Volume 1, No. 3: Cross-Genre Writers + Savory Dutch Baby
Greetings, friends. It’s the last day of March, which means tomorrow is April 1, which means I can finally say it (albeit a day early): happy spring! May April bring with it a wave of vaccinations, and maybe even some outdoor reading time (if you’re into that). I hope those of you who celebrate had a good Pesach. It’s usually my favorite holiday, but not being able to gather takes a lot of the joy out of it for me, so this year I just ate some chocolate-covered matzah. I’m hoping for a feast to end all feasts next year!
While many authors write only in a particular genre, many others write across two or three or more. I’m always excited when a fiction writer I love writes a book of nonfiction, or vice-versa. It’s a nice reminder that authors aren’t monoliths and aren’t required to write only one kind of book. And as someone who could recommend books all day, I especially appreciate how cross-genre writers allow me to recommend more books by authors I love to more people.
My history with each of these three authors is different. I’ve read all three of Morgan Jerkins’s books, but only one of Alexander Chee’s (I’m working on it!) I came to Caul Baby because I love Jerkins’s nonfiction so much, but I picked up Last Night at the Telegraph Club because I haven’t enjoyed other books by Malinda Lo and wanted to give this new one a try. This is the joy of cross-genre writers: more chances to enjoy a great writer, even if some of what they write is not your cup of tea.
The Books
Backlist: How to Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee (Essays, 2018)
Here’s part of what I wrote, days after finishing this novel in May 2018, when I first reviewed it on Goodreads:
Chee writes about writing in a way that cut me down to the core, with a kind of honesty that I've rarely, if ever, seen. I want to hold this book against my chest and let all its power and gorgeousness and intelligence and grace just sink into my skin.”
Here’s what I wrote when I reviewed it for Book Riot’s The Best Books of 2018 So Far:
In this profoundly moving collection of personal essays, Chee explores the complexities of identity—the ever-shifting constellation of experience and memory that dictates how we move through the world. Whether writing about tarot, rose gardening, or AIDS activism, Chee’s prose is flawless. Each essay is a knot of hard-fought wisdom, but the heart of the book is in the essays about writing, the murky intersections of author and character, writer and reader, fiction and truth. Chee writes with nuance and generosity about the wonder and loneliness of being a novelist. His raw honesty is a gift to anyone who has ever been moved by words on a page.
I borrowed this book from the library and bought it weeks later, and that was back when I almost never bought books.
I am holding it right now, and I just flipped to one of my favorite essays (how to pick? they are all my favorite!) so I could include a quote in this review. Instead of doing that, I read the essay again. Anyway, here are a few lines from ‘100 Things About Writing A Novel’:
Or it is like having imaginary friends that are the length of city blocks, the pages you write like fingerprinting them, done to prove to strangers they exist.
Reading a novel, then, is the miracle of being shown such a fingerprint and being able to guess the face, the way she walks, the times she fell in love incorrectly or to bad result, etc.
Honestly I wanted to transcribe the whole essay. I read this book while in the midst of writing the first draft of a novel (which is now in a drawer in my desk and will hopefully see the light of day eventually). I cannot explain what it felt like to read this essay then. It was like Chee had opened up my heart, found the truest, most vulnerable words I’d hidden in there, and put them on the page. I’ve read many books about writing, and none of them have ever made me cry, or catch my breath, or feel so completely seen, like this one did.
I personally think this essay is a masterclass in essays, one that will speak to you whether you’ve ever worked on a novel or not. But I mention it because there are other essays in this book that might feel, to other people, the way this one did to me. Chee’s writing is so precise, so wise and open and generous, that when he writes about something that you also know or have experienced, it feels incredibly intimate. There are many books within this one, one for every reader. It’s a remarkable gift for all of us.
I still haven’t read Chee’s two novels, Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and I have no excuses. I own them both! I’ll get to them eventually. I wonder how my experience of them will be changed by having fallen in with love Chee’s work through his nonfiction. I’m looking forward to finding out. In the meantime, all I can tell you is that How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is one of my most beloved books. If you do pick it up or have already read it, and want to talk about its many wonders and layers, I am always ready.
Frontlist: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo (YA historical fiction)
Malinda Lo is one of those beloved YA authors whose work I have never connected with. I read her sci-fi novel Adaptation and it just wasn’t my thing, so I never picked up her fantasy, even though I’d heard good things about it. But then Lo decided to write a sapphic historical set in 1950s San Francisco. That is not the sort of thing I can resist, so I decided to give her another go. Friends, I loved this book.
Lily is a Chinese-American teenager who dreams of working in the space program like her aunt. When she stumbles across an ad for a male impersonator in the paper one day, she feels a sense of recognition in her gut, though she doesn't know how to articulate it at first. Over the course of the next year, she meets and falls in love with a white classmate, Kath, and together they navigate the challenging terrain of naming who they are, and what they each want.
Lo packs so much into this book. It takes place during the Red Scare, and Communist paranoia is everywhere. The fear that Lily feels, especially for her Chinese-American family, is palpable. When she and Kath start sneaking out to the Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar, she’s terrified of what getting caught could mean for her parents. At the same time, she’s discovering a new freedom she’s never felt before, and her joy is palpable, too. Lo writers beautifully about the queer family Lily and Kath start to build with the women they meet at the club, and the sense of possibility it creates for them. She also writes about the racism that Lily encounters there; she’s often the only Asian person in the room. Lily’s life is threaded through with many emotions, often contradictory ones, and Lo perfectly captures them all.
But what I loved the most in this book are all the small moments of recognition. This is something I love in queer historical fiction, and Lo does it so beautifully here. To me, this felt like the emotional heart of the novel, this series of small moments that create space for Lily to be and express herself. There’s the first moment of recognition when she sees a a picture of a male impersonator and just—feels it, in her gut. And then they start cascading. She sees something she recongiznes in Kath, at the Telegraph Club, in the apartment of the older lesbians she meets there, in a lesbian pulp novel she picks up in a corner store. They’re not always perfect moments. This book takes place in the real world, with its racism and its homophobia, and Lily experiences both. But all of these instances of possibility, recognition, and connection feel so true to how self-discovery actually happens. There’s not always an “aha!” moment. Sometimes it’s a glance on a street corner or the cover of a dime-store novel that changes the course of a life.
This is a quiet novel, a love story seamlessly woven from all these small, poignant bursts of what is essentially a timeless, secret queer handshake: I see you, do you see me? Yes. I see you.
Upcoming: Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (Fiction, Harper, 4/6)
I absolutely loved Jerkins's two nonfiction books, This Will Be My Undoing and Wandering In Strange Lands. Both of them have the kind of momentum and rhythm that I associate with fiction. So I was excited to pick up this novel, and was not at all surprised to encounter the same kind of powerful, beautiful storytelling.
This book takes place over many years, though it’s set entirely in Harlem. It follows the interconnected lives of three generations of Black women. The book opens when Laila, trying to get pregnant after multiple miscarriages, approaches the Melancons family for help. The Melancons women are know for the healing power of their cauls. When they refuse to give Laila a caul, and her baby is stillborn, she falls into a deep grief. The narrative then moves swiftly among the women in Laila’s family—her sister, niece, and great-niece—whose lives become entangled with the Melancons women. There is quite a bit of plot, which I enjoyed letting unfold as I read, so I won’t go into any detail here.
I love a book with multiple POVs, though I don’t usually like the kind of perspective-jumping that Jerkins uses here. But she does it effortlessly, masterfully. The novel moves through almost a dozen POVs. There aren’t chapters for each character; sometimes the POV even switches in the middle of a scene. Reading it feels a little like listening to a symphony. Even when one voice rises up above the rest, you can hear other voices still humming below the surface. The many perspectives, and the way they bleed together, creates this quality of closeness—sometimes stifling, sometimes intimate.
Each of the women in this novel has their own story. But their lives are deeply linked, sometimes in ways they’re not even aware of themselves. One woman’s action affects someone else’s life affects someone else’s life and on and on and then back around to the beginning. I think this is why the many-voiced narration works so well. It’s a book about people with strong feelings about each other (love, fear, resentment), each with their own conflicting thoughts, beliefs, and desires. They way their voices topple all over each other makes that interconnectedness all the more palpable.
I also loved the deeply rooted sense of place in this novel. Everything felt like a character. Each family. The specific bit of Harem where most of the story takes place. The Melancons house, especially, an old family brownstone so vividly drawn that I can still see it, hear it, smell it. Jerkins’s writing is so firmly rooted in the physical.
I appreciate a book that asks questions it doesn’t answer. There’s a lot going on in this one. It's about mothers and daughters, generational trauma, gentrification, Black motherhood and womanhood, the ways that white people profit from Black pain. It’s about intentional and unintentional harm, how capitalism grinds down tradition, and the commodification of culture, suffering, stories. Every character makes complicated choices—good, bad, and in between. It’s messy, and Jerkins doesn’t wrap it all up neatly at the end.
Above all else, Jerkins is phenomenal storyteller. That’s why I picked this book up, and you should, too—it’s out this coming Tuesday!
The Bake
This recipe comes from Melissa Clark’s amazing cookbook Dinner, and it’s a cross-genre bake! A Dutch baby is basically a huge pancake, usually sweet. I’ve enjoyed endless variations on the sweet kind, which makes for an easy and decadent breakfast. But I didn’t fall in love with Dutch babies until I made this savory version.
This one is topped with a lemony ricotta spread and spinach, because that’s what I had around when I made it. But you can use it as a vessel for just about anything. Replace the Parmesan with cheddar, and top it with black beans, roasted sweet potatoes, and salsa. Replace the Parmesan with goat cheese, and top it with sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions. Replace the Parmesan with feta and top it with roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts. You get the idea. This bake is endlessly adaptable, quick to prepare, and makes for a delicious and filling dinner. Plus, it looks super impressive.
If you’re keeping kosher for Passover this week, I apologize for tantalizing you with flour. But now you have this recipe to look forward to!
Savory Dutch Baby with Lemony Ricotta & Spinach
Makes one 12” Dutch baby
Ingredients
138 grams (1 cup + 2 Tbs) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper (or more to taste)
8 eggs
3/4 cup whole milk
2 Tbs minced fresh thyme (feel free to use another herb instead)
6 Tbs unsalted butter
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Flaky sea slat for sprinkling
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
Juice of 1 lemon
2 garlic cloves, pressed
Several handfuls of baby spinach (or big leaves torn in pieces)
Preheat the oven to 425.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. Add the flour, salt and pepper, and whisk to combine. Stir in the thyme.
Melt the butter in a 12” cast-iron skillet (or use another kind of oven-safe skillet). Once the butter has melted, continue cooking over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, until just starting to brown. Swirl the pan so the butter evenly coats the bottom.
Pour the batter into the skillet. Sprinkle the Parmesan and flaky salt on top. Bake until puffed and golden, 20-25 minutes. If you bake it a little less, the inside will be softer and more eggy. If you bake it a little longer, the inside will be drier and you’ll get more puff. Both ways are delicious.
While the Dutch baby bakes, make the topping. Combine the ricotta, lemon juice, and garlic and stir until smooth.
As soon as it comes out of the oven, spread the ricotta over the surface and top with the spinach. Drizzle with olive oil and a few grinds of pepper. It’s most impressive served right away (it sinks within minutes), but it’s still delicious reheated as leftovers.
The Bowl & The Beat
The Bowl: Meatballs!
For a long time I thought meatballs were fancy and hard to make. I am happy to report that I was very, very wrong. They are, in fact, absurdly easy. You mix some stuff in a bowl, which takes between 5 and 15 minutes, depending on what you decide to put in. Then you shape them into balls and stick them in the oven for a bit. After that, you can eat them as is, or in a sandwich, or with grain or pasta and a sauce of your choice, or in a salad, or with some roasted veg. Or you can stick them in the freezer for later!
Preheat the oven to 425. Put a pound of thawed ground lamb in a mixing bowl. Because I am lazy, I sometimes use half-thawed meat and just chop the frozen bits into small pieces. It’s fine. Add 1/2 cup bread crumbs (I usually use panko, but any kind works, including matzoh crumbs), an egg, and some crumbled feta cheese, a good handful. Dice a small onion and add that. Press a few garlic cloves, add those too. Fresh rosemary is lovely, about a tablespoon. If you don’t have it, use dried rosemary instead. Za’atar is also nice. If you have pine nuts around, toss some in. Add salt and pepper. Mix it all together. I usually use a fork and then switch to my hands. Shape the mixture into balls. Place them on a baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes, until tender and nicely browned on top.
I love these lamb meatballs, but you can make meatballs with many other flavorings! A few favorite combos in my rotation: beef with thyme, Parmesan, and tomato paste; pork with scallions, soy sauce, and ginger; chicken with ricotta, parsley, and lemon zest.
The Beat: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badge, read by Kinsale Hueston
I’m almost done with this one—I’ve got about an hour left. I’m enjoying it, though I have found myself drifting at times, and I think that’s actually because of what I like most about it. Elatsoe is a Lipan Apache teenager with a particular affinity for ghost creatures (a normal part of the world of this novel). When her cousin Trevor is killed in what appears to be an accident, he comes to her in a dream and tells her the name of the man who murdered him. So Elatsoe makes it her mission to track down his killer.
I love Ellie. She’s confident and resourceful and completely at ease in herself. She’s got a great relationship with her parents and her best friend. She talks openly with all of them about the murder she’s trying to solve (no absent parents while kids go off into massive danger in this). Her ability to summon animal ghosts has been passed down through generations of her family, and she has a particular connection with Six Great, an ancestor whose stories Ellie treasures. She’s fiercely proud of her Lipan Apache culture and she loves her ghost dog Kirby and isn’t afraid to tell anyone who asks how much he means to her. She’s asexual, and there’s no romance in this book!
All of this is a joy to read, and it’s also the reason I’m sometimes not as engaged as I could be. This is a murder mystery, and it deals with loss and grief, but it’s not really a story about growth. (At least it hasn’t been so far.) It’s not a coming of age story. Ellie is a teenager doing her thing with the support of her people. I generally gravitate toward books with a lot more turmoil. This isn’t a criticism at all; in fact, it’s quite refreshing. It’s just requires a different kind of attention.
I absolutely love Hueston’s narration. She somehow captures all of Ellie’s love, practicality, confidence, and curiosity.
The Boost
Today is the Trans Day of Visibility. The time to celebrate trans lives and fight for trans rights is always, but right now there is a wave of truly horrifying anti-trans legislation being introduced and/or voted on in states across the country. Trans activists Raquel Willis and Chase Strangio have organized a Trans Week of Action to raise awareness—and take action against—these hateful, life-threatening laws. The Arkansas legislature has already passed a bill which, if signed into law, will ban trans youth from accessing gender-affirming care. Click through the Instagram post below to learn more about who to contact today in the Arkansas and Alabama state legislatures. You can find scripts for calls/emails, action alerts from the ACLU, and more general resources here.
Image: An Instagram post by Chase Strangio: The words “Transgender Week of Visibility & Action March 24-31 by @chasestrangio and @raquel_willis” appear against a green background that fades to blue in the center.
As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: A few weeks ago a dear friend of mine sent me this print by Nicole Manganelli (Radical Emprints). I just happened to have the perfect frame for it lying around. Now it hangs right above my desk, and every time I look up from my computer and see it, I’m happy.
And that’s it until next week. Happy eating, baking, and reading, everyone!
I have Melinda Lo's novel above and it keeps getting put on the back burner, shame on me. It's moving to the top now. Thanks for the gentle nudge. :)