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THE BODY LEADS THE WAY

A poetic and inspiring invitation to find ways of dwelling in meaning and joy.

Awards & Accolades

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A collection of essays centered around the theme of the ritual.

A ritual encompasses many forms: It could be mundane, like eating breakfast, or symbol-laden, like receiving the body and blood of Jesus at Communion. The experiences that interest Potter are ritualistic acts elevated into life-altering and resonant experiences, leading to a state of liminality—a sense of crossing a threshold or existing in between two separate realities. One way these liminal states can be entered is through physicality, via the body itself. In her first essay, “Between Chaos and Light: Sex, Card Playing, God, Calvin, and Dancing,” the author, who was forbidden to dance during her Calvinist upbringing, discovers that rhythmic yet freeform movement can become a spiritual rite akin to the practice of the whirling dervish Sufi dancers (“their bodies prayers”). In “The Story of a Hollowed-out Bone,” Potter acquires a Buddhist relic for self-protection (a femur, fashioned into a trumpet) that leads her to a shattering discovery about herself. Places can be routes to the in-between state as well, catching us between two worlds. “By the River of 1000 Lingas” explores how a small river in Cambodia with carvings of sacred masculine and feminine symbols (lingams and yonis) adorning its banks mystically links the natural with the human-created. Another essay, “Ever Becoming—Never Being: Dwelling in the Sukkah,” concerns the concept of sukkot, open-sided temporary dwellings some observant Jews reside in for a short period every fall. Sukkot, too, present a duality, acting as both refuge and not-refuge. Potter’s book is tightly organized, with essays divided thematically into four parts. Photos of such subjects as Cambodian temple moonstones, a Whidbey Island labyrinth, and the author’s tallit (prayer shawl) add visual interest, but are almost unnecessary; the prose creates evocative word pictures on its own. (Preparing to write, Potter feels “rushing-spirit brooding over the face of deep, dark, moving waters of what is possible but is not yet born.”) The author describes her book as “an active intuition going for a walk”; Potter’s lyrical essays will make readers want to join the walk, too.

A poetic and inspiring invitation to find ways of dwelling in meaning and joy.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2025

ISBN: 9798989164028

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Ritual, Liminality, and Imagination

Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025

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THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.

“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023

ISBN: 9780063304413

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.

In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

Pub Date: April 23, 2024

ISBN: 9780593536131

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024

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