2020: Year in Review

Everyone, including me, has agreed that 2020 has been the worst, but shockingly, it's been fantastic for my reading--and even more fantastic for writing about my reading. This year I wrote 22 (!) reviews, the most since 2014, before I had children. I also read 30 books, equaling my 2014 total (and in 2014 I spent a whole summer hugely pregnant, sitting around the house, doing nothing!). I had attributed my continued reading to my book club, but with that on pause since March, I realized I'll read plenty on my own, and maybe even more without the pressure of a deadline.

Partly I read because I didn't want to think about this year. Reading was an escape and a distraction. I wrote because I felt stupid and ineffective sitting at home. Writing was a way to prove to myself that I'm still capable, still have intelligence to offer, even if it's rarely called on these days. 

Even so, writing the reviews was a struggle at first. I had fallen out of the habit of composing reviews in my head, something I used to do as a way to occupy idle time. When I do sit down to write, my brain resists the necessary effort to make my swirling ideas into coherent thought. I feel myself getting lazy--putting down ideas but not taking the time to form them into a cohesive whole. 

But I decided permitting some of the laziness was a necessary compromise in order to write. If I demanded A+ work every time, I'd stop doing it altogether. So I wrote 22 reviews. Some I'm happy with, some I'm not. Some expressed my thoughts about a book well, and others are just glimpses of still-inarticulate thoughts. That's okay, which is probably the biggest lesson of 2020. 

Books read in 2020:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Jan)
2. Lanny by Max Porter (Jan)
3. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Feb)
4. Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott (Mar)
5. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Apr)
6. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Apr)
7. Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams (May)
8. Normal People by Sally Rooney (Jun)
9. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham (Jun)
10. Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin (Jun)
11. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson (Jun)
12. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (Jun)
13. The City We Became by NK Jemisin (Jul)
14. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Jul)
15. Wordslut by Amanda Montell (Aug)
16. A Burning by Megha Majumdar (Aug)
17. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (Aug) 
18. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Sept, a reread)
19. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Sept)
20. Pew by Catherine Lacey (Oct)
21. There There by Tommy Orange (Oct)
22. Space Invaders by Nona Fernandez (Oct)
23. The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine (Nov)
24. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (Nov)
25. Survival Math by Mitchell S Jackson (Nov)
26. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (Nov)
27. Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh (Dec)
28. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (Dec)
29. Cleanness by Garth Greenwell (Dec)
30. Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh (Dec)

Twenty-one of the books were written by women, a huge shift from when I started blogging and oddly favored men. In addition, about a third of the books were written by people of color. Almost a third were non-fiction, also a big change from a decade ago. Most of the books were published in the last three years, with only four written before 2010.

There were some fantastic books this year. I'm still proud of myself for finishing Ducks, Newburyport. It's an English lit fanatic's dream, and I'm still thinking about it. Little Women was an absolute delight (as is the Gerwig movie adaptation). Perhaps Normal People wouldn't have resonated as much if I hadn't watched it alongside the Hulu miniseries, but it nonetheless has stuck with me. Though there were some I didn't love, there weren't any real stinkers.

So as I close out 2020, I'll just reiterate that this year was the worst, except for the books. 

"Homesick for Another World" by Ottessa Moshfegh

After teasing for weeks, I've finished Ottessa Moshfegh's short story collection! The collection that I reacted to so strongly, I had to put it down twice in favor of the sparseness of Carver and the poetry of Greenwell. I've learned a few things. I don't like reading the same author back-to-back (just as I don't like binge-watching TV shows). For me, the magic of artistry falters when examined in repetition; the artist's skill becomes a trick exposed. I also don't like reading short story collections back-to-back. Stories demand savoring, yet a collection demands to be read as a whole. I find it hard to balance the needs of the individual story with the theme of the whole in a single collection, let alone three.  

But none of that ultimately says anything about Homesick. In most fiction, the characters’ emotions are relatable, even if their actions are not. I alluded to this as much in Greenwell's Cleanness. Though the protagonist and I have little in common, his feelings were something with which I could empathize. Moshfegh’s characters, on the other hand, exist very much on the periphery of human experience—little about them is relatable or understandable. They're scarcely believable as human beings half the time.

I tell my English classes that they can’t argue a character is “crazy” because it stops the conversation. “Crazy” (in literature, anyway) means meaningless, arbitrary. I don’t think Moshfegh crafts stories that are either, so what, then, to make of her undeniably “crazy,” delusional, and (as I put in my Greenwell review), psychotic characters? Characters who have no lucid grasp on reality or other people?

Beyond existing on the periphery, her characters are similar in many other ways. Moshfegh’s protagonists are united by a common revulsion for fat people, by disgust at the classless-ness of the poor. Yet they have a fascination with the human body at a base and visceral level. They’re the kind of people who casually use the word “retarded” or refer to gay people as “homosexuals.” They’re also arrogant and proud; their fringe existence confirms (for them and only them) their specialness.

The same type of protagonists occupy the two Moshfegh novels I’ve read—My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands—but isolated from other “crazies,” their protagonists’ actions can feel like a reflection of a crazed society. Placed together in a short story collection, however, the protagonists appear separate from society. Their psychosis seems to be about them, not a broader whole.

 So while I didn't see any larger meaning or message to the stories, there does exist within them a weird energy, a sense of life in their absurd characters. There's "The Surrogate," about a woman hired to play the attractive face of a business. It seems like a story that should take a dark turn, but it doesn't really. In "Dancing in the Moonlight," a man who spends all his money on luxury clothes but is essentially homeless decides he's in love with a woman who remodels furniture. He goes on a tragically comic adventure to convince her he has an ottoman that needs reupholstering. "The Beach Boy" maybe works best as a whole. In it, a middle-aged couple returns from a trip to Mexico; the wife's unexpected death leads the husband to reconsider everything about his marriage (in absurd fashion, of course). They're all unsettling and fantastical.

Ultimately I don't know what it all means, or whether it means anything. I wouldn't universally recommend Moshfegh--she's something to be taken in small doses--but there's undeniable skill in her craftsmanship of crazy. 

"Cleanness" by Garth Greenwell

It's rather odd that I've felt the need to begin both this and my last review (of Raymond Carter's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) by referencing Ottessa Moshfegh's short story collection Homesick from Another World. Partially it's because all three books are essentially short story collections (though Cleanness has a single narrator), which inevitably invites comparisons. Partially it's because twice I picked up Moshfegh only to set it aside for another.

Even more so than Carver's collection, Cleanness exists opposite Homesick for Another World, which could probably be subtitled "Dirtiness." There's plenty about Moshfegh that enthralls, but coming off her novel Death in Her Hands, I couldn't handle even more nearly-psychotic narrators, nor her minute and all-consuming focus on the disgusting nature of human bodies and habits. Though Greenwell's novel also focuses intensely on the human body and the inner self, its focus, tone, and style have almost nothing in common with Moshfegh's cynicism.

Greenwell's narrator, a gay American professor living and teaching in Bulgaria, goes through a range of emotions, including depression, but unlike Moshfegh's protagonists, he never feels psychotic--even his tendency toward self-harm is understandable, natural. And though Cleanness contains the most explicit descriptions of sex I have ever read, Greenwell writes in such a way that the acts don't inspire disgust or titillation, nor laughter or grimace; instead, they read as pure expressions of need or love or feeling. So maybe ultimately it's love that's absent from Moshfegh's work and which sets her and Greenwell most apart.

While Moshfegh's characters are usually alone, Greenwell focuses on love--and its mate, pain--through the relationships of human bodies. The explicitness of the sex in Cleanness was what most stood out in the New York Times review that led me to pick up the book, and undoubtedly it's something that could turn off readers (especially the second chapter about a BDSM encounter gone wrong). I thought of a teachers' Facebook group of which I'm a part; in a recent post, a member asked about the acceptability of a teenager using casual profanity in an essay. I was shocked by how many teachers were horrified--it was a sign of lack of intelligence, they bizarrely argued; they would never read anything with profanity. I think English readers as a whole (or maybe just Americans?) have a similar attitude toward sex, particularly in the written word. Sex can exist "off-screen," but any detailed description is pornographic, a sign of smuttiness and poor writing (unclear which is worse). 

Greenwell seeks to challenge that assumption, writing about sex in exquisite detail and beautiful prose. For Greenwell's narrator (and Greenwell himself), sex is an essential part of one's true self--to remove sex or to deny sex's role in life is to deny one's humanity (a metaphor that is especially apt for the queer community. Though the protagonist is an openly gay man, he lives in Bulgaria, a country with rampant homophobia that demands his relationships be kept somewhat hidden). In the novel, sex is a vehicle to explore love, hope, heartbreak, and shame in ways that we hide in our day-to-day interactions.

But to focus only on the sex is to do a disservice to the rest of the book, much of which goes beyond sex. The first chapter, where a student comes out discreetly to the professor and the professor finds himself unable to offer the comfort or solace the student seeks, is incredibly heartbreaking, as is "Decent People," about pro-democracy protests in Bulgaria that attack simultaneous LGBTQ-rights protests. The largest section of the book, about the narrator's relationship with R., a Portuguese man, is one of the most moving depictions of love and heartbreak I've read. 

In trying to determine what it is about Greenwell that's so moving, eventually I realized it's the prose itself. It's not a surprise that Greenwell started out as a poet--there's a rhythm through his sentences that carries the emotional content. In an interview in The Paris Review, Greenwell describes his syntactical style: "The kind of sentence I'm drawn to, which constantly falls back on itself in correction or hesitation or defeat but is also drawn forward by the demands of rhythm and cadence, feels mimetic of desire to me, even of sex" (yeah, okay, there's a lot of sex; in the same interview, he says "the great human virtue is promiscuity"). I do think that Greenwell's recursive style is part of his appeal, so at odds with the assertive, "masculine" style of an author like Carver or Cormac McCarthy. Maybe I felt reassured that the prose itself assumed a lack of knowing rather than bold pronouncements; that the prose invited one to be washed over by emotions. 

Maybe I also felt reassured by the fact that, despites its sadness, Cleanness seems hopeful about love. Moshfegh's characters are hopeless and alone, but Greenwell suggests meaningful connection is possible, even if fleeting.

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver

Though focused on the mundane rather than the fantastic, Carver's short story collection reminded me most of Haruki Murakami's short stories. They're concise to the point of the reader feeling like she's missing something. I'd finish a story and feel like something had happened--I just wasn't sure what.

I started Ottessa Moshfegh's short story collection Homesick for Another World immediately after (a bad idea, short story collections shouldn't be read back to back. Good ones demand percolation), and I felt almost revolted by her focus on the grotesquely detailed inner workings of her characters' minds. That's not a criticism of Moshfegh, but rather an awareness of how sparse Carver is in comparison. He sets the stage (and does so well), but then the reader is put to work. Characters' lives remain largely hidden, open to enigmatic glimpses, not revelations.

In an apt comparison to Moshfegh, there's an undercurrent of violence and anger in Carver's stories, particularly against women. There's a sense that heterosexual relationships require an intensity of feeling that inevitably manifests itself violently. That's most true in the titular story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," where married couple Mel and Terri debate whether a violent ex-husband's abuse was love. Terri is certain it is, but I was struck by the tension between Mel and Terri. He doesn't appear to be abusive, but there's a level of violence there too. Not all the stories end violently--"Everything Stuck to Him," by comparison, has a fight that appear to resolve lovingly. Yet even the most positive ones, including "Everything...," ultimately have an unresolved edge.

One of the most frequent topics brought up when Carver stories are discussed today is his contentious relationship with his editor, Gordon Lish, who cut considerably from Carver's stories against Carver's wishes. I know little about the drama involved, but it does give an increased sense of mystery to the stories themselves. What did Carver want? Is the story better or worse for the editing? Perhaps their tension is manifested in the stories itself (or maybe that's too Freudian).

Ultimately, I'd recommend Carver's stories, though they're somewhat of a paradox. They're very short, and thus appealing to readers wary of length. On the other hand, they're probably too enigmatic for impatient readers. Maybe perfect for literary readers with not a lot of time. :)

"Death in Her Hands" by Ottessa Moshfegh

I chose Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation for my book club last year, and I was as fascinated with the novel as with the author herself. Death in Her Hands certainly shares similarities with My Year, particularly its unreliable female narrator, though its dissonance from reality seems somewhat less significant, and its mystery (if there is one) ultimately unfulfilling.

The most important element of Death in Her Hands is that it begins with a note 72-year-old Vesta Gul finds in the woods while walking her dog, Charlie. Vesta has recently moved to a rustic cabin in the woods in the small town of Levant after the death of her husband. The note reads, "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.” There is no body nor any evidence of a crime, but Vesta becomes obsessed with the mystery of Magda's death anyway.

Soon, Vesta has created an entire backstory for Magda, whom she has decided is a young immigrant illegally living in Levant. She's decided the note was written by a young man named Blake who has a crush on Magda and has allowed her to live in his mother's basement. She crafts an entire range of suspects, from a monster named Ghod who takes the form of a police officer to a disfigured man named Henry who works at a gas station.

There's some pleasure in this absurd build-up, as Vesta cluelessly attempts to use a computer in the library and "finds" further clues. Eventually, she even "meets" much of her cast of characters, including Blake's mom "Shirley" and Officer Ghod.

While Vesta is obsessed with the mystery of Magda, perhaps the real mystery is of Vesta herself, whose life we learn about in small snippets. Her disdain for her late husband eventually becomes clear: he was cold, controlling and condescending; he preyed on female college students and belittled his wife. It's obvious why Vesta would want to escape him and find some independence, though we also learn that Vesta, while a victim, is not a hero. She herself is condescending, particularly to the other residents of Levant, and there's a sense that for a long time she bemoaned her vacant life without trying to alter it. By moving to Levant she's made a large outer change, but she's not "living the dream." She's eating cold, grocery story bagels each morning and fiddling the day away with her dog. 

As the novel continues, Vesta's derangement is clear, but it's not quite clear where the derangement is going. There's something engaging of the paradox of a mystery without an actual mystery, but eventually, after pages of Vesta inventing Magda's life and increasingly bizarre encounters with actual (maybe?) people, there's an expectation of some sort of meaning in the end.

Instead, Vesta just seems crazy. The final scene--involving a showdown with her previously loyal dog--is pretty fantastic, and I wanted to laugh as Vesta improbably leapt into the wilderness in her black camouflage suit, but I also wanted it to amount to something. "Crazy old lady" doesn't seem sufficient.

"No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy

This will be my second year teaching The Road to my junior classes, so I thought reading another McCarthy novel might be useful. Anyone who's read The Road could clearly identify No Country for Old Men as another McCarthy work--it shares the former's spare prose, minimalist punctuation, subtext-heavy dialogue, and cryptic maxims. Despite the many similarities, they're substantively different books--among other things, No Country's action-heavy plot contrasts The Road's endless (yet purposeful) tedium. While I prefer The Road, particularly for its worth in discussion, I still found No Country hypnotic, appealing despite my inclination toward eye rolls. 

There's something masculine and Western in the way McCarthy writes. It didn't come across as forcefully for me in The Road, a book devoid of women, but the tone is very much on display in No Country. The book is populated by independent men, men of the Code. They're stoic and principled, even when those principles are absurd and harmful. The women in the book, by contrast, are vulnerable and emotional--the symbolic representation of the men's inner caring that they don't reveal to the world. Certainly we're supposed to believe Bell and Moss love their wives (Bell explicitly and Moss because he resists the "temptation" of a desperate teenage runaway), but that loves feels patriarchal, not equal. The women sit and wait for the men to return and grant their affection.  

What to make of that? Is is descriptive or proscriptive? Simply reflecting a certain kind of man, a certain expectation of masculinity, or idolizing and romanticizing such a characterization? I'm not sure there's a clear answer, but I couldn't shrug off that the men in the book--Moss and Chigurh especially--are meant to be cool. And I couldn't shrug off the ickiness I felt whenever they spoke to a woman. Her concern for him or for life written off as irrelevant.

And yet I can't say I disliked the book. Chigurh's a psychopathic murderer, but his nearly inhuman strength and relentless fulfillment of his obligations makes him an obvious antihero. The swirling and intersecting storylines build suspense. Like George R.R. Martin, McCarthy's not afraid to kill off an apparent protagonist without warning. He also resists the lure of a climactic final battle, having Sheriff Bell walk away at the end rather than pursue Chigurh.

The Road resonated deeply with me as a parent. I can't read the final scene without weeping uncontrollably, and in the context of the novel's apocalyptic setting, the Man's love and devotion for his son feels true and enduring. No Country didn't feel as meaningful in comparison, despite the blurb-emphasized line "How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?” Still, I finished it in an easy three days, which is praise in and of itself.

Side note: When I taught The Road last year, we discussed the book's lack of traditional punctuation. There are no quotation marks, and McCarthy often omits apostrophes in contractions. We'd suggested the omissions reflected the Man and the Boy's world--one without society's constructs. The father and son's world was stripped to its bare minimum, much like McCarthy's punctuation. However, I hadn't realized that style was indicative of all of McCarthy's works, so when I saw similar conventions in No Country, I wondered whether my earlier analysis was invalid. In other words, if McCarthy always writes that way, then is the style still a rhetorical choice significant to this particular work? I ultimately decided it was. Though No Country exists within the real world (more or less--it's rather sensationalized), its characters exist on society's fringes. The lack of punctuation mirrors the Western aesthetic.

"Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family" by Mitchell S. Jackson

Where to start with Survival Math, part memoir, part historical analysis, part ethnographic study? Mitchell Jackson's book is the story his upbringing and the Black men in his life, centered in Portland, Oregon. Through his and others' personal stories, he explores expectations of masculinity, the pimp life, the draw of drug culture, and gangs. The cultural elements could feel well-tread or stereotypical, but Jackson's introspection and empathy help them feel meaningful. 

The most meaningful--and jarring--section for me was his discussion of women. Jackson describes expectations of men that demand poor treatment of women, treatment that Jackson freely admits his participated in himself. These abuses were not just of his youth, either. He explains juggling various women, lying and manipulating them, well into adulthood. Maybe it was just jarring to see a man describe his harm with such candor. But, then again, that candor itself is unsettling. By virtue of being our honest, open, and forthright protagonist, Jackson gains our sympathy and understanding. Thus, when he openly acknowledges his many abuses of women, he paradoxically becomes even more sympathetic. I'm not sure what to make of that, and I'm not sure Jackson is either. He lets the women he's wronged tell their side of the story, verbatim, at the end of that section, and the most telling is Statement Four:

Ok, so your asking all of us who may or may not hv been broken to help? Just trying to understand cuz the irony feels really sad... (119)

Jackson spends a lot of time on the expectations of behavior, which include not only how men treat women but also how men treat other men. Such expectations demand bravado and often led to jail or death. He also describes the normalization of using and selling drugs. Jackson has no solutions for these cycles of violence and incarceration, but he does paint a portrait that allows the reader to see how easy it is for them to continue. 

Throughout the book, Jackson covers such issues by switching from intimate personal stories to sophisticated theses on cultural patterns with little warning. The unusual mishmash of genre can, like his content, be startling, particularly because his book follows the same pattern stylistically. 

I spent a lot of time thinking of The Grammarians, which I recently finished, while reading. The books have almost nothing in common, but the twins of the Grammarians argued over "standard English" versus colloquial, and I realized Jackson might just be the compromise the twins need to bring them together. His book weaves the casual vernacular of his upbringing with the lofty syntax and vocabulary of academia, often in the same sentence. Take his discussion of Black men and white women:

Much, but never enough, has been said about the extreme violence white men have been willing to perpetrate in the name of chivalric and paternal protection of the women they've invested (burdened?) with the expectation of piousness, whom they've weighted with lifetime roles as the incubators and progenitors of the white race. But let me call it, white men were never protecting the purity of white women, for couldn't no mortal woman satisfy his needs nohow. (71)

Though not the explicit focus of his book, Jackson's style is itself a commentary, a challenge that colloquial equals uneducated or unworthy or that "standard" English means a life of ease. 

I would suggest there's times the loftiness can feel a hindrance. Take the end of that paragraph: "Indeed, the white man has committed malevolence after malevolence to secure his hegemony over the apple: perforce, his most prized possession. She being vital to his dominion over whomever and whatever he envisaged," where both "malevolence" and "envisaged" seem needlessly verbose. Similarly, some of the segues into fruit seeds of Don Giovanni might have been a little long.

Surprisingly, Jackson spends almost no time on what, at first glance, a reader might expect to be the focus of the book: his "escape" from his "troubled" upbringing. Here's a former drug-dealer who spent time in jail and yet is now a lauded, published author and NYU writing professor. The American Dream in reality! But while Jackson is undoubtedly successful, I think part of his point is that while he's avoided jail and death, he hasn't "escaped" his upbringing nor is his story some easy pathway to success. He spends some time on why he was able to make it out fairly unscathed, including his unwillingness to murder and his willingness to step down, but his book isn't meant as a treatise on how with grit and hard work anyone can make it. With a little bad luck, Jackson could easily be one of the many he knows who didn't survive.

"The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown

I've been hearing praise for Boys in the Boat for quite awhile, but I'd put off reading it. It's nonfiction (though I've found I'm getting over my nonfiction prejudice quite nicely); it's about sports; it takes place in the 1930s. Nonetheless, when I finally convinced myself to read Boys in the Boat, I was reminded that there's a good reason heroic sports stories resonate. Even when the reader knows the outcome (and the American team's 1936 Olympic gold medal is known from the beginning), we can't help but be moved by a story of struggle and ultimate definitive win. 

Brown frames the tale of the University of Washington's eight-oar crew through the lens of Joe Rantz, a determined young man mostly abandoned by his family growing up. For Rantz, rowing is motivation and validation of his worth. In the sport he finds the camaraderie and family he lacked as a child. Though Rantz centers the story, much of the book's power comes from its classic American Dream framework. The University of Washington's crew is made primarily of working-class boys; their heart and grit propel them to success against the elite, privileged crews of the East and also against Hiter's Germany.

It's a glossy view of history--Western physicality vs. Eastern elitism. American hard work vs. Nazi propaganda and tyranny. But I also don't doubt that the crew's experiences on the team were as monumental as they describe. I know many people, including myself, look back on high school and college competitions with a kind of nostalgia that can't be shattered. Compared to the real world, athletic competition is straightforward and simple.

Brown's glossy view extends to his characters, most of which fit familiar molds. Boat-builder Pocock is the archetypal "wise old man"; coach Ulbrickson is the taciturn father figure the boys need; Rantz is the scrappy, never-give-up hero. But darn is it moving anyway. I found myself on the edge of my seat during pivotal races, particularly the final gold medal match, where I wanted to scream at severely-ill Hume to just make it through!

Brown is able to make rowing, a sport that today is again considered a field of the elite, into something quintessentially American: the power of the individual harnessed for the success of the group. Against my tendency toward pessimism, I'll admit it's a beautiful tale.

"The Grammarians" by Cathleen Schine

The Grammarians, so we're told, is a book about twins who love--and fight over--words, a passion which (according to the blurb) comes to climax in a fight over a beloved Webster's Dictionary. With such a summary and a title like The Grammarians, it's easy to believe the book is comprised of witty repartee about vocabulary, obscure arguments about punctuation use. Such reductiveness--girls whose passion for language is all-consuming!--can come off twee, even among readers who also like to discuss favorite words (I learned "eephus" the other day and adore its oomph) and praise the versatile colon (which may or may not have been my Halloween costume this year). Not wanting to see my passion made into mockery (see: science and The Big Bang Theory), I'd avoided the book despite seeing it praised. 

But, as the saying goes, don't trust a book by its cover--or by its title and its blurb, which were probably written by someone who thinks a colon can only introduce a list.

(By the way, what is up with the FOUR parentheticals in the opening paragraph? I'm aware they're excessive, and yet I'm loath to remove them, dear [non-existent] reader, as I'm feeling rather 19th-century amiable today. Don't worry, I'll give up the affectation.) 

The Grammarians is about Laurel and Daphne, two identical twins who do love language--both the secret language by which they communicate and the words inscribed in their beloved Webster's Dictionary. And their lives do intersect and conflict over the written word. Daphne eventually becomes a newspaper copyeditor with a popular--and pedantic--column grousing over the demise of the English language. Laurel ends up a "found verse" poet, rearranging old, colloquial, and grammatically-incorrect correspondence to form modern poems. Lauren and Daphne fight over many things, including whether "good" language is an unchanging truth or a social construction of the privileged, but the mention of the fight over the dictionary in the blub is both a spoiler and a misdirect, as it occurs in the last twenty or so pages of the novel.

Ultimately, the heart of the sisters' conflict is not language but their relationship to each other, the push and pull as each seeks to be similar to each other and also independent. When, for example, Laurel gets engaged, Daphne rushes to find a spouse too, in order to have a double wedding. They're thrilled to experience the life moment together. But when Laurel chooses to be a stay-at-home mother rather than pursue a career, Daphne is incensed. For Daphne, especially, Laurel's choice to make decisions different than Daphne (especially when Laurel gets a nose job, thereby condemning both their noses) reads as condemnation of Daphne herself. It's a messy relationship that anyone with a sister or best friend can identify with.

Thus, though language provides a connecting thread in the novel, it's not really the focus of the novel. Much of both women's lives are separate from debates over the written word. Schine follows the sisters from birth through late age, but she isn't interested in a methodical retelling of their lives. Instead, the novel jumps around, covering some events in great detail before jumping forward with little concern about the time skipped. Some characters, such as their cousin Brian, get a lot of page time but don't seem particularly connected to the greater whole. The effect is a (paradoxically) full but partial snapshot of two smart, independent, and stubborn sisters. 

"Space Invaders" by Nona Fernandez

Space Invaders is an odd, little (very little) book. I sort of feel like a kid cheating at a book report project writing about it. That's because the book is short: we're talking only seventy pages, and that's with generous spacing between chapters and sections. For that reason, Space Invaders has more of the feel of a short story. I'm left wanting the larger work--to see how it connects to broader themes--instead of groping around with the little I'm given.

Part of that frustration probably results from my own deficiencies in knowledge. The novel centers on the childhood experiences of a group of students during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1989 military dictatorship (I looked up that fact in an NPR article on the book, which tells you everything about my lack of knowledge). Throughout the book, the children react to their feelings about Estrella, a peer and daughter of a national police agent (yup, stole that from the article too). From that perspective, the innocent qualities of childhood--crushes, mundane classroom experiences--are contrasted against the political brutality happening outside (though filtering into) the classroom. However, the children's experiences are primarily told through dreams, rather than hard memories, lending an air of mythical uncertainty to the whole experience.

So that's a lot, especially for a calling-it-seventy-pages-really-is-cheating novel. There's also an analogy to the old Space Invaders video game that I didn't quite get. 

I think I need a reread. 

"There There" by Tommy Orange

This year, due to changes because of Covid-19, the school at which I teach has five lunch mods. 5th period--our lunch period--has always been longer than the other six bells to accommodate lunch, and this year it's even longer. Twenty minutes longer each day, to be exact. That means, over the course of a week, I have an hour and forty minutes more with 5th period than my other classes. I teach junior honors both 1st and 5th period, so this discrepancy became an issue. 

I came up with a novel (okay, easy) solution: we'd read in 5th period. I'd always wanted to do independent reading, but I couldn't figure out how to do it authentically in a school where student subterfuge is common. I checked out dozens of high-interest books from the library, and every day, for the last 15 minutes of class, my 5th period walks outside and reads by the baseball field.

I don't really know what my students think about it. They tell me it's "cool," but maybe they just sit there and daydream. I honestly don't care. Want to know what I do? Sit there, soak up the sunshine, and read for pleasure. It's my form of meditation. I'm dreading when it will be too cold to sojourn outside, but I'm taking it while I can.

Which is a needlessly long preamble to say I read There, There in 10- to 15-minute chunks over the course of six weeks or so. It's not an ideal way to read, and my apologies to Orange because I do think it did a disservice to his book, but I'll always remember it nonetheless. 

There There is a compilation of interwoven stories, all about "urban Indians"--that is, Native Americans living in the city, largely around Oakland. The characters in each of the stories weave into each other, all coming together at the end in a large powwow. The biggest downside of reading in small chunks was that I struggled to remember the characters' relationships to each other, especially because the connecting threads are often subtle.

That's a minor issue on my part, though, not a criticism of the book. I hadn't thought about it until I read There There, but I don't think I've ever read a book about modern Native American life that didn't take place on a reservation. Part of Orange's focus is that Native American identity and culture exist throughout America--not just on the reservation. He also considers what it means to be Native American today: some of the characters identify strongly with the label; others are barely aware it's part of their history. Regardless, the characters carry the history--and the baggage--of being Native American, which for many also means generational cycles of poverty and troubles with alcohol, drugs, or violence. 

Throughout the novel, there is a sense of dissonance, of disconnection--from identity, from family, from the outside world. None of the characters seem settled, at ease with where they are in the world, which is perhaps a reflection of America's long-standing tradition of uprooting Native Americans, of forcing them to an ambiguous place in our country.

In the increased focus on people of color this past spring, I realized how erased Native Americans have been. Other than a discussion of racist mascots, Indigenous' people's lives are rarely considered. There There is a glimpse of "urban Indian" life that few white Americans are familiar with, but it's also an unsentimental look at identity and our relationship to the past and present.

"Pew" by Catherine Lacey

I really wanted to like Pew. There's plenty of appeal: small-town secrets, a dash of "The Lottery" horror, a nameless (identity-less) narrator. But Pew is one of those books that only works when there's some sort of payoff, when the time spent feels ultimately meaningful. It's harder to justify the experience when all the ambiguity ends in... gooey ambiguity.

Pew is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator who is discovered sleeping on a church pew. Though the church members are discomfited by the narrator's lack of clear identity markers (boy or girl? Black or white? young or old?), they decide to take the person in. The church members' "generosity" is pushed, however, as the narrator--whom they name Pew--refuses to speak or divulge any personal information. In the midst of the community's frustrations at Pew and Pew's unwillingness--or inability--to perform an identity, is the upcoming Forgiveness Festival.

There are multiple potential themes running through Pew, none of which quite come together. First, there's the town's uneasiness with Pew's gender ambiguity. It would seem to be a commentary on transgender individuals, but Pew doesn't identify as a person at all. The town is judgmental, but their discomfort with a person who refuses to take any kind of identity seems a pretty human response.

Pew repeatedly insists that their body is just a vessel; that they are not an individual with a past and a future. I could see this being a statement on trauma or perhaps a criticism of our over-individualistic society, but it just makes Pew feel empty as a character.

Pew becomes acquainted with Nolan, a boy adopted by a town family from a war-torn African country. Nolan clearly hates his family, and his family's condescending magnanimity is awful and cringe-worthy, but the ultimate criticism--that small-town, Christian goodness toward the "underprivileged" is often just a new form of Colonialism---doesn't feel especially new.   

Then there's the way in which individuals are prone to confess to Pew. In the absence of an identity, other people can project whatever they like onto Pew. Pew becomes a canvas for others' fears and insecurities. I suppose there's irony that a person in whom everything is hidden becomes a medium by which others' finally feel free to reveal, but, again--to what end?

Then there's the Forgiveness Festival itself, a vaguely referenced and ominous-sounding community event that the entire book leads up to. Given the hints scattered throughout the novel, it's easy to imagine a town from "The Lottery" or Midsommar, but instead the final event seems, well, rather tame. People [spoiler] confess aloud their wrongdoings, all at once... and then have a picnic? There are hints or worse doings (murders by the leaders? I'll confess I didn't follow), but nothing is confirmed. Again, it seems like there's an important theme that's just out of reach. Suggestions that the Festival is used to cover up rape, for example; or that grace-giving "forgiveness" can easily be twisted into harmful "forgetting." All worthwhile to explore, but the end effect is that they're mentioned--and then also forgotten.

The book ends suddenly, and while it feels like an ambiguous ending should feel meaningful, instead, it feels cheap and empty--sort of like Pew

"The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas

It feels like it's been awhile since I read a real young adult book, and Thomas' The Hate U Give reminds me of all the things good YA does well: compelling characters; nuanced relationships; something to say about the world without being preachy.

The book follows Starr, a 16-year-old Black girl. She lives with her family in the self-described "ghetto" yet attends an elite, mostly-white private high school in the suburbs. She keeps her identities separate: her Black family (including her dad, formerly incarcerated and a former gang member), Black friends, and Black neighborhood don't interact with her white school, white friends, and white boyfriend. Those two worlds are brought together when Starr witnesses a police officer murder her childhood friend, Khalil, during a traffic stop.

The book was published in 2017 and the movie adaptation followed in 2018, and of course in 2020 it feels even more relevant--and important--for its audience. One of the things The Hate U Give does best is offer an empathetic perspective, particularly for individuals commonly dismissed by society. Starr's father is no saint: he was a gang leader, and Starr has a half-brother from an affair, but he's also a man deeply devoted to his family and his community. Such characterizations can, over the course of the novel, veer almost too simplistic (all the sympathetic characters with "bad" pasts are ultimately redeemed or their actions admirably explained), but it works as a whole to reflect the layers that go into creating criminals, drug addicts, and gang members. People don't "choose" those lives because they're evil. They "choose" such lives because they have no other choices.

Maybe even more necessary, The Hate U Give provides insight into how white behavior--even from well-meaning white people--contributes to racism. White Fragility and similar books clearly make this claim, but I imagine presenting the same argument in an engaging YA read could be even more effective. There's Hailey, Starr's school friend who wants Starr to just "get over" racism, and there's also Chris, Starr's supportive and loving boyfriend--who also, unintentionally, allows his white privilege to keep from fully seeing Starr's life. 

The book is a funny, frank, and thoughtful introduction for young readers--particularly white readers--to issues of inequality and racism raised by the Black Lives Matter and other protests.

"Ducks, Newburyport" by Lucy Ellman

Ducks, Newburyport is not for your casual reader. I don't say that in a snooty way, as its text is certainly accessible for a broad audience, but it's the kind of book that screams to be appreciated for its structure; its audacity; its singular, unrelenting voice--rather than its plot. English nerds who love that kind of thing will be rewarded, feeling they've gained something at the end of the 1000-page opus. Everyone else will give up a page or two in.

The story primarily takes place inside the head of a middle-aged mother in Ohio who runs a from-home bakery business. Like the famous chapter of Joyce's Ulysses, it's told in a one-sentence, stream-of-consciousness format, though over multiple days. Like most of us, the narrator's voice runs from the prosaic to the philosophical, the intensely personal to the all-encompassing. She worries about her pies; she worries about her relationship with her children, particularly her oldest child from a previous marriage; she worries about her lack of social skills. She worries about school shooters, about police violence against Black Americans; about Trump's pull on America. She mourns the loss of her mother many years ago; she dwells on her relationships with her father, siblings, friends, and ex-husband. In between she recounts random dreams and walks through the plots of classic books and movies.

The common thread among all of these is worry and recrimination. Ellman expertly captures the constant state of (usually) low-level anxiety and guilt that runs through many mothers. It's not enough to take care of the daily needs of your children; it's not enough to take care of the emotional needs of your children (besides, that will fail); there's also a sense of needing to be on guard at all times. The protagonist worries particularly about shooters, but beyond that is a sense that the world is not safe. That our children will not be okay, and that it's our fault.

The protagonist's state of mind is occasionally interrupted with detailed descriptions of a mountain lion mother seeking to protect her cubs. It's a jolt at first, not only because the style is so different, but because--beyond the commonality as mothers--the stories seem too disparate. As the book progresses the protagonist's and the lion's stories intertwine, but not as much as a reader might expect. Instead, the focus seems to be on the parallel paths of mothers everywhere, the single-minded devotion to children.

Given the grainy "realness" of the novel, the ending is unexpected: a perhaps too-easy story of triumph and happy resolution. Somehow, though, I didn't mind. A lot of our world is shit, and our minds are still going to be stuck in that shit most of the time. So take a success story when it comes.

"A Burning" by Megha Majumdar

A Burning tells the story of class aspirations through three characters: Jivan, a Muslim girl living in the slums; PT Sir, a physical education teacher at a girls' school; and Lovely, a hijra who wants to be an actor. As in many stories (particularly many of the stories set in India that I've read), poverty is a primary obstacle, but so too is discrimination. Jivan, part of a Muslim minority, is framed for the bombing of a train station. Her poverty and religion make her an easy target, but so too is her belief that she can make it, that she can rise out of the slums. She's able to be framed because of her job at a retail shop which gives her some money and thus access to a phone and the internet. Ironically, had she been resigned to her life in poverty, there would have been no "evidence" to use against her. Even while in jail, she retains the hopeful belief that once people hear her story, they'll understand she's innocent. As before, it's her belief that she can better herself--the "work hard and you'll make it" attitude we so prize--that blinds her to reality. It reminded me very much of Gatsby, despite being set worlds apart.

In The Great Gatsby, all the characters who try to rise above their impoverished roots are "punished" for their hope. However, in A Burning some do succeed. The reader roots for Lovely from the moment they meet her. Her joyous energy and optimism stand in contrast with all those around her. But she also seems hopelessly naive, and I assumed Mr. Debnath, her acting teacher, was only taking advantage of her. As a transgender woman, she actively faces discrimination and has few employment opportunities. Yet, shockingly, she is discovered. She ends the book acting in a big-budget film that respects her experiences as a hijra. She does walk away from her friendship with Jivan, who had been teaching her English, but it's not a stunning betrayal--Jivan's fate was already sealed. But even separate from her relationship with Jivan, her success is bittersweet. Lovely makes it, but her success doesn't undo the the discrimination and poverty most of her hijra sisters face. It doesn't make the entertainment industry or the economic system broadly more fair or just. She's a success story that works to obscure systemic injustice.

PT Sir's story feels a little different than Jivan's and Lovely's, perhaps because he's a man or perhaps because he's more acutely aware of how to work the system for his advantage. PT Sir works his way from teacher to powerful politician the same way most politician do--through favors to those in power. He's actively aware of the wrongs he's doing, but he's too intoxicated by power to change his behavior. Like Jivan and Lovely, he's a player in a system that he can do little to change, though his choices feel far more selfish.

Majumdar easily captures the characters' voices, particularly Lovely's sing-songy, present-continuous, gerund-y style (okay, it's hard to describe!). The tension builds easily as the characters' stories intersect. A Burning isn't an exceptionally long book--just over three hundred pages--but it still clocks in as one of the fastest I've read in awhile. 

"Wordslut" by Amanda Montell

Wordslut is subtitled "A feminist guide to taking back the English language." It's a powerful slogan, though perhaps a bit misleading. Wordslut is less an action guide and more a overview of feminist linguistics, outlining the ways in which language shapes and is shaped by our understandings of gender.

Most of the content of Wordslut will be familiar to anyone who's taken basic women's and/or gender studies courses: the way in which language categorizes women as either virgins or whores. The sexual nature of most vulgarity and its role in perpetuating sexism. Catcalling as a form of dominance. It's all important information, but if you've chosen to read this book, it's probably not new either. Even the section on Polari, a cant slang used in gay British subculture, was covered on an episode of the Allusionist podcast I listen to.

I found myself skimming the information that felt familiar, but there were some sections that I slowed down for. I was familiar with the sexist denigration of "teenage girl" speak, but Montell analyzed both the nature of the language (spoiler: it's no different than that of other English speakers) and why it's so hated.

Montell thoughtfully explores the double-bind many women feel in navigating language. Speak "like a woman," and a woman is likely to be dismissed for lacking confidence. Speak "like a man," and a woman is likely to be dismissed as too aggressive.

Montell's tone is casual, which makes the reading feel breezy. At the end, though, I left without feeling I had much of a call to action. True, I could try to invent some new profanity that didn't rely on denigrating women. Not sure how likely that is to catch on. Perhaps the broader message is to not accept language implicitly but rather to think explicitly about the messages we're conveying--intentional or not--when we use certain words. 

"Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

It's no surprise that Ng's novel is currently a popular miniseries. It's filled with family drama, mystery and intrigue, and teenage and adult angst.

The novel is about the tension between two families with opposing views on the world. First there's the Richardsons: Mom, Dad, and high school children Lexie, Trip, Moody, and Izzy. They live in wealthy suburban Shaker Heights and are committed to living the traditional American Dream. Then there's Mia and Pearl, who move into a rental house the Richardsons own. Mia is an artist, traveling as inspiration strikes her with her high school daughter Pearl. As the children form friendships with each other, the mothers' opposing viewpoints are brought into conflict.

Mia is the hero of the book: wise, comforting to all, unflappable, unrelenting in pursuit of her craft. Her big secret--that she agreed to act as a surrogate for another couple but instead ran off with her unborn child--is a sign of her love and devotion. At the end she leaves intensely personal, perfectly tailored, on-the-nose art pieces for each member of the Richardson family. Which, c'mon, is just creepy. If she hadn't been run off by Mrs. Richardson, what would she have done with them? While Mia has many admirable traits, I wish she had been more nuanced. Is it that admirable to pursue your audience-less and payment-less art at all costs, even the life of your daughter?

If Mia's the hero, then the suburban characters--no, the suburban moms, of course--are the villains. I'm fully ready to acknowledge there is plenty wrong with suburbanites, but a broadly characterizing them as self-entitled, narrow-minded, and insular feels dully stereotypical at this point, especially when such criticism is always targeted at the moms. Even the names suggest such disdain. Mia, though an adult mother, is just Mia. But Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. McCullough are always their surnames, just another reflection of their lack of identity and coolness. Mrs. Richardson is portrayed as completely unsympathetic, and even though Mrs. McCullough ought to be more sympathetic given her enormous number of miscarriages and the loss of a child she has cared for as her own for a year, she too comes off undeserving because of her money.

Ultimately the book is deeply--and troublingly--romantic. It favors the passionate free spirits and vilifies the orderly suburbanites, all while ignoring reality. It suggests any pursuit of money or suggestion that money correlates to happiness is wrong but says nothing about the horror of poverty. At the end (massive spoilers), Bebe kidnaps her child from the McCulloughs and returns with the child to China. We're led to see it as an act of heroism, a rightful return, but Bebe is also destitute. A mother-daughter bond is powerful but does not provide food. I don't mean that to say that the baby should have stayed with the McCulloughs, but rather to suggest that Bebe and May Ling's ending is not a "happily ever after" as the novel implies. Similarly, 15-year-old Izzy runs away at the end after setting fire to her family home, with the implication that she will miraculously someday join Mia and Pearl and they'll all be happy, free spirits together. Again, this is a horrific misrepresentation of the life of a homeless runaway teen.

In the end the book paints with a very large brush in depicting its teenage and adult characters. Its targets feel easy. It's an engaging mystery with little depth or meaning.

Note: Looking up the cover for the book, I saw that the new Hulu miniseries specifically casts Mia and her daughter Pearl as black, a change from the book where their ethnicity is never referenced. I think this contrasts could add a layer that's missing from the book and also perhaps complicate Mia and Mrs. Richardson's relationship more than the novel does.

"The City We Became" by N.K. Jemisin

At this point, I've read--and adored--quite a few of Jemisin's novels. The City We Became stands out from her other entries by being the first to take place in our world, rather than a fantasy environment. Sure, there's still magic and bizarre creatures and people with powers, but it takes place in New York City! Our New York City!

It's easy to understand such a shift. After all, if there's an American city that's been endlessly mythologized, it's NYC. Heck, there's a whole genre of "love letter to New York" movies, TV shows, and books. Whether you're a born-and-raised city dweller or a farmer in Montana, NYC means something to you. Jemisin plays with that mythology and meaning by taking it literally: in The City We Became, NYC and its boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) are embodied by human avatars who are endowed with powers drawn from their boroughs' characteristics.

However, by setting her novel in the real New York, Jemisin creates a relationship with the reader that is different from her other works. In the Broken Earth trilogy, for example, readers are on equal footing in their confusion over orogenes' powers, but The City We Became relies on readers' knowledge of--and adoration for--New York to work.

This is where I hit my first stumbling block. There are people for whom New York is everything: the apex of America, the place where it happens. And plenty of those people aren't New Yorkers (and perhaps have never even been to New York). Then there are those for whom cities have little appeal. Though I've been to New York a handful of times and I get that it's a big city and has a lot of cool stuff... meh? Don't get me wrong, the suburb in which I live is dull and lifeless, but I still don't feel the pull of the city. Or know much about it (I'll admit those could be related).

I think that buy-in is key to really loving The City We Became, which relies on the insane and joyful jumble and mismatch of people and ideas that is New York to craft its characters and conflicts. For those of us who don't love it, the New York adulation can become a bit eye-rolling.

In depicting the real New York, Jemisin also gets to play with another real issue: racism (also sexism, homophobia, and ageism, though racism is the more dominant theme). Her books always feature characters of color and address issues of discrimination, but here she gets to address American racism explicitly. There's some good and bad there. On the one hand, some of the discussions have a feel of "Racism 101," lacking much nuance or depth. Because the Big Bad uses white racists to attack, the racism can feel heavy-handed and obvious (Aislyn's father feels especially caricatured), which can obscure the less obvious--but more pervasive--racism today. Still, it's rare to see racism discussed in fantasy settings, so Jemisin's focus feels relevant and warranted.

I also thought the characterization if Aislyn (Staten Island) was especially good. She's a racist xenophobe, but you can understand why she's that way and how her experiences have confirmed her prejudice--and just how challenging it is to undo. The Woman in White (the Big Bad) is especially good at manipulating that prejudice. The focus on "niceness"--Aislyn assumes that because the Woman in White is "nice" and looks like her, she can't be bad--was an especially effective point.

Ultimately, though, The City We Became is a fantasy action novel. And here's the thing. I was annoyed by the book. Rolled my eyes at all the mentions of just how awesome New York is. Thought the characters were cheesy, over played. Yet I kept returning to it whenever I had a minute. Flew through its 500 pages. And even though I knew it would end with a hand-holding mantra of "We are New York!", I still welled up.

Miscellaneous:

• I realized just how rarely we see older heroes in fantasy settings. Though we're frequently reminded that Bronca (the Bronx) is in her 60's (maybe even 70's), I wanted to miscast her as a younger woman. Even Brooklyn is older (50's?) than your typical heroes.
• The boroughs rely on "constructs"--essential New York things--to get their powers (e.g. the first time Manhattan gets his power it's through a credit card). In the final fight, Manhattan turns into King Kong. I was so tickled.
• There's a lot going on with multiple universes/layers of existence, all of which speaks to the Woman in White's motivation. It works to add layers (the Woman in White isn't inherently evil), but it's also confusing and perhaps works against some of the metaphors and symbolism Jemisin's crafted to challenge racism.
• Addendum: There's some interesting stuff suggesting that gentrification (worldwide) is a result of the Woman in White's attempts to weaken and infiltrate the cities to be born. Need to think more on it
• Manhattan's roommate-to-be, Bel, plays an important role in the early chapters and is then completely forgotten. I wonder if he'll return in a more significant way.

"White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo

White Fragility acts as a sort of primer on racism, specifically the omnipresent racism in the United States that elevates--and simultaneously makes invisible--whiteness in order to perpetuate the subjugation of people of color more broadly and Black Americans in particular. Unlike a lot of popular nonfiction that is narrative-focused and anecdote-heavy, White Fragility operates much more like a textbook: straightforward, term-focused, with easy-to-follow lists and summaries (though she does include illustrative examples). While in other subjects I might have been turned off by the didactic approach, here I appreciated it. The starkness of her claims removes any potential ambiguity; the repetition ensures the point is received, not subconsciously countered by a reader's internal judgment.

What makes DiAngelo's book important, especially for me, is its focus on "good" racists--liberal, progressive whites who sympathize with the historical plight of people of color but disown their own complicity in racism. DiAngelo argues this type of racism is perhaps even more pernicious because it's more challenging to fight and counter, even as it perpetuates oppression.

In reading the book, I was able to understand so much of what I've experienced: my own racist ideologies despite my liberal attitude; my discomfort around people of color; my inability to articulate why racism perseveres today when overt, act-specific racism is condemned; the challenges--and failures--I've experienced trying to talk about racism as a teacher in a primarily white school.

It explains why, though I've spoken with white friends about racism, it's always been in a "tsk, tsk" kind of way, something that's made easier with Trump in the White House. I mean, I'm nothing like him! I've almost never spoken about my own racism. It's what's allowed me to dismiss the intense segregation in which I grew up and in which I currently live as a neutral choice of good schools.

Towards the end of the book, DiAngelo addresses the question of "what should I do when I encounter a white person engaging in racist behavior or holding racist attitudes?" Her immediate response is, "What are you going to do about your racist behavior and attitudes?" Again, I was challenged. I had still been reading the book with a removed attitude. Yes, white people do that!, I'd agreed. Not, I do that. It was so easy to fall into the trap of seeing myself as one of the "good" ones, someone who was aware and owned-up to her racism, someone who would accept exposure as a racist. The most important thing you can do, DiAngelo argues, is to be aware of your own racism and work to break white solidarity. You probably won't change the mind of a fellow white peer by exposing his or her "well-intentioned" racism; but you can break the unspoken agreement (that works to perpetuate racism) that whites stay together by speaking out.

The book has a lot of consequences for my work as an educator. I've struggled to discuss racism in any meaningful way in the classroom, and when it's brought up, it's primarily historical, such as in Huck Finn and A Raisin in the Sun. It's too easy for the students--no, me--to frame the book's overt depictions of racism as bad while dismissing any relevance to today. I've realized discussion about racism needs to be overt, it needs to be about whiteness, and it needs to be about today. DiAngelo has also made it clear that such a discussion will not go over well. Students'--and my own--white fragility will be triggered, and in a predominantly-white classroom, it will feel safer to retreat to white solidarity. But I still need to say it, even if only to challenge the tacit norm. In some ways, her assertions are comforting. She is a career diversity educator, and yet she regularly encounters hostile or reactionary participants. Why should I expected any discussion I lead would end racism? Such an acknowledgement frames the inevitable "failure" of such discussions as a product of white fragility. The success comes in working to challenge it despite the failure.

There are also implications for how I raise my daughters. Like many white people, I've focused on the generic "treat everyone the same!" model, which again perpetuates racism and white superiority by failing to acknowledge the racist system in which they are raised. Though I've spoken with them about historical racism against Black Americans, I've never spoken to them about their own whiteness. Such omissions are compounded by the fact that we live in a highly segregated neighborhood and the girls will attend a highly segregated school. They encounter few people of color in their lives on a regular basis, and my husband and I have no local friends of color. A vague "be kind!" message and some picture books with protagonists of color aren't going to cut it. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that we'll move to an integrated neighborhood or that our social groups will substantively change. At a minimum, then, I need to explicitly acknowledge those realities to my daughters while finding ways to expand their experiences.

Overall I found White Fragility accessible and clear; I would highly recommend it to any white progressives.

"Red at the Bone" by Jacqueline Woodson

In many ways, Red at the Bone parallels The Mothers, which I read last year for book club. In both books, young Black teenagers become pregnant. Afterwards the mothers seek life far away from home--and their children's fathers--at college, while the young fathers stay home, mourning their lost loves. The central difference is that the pregnancy in The Mothers ends in abortion, while Iris, the mother in Red at the Bone, chooses to keep her child.

That key difference allows Iris' daughter Melody to become a character central to the novel, and it also allows Melody's father--Aubrey--a different path than the father in The Mothers.

Red at the Bone provides the perspective of many characters: Iris, Aubrey, Melody, and Iris' parents. This allows Woodson to give internal and external contextualization to each character's feelings of love and grief, frustration and dreams. I particularly appreciated the voice of Iris' mother, Sabe, as she carries on the legacy of her family while working to support her future. Given the recent controversy over Trump's decision to hold at election rally (the day after Juneteenth) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a horrific massacre of Black residents by white mobs in 1921, the novel situating Sabe's life as a reaction to her family's experience in Tulsa was especially meaningful.

The multitude of voices in a slim book does mean some elements get short-shrift. Aubrey and Iris are brought alive as a young people but given little attention as adults, and Aubrey's death on 9/11 felt too quickly gleamed over. I would have also liked more on Iris and Melody's relationship as adults, given its strained beginning.

Overall I preferred The Mothers in its rich depiction of characters, but Red at the Bone offers more nuance into the family dynamics at play.

"Little Eyes" by Samanta Schweblin

Most people of my generation remember Furbies, though I never had one and honestly can't remember having friends who did. Little Eyes plays off the basic premise of Furbies with an essential twist: what if a real human was controlling the Furby--or, in the novel's case, a kentucki? What if one could pay to own a kentucki or could pay to be the one controlling the kentucki? The reader is immediately made to ask the question--which would you choose?

At first, it seems like it would be far better to be a controller operating the kentucki, as they can act anonymously and without real-world consequences. After all, a keeper (one who owns the kentucki) opens him/herself open to all sorts of invasions of privacy as well as safety risks. Who would want some unknown person watching them anonymously any hour of the day?

Though there are obvious risks associated with being a keeper, they're also fairly ordinary risks (theft, burglary, pornographic material), and Schweblin mostly avoids focusing on them. Instead, her primary target seems to be what happens when we reduce one human being to another human being's pet.

Keepers continue to act as ordinary humans, reacting with their new "pet" as much or as little as they want. Controllers are at their keepers' mercy for physical and human access while operating the kentucki. Keepers can speak and interact with the world, whereas kentuckis are given only indiscriminate animal squeaks and motorized wheels. Kentuckis can be physically and emotionally abused with little recourse beyond squeaking angrily and ramming against objects.

By their very nature, kentuckis encourage the dehumanization of another, and Schweblin depicts the insidious results, even among relationships that at first appear benign. There's elderly Emilia, enamored and protective of her younger keeper, Eva. There's Alina, bored while on residence with her artist boyfriend, who at first appears friendly to her mole kentucki. Or the father who initially rejects the kentucki bought by his ex-wife for their son but eventually warms to the "friendship."

The book is organized not as a single narrative, but rather a collection of short stories, with some individual stories broken up into "chapters" throughout the book. Schweblin, an Argentine writer, situates her keepers and controllers throughout the world, for a variety of perspectives.

Ultimately the novel was far more harrowing than I expected (particularly the conclusion to Alina's story) but also fascinating.

"Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster" by Adam Higginbotham

Before reading Midnight in Chernobyl, I knew that Chernobyl was the site of a massive nuclear power plant explosion. I knew that the land surrounding it was abandoned and reclaimed by nature. I knew a lot of people died. I didn't know much.

The book goes into incredible detail about all the missteps--both structurally in the creation of the reactor and operationally on the day of the disaster--that let to the explosion. While many of the operators made mistakes, Higginbotham primarily faults the design and construction of the reactor itself, the shoddy materials and craftsmanship allowed under a USSR more focused on image, speed, and individual prestige than safety and quality.

Even though the errors leading up to the explosion are terrible, so too is the reaction after the explosion occurs. Officials are slow to order evacuations, unwilling to believe that the reactor was truly destroyed. Even more lives were endangered in the confused attempts to quell the reactor fire and to contain the radioactive ash and debris that resulted.

Perhaps what surprised me the most was how little we still know about the effect of radiation. There were a couple dozen nuclear operators and firefighters who died early and relatively quickly of acute radiation sickness. However, estimating the true effect of the nuclear fallout has been difficult, and even understanding its impact--positive or negative--on wildlife and fauna is murky.

For a book awash in technical scientific description of nuclear physics, Midnight in Chernobyl is accessible and engaging. My knowledge of the science is still shaky, but I do have a basic understanding of how and why the explosion occurred.

Similarly, though it can be easy to get lost in similar-sounding Russian names, but the book is surprisingly easy to follow even without keeping them straight. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to be able to describe, even vaguely accurately, more than a couple of the individuals described and their responsibilities, yet I don't feel like my overall comprehension suffered.

This spring my motto has been "everything's a metaphor," and there's plenty of metaphors to be found in the Chernobyl disaster that are applicable to use today as we fight Covid-19. Though battling the disease is quite different than dealing with the fallout of a human-caused nuclear disaster, there's lessons to be learned. There's the fact that we're willing to marshal enormous resources to fix catastrophic problems--but very bad at taking the simpler measures that would have prevented them in the first place. I was also struck by how often people were making life-or-death decisions on incredibly little or incomplete information. There were some bad actors, but more often than not, there were individuals making decisions without any real knowledge of what they were doing. Huge amounts of effort, time, money, and--most importantly--human life, were spent for naught. The book also highlights the huge disparities in our knowledge. Yes, we can harness the power of nuclear energy, but there's so much we don't know about how it works and its effect on humans. That point also resonates during the pandemic. We can build incredible computers and have stunning technology yet everyday it feels like we're getting contradictory information about how Covid-19 spreads and how to treat it.

"Normal People" by Sally Rooney

I'm happy to engage in "did the book or the movie do it better" talk (of course, as a literature aficionado, my alliances typically lay with the book), but that question gets muddled--for me--in the case of Normal People. I began watching the new Hulu miniseries first, then started reading the book, and then read/watched more or less simultaneously, curtailing my reading as necessary to ensure I didn't get ahead of my spot in the miniseries. For that reason, I view the book and miniseries as intertwined, two complementary parts of a whole, rather than separate entities. This point of view is made easier to accomplish because the novel's author, Sally Rooney, wrote a textually-faithful adaptation, at times taking entire conversations word-for-word from the book.

This long introduction is all to say that this is a review of the book and miniseries.

On paper, the story isn't my typical fare. Marianne and Connell attend high school together. She's wealthy but "weird" and unpopular; he's poor (his mother is a housekeeper for Marianne's family) but easy-going and popular. Nonetheless, they're drawn to each other and begin a secret affair. The book then follows them as they come together--and move apart--over the next several years. It could be a cliche Nicholas Sparks' novel, or a melodramatic young adult book.

Somehow it's neither, and even though nearly the entire story is about Marianne and Connell's relationship (other characters come and go, but all remain bit players), I'm not even sure it's a romance. Instead, it's perhaps about the kind of friendship that allows you to grow as a person by allowing you to be yourself. A friendship that validates the part of you you hide from others.

One of the elements I most enjoyed about the novel was its portrayal of the contradiction in one's outer persona and inner life. Marianne presents as cold and uncaring, but inside she's deeply shattered by her family's neglect and outright abuse; she seeks pain from others as a way of recreating her inner feelings of self-loathing. Connell presents as "chill" and "one of the guys," but he struggles with feeling like an impostor, of seeing no place for him in the world. Though Marianne and Connell hurt each other as they struggle to maintain that outer persona, they also allow each other to go beyond a neat box.

The most disquieting element of the book and miniseries is Marianne's descent into unhealthy BDSM, arousing out of a desire for submission. She ends up in a series of relationships that abuse that desire and leave her feeling even more empty. Her desire for submission is complicated, as clearly it arises from her abusive family, yet it feels simplistic--and unfair--to suggest she "shouldn't" want it. Though not easy to understand, with a healthy partner (ultimately Connell) she can achieve that feeling in a loving and supportive relationship.

Rooney frames the book's dialogue without quotation marks, a modern style that effectively emphasizes the intimacy of Connell and Marianne's relationship. The miniseries can't play with punctuation, so in its one significant departure from the novel, it includes several explicit sex scenes. In other stories it could be prurient, but the emphasis is on the intimacy, on the way sex allows two reserved and uneasy people to feel free and understood. The blunt nudity doesn't feel gratuitous, but rather reflects the joy of reciprocated vulnerability.

There were a few missteps for me. Connell's brilliance in school and writing is somewhat overplayed. Marianne's family is so needlessly and unceasingly cruel that they feel like cartoon villains rather than real people. There are some conversations that are meant to make Connell and Marianne sound sophisticated (like one complaining about the emptiness of Facebook posts after a friend's death) that instead feel worn.

Nonetheless, it's a captivating book and an engrossing miniseries. The book stands alone, but by itself you don't get the lilting Irish accents and the gorgeous Irish countryside (or, yes, okay, the sex. Or Connell in a school uniform). It's worth it to consume both.