Smile

May 1, 2021

The first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast, winner of multiple honors (including numerous Emmys and two Edward R. Murrow awards), and cofounder of Stand ​Up To Cancer, Couric discusses her personal and professional lives in Going There (750,000-copy first printing). The current U.S. Poet Laureate and a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Harjo relates how she came to be a Poet Warrior whose verse bespeaks compassion and demands justice. As revealed in Brandon Stanton's photoblog Humans of New York--and now in The Redemption of Bobby Love--at age 14 Love was charged with disorderly conduct in the Jim Crow South, subsequently drawn into a band of thieves, and facing a 30-year prison sentence when he escaped to New York, changed his name, and led the model life of a family man with multiple jobs, church, and Little League until the FBI and NYPD came calling after decades (150,000-copy first printing). After successfully negotiating the high-risk birth of twins, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Ruhl came down with Bell's palsy--a condition paralyzing half the face--and unlike most patients did not recover quickly; Smile relates how she spent a decade searching for a cure while grappling with her suddenly inexpressive face (100,000-copy first printing). Picking up directly after Theft by Finding, Sedaris's previous volume of diaries, A Carnival of Snackery brings us up to the present (750,000-copy first printing). Told by Egyptian Canadian actor Sharif, A Tale of Two Omars relates his life as the grandson of the famed actor on his father's side and Holocaust survivors on his mother's while also reflecting on his life as a gay man in the Arab (and larger) world. Featured on the Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the Middle East in 2014, 2015, and 2016, Wassef is the founder and manager of the Cairo-based Diwan, Egypt's first modern bookstore, which now has ten locations, 150 employees, countless loyal customers, and a book of its own with Shelf Life (25,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 12, 2021
In this stunning work, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ruhl (44 Poems for You) reflects on her long and arduous battle with Bell’s palsy after giving birth to twins. For about 85% of people, Bell’s palsy, a weakness in facial muscles, lasts for three months or less, yet for an unlucky 5%, it can be long-term. For Ruhl, the condition has persisted for more than a decade. In a series of insightful and witty essays, she provides an unvarnished look at coming to terms with a face that’s paralyzed on one side (“Kissing with one eye open isn’t exactly a peril, but it is strange”); the postpartum depression she dealt with after a complicated pregnancy; and a celiac disease diagnosis that made her give up her beloved bagels. Ruhl juggled all this while simultaneously working in theater and mothering three children under the age of five with her husband. “My years of writing plays tells me that a story requires an apotheosis, a sudden transformation,” she muses. “But my story has been so slow... the nature of the chronic, which resists plot and epiphany.” As she recounts learning to find joy in small things—such as regaining the ability to blink—Ruhl proves that even life at its most mundane can be fascinating. This incredibly inspiring story offers hope where it’s least expected.

August 1, 2021
A diligent search for self through years of affliction. Award-winning playwright Ruhl, a MacArthur fellow and two-time Pulitzer finalist, was pregnant when she opened a fortune cookie that contained a cryptic message: "Deliver that what is inside you, and it will save your life." What was inside her turned out to be much more than fraternal twins. In a wise, intimate, and moving memoir, the author recounts a decade of illness, recovery, and self-transformation that followed her pregnancy. It began the day after delivering the twins, when the left side of her face became paralyzed; she had developed Bell's palsy, a rare condition of nerve damage. She could not blink her left eye and, equally devastating, she could not smile. Although most people recover from Bell's palsy within months, Ruhl's persisted, causing not only physical discomforts--she had trouble eating and enunciating--but psychological and emotional distress. "Is the self the face?" she wondered as she became increasingly depressed at the facial asymmetry that seemed to her so "ugly." Although she had considered herself a person of little vanity, now she "veered dangerously close to self-pity" and also self-blame for not getting better. Ruhl engagingly reports on her interactions with a host of therapists and medical practitioners--some brusque and dismissive, some caring and helpful; she even sought advice from a Tibetan lama. Sometimes, she admits, "I felt like anatomy rather than a whole." A positive test for celiac disease helped to explain why nerve growth was inhibited, but it still took years before she could produce a semblance of a smile. Within her chronicle of illness, the author deftly weaves memories of her father; thoughts about motherhood, friendship, writing; and perceptive reflections about the meaning of smiling, especially for women. "I thought I could not truly reenter the world until I could smile again," she writes; "and yet, how could I be happy enough to smile again when I couldn't reenter the world?" A captivating, insightful memoir.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 22, 2021
Best known as a mega award-winning playwright, Ruhl (44 Poems for You, 2020) is also a MacArthur "Genius," Yale professor, poet, and author. Her memoir is an utter gift--no superlatives are enough; no review can communicate its resonating efficacy. Just after Ruhl found out she was having twins, she met her husband for lunch and ended their meal with a prescient fortune cookie: "Deliver that what is inside you, and it will save your life." Parsing its full meaning would require a decade. That fall, the day after her first Broadway opening, breakthrough bleeding required bed rest; "boredom and entropy" ensued. Complications didn't stop, including a supremely rare disease that caused early labor. Both children came out "perfect," but the next day, the left side of Ruhl's face fell down: "eyebrow, fallen; eyelid, fallen; lip fallen, frozen, immovable." Bell's Palsy was diagnosed, and although 95 percent got better in a year, Ruhl would have to navigate 10 years of seemingly endless specialists, therapists, and miracle workers to smile again. Recognizing her own self becomes a stupendous, raw, funny, piercing, brilliant journey. Ciphering her work for the stage, Ruhl makes sure her words on the page are part spotlighted monologue, part family album, part BFF confession, part unguarded reveals. Indeed, audiences are guaranteed a standing-ovation-worthy production.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.