George (Gino)

When I see Banned Book Lists, I tend to take them as reading lists. Thus, George, a novel about a young boy trying to figure out how to tell her friend, her mother, her school, and herself that it is okay that though she was born as a boy, she is truly a girl and wants to be seen for who she is. Gino cleverly and appropriately uses pronouns to reveal how George has to live two lives. George talks about herself as “she”; others speak about her as “he.” I was also impressed by Gino’s attention to the reactions of those closest to her. Her teenage brother just sort of shrugs. Her friend takes time, educates herself, and the finds her way back to her as her biggest champion. Her mother urges her to take things “one step at a time.” Even the detail that George herself will only things up about being transgender once her brother teaches her (prior to him learning about her) how to clear a browser’s history.

I was also impressed that Gino chose to make George a 4th grader, prompting some initial reactions that she’s too young to make such claims about herself, something some readers might be thinking as well. I also think it’s logical to infer that Gino was writing for a 4th grade audience. Would I make it a read aloud? Or a class novel? My initial reaction is no, at least not at first. But if I needed to prompt a conversation? Maybe. I would definitely have a few copies available on my shelf.

The Blind Man’s Garden (Aslam)

I came upon this one by accident – a search for something to give me more of a feel for Pakistan. And it is almost midnight as I write this, and I cannot sleep because the book and its characters and its moments and its images are reverberating within me. Though it is simple, it is nonetheless true: I have never read anything like this. I truly felt, as a reader, like a stranger in a strange land, not understanding the geography of anything, not houses, not the connection between Pakistan and Afghanistan, nothing. There are no angels here. The book is brutal. It has to be. The war between American and Taliban forces invades everyone and everything in this book, and Aslan does not shy away from any of it. But he manages to convey, from the garden of the title outward, the beauty of the land of the human beings (they are more than characters) who inhabit his book. Because of the violence, I had to digest this one in small bites, but Aslan massages languages in ways I have not encountered before, no more so than in the scene in which the man of the title becomes blind. Just breathtaking. I will be devouring his other books soon.

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Taylor)

This is a radical (in the political sense of the word), dense and important book. Taylor’s arguments – against capitalism, for solidarity, against the personal responsibility argument, for ‘pragmatic utopianism,’ against Al Sharpton and for identifying systemic racism – are well-supported with examples and evidence and are therefore persuasive. Taylor’s writing packs an unrelenting punch. Her word choice occasionally strays, but those examples are minor road bumps in how to transform a movement, like the one she celebrates in Ferguson, into action, lest it turns to the other logical alternative: violence.

Taylor’s comments on Barack Obama’s presidency seem to me to stand on the shakiest ground. It is probably no coincidence that here is where I found the most examples of dubious and sometimes hyperbolic word choice. Granted, I have a bias for Obama here and can, in no way, imagine what expectations Taylor or any other member of the Black community had for his tenure.

I also think Taylor needed to identify her lens on all of this, which, at least in part, has to be informed by her perch at Princeton University.

No Is NOT Enough (Klein)

I can honestly say that I’ve been with Klein since the beginning. I read a review of No Logo while we lived in London and carried it around with me until I could find a copy. That book, though a bit long-winded at times, changed the way I see the world, and every one of her subsequent books has done the same.

When I first learned that Klein was “rushing” this book into print, I was struck by her urgency, the belief that people needed what she had put together, and they needed it sooner rather than later. And she’s right.

In this brief history of neoliberalism (a word I think I finally understand), she, in the end, sees our current American president (I can’t make myself write his name) less as the kind of shock she described in her book, The Shock Doctrine, but as a predictable culmination of the direction our world, particularly the United States, has been taking.

And though I resist the notion that those who criticize are responsible for providing suggestions and alternatives, Klein does do that, first outlining the model she experienced at Standing Rock and then the process that led to her being a part of the group that established the LEAP manifesto.  ‘Leap,’ not walk. There’s that urgency again.

She calls for a re-awakening of dreaming of utopias and thinking big. What kind of world do we want? And then, though a brief aside suggests she’s a bit too locked into the mode of electoral politics that Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues we should work outside of in her powerful book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. If we’re going to destroy the box that has constrained our thinking – particularly one that is so tied to the “ecocidal capitalism” Klein rejects, then we need to destroy all of it.

And while I applaud Klein’s call for more imagination and creativity and while I understand the logistics involved, I worry about our reliance on the Internet. Does making something into a hashtag really matter? If we’re on the internet, then we’re not face-to-face (an option Klein does support – it led to the creation of the manifesto) and we’re not reading and we’re not reading fiction, which does activate the imagination and creativity. We’re also not stepping in any way outside of our comfort zone, whether it’s to another place or even another place of worship. That said, I have joined the internet community Klein has helped create. I want to not only be ready to resist any new natural and created shocks, but I also want to be part of the group that has a plan ready – some good, Klein points out, can emerge from shocks, but only if we are prepared and we dream big.

No is NOT Enough

Democracy Now’s interview with Naomi Klein

Chicago: City on the Make (Algren)

I didn’t know what to expect from Algren, but after Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift I wanted to read another Chicago writer. This piece, marked ‘Literature’ on the back, but really an essay, is a kind of love note for the city Algren loves and a lament for what he thinks it’s becoming. Algren’s syntax is powerful and original, if a bit elusive at times. Still, I recognize the city and its spirit in his words and will read more of his work. The edition I found contains an Afterword in which Algren responds to the less than enthusiastic reception his book first received. I recommend getting a copy that includes this section.

Treasure Island (Stevenson)

Sometimes, you have to go back and get one you missed. Since our son was performing in a stage adaptation of this novel (he was Long John Silver), I figured I had my excuse. Though I am neither nautical nor piratical (is that a word?), I didn’t expect to track all of the details. And I didn’t really expect to like it since I normally don’t go for adventure stories. But I did – at least for a bit more than the first half of it. It was a page-turner as Stevenson unveiled the characters and set the scene and conflicts.

When everyone arrives on the island, though, the pace bogs down, the geography gets muddled, and the characters start to blur.

Nevertheless, it’s a memorable story, thanks to the basic plot and some very vivid characters.

The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation (Moore)

Having lived on Chicago’s South Side for 8 years (granted it was Hyde Park), the description of this book caught my attention. Moore, a local NPR reporter and a past and current resident of Chicago’s South Side has combined an analysis of the historical causes of Chicago’s segregated neighborhoods, with a memoir of how her family experienced this segregation and how she encounters it in her neighborhood of Bronzeville. She also works outward from there to show how neighborhood segregation is not an isolated or accidental issue, but how it intersects with our “apartheid school system,” health and food issues, and political power. Underlying all of this, Moore argues convincingly is race.

To her credit, Moore is not all doom and gloom. She identifies some pieces of hope, even if it often moves in fits and starts.

Two issues, both about the writing, were minor obstacles. First, Moore couldn’t seem to locate the register she wanted to write in. In other words, some of the writing is accessibly academic while other parts are quite casual. It made for a kind of whiplash experience. Second, I found more than a few occasions where I questioned the editing of her work – word choices that didn’t make sense, sentences that didn’t follow from each other.

Still, as insight into Chicago’s South Side and case study for America, I think this is an excellent book.

Cities of Salt (Munif)

This novel, the first of a trilogy, is a kind of parable – what happens when the Americans come to town? Or, more specifically, to the desert. In search of oil. (Hint: Very little of it is good.) What takes this novel beyond the ordinary parable is that Munif describes the  destructive impact of the Americans on the indigenous population and environment in several ways. The Americans not only oppress the people, but they turn some of the local Arabs into their allies so that they, too, become architects of the destruction of the people and land they once cherished. Interestingly, Munif does not shy away from mocking the Arabs, particularly the way they lust after American women. It’s one thing to mock the Emir; I was surprised that he also mocked the ordinary Arabs.

Munif creates memorable characters, including one who disappears early on and becomes a kind of legend. My guess is that his presence looms over the next two novels. My favorite characters were the two bus drivers, once clearly enemies, but in the end good friends.

There’s a Things Fall Apart quality to the novel, but Achebe is the better writer. And he’s much more succinct.