Skip to main content

When What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Funny

Need to laugh out loud? To feel inspired? To feel seen? To feel encouraged to pursue your heart's most ambitious desires despite overwhelming odds against succeeding?  

Read Zarna Garg's memoir, which offers an intimate, compelling coming of age, immigrant's journey, family saga, and keen observations about humans and life as experienced by a hilarious, intrepid individual. 

[front cover of "Zarna Garg, This American Woman: A One-In-A-Billion Memoir" showing the Statue of Liberty holding the author in her arms with the New York City skyline in the lower half of the background] 

This American Woman: A One-In-A-Billion Memoir by Zarna Garg 
non-fiction memoir 
Ballantine Books, April 2025 

Universal themes of family love and family conflict, support and abandonment, grieving as a years' long process with lulls, parenting and being parented (or not), finding your people in friendship, romance, community presented and dissected with the author's sharp wit and insights make this memoir an entertaining and motivational read. Poignant hilarity. 

Two memorable passages* (page numbers refer to hardcover library edition): 
pg. 133 
"I'm such a freak!" I told Shalabh later. "Why can't I do anything normal? It's like I was born to just not fit anywhere and to freak everyone out." 

pg. 250 
He's [Shalabh] actually a full-on Western feminist, although he doesn't realize it... But somehow it hasn't occurred to him not to treat women as equals... 

*My reading, writing, and reviewing is romance-centric, which provides context for why these passages stuck with me.

This week's BAC Issues (Book Acquisition Compulsion)

[bookstack of 6 books, from top to bottom: Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of a Black Bookstore, Mate, Best Woman; bottom 3 books arranged showing only the bottom edges of their pages] 

This weekend launches my extended family and me into consecutive days of loving chaos. I'm thankful for all of them and for all of you. 

Wishing you an abundance of all good things that feed your body, mind, and spirit! 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Arrivals Giving BRBF Vibes + BAC Issues

Even as my friends and I enjoyed a fantastic community event yesterday in and around the Bowie Branch of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System, there was envy in my heart for all of the attendees and participants at the Black Romance Book Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. Reports of issues of crowding just made me happy for the event organizers' success while they posted apologies and corrective strategies for crowd control during the last day.  In the meantime, the new arrivals shelves at the closest library in the neighboring county offered a variety of books by BRBF authors. "Where the Melanated Are Celebrated" indeed.   [9 books, from left to right: Positive Obsession, Communion, Big Girl Blitz (atop a bookstack), The Started Ex, Fire Sword & Sea, Leave Your Mess at Home, Archangel's Eternity, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, First Sign of Danger]  Currently reading Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Mo...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Best Man: Unfinished Business by Malcolm D. Lee with Jayne Allen Delivers All the Feels

Black love. Black joy. Black drama. Humanity in its vast melanin array.   [front cover of a paperback ARC for The Best Man: Unfinished Business; silhouette of three adults] The Best Man: Unfinished Business by Malcolm D. Lee with Jayne Allen  adult contemporary fiction with romantic elements  Storehouse Voices, July 2025   First, dedicated fans of The Best Man franchise and its beloved characters need not fear how they’re treated in this first of three novels. In fact. One thread of Harper’s storyline seems to reflect the real-life author/screenwriter/director’s battle to protect and maintain the integrity of The Best Man universe. Mission accomplished.  Second, once readers - fans or not - start this novel they won’t want to stop. The compulsion to re/watch The Best Man movies and limited series and maybe even to reread this book while anticipating the release of book two in 2026 will prove difficult to resist.  Who are you?  Who are your people?...
Post a Comment
Read more