Spring Break Listens

“Zora Neale Hurston’s (Their Eyes Were Watching God, Barracoon) body of work continues to grow and impress. In Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, 21 short stories, including several “lost” pieces depicting the Great Migration to northern cities and Harlem’s educated New Negro middle class, offer an updated perspective of Hurston’s Harlem Renaissance-era cultural commentary. These stories, written in the 1920s and 30s, explore toxic masculinity and women’s agency, urban vs. rural class representations, colorism/shadeism, identity politics, and the intersectionality of race, class, age, and gender in a way that remains relevant today. And, by using humor, folklore, and her unique combination of delicate prose and vernacular speech, Hurston also has written thoroughly engaging slices-of-life, always centering Black characters, from a very specific time period. To fully appreciate Hurston’s stories, Tayari Jones (An American Marriage) recommends in her foreword, “reading this work aloud, enjoying the feel of the words in your mouth, and the sound of English tightened and strummed like the strings of a banjo.””

“I never expected to enjoy this book as much as I did. I broke my cardinal rule of only listening to books while I walk. From the moment I turned this book on I did not turn it off until I finished it. I don't know whether I would have liked the book as much if I read it. The narrator did an outstanding job reading. I highly recommend this delightful book.”

“Brief and brilliant, Jenny Offill’s Weather doesn’t need page after page to trap us inside. Tearing through precision-crafted paragraphs, we willingly follow a Brooklyn librarian down a doomsday rabbit hole as she tries to limit the world’s damage to those she loves. On the express bus to the demise of civilization, find a seat next to Lizzie for a wild and witty ride through the storm raging across America. An astute and satisfying read.”

“When I attempted to write a review for Such a Fun Age, I was at a loss for words. How could I encapsulate how Kiley Reid’s startling debut perfectly captured what it means to be a woman? The societal pressure, the self-doubt, the perseverance, the constant comparison — all of it was perfectly represented through Reid’s two wonderfully flawed and captivating leads. Follow Emira and Alix, two women on seemingly incongruous paths who find themselves searching for purpose and an authentic sense of self. Such a Fun Age tackles complex issues — race, gender, economic status, and the intersection of them all — yet remains accessible. You will not want to put this book down; when you do, you’ll be itching to pick it back up again.”

“Deacon King Kong centers around an uncharacteristic event life in the projects in 1960's New York City. McBride’s highly energetic story encompasses a multitude of characters that circle the Five Ends Baptist Church, where his main character, Sportcoat, is a Deacon. Sportcoat is a hard-drinking, odd-job handyman that lost his wife two years ago (but continuously argues with her ghost), defies death multiple times, coaches a youth baseball team, and teaches Sunday School. The reader bounces around from character to character learning about the internal dynamics of the community; the mysteries, myths, and urban legends of the community and each individual’s take on shared events. The characters felt so real and the interactions often made me laugh out loud. The semi-chaotic writing style, jumping from one character’s perspective to another, was a bit challenging for me to get into at first, but soon the style clicked and I was swept away! And somehow, despite the chaos, everything ties up brilliantly at the end.”

“Casey is the brilliant and vulnerable protagonist in this well-written novel. She is a writer and is striving to have her novel published. When not writing, Casey is waiting tables in Cambridge. She finds herself torn between two lovers. One prospect is a famous writer who is a widower with two children. The other is Silas, who is a teacher and the less stable of the two suitors. He shows up whenever he feels like it. Through the book, Casey suffers a health scare which enables her to focus on what she really wants and needs in her life. The writing is spectacular. As I listened to this book, I wanted to take notes of the extraordinary language. The narrator was up to the task and did an exemplary job.”

“A hilarious sparkler of historical quirks burns down to a dangerous fuse of tampering, territory, and transnational economics in this history of the USA not as the nation you just pictured, but as the complete global network of Americans, many without the rights the Lower 48 believe in, most segregated into cells of power that occasionally overheat. Explosive. Narrator Luis Moreno delivers both bitter reality and hilarious asides with a tone of candor and clarity: A+”