By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Mar 30th, 2023
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366 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE Bonnie Garmus’s debut novel Lessons in Chemistry showcases a sucker punch narrative laced with social commentary. With the ever changing dynamic for women’s roles and perceptions in society, Garmus looks back at where they’ve been. In the 1960s, Elizabeth Zott is an aspiri...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Feb 28th, 2023
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451 Views
by Tina Miles review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE In 1850, enslaved Rose learns her nine-year-old daughter Ashley will be sold after the death of the plantation’s master. Rose hurriedly packs a cotton sack with pecans, a braid of her own hair, a dress, and composed a brief note, “with my love, always” before...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Feb 28th, 2023
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739 Views
by Jesmyn Ward review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE Ward’s heartbreaking and achingly poignant memoir explores her upbringing in DeLisle, Mississippi, a town that would eventually be wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. Raised primarily by her mother, with a father who was in and out of the house, Ward endures finan...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 30th, 2023
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374 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.” In this sweeping epic that spans almost three centuries, Yaa Gyasi delivers a powerful punch to colonial history and the transatlantic slave trad...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 30th, 2023
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714 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “A story might help you get through your life, but it doesn’t literally keep you alive — if anything, most often people who have power turn their story into a brick wall keeping out somebody else’s truth, so that they can continue the life they believe themselves to ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 6th, 2023
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472 Views
Review by Meredith Mckinnie This contemporary romance novel by Sally Rooney centers on two meandering couples and the primary friendship between the women. Alice, an independently wealthy novelist fresh off a mental breakdown, and Eileen, an editor for a literary magazine, converse via letters/emails...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Dec 1st, 2022
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421 Views
by Natasha Trethewey Natasha Trethewey’s love affair with language is so palpable that as a reader, I sometimes feel I’m witnessing something I’m not supposed to see. Her command of words and their implications and sentence structure and composition, not to mention the lyrical cadence of phrasing, re...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Nov 7th, 2022
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459 Views
by Jesmyn Ward Christophe and Joshua, fraternal twins, have just graduated high school. Raised by their maternal grandmother Ma-mee, the boys have never known life not by each other’s side. Faced with meager job opportunities and low-wage realities, the twins’ dynamic is complicated by one receiving ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Nov 7th, 2022
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588 Views
by Robert Olen Butler B utler’s collection of short stories recounts the experiences of Vietnamese Americans living in Louisiana. Each of the twelve stories is told from one character’s perspective with the topics centered on cultural differences between Vietnam and the United States. As an American ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Oct 4th, 2022
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410 Views
by Maurice Carlos Ruffin Review by Meredith McKinnie The debut novel by Maurice Carlos Ruffin casts a blistering light on the shadowed future of race relations in America. While many authors are concerned with looking backward in search of warning signs of racial regression, Ruffin dares to cast his ...
