miareadthis - 808
reflecting on my latest dives into Kennedy Ryan, Jacqueline Woodson, and the discovery of Jessie Redmon Fauset
Dear reader. It’s Friday. Hope you’ll enjoy rest this weekend and I doubly hope it includes cozying up with your latest pick off your TBRs. Unlike in 807, I promise this post won’t be an onslaught of books bodied. I am however still enjoying Dorothy Parker’s Constant Reader one entry at a time before bed. Trying to make it last as long as possible… But first up, I tempted fate with yet another Kennedy Ryan — oh my!
Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan
Y’all. What did I say? I knew KNEW picking up Kennedy Ryan’s Before I Let Go would leave me feeling some type of way. This one I purchased in a state of panic due to the ticking clock on a gift card. I wasn’t allowed to order anything (like say Sonali Dev’s backlist of Bollywood romance novels), but I also knew it wouldn’t be a complete miss to purchase the wildly popular first installment of Kennedy Ryan’s Skyland series. “We can’t keep this one in stock,” the nearby bookseller said as I plucked it from the shelf.
While yes this was a page turner and while yes I could not put it down, like my only other attempt with Ryan’s work (Long Shot, I’m still thinking about you!), I was left a bit mad - in the ‘intensely angry or displeased’ sense of the word and also, ‘carried away by enthusiasm’ kind of mad as well. Look, the ‘second chance,’ trope is my all time favorite. Hello Jane Austen’s Persuasion. But with B.I.L.G. revolving around a divorced couple who clearly still love each other and are only separated due to unaddressed grief, I felt there were no real stakes of them not coming together in the end. While yes, romance novels are predictable and adhere to their tropes, usually somewhere toward the end of act two aka the ‘all is lost moment,’ we the reader should fear and wonder how the two protagonists will eventually end up together! Instead, I just felt like I was trudging along toward the inevitable.
Yes they had their shit to work out, but they are also very much in communication see each other every day business partners, literal neighbors, and either’s attempts at dating were far from serious steps to move on. And AND the fact that the MMC Josiah didn’t even fight for their marriage (kept waiting for that flashback scene to appear where he’d be all Dwayne Wayne’s Please Baby Please) irritated me to no end nor did Josiah ever truly check his daughter for blaming their divorce on her mom, the FMC Yasmen… I don’t know fam. This wasn’t for me.
Positives though — I love how Kennedy Ryan portrayed Black men and Josiah’s journey toward mental health and modeling that practice for his son and daughter. I loved Hendrix as a supporting character and I may MAY pick up the third book in the series to see how her story plays out. Also enjoyed the surprise recipes in the back of the book! Was not expecting that. While I wouldn’t classify this novel as food forward in the same way as Piglet, Food Person, or From Scratch, Yasmen and Josiah’s restaurant subplot made the inclusion of recipes make sense. So thank you for those given my past recipes-not-in-back-of-books complaints. Kennedy Ryan deserves all the flowers for what she’s doing and representing in the romance community. And I can’t wait to see this Skyland series come to life on Peacock!
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
While I brought Before I Let Go with me to Chicago, I ended up leaving with a copy of Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn. Whilst in Chicagoland and staying with my dear gracious cousin, I convinced her before dinner on the first night to pop into Hyde Park’s Call & Response Books. We ended up staying over an hour there - my cousin hilariously only remembering when we were checking out that I worked at a bookstore in Brooklyn while I was chatting up the owner Courtney about backend POS systems - and while the selection was tight and niche (focusing only on poc writers, love it!), it was super cozy and my cousin forbade me from sitting down on the couch because she knew I wouldn’t be able to leave. And yes - I do love the physicality of the book itself. Another french flap find! Plus the silver iridescent soft cover with bright yet not overpowering bold letters, made picking it up a treat in and of itself before I was wholly consumed by Woodson’s poetic prose.
Y’all. Do NOT sleep on this book. It’s a small little thing, not even 200 pages, but the impact, the hold, this book has on me must be examined. It’s a retrospective. An adult looking back on her formative years in Brooklyn. The hope. The heartache. The potential and losses that many a Black girl must endure and learn too early growing up Black in Brooklyn. It was a time. I wonder why someone hasn’t made a moody, vibe heavy film following the four protagonists — August, Silvia, Angela, and Gigi. After the beautiful subtleties of Mara Brock Akil’s Forever, I can totally see these four Black girls walking the blocks of Bushwick in the 70s, 80s, then 90s… a coming of age tale through the decades. But I digress… some quotes that made me pause, pencil underline, and fold down the corners of pages:
When we asked, What do you love? Sylvia looked around her perfectly pink room and said, I’m not the boss of me. How the hell would I even know.
Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone — adults promising us their own failed futures.
Don’t dream. Dreams are not for people who look like you.
On a different plane, we could have been Louis Lane or Tarzan’s Jane or Mary Tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas. We could have thrown our hats up, twirled and smiled. We could have made it after all. We watched the shows. We knew the songs. We sang along when Mary was big-eyed and awed by Minneapolis. We dreamed with Marlo of someday hitting the big time. We took off with the Flying Nun. / But we were young. And we were on on earth, heading home to Brooklyn.
On crafting the novel — A writer writes to hold on. I wanted the Bushwick of my childhood remembered on the page — so I created four girls who were fascinating and foreign to me, stepping far outside my own childhood. Then I sat the down in a neighborhood that was once as familiar to me as air.
Also on craft — At the day’s end, a writer lives alone with her story, wrestling with characters and settings, and the way light filters into and out of a scene. The deeper messages often escape her. Sometimes I take for granted the journey through the telling. At other times I curse the muses’s power. But through it all, I live each day in deep gratitude.
And the inscription before the novel begins — For Bushwick (1970 - 1990) / In Memory.
There Is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset
We can all agree Ryan Coogler ate and did his research with the late spring box office hit Sinners. I hope to see it for a third time today as of this writing1. And because of Sinners’ success and influence on the culture, I love seeing all over my bookstagram feed different influencers, publishers, librarians, and bookstores alike create reading lists. If you liked Sinners then read this…
Because of these lists, I picked up There Is Confusion by (new to me!) Jessie Redmon Fauset suggested by All Ways Black. 2 And already being a huge HUGE fan of Harlem Renaissance’s own Nella Larsen, I knew Fauset wouldn’t disappoint. While the bright lime cover caught my eye with the minimalist design, it did take the first 70 pages to get interesting. But once I hit the 70th page mark, I could NOT put this one down. It felt like I was reading a 1920s Harlem soapy as hell primetime drama with the quick, unchecked dramatic wit of Jane Austen, Nella Larsen, Dorothy Parker, and Nora Ephron.
Equal parts epic, romance full of love axis of all geometries, and social commentary on race in America and the Black impact of the Great War, somehow Fauset was able to take on all these topics with such ease and delight that at times I was rolling with laughter and just as quickly crying into my coffee given the fact that we’re still STILL having the same conversations and opinions 100 years later.
As the novel went on, so did my earmarked pages, increasing exponentially as Confusion reached its climactic end. The lives of Joanna, Maggie, and Peter will forever stay with me, and while I saw myself in each of them — Maggie’s hopes for a better life despite her circumstances, Peter wrestling with his own natural inhibitions while enduring those put upon him, and Joanna’s strife for greatness despite her race and refusing to let that be a factor in her own measure of success — Joanna’s character chilled me as her inner thoughts and ways of moving and thinking ‘bout the world heavily mirrored my own.
Like in Nella Larsen’s Passing3, the dichotomy between Clare and Irene, the push and pull of one’s allegiance, loyalty, and question of duty to your own people, similarly impacted every character in Fauset’s novel. Too, just like in Larsen’s Passing when I alighted in delight at the choices and conversations between Clare and Irene, I once again felt seen in Confusion’s Joanna, Maggie, Sylvia, and Vera. Never before Larsen or Fauset had I encountered literature that mirrored my own family’s history, worlds, and reality in regards to ‘the color problem’ in America4. Yes there’s something to be said of the tired rote-ness of the ‘tragic mulatto’ plot/trope but may I daresay — I don’t get a lot of literature (that I’m aware of, down for more recs!) that tackles my and my family’s experience so I take it where I can get it.5 Representation is a hell of a thing.
Fair to say I wholly enjoyed and most ardently recommend this book. If you’re looking for a decades sweeping epic, romance, and adventure, Fauset takes you just south of then San Juan Hill, up to the heart of Harlem on 135th Street, a train ride away to Philadelphia, and sweeps you into the racially fraught countrysides of France during the Great War all before returning us back to the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Epilogue…
On deck for summer is - The Coldest Winter Ever, the new Oyinkan Braithwaite in galley form, hoping to crack open Jafari’s latest, and try again at Sex, Lies, and Sensibility.
Definitely pre-ordering the August 2025 re-release of Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset because I’m on a roll y’all.
On that note (of said roll), I’ll also be adding to my TBR Harlem Rhapsody, the novel fictionalization of Fauset’s life.
Whilst in Chicago, I could not resist the urge to hit up Andersonville stationary shop Paper & Pencil. It was too cute!
Shoutout to the reason I was in Chicago in the first place — Beyoncé.
Peeped this med-romance book during a stroll through the Ripped Bodice Brooklyn and while I’ll be stepping outside of my comfort zone with non-poc romantic leads, I’m hype for Love Sick by Deidre Duncan because the author is a practicing OBGYN. #Authenticity
As always, thank you for reading, resist, and stay sane (and safe!) out there,
miareadthis
I did in fact see it for a third time.
I’m dumb and thought I was following a Black bookstagrammer and wanted to shout them out but after some very light digging on my end, figured out that All Ways Black is in fact a ‘year round celebration of Black authors and stories’ backed by Penguin Random House. Shoutout to
, the curator. Thank you.One of my absolute most favorite books of all time that I discovered during my senior year of college. I refuse to watch Rebecca Hall’s Netflix adaptation.
Please see The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois.
If it says anything about the author (me, authoring this substack), I didn’t first see myself reflected back through ‘popular culture’ until I laid eyes on Denise Huxtable on Cosby, then Whitley Gilbert on A Different World. I’m starved for this content y’all. But please tell me if I’m wildly miseducated or crossing some sort of line.