AWM Staff Picks: September 2024

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

From the publisher: “Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.”

We are thrilled to partner with Chicago Public Library this fall for their annual One Book, One Chicago initiative. This year we are celebrating Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow! We are hosting a number of events in September and October that will highlight the novel, engage with our special exhibit Level Up: Writers & Gamers, and inspire readers and writers of all ages to tell their stories. All of these events take place at the AWM and are free to attend. View the AWM’s One Book, One Chicago events here.

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomás Rivera

To celebrate the upcoming National Hispanic Heritage Month, Tomás Rivera’s …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is a children’s book but also very adult. Short vignettes and very poetic, it follows a young Mexican American farm worker coming to age during the ’50s in the southwest. My book copy is in Spanish and then translated in English in the second half. Not sure if all prints are like that, but I hope so. It was also made into a movie in the ’90s.

—Isabel, Storyteller

Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa

From the publisher: “Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa’s experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. Borderlands / La Frontera remaps our understanding of what a ‘border’ is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.”

Later this month, I am excited to host an episode of our podcast Nation of Writers that will focus on Anzaldúa’s life, writing, and lasting legacy. I’ll be joined by scholars and writers AnaLouise Keating and ire’ne lara silva. The episode will air later this month, so be sure to subscribe to our podcasts so you’re notified when it’s released!

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz

For something fun but still Latinx, I recommend Kristoffer Diaz’s, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. I still remember reading this for the first time thinking, “how could this work on the stage?”, and then being floored by the production with a complete professional wresting ring at the Geffen Playhouse in LA. It’s outrageous, hilarious and deeply moving on the ideas of how BIPOC are allowed to operate and be seen in the American public eye.

—Isabel, Storyteller

Homecoming: New and Collected Poems by Julia Alvarez

From the publisher: “Long before her award winning novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez was writing poetry that gave a distinctive voice to the Latina woman and helped give to American letters a vibrant new literary form. These more recent writings are still deeply autobiographical in nature, but written with the edgier, more knowing tone of a woman who has seen, and survived, more of life. Wonderfully lucid and engaging, toned with deep emotionality and a wry observation of life, the poems of Julia Alvarez stand next to her fiction to both delight us and give us lessons in living and loving.”

—Cristina, Development & Membership Associate

LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority by Marie Arana

From the publisher: “An exceptional, all-encompassing overview of Hispanic America based on personal interviews, deep research, and Marie Arana’s life experience as a Latina. At present, Latinos comprise 20 percent of the US population, a number that is growing. But Latinos are not a monolith. They do not represent a single group. They are varied culturally, racially, and politically. In LatinoLand, Arana celebrates Latino resilience and character and shows us why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.”

Explore more resources for Hispanic Heritage Month here!

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

From the Folger Shakespeare Library: “The comedy centers on four young men who fall in love against their wills. The men, one of them the king of Navarre, pledge to study for three years, avoiding all contact with women. When the Princess of France arrives on a state visit, the king insists she and her ladies camp outside the court. Even so, each young man falls in love with one of the ladies. Meanwhile, Don Armado, a Spanish soldier, falls for a servant girl, Jacquenetta. Costard, an illiterate local, mixes up two letters he is to deliver, one from Armado to Jacquenetta and the other from Berowne, one of the king’s companions, to Rosaline, one of the French ladies. The men confess they are in love, and devise a pageant for the ladies, who set a trap for them by exchanging identifying markers. When word comes that the princess’s father is dead, the ladies reject the men’s proposals as rash and impose a year’s delay before any further wooing.”

—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate

One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko, foreword by Studs Terkel

From the publisher: “With the incisive pen of a newspaperman and the compassionate soul of a poet, Mike Royko was a Chicago institution who became, in Jimmy Breslin’s words, ‘the best journalist of his time.’ Culled from 7500 columns and spanning four decades, the writings in this collection reflect a radically changing America as seen by a man whose keen sense of justice and humor never faltered.”

I recently had the pleasure of hosting scholars Sarah Boyd Alvarez and Bill Savage from the Newberry Library on the most recent episode of Nation of Writers about Royko. You can listen to the episode here to learn more about Royko’s life, writing, and influence.

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

Operation Mincemeat (album) with music and lyrics by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts

From the publisher: “The best reviewed show in West End history, with 56 five-star reviews!… It’s Singin’ in the Rain meets Strangers on a Train, Noel Coward meets Noel Fielding. Operation Mincemeat is the fast-paced, hilarious and unbelievable true story of the twisted secret mission that won us World War II. The question is, how did a well-dressed corpse wrong-foot Hitler? Operation Mincemeat won The Stage Debut Award for Best Composer/Lyricist and the Off-West End Award for Best Musical Production and Best Company Ensemble.”

—Matt, Community Engagement Manager

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean

From the publisher: “A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion.”

We are looking forward to our annual benefit, OnWord 2024, on September 9. Orlean is one of the night’s honorees, with special guest presenter Peter Sagal. Learn more about the benefit here.

—Nate, Digital Content Associate

Raising Arizona (film) by Joel and Ethan Coen

Incredibly written dialogue that was inspired by Southern writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. The characters are amazing and the acting sublime.

—Christopher, Director of Operations

Summer by Ali Smith

From the publisher: “The fourth novel in the Seasonal Quartet by Man Booker Prize Finalist Ali Smith. In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world’s in meltdown—and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time. This is a story about people on the brink of change. They’re family, but they think they’re strangers. So: Where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common? Summer.

—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli

In the lead up to the ridiculously split month celebrations bestowed upon us American Latinx, and the continued rise of immigration talks and policy changes of this election cycle, I can’t recommend enough Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli. It covers her time as a translator for undocumented children as they move through the asylum process in NYC on their own. I read it, gosh almost seven years ago, and I constantly think about it and my heart is still healing from it.

—Isabel, Storyteller

When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir by Esmeralda Santiago

From the publisher: “In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby’s soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.”

—Cristina, Storyteller

You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace

From the publisher: “A comic thriller following the trials and tribulations of Claire, a part-time serial killer, who is keen to keep her favorite hobby a secret—despite the efforts of a determined blackmailer. The night after her father’s funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn’t know it, but it’s not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink—even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces—something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby. The thing is, it’s not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Will Claire finish off her blackmailer before her pursuer reveals all? Let the games begin…”

—Matt, Community Engagement Manager