Walking in My Joy

March 1, 2022

Currently president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Leahy gives us a sweeping view of U.S. politics as he tells his story as the country's longest-serving senator in The Road Taken (75,000-copy first printing). A leading light in film and television, also featured in four Broadway shows, Lewis (The Mother of Black Hollywood) recounts personal experiences encapsulating the vagaries of modern life while highlighting what she's learned about Walking in My Joy (125,00-copy first printing). In Deer Creek Drive, AWP Award-winning novelist/memoirist Lowry recalls the particularly vicious 1948 murder of society matron Idella Thompson near where she grew up in the solidly Jim Crow Mississippi Delta, with neighbors protesting the conviction of Thompson's daughter even though her claims about a fleeing Black man proved spurious. Proclaiming I'm Glad My Mom Died, actor/director McCurdy relates what it was like to be a child star (iCarly) wrestling with an eating disorder, addiction, and a controlling and aggressively ambitious mother (75,000-copy first printing). In a memoir rejecting the standard resilience trope, Nietfeld chronicles traversing a childhood encompassing a mother who put her on antipsychotics, icy foster care, Adderall addiction, and homelessness to arrive at Harvard, Big Tech, and Acceptance--crucially, of herself. Award-winning critic/novelist Tillman relates a life taken over by Mothercare after her mother was diagnosed with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (after several wrong assumptions), leading to seven surgeries, memory loss, and total dependence on her daughters.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2022
The Black actor and activist continues the life story she began recounting in her first book, The Mother of Black Hollywood. In the essay titled "Dicktimized," Lewis describes her brief relationship with a man named Tony, who she later discovered was imprisoned for committing fraud. In "Age of Innocence," the author reminisces about her relationship with her cousin Ronnie, a talented, gay hairstylist who hid his HIV-positive status while supporting Lewis through the ups and downs of her early career. "Without him around," she writes, "I would have to put on a hat and any sweat suit for an audition." Several essays deal with Lewis' commitment to activism, including a revelatory moment involving climate change while aboard a cruise in Antarctica and her vocal and organized resistance to Donald Trump, who revealed "the bones of the nation--a country that has been quietly lusting after crooks for centuries. The only good thing that man ever did was pull back the curtain on the hate the US is fueled on." Lewis also reflects on the pandemic, which she spent living with her nephew, Jason, and his "Blasian" family, while also caring for friends who suffered from both physical and mental health issues. In an essay about meeting the Obamas in the White House, Lewis writes, "My whole life is made up of moments grand enough for me to pinch myself," a description that truly fits the scope and grandeur of the stories she narrates throughout this collection. The author's voice is alternately hilarious and compassionate. Her frankness about living with bipolar disorder is particularly insightful, and her commentary on the state of mental health in the U.S. is trenchant and sincere. While the book does not have a clear structure, the essays generally connect enough to create a mostly coherent narrative. A funny and poignant essay collection by a celebrated Black actor.

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June 1, 2022
Jenifer Lewis, Hollywood diva, star of Black-ish and I Love That for You, shares personal and entertaining accounts about life after her debut bestselling book, Mother of Black Hollywood (2017). After the politically polarized 2016 election, she became an activist avidly championing the need to vote, heal our nation, and raise awareness of the treatment of marginalized U.S. citizens. Each chapter begins with thought-provoking poems about life, racism, climate change, and social justice issues. Lewis' larger-than-life personality shines throughout her memoir even as she shares such vulnerable moments as being scammed by a lover, life during COVID-19, and embracing life in her mid-sixties. She is especially candid in her reminisces about growing up poor in the small town of Kinloch, Missouri, and her unhealthy relationship with her mother, experiences that left her struggling with uncontrollable rage. Having benefited from therapy, Lewis is also a mental health advocate, providing guidance to help others work through their anger. If you want to walk in your joy, Lewis advises, you must love yourself, set boundaries, and remember that you oversee your happiness.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 13, 2022
Lewis (The Mother of Black Hollywood), star of ABC’s black-ish, presents a no-holds-barred look at her life as an actor and Black woman in America. “You know me,” she writes, “I’m comfortable front and center,” before proving just that via a piquant combination of essays that veer from recollections about fainting at a White House Christmas reception to her whirlwind weekly schedule. In the irreverent “Dicktimized,” recalling a love affair with the manager of her local gym, Lewis drolly muses “there is nothing as good for the ego as a desperate man hitting your line daily, whispering sweet nothings in your ear.” While the humor never wanes, she also digs into more serious topics, such as her tough childhood growing up in poverty-stricken Kinloch, Mo., in the 1960s; her reactions to national tragedies, including the 2015 massacre at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C.; her anxieties around “the Orange Man’s candidacy” (“This thing is a fast food glutton/ Got his finger on the button,” she writes in a poem titled “This Thing”); and Black history in America, a “relay race,” she writes, “that still in progress.” Taken together, the essays are as dynamic and vibrant as Lewis herself. Fans are lucky to be in the front row for this.

Starred review from July 1, 2022

Lewis, the outspoken, hilariously profane, and wildly entertaining actress and activist, follows up her no-holds-barred memoir Mother of Black Hollywood with a new and equally entertaining collection of autobiographical essays. One chapter movingly pays tribute to growing up with her favorite cousin Ronnie ("part cousin, part sibling, part soulmate," she clarifies). "Ronnie [who was gay] was the beginning, and since then it has been me and a hundred million gay boys running around any town I set foot in," she writes. After Ronnie's death in the 1990s, Lewis's grief almost swallowed her, she writes, until she came to realize that "my pain was merely the receipt, the proof that I had loved." A decade later, Lewis met a young, eager fan named DJ, to whom she felt an instant connection. ("He had been sent to me. Maybe by Ronnie," she writes.") DJ would fast become Lewis's assistant and move into her basement (and, soon after, win a spot on RuPaul's Drag Race, competing as his drag persona, Shangela). Lewis's book is also forthright about her activism (climate change, pro-LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter, anti-Trump), written with conviction and power. Lewis's tales are heartfelt, impassioned, and uplifting, but with a pleasing undercurrent of irreverence. VERDICT The latest memoir by fierce and fabulous Lewis easily switches between moving confessionals and fiery calls to eradicate oppression.--Kevin Howell

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.