Happy Monday, theydies and gentlethems! I’ve got a full roster this week for you on BBB… first up, I’m going to give a little nod (both sad and happy) to Trans Week and TDOR, there’s some rad trans books in the news that deserve a little shoutout, I’ve got a tip to make you smile, a new author (and some delicious snacks) to introduce you to, AND a review of The Harpy, by Megan Hunter, written by contributor CeCe Lyra. Stick with us, there’s lots to see!
First, I’ll give a quick shout out to Téa Mutonji’s short story collection, Shut Up You’re Pretty, which is a kickass collection that totally drew me in when I encountered it at the Toronto launch of Vivek Shraya’s VS. Books, an imprint of Arsenal Pulp Press. Mutonji’s collection is CeCe’s recommendation of a book by a Black author to check out alongside The Harpy.
Trans Week and Trans Day of Remembrance
CW: death, police violence, ableism
Full disclosure: I don’t typically mark Transgender Visibility or Awareness Week, or the Trans Day of Remembrance. There’s a lot that’s complicated and difficult for me about these events, and I do my best to affirm trans voices all the time, and not just these couple of days a year. Despite that, I know that they are meaningful to many people, and so I do want to mark them in this space this year, both with a heavy heart, and also with a celebratory spirit for all the amazing things that trans folks are doing out in the world.
There are two members of my communities that I do want to use this space to recognize and remember. First, Coco, a Black trans sex worker who died in police custody in my local community recently. As many who were close to Coco have said better than I can, Black lives matter, Black trans lives matter, and Coco deserves to be remembered and her communities deserve justice. If you are able to participate or support that cause, check out the links below.
Second, Corey Alexander passed away a few months ago. They were a disabled trans person (like me), who had to balance a lot of factors and considerations when seeking medical support and treatment. Corey was one of the first people to support this blog, and me as a content creator, and for that, I will always be grateful. They left behind an archive of incredible work, including their own books and blog, that are still available to appreciate.
I also want to use this space to share some great resources that other content creators have put together to lift up trans voices right now, and always. First, if you haven’t checked out the Transathon, an ongoing reading challenge to celebrate trans authors and books, you absolutely should. They are sharing AWESOME book lists, like this thread of books by trans authors being released in 2021, some trans books by Orca publishers, and this list from author C.G. Drews. For further reading about the Transathon, I would also recommend reading this wrap up post by participant Daniela, from The Booksnom.
One last book list that I want to share is by bookstagrammer @anyaemilie, which you can check out below:
Trans Books in the News
Quick shoutout to trans YA author Aiden Thomas, whose book Cemetery Boys is currently a finalist in the Best Debut Novel category for the Goodreads Choice Award, but also HUGE congratulations to Kacen Callendar, whose middle grade novel King and the Dragonflies won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature last week! 🎉
#DrawYourBookstore
If you need an uncomplicated bookish something to brighten your days right now, might I suggest checking out the #DrawYourBookstore hashtag, hosted by the SelfMadeHero graphic novel publisher? I discovered it earlier this week when illustrator Mariel Ashlinn Kelly posted her drawing of the bookstore of my heart, Another Story Bookshop, here in Toronto. For safety reasons, I haven’t been able to go there since April, and this drawing made my day.
New Addition to my List of Authors, the #SpineSquad
For those of you who follow this blog but who aren’t in the professional publishing world, you may not know that I am a literary agent. I don’t usually use this space to make personal announcements, but I’m making a delicious exception, just this once…
I discovered Abi Balingit’s blog, the Dusky Kitchen, when one of her recipes popped up on my Twitter timeline. It was for lao gan ma spicy chili crisp cupcakes. My partner loves that flavour that kind of makes your face go numb a little(??) and sweets, so I was immediately excited and started scrolling Abi’s feed and eating with my eyes. Not long afterward, I started chatting with Abi about working on a cookbook together – something that captures her incredible cultural experiences and translates the diasporic identity through food.
When Abi signed on to work with me, I was thrilled… but as with any agenting project, I also had some major research to do. Abi’s work is largely based on her Filipino-American experiences, and although there is a big Filipinx community in Toronto where I live now, I grew up in Newfoundland, and I had never experienced the flavours in Abi’s recipes before.
I dove into Abi’s blog. First things first, I realized that I had no idea where I was going to get the ingredients needed to make any of these recipes with the flavours that Abi was so passionate about. I did a quick Google for stores in or around Toronto that might have Filipinx products and be offering delivery, since we’re still in COVID quarantine in these parts. I was super hype when I found Sunshine Grocery. This little shop opened because of the pandemic, ships all over, and has a huge range of Filipinx products to choose from. Abi was super helpful and sent me all kinds of recommendations for stuff that my partner and I should try. Really not sure what we were getting into, we went for it…
My partner and I are both white, and when the folks from Sunshine showed up to drop off this big order we had made, they were a little confused. And honestly, so were we. Like – I wanted to trust that banana ketchup would make for good pasta sauce, but I just had zero frame of reference, you know? And listen, my partner’s face when ze first tried Filipino spaghetti? Was hilarious. But we’re both hooked on it now, so Sunshine is going to have to get used to seeing our faces! I’m super glad that we trusted Abi, because my partner and I have had a wild delicious week trying out all of the food that we got from that order – and trying Abi’s recipes!
In the spirit of the project that Abi and I will be working on together, my partner and I wanted to pick something that was nostalgic for us, and that was decidedly Filipinx, to test bake from Abi’s blog to welcome her to my author list! I had grown up eating ginger crinkle cookies at Christmastime, and my partner, sen, had grown up with a chocolate version, so we thought that Abi’s ube crinkle cookies would be the perfect place to start.
I can take no credit for the baking this time around – that was all sen – but this recipe was a simple, beautiful adventure… even though we veganized the recipe, and made it in our postage stamp sized kitchen. The cookies were completely irresistible, even though I have never tried ube in my life before this past week, and I can’t wait to try more of Abi’s recipes. Horchata bibingka is next on our list!
I am SO excited to welcome Abi to the #SpineSquad, and I’m so happy to get to learn about all this delicious food! It’s going to be so much fun.
In celebration of all of these delicious flavours that Abi has introduced me to, my partner and I also donated this week to one of the relief efforts in the Philippines following the recent typhoon. If you can donate, please do. There is a Twitter thread linked below of places that are easy and worthwhile to donate to. If you aren’t sure what the situation is in the Philippines right now, and you would like to know more, there are threads linked that summarize recent events as well.
Review of Megan Hunter’s THE HARPY, by CeCe Lyra
Married couple Lucy and Jake each have a role to play. His: reliable and successful breadwinner. Hers: loving wife and mother. It is a familiar set-up—his life is his; hers is theirs. Jake’s career takes center stage. Lucy’s part-time freelance work is barely worth noting, even to herself. They are a family. Never mind that Lucy is bored, that her sharp intellect is wasting away against a backdrop of bourgeois domesticity.
Then one day Lucy gets a call. A man is on the other end of the line. He has news: his wife, Vanessa, has been having an affair with Jake. Lucy has met Vanessa—Vanessa and Jake work together. The two couples have socialized. The betrayal cuts Lucy. Jake does not deny the adultery. He begs Lucy for forgiveness. Lucy wants to hurt Jake. (I wanted to hurt Jake, too.) And she does—a brush of her fingernail against his skin. An accident. But it is satisfying, comforting. To keep their family together, they come up with an arrangement: Lucy will hurt Jake three times, and then they will be even.
What unfolds is a dance of reckoning and retribution, one that leads Lucy down a dark path. Slowly, quietly, she succumbs to her violent impulses. Through it all, Lucy feels the push and pull of guilt (how can she unravel when she is the mother of two children?) and desire (Jake deserves this—he hurt her first). And we feel for her. After all, it is a familiar urge—inside every woman lives a question: what would happen I didn’t behave? By bearing witness to Lucy’s yielding we allow ourselves to do more than wonder.
Written in a musical prose that is both delicate and sharp, THE HARPY examines the darkness that inhabits all love stories. It reads like a fairy tale, but not of the Disney variety. It is a story about a woman succumbing to primal urges: shredding her societal self, eschewing domesticity, and allowing destructiveness to take over. It is a meditation on metamorphosis. It is a story about a woman’s unravelling. But—strangely enough—is it also the opposite. It is the story of a woman coming home to herself.
PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!
Books Beyond Binaries 