Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

It’s been somewhat of a tough few days on a personal level, and a tough several months worldwide, but I often find turning to a book is very helpful for easing stress, burdens and pain. So this week, my selection is a book that I recently found very useful in focussing on positivity and taking time for oneself – Prajña: Ayurvedic Rituals for Happiness by Mira Manek. Manek is a London-born writer, chef and wellness expert with Indian heritage who’s lived all over the world, and her book is a clear and easy-to-follow exploration of the age-old rituals of Ayurveda, one of the world’s oldest healing systems.

The book takes you through easy to follow practices for wellness – breathing, yoga, meditation and recipes for nourishment – all of which are so vital for coping with the world around us, especially when life feels tough. The book is set out in sections for morning, afternoon and evening, and Manek thoughtfully intersperses tales of her own life experiences alongside exploring the ideas of prajña – which means ultimate wisdom in Sanskrit – in an accessible, enjoyable way. Though some of the ideas may be complex, she sets them out in a manner that shows how innate they are to our day-to-day humanity and wellbeing. The intuitive nature of the concept really shines through.

As Manek writes, ‘Understanding our need to recalibrate, to come home and unwind, will carry us through the next day with greater steadiness, and can certainly help diffuse the impact of a crisis when it arrives.’ And such wisdom is why Prajñā: Ayurvedic Rituls for Happiness by Mira Manek, is my book of the week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

Today is a day of celebration for me, as it marks the publication of my second novel for younger readers, Love on the Main Stage! So, I thought my selection for Book of the Week this week should be one of my favourite novels for young people and older readers alike, and the book I first remember making me want to be a writer: The Outsiders by SE Hinton.

The Outsiders was first published way back in 1967, and it absolutely astounded and inspired me that Hinton was only 16 years of age when she wrote it. The book is a classic, impactful coming-of-age story narrated by the character of Ponyboy, a teenager whose semi-tough exterior hides a sensitive soul. He’s a member of a working-class gang, the Greasers, who are in a rivalry with wealthy gang The Socs (short for ‘Socials’). Raised by his older brothers, Ponyboy and the Greasers’ lives are thrown into turmoil after his ordinarily sweet-natured and gentle best friend Johnny kills a Soc in order to save Ponyboy’s life. A violent chain of events unfolds, which ultimately ends in tragedy.

The Outsiders’ narrative is enduringly compelling, and relentlessly emotional in its depiction of brotherhood and the bonds of friendship, as well as highlighting the difficulties faced by the working-class Greaser gang. Hinton perfectly captures Ponyboy’s voice, and utilises a clever device of ending the novel with the same line as it’s opening for reasons that become apparent at the book’s conclusion: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. The full-circle narrative really blew my mind as a young reader, and I’ll never forget being a young girl introduced to a world so outside of my own, but so utterly enthralling and impactful. The books we read when we’re young stick with us throughout our lives. That is why one of my personal favourites, The Outsiders by SE Hinton, is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week my selection is a beautiful coming of age memoir by polymath journalist, television director and trans activist Janet Mock: Redefining Realness. Mock’s book builds from a firm tradition of Black women taking their narrative into their own hands, writing themselves into a space that may have excluded them, from Maya Angelou to Roxane Gay.

In Redefining Realness, Mock takes us on a journey that, to paraphrase the author, ‘disrupts the portrait of womanhood’. Starting from her sometimes displaced and often fraught childhood as she explored her trans identity, the book takes us through the complex issues of engaging in sex work as she grew older, to her search for validation, selfhood and romantic love as a young woman in her twenties.

Mock’s remembrances of her early life as a Black mixed race trans girl in Hawaii are poetic, sometimes heart-breaking and ultimately uplifting. They’re personal to her, of course, but eminently relatable for so many of us.

However, it’s sadly rare to see trans people’s stories being told, and sadder still to see the rights and identities of trans people being attacked currently by those in power – culturally or politically – or the lives of Black trans people being brutally lost to little acknowledgement.

In the gorgeous conclusion to her book, Mock writes, ‘Somewhere along the way, I grew weary of grasping at possible selves, just out of reach. So I put my arms down and wrapped them around me. I began healing by embracing myself through the foreboding darkness until the sunrise shone on my face.’ It’s time we afforded trans people a similarly loving embrace. And that is why Redefining Realness by Janet Mock is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week, my selection is one of my absolute favourite British novels of the last few years, recently long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 – Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie.

Set in the mid-90s, the book begins by introducing us to an array of characters on a seemingly ordinary Saturday morning on a London estate. Goldie provides calm, vivid and empathetic portrayals of characters such as Malachi, a young Black man trying to do right and raise his younger brother, Tristan; vulnerable Elvis, a man navigating developmental issues and independence; Pamela, the white girl Malachi’s been dating, whose love of running provides an escape from her abusive father; and Mary, a Filipino nurse harbouring a secret.

So when this cross section of neighbours find their home of Nightingale Point struck – quite literally – by a devastating disaster, we’ve grown to love Goldie’s characters so rapidly that the effect is truly visceral and the tension gut-wrenching. The story deals with the shocking day in question, and the subsequent efforts of those impacted to heal and to rebuild their lives – collectively and individually.

The varied lives portrayed in the book feel like a love letter to the cross section of humanity to be found in city neighbourhoods that are so often neglected. In that way, it can’t help but have resonance with the devastation wreaked physically, mentally and societally by the Grenfell Tower fire, whose the third anniversary is this coming weekend.

Ultimately, for me, the story is a stunning testament to the importance of empathy and community – something so vital in our current times. And that is why Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

In the past week, the murder of African-American man George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis has sparked a wave of protests around the globe. The depth of anger and emotion that Mr Floyd’s death has exposed could seem surprising to those who have not been forced to consider the scale of endemic racism that affects Black people’s lives every day. That is why my Book of the Week selection this week is Citizen: An American Lyric by poet Claudia Rankine.

Published in 2014, Rankine’s multi-award winning book combines lyrical poetry with images from paintings, drawings and other media. It documents multiple instances of racist microagressions – instances of indirect, unintentional or subtle discrimination – faced by Rankine and her Black friends. These are juxtaposed with poetic examinations of wider racial discrimination and violence – ranging from the media’s engagement with Serena Williams, to stop and frisk laws, the 2011 London riots following the killing of Mark Duggan, and the murders of Trayvon Martin and James Craig Anderson.

In combining these micro and macro instances, Rankine demonstrates how racist interactions coexist in direct correlation. From a description of a man cutting in line at a grocery store: Oh my god, I didn’t see you//You must be in a hurry, I offer//No, no, no, I really didn’t see you. … to lines about the London riots that seem particularly apt today: How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another? Are the tensions, the recognitions, the disappointments, and the failures that exploded in the riots too foreign? Rankine’s book is a powerful indictment of our times. And that is why Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week is my birthday – a new year, and a fresh start! That got me thinking about rebirth and reinvention. And so this week, my selection is one of my favourite novels to examine that theme: Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee.

Jasmine is narrated by a young woman who sets out from her life in Punjab, India after being suddenly widowed, following her through a turbulent journey to a new life in the United States. Eventually, Jasmine finds herself in the unlikely location of Iowa, married to a much older man and with an adoptive son of Vietnamese descent.

Our narrator is known by a number different names over the course of her story, with a new moniker at each pivotal moment of her life – from ‘Jyoti’ in her village as a child, to the Anglicised ‘Jane’ in middle America. But in exploring how Jasmine assures her own survival through necessary assimilation and adaptation of her own identity, Mukherjee weaves a stunning tale of the invention of self.     At the very beginning of the story, Jasmine is told by an astrologer that she’ll be a widow in exile. But by its conclusion, she whispers, “Watch me reposition the stars.” A beautiful aspiration, I hope you’ll agree, especially each time you reach for a new stage of life. And that is why Jasmine by Bharati Mukerjee, is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari. For my first selection, I thought I’d go with the loose theme of beginnings. So, for this week’s selection, I’ve gone with a debut novel – The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty.

Beatty is a fantastic writer who uses humour and satire to great effect, most recently in his Booker Prize winning novel The Sellout. But his first novel, The White Boy Shuffle, published back in 1996, is my absolute favourite of his. And it also features my favourite opening lines: “On the one hand this messiah gig is a bitch. On the other I’ve managed to fill the perennial void in African-American leadership.”

The book is a satirical coming-of-age story, featuring young black teen Gunnar Kaufman, who is yanked from his privileged, mostly white neighbourhood in Santa Monica, to a predominantly black neighbourhood in West Los Angeles. Gunnar gradually adapts and begins to thrive in his new surroundings, becoming a basketball prodigy and poet, eventually becoming so renowned and successful that he’s seen as the voice of his generation – a messiah of sorts. Beatty explores black identity and cultural representation with dextrous, clever, laugh-out-loud prose. Trust me, if you haven’t read it already, you’re going to love it. Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle – my Book of the Week this week!