Dear friends,
I once knew a writer who had tracked every book she read in a running list since childhood. What I’m telling you is that this bitch had a chronicle of every text she’d ever read. GOD do I wish I had a notebook somewhere that substantiated the absolute trash I hoarded from the Edina Public Library in the 1990s. Ginger Rogers’ autobiography, at least five times. The saucy Irish canon of Maeve Binchy. Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood and its sequel Little Altars Everywhere. Jane Eyre. (Please understand that I was an extremely highbrow preteen who read Charlotte Brontë in between rereads of Ginger Rogers. Did you know that Ginger Rogers had five husbands and a restaurant-grade soda/ice cream fountain in her home?)
Now I am a woman who reads professionally (#dreams) and I have grown more dedicated in tracking the books I love. Annotated below is a list of books I read in 2024 that blew my mind, taught me things, or made me ugly-cry.
This American Ex-Wife, Lyz Lenz
This book was an instant bestseller for a REASON—it’s an absolute banger. One of the greatest prides in my life is having predicted that this banger would be a bestseller, on the record, during my February 2024 podcast interview with Lyz.
I probably can’t describe without yet more ugly-crying how much Lyz and this book mean to me. Lyz Lenz is the internet’s guardian angel of divorcing women, and she is out here doing God’s work. In this book you’ll learn how a missing MALE WRITERS’ TEARS mug crucially contributed to the dissolution of her marriage, why it’s easier for a 16-year-old to get married than a 41-year-old to get divorced in this broken, stolen country, and so much more. I thought Lyz combined sociological research and memoiristic reflection so skillfully—hard stats and hot tea. Everyone should read this book before, during, or after marriage—which is to say, everyone should read this book. You should also subscribe to Lyz’s Substack Men Yell At Me.
Magical/Realism, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
This is a HOLY SHIT essay collection. In my July 2024 podcast interview with Vanessa, I told her I had to read it with both hands, foot-thick as it is with references and reframings. I’ve never read a more nuanced unpacking of the resonance and complexity of Selena Quintanilla. She re-envisions Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey as The Migrant’s Journey. She fundamentally revised my understanding of what poetry is, and where it comes from, by positioning AI vs. Poetry as the ultimate death match. I texted Meera the below pages because they felt so relevant to conversations we’d had for decades.
For a bonus round, tune in to my IRL interview with Vanessa at Green Apple Books, in which I ask her at 25:20: “if this book were a baby, and you were its birthing mother, who was in the room to catch the baby?” Her answer is incredible.
America Is Not The Heart, Elaine Castillo
Unlike the two above, this book was not published in 2024, but rather in 2018. I honestly think it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It defies neat encapsulation, but in broad strokes, it charts the complexities of the migration path of the Rivera family from the Philippines to the Bay Area—specifically, to Milpitas, a suburb of San Jose. The matriarch and breadwinner of this family, Paz, works herself to the bone as a nurse in order to support a whole raft of other family members, among them her young daughter Roni, suffering from mysterious eczema and getting into fights at school, and her husband’s cousin Hero, a wounded doctor and freedom fighter recently escaped from enemy capture. Hero is one of my favorite characters ever committed to fiction, and her slowly-then-all-at-once falling in love with local Milpitas pinay makeup artist Rosalyn made me, per the subheader of this newsletter, open-mouth-sob in multiple Buenos Aires restaurants while reading this on vacation. Elaine Castillo is grand-mastering 4D chess while the rest of us drool on a checkerboard.
Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga
First published in 1988, this novel opens with a stunning line: “I was not sorry when my brother died.” Tracking the complex historical late-1960s moment in which Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, Nervous Conditions centers the quest for education of Tambu, the brainy daughter of a poor farming family who dreams of going to school. “Going to school”, of course, means learning English, observing Christian doctrine, abandoning the farm that deeply needs Tambu’s labor, and to a complex degree, meeting colonialism face-to-face. This roman-a-clef novel was brought to my attention because Dangarembga visited Stanford for an event this fall, and let me tell you, she is a fucking QUEEN. She is a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and when asked in the Q&A how she determines in what medium a story ought to be told, she said “I think every story begins with something preconscious.” I have thought about that statement every day since.
Connie: A Memoir, Connie Chung
This one snuck in under the wire—I nabbed it from the library during a winter-break visit with my kids, who are, of course, nothing but endlessly thrilled by how often Prof. Mama drags them to the library. If you were as moved as I was by the 2023 NYT story about the many Chinese American daughters named Connie in Connie Chung’s honor, or even if you just faintly remember how obsessed Stephanie Tanner was with Connie in the 90s, this memoir is for you.
Connie Chung is….a complete and total badass?! Her family’s migration story from post-WWII China to Washington, D.C. is high-stakes and gripping. She is the youngest of five famously beautiful sisters. Her forcible entrance into the pale, male, and Yale boys’ club of journalism is hustler gold. She was mentored by Walter Cronkite. She once had to repel a kiss from George McGovern. Basically, every woman who writes or reports for a living owes a very real debt of gratitude to the pathbreaking of Connie Chung, and if the below photo makes you Feel Things—holy fuck, does this photo ever make me Feel Things—you should absolutely read her book.
Honorably mentioned:
Three Women, Lisa Taddeo, couldn’t put it down.
Holding It Together, Jess Calarco, who coined the brilliantly succinct rallying cry: “Most countries have social safety nets. America has women.” We had a terrific interview with Jess on the podcast as well.
What Is This Thing Called Love, Kim Addonizio—you probably know her poem “To The Woman Crying Uncontrollably in The Next Stall”, and I devoured this sharp, sexy collection of hers.
Listen I love you joy is coming—
LEG