Category Archives: books

Lantana Lane – Eleanor Dark (1986)

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We have lived round the corner from the world, with not even a signpost to betray our whereabouts… and if the treasure we have accumulated makes no show upon our bank statements, neither is it subject to income tax…

Picked off my much-neglected Virago collection bookshelf, I had absolutely no expectations for this novel, except that I wanted to read something off my own TBR. So, I had a very clean slate for this, and it ended up being a really good read. (By now, I should know that to be true for the vast majority of Virago titles.)

Set in a non-specified quite modern year in the countryside of Australia, this novel tells the stories and tales of a small group of inhabitants (called Anachronisms by the author, a perfect phrase) who live on (or just off) a dusty road called Lantana Lane. (Thus the title.) Lantana, if you’re not familiar with it, is a plant that grows quickly and widely. I didn’t know this, but I think Australians view this plant as a veracious tropical weed. In the U.S., I know that I’ve bought some from a nursery to plant in the garden as it’s one of those hard-to-kill plants… And amazingly, I haven’t killed one yet so perhaps it really is immortal. (See pic below.)

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Anyhow, as with my last few reads, I would describe this book as a tapestry book, in that you’re introduced to a community of individuals with one thing in common (in this case, location), and then as you learn about everyone, their stories get combined (similar to how threads get combined to create a tapestry). (I know – I thought of that metaphor all by myself. 😊)

Most of the characters are linked somehow with farming or the land, with the common crop being pineapples (or “pines” as they are called in the book). Though not well off with money, the tiny community mostly get on with each other, are cooperative and collaborative, and all pretty interesting characters. It’s a very rural set up, and although each of these characters commonly refers to the drudgery and poverty under which they suffer, there is a lot of good will and common sense at the same time.

Wow. That makes it sound like an Australian version of Lark Green, but these guys are a bit more meaty and edgy than those characters.

And so the book is structured around fairly short chapters, each covering a slice-of-life that happens to each of the characters (and thus to the community). It’s an earthy book, revolving around land and weather, and the neighbors are all very down-to-earth without crossing into cute. Dark is a strong writer, and despite not having a very clear image of what this folk actually look like, I ended up with pretty clear images of how I imagined each character to look, and I was pretty engaged with the narrative and what happened in their lives.

It’s also a surprisingly witty book, drily written and frequently made me smile with the writing which took me by surprise but which I loved. (The humor matches the climate: very dry.) It reminded me of Thomas Hardy in some ways, since both of these authors have used agricultural workers who are pretty isolated from other communities, but closely formed within their own. This is similar, also, in the ways that although these characters may not be very experienced in the ways of the world, they are wise about themselves and each other, so it’s not written as a mean poke at anyone or such.

This was a great read from an author with whom I was unfamiliar, and I highly recommend it. Good one. (A cursory search on-line for other reviews found it be a rather rare title to read. Is that true?)

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Some Mini-Reviews for You…

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WowStationElevenNorthAmericaHiRes. The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind, but as I’m figuring out how the world turns in my new position at work, I think there will be a bit more breathing room for me to get back to blogging.

So – let’s jump to it. Some mini-reviews to catch up on some of the titles that I’ve finished recently:

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

Different from my usual fare and searching for a “hot knife through butter” reading experience, this met the match on so many levels. Set in a fairly near future in the U.S., this fast-moving novel revolves around an emerging flu pandemic which devastates the world and the people in it. Just a few communities populate the world now, and they have to learn how to survive without electricity, without running water or pipes, without regular food shopping, without government… Mandel does a superb job here of describing how unmoored regular twenty-first century people would be in such a situation. (If you think about it, most of us would be woefully unprepared without replenishing grocery stores, without public governance, without communication.)

As the plot progresses, things begin to get more dire as the usual order of things collapses left, right, and center…

The story revolves around a roaming group of musicians and actors who travel from community to community, trying to avoid being attacked and sharing their message of culture to those who may not remember or be exposed to Shakespeare and the like. (In fact, this whole story starts with the unexplained death of an actor playing one of the parts in King Lear.) Since this is a book that uses the different threads in a tapestry structure, you’re lost at first (or at least I was), but then the magic happens, and you get the whole picture through different POVs and characters.

This was a great read, and I have no idea why I’d put it off for so long. If you’re searching for a fast-paced novel that’s really well written with an involving story line, you can’t go wrong with trying this one.

thunder_rednissThunder and Lightning – Lauren Redniss (2016)

Described as an “uncategorizable fusion of storytelling and visual art”, Redniss here covers the huge topic of weather and atmospheric science in bits and pieces. It’s a little random, but it was an good read, and I’m developing a more detailed post about this. (See here for my review of Radioactive , Redniss’ 2010 creative exploration of the biography of Marie Curie, and a finalist for the National Book Award in 2011.)

Moving on, I had a quick read of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977) which I enjoyed, although it wasn’t a very happy novel detailing, as it does, the modern day challenges of a group of First Peoples in the US whLeslie_Marmon_Silko_-_Ceremonyo are in the midst of unemployment, modern day choices, and trying to retain their old tribal ways. (Sounds horrendous. It wasn’t an awfully depressing read, but it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns.)

Then, a read-through of Our Longest Days: A People’s History of the Second World War (edited by Sandra Koa Wing, 2009), an edited collection of Mass Observation diary entries from WWII England. There’s something about reading diaries which is irresistible to me, and so I gobbled this one up. (Perfect for a Monkey Mind, but you do need to track who’s who where and when. Luckily, there’s an appendix which details this, so you just flip back and forth. Easy to do, and you can kinda figure out who’s saying what in the end as you get to know the characters…)

Then there was a lot of picking up and putting down of titles (talk about Monkey Mind), but then I finally landed on an old Virago read of an Aussie author. Completely unknown to me, but ending up to be a witty read in the end. (Just finished it, so post to come.)

So, these are the past titles from the last few weeks, and then a couple more posts to come about two titles that each deserve their own reviews.

Glad to be back. I’ve missed you.

So – here’s some news…

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So, there is some momentous news for me in my world: I have a new job. Yessiree. I’ve left my previous job for some different adventures but still at the same university. I have been invited to join the faculty in the department of Media and Communications at the university, and I am completely excited about this. I’m going to start in the fall (i.e. next month), and until then I’m on vacation which means … Guess what?

Loads and loads of free time to do stuff! This is such a great gift for me, as I usually tend to feel as though I don’t really have enough time to do All the Things, and now I have the next three weeks off. And how am I going to fill the time, you ask? Well….

I am reading the textbook(s) to become familiar with the material that class will be covering, and I’m researching some of the Best Practices for teaching in the classroom. I’ll be covering sophomore writing classes for media (along with a technical writing class for the English department), and I am so psyched to be back into the classroom after such a long time. I’m also going to be (posh title alert) Editor-in-Chief for the college’s publications, and I am very looking forward to this whole new adventure.

In the meantime, I have a few days in which to mess about doing non-work stuff such as working out, reading, writing, and doing general catching up on life. My reading mojo has returned as well, and so that’s been a lot of fun for me. I have missed the joy of reading over the past few months, and have a small pile of books that I’ve pulled from the TBR shelves from which to choose.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying Our Longest Days, a collection of WWII Mass Observation diaries edited by Sandra Koa Wing (2007), along with a fiction read of Ceremony by Leslie  Marmon Silko, a First Peoples author, and both are good so far.

I’m also preparing to travel to CA to see some family out there, and, as always, am enjoying the excitement of choosing which titles to take with me to read (on Kindle and otherwise). Book nerds unite!

So – life is good right now. I hope that you can say the same of your life. 🙂

(Life is good except for the orange clown and Charlottesville. That’s not good at all. What is wrong with some of these humans? I’m sending gentle thoughts to the many out there. Be kind. Be calm. Be courageous.)

 

 

Mini Reading Reviews

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I’ve been reading, as per usual, but not with the usual abandon, I’m afraid. My injured eye is *still* bothering me, and I’ve been ending the day resting it more than usual. It’s really been rather a bane to my existence, but in the big scheme of things, it’s manageable in the end. Plus – my doc and I are making progress, so I’m hopeful that this is temporary.

Anyway, so life has been moving a bit slowly, but the vision issue combined with the lassitude of late summer makes for not many blog entries about books read. For the two that I have recently finished up, they were good reads, but not astonishingly fascinating enough to write book reviews. To wit, here are two mini reading reviews. As always, these tiny review-lettes don’t necessarily mean that the titles were bad. Sometimes, you can have a good read and still end up with not much to say, so they fall into that category.

Mrs_ MiniverMrs. Miniver – Jan Struthers (1939)

This was a reread to get another title into the ongoing Century of Books and was quite fun. It’s a collection of newspaper columns written by Struthers and describing life for her and her family during the outbreak of World War II in England. Fairly lightweight covering topics such as buying a diary and going to dinner parties, this was more a palate cleanser than anything. If you have a Monkey Mind and need something to read that you can pick up and put down with ease, this would fit the bill. This was a good read, despite the gamble of rereading, and did remind me of how hard life would have been at that time and how easy life is nowadays. Plus – epistolary. Swoon.

Here’s a paragraph from Mrs. Miniver which mirrors my own attitude towards learning:

The structure of our life — based as it is on the ever-present contingency of war — is lamentably wrong: but its texture, oddly enough, is pleasant. There is a freshness about, a kind of rejuvenation: and this is largely because almost everybody you meet is busy learning something. Whereas in ordinary times the majority of grown-up people never try to acquire any new skill at all, either mental or physical: which is why they are apt to seem, and feel, so old.

Moving on…

still-life-with-breadcrumbs-tpStill Life with Bread Crumbs – Anna Quindlen

A domestic novel that’s fairly straightforward in its narrative arc, this was a fun non-challenging read. (Plus – off the TBR.) It’s about a female fine art photographer who leaves NYC to live in a rural village, rents a slightly tumble-down shack, meets village residents, and a bloke, and it all runs smoothly from there. Nothing too strenuous, but just a nice fairly easy (I might say even cosy in a way) read.

I’m also in the middle of some pretty funny essays collected together in a book called “I See You Made an Effort” by comedian Annabelle Gurwitch. Gathered around the theme of aging and reaching the milestone birthday of 50, it’s an entertaining E-Z read that has some sly wit in it every now and again.

Another reread gamble, but this one paid off, for the most part. Good if you like your humor sly and quick-witted, and you’ll be able to relate to her essays if you’re now a woman of a certain age. 🙂 (I do recommend that you read this in bits and pieces, as opposed to solid front-to-back. It can get a little same-y after a while if you do it solidly. Still fun, but just not as good a reading experience.)

So nothing too mind-blowing. More of just pottering around, really. Life is good… I hope yours is as well.

Monthly Reading Review: July 2017

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So another month has passed, and let’s check in with how my reading is doing… (just out of interest).

The reads for July included:

So to the numbers:

Total number of books read in July: 5

Total number of pages read:  1,563 pages (av. 313).

Fiction/Non-Fiction: 4 fiction / 1 non-fiction.

Diversity: 2 POC. 4.5 books by women.

Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode): 3 library books, 2 owned book and 0 e-books (although one is in progress…).

Here are the top three most popular posts from the last month:

Plans for August: There are some big changes coming up for me, so we’ll have to see how that goes. (They are good changes.)

 

At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick Up the Pieces – Mary Collins and Donald Collins (2017)

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Saw this title somewhere out on-line, and thought it could be interesting so picked it up. It’s a dual-memoir from a mother and her transgender son (just as in the title) and this narrative (actually a series of essays) shows how they went through the journey of Donald choosing to be a male when he had been born a female. (When your outside gender doesn’t match the gender you feel is true to yourself, it’s called gender dissonance, I learned.) Anyway, with the Orangutan’s recent announcement about the military not allowing transgender people to serve any more (*smh*), this book seemed to be pretty timely.

Donald was born a female, but knew early on in his life that he felt more comfortable and authentic as a male. As he got older, these feelings turned into a serious need, so when he was in high school, he started steps to change into a female. He was honest and open with his mother about this plan, and from Donald’s perspective, he was doing everything he could to keep his mother in the loop.

His mother’s perspective, however, was that he was too young to know what he was doing, he might change in the future, and how could he do this to her so she was “losing her daughter”? This memoir is set up as a written dialogue between mother and son, each giving her or his view on how things progressed. The interesting (and rather appalling) detail is that Donald was perfectly fine aligning his outside gender with his inside gender, but his mother comes across as one of the most selfish people on the planet.

Every single one of the mother’s entries is concerned with how she is “losing a daughter” rather than gaining a son, regardless of how this may impact her child. She refuses to use the preferred pronoun for her son, and fights him every step of the way of his transition. It’s hard to believe that someone could be this callous to someone in their family (“it’s all about me”), especially when it’s something as fraught with challenges as changing your whole gender identity. (And that’s all it is, really. People are just aligning their outsides with their identity. It’s not hurting anyone else.)

During this read, I was getting so annoyed with the mother in this autobiographical recounting of events. Donald was well prepared in how he approached his transition, he looped his mum in the plans before, during and after, and yet her entries only recount her “losing a daughter” and not having control over her child any more (if she ever did).

She bemoans how there weren’t any support groups for her and other parents who, according to her, are “grieving their lost child”. There was no mention at all of how her child was brave enough to be true to himself at an early age – it was completely her needs that should have been addressed. Sod Donald and his needs, to be frank.

I am not a parent, nor am I a parent of a transgender child. I’m not LGBTQIA, but I am a strong LGBTQIA ally, and it really unnerved me just how unsupportive this mother was of her only child and his needs. No wonder she had such a hard time with her son transitioning – she refused to consider his perspective, and was very resistant to using correct terms with his new identity. (Not really “new”. He was being true to himself.)

If this book is fairly representative of how such transitions occur in lots of other families, it’s pretty distressing as the child is already going through enough, if you ask me. I would hope that, by now, more families are better educated on the issue, and that the child in question can now receive the vital support that they need at this time.

On the other hand, the trans son, Donald, handled his transition like an adult and like a champ. Perhaps it’s easier if you’re the one who is going on that journey as you have known your thoughts your whole life and probably have been thinking about this for a while, internally, so it’s not a “sudden” event when it’s announced.

Perhaps that what Donald and his mother didn’t have was an honest communication growing up. (How could they when she refused to honor his request for a new name and gender when he was a teenager? That can’t have been a big surprise for her. Who knows, though?…)

This was a provocative read, for the most part, and covered a world with which I was not that familiar. I don’t know anyone close to me who is transgender, but I am certain that if they were, they would have my 100% support in this endeavor. So long as everyone is of age and consenting, then go for it.

Perhaps that is the strength of this book: that it shows how one family traveled along that path and comes out in the end. I must admit that the mother must be braver than I to show herself, warts and all, in this light as she shows how she would not back down on her idea of “losing a daughter”.  For goodness’ sake, give your child the respect, support, and latitude to be who they are so that they can be happy. It’s not all about you all the time.

Kudos to Donald for writing about this experience. Kudos to the mother for being so honest, as well, I suppose, but I’m afraid I’m more in Donald’s corner on this issue.

An interesting read overall.

Words New to Me…

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  • A highly aperitive notice (flyer for a chamber music concert) – a highly appealing break from the duties of normal life sort of thing.
  • Ratafia biscuits – small round macaroon-type biscuits
  • Leadbetter – type of car but couldn’t find a pic
  • Midden – old dump for domestic waste (such as a compost pile)
  • “…To switch on the lights, shut the windows, and admit that Christmas Day had insidiously but definitely begun…”  – they slept with the windows open? In England? In December?…
  • Straw palliasses – large bag made of canvas (or similar) and stuffed with material such as straw, horse hair. Used as a bed at times.
  • Eating his tangerine, pig by pig – pig = slices?
  • Dissyllable – a word for two syllables
  • Meiosis – process when cell divides from one into two into four etc.
  • Boak (describing person you’re not very fond of) – from verb to vomit or burp. This was in reference to some people that Mrs. Miniver did not like…
  • Skirling plover (bird doing something) – making a shrill wailing sound
  • Prognathous – upper or lower jaw is abnormally forward

(Words taken from Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struthers who has quite the vocabulary!)

Jazz – Toni Morrison (1992)

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As the second book of the fiction trilogy that begins with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, this seems to be fairly straightforward: husband is long-time married to wife, but then has an affair with 18-year old girl. He gets jealous of her spending time with boys of her own age so he shoots her (his mistress). She dies. Wife goes to funeral of said girl and tries to stab corpse’s face. And then it takes off from there…

Obviously, there is a lot more to the story than that, and it’s a lot more complicated than that simple A-B-C-D progression would seem to suggest. It’s an urban novel set in 1920’s Harlem, right in the Harlem Renaissance period when the African-American art world really exploded, and the plot seems to reflect this as it darts about, like the notes from a trumpet during a jazz concert (ref: title). The non-linear plot lines veers rapidly from thought to thought (although it’s never confirmed whose thoughts they actually are), and the characters and their individual lives overlap all the time so that the narrative is complex and opaque.

As Morrison writes in the forward:

The challenge was to take [the book] beyond the rules. I didn’t want simply a musical background, or decorative references to it. I wanted the work to be a manifestation of the music’s intellect, sensuality, anarchy; its history, its range, and its modernity.

This novel also harkens back to the Great Migration when thousands of African-American families moved from the southern states to the more northerly ones based on the hopes for better jobs, better housing, and a better life.

Indeed, both Violet and Joe have moved to NYC as part of that historic move, and in part to live with others who reflect them and their economic goals:

“Even if the room they rented was smaller than the heifer’s stall and darker than a morning privy, they stayed to look at their number, hear themselves in an audience, feel themselves moving down the street among hundreds of others who moved the way they did, and who, when they spoke, regardless of accent, treated language like the same intricate, malleable toy designed for their play…”

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(Above) – Toni Morrison, author.

The story is told through the various perspectives of different people who have all been impacted by the imploding marriage, and interestingly enough (for me at least), I learned that some critics have likened this multiple-perspective technique to the call-and-response of jazz music (where instruments echo what was previously played by other instruments, but in a different way), and that also that same call-and-response structure echoes African-American history itself (e.g., some of the field work songs used during slavery times were in that sort of set up).

It’s also reflected in how some music is played in a lot of African-American churches where the pastor calls out for a response from the congregation (“Can I get an Amen?”). Wiki also reports that this polyphony (all the multiple lines of music playing at the same time) is also a characteristic of African tribal music, and so there is this long and fascinating line of thought that emerges. (In fact, there are all kinds of rabbit holes that you can disappear down once you start researching it a bit.)

So it’s a complex read, structurally speaking, and yet despite that, it’s not really that challenging to keep everything and everyone straight so long as you’re paying attention. Having said that, it’s not a book that I recommend that you pick up and put down during random moments, but that’s not a criticism of the author or her work. It’s that, just as you don’t often hear linear jazz music and it can be tough to figure out the pattern in the music (if there is one), this is not a plot that can be followed easily without effort. But it’s worth it. The writing is excellent, and the deeper that I dove (dived?) into the book and into the lives of these intermeshed characters, the more I kept thinking about them even when I wasn’t actually reading it.

Image result for jazz music in the 1920s

Morrison’s characters are stuck with very hard lives in a world that is not caring in the slightest, and yet despite that, they put their all into their very busy working and living lives right where they are, both historically and geographically. The husband and wife in question, Joe and Violet (later nicknamed Violent) Trace lead a quiet domesticated life at the start of this novel.

It’s 1926, WWI has been over for a few years, and the world seems to have taken its breath and caught up with itself with a fairly rosy outlook in general. Joe is working as a traveling salesman selling women’s cosmetics from a suitcase while Violet is an unlicensed beautician working off the books with the more wealthy neighbors; neither of them seem to be particularly remarkable in that their lives are fairly typical without a lot of drama.

However, in the middle of this domestic balance, Joe decides to have an affair with a young woman, Dorcas, a teenager who lives in the neighborhood. However, trouble erupts when he catches Dorcas dancing with male friends at a private party, and he goes off the rails with jealousy and shoots her. Naturally, wife Violet hears about it – she’s friends with the family and it’s a close neighborhood – and when she does, things go way off the rails a bit for her as well.

For various reasons (and it’s different reasons for both of them), the couple keep a photo of the young dead girl on the mantelpiece in their walk-up apartment which doesn’t really help things, as you can probably well imagine. Violet has been hurt and humiliated by the affair, and knows that Joe is mourning his now-dead girlfriend with a strength of emotion that she believes he would not feel for her if she died, and so each character is hurting in his or her own way at his or her own pace. Few of her friends understand this married relationship, and it’s all a bit fraught. Money’s a big worry as well, which doesn’t help things.

So this is a tightly wound read set in Harlem, a place rife with racism and poverty throughout the neighborhood. You’d think that the shooting (which comes early in the novel) would be explosive enough, and yet, for the remainder of the novel, you’re just waiting for something else to happen. There’s a tension there, and Morrison does a great job of winding the springs for you, the reader. When’s the hammer going to drop? And what will it be?

If you’ve ever read any of Morrison’s other works (for example, I’ve read Sula, Beloved, and pre-blog, The Bluest Eye), you’ll know to expect expert original writing that doesn’t necessarily settle into the traditional well-worn grooves of most twentieth century books. This is not anything to hold you back from reading it, and actually, I think that the writing (and the wide-ranging freedom with the characters) is what keeps this book as such a strong reading experience.

I loved this read, and finished it quickly after only a few days. (Always a good sign of a strong read.) Not that easy, but so worth the effort. Highly recommend this.

 

Summer Reading List: The African-American Experience

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Credit: Keith Haring (1983).

I published a couple of posts the other day about summer reading, one of mostly fiction and then another on mostly non-fiction travel. In reviewing both of the lists, I saw that I was remiss in not recommending many reads from around the world from the POC experience, and so this post is to rectify that.

(Please note that just because these titles are under the POC category does not in any way negate their value. Sometimes I think it’s a good thing to be reminded of the many titles that are far outside the typical Western selection of literature and than what’s on the best seller tables at Barnes & Nobles, and so that is what this post is. Just a signpost of some other excellent reads which may be more off the beaten track a bit… Feel free to add any titles. I’m always open for recommendations!)

For the queens of African-American writing (and superb artists in their own right), I would suggest starting with super stars such as Alice Walker (The Color Purple [1982]), Maya Angelou (who actually I haven’t really read yet, but is on TBR…) and the wonderful Toni Morrison (Beloved [1987], Jazz [1993] or perhaps Sula [1973]).

And for poetry, I happen to love contemporary poet, Nikki Giovanni, while Gwendolyn Brooks is also really good… What about Langston Hughes? And if you think about it, there’s definitely an argument for looking at rap and other song lyrics as poetry (even though some of the content can be a bit rough around the edges :-))…

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Part of a Langston Hughes poem integrated as part of huge public art project at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Well played, my friends.

More fairly contemporary writing comes from the pen of author Paule Marshall with the 1985 Virago title and collection of short stories, Merle and Other Stories , and I recommend exploring her backlist – Marshall has a wide variety and I’ve enjoyed every one I’ve read from her. These are out in the trusty Virago Press if you see some around.

(Side note: Virago Press is famous for printing neglected works of female authors of the twentieth century, and the books are easily recognizable for their dark green spines — the contents of each book vary widely. Worth seeking out in if you see one in a charity shop or similar.)

For a great contemporary solid read, try  the recently published Homecoming by Yaa Gyazi (2016) or, if you’d rather have a go at some strong short stories, try Z. Z. Packer’s wonderful Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003). Don’t forget the excellent Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013) or any of the other works by this author.

The historical experience of African-Americans in the U.S. has been long and pretty awful for the most part, so there are some very tough but fascinating reads about this. Go back in time to the terrible years of slavery, and learn from Solomon Northrup’s 1853 narrative of his life, 12 Years a Slave. Another really good memoir from a slave’s perspective is The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself.

Another option is to read some of the speeches of the day by African-Americans throughout history. I enjoyed Great Speeches by African-Americans (edited by James Daley) (2006). This has a wide spread of historical speeches, ranging from the powerful Ain’t I a Woman? by Sojourner Truth to speeches by 1974 politician Shirley Chisholm, Malcolm X and former President Barack Obama.

If you’d like more NF background into the issue, there are loads of titles out there. I started with this one and found it to be a good backgrounder: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves by Adam Horschild — a really accessible and useful introduction.

Nella Larson’s 1929 fiction, Passing, looks at life for two female friends in the early twentieth century when people felt that they had to hide their origins in order to live a happy life. (Good read, btw, and will leave you with lots of thinking about it.)

Another excellent read from the early twentieth century, this one with the power of a hurricane, is Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God (1937). (Hold on to your hat for that one as it’s one of the best reads I’ve had in a long time. Highly recommended. Stick with it though… There’s dialect, but you get the hang of it after a while.)

The history of having African-American help is covered very nicely from the perspective in the novel Like One of the Family (Alice Childress [1954]) which explores the divide (obvious and otherwise) between the white families and the domestic black servants that they hire. (This is also a good read as it’s in one-sided conversations….)

Plays of that era are also excellent and powerful: Try A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry (1959) and her follow-up play, Clybourne Park (2010). (The sequel is by Bruce Norris, but it follows the narrative arc of Raisin.) (Really good if you can see if in person on a stage. Or check out the 1961 movie of the same name…)

For a more contemporary look at life in American, check out Stick Fly (2006) by playwright Lydia Diamond about family dynamics in modern America…

Coming forward in time, there are some really good titles from African authors, among whom would be the Senegalese classic So Long a Letter (Mariama Bâ [1980]) about a first wife who reacts when her husband takes a second wife, or perhaps Blackass (A. Igoni Barrett [2015]) about a twenty-first century young Nigerian man who is born black, but wakes up one day with all-white skin (except for his bottom). How does this impact his life? You’ll have to see…. (Blackass is written in a pidgin dialect, but stick with the read as you get the hang of it pretty quickly.)

Mentioned in the other post the other day, I really recommend the Aya graphic novel series by Marguerite Abouret and Clement Oubrerie set on the Ivory Coast in Western Africa, or if you’d like to read a poignant and really funny novel about a young girl growing up in 1970’s Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), see if you can find Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1989). Great read.

If you travel north a bit from the African continent, you may run across Zadie Smith who has a great collection of work from which to choose… White Teeth is the one that brought her to the fore and the one that I remember the most, but the others are certainly as good.

For a non-fiction focus on the U.S., one of the best historical reads about African-American pioneer history I’ve read (in terms of opening up a whole new world of black history in the US) was Going Home to Nicodemus by Daniel Chu and Bill Shaw (1994) which covers Exodusters and the African-American migration to pioneering Kansas. (Fascinating.) Related to this would be Black Women of the Old West (William Loren Katz, 1995) about the rarely talked-about world of African-American female pioneers who traveled west when the frontier was open. This led me down rabbit holes for many happy hours…

If you’d like to trace more recent history and the absolutely amazing stories of courage with reference to the U.S. Civil Rights fight, you can do no better than reading Sen. John Lewis’ graphic novel series called March. (Volume I, Volume II, and Volume III right now.)

To fully understand and appreciate our great former President Obama, try his fascinating autobiography, Dreams from my Father. Regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on right now, it’s a good read about a very smart and level-headed man.

Moving forward in time, there are some excellent African American authors who are very eloquent and vocal about the state of their world.

A really good and passionate start to this would be reading journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’ work, including Between the World and Me, his essay to his teenaged son on life in the U.S. for an African-American young man, or, if you’d rather read a plea for feminism (through the African-American lens), pick up And We Should All be Feminists by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie (2012). Both strong and provocative pieces of non-fiction writing…

(Coates also has written an impassioned plea for reparations in this article from the Atlantic mag. Totally worth reading if only to make you possibly rethink and reimagine a new future.)

For a shocking and contemporary critical look at how the medical establishment has treated the African-American population, Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington (2007) will leave you shaking your head at the world around you.

In fact, there is so much really good POC literature out there, that it’s hard to choose. What a great problem to have!

Can You Pls Pass Me the Catch-Up?

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catch_upI’m not quite sure what it is, but I seem to be in the midst of a Summer Snoozefest when it’s a bit too hot to really do anything major, and nothing seems to be perking my reading fancy. Fussy, I know. Summer time in Texas is underway and in full swing.

I’ve finished some middling reads, although I’m at a loss to explain why these weren’t great as lots of other people have thought just that.

The first is Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See. I fully accept the blame for this read not being that satisfying as I’d gone into it thinking it was a collection of short stories, when actually it’s a pretty clever complex novel about WWII.

It’s strange how just one expectation about your book read can impact your real experience of actually doing a read, but it can. Ahh well. You win some, you lose some. I’ve read some of Doerr’s work earlier and had thought it was the Bee’s Knees (see The Shell Collector review), and All The Light You Cannot See continues that trend of being extremely well written. He is a craftsman of a writer, to be sure, and so I think that what threw things off was the rather complicated tapestry structure of the plot when I was rather hoping for a more straight-forward short story read that would compliment my Monkey Mind instead of having to, umm, actually work for the plot. :-)

I know loads and loads of Very Important Readers have loved this book, so perhaps don’t take my word for it…

I also finished up Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett. A short novel – perhaps a long novella – this featured a fairly normal Bennett plot of Haves and Haves Nots up in the Potteries, except this one focused more on the theme of religion a fair bit. The role of the church (and the people who attended) was a central theme, but it wasn’t too heavy-handed. Still well written, but again, I think it was me expecting something else when I was reading it as it took forever for me to finish, and that’s usually a sign of trouble for me, Will Robinson.

So now I’m wheeling around thinking about my next read… 

I’ll let you know how it goes.