People, places, and topics to motivate you

Books, movies, and television to inspire you

By Heather Fegan

A round-up of pop culture to keep you entertained this summer

Books

Pick of the summer

Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett
Penguin Publishing group
$30.00, 352 pages

From the publisher:

An instant number one New York Times best seller, one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of the year, and named a best book of 2020 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Glamour Magazine.

A novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person''s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Television

The most anticipated return of the summer

Ted Lasso

This comedy starring Jason Sudeikis follows American small-time college football coach Ted Lasso who heads to the U.K. from Kansas to coach a struggling professional soccer team in London, despite having no experience coaching soccer. It’s a touching and heart-warming series with lovable characters and meaningful lessons. Sports fanatic or not, Ted Lasso will win you over. It’s easy to fill up on the 30 minute episodes

A new season of Ted Lasso returns July 23.

Streaming on Apple+

Movies

A musical summer hit not without controversy

In the Heights

This is the film version of the Broadway musical in which Usnavi, a sympathetic New York bodega owner, saves every penny every day as he imagines and sings about a better life. Based on the musical stage play with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, this is a fun and lively musical, but get comfy and settle in as it runs two hours and twenty-three minutes long.

The musical tells the story of a corner in the predominantly Dominican Washington Heights neighbourhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, where every member of the community pursues their dreams of a better life,

In the Heights has received acclaim from critics, but also sparked a conversation on race. A wave of backlash surfaced over the film’s lack of visibly dark-skinned Afro Latinx characters — the community the film purports to represent. In the movie, all but one of the main cast members are light-skinned —though a large portion of the neighbourhood’s real-life population is Black Latinx.