September has always felt like a second January to me.

I think many people can relate to this month having something about it that makes you want to buy a new notebook, attack your TBR, reorganize your closet, and suddenly become the kind of person who has somewhere to be every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night.

I know it’s probably the back-to-school energy that never really left me from my girlhood. But, between you and me, maybe I’m also just a little desperate for a reset.

I’ve been in a weird funk this year, and I cannot wait to turn 28. Nothing I want to dramatically overshare about on the internet, just that feeling of being slightly out of sync with yourself.

I’m a September baby, and being on the cusp of a new era has me intensely craving a change of scenery, more plans, dramatic new books, and more things to look forward to.

I want to shake things up with a reset, and September feels like a pretty good excuse. Consider this week’s newsletter my September agenda, should you need a little inspiration for yours. It’s different than my usual book-ish beat, but I hope you’ll enjoy it nonetheless.

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Read something atmospheric.

I’m finally getting around to picking The Secret History back up, which feels almost embarrassingly overdue. I read half of it last winter and never wrapped it up because of competing titles on my TBR. I’m a huge fan of the dark academia genre and can’t wait to finally finish this classic. It’s exactly what I want from a September book: suspense, dark comedy, a college campus setting, and academic elitism critique.

Make more plans.

Houston is about to be especially busy. Hispanic Heritage Month starts in September, and there are events happening all over the city. I’ve also been stalking the calendars of Houston It girls who somehow always know where to be. My favorite lists come from ’s weekend lists on her Instagram, and I highly suggest giving her a follow for impeccable recs.

The MFAH has Happy Hour Fridays that may make their way onto my calendar, and I’m eyeing Curator Talk: Kelly Montana on Fragility at the Menil Drawing Institute. The goal is one good plan a week. A very manageable amount of fun.

Find somewhere new.

Houston Restaurant Weeks runs through September 7, which seems like a very convenient excuse to make a reservation somewhere I’ve never been. I’m also on the hunt for new coffee shops because apparently I have decided that every coffee should be an outing. Recommendations welcome!

Pick up an old hobby.

I’ve been thinking about watercolor again. Designing things for book club has brought back my obsession with whimsical illustrations, and I want to see what happens if I let myself make things purely because I like them.

Clean out your camera roll.

I have an upcoming Europe trip and approximately one billion unnecessary photos taking up my phone storage. I’ll need all the storage I can spare. It also helps that getting rid of digital junk feels almost as great as getting rid of physical junk.

Text your friends.

Send the “we should hang out” text and then, crucially, actually make the plan.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship over the last few years and how much easier life feels when you spend time with people who make you laugh without trying. I want more of that this month.

Go somewhere alone.

This one might sound a little contradictory given the last item on my list. However, I love making September a time for reflection. I think this is an important part of turning a year older, but it obviously doesn't have to be exclusive to September babies. So, I’m making time to wander around for an hour with no agenda to enjoy my own company and thoughts.

And finally:

Stop waiting for something more interesting to happen.

Maybe a reset doesn’t need to be particularly profound. Maybe sometimes you just need a reason to put on the outfit, make the reservation, text the friend, and leave the house.

September is my reason, and I think that’s good enough for me.

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. It’s accompanied by a biweekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading) and hosts monthly literary events in Houston. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest club happenings and subscribe to our Substack to join the member group chat.

I hope you’ll read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator

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Hi loves <3

Another month, another Of My Mother meeting in the books.

This month, we gathered at Salento Bistrot in Rice Village to discuss Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, which is exactly the kind of book that requires a few drinks and several hours of conversation.

So, naturally, we had some things to say.

I think there is something particularly fun about reading weird books with other women. Alone, you can sit with all the strange details a story leaves behind, wondering whether you interpreted something correctly or if you completely missed the point. Then you bring the book to a table full of women, and suddenly there are fifteen different ways of looking at the same scene.

Someone catches something you missed. Someone hates the character you loved. Someone has a theory that completely changes the way you understood the ending.

I think I’m falling in love with the process of figuring out what the hell we just read together.

So, what did we think of The Lamb?

Going into this meeting, I was genuinely curious to see where everyone would land.

The Lamb is such a strange little book. It is grotesque, tender, folkloric, disturbing, and sometimes beautiful. There are a lot of themes packed into this book that could keep a club busy for quite a while.

One of my favorite conversations of the night was about the queerness in the novel.

There was a real appreciation for how casually queer relationships exist within The Lamb. The relationships between Mama and Eden, and between Margot and her friend, are never treated as some monumental revelation that needs to be announced, explained, or defended. They just exist.

Compared with everything else happening in this novel, the queerness almost feels wonderfully ordinary. Especially in a book so concerned with otherness, appetite, and womandhood, I loved that queerness was allowed to sit quietly in the background.

We were all rooting for Margot.

Without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t read the book, there was a collective sense of devastation around the table when we got around to discussing the ending.

There is something particularly heartbreaking about experiencing this story through a child who has been taught to understand an incredibly horrific world as normal. Margot’s perspective forces us to see things through the logic of a child, and that became one of the things many appreciated most about the novel.

The matter-of-fact way Margot describes violence, death, bodies, and cannibalism is almost more disturbing than if she were narrating everything with fear. She doesn’t have the vocabulary or the framework to understand just how horrifying her life is.

There was something so jarring about reading these horrific scenes through such a young voice. The childlike narration creates this strange tension between innocence and brutality that follows the entire novel.

Overall, I think the biggest surprise of our meeting was that more people liked the book than I expected. It certainly had its critics. The pacing came up more than once, and there were plenty of questions about whether every theme landed exactly where it needed to.

But even when people didn’t love it, everyone had something to say about it. And honestly, that might be the best possible outcome for a book club pick.

Takeaway cards: What our members are recommending for your next read

Every Of My Mother meeting ends with one of my favorite little traditions: the takeaway card.

Before we leave, everyone writes down a book they recommend and describes it in exactly three words. It has quickly become one of my favorite parts of the meeting because you get this tiny snapshot of what everyone is reading, loving, and obsessing over.

Here is what made it onto this month’s cards:

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
young adult · mystery · show adaptation

Happy Place by Emily Henry
fun · summer · book

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
cryptic · magical · journalistic

Emma by Jane Austen
classic · funny · girl-coded

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
girlhood · familial duty · patriarchy

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
what · the · fuck

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
touching · memoir · heartfelt

Loner by Teddy Wayne
male · loneliness · epidemic

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig
magic · mysterious · dark

Evicted by Matthew Desmond
challenging · educational · racial

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
loving · time · travel

Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
self-help · insightful · tools

The Troop by Nick Cutter
survival · horror · children

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
heartbreaking · captivating · devastating

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
time · crazy · atmosphere

It’s so interesting to see all these books next to each other. And somehow, they all came from the same table of women.

That is probably my favorite thing about Of My Mother. We have such a rich collection of perspectives and taste in our club.

I may be biased in thinking that Of My Mother somehow manages to gather some of the most interesting and lovely people across the city, but I’ll stand by that statement any day.

What’s Next for Of My Mother?

We’re leaving the blood, guts, and general psychological turmoil of The Lamb behind and heading somewhere a little more serene.

Our next read is Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst, a dreamy, sensual novel about five university friends who reunite for a week at a secluded lakeside house in the Danish countryside. There are midnight swims, old crushes, a looming wedding, and plenty of unresolved tension simmering beneath those long summer days.

As the week unfolds, the friends begin confronting their old ideas about love, friendship, adulthood, and the lives they once imagined for themselves.

We’ll be discussing Waist Deep at our next Of My Mother meeting in Houston. More details coming soon, but in the meantime, grab your copy and read along with us.

Until then, go read something weird :)

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. It’s accompanied by a biweekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading) and hosts monthly literary events in Houston. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest club happenings and subscribe to our Substack to join the member group chat.

I hope you’ll read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator

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Semi-tipsy after a spontaneous 5 o’clock drink with a friend, I walked into a small wine bar in East Downtown to spend the evening reading and mingling with strangers.

I can’t say this is entirely out of character for me as someone who runs my own book club and loves a happy hour—but signing up to do what is essentially adult silent sustained reading was definitely a first.

Monica, the lovely host of the event and founder of Come Together, is an internet friend of mine. She launched Come Together earlier this year as a social club for people to connect through their signature reading sessions.

I had been curious about her events since I first saw the idea come to life. As an introvert, I wanted the security blanket of going with a friend. But I knew this was something I needed to do alone if I really wanted to have the full experience.

So, I dashed to the bar upon arriving to help curb the nerves of being on my own. I had a bubbly glass of Elisa Cremant de Loire, which turned my semi-tipsy into two-thirds buzzed.

Monica guided me to a cozy pocket of people and helped break the ice.

The room, at first warm and flooded with light at the start of the evening, settled into a moody, candle-lit glow when the reading session kicked off.

Soft jazz music lulled me as I settled into my copy of Spring Paris Review, and I was surprised by how easily I found my typical reading rhythm.

Once the trance of the quiet reading session was broken, I spent the rest of the evening connecting with incredibly interesting people. Needless to say, I haven’t stopped thinking about that evening since.

I used to roll my eyes when I heard someone say, “Everyone is starved for community.” It didn’t make much sense to me, because these days it felt like if you really wanted to find community, third spaces were only an internet search or an Eventbrite link away.

But I started wondering (in a very Carrie Bradshaw way) why this night felt so refreshing. It’s going to sound super cliché, but it was as if I had found something I didn’t know I was missing.

At first I thought it was because everyone in the room loved books as much as I did. However, what made the night feel so special was that I had wandered into an evening shaped by chance.

In the last few years, I haven’t left much up to chance, truthfully.

Let me explain.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about browsing. Not online browsing, but the kind that asks for extended periods of time. Wandering through a bookstore without a title in mind. Pulling into an antique store because you happened to drive by it. Flipping through old magazines. Picking a restaurant because you liked the way the lights and people looked through the window.

I don’t know that we browse very much anymore. At least, I don’t.

Everything I ever need or crave or want is conveniently, algorithmically served to me through an ad or arithmetically calculated by generative AI.

I think the difference between searching and browsing is that a search begins with trying to find an answer. Browsing begins with curiosity.

When I order a book online, I usually know exactly which one I want.

Meanwhile, when I walk into a bookstore armed with nothing but chance, I usually end up leaving with something I wasn’t expecting. Or, sometimes, I buy nothing at all.

Since I started spending more time open-mindedly browsing (offline), leaving empty-handed doesn’t feel like wasted time to me anymore. Every hour spent this way not only brings me closer to defining my likes, but it also opens doors to titles I would’ve never considered—or, just as valuable, helps me realize what I hate.

I’d argue that the same thing happens with people and experiences.

I would have never been able to search for the conversations I had that night at the Come Together event because I didn’t know they existed.

I didn’t know that I’d run into an incredible whimsical florist. I didn’t know someone would have identical literary taste to me and recommend great adds to my TBR. I didn’t know I’d find someone who had fascinating suggestions for fantasy novels. And, most importantly, I didn’t know other people were wandering Houston to find like-minded, interesting people like I was.

I’ve spent a lot more time this year trying to build community beyond my own book club for the sake of embracing chance and the act of IRL browsing. Even in this brief journey, it’s led to so many exciting opportunities.

One reading event becomes another. One recommendation turns into a coffee date. Someone introduces you to someone else. Before long, a city that once felt enormous starts feeling surprisingly small.

It’s no secret that Houston’s reading community has quietly grown into something really special over the last few years. Reading clubs keep popping up across the city, and people are gathering anywhere they can carve out an hour to connect over literature.

For a city that’s often described as sprawling, books have a funny way of making it feel intimate. So, if you’ve been waiting for a sign to put yourself out there, consider this one.

Follow Come Together on Instagram to never miss their next reading night. Subscribe to Of My Mother to join our growing community. Walk into a bookstore with no shopping list. Drop into a local author event.

You might leave with nothing more than a good glass of wine and another book to add to your ever-growing stack. Or you might stumble into a conversation that changes the way you see life itself.

That’s the funny thing about chance.

Sometimes it just looks like deciding to walk into that room.

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. It’s accompanied by a biweekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading) and hosts monthly literary events in Houston. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to join our book club group chat and stay up to date on the latest club happenings.

I hope you’ll read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator

There are weeks when it feels impossible to talk about books.

I admit I’m actually really terrible at openly addressing the shitty things. I'm not trying to ignore them. Tragedy is impossible to ignore.

It’s as if I keep it all inside so that I can lessen the hurt somehow. If no one hears my heartbreak, I can pretend to feel stronger than I am. When in reality, I’m so scared that if I start to unpack how much things are crushing me, I’ll never stop screaming.

Recently, the ICE activity across Houston, my home, and the death of Lorenzo have led me to carry around a grief that’s impossible to hide. I didn’t know him personally, but as a Mexican immigrant, the pain that I feel for his family is indescribable.

When I see another Mexican family hurting, I don’t see strangers. As cliché as it is, I see my people. I see my family. I see all the people who raised me. I think about all the tiny moments that separate one family’s story from another’s and how easily things could have happened differently. It could have happened to any one of us.

I’ve struggled with what to write this week because recommending books almost feels silly compared to the heaviness in our community right now. But I’ve realized over the last few days that there are ways to care for ourselves while also caring for our community.

After all, rest is what allows us to keep showing up. So, I’ve put together a short list of gentle spaces (between pages and in person) to help you find some comfort despite what is going on. I hope that these stories and spots remind you of the tenderness that still exists in the world.

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Five comfort reads

I went back and forth on whether I wanted this list to all be titles on the immigrant experience. The truth is, I think I would rather revisit this challenge when the wounds of recent happenings don’t feel so fresh. Although immigrant stories are incredibly important and full of inspirational resilience, I realized I needed stories that would help me escape for a moment. So, I gravitated toward stories that gave my soul a soft place to rest.

Anne of Green Gables
by L. M. Montgomery | 1908 | Literary Fiction

Anne Shirley has an extraordinary ability to find beauty in even the most ordinary moments, and spending time with her feels like taking a deep breath. This novel reminds us that family isn't always the one you're born into and that hope can be cultivated even after hardship. It's the literary equivalent of sunshine breaking through the clouds.

The Summer Book
by Tove Jansson | 1972 | Finnish Literary Fiction

This quiet novel follows a grandmother and granddaughter as they spend a summer together on a small Finnish island, finding meaning in everyday conversations and observations. There's no dramatic plot to race through, only gentle reminders to slow down and notice the world around you.

Convenience Store Woman
by Sayaka Murata | 2016 | Japanese Contemporary Fiction

This book offers a comforting reminder that there isn’t just one way to build a meaningful life. Murata balances humor with tenderness as she explores identity, routine, and belonging. It's a quiet celebration of living authentically.

The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros | 1984 | Coming of Age

This is the only book on the Mexican American experience to make the list because of its soft, beautiful prose. Written in a series of lyrical vignettes, this novel captures the beauty, longing, and complexity of growing up in the U.S. as an immigrant. Cisneros brings so much warmth to even the most bittersweet moments.

Garden Spells
by Sarah Addison Allen | 2007 | Magical Realism

This charming novel blends family, food, and just a touch of magic into a story about healing after heartbreak. Every page feels cozy, reminding us that small acts of care can slowly transform our lives. It's the perfect read when you want to believe that brighter days are still ahead.

Five places in Houston where I like to cry

If you know me, you know I hate crying. Kind of like the talking-about-hard-things issue, I keep a lot of sadness bottled up. When I do need to let it out, I have a somewhat personal ritual.

I like to cry in pretty places. It sounds a little strange, but I find it very therapeutic. I’m usually behind the comfort of large sunglasses and being lulled by whatever sad tune is playing in my headphones. There’s something about falling apart in a beautiful place that makes me feel like things can’t be totally shitty forever.

If you see me in any of the places below in the near future, feel free to ignore me, BTW. I’m probably crying.

• The Menil Collection: One of Houston’s quietest spaces. The entire museum’s grounds are perfect for sitting alone and shedding a tear. Admission is always free.

• McGovern Centennial Gardens: This one is amazingly beautiful. I recommend bringing a journal and sitting on the lawn for your cry spell.

• Memorial Park Eastern Glades: One of my favorite places to take a long walk when my thoughts feel too loud. It’s a little less crowded than the Memorial Trail.

• Rothko Chapel: This one is newer to my list. It’s a literal chapel, so it was easy to reflect and let out what I was feeling.

Supporting immigrant communities in Houston

If you’re looking for a tangible way to help, here are a few organizations doing important work:

• RAICES Texas: Provides legal services, advocacy, and support for immigrants and asylum seekers.

• Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative (HILSC): Connects immigrant families with trusted legal resources.

• BakerRipley: Offers community programs, education, workforce development, and support for immigrant families across Houston.

• Houston in Action: Organizes civic engagement and provides multilingual resources for immigrant communities.

• FIEL Houston (Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha): A grassroots organization advocating for immigrant families and educational equity.

If donating isn’t possible right now, consider volunteering, sharing these organizations’ work, or simply checking in on the people around you. Sometimes the most meaningful form of solidarity is reminding someone they don’t have to carry everything alone.

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. It’s accompanied by a biweekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading) and hosts monthly literary events in Houston. Make sure to follow up on Instagram to join our book club group chat and stay up to date on the latest club happenings.

I hope you’ll read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator

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THIS MONTH’S TITLE

The Lamb

By Lucy Rose | 2025 | Horror Fiction

Although cannibalism continues to be one of the most taboo topics across cultures, more and more creatives are pushing the boundaries of their craft to use this horrifying concept to explore feminism.

Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All (2022), Mimi Cave’s Fresh (2022), and several titles in fiction like Hungerstone by Kat Dunn (2025) and Victorian Psycho by Victoria Feito (2025) have garnered a massive amount of attention while allegorically representing themes like the commodification of women, female desire, and gender norms.

This month, we’re diving into this flesh-eating genre and devouring The Lamb by Lucy Rose.

The book is set in a dingy, secluded cottage deep within the wilds of Cumbria, a rural county in North West England (apparently the third creepiest place in the UK). A young girl, Margot, and her mother live a life largely disconnected from other people, except for the occasional visits from stranded hikers and drivers. Horrifyingly, Margot’s mother regularly murders these ‘strays’ to use their bodies as the pair’s main source of food.

As Margot grows older, she begins to question their way of life and confronts the sinister happenings of their home when a beautiful woman named Eden nearly becomes their next meal. Margot then starts to go down the difficult path of finding a way to break free from the horrors of her relationship with her mother and her appetite.

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Crazy how the very first sin was a woman who ate.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this cannibalism boom has arrived in the aftermath of several difficult years. In less than a decade, we’ve gone through a global pandemic and seen an alarming wave of extreme patriarchal ideals gain more and more popularity.

Interestingly, horror has always functioned as a cultural pressure valve. For example, after the U.S.’s September 11 attacks in 2001, audiences gravitated toward optimistic and patriotic genres like superhero narratives. Marvel movies allowed us to process our collective fear, rewrite history, and imagine a future in which the U.S. came out on top.

Today, as women, our anxieties likely feel less apocalyptic and more intimate. Sometimes our scary monsters are as unassuming as the person sitting across from us on a first date. I think that’s why the horror genre of cannibalism works so well for our modern-day nightmares.

For centuries, women’s relationship with and in relation to hunger has been complex, physically and metaphorically.

Things like female beauty, labor, fertility, sexuality, youth, and emotional capacities are endlessly extracted, packaged, purchased, evaluated, and so on. Contemporary stories like Fresh (a dating-nightmare movie where a man traps his date in his home, cuts off her ass-cheek, and eats it) make this metaphor painfully explicit. The horror here puts a microscope on how, in patriarchal societies, women are already treated like meat.

On the other side of the coin, we have fem-eaters (women eating other people). The idea of a female cannibal is especially radical because, in a very literal sense, women are often conditioned to repress their appetites. Anecdotally, I can’t think of more than a handful of women whom I know personally who don’t have a strained relationship with food.

Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb, speaks beautifully about this connection between appetite and autonomy. She argues that society has a profound discomfort with women wanting things at all.

Long before contemporary horror discovered cannibal girls, women with appetites existed as monsters and vampires. Which isn’t a surprise because sin itself originated from the first female human, Eve, eating.

The vampire women of Carmilla and Dracula blurred the line between desire and consumption. They’re seductive and terrifying all at once, turning female sexuality into something that should be feared or stopped.

Ultimately, what these fem-eaters challenge us to wonder is what would happen if women stopped starving themselves (in any capacity)?

As Lucy Rose shared in an interview earlier this year, “. . . there’s a lot in The Lamb about female sexuality but that’s because the novel is about autonomy. Every single character in the book has some kind of challenge or conflict with autonomy. That’s where the cannibalism metaphor is at its strongest because there’s just so much to explore within female autonomy, whether it’s the choices we’re making, our sexuality or our relationship to desire.”

If you would like to learn more about cannibalism, horror, and feminism, I highly recommend giving this video essay a watch.

WHILE YOU READ

The art of reading is a lot like having a conversation. There should be a give-and-take tango of reading, processing, and probing. For those who are hoping to make reading more of an active experience and engage with the text, here are a few questions to keep in mind while you read The Lamb:

• When does hunger become about something other than food?

• What does the novel suggest someone can lose when their autonomy is taken away?

• What kind of hunger do you think The Lamb is really about?

HOUSTON LITERARY SALON: SAVE THE DATE

Houston, TX | August 7 | 6:30 - 8:30 PM

Please save the date for our next Of My Mother literary salon in Houston, Texas. I’ll be hosting a “Family Dinner” at a local restaurant where guests will discuss the book and connect with other Houston readers.

Meeting location details and registration will be public soon. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to stay up to date.

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. It’s accompanied by a biweekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading) and hosts monthly literary events in Houston. Make sure to follow up on Instagram to join our book club group chat and stay up to date on the latest club happenings.

I hope you’ll read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator

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SUMMER DEMANDS TO BE FELT

Growing up, summer was always the season I spent the most time alone. Restrained by my inability to drive and my parents’ unwillingness to help me maintain a social calendar, I’d spend months away from school friends, away from responsibilities, away from my typical childhood routines.

I could escape into the messy haven of my bedroom and spend hours reading, watching, digitally curating, writing, or simply resting. Not exciting business, but I savored the feeling of heightened autonomy in my sacred private space.

When I wasn’t a recluse, I convened with neighborhood girl friends of different ages. We got up to the typical summer pass-times. Playing pretend with plastic kitchen play sets. Watching R-rated movies in stuffy bedrooms. And, when the oldest girls of the bunch became teenagers, secretly chatting with strangers online and making up ridiculous stories about the adults on our street while we sat on hot cement curbs. Regardless of the activity, though, we would usually end up fed up with one another and storming off home as dusk settled around us.

And when boredom finally got the best of me, and none of my usual pastimes seemed appetizing, I’d get up, go to my living room, and spin in place. My arms stretched out and feet tripping over one another as I gained speed.

I would spin, spin, spin, spin, and spin until the world felt like it was tipping sideways. Then, I’d clumsily throw myself on the floor and watch my ceiling slowly drift back into space. Once everything recalibrated, repeat. Sometimes, I made myself sick with nausea.

Looking back at this silly ritual, I think I was chasing stimulation and relief from the unbearable heat. The tile floor always felt so cool when I slammed my back on the ground.

Most of my summer memories are like this—physical. Like pain, Summer demands to be felt.

When I was curating a summer reading list, I kept coming back to this dreamy intensity and the way these seasons of my life have lingered on my skin all these years.

I want these stories to layer me with melancholy, suffocate me like boredom, sting my eyes with hurt feelings, and hug me like my childhood bed sheets. Give me pretty scapes that read like the set of a Sofia Coppola movie, ornamented with unspoken sadness. As cherry, actually perfectly explained in her video essay about Sofia Coppola’s aesthetic world, I want the “texture of a feeling.”

This is my summer reading list.
Ana, Club Curator <3

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Brutes
By Dizz Tate | 2023 | Coming-of-age

Described as “The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project,” Brutes is an eerie closeup of girlhood. In a swampy Floridian suburb, a borderline-interdependent group of young girls is mesmerized by the preacher’s daughter, Sammy. They tumble into obsession and mania when Sammy goes missing. Their chase for the truth changes the girls forever.

If you’ve been following the book club and me for a while, you know there was NO way this one wasn’t making my summer reading list.

The Bell Jar
By Sylvia Plath | 1963 | Semi-autobiographical

The novel opens with Esther Greenwood, a talented young writer, beginning her summer undergraduate internship at a magazine in vibrant 1950s New York City. Despite an exciting era in front of her, Esther feels like life is happening around her as she passively floats through her days in the city. Eventually, she returns to the suburbs of Massachusetts and wrestles with a long journey of clinical depression. The Bell Jar, to me, feels like the slumps of summer. Those days you find yourself in the cave of your bedroom, unable to leave despite longing for connection and life.

Play It as It Lays
By Joan Didion | 1970 | Contemporary fiction

Told in a series of third-person streams of consciousness, Play It as It Lays is a story of how Maria, a disillusioned actress, struggles to find autonomy and happiness in what is supposed to be dreamy California. The novel feels dry and disconnected from the glamour of Hollywood, throwing you into a desert-like haze.

Cursed Bread
By Sophie Mackintosh | 2023 | Gothic historical fiction

Curse Bread reads like a summer fever dream. The book is inspired by the real-life 1951 mass poisoning in the small town of Point-Saint-Esprit, France, and is told through the eyes of the baker’s wife, Elodie, who is also completely obsessed with a new, glamorous couple—more specifically, the wife. Very strange and fantastical events start to take place when this new couple moves to town, and the reader is often left wondering what’s real and what’s not.

Milk Fed
By Melissa Broder | 2021 | LGBT

This one has been on my TBR for a while, and I’m very excited to add it to my summer reading. The tile first piqued my interest because of Sophia Coppola’s baby tee fashion line from the 90s of the same name. As I skimmed the synopsis, I knew it was going to be right up my alley.

The book is set in Los Angeles and follows Rachel, a young woman struggling with her Jewish faith and restrictive eating habits. When Rachel starts a journey of healing, she meets and becomes infatuated with an Orthodox Jewish woman set on feeding her.

“Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts.” (Goodreads)

Rogue
By Mona Awad | 2023 | Gothic Fantasy

If you love Mona Awad’s fantastical dark academia novel, Bunny, Rogue brings even more outlandish twists and turns in blazing, beauty-obsessed Southern California. When Elle’s mother mysteriously dies, she’s forced to return to her sunny hometown and somehow ends up sucked into the same creepy spa cult her mother put on a pedestal before she died. It’s a decadent and bizarre look into the beauty industry and our strange relationship with beauty itself.

The Water Cure
By Sophie Mackintosh | 2018 | Dystopian

Sophie Mackintosh had to make the list twice because she’s just that good.

Like Cursed Bread, this novel pulls the reader into a strange, dreamy world. On a secluded island, a father forces his wife and three daughters into isolation. They practice strange religious rituals in the name of curing them from the toxicity of the mainland and making them more resilient to the dangers of the rest of the world. One day, the father disappears, and three men show up. Aside from their father, these are the first men the three daughters have ever seen. They begin to question everything they know and confront feelings of desire and sibling rivalry.

Amphibian
By Tyler Wetherall | 2024 | Coming-of-age

Another one on my TBR, I’m drawn to Amphibian because of its theme of young friendship and how it can shape the rest of our lives. This book takes place over several seasons but builds a slightly humid and feral atmosphere that seems to coat long, unsupervised summer days with friends. Amphibian follows Sissy as she moves to a new school and becomes very close friends with a girl named Tegan. Amphibian blurs between reality and Sissy’s imagination as the girls become obsessed with local stories about girl abductions and the dangers of womanhood.

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. Kindly subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading), join us for monthly literary events in Houston, Texas, and stay tuned for other opportunities to connect with the Of My Mother experience.

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THIS MONTH’S TITLE

The Handmaid’s Tale

By Margaret Atwood | 1985 | Speculative Fiction

Since 1985, this novel has been an eerie but (undeniably valuable) reminder of how easily and quickly our world can change. “Anything can happen anywhere, given the right circumstances.”

Set in a dystopian United States of America, a fundamentalist Christian regime overthrows all levels of U.S. government and dismantles modern society to turn it into a totalitarian patriarchal theocracy known as the Republic of Gilead.

Offred, our narrator, is ripped away from her family and involuntarily becomes a handmaid—a woman who is forced to bear children for high-ranking male officials, or commanders. From her perspective, we learn about life inside Gilead and how, even in this dark, violent, and unfair world, a woman finds a way to hold onto her humanity.

As today’s news headlines continue to conerningly parallel scenes and ideologies within the novel, consider this month’s title a small act of bravery.

Of My Mother is reading The Handmaid’s Tale.

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SENUSALITY AND SANITY IN GILEAD

There are countless things that make The Handmaid’s Tale an important work of literature.

For starters, when Margaret Atwood was writing the novel, she vowed to only include real events that had happened to real people.

In her interview with Dua Lipa, she goes into detail about how she pulled strings from several injustices throughout history—the treatment of enslaved African Americans, widespread distrust of governments during the Cold War, the stealing of children during the WW2 Germany’s Third Reich regime, and more.

Margaret also made a point of not including any technology or scientific elements that didn’t already exist when she wrote the novel, grounding the horrific world of Gilead in a society that felt both far-fetched and jarringly familiar.

What I appreciate most about the book, personally, is that The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the first titles to tell a dystopian story through a female narrator. Margaret, who took inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984, noticed the recurring powerless position of women in dystopian novels and questioned what it would be like to tell the story from their perspective.

Many literary theorists have connected Hélène Cixous’, French writer and philosopher, concept of l’écriture féminine (or “women’s writing”) to Margaret’s writing. Without going down too deep a rabbit hole, l’écriture féminine is a feminist idea coined by Hélène in The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), in which she highlighted the connection between cultural and psychological forces on the female body and how they distinguish female language and text from traditional masculine styles of writing.

If you want some nostalgia, John Green does a really good job of diving into this analysis.

It’s always so fun to watch such cute animations portray complex and occasionally concerning concepts. Anyways!

Hélène argues that women have been forced to shut themselves off from pleasure and sexual expression by patriarchal society and says:

In short, Hélène urges us to reconnect with ourselves, to ignore the rigid constructs of society and language, and to write with openness.

Offred is an incredible example of this because she’s really good at practicing sensuality (which is worth noting does not always have to be sexual in nature). Offred describes her mind and body as a place she can escape into. She tells herself stories in her mind and grounds herself through her senses.

For example, Offred finds bodily autonomy in simple acts like extending her hand into the sunlight and using her sense of touch to feel the light. She makes a point of acknowledging this choice as a reflection of her humanity—proving to herself that Gilead has taken away a lot, but it hasn’t taken everything.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Her relationship with Nick, the house gardener, is also another way Offred holds on to herself. Nick is bribed to sleep with Offred when she isn’t able to conceive a child with her assigned commander, and Offred continues to see Nick several more times on her own accord. Offred makes it very clear that she decides to do this solely out of her own physical desire, with zero motivation to appease what Nick may want or feel.

Although the ending is a bit ambiguous, for Offred, staying connected to her senses and her body was how she kept her sanity.

Anna Howard from the Wild Geese podcast has a wonderful video essay on the art of exploring sensuality and prose. It’s a great listen on this concept and offers practical advice for being more sensitive as a form to feed creativity.

WHILE YOU READ

The art of reading is a lot like having a conversation. There should be a give-and-take tango of reading, processing, probing, and deducing. For those who are hoping to make reading more of an active experience and engage with the text, here are a few questions to keep in mind while you read The Handmaid’s Tale:

• What passage did you immediately want to underline, screenshot, or send to someone else?

• What aspect of Gilead felt least realistic when you started reading—and most realistic by the end?

• What forms of female intimacy or friendship would you hold onto in Gilead?

• If Offred could read one book from our time, what would you want it to be and why?

• If you could ask Margaret Atwood one question about this novel, what would it be?

HOUSTON LITERARY SALON: SAVE THE DATE

Houston, TX | July 2 | 6:30 - 8:30 PM

Please save the date for our first Of My Mother literary salon in Houston, Texas.

Guests are invited to bring one ordinary object (like a lipstick or a journal) that represents a freedom they would hate to lose. Throughout the evening, we’ll build a “Museum of Ordinary Strength” and share the stories behind these everyday items.

We’ll close the night with a collective reflection on The Handmaid's Tale, womanhood, and power, an experience designed to extend beyond the novel's pages.

Meeting location details and registration will be open soon. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to stay up to date.

ABOUT OF MY MOTHER

Of My Mother is a Houston-based literary club focused on female stories and voices. The club’s name is an homage to how the women, either in the pieces we read or beyond the pages, shape us. It’s a reverence for the long line of women who have come before us. And, most importantly, it’s an expression of the importance and power of female-written words.

Of My Mother publishes a bi-weekly newsletter (which you’re currently reading), hosts monthly literary events in Houston, and offers other opportunities to connect with the Of My Mother experience.

Make sure to follow up on Instagram to join our book club group chat and stay up to date on the latest club happenings.

I hope you’ll read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator

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I’ve always loved it when my mom introduces me to new people.
“Esta es la más grande.”
“Se parece mucho a ti.”
My face is its own kind of heirloom.

As it changes, like mom’s face has changed and her mom’s face has changed, and her mom’s face once changed, I hold on tighter to the other little pieces women have given me that seem untouched by time.

My love of light and the way I wish I could hang the sun itself in every room.
How my pain and rage all come pouring out of me when I can’t find a place to put it all.

Why my God only listens when I speak to him in Spanish.
How my stupid heart has managed to stay soft.
All the pretty words that have once been my name.
And my relentless will to keep going. Always keep going.

On my face and in my soul, I’m every woman I’ve ever known. Their stories. Their essence. Forever with me.

About Of My Mother

For those of you who subscribed to my literary club, LEFTONRED (and those who are finding my words for the first time), I am tickled to formally welcome you to Of My Mother.

After several years of discovery and community building under the LEFONRED name, I started to get visions of what the literary club was always truly meant to be—a curation of female stories and voices. The more vivid these ideas became, the more strongly I felt that a rebirth was necessary.

The club’s new name, Of My Mother, is an homage to how the women, either in the pieces we read or beyond the pages, shape us. It’s a reverence for the long line of women who have come before us. And, most importantly, it’s an expression of the importance and power of female-written words.

Although the club has a lovely new bow on it, the essence of this sentiment has always been a part of LEFTONRED—and me. It brings me so much joy that the club’s focus on female literature is now front and center.

I’m deeply excited about this new chapter of the literary club. There is so much to look forward to: a bi-weekly Of My Mother newsletter, monthly literary events in Houston, and more opportunities to connect with the Of My Mother experience.

I hope you’ll continue to read along with me.

Ana, Club Curator