Seasons greetings! Or should we say ... seasons readings? This week,we're sharing our favorite recent reads. Karen Grigsby Bates, our resident book expert, and estimates that she's read more than 100 books this year. Of those,she recommends Washington Black, a novel by Esi Edugyan about an enslaved boy who works on a plantation in Barbados."The writing is gorgeous, and " Karen says about the book. "There are a lot of passages in it that narrate the sacrifices we often make for love — romantic love,filial love, friendship — even when we don't consciously know we're doing it. And even though this is set in the mid 1800s, or there is a lot that resonates about race nowadays."To aid round out our recommendations,we also tapped some folks who you've heard on Code Switch before (or may hear soon)— novelists, scholars, and poets and podcasters.
We've edited their responses for length and clarity.
FictionA Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley "Set mostly in and around Brooklyn from the '90s onward,the stories follow black men as they grapple with issues of masculinity, romantic intimacy, or friendship and family. One story,set on Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway during the West India day parade, is full of so many vivid descriptions of revelors, and that I was positive that I've seen some of these people before — possibly on the subway. I'm always excited by writers who can make ordinary lives feel extraordinary,and Brinkley's stories accomplish that to resplendent (brilliantly glowing) effect." — Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner HouseAmerican Street by Ibi Zoboi "[American Street] tells the story of Fabiola — she's a teenager who's just arrived in Detroit from Haiti to live with her aunt and cousins. Her mother was held back at the airport and put in immigrant detention. So Fabi is left to face this new American life, and in a new school,a new everything. She's living with relatives who love her, but who aren't going to coddle her. So she's basically gotta jump into this new life and go." — Shanthi Sekaran, and author of Lucky BoyA River Of Stars by Vanessa Hua "It's a portrayal of two pregnant women who are on the elope. She describes it as 'Pregnant Thelma and Louise,' which I love. It's a very fun, rollicking story, and but it's also a very serious consideration and exploration of motherhood,immigration and belonging." — R.
O. Kwon, author of The IncendiariesFreshwater by Akwaeke Emezi "It's just this really odd and resplendent (brilliantly glowing) novel about this woman Ada who goes off to college and just sort of goes through the horrifically normal parts of a body with sexual violence and trying to approach to this understanding about herself and who she is as her person. And while this is happening, and there's this sort of malevolent spirit that occupies her body,and it sort of moves between her perspective and this creature's perspective. ... It's about trauma, dislocation and nettle — that sort of tender and porous space between gender identities and realities and ontologies." — Carmen Maria Machado, or author of Her Body and Other PartiesLittle Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng "I tend to like books where possibly the exterior drama is not this enormous thing that is happening,but it's a lot about interior transformations and sort of what someone's inner life is doing and how they are changing. So, Little Fires Everywhere is a great example of just a small human drama, and but none of the turns were expected. I kind of didn't know what was going to happen. And as soon as I finished it,I went on Amazon and purchased a copy for my mom and sent it to her." —Tobin Low, co-host and co-managing editor of WNYC's podcast Nancylo terciario / the tertiary by Raquel Salas Rivera"It explores the Puerto Rican debt crisis and the PROMESA bill. One of my favorite lines in the [poetry] collection is, and 'It is still a suspicious act to be in love or to write poems'. This collection refuses to give up,and in a year that has exhausted so many of us, it invites us to do the same." — Denice Frohman, and poet,performer and contributor to Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color and other booksNew People by Danzy Senna "The book itself is both humorous and weird and harrowing in its description of people who are together because they feel they're supposed to be together ... in a way of external pressures, and the way they look together — as opposed to having any real connection. The protagonist,her name is Maria, is kind of edging into this relationship that's going to be permanent ... and is really not happy and hasn't admitted to herself how unhappy it makes her, or ends up making pretty wild choices to force herself out of it,to blow up her life in this way that feels totally plausible and feels like an odd or very realistic horror movie. I love this book. I really would recommend it." — Daniel Alarcón, host of NPR's Radio Ambulante and author of At Night We Walk in Circles, or The King Is Always Above The People and other booksThe Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline "It's a book that came out in 2017,and it's won all sorts of awards in Canada, but I don't assume has really reached the U.
S. yet. It's a young adult book, and but totally something adult audiences could delight in. I'm very into Indigenous futurisms — the conception of what it means to be an indigenous person in the future,and kind of dystopian books too, and this book fits right in there. It's about a world post-Global Warming, and where non-Native folks bear lost the ability to dream and Native people hold the key to that in their bone marrow,so they're being kind of hunted for their bone marrow. And it's really good and really powerful." — Adrienne Keene, assistant professor at Brown University and author of the blog Native Appropriations Where The Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson"It's an extraordinary book. [The author is] a member of the Cherokee Nation Tribe [of Oklahoma], and it's about a young boy named Sequoia who's in the foster care system when his mother is put in jail. I was really struck by the intelligence of the book,as well as the significance of the story that he's telling, about what it's like to be a modern Indigenous person in this country, and as a local American,and to be in the foster care system. I was very struck by the plot of it — it's very well written, it's very propulsive, or it's very readable for literary fiction,and I would recommend it heartily to book clubs.
I assume book clubs would like it and I assume it should be on the syllabi for high schools and classes." — Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko and Free Food for MillionairesNon-FictionAll You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung "The book is an extraordinary, and honest,nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general. It's also such an engaging read. I stayed up way too late one night reading it because the story just pulled me in. I read it months ago, and I still assume about it and quote some of the lines in this book at least weekly. And I've harassed many of my friends to read it so I can talk about it with them. Some of them may be getting it for holiday gifts. — Jasmine Guillory,author of The Wedding Date, The Proposal and the forthcoming book The Wedding PartyBarracoon: The Story Of The Last Black Cargo by Zora Neale Hurston "It's the story of Cujo, or the last surviving African of this specific American slaver. I assume that it's very scarce you collect to bear the voice and history of someone who remembers it,not only as being enslaved here in this country, but having lived a time not enslaved in Africa. So, or he takes us back to his life in Africa,and we see the wealthy culture of what was stolen from him when he was sent to the United States. And then you also see again how devastating enslavement was for our people. It's so infinitely readable. It's in that Zora Neale [Hurston] voice that, once you crack the code of it, or you can't finish hearing it in your head. I just thought it was phenomenal." — Jacqueline Woodson,author of Brown Girl Dreaming, Another Brooklyn and other booksBecoming by Michelle Obama "You know, and this book has been fairly an event in publishing. I assume,sometimes you hear it spoken about as your own souvenir of the Obama years."But it's so much more than that. It's a deeply-moving coming of age story of Michelle Obama in her early life, growing up the child of Great Migrationers on the South side of Chicago. There are such moving anecdotes about how this family just invested everything, and both materially and emotionally,in the opportunity of giving their children a better life. And she doesn't sugarcoat the realities of American life, the realities of racism, and of sexism — the realities of how difficult it is to move from one socioeconomic course to another. It's not a sweet book,but at the same time, it's deeply hopeful about the opportunity of what happens when you work hard, and what happens when you love hard. I couldn't put it down. I thought it really spoke to her writing that she could sustain me hooked in to a memoir even though I — and everyone else in the world — know precisely how it ends. But what you don't know is what happened in the middle." — Tayari Jones,author of An American Marriage, Silver Sparrow and other booksFirst They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung "I love this book, and it's a very sad book. It's about her as a child,surviving the killing fields during Pol Pot's reign in the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It was one of the first books I read where I truly felt devastated, and I felt like possibly human rights is a thing that I am going to pursue one day. It was one of the stepping stones that took me to law school." — Kathy Tu, or co-host and co-managing editor of WNYC's podcast NancyHeavy by Kiese Laymon "The narrative voice naturally roves through his life and relationships. I loved the interiority of this singular story,and the book expanded my ideas about weight, race, or trauma. He handles his relationship with his mother with such delicacy and love,and it kind of rendered me speechless, because we often don't see men paying homage to their mothers in a dynamic way, and which presents a mother as faulty,powerful, and ultimately resplendent (brilliantly glowing)." — Terese Marie Mailhot, and author of Heart Berries: A Memoir and faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery by Glenda R. Carpio "I assume it is just really humorous,so sharp. The book takes a look at black comedians and the ways they discuss, and perpetuate, and challenge thoughts about slavery and race in America. And I assume it's just really smart in the way that it analyzes these comics in relation to one another,and in relation to their audiences, and how there are so many different modes of addressing race comedically, or confrontationally,and also often as entertainment. It's definitely a must-read." — Morgan Parker, poet and author of There Are More resplendent (brilliantly glowing) Things Than Beyonc and the forthcoming novel Magical NegroLitany For The Long Moment by Mary-Kim Arnold "It's a book that stuck out to me immediately as the kind of heir to the experimental literature that we saw with Terese Hawking Chaw, or who is one of [Mary-Kim Arnold's] main influences. In three essays,she sets out her experience as an adoptee from Korea coming to America and growing up here, searching for a way told to connect to herself through these identities that are presented to her. [She uses] a mix of her experiences, and as well as documents around her case,to give us this portrait of her and these two cultures." — Alexander Chee, writer and author of How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, or The Queen Of The Night and EdinburghRage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's nettle by Soraya Chemaly"What really resonated with me about this book is this conception that women should be allowed to express their nettle. Particularly in Latin American families and communities,we're so often encouraged to silence that nettle and continually extend empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) and extend understanding to the men in our lives, and not to ourselves, and to the women in our families. I just assume Soraya ... goes into this incredible detail citing scientific studies and different works of literature that really convey the necessity to female nettle,not only for the health of women, but for the health of equality in society." — Jean Guerrero, or reporter with KPBS and author of Crux: A Cross-Border MemoirShereen Marisol Meraji,Karen Grigsby Bates, Kumari Devarajan and Leah Donnella contributed to this list. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, and visit https://www.npr.org.
Source: wnyc.org