Against the wishes of her parents (but with their permission), Karen Armstrong entered a convent at 17. Her memoir reveals what being a nun was like in 1960s England--the spiritual, physical and emotional challenges, as well as the joy of feeling called and chosen to strive to be close to God.
Davidia, who doesn't speak for most of her Mississippi childhood after being beaten by her drunk of a mom, develops an insane crush on the BMOC at her school about ten years into her silence. Being a psychologically mute school weirdo without a single friend, that doesn't go particularly well for her.
West Indian immigrant Phyllisia Cathy has been plopped down in Harlem with her proud, larger-than-life father, dying mother and pretty, compliant sister.
Jeune fille is French for nanny. 19-year-old Rosie is spending a year in France escaping her life by taking care of three kids with an exacting mom and a physician dad on a houseboat in Paris. Ooh la la. While the storyline might make this book sound like chick lit, it's really not.
Today I thought of the first time I realized you [older sister] were not me. I was five and you were setting that red alarm clock and I watched you and I knew that you weren't having the same thoughts. That you wouldn't dream the same thing that night. And that we would die at different times. And that you might die first. It was the first time I ever felt alone. I feel that all the time now.
Three rows down [at a bullfight in Spain], Americans were pushing their way through, boys in backwards baseball caps and T-shirts advertising universities or pubs in other countries. They were boys with wide shoulders and loud laughs, boys oblivious to their foreignness, their wealth, and their freedoms. I felt a sudden compassionate, maternal contempt for them.
Marci Cruz has an abusive father, a mother who is blinded by love for her husband, and wants to be a boy so she can love girls. The story can be hard to read sometimes because Eddie Cruz really is a champion cabrón (there's a ton of Spanish in the book), but seeing 11-year-old Marci and her seven-year-old sister Corin fight back is satisfying.
Like with First Spring Grass Fire, you wonder of Someday, Someday, Maybe how much of the story of a young aspiring actor in NYC written by a former young aspiring actor in NYC is autobiographical. While reading it I was thinking that it's possible that fictionalizing one's life might make it easier to tell the emotional truth.
I grasp onto the nearby silver pole, steadying myself as the train lurches along, my hand slipping on the smooth surface, vying for a safe position along with half a dozen other hands. Today, everything about New York leaves me feeling like I'm competing for space, and just barely hanging on.
Spoon's book is listed as a novel but reads like a memoir, told in nonlinear episodes with the protagonist sharing the author's name. I suppose I shouldn't care about the distinction, but I can't help wanting to know what I'm reading. Regardless, one should treasure the rare opportunity to read about the real or fictionalized life of a genderqueer child growing up in a religious family in the Canadian prairies.
With Caroline Paul laid up after an accident and a new girlfriend on the scene, one of her cats goes missing. The cat comes back, but perhaps being bored from lying around the house, or maybe because she's just like that, Paul wants to know where the cat, Tibby, went and who took care of him while he was gone.
Chicana butch Karleen Pendleton Jiménez has known she wanted to have a baby almost as long as she has known she wasn't a girly girl. Having other things going on in her twenties and no chance of getting pregnant accidentally, she doesn't get around to trying to get knocked up until her mid-30s, which is not typically easy for lesbians in the best of times.
I don't always love compilation zines, and I don't often read zines by cisgender men, but I do love romantic comedies, so chances were 2 to 1 against my being a fan of I Love Bad Movies: Love, Sex, & Friendship. Since I'm writing about it, you can guess that I did, in fact, become enamored of the zine.
I have long enjoyed Julia Alvarez's reality inspired political fiction, I gobble up autobiographies, and because of my spouse's work with two nonprofits there, I have an interest in Haiti, so of course her Haiti memoir was appealing to me. Unfortunately...
"We ride into the downtown area [of Port-au-Prince], full of ambivalence. To watch or not to watch. What is the respectful way to move through these scenes of devastation? We came to see, and according to Junior, Haiti needs to be seen. But something feels unsavory about visiting sites where people have suffered and are still suffering. You tell yourself you are here in solidarity. But at the end of the day, you add it up, and you still feel ashamed--at least I do. You haven't improved a damn thing. Natural disaster tourism--that's what it feels like."
When Gloria, a 16-year-old Ghanaian, more or less flunks junior high school a friend of the family arranges for her to become a nanny for a doctor with a two-year-old son. Stuff does happen in this novel--good things and fair amount of bad things, but it mostly feels like a character development story.
My sister Danna recommended this book to my parents, brother and me. If you read her review, you'll see why. The titled "opposite of hallelujah" refers to the protagonist Caro's sister Hannah returning home after spending eight years as a nun in a contemplative order. (Kate, you're going to want to read this one!) The girls' parents are excited to have their dark-secreted daughter back, but 16-year-old Caro...less so.
Russian 1.5 generation immigrant teenager Anya Borzakovskaya falls down a well and meets a ghost. The ghost is scary at first, then helpful, then scary again and in the end helps Anya learn valuable lessons and quit smoking.
"At first glance you might find the above [diary entry] interesting but that's because it's me, and you obviously find me interesting enough to read this book."
"Another nice thing about the Jews is that their rabbis don't make a habit of sexually violating their youngest and most vulnerable congregants. Of course, there are obvious reasons for this. For one thing, Jewish clergy are allowed to fuck and masturbate and marry. The first two of these activities work amazingly well for relieving sexual tension. … Oh, also, the Jewish clergy are allowed to have vaginas. As a general rule for any large organization, if you're looking to reduce the rape-iness of it, try hiring more women."
"I have comic friends who are gay. Some remain in the closet, and I don't blame them. It's not just out of fear of prejudice--it's fear of the gay community taking ownership of them. Suddenly, they are a gay comic, saddled with responsibility to represent."
"Please make this book be finished. I'll be honest: I kind of blew it off." from the Afterword, by God, quoting Silverman.
Rachel Dratch's compelling memoir is compelling. She tells the story of her fifteen-years-in-the-making overnight success, some failures (that she often managed to turn around on her second try), her friendships, getting knocked up in her mid-forties, and other stuff.
Soledad is an 18-year-old Cuban-American dancer from Miami making plans to go to NYC and audition for ballet companies when she's presented with the opportunity to go pro with a drum and bugle corps. (Right? But it sounds like a really cool thing, and a great way to spend the summer after graduating from high school, not to mention with the hottie who suggested her for the gig.)
That queer feminist Nicole Georges would call regressive right-wing meanie Dr. Laura Schlessinger for advice about how to navigate a family secret is what makes Nicole and her story so interesting and surprising. Maybe it's just me, but I had the idea that Nicole, a long-time maker of zines and minicomics, was tough and a little scary. (There's a good chance I have her minicomics collaborator Clutch McBastard to blame for that impression.) The Nicole I met in this graphic memoir is not scary; she's scared. Dr. Laura makes her cry, her mom makes her go silent, and she's easily hurt by her girlfriend, Radar.
There's a lot to love, literarily, in Ruth Ozeki's metafictive split narrative novel, but it's not the fastest read. I was completely engaged in the parts of the book that are the diary of a bullied, out-of-place Japanese teenager, but found the second person story about the characters Ruth and Oliver (the author and her husband's real names) and their cat Schrödinger (not their cat's real name) less compelling. I didn't dislike it, but it was a struggle, like Ruth's life.
I think I've read too many YA dystopias lately, because I can barely keep them straight. This one is the end of the trilogy that started with Delirium. The concept, that love is regarded as a disease, and that people are surgically cured upon turning eighteen, is pretty cool. In Requiem we find our heroine wondering if she'd prefer to be happy (cured) or free (starving in the Wilds). Frankly I often wonder the same thing, regarding how medicated we modern folk are.
