AWM Staff Picks: March 2024

100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell

From the publisher: “Transgressive, foulmouthed, and brutally funny, Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting the urge to self-sabotage. As they tiptoe through minefields of romantic, substance-fueled misadventure—from dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama—Purnell’s characters strive for belonging in a world that dismisses them for being Black, broke, and queer. In spite of it—or perhaps because of it—they shine. Armed with a deadpan wit, Purnell finds humor in even the darkest of nadirs with the peerless zeal, insight, and horniness of a gay punk messiah. Together, the slice-of-life tales that writhe within 100 Boyfriends are an inimitable tour of an unexposed queer underbelly. Holding them together is the vision of an iconoclastic storyteller, as fearless as he is human.”

—Matt, Community Engagement Manager

The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin

From the publisher: “When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author’s reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin’s great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who—with tragic consequences—refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.”

Later this month, learn more about Chopin on the next episode of our podcast series Nation of Writers. We’ll be joined by Heather Ostman and Bernard Koloski, two leading Chopin scholars from the Kate Chopin International Society. Subscribe to our podcasts and keep an eye out for this new episode dropping soon!

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon

From the publisher: “Joshua Harmon’s critically acclaimed play asks questions about what you choose to believe, when you’re chosen. Bad Jews tells the story of Daphna Feygenbaum, a ‘Real Jew’ with an Israeli boyfriend. When Daphna’s cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather’s Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.”

—Matt, Community Engagement Manager

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic by Daniel de Visé

From the publisher: “The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard’s Lampoon and Chicago’s Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and of course the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene.”

We’re excited to host Daniel de Visé, fittingly in downtown Chicago no less, on May 19 to discuss his book. You can attend the event in person and get the book signed by de Visé, or watch from the comfort of home by viewing the livestream of the event.

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

Chicago’s Historic Irish Pubs by Mike Danahey and Allison Hantschel

From the publisher: “From dancing at Hanley’s House of Happiness to raising pints at Kelly’s Pub on St. Patrick’s Day, the history of the Irish community in Chicago is told through stories of its gathering places. Families are drawn to the pub after Sunday church, in the midst of sporting events, following funerals, and during weddings. In good times and bad, the pub has been a source of comfort, instruction, and joy—a constant in a changing world. Based on interviews with tavern owners, musicians, bartenders, and scholars, Chicago’s Historic Irish Pubs explores the way the Irish pub defines its block, its neighborhood, and its city.”

Join us at our next happy hour event, Get Lit: Pub Night! Raise a glass to the timeless tradition of bar stool storytelling, compete in Pub Trivia, and hear behind-the-bar scenes from the authors of Chicago’s Historic Irish Pubs. Get your tickets here.

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

From the publisher: “A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history’s most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.”

—Courtney, Education Program Coordinator

Design for How People Learn, Second Edition by Julie Dirksen

From the publisher: “In Design For How People Learn, Second Edition, you’ll discover how to use the key principles behind learning, memory, and attention to create materials that enable your audience to both gain and retain the knowledge and skills you’re sharing. Updated to cover new insights and research into how we learn and remember, this new edition includes new techniques for using social media for learning as well as two brand new chapters on designing for habit and best practices for evaluating learning, such as how and when to use tests. Using accessible visual metaphors and concrete methods and examples, Design For How People Learn, Second Edition will teach you how to leverage the fundamental concepts of instructional design both to improve your own learning and to engage your audience.”

—Noelle, Education Program Coordinator

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

Decades into our future, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just made an illicit copy of a device called A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer...the Primer’s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself… Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes—members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay Hackworth in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer.

Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nell’s will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer—a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity.”

—Cristina C., Guest Services & Operations Supervisor

The Last of Us (video game) by lead writer Neil Druckman, Naughty Dog studio

After watching the HBO series, I decided to play through The Last of Us again. I was reminded of how cinematic it is in the main storyline. My favorite parts, however, are the small pieces of discovery and story that happen while I am playing. My playstyle is to pick up and actually read everything, so I find so many tidbits about the main characters Joel and Ellie as I go along. I also was not a parent the last time I played this game. It feels like I am seeing the entire thing through new eyes as Joel does his best to take care of Ellie, even while she is thoroughly competent on her own. If you don’t have the right system to play the game, the series is also a fantastic adaptation that pulls a lot of dialogue and all the key story points directly from the game.

It was also fun to play this game while working on our forthcoming exhibit Level Up: Writers and Gamers, which opens on May 24, 2024 at the American Writers Museum!

—Ari, Assistant Director, Operations & Exhibits

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

From the publisher: “Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.”

—Deanna, Storyteller

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

From the publisher: “In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.”

—Deanna, Storyteller

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

From the author: “The story of the American serial killer is one we know by heart…Notes on an Execution was born from a desire to dissect this exhausted narrative. We grow up hearing their names: Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy. They are celebrities, feared and revered, detested and adored…And yet we rarely talk about what we lose when women die…There is a universe out there, made up of girls and women, stranded by a fiction we insist on repeating. I wrote this book to give them a chance to exist beyond the men who steal the narrative. The story of the serial killer is bigger than the bodies he leaves behind—it encompasses an infinite web, an elaborate tangle of predominantly female trauma and endurance. There is a question lurking in the dark corners of that weary tale. I wrote this novel because I needed to ask. I needed to look. I am tired of seeing Ted Bundy’s face. This is a book for the women who survive.”

—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin

From the publisher: “When April Sawicki ‘borrows’ her neighbor’s car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that’s all hers. Driving without a chosen destination, she stops to rest in Ithaca. Her only plan is to survive, but as she looks for work, she finds a kindred sense of belonging at Cafe Decadence, the local coffee shop. Still, somehow, it doesn’t make sense to her that life could be this easy. The more she falls in love with her friends in Ithaca, the more she can’t shake the feeling that she’ll hurt them the way she’s been hurt. As April moves through the world, meeting people who feel like home, she chronicles her life in the songs she writes and discovers that where she came from doesn’t dictate who she has to be.”

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

The Project by Courtney Summers

From the publisher: “The Project is a pulls-no-punches story from New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award winning author Courtney Summers, about an aspiring young journalist determined to save her sister no matter the cost…Lo doesn’t know why Bea abandoned her for The Unity Project after the accident, but she never forgot what Bea said the last time they spoke: We’ll see each other again. Six years later, Lo is invited to witness the group’s workings, meet with Lev, and—she hopes—finally reconnect with her sister. But Bea is long gone, and the only one who seems to understand the depths of this betrayal is Lev. If it’s family Lo wants, he can make her a new promise…if she proves herself to him first. Powerful, suspenseful and heartbreaking, The Project follows two sisters who fall prey to the same cult leader—and their desperate fight back to one another.”

—Courtney, Education Program Coordinator

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

From the publisher: “It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of ‘what do people need?’ is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers’s new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?”

—Linda, Director of Development

Simone by Eduardo Lalo, translated by David Frye

From the publisher: “A tale of alienation, love, suspense, imagination, and literature set on the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Simone tells the story of a self-educated Chinese immigrant student courting (and stalking) a disillusioned, unnamed writer who is struggling to make a name for himself in a place that is not exactly a hotbed of literary fame…But, as mysterious messages and literary clues begin to appear, Simone progresses into a cat-and-mouse game between the writer and his mystery stalker. When the eponymous Simone’s identity is at last revealed, the writer finds in the life of this Chinese immigrant a plight not unlike his own. Traumatized and lonely, the pair moves towards bittersweet collaborations in passion, grief, and art.”

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We’re Still So Obsessed with It) by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

From the publisher: “It’s been 20 years since Mean Girls hit theaters, winning over critics and audiences alike with its razor-sharp wit, star-making turns for its then unknown cast, and obsessively quotable screenplay by Tina Fey…So Fetch tells the story of one of the most iconic teen comedies of all time, revealing how it happened, how it defined a generation, ‘like, invented’ meme culture, and why it just won’t go away, filled with exclusive interviews from the director, cast, and crew.”

We were thrilled to host Jennifer at the American Writers Museum on March 6 to discuss So Fetch. It was, like, so totally fetch IRL. If you missed it, don’t worry. We recorded it and you can watch the program on YouTube or you can listen to it on the AWM Author Talks podcast.

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

From the publisher: “On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it—she can’t do the job alone. Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it. Dark, action-packed, and swoonworthy, this is Hafsah Faizal better than ever.”

—Noelle, Education Program Coordinator