I run hot and cold with Kurt Vonnegut, sometimes thinking he's a genius and other times silly and simplistic. My response to this tale of the effect of God's utter indifference on the creatures of our solar system is one of moderate disinterest, though I do generally enjoy clever irreligiousness.
I was so psyched to read Lisa See's new historical novel that I snatched it off the cataloging truck to get at it faster. With that kind of build up, it would have been surprising if I liked it as much as I expected to, so maybe it's not Shanghai Girls's fault that I didn't love it.
I read a lot of autobiographies, but seldom does it occur to me to consider what a feat of memory and bravery it is to get down a rich portrait of one's life. Mary Childers does an admirable job of recalling her impoverished childhood and adolescence in the Bronx, and is pretty out there about what she endured, including her own shaming behaviors. I wonder if her telling the story in the present tense helped her with that? It kind of confused me, so I wish that even if the device helped her memory, that she'd switched it to past tense after the first draft.
He had always been a cruel and violent drunk, but when he dangled Lacey out of a window because she wasn't his kid, Mom ditched him. At least that's what she tells us. I'm glad to have a standard for where to draw the line on the kind of abuse to take from men. p.17
I wish my social studies teacher would verify what the old Irish guy told me and Paula about these crowded hills belonging to the Appalachian Mountains. But during the geography unit we only memorized and pierced with pushpins the map locations of natural resources and capitals in Africa, Asia and Central and South America, as if preparing for lifetimes of exile or plunder. p.127
Regarding the last vampire book I read, my cousin asked me, "Isn't that trash?" I don't think that particular book, a graphic novel, is trash, even though I didn't like it very much. I did like Dead as a Doornail pretty well, but I do more or less regard it as trash. But I also don't say trash in an entirely pejorative way. I guess what I mean is that it isn't literature. It goes down quickly and leaves you feeling sated, even if hungry for more. I don't think that's a bad thing, although I do prefer to balance paranormal series like these with materials that are edifying. If I had a better diet, I'd probably make analogies to protein and carbohydrates. If I had a worse diet, I might compare genre fiction to fast food, but since I haven't been inside a McDonald's since the turn of the century, I can't bring myself to liken tasty paranormal tales to something that in addition to having bad politics makes you feel sick when you're done consuming it.
"Male like me" is the general idea of Ned/Norah Vincent's year and a half undercover as a man. Vincent is a tall lesbian, who has a masculine mien. After one night out in costume accompanying a drag king friend, and experiencing how differently people respond to men, even in passing on the street, she decided embark on an intensive research project. Dressed as a man, Vincent infiltrated a men's bowling league, strip clubs, the world of online dating, a monastery, some sales jobs, and finally a men's group.
I (mostly) recommend and (somewhat) don't recommend this book. It's a pretty good read, but doesn't necessarily achieve what it sets out to do. I love Lisa See's historical novels, which is how I ended up reading the first two books in her mystery series.
You can just imagine the fun of growing up in the Midwest with a name like Bich (not pronounced the way it's spelled) and being so tiny that your peers want to use your head as an armrest, right? That's not what this childhood memoir from a Vietnamese-American whose family moved to Michigan when she was a baby is really about, but details like provide access points for people of all backgrounds, I think. Something else that will appeal to lots of y'all is Nguyen's love for and descriptions of food, especially the 1970s/80s candy that give her in her youth both torment and succor. She is a total foodie and is enraptured by the food writing in the Little House series. Who knew?
While supervising a project to increase the lesbian fiction holdings at Barnard, I discovered this novel by Barnard professor Margaret Vandenburg. To my discredit, I'm kind of cloistered in the library and don't know much about what goes on on campus, but since Teresa Lee (LIS student whose project the lesbian fiction collection is) determined that the book has circulated sixteen times in the last six years, I guess there are plenty of people who know about Dr. Vandenburg's work.
Yup, it's back to vampires for me. I let a dozen books go by since the last one I read, unless you count the zombie book. Life Sucks is a graphic novel about a reluctant vampire, a vegetarian convenience store clerk named Dave, who is competing with a trust-fund surfer vamp for the affections of a hot mortal goth girl. I wasn't especially taken with the story or the art, I'm sorry to say, which is especially grating considering the anticipation with which I waited for it to be released from NYPL's nearly three week long "in transit" status. I think the problem is that the book really should have been about the girl, Rosa, with her traditional Mexican mother who wants her to get married and procreate, and her own identity struggle, including her desire to be a vampire.
Where have I been all of Ker-bloom!'s life? artnoose has been making this handset letterpress zine every other month since 1996. I finally got around to reading it when I received several copies in a zine donation at Barnard.
Here's a cover scan from issue 55 and Kelly Wooten's review of it in Library Journal:
You know how I'm often, perhaps self-righteously, claiming that my favorite authors are women of color? Well, I have to admit that there are a few white male authors in my heart, too. And you can't get much whiter than white Canadian Robertson Davies, eh? I've read, with affection, his three completed trilogies at least twice apiece, but I hadn't yet gotten around to rereading the first two of what Wikipedia surmises would have been called the Toronto Trilogy. The bad news is that I'm now pretty sure that Murther & Walking Spirits is my least favorite of Davies' novels.
I mentioned my preference for books by women of color in a previous post, and Johanna, a friend with I think pretty similar tastes (woc, but also zines and paranormal fiction) recommended Trumpet. I realized that while I do consistently enjoy books by women of color—American, immigrant-American, and Chinese and African (writing in English), I haven't done all that well with books by British women of color. I'm sorry, but Zadie Smith does nothing for me and Monica Ali less than nothing. I'm sure they're lovely women and skilled writers. Their writing styles just don't appeal to me, nor do those of the other women Brits of color I've read. Therefore it was a relief to dig into Johanna's recommendation by Nigerian-Scot Jackie Kay and realize that I was in the right place for once.
From early childhood through high school in upper class Palos Verdes California, Baszile was the only (or rare) African-American girl other than her sister on her street or in her school. This coming-of-age memoir focuses on issues particular to her situation, but that also apply to any young woman growing up in America. The anxieties about how she looks, dating, and her rocky family relationships are pretty universal.
Maybe he finally understood that integration had been as hard on me as segregation had been on him. p.307
Carla Olivares spends a year in Mexico City trying to engage with the Chicano side of her heritage. At first she spends time only with fellow expats, starting with her trustafarian (her description) ex-boyfriend with whom she lives with for the first few months. She knows very little Spanish in the beginning of the story, but as she works at immersing herself in Mexican culture, she also learns the language.
This was a quick and somewhat tearful read. The teenage narrator, a talented classical musician in a coma after a car accident, must decide whether to live or die. While this is an affecting book and an interesting premise, I think there could have been more complexity on the death side. But maybe that's just a middle-aged reader of YA lit talking. I think teens will appreciate the drama.
Dick-lit. If I had to write a two word review of this book, that would be it. It's amusing, shallow, the boy gets the girl, and there's a fair amount of gross-out violence along the way. Although frat boys don't do too well in this book, they're a good audience for it. The author reveals himself—or at least the narrator—to be something of a liberal by ragging on Fox News, but really, if your politics go much deeper than Fox's, you might find parts of this book offensive.
As regular readers of my zine know, Celia Perez is one of my best friends and favorite zine writers. Therefore it shouldn't surprise you that hers is one of the rare zines I'm including in my reading log. Since I read so many zines for work, it's just not practical for me to review all of them here, so I just write up my very favorites, and I don't even get around to them half the time.
Anyway, this issue of I Dreamed I Was Assertive is one of those zines that make me wish I was a better writer. I'm kind of ashamed that my messy old zines were next to Celia's on our table at the NYC Zine Fest! Oops, I'm making this about me, so I'll get back to IDIWA…
Finally, I'm back to some literary fiction by a woman of color. I apologize if that sounds fetishistic, but seriously, other than vampire books, that's what I like to read best! This coming of age novel takes place in Shanghai during the good old days of the Cultural Revolution and is told by Maple, a poor girl from a suspect family. (Her schoolteacher father made some unfortunate comments about Mao that landed him in jail.) Maple makes friends with Wild Ginger, who is one quarter French and therefore also branded counterrevolutionary. But really, Wild Ginger is a hardcore Maoist whose devotion to the man and the cause first elevate and then destroy her.
"Be careful with that statue," she warned as he turned. Toward the entrance there stood a life-size glow-in-the-dark Mao sculpture, its right hand waving above the head in the air. p.106
POTENTIAL SPOILER
"Yes! Do that again Maple, yes!"
"Chairman Mao teaches us…"
"No."
"Come on, Evergreen!"
"'People…people of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties, and advance wave upon waves.'"
"'Keep pushing the cart,' Maple!"
"'Keep pushing the cart until…until we reach the Communist heaven!'"
"Oh Maple, the blind woman is picking the peaches."
"And the blind woman has caught a fat fish—this is a miracle."
"Do the quotations!"
"You armchair revolutionary!"
He groaned, "Oh! Chairman Mao!" p.151
Love & Lies is billed as a companion to Wittlinger's Hard Love, a YA novel with zine publishers as its main characters. Sadly this installment doesn't involve zines--and weirdly none of the characters seem to be vegetarian, much less vegan--but it is still a compelling read.
Published in 1969 by a mixed race African, this novel about a farming community in Botswana clearly has a lot of weight, but unfortunately I lack the history to fully understand what's going on and its significance at the time. I think my reaction to the book would have been much more powerful if I could fully appreciate what was going on politically, and perhaps also culturally. The writing is fairly spare and detached, always third person, and moving from one point-of-view to another fairly rapidly.