  From Dorothy Wordsworth's early 19th-century journals to Carolyn Finney's interrogation of "wilderness is whiteness" — these books, and the women who wrote them, changed the nature writing game.
More for your TBR list Longer reads In the news
For Your Reading List  Credit: Berkley / Sultan Khan One of my all-time favorite types of fiction is the multi-generational family drama. Author and psychiatrist Saumya Dave's debut novel Well-Behaved Indian Women is an excellent addition to the genre. It follows three generations of Indian and Indian American women: 26-year-old Simran, a psychology student whose professional and romantic plans are complicated by her long-suppressed dreams of being a journalist; her mother Nandini, who's starting to resent the sacrifices she's made trying to be the perfect Indian immigrant and the ideal mother; and Nandini's mother Mimi, who's trying to make up for mistakes she made with Nandini through her relationship with Simran — and through her attempts to heal Simran's and Nandini's relationship.
Dave creates three distinct, nuanced voices in these three women, and through their complicated relationships, she explores the ways in which we balance ambition and desire against obligation and cultural expectations. It's a poignant, character-driven story of love and courage, and an enlightening examination of assimilation and its pitfalls. Get your copy now. —Arianna Rebolini
Chatting with Alyssa Cole  L-R: Diane Cook (credit: Katherine Rondina); Lydia Millet (credit: J. Beall) Alyssa Cole's forthcoming novel When No One Is Watching — the prolific romance writer's debut thriller — looks at gentrification and the erasure of Black history in Brooklyn. After a rough divorce, Sydney returns to the Brooklyn neighborhood she grew up in, only to find it changing rapidly. And when she decides to put together her own Brooklyn tour, she starts to suspect something more sinister than gentrification is responsible for the seeming disappearance of her Black neighbors.
We chatted with the author about shifting genres and tackling real, urgent issues in fiction.
BuzzFeed Books: What inspired When No One Is Watching?
Alyssa Cole: When No One Is Watching is inspired by the real life gentrification I witnessed over a lifetime in NYC/New Jersey, and also by the extensive historical research I've done over the last decade — first for personal reasons and then for my historical romances, which are set in eras ranging from the Battle of Brooklyn to the Freedom Rides. As I researched, it became apparent to me that if the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, that isn't its natural inclination. It's only from the hard work of people fighting against the forces of greed and white supremacy that was laid into the foundation of America. This book is in an exploration of how maddening it can be to discover injustice and feel that no one will believe you — or if they do believe you, they won't care, which is the reality of Black people and most marginalized groups in America.
BFB: How did the experience of writing a thriller differ from writing a romance?
AC: Hm, well my romances often have a bit of darkness about them (the "meet cute" in at least two of my books — Be Not Afraid, a Revolutionary War romance novella, and Radio Silence, a speculative fiction romance — have taken place over a dead body), but I got to delve a little deeper into it in a thriller. And all of my romances have a bit of mystery to them, but something I've been thinking about a lot is that all romance writers are mystery writers. This is why it's hard to get anything by Romancelandia on social media. People outside of romance believe that our main genre rule — the "happily ever after" ending — is some kind of cliche that makes the books easier to write, and that couldn't be further from the truth!
At the outset of every romance, the reader knows the characters will get together at the end of the book AND YET you as the author have to truly make them (a) invested in this couple getting together and (b) completely convinced that it might not work out, while also balancing all of the emotions that come with the various kinds of relationships. Romance writers know how to lay down clues and surprise you with twists and highs and lows like nobody's business. So the main difference was, at various beats, choosing to bring anxiety and fear to the forefront instead of the good-romance-novel-tingles and romantic tension.  "The 'meet cute' in at least two of my books — Be Not Afraid, a Revolutionary War romance novella, and Radio Silence, a speculative fiction romance — have taken place over a dead body." BFB: The book touches on issues that are at the forefront of current conversations around race and oppression in the US, especially against Black communities — themes like gentrification, white-washing, capitalism. (I've seen it described as Rear Window meets Get Out.) Can you talk a bit about exploring these themes in your writing, especially in a genre that has been so white for so long?
AC: Well these are themes I've explored for most of my writing career, and in a way this book is a way of processing how, through writing romance and now thrillers, I was exposed to how deeply ingrained white supremacy is in the American imagination as well as in its institutions. There are people who find the idea of Black people in love unbelievable, of Black people solving crime unbelievable, who seem to think people from marginalized groups are non-player characters that just wait around for something to happen to them. And the themes explored in this book are simply reality — seeing the protests and uprisings across the country lately for issues that are raised in this book has been very surreal but not surprising. There's a line in the book where Sydney says "Nothing stays buried in this city," and that's true of America, too. You can't pave over injustice and pretend everything is fine.
BFB: What are some of your favorite thrillers?
AC: Oooh, well I grew up reading Mary Higgins Clark and Walter Mosley, but some of my recent faves have been Rachel Howzell Hall's Detective Elouise Norton series (the first book is Land of Shadows), Victoria Helen Stone's Jane Doe, and Nalini Singh's A Madness of Sunshine. I also just got S.A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland which just came out, and I can't wait to dive in! ●
More From BuzzFeed
Do you know someone who would love the Books newsletter? Tell them to sign up here!
Got any feedback for us about the newsletter? Respond to this email; we'd love to hear what you want more (or less) of!
BuzzFeed, Inc. We hope you love the products we recommend! Just so you know, BuzzFeed may collect a small share of sales from the links in this email.
|
