100 Books Like Red

As a pastor’s kid, this light, lyrical book about a church community gathering awakens my earliest memories: the bells and banners, candles and choir, warm greetings, and toddler wiggles. This community offers something many of us lacked: “A church for all!” From the first image of a mixed-race queer family waking early for church to the assembling “Weak and healthy/ Neat and messy/ Poor and wealthy/ Plain and dressy” chatting and worshiping together—this brightly illustrated book captures a true spirit of inclusion. Like many queer people, I had to leave my first faith community. Later I was amazed to find houses of faith like this one. I even married a pastor. Young me couldn’t have imagined living out, opening a service with a book like A Church for All.

In this gorgeous, accessible story, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two transgender women meet on the street and become fast friends. They never knew whether they would eat, find shelter, or face violence from "Alice in the blue dress" (the police). Yet their friendship and generosity radiate throughout this story. They freely give their last dollar. Worry about kids without roofs. On Marsha’s birthday in 1969, they begin the “beautiful” revolution at the Stonewall Inn by refusing to be arrested for wearing dresses. This courage, this determination to create safe housing, this joyful zeal for equality inspires me still. Transgender people still face so much danger, something I've learned from people I care about. Sylvia and Marsha inspire me to revolt with love.

A few years before I came out, I remember marveling at the boldness of certain women like Frida Kahlo, Toni Morrison, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who expressed so freely. With jealous awe I wished I could do that. But how could I? I came from a family of clergy people! In time, however, those brave women inspired me as I came out loud. The remarkable autobiographical story of Congresswoman Davids has that same power. She grew up always speaking, yet also listening, including to those often ignored. A lesbian and member of the Ho Chunk Nation, which means People of the Big Voice, she saw the lack of minority representation in Congress and boldly stepped forward. Now she listens and raises her Big Voice loud in service of others! So inspiring!

A life-long lover of dresses that “swish” and “crinkle,” I’m in complete solidarity with Morris Micklewrite in his choice of the tangerine dress and shoes that “click” at dress-up time. But his classmates, hung up on narrow gender rules, don’t agree. Yet this story is not about Morris’s gender. It’s about his fondness for a color that reminds him of tigers and the sun, his love of playing spaceship and visiting elephants in his imagination. Even before I understood I was queer, I gravitated to peers who I now know are queer, too. Yet we bonded over play, singing, imagining adventures together! That’s what mattered. By this story’s end, some of Morris’s peers also realize it’s not gender rules that matter, but the greatness of the adventures you share! 

I heard about this delightful book from a friend and knew I had to read it. It is a meditation on the color blue. Each of Nelson’s “propositions” explores blue metaphorically, literally, historically, emotionally.

Reading this book I immersed myself in blue and all its facets, and through doing so I discovered the worlds of other colors, so that when I step outside, I see not only green but all greens, not only brown but all browns, and blue, of course, everywhere.

Iraq was home to about 150,000 Jews until 1948-1951. Baghdad was a very much Jewish city. Iraqi Jews were very assimilated, but there was very little known about the political and social history of Iraqi Jews beyond the Zionist story. While many of the Iraqi Jews did indeed view Zionism as a viable solution for them, overlooking Jewish involvement in Iraqi national and communist organizations misses several of the most fascinating transformations of any Jewish community in the world. In this book, Bashkin analyzed the social, cultural, and national participation of Iraqi Jews from within the perspective of Iraqi society. Interestingly, many of the patterns continued even after their migration to Israel.

This gorgeous book is both metaphoric and literal. A young boy learns about dragons (and himself, his grandmothers, and life) on a mythical bedtime story-walk to find two very different paths.

I love the message here (and that it isn’t too in-your-face message-y; the story is really primary). But the art is so gorgeous that I could dive back into it over and over again for that alone. 

Is this a children’s book? Yes. Yes, it is. Since ten-year-old me can still remember reading it, however, (particularly a paragraph about how special it was to be able to read and write in sixth-century China—which blew ten-year-old me’s mind) it’s still going on the list. Lady of Ch’iao Kuo is also one of the Scholastic Royal Diaries series, which I devoured as a younger reader, and is fabulous as a whole. It includes both well-known (another Elizabeth I book? Yep) and more obscure historical figures, all written about in a way that allows children to connect to them. Highly recommended for both the young and young at heart!

Now that I’ve raised the issue of whiteness—ways in which American structures and institutions reflect the agendas and interests of white people, and the role those structures play in shaping opportunity and life experiences—here I want to bring it front and center.

Many white people don’t recognize how they benefit from having white skin (called “white privilege”), and many white ethnic groups, including many white Jews in the U.S., deny their white privilege altogether, insisting that they too have been the victim of white discrimination, and that anti-Black racism is no different.

Brodkin offers a powerful counter-narrative, pointing out the many important ways that American Jews of European descent did indeed benefit from their white skin even when they did not realize it.

So, what are the ingredients that make a thriller thrill? Well, let’s see. I’d probably start with suspense. It’s suspense that has us turning the pages late at night long after we should have turned out the lights and floated off into dreamland. Then there’s believability. I have to be able to believe that the things going on in the story actually happened or at least that they could have happened. Otherwise, why would I care? Then mix in characters that matter to me, twists and turns to set the mind spinning, and a well-told story…and that thriller should work. The Leaving works. The story of six kindergarten kids who disappear one day with five of them returning eleven years later—wow, that premise gives me chills just thinking about the possibilities. And Tara Altebrando takes us on a heart-grabbing thrill ride, brimming with suspense, believability, and those twists and turns… show more.