This is not your ordinary book club.
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Step One
Subscribe to our newsletter and download the Bookum App.
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Step Two
Purchase the book with our partner Reparations Club, a black, woman-owned bookstore or reserve at your local library.
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Step Three
Follow our weekly emails and chapter guide, and join us for our final meeting that will feature our highlighted authors. Get an inside look at their approach to craft.
Read Like a Writer invites participants to slow down and study how Black authors build their books — examining structure, voice, point of view, and form, not just theme and feeling.
Angela Nissel is the award-winning author of three books, including the national bestselling memoir The Broke Diaries and her latest, Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead, which was named one of Essence’s most anticipated books of 2026. Her work has been praised as fiercely honest, deeply moving, and laugh-out-loud funny, often all at once. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, and several late night talk shows, bringing her signature humor and candor to a national audience.
Before blogging had a name, Angela was documenting her broke college life online, stories that would eventually become the book The Broke Diaries, helping to define a new voice in personal storytelling. She also co-founded Okayplayer alongside Questlove, helping build one of the internet’s earliest and most influential music and culture communities. Angela seamlessly translated her distinct voice to television, launching her Hollywood career on Scrubs in 2002. Over the past two decades, she has written and produced on a wide range of acclaimed series, including Scrubs, The Boondocks, and Ginny & Georgia, earning a reputation for blending sharp humor with emotional depth. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Angela still carries that energy with her, whether she’s covered in dog hair at home or digging through bins at thrift stores looking for a bargain.
Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead
Angela Nissel
JUNE/JULY
Angela Nissel always wanted her mother’s approval. But two defining events created a barrier between them: renouncing Christianity and being admitted to a psychiatric ward— events that mirrored failed parenting to her mother.
Beating her depression, Angela moved to Los Angeles where she quickly achieved success as a television writer but soon after found herself dead broke and enduring a painful divorce. It was at this low point that she received heartbreaking news: her mother had cancer. Angela moves her mother to Los Angeles where she attempts to hide foreclosure notices and her live-in boyfriend while also trying to save her mother’s life with everything from crystals to celebrity doctors. Still, her mother succumbs to her cancer.
In this poignant and hilarious memoir, Angela chronicles her odyssey as she tries to remain “strong” like her mother in the face of grief. Delightfully self-deprecating, unsparing in its honesty, yet filled with wacky humor and joy, Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom is Dead, is an unforgettable portrait of love, yearning, loss, and resilience that reveals the indelible power of introspection to save our lives.
There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood
Rasheed Newson
July/August
Xavier C. Barlow, one of Hollywood’s young Black stars taking the industry by storm in the late 1950s, is Skyline Studios’s ambitious attempt to rival Sidney Poitier. His arrival into the industry is calculated, his charm is magnetic, and his seductive screen presence appeals to both audiences and celebrities across generations.
But years later, after Xavier dies at the height of his fame, Aaron Touissant—Skyline’s designated backlot fixer who helps the studio’s stars stay as deep in the closet as humanly possible—is finally ready to expose the powerful culprits responsible for his untimely death.
Written from Aaron's panoramic lens, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood is a searing portrait of the movie industry as a manicured minefield and a compelling journey into the queer history of Los Angeles.
Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He codeveloped Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.