Spring Reading List: 4 Novels About Women, Magic, & What We Carry
Start your spring reading list here: four novels about women, magic, and becoming. Sisterhood and secrets, magic and artistry, mythology and destiny, and the pull of the heart.
New season, new reading list. Spring is the season of softness, creativity, and rebirth — and it’s the perfect time to dive into books full of emotion and magic.
If your reading list could use a little inspiration, here are four books that will make your heart bloom:
Kin by Tayari Jones
“While I was tended to, I was never mothered. Many people suffered far more, even people raised at the knees of their actual mamas. Still, the hole in my spirit made me into the girl I was and then the woman that I am. One day, I will grow a person within myself and love that little person so hard that it would bind her to me like rich dirt in the corner of a canvas satchel.“
If there’s one book you read this spring, let it be Kin. The latest novel from the masterful Tayari Jones (author of An American Marriage and Silver Sparrow, among others) is undoubtably her best yet.
It follows Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, who have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives.
It’s a story about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and what it means to belong to each other. It’s Jones at the peak of her genius, and is already one of our favorite books of the year.
The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward
“In the stillness of my body, I feel calm. I study the deep brown nape of her neck, at once exhilarated by how familiar she smells. Earth. Smoke. The Woods the Trees. As though wild things might be growing inside her. I close my eyes and wait for it. I hold my breath and I almost hope it hurts.“
The Catch is the first fiction novel from brilliant poetess Yrsa-Daley Ward. It follows Clara and Dempsey, sisters who were adopted into different families as infants following their mother’s tragic death.
Clara is sent to live with a successful, posh couple, while Dempsey ends up with a sullen and unaffectionate city official. In adulthood they are all but estranged — until one day, when Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their dead mother. What happens next sets the sisters off on a sweeping path that leads them deep into their past, and back into each other’s lives.
It’s fresh and daring, with writing as quick and as evocative as you would expect from a poet. And, it’s completely brilliant.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
“A glorious future beckoned on the horizon. Yet I still clung to a shred of my past, as a flowering peach blossom tree yearning for its fallen bloom.“
If you’re in the mood for a sweet, magical romance, this is for you. Daughter of the Moon Goddess is an enchanting, richly imagined fantasy romance inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess Chang'e.
It’s the perfect book to get lost in while basking in the first sweet sunny days of the season.
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange
“When there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.“
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is a 1982 novel written by renowned American playwright, poet, and Black feminist, Ntozake Shange. It follows three sisters from Charleston, South Carolina: Sassafrass, the oldest, a poet currently living in LA with her boyfriend and other artists; Cypress, a dancer who sets off to discover new ways of moving through the world; Indigo, the youngest, remains in Charleston and lives in poetry and magic.
The novel is both sweeping and intimate, a “rich and wondrous story of womanhood, art, and passionately-lived lives.” Dynamic in its form, the narrative is interwoven with letters, recipes, dreams, and journal entries. Poetic and profound, it’s bursting at the seams with life and magic.
