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Memoir

Scenes From My Life by Michael K. Williams

November 29, 2022      1 Comment

I am the last person who should be reading Michel K. Williams’s memoir. I have never seen an episode of The Wire. I only know him from his 3 episode stint on Community. In Season 3 episode 1 he says the line “I know who Sean Penn is! I seen Milk!” and I think about the way he delivered this line all the time.

I also remember how, back in the day, The Wire got so much press because they hired actors with the same lived experiences as the show. Notably, Williams was not from Baltimore and the New York projects he grew up and lived in were culturally different from the Baltimore projects…though I’m sure the producers didn’t get that nuance. 🙄

The memoir is a fascinating dive into Williams’ journey to fame and how he used his fame to become a juvenile incarceration reform advocate.

Williams was a queer Black man living in New York City during the 80’s–part of his early young adulthood was spent in the underground ballroom scene. He spent much of his life balancing his queer and Black identity. I will say–it did sort of stand out to me that there was very little about his romantic relationships or his thoughts on having his own family.

William is brutally honest about his failures and mistakes. Despite becoming a pop culture icon and renowned actor–Williams struggled to support himself and manage money well into his 40s. He found renewed purpose later in life and became an advocate for reforming juvenile incarceration.

Williams struggled with addiction his entire life which ultimately lead to his passing before this book could be completed. Williams’ addiction was often triggered after performing violent street roles that mirrored his real-life trauma. I can’t help but think that if there were more diverse roles for dark-skinned Black actors– Williams could have had a chance to expand his range and side-step his addiction.

I probably won’t watch The Wire (BTW this book spoils the show so …*20 year spoiler alert* ??) but I do want to check out his Vice show Black Market and the documentary he made about juvenile incarceration. 

If you want a cliff notes version of this book check out Vanity Fair’s Michael K. Williams Breaks Down His Career video on YouTube. I think they used this interview to help flesh out the book.

Over The Top by Jonathan Van Ness

May 25, 2022      2 Comments

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

In this revealing memoir, the bubbly grooming expert from Netflix’s Queer Eye shares their past struggles with addiction, childhood sexual abuse, and disordered eating. Van Ness takes readers along on their often messy and deeply complicated journey to becoming the on-screen persona adored by millions of fans.

Needless to say, this is a heavy read. 

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Audiobook Review: Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

October 4, 2020      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

 4 hours 55 minutes| Simon & Schuster Audio | Nonfiction | Release Date: 4/14/2020

Science reporter Lulu Miller is maybe best known as the co-founder of the Invisibilia podcast. I remember when she left the show to write a book and when I saw her book on Scribd I decided to check it out. 

This book is a mix of memoir, nature writing and biography as Miller dives into the life of 19th-century ichthyologist David Starr Jordan and his obsessive quest to categorize every existing fish. Miller became fascinated with Jordan during a bleak period in her own life and seeks to learn what drove Jordan to create order out of chaos when everything was falling apart around him. 

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Audiobook Review: Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway

September 21, 2020      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

 5 hours 9 min. | Harper Audio | Non-Fiction  | Release Date: 7/28/2020 

I’ve finally been in the mood for nonfiction again and picked this one up while browsing the new release shelf with no context whatsoever. I skim read it was about a murder and thought it was maybe true crime (it’s not). I didn’t even look at the cover long enough to realize Tretheway is a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate.

Memorial Drive is a literary eulogy to Tretheway’s mother, who was shot and killed by her abusive ex-husband in 1985 while Tretheway was away at college. The book begins with Tretheway’s experiences growing up as a biracial girl in 1960s South and she takes us along through triumphs and heartbreaks as she and her mother make their way to Atlanta for a new life together.

Tretheway has a Pulitzer Prize in poetry so it’s no surprise that the writing is amazing. There is a large section where the narrative voice switches to the second person and it is done flawlessly. I was listening to this on audio and it took me a minute to even realized she’d switched.

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All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

September 13, 2020      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

6 hrs. 42 min. | Memoir | Catapult | Release Date: 10/2/2018

Nicole Chung is probably most well known around the internet as the managing editor of the now-defunct The Toast and her If John Cho Was Your Boyfriend piece.  In her memoir she tells the story of her transracial adoption, her path to finding her birth family and how she inadvertently uncovers a family secret. 

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The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an L.A. Dungeon by Jenny Nordbak

December 31, 2018      Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

9 hrs. 11 min. | St. Martin’s Press | Macmillian |  Release Date: 4/4/2017

 Jenny Nordbak’s podcast, The Wicked Wallflowers Club, has been one of my favorite podcasts this year. Their author interviews are always a fun mix of craft talk, raunch, and bookish squee. After hearing Nordbak share a few snippets of her time as a dominatrix on the podcast I decided to check out her book to get the full story.

This memoir follows the two years in Nordbak’s early twenties where she secretly trained and worked as a dominatrix at a BDSM dungeon in Los Angeles. Nordbak weaves together the events of her “vanilla” life with anecdotes about her sessions with clients as she becomes Mistress Scarlett. I found the peek into the BDSM scene fascinating and enjoyed getting to know the irreverent found family Nordbak creates for herself.

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