Have you ever wondered what family secrets are hiding just below the surface? In this episode, Jen and Ashley dive into Jas Hammonds' stunning debut, We Deserve Monuments.
As seventeen-year-old Avery navigates the tension between her mother and her terminally ill grandmother, we unpack the complex relationships, hidden histories, and simmering truths that drive this story forward. We discuss how Avery’s search for answers shakes the foundation of her world. Join us as we explore this emotional and thought-provoking novel about family, identity, and the price of truth.
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Bookish Check-in
Ashley - Sonali Dev’s A Change of Heart (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
Jen - Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
Our September Book Club Pick
Jas Hammonds’s We Deserve Monuments (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)
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Full Transcript
[00:00:33] Jen: Hi everyone. And welcome to Unabridged. This is episode 278. Today is our September 2024 book club discussion. We are talking about Jas Hammons's We Deserve Monuments. So as we're getting started here, I just want to remind you about our Patreon. If you would like to help support the podcast, you can check that out.
[00:00:57] So you can, of course, become a patron and offer some consistent support. And there are some gifts out there if you choose to do that, but we also have some resources available. So even if you're not a patron, you can access some of our teaching guides and discussion guides over there. So you can check that out at patreon.com/unabridgedpod. All right. To get our episode started, we're going to do our Bookish Check-In. Ashley, what are you reading?
[00:01:23] Ashley: One of the books I'm reading is Sonali Dev's A Change of Heart. Quite a while ago, I just looked, so it's 2021, we had read Sonali Dev's Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. And I loved that and had been kind of meaning to get back to her work and just hadn't, but this one was on my Kindle, I probably had purchased it on sale at some point.
[00:01:44] And so I started that. And when I started it, I was like, Whoa, this is really different. It's pretty intense in the beginning, and it is pretty heavy. And so I, I think I was expecting a different tone, but I have, But after adjusting to that... it was funny because I was like, Oh, apparently I had some feelings about what I expected it to be,
[00:02:03] and it was different. But once I adjusted to that, I have been really captivated by this story. So it's about Dr. Nic Joshi. He is on a cruise at the beginning. He's like the cruise ship doctor. And it seems like he's basically spending his entire life, like he drinks his way through, numbing himself with alcohol.
[00:02:27] And then he's working through the day helping people with pretty mild things usually. And then back to his drinking pattern. And so this is basically his life is like, he's really hung over in the mornings. Then he goes to work, he helps people with these pretty minor things, and then he's trying to just tune out on life as much as possible.
[00:02:48] And he's been that way for two years since the murder of his wife, Jen, who was also a doctor. Right at the beginning, there is someone who appears on the cruise ship and she has this like flaming red hair that his And it's like a very specific dye and color and all of that and so it really catches his attention, and at first it's like an apparition is what it kind of seems like.
[00:03:17] But then it is this woman, and her name is Jess and so he is like, what is happening? Like why do you look like her? How did you get that?
[00:03:29] When he sees the hair, he's like sure that this is from the specific place in India where
[00:03:35] both of them, so Jen and Nikhil, they were both working and they were helping the community there and doing a lot of really hard work as surgeons. He's like, oh my gosh, this is from that same place, and what is happening here? And again, he's kind of in this like alcoholic haze through a lot of that early on.
[00:03:56] Well, has this big scar on her chest. She convinces him that she received Jen's heart and a heart transplant operation. And Jen had donated her organs and But he's still like, is she scamming me? Like, what's going on here? But she convinces him of that and then that because of that she has this connection to Jen.
[00:04:18] And she does know all these things about him and about Jen and about their life together. And so, he's very skeptical, but she does persuade him, to She's like we have to solve this... like Jen is telling me that you need to follow up on her murder You need to be doing things and so you've got to go back to find some evidence because they had been in Mumbai.
[00:04:41] They had been in India they've been doing all this work, and Jen, his wife had discovered a whole ring of organ transplant stuff that was happening that was horrific. And it's because of that that she was killed. And he knows a little bit of that, but he did not know until she was murdered. he has a lot of, like, betrayal of feeling like she was doing this thing that was, of course, important work, but was also extremely dangerous, obviously, hence the end.
[00:05:13] And he didn't know until after her murder that any of that was happening. And so he felt betrayed by her and also just, you know, again, I mean he was at the point where he just really isn't functioning. I mean, so for the two years past that, he really just has not been functioning as a person beyond getting out of bed.
[00:05:30] Jess does convince him to leave the cruise ship so that they can go back to where all of his stuff with Jen is in the U S where it all got shipped to, with his family. And so he hasn't been home this whole time. And so she convinced them that they need to go. And, they go back, and that kind of starts their journey.
[00:05:49] And it is a very intense book. And at the same time, it is asking a lot of really important questions about... They both have a lot going on. They both have a lot they're not saying to the other person, but Jess especially has this whole thing that of course led to her approaching him that he does not know about.
[00:06:08] And so she's got a lot of dangerous and high stakes things happening on her side that have led her to approach him and try to get this evidence that she feels sure that Jen hid somewhere that they've got to find because again they would not have murdered her if they weren't sure that there's something that she knows and if we can get a hold of that thing like we could break down this whole thing... but then they felt very sure there's some very high end people involved So, whoa, it's a very, it's a very, it's like both feels like a thriller but also there's a bit of a romance.
[00:06:45] And so I'm really enjoying it. I just think Sonali Dev is a great writer. I feel like it is quite different from what I thought about Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. But oh my gosh, I'm here for it. And I'm really, like, I'm swept up in this story and have been very interested in what's happening.
[00:07:01] it's very interesting. I would definitely recommend it.
[00:07:04] Jen: Oh, that sounds great. Yeah. I've read some of her other books, like I read the whole series of Austin Retellings that she had, but I, I definitely wanna read more. 'cause yeah, I think it, it would be easy to discount her just on the basis of that. Some people do that as just writing romances and retellings.
[00:07:22] But each of those books had some serious questions they were considering. They were just in the scope of this romance. So that's interesting.
[00:07:31] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. So, again, that's Sonali Dev's A Change of Heart. Jen, what is something that you're reading?
[00:07:36] Jen: So I am reading Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky, and this has been part of quite a journey in reading Shafak's work. So with Read with Toni, we read, oh gosh, it's been a couple of years, The Island of Missing Trees, and someone in the chat said she has a new book coming out, why don't we read that together?
[00:07:59] And then someone else suggested, hey, let's read through her backlist. And so over, I guess the course... I think it's all been in 2024. We have been reading Shafak's backlist and then There Are Rivers in the Sky is the book... by the time this releases, it will have come out at the end of August. We're recording a little early.
[00:08:17] And I just want to say it is so interesting to read an author's books in a concentrated way and to see.... We did them chronologically... And just to see them grow and develop and to see the themes that are there at the beginning, still emerging, but also to watch. Shafak has dived into a lot of different types of writing and has different levels of historical fiction and different levels of the paranormal in her different books.
[00:08:48] There are Rivers in the Sky, which came out just at the end of August, has these different characters in these different time periods that it's cycling through. So it actually starts with a drop of rain falling from the sky, and water is at the center of the book. I'm only halfway through.
[00:09:07] So I, there are some things I'm projecting that I'm assuming are going to come together, but definitely this little drop of water falls on the head someone, of a ruler in Mesopotamia, who has a tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh in his possession. And then it spirals out to Victorian London with a baby who is born to Toshers.
[00:09:33] These are the people who dig through the sewers. They're very poor to find treasure that they can sell and make a living. And this baby is born on the side of one of those sewers. And the people who help his mother give birth decide that his name should be King Arthur of the sewers. So that's about Arthur.
[00:09:52] And then there is, in 2014 in Turkey, Naren, who is waiting to be baptized before she has a condition that is going to make her go deaf. She's nine years old. And so it's both unusual that she has not been baptized yet, but also part of her culture's rituals is that she should be baptized in Iraq, but because of a lot of, you know, things.
[00:10:18] Her family has not been able to get there, but they decided that they're going to get there before she goes deaf. And then finally in 2018 in London, there is Alika who is a hydrologist and she and her husband have just split up and she moves into a riverboat and is going to live on this riverboat. So It's one of those books where you have these four disparate characters.
[00:10:40] You can start seeing the threads that are pulling them all together. And this drop of water is definitely one of them. So it's really interesting. So, shefak is a British Turkish writer, and you can see, some of her books have focused much more on Turkey and others have been more international.
[00:11:00] Here you can see the way she's drawing these different parts of her own history and culture together. So it's really interesting. And again, I think I'm seeing that more just because of that experience of reading so many of her books together and seeing the ways that she's diving into these different parts of her heritage.
[00:11:16] Her writing is beautiful. She's an amazing writer, just on the sentence level. And then I think she's just really creative and you can see she's challenging herself through her book. So yeah, so far it's great. I would highly recommend it. I will definitely be posting a review since I got the eGalley and yeah, that is Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky.
[00:11:36] Ashley: Wow. I want to read that, Jen.
[00:11:38] Jen: Yeah, I think you would really like her work. She's really interesting.
[00:11:42] Ashley: Cool.
[00:11:43] Jen: All right, well, we are going to dive into We Deserve Monuments now. So first I'm going to read the publisher's synopsis. 17 year old Avery Anderson is convinced her senior year is ruined when she's uprooted from her life in DC and forced into the hostile home of her terminally ill grandmother, Mama Letty.
[00:12:00] The tension between Avery's mom and Mama Letty makes for a frosty arrival and unearths past drama they refuse to talk about. Every time Avery tries to look deeper, she's turned away, leaving her desperate to learn the secrets that split her family in two. While tempers flair and her avoidant family, Avery finds friendship in unexpected places.
[00:12:20] In Simone Cole, her captivating next door neighbor, and Jade Oliver, daughter of the town's most prominent family, whose mother's murder remains unsolved. As the three girls grow closer, Avery and Simone's friendship blossoming into romance, the sharp edged opinions of their small southern town begin to hint at something insidious underneath.
[00:12:40] The racist history of Bardell, Georgia is rooted in Avery's family in ways she can't even imagine. With Mama Letty's health dwindling every day, Avery must decide if digging for the truth is worth toppling the delicate relationship she's built in Bardell, or if some things are better left buried. All right.
[00:12:57] Well, as you can tell, if you haven't read this yet, there is a lot going on in this book. So just a reminder that our discussions here do dive into spoilers. So if you want to avoid spoilers, you might want to pause on our episode, go read the book really fast and then come back. But yeah, we'll get into our overall impressions.
[00:13:15] Ashley, what did you think?
[00:13:17] Ashley: Oh, gosh. I thought this was fantastic. I was really captivated by the way that Hammonds brought in so many different threads. I found it very moving. I mean, I thought a lot of the parts about grief and how to help someone die. I think that was a big part of the story.
[00:13:40] It was just this idea of like, what do we do with the fact that we are mortal and that we know that our time is limited and that sometimes in situations like this, we know that it's limited and that the end is imminent. And so we really see that with Mama Letty and like, kind of the different ways of handling that. And I also felt like, All the characters are richly drawn. I really appreciated that, and the issues are complex, and I felt like that was really handled really well. I think that a lot of the exploration of sexuality and romance and what those things mean, what they've meant in the past, what they mean in the present, how they might be different in a place like Bardell, Georgia, than in a place like DC.
[00:14:25] I thought all of that was really well done. So interestingly explored, and then also with racism and how deeply entrenched that is and there are some questions that are hard questions, you know Especially when you get to looking at Jade and Jade's family and like what is her culpability in that situation?
[00:14:42] There's a lot of questioning there for her, like she is having those questions, and then for Avery and I just thought all of that was really well done So, yeah, a lot going on, but I thought it, it all flowed really well, and I, thought that the threads pulled together nicely. What about you, Jen?
[00:15:00] Jen: Yeah, I really loved it too. I agree. I think if you sit down and list all of the different issues it's addressing, I think you might feel that it's too much, but it didn't ever feel like it was too much when I was reading it because there's so much just about, I'm kind of stepping on the next category here a little bit, but so much about the way that trauma can afflict generations and the ways that we see things that happen to Mama Letty and to
[00:15:31] her grandfather are still affecting her, even though she doesn't know the whole story. And yet those things have irreparably changed her life. And it's that whole thing of do you share all of the stories with your kids? Do you tell them all of the horrible things that have happened or do you try to protect them from that?
[00:15:51] I think there were a lot of moments where even though it is definitely her story, it is definitely Avery's story. I connected a lot with her parents and just the difficulty of knowing what to tell your kids sometimes. That'll be a whole other rant for later. But yeah, I thought
[00:16:09] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Jen: Oh, I should say Hammonds uses they, she pronouns. I want to make sure you know we're being cognizant of that. But yeah, I think Hammonds does such a great job of navigating the complexities of the ways that identities become. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. interwoven, like more than one thing matters in understanding your identity, and in how you react with the world, and how the world reacts to you.
[00:16:33] And I think we see that in the things that Avery's mom shares with her, that she is keenly aware that Avery might be in danger, does not seem too dramatic for this book because of more than one side of who she is. So yeah, I think... My brain just went in another direction, but I'm going to pause there and just say, we'll move on to what worked for us.
[00:16:56] So Ashley, just highlighting what is one thing that worked for you?
[00:17:01] Ashley: I think at the core, what I really loved was seeing Averyand Momma Letty's relationship come to blossom. I absolutely loved that. I thought it was really beautiful. I thought it kind of spoke to the idea that like, it's never too late. And that it is worth the hard work of trying to get to know people, and that just because something is painful doesn't mean it's not important or worth it.
[00:17:31] And I felt like all of that was just beautifully explored. I felt like we see how hard it is to muck through those hard things.We really felt the payoff of that in the book, and, I wanted them to have a tidy, feeling good ending. I don't know that always those things can necessarily work out that way. But I do know that if we don't do that hard work, they don't work out that way. Or they can't. You know, Avery would not have known her at all if they had not come home.
[00:18:06] And she would have missed this entire part of herself that she really needs, and we see how it makes her such a fuller person to come to know this past that is intrinsically connected to her present, but was completely denied to her before arriving in Georgia. And so I think that's just really powerful and I love how that, even though there's lots and lots and lots of things going on in the book, I felt like that was a very vital core to what worked so well for me in the story.
[00:18:38] What about you, Jen?
[00:18:39] Jen: Yeah. I, all of that. But yes, I,
[00:18:45] Ashley: It's always nice to go first.
[00:18:46] Jen: That's right. I think I want to focus on, I said this a little bit in my overall impressions, I think we see, and Ashley, you mentioned this explicitly when you're thinking about Avery's relationship with Jade and what is Jade's responsibility for the ways that her ancestors, her very close ancestors, have run roughshod over the citizens in their town.
[00:19:18] And then going back to what I said about the way that trauma affects multiple generations, because, and the boy, this is a big, big old spoiler. When we find out that mama Letty is the one who killed Jade's mom. And then that is the ending basically. And you're, you're suspecting it. Of course... or I was suspecting it as a reader.
[00:19:36] And yet, that's where we leave it because then, yeah. So if Jade has some responsibility. for what her ancestors have done, Avery does as well. And as these secrets start coming to the surface and you see people striking out at each other because of the wrongs done to them, and then you see that the people who are paying for those wrongs aren't necessarily the people who perpetrated them,
[00:20:00] it gets really, really messy. And I think it deservedly so. I think that is. Yeah, the more I sit with it, the more I think that's such a brilliant way to bring the book to a close, even though I wanted... Right when I ended, I was like, Oh no, there should be multiple more chapters after this ending.
[00:20:22] But then I think that yeah, because there's something unanswered in that because I don't think we have fully figured out how to contend with that, and so of course these characters can't, and there are always more secrets to unearth So that was another thing. Avery has all of these secrets that she's finding out and then she has to figure out the right times To reveal them to other people whether it's her secret to reveal. And so you see that we are left with one last secret that... is she going to tell anyone? Is Yeah.
[00:20:52] So, wow. It's messy, but in the most brilliant way possible because I think it has to be, to reflect the messy reality that Hammonds is trying to portray in the text.
[00:21:04] Ashley: I was like, I only finished this a couple of days ago, and I was like, I am going to have to sit with that. I think that, like you said, Jen, it is so complex. And, It is heartbreaking. I mean, I, I did not see that coming. I did not expect that that was ultimately, and then when it becomes apparent, all the threads are there.
[00:21:26] Because Avery cannot remember the horrific fight, we see these glimpses of something really bad that happened. But I certainly did not expect that that was the really bad thing. And then to see that her mom has realized what happened and decided to live with it and to keep that secret.
[00:21:48] I just thought all of that, and then to think of Jade, I mean, I think we really, just like our heartbreaks for Mama Letty with Ray, our heartbreaks for Jade, who is stuck with this horrific family that she can't stand, and then she is the one living a motherless life because of the decision Mama Letty made, I mean, that doesn't, like, it doesn't feel great.
[00:22:11] It doesn't feel like justice, because it feels like she's the one who suffers here. She believes her dad may have killed her
[00:22:18] Jen: Mm-Hmm.
[00:22:19] Ashley: Or had her mom killed. Now she's stuck with this horrific stepmom. I mean, so I feel like the person she needed in her life is taken away. And absolutely, like you said, Jen, I wanted some unpacking there.
[00:22:31] And yet, I think that it's so effective that there is no unpacking, because that's exactly what trauma is like. And that's what the cycle of trauma is like, is that it is so difficult to not continue to impose trauma on others when we've had such deep trauma imposed on ourselves. And I think we really see that.
[00:22:49] We saw it, of course, with Zora, and with it playing out for Avery's mom. We see how damaging that was for her, and why she's the way she is. And yet we see in Jade's life, once, you know, again, very end, right? So we think we've learned all these things about Mama Letty, and then all of a sudden it's like, Oh my gosh, there's this whole other thing that we did not know that makes her an even more complicated character.
[00:23:13] And yet, we see, again, somebody who was completely innocent get hit with something really horrific in the way that Mama Letty was really innocent and got hit with something that was really horrific. And so, yeah. I mean, complicated. In a very interesting.
[00:23:31] Jen: Was really angry at Mama Letty. I so angry and I continue to be because... and she was so immersed in her own suffering and her own trauma that she was just striking out. But of course that was the wrong call. Of course it was. And so,
[00:23:49] Ashley: And anyone else in the family would have been a better choice. And so it was that idea of like, you can't just take any action in order to have taken action. And that's sort of how it felt. And I mean, I think that idea that like, it hurts. I mean, there was, like, again, I've got to sit with it.
[00:24:06] You know, that was really like, such an abrupt thing to discover. But, I think what we see is that she's thinking, I will hurt them by doing this, but the reality is it didn't hurt the Oliver men at all. The person who got hurt was Jade. But I think we see that again and again and in this situation and again in the cycles.
[00:24:26] I mean, it's like the people who are getting hurt are not the ones who are in any way culpable. It is the people who are, you know, the bystanders of these horrific things happening that they're the ones that are paying the lifelong price.
[00:24:39] Jen: And that Jade has left there with this sense of not knowing what happened to her mother, which of course hurts her. It's not like that would redeem her dad to know that he's not the one who had her mom killed because he's horrible. But right. That is a different level of hatred that she's going to have for him thinking that he might've been the one.
[00:24:59] So yeah, it's really interesting. I'd also just finished it this week. And so I'm still... you can probably tell I'm still processing it and trying to figure out what I think of it. And I keep going in circles, but I do think it needed to be messier than a neat tied with a bow ending.
[00:25:18] And so I, Hammonds did achieve that for sure.
[00:25:22] Ashley: Yes, and I think we saw that in several situations. Because I felt like with Carol and Zora, there is a lot of complexity there that is unfurled over time. And so that same kind of thing where it's like, things aren't always what they seem. And , the disagreements that they've had aren't what you think they are, you know?
[00:25:39] So I felt like there was a lot of that in other areas also. That was really powerful. But yeah, to leave that at the end, I mean, again, it, it really is something you have to reckon with, with a central character.
[00:25:51] Jen: Yeah, that's a bold choice. All right. Well, let's move on to some quotations. Ashley, what quotation would you like to share?
[00:26:00] Ashley: I think I'm going to go with something that Avery's dad said to her. And he says, "It's okay to feel lost sometimes, Avery. It's okay to feel like you don't have the answers. You don't need to always have the answers, but you do need to give yourself some grace. It's okay to breathe sometimes. Why does everything have to be so urgent?"
[00:26:18] Jen: Mm hmm,
[00:26:19] Ashley: And I just felt like we don't see a lot of her dad in the story, but he is such a quiet and calm presence for her mom and for her. And he seems to always know how to abide the things that are happening without making himself central to it. And so I just really appreciated him as a supporting character.
[00:26:39] I felt like he played an important but quiet role. But I think in that moment and in that conversation, what really resonated to me is that that feeling of urgency, of feeling like everything is on fire. I felt so deeply as a teenager. And I think it's such a part of youth to feel... I mean, I remember a professor saying basically something like that to me of like You're not going to figure this all out today, this week, this month, or this year.
[00:27:12] And I'm like, why? Like this needs to happen right now. So I think that is such a part of youth of like this feeling of I don't have it all figured out But I need to have it all figured out. Other people do, I think it's this feeling when you're young, I think you think everyone else has their identity figured out in a way that you don't.
[00:27:32] And as you get older, you just come to realize, one, that journey never ends. It ends when you die. That journey of figuring yourself out is never over because it's just such a journey and who you are today and this week and this year is different than who you have been and who you will be.
[00:27:49] And so I think as we age, we get more comfortable with that idea. But then also, it's this feeling of, I need to know all the pieces right now. And, you know, and she goes on, the passage after that goes on to talk about all the things that this generation specifically has
experienced that have made it even more urgent to them,
[00:28:10] that I thought was really powerful, because it's exactly that. I mean, as we all know, like, kids who are teenagers right now are experiencing a lot of very overwhelming and worldwide things. And so, she has even more of the reason to feel that way than I think I did as a teenager. But even so some of it is just youth and it is that feeling of, of both I am NOT who I thought I was, and also I don't know who I am.
[00:28:38] I know maybe who I am NOT, but I don't always know who I am and like how can I figure that out? And why can't I do it right now? And you know figure out, make everything work, and make everything fit. And so I just love that because I thought it was really beautiful and I think that
[00:28:51] there's so many things going on in the book, but Avery's journey of self discovery is certainly an important one.
[00:28:56] Jen: Yeah. Yeah. I marked up quotations similar to that one. And I think I see that in my students and... And also this sense that if I do all of the things, right, that will mean that I've, that everything comes to a place where I can be settled and not panicked and not anxious. And I think getting older and accepting that you've never checked off every item in the to do list.
[00:29:22] You've never fit in every puzzle piece of who you are is part of getting older, and just making peace with that, which is definitely harder for some of us than for others. But yeah, I think I see that a lot in my students and my kids. I, I do. Yeah.
[00:29:39] Ashley: Yeah. Absolutely. What about you, Jen? What did you choose?
[00:29:43] Jen: So I want to, I think, highlight... You know, the title of the book is We Deserve Monuments. And so Mama Letty at one point says, "'Ray deserved every damn thing.' Mama Letty said, smiling off of the ocean. 'He deserved monuments, television specials, documentaries. Then she looked directly into my eyes, 'Murals. He deserved all of that.'" And I think as Avery... You know, Avery comes in not knowing anything about her grandfather. And so then to find out what a wonderful human he was and that he had been murdered this horrible, not that there's a good way to be murdered, but in this horrible way for this. utterly ridiculous and unjust reason. And then to find that contrast between how he has been not remembered, really taken out of everyone's memory, in contrast with Jade's mom, who is going to be the subject of all of these murals because of who she was in the town. I just think that whole process of discovery is so powerful. And, you know, the moment when the town says there's no evidence that he deserved a mural. And then you're like, well, what, yeah... who does deserve a mural? What does that evidence mean? And so I just think that title of the book, we deserve monuments is so powerful and so beautiful. And then when you dig into what it means, both in the story and in history in general: who are we memorializing and why, and who is being left out of that?
[00:31:19] I think these are questions we're really contending with right now. And I think it's really a powerful conversation that we need to have both on this personal level where, in her story, Avery wants to memorialize him because he was absent for so long, but then in the larger, the larger town, the large, yeah.
[00:31:41] Anyway, I keep going on, but I just think it's such a perfect title and it means so many things within the text of the book.
[00:31:48] Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. I thought that all that discovery about Ray, and then how important he is, and how completely... I mean, he's been erased in a lot of ways from this story. I think, yeah, it's just really striking.
[00:32:10] Jen: All right. Well, let's move on to our pairings. So, Ashley, what book would you like to recommend alongside this one?
[00:32:18] Ashley: So I am going to go back to a book that we have done for Unabridged. It's been a while, but we did this as one of our book clubs, and this is Laura Taylor Namey's A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow. And the reason it came to my mind is because Lila Reyes is the protagonist, and she, at the beginning of the book, she lives in Miami, she helps her family with a bakery, and her dream is to take over the family bakery.
[00:32:46] But she's had these series of events happen, and a big one was that her grandmother, who she adored, has passed away. And so she is rocked by that, she's rocked by a couple of other things that happened. And so after her abuela's service, and them mourning the loss, she goes on this like, run, where she kind of disappears and she's gone for a long time, and she's really dehydrated, and somebody finds her.
[00:33:10] But it was like this moment where the family is like, oh my gosh, she is on the verge of a breakdown here and we've got to do something. And so what they decide to do is send her to England for the summer with a relative over there. And she is disgusted and annoyed and all the other things. And yet going to England
[00:33:31] transforms her life. And so I felt like while it is not the same, because in a lot of ways, Avery's going to her roots, it's roots she's not familiar with, but it is her familial roots of being in Georgia, I felt like Lila goes through a similar journey of like, not wanting to go to a place, but by going to a place and digging into that place, she finds a lot of things about herself.
[00:33:57] And those things shape her and change her in a way that she did not expect. So I feel like that's what really I kept thinking about. And also, like, the closeness to her abuela. The way that that was, she was such an important part of her life. And then again, it is a little, the grief process is different because the abuela is already gone at the beginning of the book.
[00:34:17] Whereas like, of course, and this one is very much about losing Mama Letty, and being with her at the end of her life. But I felt like that idea of how grief impacts us, how it impacts teens, what that means, I felt like all of that was like really richly drawn in both stories. And then also I felt like this one, it is, there is a sweet romance,
[00:34:41] and it also that is unfurling in her new place. She meets Orion and he has a lot of things going on in his life also, and has, his mom has early onset dementia. And so he is going through his own grief process of being with her, but also her not being mentally present with him. And so he's really grieving and also carrying a very heavy load for such a young person.
[00:35:05] And so I just felt like there's a lot of things where teens are working through hard things that both are extremely challenging, but also give a lot of shape to who they become. And we see them grow and change because of it. And so that's what I thought it had in common. so again, that is Laura Taylor Namey's, A Cuban Girls Guide to Tea and Tomorrow.
[00:35:27] And it's quite different in a lot of ways, both in tone and in subject, but I also felt like it had some strong similarities.
[00:35:34] Jen: I think that's such a great pick, and it made me want to revisit that book. I loved it so much.
[00:35:40] Ashley: Yes, such a good one. And I would like to read more of her work. Yeah.
[00:35:43] Jen: Same.
[00:35:45] Ashley: What about you, Jen? What's your pairing?
[00:35:46] Jen: I chose... This book popped into my head right away when I was reading this. So I chose Kim Johnson's This is My America. And I think this is another book that is really looking at the ways that generational trauma afflicts families, in the South in particular, but really everywhere. And it's very much dealing with a racist past and how it affects.
[00:36:10] another teenager in this case. So the main character in this book, which I will say, the synopsis compares it to Dear Martin and Just Mercy, so I think those are other books you could definitely think of alongside this, but for This is My America, the main character is Tracy Beaumont and she is 17 and her dad is a black man on death row.
[00:36:30] And she is convinced that he is innocent. There's compelling evidence in the book that he is innocent. And so she is writing letters, weekly letters to Innocence X, which is an organization that helps people on death row, trying to convince them to take on her father's case because she does not want him to be put to death.
[00:36:48] As she's navigating all of this, she lives in a very small Texas town that definitely has a racist system of justice, and there's a white girl in their community who is killed, and Tracy's older brother, Jamal, is at the center of the investigation. And as the police are starting to hunt him down, he goes on the run and Tracy is trying to... She almost has to shift her focus to her brother now to ensure that he does not go through the same thing that her dad went through.
[00:37:30] There's a little bit more of a mystery element to this one, and she is sort of... She's trying to find out who really did do it so that she can prove that her brother is innocent. But I felt like a lot of the themes of We Deserve Monuments appear in This is My America as well. So I think those two would really echo each other.
[00:37:49] And I think though they're dealing with the central questions in different ways, they are equally powerful. So yeah, that is Kim Johnson's This is my America.
[00:37:59] Ashley: Yeah, that is on my TBR. That sounds great.
[00:38:01] Jen: Yeah, it's really powerful. All right. Well we are going to wrap up this discussion with our bookish hearts. Ashley, what do you think?
[00:38:09] Ashley: Five for me.
[00:38:10] Jen: Okay. Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:38:11] Mine is actually changed because right when I finished it, you know, I always put things in Goodreads. I did four and then the more I've sat with it and after our discussion, it's five for me as well. Mm hmm.
[00:38:22] Ashley: It is complicated. Like we talked about with the ending, a lot of times, especially if I rate right away,
[00:38:27] Jen: Mm hmm.
[00:38:27] Ashley: ending of a book can really affect how I rate. So, yeah.
[00:38:31] Jen: All right. Well, we are going to end with a segment we are changing to now be called Unabridged Favorites and each of us is just going to share something favorite we'd like to recommend. Ashley, what do you want to recommend?
[00:38:41] Ashley: I was looking back on the summer and thinking, gosh, we did not like... It was very busy, but also like I didn't watch anything. I didn't see any movies. But anyway, I was thinking something that I have found very comforting and have loved revisiting is Schitt's Creek. So I had seen that whole series. I guess when it came out probably and it's been a while, and I just love it. And I think in some ways I'm enjoying the rewatching experience because I already know the characters so well that it's really fun to... The arc of the series is such a fun, like, they all evolve and change so very much.
[00:39:18] And so it is fun to go back to the beginning to what they're, the main characters are like at the beginning of the series. So that's been fun. So I would recommend either watching if you haven't or a rewatch of that one. What about you, Jen? What's a favorite for you?
[00:39:31] Jen: My family has had a lot of fun this summer with the 1 percent club, which is kind of a, I guess, a game show series on Amazon Prime. It's hosted by Patton Oswalt. And the premise is that they have gone out and they have put these trivia questions or brain teasers or logic puzzles in front of a group of Americans, and they've categorized the questions for 90 percent of the people got this one right, 80 percent so on and so forth.
[00:40:01] They bring in 100 people who are in the audience, and they go through, and they answer the questions, and every player starts with a thousand dollars, and if they get it wrong it goes into the prize pot. So the people who get it to the very highest tier, the one percent club, get the money that's in the prize pot.
[00:40:21] So that's all fun and it's fine and it's great, but there's also an app that you can download. So you play alongside the contestants. So we all have the apps on our phones and Patton Oswalt, before he reveals each question, he says, all right, let's take a look at the question. And he reads it. And then he says, you have this much time.
[00:40:41] And then you click the button on your app to answer the question alongside them. And even if you miss it. If the contestants miss it, they're out. If you miss it, you have a little like red square around that level. And you just keep going, which I will just say the first time is weird. It's like any test or any system. You have to kind of learn how to answer the question.
[00:41:00] So the first time just accept that you're probably not going to do very well, but then we've all gotten better and it's been fun. Eventually there's a lifeline, and so you can skip a question and, but you give up your theoretical thousand dollars, but yeah. So that's been a
[00:41:14] Ashley: Oh, that's cool. That sounds really fun. Very interactive. Haha.
[00:41:19] Jen: All right, everyone. Well,
[00:41:20] Thank you so much for listening to our discussion of We Deserve Monuments. We would love to know what you think of the book. You can either respond, on Instagram at unabridgedpod, or you can send us an email unabridgedpod@gmail.com.
[00:41:34] Thanks so much for listening.
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