Tag: books

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

“I do not even struggle to speak; the spark of words dies so deep in my chest there is not even space to mount them on an exhale.”

91ZOrAgmdrLOne thing I love about essay and story collections is seeing the recurring images and ideas that pop up throughout, like the weeds (or wild flowers?) of the author’s subconscious. As the title suggests, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado is full of women’s bodies—bodies disappearing, falling apart, taking up space. With hints of surrealism, Machado’s stories explore the ways that we are continually haunted by past traumas. She renders the neurotic mania that sometimes takes the wheel when women remain unheard or misunderstood as well as the pain of feeling like a burden to your loved ones. Her characters don’t necessarily find healing and happy endings, but I love that they face their truest selves, no matter how terrifying it is, and fiercely pursue what they most desire.

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In the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. What if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? What if you step in side and when you touch the furniture, you realize it’s all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? What if you get inside and there’s no furniture? What if you get inside and it’s just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket on your lap and humming a little tune? What if you get inside and there’s nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

What is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?

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The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward

“Some days you can’t breathe; you know what that feels like: When you are bored at night and everything bad is loud and important take to the streets. It’s a one-time thing, this life. You’ve got to move. When in doubt, always move. Or you ain’t going to make it.”

416gpO3czjLAn autobiographical poem or a poetic autobiography, Yrsa Daley-Ward’s memoir is a testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit, its ability to contain an immense darkness and release it in waves of destruction, love, and poetry.  As a child, Yrsa and her little brother are raised partly by their strict, religious grandparents and by their single mother. As Yrsa gets older, her body becomes a “haunted unreal place”, where mental illness reigns. Her body is the source of her power as well as her fear. Her story gives voice to the chaos of sexuality, addiction, depression, and anxiety, and the potential for redemption in the form of self-expression.

 

 

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Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez

9780399555497Julia Alvarez tells the story of 12-year-old Anita, whose family joins the resistance against Dictator Trujillo in the Dominican Republic during the 1960’s. While coping with the early stages of puberty, Anita also grapples with the concepts of justice and freedom as General Trujillo, “El Jefe”, and the secret police terrorize her family.

It’s a novel written for all ages that illuminates a history too often forgotten by Americans and the rest of the world. Regarding the political reality that her own family lived through, Alvarez writes– “As Americans, I think we’re very aware of the genocide and destruction that happened in Europe, the young casualties of the Holocaust, all those World War II children for whom UNICEF was originally created. But we’re less knowledgeable about what happened in our own hemisphere in the second half of the last century: the dozens of dictatorships and repressive regimes that afflicted the South American countries. In 1972, there were only three democracies in all of Latin America…I wanted to tell the story of our Anne Frank on this side of the Atlantic.”

Before We Were Free honors the children who had no choice but to fight for their psychological and physical freedom while their mothers and fathers risked everything for the ajusticimiento.

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Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

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The novel opens with surrealist undertones as the main character, a young woman named Makina, is about to cross over to another world. Makina has been tasked by her mother to cross the border from Mexico to find her brother who left 3 years earlier. In order to have a chance at succeeding, Makina is forced to cooperate with the local cartel, who promise to help secure safe passage in exchange for a favor.

Makina’s journey illustrates the unimaginable risk undertaken by those crossing the border illegally, the stakes that make it worth losing everything, and the forces that motivate immigrants to stay in a new country despite their permanent status as an outsider in a disillusioned society. By showing the US through Makina’s perspective, Herrera turns the tables on the common notion of Latinx immigrants as criminals.  In the US, Makina’s compatriots must be “armed with work”, constantly deflecting persecution and protecting themselves from violence by existing just on the edges, in the backs of restaurants and on bleak construction sites.

The story also showcases savvy women who choose not to be victims in a misogynistic society. The women adapt ways to harness their power without men even noticing the ways that they take control of their lives and communities. Early on in the book, her mother says, “I don’t like to send you, child, but who else can I trust it to, a man?” Makina’s power stems from her ability to interpret many layers of language in her job as a switchboard operator as well as acting as an emissary between two entangled cultures.

Herrera has an unexpectedly whimsical use of language, his words both simple and inventive. The English translation captures this surprisingly well; the original Spanish version is surely even richer. The plot is largely executed in the abstract, with towns, countries, and activities that go unnamed but are understood implicitly by the reader. These concepts are interspersed with tangible details that bring to mind stark images. To read this book is to take a journey to the US from the Other Side—any origin/identification/language that makes you forever the target of disdain and suspicion.

 

“The city was an edgy arrangement of cement particles and yellow paint. Signs prohibiting things thronged the streets, leading citizens to see themselves as ever protected, safe, friendly, innocent, proud, and intermittently bewildered, blithe, and buoyant; salt of the only earth worth knowing.”

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1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

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Charles C. Mann’s 1491 re-tells the history of the Americas as it has been revealed over the last several decades of advanced research. Starting by correcting the massively underestimated pre-Columbian population figures, Mann then shifts focus to the next logical question—what were all those millions of people up to before small pox and Columbus arrived? The last section of the book discusses the ancient ecology of the Americas and why its collapse inevitably followed the destruction of Indian societies.

Each chapter is full of boots-on-the-ground research efforts, the high drama of the academic world, and myth debunking evidence.  Mann’s level of detail is complete with appendices on topics such as loaded words and the technical details of the ancient Mesoamerican calendar. Throughout the book, Mann equivocates about politically charged disagreements regarding native communities and more importantly, insists on something long denied the American indigenous—the dignity of agency in their own history.

1491 is important because it points out why the Americas was not, in reality, a New World simply because it was new to Europeans in the 15th century. Many modern environmentalists who advocate for restoring land to a “pristine, wild” state of the past fail to acknowledge an entire continent of diverse ecosystems that were highly managed and integrated with native communities before those societies were decimated. This book is proof of the monumental gaps in our understanding of the world as well as the underestimated legacy of the people who were exploited to make a privileged Western society possible.

 

“Understanding that nature is not normative does not mean that anything goes. The fears come from the mistaken identification of wildness with the forest itself. Instead the landscape is an arena for the interaction of natural and social forces, a kind of display, and one that like all displays is not fully under the control of its authors.”

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Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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Women Who Run with the Wolves is a collection of myths and stories venerating the Wild Woman–the powerful, instinctive nature that lives within every woman. Collected over a lifetime from around the world, and especially from the author’s Latina and Eastern European ancestors, the stories teach us that the Wild Woman brings vitality, good instincts, and creative fire to the female soul. Through the characters and archetypal symbolism, Estes teaches women how to nourish the Wild Woman in order to avoid falling victim to an over-civilized culture and other predators both external to and within our own psyches.

 In contrast to the watered down, Christianized fairy tales of modern times, these stories are dark and messy. Each one, combined with commentary, reveals insight into topics such as romantic relationships rooted in soul-craving, seeing through illusion, finding people we belong to, embracing the Life/Death/Life cycle, and how to live in a way that honors the untamed criatura within each of us.

I hope that all of the women I love will read this one for the spiritual healing it can bring at any stage of their post-adolescent life. I suspect that different chapters will speak to women at different points in their journey, and I plan to read it multiple times!

 

“The balanced valuing of emotion is certainly an act of self-respect. Even raw and messy emotions can be understood as a form of light, crackling and bursting with energy. We can use the light of rage in a positive way, in order to see into places we cannot usually see.”

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The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

fukuoka “The human being was a happy creature, but he created a hard world and now struggles trying to break out of it.”

Fukuoka’s iconic book about natural farming explains how his simple principles of working the land depend on our ability to cast aside the human will and ego. By observing and cooperating with the natural patterns of nature, he has found a way to produce an abundance of rice, winter grains, citrus, and wild vegetables on land that becomes more fertile with each year.

His journey begins at the age of 25, when the simple thought occurs to him that humans know nothing at all. As he follows this concept to its logical conclusion (maybe he doesn’t even exist at all!), he abandons a way of life centered on human knowledge, choosing instead to fully embrace the incomprehensibility of nature. The four principles of his farming are simple: 1) no plowing 2) no chemical fertilizers or prepared compost 3) no weeding by tillage or herbicide and 4) no dependence on chemicals. His methods are based on decades of observations of complex, naturally occurring systems. In short, he aims to do as little as possible to interfere with these systems.

While the language of the book is simple, the philosophy is a bit mind-bending. Ironically, Fukuoko encourages readers to not try to intellectualize it. In the end, Fukuoka’s most poignant point is that we can choose to live within a different societal construct from the one that has caused so much destruction to the earth, body, and spirit. He explores details such as the role of a spider within his rice fields and the synergistic effects of a specific acacia tree, while also linking these specific examples to a holistic concept of ecological health. Fukuoka’s life and his impact on those who have visited his farm are a breath of fresh air to those of us who have read too many books about the many ways we are depleting the earth.

 

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An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

Gay-An-Untamed-State-jacket-art-9780802122513Roxane Gay has a truly inspiring ability to write about sexual violence through the unfiltered, unapologetic voice of a survivor. In this novel, she details the unravelling of a woman after she is kidnapped for ransom in Haiti—the destruction of a woman’s body and her fundamental sense of self.

As a first generation Haitian-American, Mireille copes with the uncomfortable contrast between her family’s wealth and the poverty of a country that is both an integral part of her identity and a place she can never really understand. Throughout the book, Gay’s characters are forced to determine what physical and emotional ransoms they are willing to sacrifice for survival. The novel is also critical of Western perceptions of poorer countries but refrains from presenting readers with any simple conclusions regarding ambiguous identity politics.

It’s a heavy read, but an important one—the timeless story of the destruction of women at the hands of entitled, prideful men. The dialogue felt a bit heavy-handed at times, but I appreciated the fact that the relationships are full of the frustrations and contradictions that push us to our limits, for better or worse, when it comes to the people we love the most.

 “There is nothing you cannot do when you are no one.”

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

angelouMaya Angelou’s memoir begins in Stamps, Arkansas during the 1930’s. In this rural community, raised by her grandmother and crippled uncle, she learns from a young age what it means to be a tough woman as she and her family endure the humiliations of racism and prejudice. When her estranged father unexpectedly returns for Maya and her brother, they are introduced to an entirely new cast of family members and misadventures as they transition to life in urban northern cities.

This biography reads like a heartbreaking poem. With a seamless narrative style, Angelou depicts the petty struggles of adolescence alongside the traumatizing injustices of being a young black girl. She recounts her experiences in the refined voice of her adult self while capturing the innocence of her younger version. I loved reading Angelou’s story, and by the last page I was overwhelmed with awe at the woman she becomes.

 

“It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of blackness.”

 “Horatio Alger was the greatest writer in the world. His heroes were always good, always won, and were always boys. I could have developed the first two virtues, but becoming a boy was sure to be difficult, if not impossible.”

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I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez

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Of all of the coming of age stories I’ve read in my life, this novel is the first that made my heart swell with pride as I recognized bits myself in a young Mexican-American woman forging her identity in the uncharted territory of early adulthood.

Julia is an emotional and short-tempered teenager who struggles to relate to both her parents and peers. She’s a bookworm and grammar snob who fantasizes about her future library. She stumbles over her Spanish when she’s nervous and falls for a white boy whose privileged community feels like a different planet to her. After the sudden death of her older sister, Julia begins to learn more about the life her sister led behind closed doors and questions whether the truth is more valuable than the tenuous threads barely keeping her family together.

The novel features a young adult not only battling the timeless issues of teenage heartbreak and social anxiety, but also those struggles specific to the immigrant family identity. The protagonist’s hilarious voice is abrasive and witty, insecure and overconfident at the same time. I would highly recommend this book to anyone—readers of all ages will undoubtedly relate to Julia and her family in unexpected ways.

“But where are you from from?”

“I’m from Chicago. I just told you.”

“No, what I mean is…Forget it. ” Connor looks embarrassed.

“You mean you want to know my ethnicity. What kind of brown I am.” 

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