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  • Sarah Jessica Parker Launches Her New Literary Imprint

    Sarah Jessica Parker Launches Her New Literary Imprint

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    “The main obstacle to my simple, happy life,” muses Eleanor, the narrator of Elysha Chang’s debut novel, A Quitter’s Paradise, “was that I was prone to secret-keeping.” According to her new husband, Ellis, at least—her marriage to whom Eleanor hasn’t yet shared with her mother, Rita. When Rita finds out, she sends Eleanor an email: “Why hide yourself from me? Why why?”

    When the book begins, Eleanor is a PhD candidate at Mount Sinai studying mouse cortices, though soon after marrying Ellis, she quits the program and becomes a technician in her husband’s lab, a source of consternation for her mother and colleagues. That decision, coupled with a family tragedy, sends Eleanor into a spiral of erratic decision-making: She kicks off an affair and also jeopardizes the work and safety of her labmates. Punctuating Eleanor’s sections are dips into her family members’ lives, from both earlier years and long before she was born.

    “Eleanor’s voice came to me first,” Chang says. “But she’s very evasive; she’s a slippery character. And at some point I understood, I’m not getting more information out of her—that’s part of her charm, right? And so I did, initially, just start looking for other sources of information—from her sister, her parents.” Soon, those characters bloomed to play a larger role than simply being in service of Eleanor’s narrative: A pair of brothers, decades earlier, became estranged during the Chinese Civil War, with one growing up in China and the other Taiwan; the origin story of the relationship between Eleanor’s parents, Rita and Jing, comes to light. “I became interested in that family dynamic—that there’s so much of our family history that we don’t know, we don’t have access to. That’s not a new tradition. James Baldwin does that. Toni Morrison does that. I think this is, maybe, my immigrant spin.”

    The book also calls to mind recent explorations of science and relationships, including Weike Wang’s Chemistry and Brandon Taylor’s Real Life—it’s no surprise when Chang says they’re two of her favorites. And, as if in keeping with the scientific method, the characters’ narratives are peppered with questions: “What was its purpose?” Eleanor thinks, frustrated by her research. “Was this the life she wanted?” her mother worries when Eleanor is a child. “What in his life had ever made him think that money would come easily?” wonders Jing, newly in America.

    The novel is the first from Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP Lit, a new imprint from the independent publisher Zando, launched in 2020 by Molly Stern. “What struck me about this book was that it was exactly what I was looking for, which was a brand-new voice who was telling a story unfamiliar to me,” Parker says, “but also a story that would connect with readers who were looking for stories of their lives, who had yet to experience them in a book.” The story “is so smart and funny and heartbreaking,” she says. “And then we just had to fight for it. We just had to hope that she would trust us with this gift.”

    Chang calls the decision to work with Zando editor Erin Wicks “a no-brainer” because of “the enthusiasm that I felt from Sarah Jessica and also from Erin. They had clearly read and read the book.” (And it’s true that Parker’s palpably enthusiastic about books she loves, whether on Instagram or during this interview. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” she repeats each time I mention that I haven’t read one of her favorites.) 

    Parker and Zando publisher Stern connected at a lunch hosted by Joanna Coles; Stern had seen Parker photographed with a copy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which Stern had published. (Flynn has her own eponymous imprint with Zando; its first book, Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy, launched in February, and Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s The Centre will be out in July.) After the lunch, Stern sent Parker a stack of books, including A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra; over time, after the two started a book club together, Stern convinced Parker to launch a literary fiction imprint with Crown called SJP for Hogarth: “That book,” Parker says of Constellation, “became the standard-bearer.” 

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    Keziah Weir

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  • “The Good, The Bad, The Fabulosity, The Ugliness, The Absurdity”: Geena Rocero on Her New Memoir, ‘Horse Barbie’

    “The Good, The Bad, The Fabulosity, The Ugliness, The Absurdity”: Geena Rocero on Her New Memoir, ‘Horse Barbie’

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    The mordant irony of her location is not lost on Geena Rocero. When Vanity Fair reaches her by phone, the filmmaker, model, and activist is perched in a guest room on a Virgin Voyages cruise ship idling in the port of Miami, preparing to set sail for the Bahamas; she’s there for the Summit at Sea conference, at which she’ll give a talk about her debut memoir, Horse Barbie, out next week from The Dial Press. But in Florida, in 2023, “Can I get off this ship and scream, I’m a proud trans woman speaking at a convention here?” says Rocero. “Maybe a different story.”

    Horse Barbie details Rocero’s childhood and teen years spent with her family in Makati, a city in the Philippines, her subsequent move to San Francisco, and eventually a life modeling in New York. Raised on Hollywood exports and the Catholic Church, Rocero traces major moments of self-discovery to these two juggernauts: as a hand interpreter in the church choir at age 10—a child chosen to stand before the congregation and perform graceful hand movements in sync with the music—Rocero writes of having felt a sudden bolt of understanding. “I am a child, I am Catholic, and I am femme.” 

    Rocero was 15 years old when she started modeling in trans pageants, “a national sport” of the Philippines tied to religious celebrations, she writes, and an “amalgamation built through centuries of war and conquest”: pre-colonial heritage, which honored gender-fluid identities; the Spanish institution of Catholic festivals; and American pageant culture. At her first show, Rocero met a young woman named Tigerlily who became her trans mother and gave her the moniker Horse Barbie, a reclamation of the insults hurled by teasing onlookers who called her appearance horsey. It was Tigerlily, too, who introduced her to the story of the woman who would become her Hollywood idol: Caroline Cossey, also known as Tula, who worked as a model throughout the 1970s. When Cossey appeared in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, the British tabloids outed her as trans, an experience that drove her to suicidal ideation. “She was communicated in our community as, Look at this girl who has made it,” Rocero says. “And then the culture and media were not ready for her, and this is what they did to her”—a “complicated model to have.” 

    In 2001, following her father’s death, Rocero moved with her mother to San Francisco, a place she had come to know through films like Vertigo and Basic Instinct. After living openly in her trans identity for years, Rocero became closeted again. “Trans people in the Philippines are culturally visible, but not politically recognized,” she says. “And then when I moved to America, it was the other way around. At the time I was politically recognized—I was able to change my name and gender on my legal documents—but there was no mainstream cultural visibility.” 

    It’s no surprise, she says, that one of her longtime favorite film genres is the spy thriller. (Particular current favorites are the French series The Bureau, starring Mathieu Kassovitz, and Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman.) When she eventually moved to New York and began working as “a stealth fashion model,” Rocero felt like a spy. “I felt like I was in a covert operation for eight years where I had to protect my cover. I had to be so hypervigilant,” she says. “At the same time, my cover is about being sexy. I have to be sensual. I have to be that girl.” 

    Rocero writes with openness and humor (“I’m Filipino,” she says, “everything is funny!”) about exceedingly personal experiences, from undergoing her gender confirmation surgery, to being the focus of a date’s anger after telling him that she’s trans, to her panic while on set, wondering if she’ll be found out. She describes going to a San Francisco sex club called Power Exchange, “the Catholic guilt…surging up,” and praying for orgasms, and overcoming shame. (Rocero no longer subscribes to any organized religion. Nature is her spirituality now—hiking to camp “six hours away from the parking lot, 10,000 feet high.”) The book contains, she says, “the good, the bad, the fabulosity, the ugliness, the absurdity, all of that madness.” Accessing her sensuality after years of repression was a kind of ultimate freedom. Writing the book “in the freest way that I could, in the details that only I could, maybe it will give freedom to somebody else.”

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    Keziah Weir

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  • 11 New Books to Read in May

    11 New Books to Read in May

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    “I still have so much work to do,” says Aurora James. But the Toronto-born, New York–based 38-year-old is already doing a lot. The creative director and founder of the brand Brother Vellies, beloved for its artisanal accessories that maintain African design practices—Zendaya and Beyoncé have both walked red carpets in the brand’s footwear—is the one who came up with the Fifteen Percent Pledge, a nonprofit dedicated in part to encouraging retailers to stock Black-owned brands. She was responsible for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” dress at the 2021 Met Gala. And this month, with the release of her memoir, she adds author to her list of credentials. Wildflower (Crown) details a tumultuous upbringing—after relocating to Jamaica as a child, she watched her mother, James’s earliest fashion inspiration, suffer domestic abuse—and the eventual solace she found in creativity. James hopes the book illustrates how she’s worked within a constricted system. “This is the country we are in. This is the game that we are playing,” she says. “It does not mean that we can’t rewrite some of those rules. It does not mean that we cannot get across this mountain together.” That togetherness is paramount. “We are not on our own. We’re also on the wings of our ancestors.”

    After book demands recede, James plans to expand Brother Vellies, which already sells at Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, along with its flagship store in Brooklyn—she’d like it to become a household name. She also hopes that her best-known project will become obsolete. “I think the pledge needs to work itself out of relevancy,” she says. “We need to get to a place where 15 percent is just a given. We are not there yet.”

    More Nonfiction

    Four books plumb intimacy of all kinds

    ‘Taking Care’ by Sarah DiGregorio

    This probing history of nurses (Harper) situates the profession as radical, necessary health care—but plagued, too, by structural inequities from sexism to racism.

    ‘A Living Remedy’ by Nicole Chung

    Having lost her parents to varied failures of the American health care system, Chung has situated a portrait of grief, rage, and love against a backdrop of a middle class in flux. (Ecco)

    ‘Lesbian Love Story’ by Amelia Possanza

    In this warmhearted and sexy memoir (Catapult), Possanza combs through Bushwick bars and Hadrian’s library for stories of queer love.

    ‘Irma’ by Terry McDonell

    McDonell’s father died young, a pilot killed during WW II. As he raises his own sons, he reflects on his mother’s relentless optimism and strength. (Harper) —Keziah Weir

    New Fiction

    Manuscripts lost, found, and stolen—and more fresh fiction

    ‘The Late Americans’ by Brandon Taylor

    Brandon Taylor’s finely rendered sophomore novel excavates relationships, from lust to soured love, among a group of Iowa City grad students (writers, dancers, and more) and town residents. (Riverhead)

    ‘The Covenant of Water’ by Abraham Verghese

    In Kerala, South India, a surviving daughter (and neurosurgeon) seeks the cause of her family’s multigenerational drowning curse in Abraham Verghese’s surreal and sweeping epic. (Grove)

    ‘Yellowface’ by R. F. Kuang

    In this publishing world send-up from bestseller R.F. Kuang, a Chinese American literary sensation dies and a middling white contemporary steals her unpublished manuscript—part ghost story, part farce. (William Morrow)

    ‘The Guest’ by Emma Cline

    Emma Cline serves glitz and unease: Following a romantic tryst gone awry, a 22-year-old charms her way into the Hamptons houses of unwitting strangers, leaving destruction in her wake. (Random House)

    ‘The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts’ by Marcel Proust

    Marcel Proust’s recently discovered early manuscripts for his classic magnum opus now appear in English, edited by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer and translated by Sam Taylor. (Harvard)

    ‘The Prodigal Women: A Novel’ by Nancy Hale

    First published in 1942, former VF contributor Nancy Hale’s intimate and incisive novel of three 20th-century women coming of age is back in print. (Library of America)—Keziah Weir

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    Keziah Weir , Kia D. Goosby

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