Buzz Books 2022: Fall/Winter

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61083062-buzz-books-2022

Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors, and this edition is no exception with Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, Jamila Minnicks’ Moonrise Over New Jessup, and Kai Thomas’s In the Upper Country. Our nonfiction selections range from New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv’s exploration of trauma to Cin Fabré’s inspiring story of becoming a Wall Street Trader at 19. Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Thomas Ricks offers a look into the civil rights movement.

Kirkus Review

WOLF HUSTLE

A BLACK WOMAN ON WALL STREET

BY CIN FABRÉ ‧ RELEASE DATE: SEPT. 13, 2022

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cin-fabre/wolf-hustle/

The daughter of Haitian immigrants lands on Wall Street. Born in the South Bronx and raised in Queens, Fabré styled herself as a brash, street-smart hustler, traits that served her well when she found herself working on Wall Street. In her zesty debut memoir, the author recounts her surprising journey from roach-filled public housing to becoming one of the “youngest Black female stockbrokers.” At the age of 19, she was an ace salesperson for an optical shop when she met a recruiter for VTR Capital, an offshoot of the notorious investment firm portrayed in Wolf of Wall Street. Although she would be working as a cold caller for a low salary, she saw the job as an investment in her future. After three months as a cold caller, she learned, your firm could sponsor you for a test to earn a broker’s license. Fabré had no doubt that she would excel, get sponsored, and pass the challenging test. “Whenever I set out to do something,” she asserts, with no false modesty, “I was confident it would work out for me.” VTR certainly tested her conviction: Like all the Black and Latine cold callers, she was brutally belittled by the White brokers. “All callers were made to feel inferior,” writes the author, “had it hammered into them that they were lowly dialers, good for punching numbers into a phone and uttering words from a script, nothing more. Verbal—and sometimes physical—abuse was hurled at us.” But there was big money to be made, and Fabré admits to wanting “the cars, the houses in the Hamptons, the Gucci and the Versace.” At the age of 20, “without knowing a single thing about investing,” she became a broker. With disarming candor, Fabré recounts her heady infatuation with Wall Street, her timely escape from VTR, and her dawning realization of what she and her colleagues were really doing. A stark exposé of Wall Street’s corrupt underside and an inspiring story of overcoming adversity.

Publisher's Weekly

Cin Fabré. Holt, $28.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-250-81685-6

https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781250816856 Former stockbroker Fabré debuts with a rollicking account of joining Wall Street as a 19-year-old Black woman in the 1990s, when brokers were “alarmingly white and male.” The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Fabré grew up poor in the Bronx with an abusive father. She followed her hardworking mother’s example and found her first hustle selling stolen school lunch tickets; by 18, she was a top salesperson at an optical franchise. Following a tip from a high school classmate, Fabré joined VTR Corporation, an offshoot of Stratton Oakmont (the firm where Jordan Belfort of Wolf of Wall Street infamy made his “debut killing”). Fabré was determined to succeed despite being surrounded by “shameless” men in an environment where drugs and racism were the norm, and became a licensed broker at 20 years old. Fabré recounts the highs and lows in vivid detail—as with descriptions of the unrelenting sexual harassment she faced—and the author’s exuberance is contagious: “I tossed and turned in my little twin bed, too electrified with the knowledge that my life was about to arrow upward in ways that I couldn’t even begin to fathom.” The result is as memorable as it is inspiring. (Sept)