble Inc., the world’s largest retail bookseller, today announced that booksellers from across the U.S. selected ten titles as the Best Books of 2020 (So Far), including books that address our current moment, share lessons from the past, and bring memorable characters—both real and imagined—to life.
“Our passionate bookselling team has undertaken the distinct challenge of narrowing down our favorite books from the first half of 2020 into a short list of ten diverse and thought-provoking titles. The result is a unique range that includes the informative and historical, to electrifying new novels and even a heartwarming children’s tale about a dog, a gorilla, and an elephant,” Jackie De Leo, Vice President, Bookstore, Barnes & Noble. “I am really impressed with our booksellers’ selections, and I am pleased to recommend these titles to our customers.”
1) The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins “Readers return to the districts of Panem to see the Hunger Games in its infancy and witness a side to future-President Snow that you wouldn’t expect … A heart-stopping adrenaline rush that has you clamoring to reread the original series now that you’ve gotten a glimpse of this unexpected backstory!” -Bookseller Melissa Lavendier
2) A Burning, by Megha Majumdar “A searing debut novel filled with characters who will live with you long after you turn the final page… the intensity of this story cannot be overstated. A Burning is the best book I’ve read so far this year!” -Bookseller Sarah Coombs
4) Deacon King Kong, by James McBride “This brilliant novel starts out with a literal bang when a church deacon shoots a local drug dealer in 1969 Brooklyn. It’s a story that will captivate you until the very end. Hands down, one of the best books I’ve read this year.” -Bookseller Tara Smart
5) Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad “A must read—and ENGAGE—book and an invaluable tool for fully examining the tentacles of white privilege and for confronting our own, individual complicity in a racist culture. Said is a firm, gentle, frank, and demanding guide on a journey to explain and drive home the full meaning of what it is to be antiracist.” -Book Buyer Sallye Leventhal
6) The One and Only Bob, by Katherine Applegate “Another heartfelt and empowering novel from Katherine Applegate, it will enchant and delight the inner child in every reader. Follow Bob along on his mission to save his long-lost sister with his best friends. See Ivan again in this as he helps his friend, Bob, and root them on until the very last page.” -Bookseller
7) The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson “A beautiful history of how Churchill gave strength to the British people through times of great struggle and brought a country together.” -Bookseller Savanna Kessler
8) Stamped, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi “Stamped is a book that should be in the hands of every teenager. This book is a call to action and is written with the intention of dismantling the racist prejudices that continue to plague our nation. It is educational, important and so very relevant.” -Bookseller Victoria Bartolo
9) Untamed, by Glennon Doyle “Untamed is another honest, moving and empowering book from Glennon Doyle. Her books feel like you’re having a conversation with just her, this one is no different.” -Bookseller Sarah Smith
10) The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett “The Vanishing Half is an incredibly thought-provoking novel that touches on societal norms, gender constructs and racial inequality. Brit Bennett has given us a powerful, challenging and complex story that I absolutely recommend to anyone looking to understand racial prejudice and colorism.” -Bookseller Allison Osborn
It’s a place many of us have been in–counting calories, obsessing about what we ate and shouldn’t have and still seeing the scale tip higher and higher. There’s a different way according to Chef Daniel Orr, owner of FARMbloomington, an award winning restaurant in downtown Bloomington, Indiana and Kelley Jo Baute, owner of A Splendid Earth Wellness, a company she runs offering wellness coaching to individuals and businesses and workplace ergonomics consulting in Seymour, Indiana. The two, who are friends, melded their skills in creating MyTendWell Lifestyle Plan, a program focusing on eight different wellness factors — social, occupational, intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, environmental, and nutritional. That in turn led to writing The Wellness Lifestyle: A Chef’s Recipe for Real Life.
Daniel Orr and Kelley Jo Baute
“We’re really unique because there are no books where there’s really an exercise scientist working with an international chef,” says Baute.
When she says international, she means it. Orr, a graduate of Johnson & Wales University, a culinary school in Providence, Rhode Island, has worked in France at such restaurants as Auberge des Templiers, Restaurant Daguin and three-star L’Esperance, and Belgium’s three-star Restaurant Bruneau. After that he worked as an executive chef at several high end New York restaurants and becoming executive chef of the Cuisinart Resort & Spa in Anguilla, BVI in the Caribbean.
For her part, Baute was working on her PhD at Indiana University Bloomington when she was diagnosed, at age 41, with Stage 2 breast cancer and embarked upon a rigorous regime of chemotherapy and a year of Herceptin treatments. Doctors also removed a tumor and surrounding lymph nodes and she underwent a bilateral mastectomy. Though ongoing tests showed her to be cancer free, for the next five years she had further biopsies, a hysterectomy, and other surgeries. Despite this, she managed to complete her PhD in kinesiology and start her own business. In other words, she says, she wasn’t going to let cancer define her.
Pulling on their diverse backgrounds, Baute and Orr created an easy-to-follow book designed for those who want to enjoy food and also have a healthy and fulfilling life.
“It’s about taking care of yourself and taking care of each other, reaching a handout to help others,” Baute says.
“The Wellness Lifestyle is an all-in-one life-long wellness plan,” says Orr. “Dr. K and I wanted to create something that was a one size fits all in both understanding health and enjoying life. A lot of that is food. The fresher your food is the more nutritious it is. Many of the antioxidants are most available in the whole raw ingredient of fresh fruit and vegetables. Growing and cooking your own food is the number one thing you can do to live a healthier lifestyle.”
If you can’t grow your own, you can still cook fresh foods found at supermarkets and farm stands.
It’s important to plan a schedule of exercise, wellness and eating healthy and stick to it says Baute.
“Wellness is a lifestyle, so get started and stay committed,” she continues. “Encourage others to join you. Just keep moving.”
When New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson (Devil in the White City; Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania) moved to New York five years ago, he had what he describes as a revelation. He had watched, horrified, as 911 unfolded on CNN.
Author Erik Larson
“But I wondered what was it like for people living in New York to have their city invaded and all the fear they must have felt,” he says. “Then I started thinking about the bombing of London by the Germans during World War II. It was 57 nights of consecutive bombings. 911 shook us all but how did Londoners cope, knowing that every night their city would be bombed—that every night, hundreds of German bombers were flying over with high-explosive bombs?”
At first Larson thought he’d tell his story about an ordinary family living in London at the time.
“Then I thought why not a quintessential London family—the Churchills,” he says. “So much as been written about him, but this gave me the lens through which to tell the story.”
” I think the things that surprised me the most was the fact that Churchill was a lot of fun,” says Larson. “Even though his staff was really overworked, even though they knew Churchill was inconsiderate, but he worked just as hard or harder than anyone. They loved working with him, he was able to do that.”
He also had some intriguing habits—his drinking and his long soaks in the bathtub, smoking cigars and having his secretary take dictation, getting out, naked and wet to answer the phone and then getting back into the tub.
Churchill was also fearless and without vanity says Larson.
It drove the Nazis crazy.
Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, cursed him, writing in his diary, “When will that creature Churchill finally surrender? England cannot hold out forever!”
His speeches were so effective with the British that Goebbels was alarmed when he learned that Germans were listening to them as well and ordered them to stop, saying it was treachery.
“Churchill would visit a city that had been bombed, and people would flock to him,” says Larson. “I have no question that these visits were absolutely important to helping Britain get through this period. He was often filmed doing so for newsreels, and it was reported by newspapers and radio. This was leadership by demonstration, by showing the world that he cared, and he was fearless.”
“You wrote about my life,” I say when Nicholas Kristoff and his wife Sheryl WuDunn call me from their hotel room on a stop of their multi-city tour promoting their new book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope.
I tell them about growing up in East Chicago. Sure, it was always a blue collar town but when I was young both East Chicago and, across the Columbus Avenue bridge, Indiana Harbor where I grew up, had a vital economy, two separate but thriving downtowns and work for all those graduating from the two high schools, Roosevelt and Washington.
My mother worked at the East Chicago Public Library for 50 years and in the 1960s bought clothes at Broadway Dress Shoppe with its sleek curved window exterior. Albert’s Jewelers had a store on Main Street, and I remember my dad saying they held on as long as they could as Indiana Harbor continued to lose population and other stores closed as the manufacturing slowed down before moving. My friends and I perused the racks at the Mademoiselle Shop on Main Street, wondering if we could talk our parents into buying the latest Bobby Brooks sweater and skirt set. We bought Nancy Drew books, dress patterns and sodas at one of the two dime stores just down the street.
For children’s clothes there was Jack and Jill’s owned by my friend’s family. After he retired, my father would walk from our home by St. Catherine’s Hospital to the Olympia, the ultimate busy Greek diner or as a family we’d eat at the Trolley Diner. I’d buy freshly made bread on my way home from school at the bakery; my Romanian grandmother would get freshly butchered chicken at a meat story further south on Main always asking that the head remain on so she could make sure it really was fresh. Both the A&P and Kroger’s in Indiana Harbor gave out stamps that you’d paste in books and exchange, when you had enough for items in a catalogue.
Both downtowns were vital and busy, there were no empty store fronts. I told Kristoff and WuDunn, the only husband and wife journalist team to win a Pulitzer Prize. about how kids would graduate from high school and go straight into the mills, even those who in other cities would have gone to college. The starting pay was at least four times more than minimum wage at the time. It was hard work, sometimes dirty and dangerous but my friends whose parents worked in the mills had good solid middle class lives with the added values of health insurance and pensions and saved money because they wanted their kids to go to college. When there was a strike—particularly one that lasted for weeks and weeks—there was a feeling of unease and sadness and even fear. The annual fair held at the Katherine House where I went to day care was canceled. My friends’ families couldn’t afford to get candy and comic books after school like we used to. But then the strike was settled, and the world righted itself until it finally didn’t.
I wasn’t the first person to tell Kristoff and WuDunn about such a loss—because seeing your hometown hollowed out, losing population and good paying manufacturing jobs, echoes through you–it’s a sadness because I loved growing up there.
“Sheryl and I are so struck with stories like yours,” Kristoff tells me, noting that he’s familiar with what happened to the steel mill cities of Northwest Indiana and even their current commitments to rebuild/reimagine their identities. “wherever we are, whenever we talk about the book, people come up to us and say I grew up in a tiny town in Tennessee, Ohio or West Virginia, anywhere and say this happened to me.”
Tightrope tells the tale of an America that is still in the process of losing well-paying jobs, where people work two or more jobs just to make ends meet, where one illness can turn into a bankruptcy for those who are uninsured or underinsured and where opioids and other drugs lead to incarceration, early death and family destruction.
Like me, like most of us, Kristoff has seen it firsthand as well and he propels the book from that point of view. He grew up in Yamhill, Oregon on a sheep and cherry farm and traces what happened to the kids who rode with him on the Number 6 bus to Yamhill Grade School and then Yamhill Carlton High School. Kristoff went on to graduate from Harvard and as a Rhodes Scholar, studied law Magdalen College, Oxford. He’s a New York Times columnist, won two Pulitzer Prizes, is a frequent CNN contributor and is the author of several books.
Life wasn’t as good for many of his bus mates. About one-fourth are dead from drug overdoses, suicide from depression and despair, alcohol, obesity, reckless accidents and from what WuDunn and Kristoff call “pathologies.” Of the five Knapp children who lived next door to the Kristoff family and rode Number 6, four are dead and the fifth most likely survived because he spent 13 years in the Oregon State Penitentiary.
“We wrote this book to help change the narrative and to put human faces on issues,” says Kristoff. “Our hope is by using the narrative of the old school bus we can help generate a conversation that would lead to change. It’s deeply painful to see this happen to a community which Sheryl and I loved, where those I grew up with were opportunistic about the future when we were young. Now people are dying unnecessary.”
Each time Kristoff returned home he’d hear more horror stories. He was, he realized, watching the lives of his classmates implode and along with them, the lives of their children.
“We have so many young children now growing up in toxic environment,” he says.
“That’s why the situation is so critical,” says WuDunn, who also worked at the New York Times and is now a senior banker specializing in growth companies in technology, new media and the emerging markets. “It’s like compound interest rates on steroids –kids getting taken away by the state, trying to place them in stable foster homes, their progeny going through the same cycle.”
But WuDunn and Kristoff aren’t just about detailing the destruction and despair, they’re all about solutions as well.
“Remarkably, even during the Great Depression life expectancy didn’t fall the way it is now,” says WuDunn. “For the last three years in a row, life expectancy has decreased in the U.S. unlike other first world countries. That’s because during the depression they had a process and plans for getting back on track.”
It’s not only about the outsourcing of jobs to other countries where labor is cheaper and environmental rules lax, it’s about how America’s politicians react—or don’t– to it.
“Globalization is global, and it affects all countries, particularly our peer countries in Europe but they’re not exhibiting the same challenges that we are, to the degree that we are experiencing them,” says WuDunn. “We’re absolutely capable of changing. There’s evidence based research showing the solution of these issues. Great Britain decided to do something about children living in poverty and were able to reduce it by 50%. Portugal is the best example of dealing with drug use, they don’t jail drug users, they place them in rehab.”
Indeed, statistics indicate that a dollar invested in addiction treatment saves about $12 in reduced crime, court costs and health care savings.
“We’ve been paralyzed by this idea that nothing works,” says Kristoff. “The narrative is we waged the war on poverty and poverty won, this obsession with personal responsibility and that poverty is a choice, these false narratives are powering what’s going on in this country.”
America is crippling itself by not taking care of its own, by spending more money on incarceration that rehabilitation, by short funding schools and by a tax system that benefits the rich and takes away from the poor.
WuDunn worries about how we can maintain our primacy in the world when so many of our families are failing.
“Change will only work if everyone says we need to advocate for this,” she says. “One man came up to me and said it’s really important to invest in human capital. We need to do that if we want to be able to compete against China and India. Taking care of Americans is an investment in all of America.”
Class Mom meets Small Admissions in MINOR DRAMAS & OTHER CATASTROPHES, a wryly-observed debut about the privileged bubble that is Liston Heights High–the micro-managing parents, the overworked teachers, and the students caught in the middle–and the fallout for each of them when that bubble finally bursts.
A former teacher, Kathleen West keeps us amused and amazed in her book about the social stratas on an upper middle class high school where some parents (think Lori Loughlin) will stop at very little to make sure their children achieve what they see as success.
Isobel Johnson can’t stand helicopter parents like Julia Abbott, a stage mom whose world revolves around interfering in her children’s lives. Julia resents teachers like Isobel, who effortlessly bond with students, including Julia’s own teenagers, who’ve been pulling away from her more each year.
Isobel has spent her career in Liston Heights side-stepping the community’s high-powered families. But when she receives a threatening voicemail accusing her of Anti-Americanism and a “blatant liberal agenda,” she realizes she’s squarely in the fray. Rather than cowering, Isobel doubles down on her social-justice ideals, teaching queer theory in AP American Lit. Meanwhile, Julia, obsessed with the casting of the winter musical, inadvertently shoves the female lead after sneaking onto the school campus. The damning video goes viral and has far-reaching consequences for Julia and her entire family.
With nothing to unite them beyond the sting of humiliation from public meltdowns, Isobel and Julia will find common ground where they least expect it, confronting a secret Facebook gossip site and a pack of rabid parents in a suburb where appearance is everything.
Perfect for readers who loved the novels of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger, Laurie Gelman’s Class Mom and Amy Poeppell’s Small Admissions.
A teacher for twenty years in the Minneapolis school system, West brings her experience to a novel set in a small, privileged suburban high school that explores all sides of the teacher/parent equation: the good, the bad, and the truly outrageous. MINOR DRAMAS & OTHER CATASTROPHES is a wryly-observed story about two women: Isobel, a beloved teacher whose “unconventional” teaching methods and in-classroom politics ruffles some parents’ feathers and puts her job in serious jeopardy; and Julia, a helicopter parent who becomes the subject of a viral video when she has an altercation with a student on school grounds. MINOR DRAMAS & OTHER CATASTROPHES combines heartfelt humor with thoughtful insights into the modern challenges facing students, parents, and teachers.
A Hip Hop artist, even one who whose group has sold millions of records globally and was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, isn’t the person we typically turn to when needing relationship advice.
“We’ve had hard times, but we have resilience and we always knew we wanted to be together,” says Rev, front man of Run-DMC.
“Now people come up to us, people who see us on TV or follow us on Instagram,” says Justine about their reality shows—Run’s House, All About the Washingtons and Rev Run’s Sunday Suppers. “They ask us for advice or say we should write a book about how we make our marriage work.”
You can’t have a marriage without a love story, so let’s start with theirs. They met when Rev Run was just Joey but, still at the age of 15, an up and coming musician. He met Justine when performing at a roller rink. She was 14 but a vision in blue as he remembers. They went out, they liked each other, he wrote her a letter saying, “I will marry you one day.” But though they both lived in New York, the physical distance eventually worked against them. They parted. Joey became Rev Run, front man for the first rap group to earn a Grammy Lifetime Achievement honor. He was on top—fame, gold and platinum records, millions of fans, long days and crazy nights as he recalls. For some that would be all you’d ever need.
But there must have been something missing because years later when his cousin asked him if he remembered a girl named Justine, Rev Run asked him to get her number. He called and just like that the relationship was on again.
So what makes a marriage last, I ask Rev and he refers me to the chapter he wrote about that very subject. It’s simple but it all makes sense. “If you want to go partying and clubbing and carousing and drinking, here’s a better piece of advice: Do. Not. Get. Married.” Instead just stay single.
He has more to say.
“Be selfless, not selfish,” he tells me. “Pay attention, listen to what your spouse is saying, don’t let it be in the background. “If I can see she really wants something or if she doesn’t see my point of view, then I back up. One of the biggest takeaways I want for this book is that it’s important to listen to the whispers to avoid the screams later.”
Takeaways are a big component of their book. Each of the chapters, written alternately by Rev and Justine end with a page of “Takeaways” or their advice on nourishing relationships.
Here’s a big one from Justine.
“Both my parents were divorced and remarried,” she says. “If you have children and go into another relationship, make sure that they love your kids like they love you. And make sure you love their kids. If not, then don’t marry that person for your own selfish reasons because your child or their children will suffer.”
Luckily, when Justine met Rev she loved his three daughters. When the two adopted after the death of their infant daughter, they all blended into one family. Parenting became so important that the couple wroteTake Back Your Parenting: A Challenge to America’s Parents about how to make it all work.
Which brings us to this. Both Rev and Justine, who are a deacon and deaconess, want to help guide others—whether it’s in parenting or love. Helping is what they are all about.
One last thought. The letter 15-year-old Rev wrote the note pledging to marry Justine one day—well, she saved it and when they reconnected, she gave it to him.
What: Rev Run and Justine Simmons presentation, Q&A and book signing event. Old School Love and Why It Works
Cost: Each ticket includes a copy of the book and admits one or two people. You will receive your book when you arrive at the event. They will not be available for pick up before that time. Rev Run and Justine will be signing each attendees book and posing for photographs after their presentation.
fyi: For more information and to purchase tickets, 630-355-2665; andersonsbookshop.com
“I didn’t come out of the womb craving Oreos,” says comedian and journalist Chloe Hilliard, who is launching her new book,F*ck Your Diet and Other Things My Thighs Tells Me, this Monday and Tuesday at Zanies Comedy Night Club in Chicago. “Our food choices and our image of ourselves are part of our culture.”
Hilliard, who writes about Hip Hop culture and has been featured on C-Span, CNN Headline News, ABC News and Our World with Black Enterprise, has long had an adversarial relationship with food. Over 6-foot tall at the age of 12, she also wore both a size 12 dress and shoe at that time. In other words, she was different and she knew it.
“Fitting in was never an option for me,” Hilliard said in a phone interview, noting that she was the loser of the fat trilogy—someone with a slow metabolism, baby weight that didn’t go away and big bones. “Growing up, it was unfair that people said just do this or that to lose weight. But now I understand it’s about acceptance, to be comfortable and to be healthy and okay with who you are.”
It was a truth that Hilliard came to only after a long time of trying to change her body with the help of fad diets, intense workouts, starving herself and consuming diet pills. Now she looks at her body image in a different way and understands how much our culture negatively impacts the way we perceive ourselves, how corporations including the diet industry also reinforces our image of ourselves. It was enlightening and freeing. But it wasn’t easy.
“I thought the book was going to be way more lighthearted,” says Hilliard. “I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to write. But it helped me understand where I was at different times in my life.”
But being Hilliard, who made her national TV debut on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” the book is not only informative but laugh out loud funny as well. Afterall, she has a message for readers—you’re okay.
“I use a lot of facts and figures,” she says. “I didn’t want the book to be voyeuristic, I wanted it to be about how culture effects our relationship with food and our waistline and teaches us that we are nothing without a perfect body. I want to help people get away from that. Be healthy, be fit. It’s a new year but you don’t need to be a new you, just yourself.”
Ifyougo:
What: Chloe Hilliard is launching her new book and performing at Zanies Comedy Night Club.
When: Monday, January 6 and Tuesday, January 7 at 8 p.m.
But Frankel’s book isn’t about those heady days in the White House. Instead, the story he tells in his recently released book, The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing, about identity, family trauma and how in family those who came before us impact our own lives. It begins with his maternal grandparents, both Holocaust survivors who ultimately were able to make it to the United States and settled in Connecticut. But their trauma during those years didn’t end with the freedom and safety they found in New Haven. It echoed through the generations first to their daughter, who suffered from depression and was prone to violent outbursts and then to Frankel himself. But there was more trauma to come for Frankel.
“Shortly before joining the Obama campaign in 2007 I learned
that my father was not my dad, a secret my mother had kept from us,” says
Frankel, now the vice president of External Affairs at Andela. “In order to
wrap my head around it, I had to go back in the past to my grandparents and my
mom who had mental health issues.”
When he was writing The Survivors, Frankel says many of his relatives lobbied him to abandon the project. Besides pushback from family, he also had to deal with his own feelings.
“This was a very difficult book to write,” says Frankel,
noting that he often had to take hours and sometimes days to step away before
he could go back to exploring his family’s story. “Only by writing about it
could I process it.”
Frankel, a graduate of Princeton University and the London
School of Economics and Political Science, where he was a Fulbright Scholar,
describes putting his thoughts on paper as a form of expressive writing where
one receives physical benefits when writing about thoughts and issues that are
weighing them down.
“My goals in writing
were to be as honest as I could and also to tell the story honestly about how
World War II reverberated within my family,” he says. “All families have trauma
somewhere and there’s nothing disrespectful about being open and acknowledging
that. That’s the way we heal.”
Ifyougo:
What: Adam
Frankel talk and book signing
When:
Tuesday, November 19, 7 to 9:30 p.m.
Where:
Northbrook Public Library, 1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook, IL
Shelf Life 