Book of the Day Roundup: June 3-7, 2024
Breaking the Curse
A Memoir about Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft
Alex DiFrancesco
Seven Stories Press
Softcover $18.95 (192pp)
978-1-64421-384-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Alex DiFrancesco’s gripping memoir Breaking the Curse is about being unheard, misunderstood, abused, and traumatized by family members and society while growing up transgender.
In childhood, DiFrancesco was forced to dress and present as a girl, though everything in him told him that he was a boy. His cries to be seen and heard were ignored. And when his family finally began to listen, the situation got much worse: they expressed disgust, and DiFrancesco was “swept out of his body, out of knowing himself for decades.”
In places, this book is horrifying, covering addiction, mental illness, stays in mental hospitals, rapes, frequent assaults, and a break from reality. In narrating such occurrences, the prose is intimate and multisensory, thrusting attention into a dark alternate reality. There are graphic depictions and distressing scenes in which DiFrancesco struggles for wholeness and authenticity while the world uses and abuses him. His sense of confusion is palpable throughout: while trying to make sense of the world and his place in it, DiFrancesco even forgave one of his rapists.
The stage was set for such troubles, the book says, when DiFrancesco, as a child, was told over and over again that what he saw, felt, and knew was not real. Indeed, the book is persuasive regarding the importance of parents’ protecting their small children, noting that their absence in fairy tales is what makes terrifying events possible while, in real life, far greater terror is caused when those trusted to love and protect children instead inflict pain on them. That the book concludes with DiFrancesco connecting to his ancestral roots and seeking forgiveness and healing thus reads like a miracle.
An indomitable spirit triumphs in Breaking the Curse, a memoir about growing up transgender in an abusive, dangerous world.
KRISTINE MORRIS (April 25, 2024)
Fire Exit
Morgan Talty
Tin House
Hardcover $28.95 (256pp)
978-1-959030-55-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A recovering alcoholic considers what to do about his family’s secrets in Morgan Talty’s affecting novel Fire Exit.
Charles was raised on the Penobscot Island Indian Reservation by his Native American stepfather, but that doesn’t matter to the government: they only care that the blood in Charles’s veins is not Indigenous. This simple yet irrevocable fact affects every stage of his life, from where he can live to the relationship he can have with his daughter, Elizabeth. A perpetual outsider in his own community, Charles believes that telling the truth is the only way to heal his troubled daughter, but his insistence could end up doing everyone more harm than good.
Charles is torn between worrying for his mother, stolen away by dementia at a piece by piece rate, and for Elizabeth, who is struggling with something he can only speculate about based on the glimpses he steals of her from across the river that separates their homes. When he does get to meet Elizabeth at last, she proves abrasive, insensitive to everyone, and all too cognizant of the distance that a lifetime of secrecy has created between her and her biological father.
Charles’s sense of helplessness is conveyed through direct, evocative prose. Despite his convictions, he faces the fact that while blood may not matter between people who love each other, it still dictates what others think and what dangers lurk inside the mind, passed down from one generation to the next. In the tense climax, a painful part of Charles’s history threatens to repeat itself. He risks all that he has left to save Elizabeth—and to get a second chance at having a family.
In the thought-provoking novel Fire Exit, family and identity are so much more than what is in the blood or on a piece of paper.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (April 25, 2024)
Becoming Who We Are
Real Stories About Growing Up Trans
Sammy Lisel, editor
Hazel Newlevant, editor
A Wave Blue World
Softcover $16.99 (144pp)
978-1-949518-26-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
With memoir entries for transgender youths by transgender people, Becoming Who We Are is a comics anthology about the process of becoming yourself as a transgender person. It includes essential representation along with a life-affirming message: you may feel isolated, but you are not alone.
By a lineup of transgender illustrators and writers, both award-winning and breakout independent talents, the book tells nine transgender people’s stories of coming into their identities. While Rebekah Bruesehoff, the youngest contributor, is still in her late teenage years, most others reflect on their childhoods from the vantage of adulthood, with glimpses of what comes next in terms of careers to personal lives when one is living as their authentic self. Some stories touch on difficult childhoods featuring poverty and neglect—circumstances beyond children’s control. Each person’s trans identity is affected by such problems, as their abilities to focus on self-actualization are delayed amid the pressures of survival.
Unified by soft palettes, hand-drawn styles, and a cozy aesthetic, the anthology moves through contributors’ childhoods into their presents. Each entry distills a complex life story and a sense of rich personal identity into a moving yet simplified arc of figuring out what it means to be human. They emphasize the breadth of transgender experiences and the needs of young audiences, focusing not only on people from a variety of identities under the transgender umbrella, but on diversity in people’s cultural, economic, and racial backgrounds. There’s power in the depiction of transgender people in rich and poor homes, accepting families and rejecting ones, white and BIPOC spaces, and communities both urban and rural.
In the comic anthology Becoming Who We Are, transgender origin stories are just as difficult and beautiful as anyone else’s.
LETITIA MONTGOMERY-RODGERS (April 25, 2024)
The Black Woman’s Guide to Coping with Stress
Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Skills to Create a Life of Joy and Well-Being
Cheryl W. Giscombé
New Harbinger Publications
Softcover $18.95 (200pp)
978-1-64848-114-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Cheryl W. Giscombé’s inspiring guide explores why Black women are extrasusceptible to the killing effects of stress, suggesting strategies for empowerment, self-care, and radiant health.
Arguing that women must nourish their relationships with themselves first, the book notes that such a perspective runs counter to long-held beliefs in Black communities that a woman’s first responsibility is to care for, support, and be an example of stoic strength for others, all while suppressing her own emotions. Passed down through generations and embedded in the unconscious, this image of a strong, self-sacrificing pillar of the community and source of family stability (referred to by the book as the “Superwoman Schema”) still lingers. But while living up to its demands may make a woman revered in her community, the book shows that doing so has serious downsides for women’s health and happiness.
Throughout, the stresses of navigating life in a patriarchal, racist society are noted and countered by the firm, comforting promotion of mindfulness-based approaches to coping with stress. There are denial-eliminating reflections, journaling prompts, and stories from Black women dealing with internal and external conflicts in high-stress situations. All support the idea that it is possible for Black women to “harness [their] power without being worn down by the responsibilities of having it.”
Recognizing that women may encounter resistance and perhaps even anger from others when they begin implementing self-care methods, the book suggests methods to help others understand and respect women’s need for change too. These include inviting outside participation in women’s stress-relieving practices. But there are also strategies for disentangling from people who are not supportive.
The persuasive self-help guide The Black Woman’s Guide to Coping with Stress suggests that focusing on personal well-being not only leads to greater health and happiness, but is a potent act of service.
KRISTINE MORRIS (April 25, 2024)
Mythical Monsters of Greenland
A Survival Guide
Maria Bach Kreutzmann
Coco Apunnguaq Lynge
Inhabit Media
Hardcover $18.95 (96pp)
978-1-77227-499-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In the cheeky fantasy guide Mythical Monsters of Greenland, an explorer details the best ways to avoid, escape, and placate the wild spirits that inhabit Greenland’s vast wilds.
Living off the land in Greenland has never been easy. There are harsh weather conditions, deadly animals, and limited resources to contend with. For the early Inuit people, the book notes, this was all part of daily life. To make matters worse, a vast compendium of mythical creatures are said to call the island home, and most are not too fond of humans. To help protect her fellow adventurers, a monster hunter compiles a handy survival guide for those not yet acquainted with the hidden dangers of her homeland.
In this streamlined narrative, each monster receives broad analysis. The guide divides its subjects into groups: there are spirits of the dead, small dangers, and animalistic creatures. Each creature is covered via an illustration, a short biography, a description of their habitat, and an explanation of where and why one might encounter them. The dramatic digital illustrations in particular do a thorough job of encapsulating the entities’ main traits, be they horrific, playful, majestic, or wise. The Amaruq is a giant wolf many times larger than a reindeer; it doesn’t crave humans, though, and “may even guide a lost or injured hunter back to a settlement or village.” The Ijiqqat are naked, tiny, and almost cute; the elbow-walking Ikusik, in contrast, has qualities in common with a zombie.
Also included is an Inuktitut glossary and a map of Greenland—both helpful resources for understanding the lore of the region. Still, some non-Inuktitut speakers could face phonetic challenges.
Mythical Monsters of Greenland gathers Inuit mythology into a unique bestiary that even the most daring of monster hunters would do well to learn.
IAN DAILEY (April 25, 2024)
Kathy Young
