2021: Year in Review

I need to give myself some props--I read 40 books this year! That exceeds my 2013 (pre-kids!) total. I also wrote about quite a few of the books I read, though you can see the start of the school year destroyed that streak (and drastically reduced my reading too). 

1. Irresistible by Adam Alter
2. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3. Slaughterhouse-Five, a graphic novel adaptation by Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, and Albert Monteys
4. The Best of Me by David Sedaris
5. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
6. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
7. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
8. Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
9. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
10. The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams
11. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
12. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
13. News of the World by Paulette Jiles
14. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
15. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
16. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
17. Imitations by Zadie Smith
18. Consent by Vanessa Springora
19. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
20. Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
21. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
22. Nick by Michael Farris Smith
23. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
24. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
25. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
26. Cosmogony by Lucy Ives
27. The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
28. The Doctors Blackwell by Janice Nimura
29. Memorial by Bryan Washington
30. Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
31. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
32. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
33. The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
34. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
35. Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
36. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
37. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
38. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
39. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
40. When We Cease to Understand the World by Bejamin Labatut

About 60% of the books were written by women, and a third were written by writers of color. Eight were nonfiction, and though most were published in 2020 or 2021, I read several old classics (hello 1851 with Moby Dick!).

Fortunately I liked quite a lot of the books I read! Moby Dick and Mrs. Dalloway were challenging but worth it. Butler's science-fiction is enthralling. Found myself carried away by some strong contemporary writers: Ferrante, Rooney, Lockwood. The enjoyment I got out of Saunders' book-as-college-class suggests I really would appreciate going back to school. I loved Green's Anthropocene Reviewed so much I wrote my own essay in the same style (and had my students do so too!).

"The Other Black Girl," "The Chosen and the Beautiful," "No One Is Talking About This," and "Remote Control"

I'm horribly behind in reviews. I suppose with school starting and feeling anxious about sort of everything, I haven't been able to muster the intellectual gumption necessary to write even a bland review. It's a shame because I've read a couple good ones recently! My last four books:

• The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
• The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
• No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
• Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

First, the less-than-thrilling:

The Chosen and the Beautiful was my second foray into Gatsby fanfic. It was far superior to Nick, mostly because it openly acknowledges The Great Gatsby as its source material, but it also didn't amount to much. Sure, it was neat to have Jordan as the narrator, and I liked the idea of complicating her identity by making her a bisexual Vietnamese adoptee, but in the end Vo's revisionist take didn't seem to have anything new to say. And the demon blood and magic felt like unnecessary distractions.

Nnedi's Remote Control had some promise, but its brevity--at somewhere around 150 pages, short even for a regular novel--really felt a deficit in a science-fiction book. There was too much unanswered and undeveloped in the world building and character building.

The quite good:

The Other Black Girl takes on the traditional mystery genre, but wraps it up in some sharp commentary about race. It follows Nella, the only Black employee at Wagner book publishing. When Hazel, another Black woman, is hired, Nella is excited to have a comrade in her wearying attempts to challenge entrenched racism and microaggressions at the publisher. However, soon after she gets a threatening note to "Leave Wagner"... and everything spirals from there. The novel captures the paranoia of a good thriller, enhanced by Nella's feelings of isolation from her white co-workers. Her struggle to be heard and believed is not just a convention of the genre but a reflection of the challenge of Black employees in white-dominated spaces. I've read complaints about the sci-fi twist at the end, but I found it fitting within the larger commentary.

Most recently I read Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This. Apparently Lockwood is somewhat famous as a poet/social media presence, but I'd never heard of her, which let me go into the book a clean slate. The first half of the book follows the thoughts of a social media influencer, made famous for the absurdist Tweet "can a dog be twins?" She's ambivalent about her attachment to "the portal," as she calls it, aware of its pull and the ephemeral nature of internet fame. Even though my social media presence is light--I scroll Facebook more than I should but almost never post--I was constantly chuckling at moments of recognition, at how astutely Lockwood understands the absurdity of our attachment. Half way through, the narrator is confronted by a family tragedy, and the real world invades her focus on the internet. It could easily have been an "internet-crazed young person learns the importance of family" kind of novel, but Lockwood avoids such easy answers. The narrator is moved by the physicality of her experience, but the internet also remains a place of solace. The book is sharp and definitely has me wanting to read more from Lockwood.

"The Plot" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I’ve written before about the downside of choosing many of my reads from lists of prestigious literary award-winners or high-brow book reviews. I end up reading a lot of important, thoughtful, and beautiful literature, but it’s often not fun. Not that great literature has to be boring or depressing, but there’s usually a heaviness in subject or prose that can make the reading feel a bit like work. And I like to work for my literature, but I’m realizing that I don’t like to work all the time. Korelitz’s The Plot is an engrossing mystery/thriller about the motivations, justifications, and perils of writers. Most readers (myself included) will probably see the plot twists early, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the ride, even the stereotypical hackneyed ending. Despite some of the more overdone contrivances of the mystery genre, the book also raises plenty of issues of “ownership” in an age of over-sharing—when do we have the right to tell someone else’s story?

"Black Buck" by Mateo Askaripour

The jacket blurb says that Black Buck is for "fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street," which is to say the novel is about the insanity of high-power sales and its intersection with race. The novel centers on Darren, who's working at Starbucks despite graduating valedictorian of his class and possessing potential for greater things. One day, on a whim, he convinces a regular customer to buy a different drink. The customer, Rhett, is so impressed with Darren's sales skills that he convinces Darren to come work for his company Sumwun. Darren is renamed "Buck" and racially hazed, but the adversity strengthens him and he eventually saves Sumwun through a disaster. I haven't seen more than 15 minutes of Wolf of Wall Street, but I think it follows somewhat from there: meteoric rise, lots of drugs and partying, bad decision-making, alienation of old friends and family. Then Darren decides the key to saving Black people (and other people of color) is teaching them sales.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about the novel. There's certainly some on-point racial satire, particularly around the way Buck's co-workers' surface-level geniality masks underlying prejudice. The book as a whole, though, feels so extreme that it's hard to get invested. Part of that extreme comes from the hyper-emphasis on sales as the end-all-be-all of life (the book is even framed as a "manual" for readers to learn sales). Part of the problem with Sumwun is its single-minded belief in the importance of its work. As if selling more subscriptions for teletherapy makes any actual difference in the world. Now, this is a problem in corporate business in general--the intensity of the work giving the illusion that the work is meaningful--but the book doesn't do much to dispel the myth. It also suggests sales is the solution for all problems. Darren teaches a few people sales over a couple days and--voila--they're successfully hired in business. It ignores all the gatekeepers--college degrees, internships, etc.--and suggests success is simply a result of tenacity.

And that's the biggest issue I had with the novel. Sure, it's quite aware of racism in American, but its counter to that is to revert back to a straightforward American Dream ideal. In the world of Black Buck, sales success is a result (solely) of bravado. And how do you learn bravado? You do crazy stunts like walk pass police drinking open beer cans and then run away. By that logic, teenage boys should be the most successful humans on the planet. Or, you demean and abuse people, and "what doesn't kill them makes them stronger." Uh... I certainly agree that confidence, swagger, and the knowledge of how to persuade another person are incredibly useful skills. But the book rarely teaches how to actually learn those skills. Instead, Darren takes a group out to an expensive dinner and then they skip the bill. They make a limited attempt to persuade the waiter that they shouldn't pay, then run away. How is that teaching sales? How does that make the group anything but jerks?

Darren's inconsistencies as a character and the convoluted ending also dampened my spirits for the novel. The book is so extreme that I think it shines less light on race and the business world than it could have.

"Memorial" by Bryan Washington

Memorial tells the story of gay couple, Ben and Mike, in a relationship that's on the brink of crumbling. Yet at the moment when their relationship seems at an end, Mike leaves their home in Texas for Japan, to be with his estranged dying father. Ben remains in Texas, suddenly roommates with Mike's mother, who's recently arrived from Japan. The book is told first in Ben's perspective, and then the same time period is told from Mike's perspective. The portrait that emerges is of two young men struggling with trauma from their families, who are unable to communicate, especially with the people they love the most.

Both Ben and Mike have casual, free-flowing voices. There's a lot to unpack in their identities, their relationships with others, their sense of purpose. I enjoyed the book, but the characters' inability to communicate could sometimes be frustrating. At times it felt like the dialogue was all subtext--a series of vague, "deep"-sounding non-statements, to the point where I had no idea what the tacit meaning was.

Still, it was a book with characters and relationships that go outside the norm that I read about. The voices felt authentic and nuanced. 

"The Doctors Blackwell" by Janice P. Nimura

I have a vague memory from elementary school that concerns me making Elizabeth Blackwell’s head out of a pumpkin. Not jack-o-lantern style, but painted, with a neat bun made out of gray yarn. I have to imagine a written report accompanied my creation, so presumably I learned that Blackwell was America’s first female medical doctor (M.D.). Like most people, that fact represented the entirety of my knowledge of the medical pioneer.

Nimura’s book complicates the basic fact of Blackwell’s fame, beginning with the title itself: The Doctors Blackwell. The pluralization of the profession reflects that the book is not just about Elizabeth, but also about her younger sister Emily, who followed in Elizabeth’s footsteps by also acquiring her M.D. and becoming her medical partner.

Nonetheless, the book is still largely Elizabeth's story, and Nimura seeks to paint a complex portrait of the doctor. Elizabeth did much good both by establishing hospitals for the indigent and, with Emily, opening a women’s medical college. But none of her actions were motivated by benevolence or altruism. She opened a hospital because she could get funding by the state and could not get work as a private physician. She opened the women’s college because the few women’s medical schools that existed were inferior, and she could not get qualified female doctors to work for her hospital. Elizabeth became a doctor to earn society’s—and men’s—respect. According to Nimura's portrait, Elizabeth was an idealist, not a pragmatist interested in the day-to-day work of caring for sick human bodies. She was ambitious, arrogant, and disdainful of others, just like so many male icons of history. She matched their bravado and found success—and censure—because of it. Ultimately, it was Emily who did much of the real physician work, including running the women's college for decades.

Aside from the sisters' fascinating history, one of the truths the book exposed for me is how misleading it is to focus on “firsts,” as doing so suggests a finality of accomplishment—in particular, overcoming discrimination—rather than a lifetime of struggle. For Elizabeth, acquiring the M.D. itself was, relatively speaking, easy. At the time, there were no admission requirements for medical school (beyond the ability to pay for it). Instruction consisted of two 16-week terms of (identical) lectures and examinations. There was no practical experience or continuing training. In that way, medical schools did little to actually train doctors. The male student body of the Geneva College of Medicine only agreed to admit Elizabeth because it seemed funny, a lark. But earning the M.D. did not clear the way for Elizabeth—she fought her entire life, often unsuccessfully, for the access, respect, and funding her male colleagues enjoyed. Even worse, her graduation did not clear the way for future female physicians either. Admitting one woman to medical school might be a publicity-earning novelty, but no male schools were ready to truly open to women. In fact, many—including Geneva—passed rules barring future women from entering. Emily’s first medical school barred women after Emily had completed her first year.

Sexism shaped every part of the Blackwells’ lives, and the book focuses especially on Elizabeth’s and Emily’s decisions not to marry. We know that many of their literary contemporaries—Louisa May Alcott, the Bronte sisters, Emily Dickinson, etc—were unmarried, and the Blackwells consciously chose the same. At the time, a woman’s success was completely incompatible with marriage, particularly since limited access to contraception meant a married woman would likely be burdened with children.

Interestingly, though the Blackwells’ time intersects with the burgeoning women’s rights movement, Elizabeth and Emily were somewhat skeptical. Elizabeth, in particular, looked down on most women, whom she found stupid, lazy, and silly. She blamed the women themselves—not men—for failing to rise from their station.

Ultimately, there was so much I found fascinating about the story. The Doctors Blackwell even reflects the Blackwells' time at an interesting point in medical history, a time before most modern advances or even basic hygiene practices, where physicians were as likely to do harm as do good. Doctors had to weigh what they were taught with their own experiences and observations in an attempt to do the most good.

In the end, the book paints a complicated picture of the Blackwells, of medicine, and of women's rights. I'd recommend.

"The Committed" by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Committed is a sequel to Nguyen's The Sympathizer, which follows the previous book's protagonist after his experience--okay, torture--at a communist "reeducation" camp at the hands of his "blood brother," Man. Now living in Paris with the third "blood brother," Bon, the protagonist is psychologically tortured by a number of things: 

1. The lies he's told Bon
2. The people he murdered while a communist spy
3. His "bastard" heritage as the son of Vietnamese woman and a French priest
4. His love for his mother and his self-aware objectification of all other women
5. Colonialism and the persistent racism as a result

And when I say "tortured," these five items are almost all he thinks about, except for occasional intrusions to get high or drunk and consider the drug-dealing business he's now a part of (including his ambivalence about supporting capitalism, given that he's nominally still communist). There's both power and tedium in the fact that the narrator waxes, ad nauseum, about these items. For example, we know that racism didn't end with slavery, and that racism today is not a result only of actions in the past but persistent racism today. The protagonist emphasizes that the same is true of colonialism. France's complicated and violent interactions with Vietnam (and other countries) didn't end with the end of colonialism, and even Vietnamese living in France as French citizens are still living with perpetual racism. There's power in the protagonist's recognition--and eventual exploitation--of these truths, but there's also the sense that the novel could have been trimmed without losing the message.

In fact, every one of the protagonist's revelations is repeated so often--and in such detail--that they begin to feel tiresome. Then again, perhaps that's part of the point. Racism is ever-present for those experiencing it but something to be addressed only when "convenient" when part of the privileged group. The idea is reinforced with the protagonist's perpetuation of sexism. There's a great line from Bo Burnham that goes something like, "self-awareness absolves you of nothing," which applies. The protagonist realizes he has used women as sex objects, but he doesn't stop doing so. In his final interaction with a woman, he can only focus on her partially-addressed (and very sexy [eye roll]) appearance, not her intelligence and power.

Nguyen is an engaging writer, and I eagerly followed the protagonist's desperate attempts to survive in a world so complicated there's no clear way out. Its stark depiction of the continuing harm of colonialism also serves as a reminder that racism is a multi-faceted, world-wide issue.