Tiny Reparations Books: Background information when reading Perish

Tiny Reparations Books

This article relates to Perish

LaToya Watkins' debut novel Perish is published by Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House launched in July 2020 with the goal of highlighting diverse voices that are often shut out of mainstream publishing. The project is a joint venture by Christine Ball, senior vice president of the publishers Berkley and Dutton, and Phoebe Robinson, a comedian, author, producer and actress perhaps best known for her podcast and HBO series 2 Dope Queens. Robinson summarizes the imprint's mission: "We are looking for queer, Black, Indigenous, people of color and neurodiverse writers, not only to publish them, but to launch their careers. We want them to have the experience of being appreciated and seen."

In a 2021 interview with Refinery29, Robinson explained that she had difficulty finding a publisher for her first essay collection, You Can't Touch My Hair (2016). "People just felt so comfortable telling my agent, 'Oh, this book will never sell. People aren't interested in funny book collections from Black women. It's not relatable,'" she recalled. Tiny Reparations' first slate of releases included Robinson's third collection, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes, which published in September 2021.

This was followed by What the Fireflies Knew, a novel by Kai Harris that published in February 2022. Harris's book is narrated by a Black preteen named KB, who goes to stay with her grandfather for the summer after her father's death and learns more about her family, and herself, in the process. Harris told TODAY that she wanted to give readers insight into the experience of Black girlhood — "To see what it smelled like, what it tastes like, what it feels like. What hurts, what's exciting, what's joyful, what's painful for a young Black girl in this moment of her life."

Grace D. Li's Portrait of a Thief was published by Tiny Reparations in April 2022. This novel centers around a group of Chinese American students who conduct a heist, stealing looted Chinese artifacts from American museums and sending them back to China. Portrait of a Thief was optioned for a Netflix series almost a full year before its release.

Perish is the fourth and most recent book in the Tiny Reparations lineup as of August 2022.

Phoebe Robinson also helms the Tiny Reparations television production company in partnership with ABC Studios, which is "dedicated to showing how women, people of color and anyone…on the LGBTQ+ spectrum are the heroes of their own TV shows."

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This "beyond the book article" relates to Perish. It originally ran in September 2022 and has been updated for the August 2023 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

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