Belonging

October 1, 2022

Stand-up comic, actor (e.g., Netflix's Cobra Kai), and host of the No. 1 food podcast in the country, Green Eggs and Dan, Ahdoot uses an essay format in Undercooked to explain how food became a crutch and finally a dangerous obsession for him, starting with his brother's untimely death. Before he died of cancer, Braitman's father rushed to teach her important things like how to fix a carburetor and play good practical jokes; long after his death, she realized the cost of What Looks Like Bravery in suppressing her sorrow at his passing; following the New York Times best-selling Animal Madness. In Forager, journalism professor Dowd recalls her upbringing in the fervently Christian cult Field, founded by her domineering grandfather, where she was often cold, hungry, and abused and learned to put her trust in the natural world. Hospitalized from ages of 14 to 17 with anorexia nervosa, Freeman (House of Glass) recalls in Good Girls her subsequent years as a "functioning anorexic" and interviews doctors about new discoveries and treatments regarding the condition. In Happily, which draws on her Paris Review column of the same name, Mark uses fairytale to show how sociopolitical issues impact her own life, particularly as a Jewish woman raising Black children in the South. Philosophy professor Martin's How Not To Kill Yourself examines the mindset that has driven him to attempt suicide 10 times. Award-winning CBS journalist Miller here limns a sense of not Belonging: abandoned at birth by her mother, a Chicana hospital administrator who hushed up her affair with the married trauma surgeon (and Compton's first Black city councilman) who raised Miller, the author struggled to find her place in white-dominated schools and newsrooms and finally sought out her lost parent (60,000-copy first printing). From Mouton, Houston's first Black poet laureate and once ranked the No. 2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (Poetry Slam Inc.), Black Chameleon relates an upbringing in a world devoid of the stories needed by Black children--which she argues women must now craft (60,000-copy first printing). A graduate of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, Mount Holyoke College, and Columbia University, Ramotwala demonstrates The Will To Be in a memoir of early hardship (her mother's first-born daughter died in a firebombing before the author was born) and adjusting to life in the United States (75,000-copy first printing). In Stash, Robbins, host of the podcast The Only One in the Room, relates her recovery from dangerous drug use (e.g., stockpiling pills and scheduling withdrawals around PTA meetings and baby showers) as she struggles with being Black in a white world. Author of the multi-award-winning, multi-award-nominated No Visible Bruises, a study of domestic violence, Snyder follows up with Women We Buried, Women We Burned, her story of escaping the cult her widowed father joined and as a teenager making her way in the world (100,000-copy first printing).

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February 15, 2023
The co-host of CBS Saturday Morning recounts the quest for her biological mother. Miller's father was a successful surgeon who, even in supposedly progressive Los Angeles, encountered a color line that prompted him to political activism. As the author writes, she was "the child of a clandestine affair," and her father was reticent to reveal to her the identity of her mother, who was clearly not Black. "If I wore my hair blow-dried straight," Miller writes, "people queried whether I was Italian, Jewish, or Hispanic, peppering me with questions about my heritage long before I had examined such questions for myself." Among the Southern relatives with whom she lived, her mixed-race status was acknowledged, if quietly. However, no details were forthcoming until her gravely ill father suggested that she find her mother to answer the questions he knew his daughter harbored. One, of course, is why her mother abandoned them. Enter the color line again and the manifold prejudices of the era. Those color lines were still in play, writes Miller, when a classmate and crush, shocked to find out that she was Black, shunned her afterward. Unlike many such memoirs, the author refuses to wallow in self-pity. Instead, she is determined to claim her heritage and honor it. Unfortunately, her mother continued to distance herself, at which point Miller resolved, "no longer would I accord her half of my identity, when she had given me nothing of hers." That view gained further nuance as Miller grew to middle age and deeper wisdom. Though the author prepared a special TV segment in the hope that her mother would finally "publicly acknowledge the Black child she had borne," she understands that it will likely remain unrealized in a time when the color line still holds strong. An affecting narrative that explores race and racism while addressing deeply personal questions.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2023
When journalist Miller, co-host of CBS Saturday Morning, was born, her father was married to a woman who wasn't her mother. Her parents met at the hospital where they both worked, he as a surgeon and she as a nurse. Miller's Mexican-American mother never told her family that she was pregnant, and after giving birth, left the author with her Black father, who asked his own mother to raise the baby. Miller grew up surrounded by love and maternal figures, but always wondered about the mother who had left her. This memoir chronicles Miller's life as an inquisitive child growing up in Los Angeles. Her experiences with racism and colorism from a young age shaped her identity. After she graduated from Howard University, she determined to make a career in reporting and broadcast journalism. In her twenties, Miller learned her father had cancer, and he urged her to find her mother, if only to understand the other half of her medical history. Miller's recounting makes for a thoughtful meditation on family and identity.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 20, 2023
CBS Saturday Morning host Miller chronicles the search for her estranged birth mother in her outstanding debut. When Miller was 24, her dying father—a Black trauma surgeon—urged her to find her white Chicana mom. As a child, Miller was raised by her grandmother and a handful of other women, and she longed for a connection to her biological mother: “Why is the light pigment of my skin or the too-loose texture of my hair, physical attributes not of my choosing, bestowed upon me at birth by a woman whose face I couldn’t even conjure?” Later, she sought out half-siblings and other formerly unknown relatives to help piece together a picture of her own identity, ultimately finding her mother and uncovering the reason for her mother’s departure. Miller poignantly weaves her story with key historical moments, including the Rodney King beating—she lived a few blocks away in Compton at the time—and the fact that her father was the first doctor to treat Bobby Kennedy after he was shot. Readers will be transfixed by Miller’s thought-provoking queries about race and family, and inspired by her candor. The result is an elegantly structured soul-soother. Agent: Will Lippincott, Aevitas Creative Management.