Post Traumatic Hood Disorder (Martinez)

This will probably be an unfair review. I try to vary my reading enough so that I don’t overdose on a particular author or subject or style. I’m afraid that Mr. Martinez’s work came on the heels of several other what I’ll call modern poets, and I should have taken a break. The pyrotechnics (verbal, visual) irked me, and I am tired of poets shouting at me. Martinez is clearly in full command of the possibilities of language and how it’s presented on the page, but with a few exceptions, I didn’t find a connection to this collection.

I liked “Found Fragment on Ambition” — https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Found+Fragment+on+Ambition.-a0523888766

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (Amado)

I’m not sure what prompted me to finally pluck this one off of the shelf. It was. . funny. I often have to remind myself that that’s okay. I loved Amado’s attention to detail when it comes to creating a neighborhood (reminded me of Mahfouz) and the energy in his non-linear writing. There is a surprise or at least a plot twist around 3/4 of the way through the book, but it makes sense and is necessary to allow Amado to bring the book to a successful conclusion. It’s no deux ex machina; it makes sense, especially for a book set in Brazil. I will say no more. I enjoyed this and will read more by him.

Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe (Lisle)

This is a compelling account of a woman developing as an artist at a time when women tended not to aim for much more than being art teachers. O’Keeffe’s single-mindedness, together with mentorship from and eventually marriage with Alfred Stieglitz, yielded wonderful art and a remarkable story. In this case, I don’t think you can separate the artist from her art. Nor should you. On the other hand, those male reviewers who tried to interpret her art as the work of a feminine mind come across as remarkably patronizing. So do those who try to box her into a certain style or classification of art.

O’Keeffe becomes a kind of canvas herself, a subject of Stieglitz’s photographs as well as someone who dressed as though presenting a blank canvas to the world.

I think Lisle did a nice job of pacing the book and, unlike in many biographies, her goal did not seem to be to produce an exhaustive and generally exhausting biography – just a necessary one. I’m sure it’s a kind of layered challenge to write a biography of an artist without resorting to becoming an amateur psychologist, but Lisle resists the temptation for the most part.

My daughter once said that she loved reading biographies, but hated that the subject always died at the end. I was bracing myself for that, but it turns out Lisle must have finished while O’Keeffe was still alive, so the book doesn’t end with the traditional gut punch.

I am neither an art expert nor a biography expert. I just enjoyed this one.

http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibitions/georgia-o%E2%80%99keeffe-living-modern

Ghosts in the Schoolyard (Ewing)

This book is essential. Much of its success stems from its narrow focus, a focus that’s encapsulated in its subtitle, “Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side.” Ewing refers here to the 2013 school closings because, as she makes it clear, this isn’t the first time that there were school closings; nor will it be the last. She also makes it clear that she recognizes that school closings have to happen. She seeks to make sure we understand that these decisions need to be understood as more than just the results of test scores or other cryptic jargon (“underutilized schools,” for example). There are historical factors as well, and those factors are inextricably linked with racism.

Since I knew her first as a poet from her remarkable collection, Electric Arches, it doesn’t surprise me that her attention to language is so insightful. The section on institutional mourning was revelatory to me. I just never thought that deeply about that aspect of a school closing. It helps to have the words of those who have experienced one (and, in some cases, more than one), but it is Ewing’s capacity to bring the various pieces of testimony together that really helped crystallize the issue for me.

This is not a book to read and shelve. This is not a book just for teachers or for Chicagoans. This is a book for citizens because we all, whether we like it or not, have a stake in public education. As we move forward in the wake of strikes (LA, and perhaps Denver), disaster capitalism and charter schools (New Orleans) and a Secretary of Education who seems to know very little about, well, education, it’s time to remember that the public is supposed to be in charge of public education.

photo by Susan Irene Phillips

The Coddling of the American Mind (Lukianoff & Haidt)

Read books, they said, that you disagree with. This one certainly qualifies. Even a cursory glance at my marginalia shows just how much this book, at least, parts of it, infuriated me. The book, with its surprisingly unacknowledged nod to Allan Bloom (especially considering the fact that his university – also my university – gets such high praise in the end) examines the origin of our obsession with the emotional safety of college students and the consequences it’s causing. The writers, perhaps practiced in it by their experiences writing for academia and magazines, are a bit overfond of numbering things. Even the clever catchphrases grow tiresome. But my biggest objection is the seeming blindspot when it comes to race and poverty.

There area a few token acknowledgements that some populations need more support than others, but to suggest that all parents adopt a more free-range parenting style, that their children carry a note saying they’ve been given permission to do this, that by doing so, the children will learn to negotiate the issues that are making them feel ‘unsafe’ on college campuses.

In a word, no. I’ve got students who are not permitted to stray from home once they return from school and may travel (not independently) to a local relative’s house during a vacation. Statistics be damned. Statistics assume a rational world. This is not the world my students inhabit. Send them on an errand at age 10? No. Just wrong. So either this is a blindspot or the authors don’t expect my students to attend their colleges.

Searching for Safehavens (Ellenbogen)

Okay, I might be slightly biased here. Not only does the author share my last name, he also shares my address; he’s my son. Though he’s just 12, he took on the National Novel Writing Month challenge and produced a remarkable globe-trotting novel. He also managed two separate and very different narrators and charted a course for their eventual connection, I admire the way he was not afraid of giving his main characters flaws, and I loved the humor in the midst of the dystopian novel. I happen to know that there’s a sequel coming. Sometimes, authors who have sequels planned don’t really end their books; they just stop. (See The Maze Runner.) But he fosters a genuine ending here, one that both closes up the plot and opens out into the prospect, indeed the necessity of a sequel.

And I love the cover design too.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Frankopan)

I have long accepted the need to remedy or at least balance the traditional canon in literature, and I guess I’ve had a vague idea that the same thing should be done in history, but from the beginning, Frankopan makes this necessity both specific and compelling. I understand the requirement to study American History (though when it ‘starts’ and ‘ends’ is always of interest), but why do we require students to study the history of Europe more than any other place? I know it’s likely because that story eventually ends in the United States. Frankopan, though, makes the convincing case, that to understand history, we shouldn’t look to England (for example), but to places whose names carry different weight now in our studies. And this weight, Frankopan demonstrates, is in large part due to our own blunders there. I’m talking about Baghdad, Iran, etc., the true center of the world.

In addition to seeking to persuade us that we need to reorient ourselves away from the United States and towards the true center of the world, Frankopan recounts the attempts at globalization that existed long before the internet, namely roads. The history of the world, Frankopan contends, can be understood by who has had safe access to and therefore control over resources all over the world.

This is, to borrow the blurb from The Wall Street Journal that graces the cover, “a rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world.” It also made me question the range of my own education (and the reason for that limited range). There is so much I do not know.

Her Body and Other Parties (Machado)

The key word in the title, the main motif in this book is “body” or rather “her body.” All that can be done to it – sex, abuse, violence – and others that are too surreal to describe. Come to think of it, maybe because it isn’t present or maybe because it’s overwhelmed by the violence and surreal imagery (which are sometimes intertwined), I don’t know that there’s love here, or even physical affection.

Machado is not coy. I was forced into some uncomfortable moments, both in terms of her words and my imagination (invoked by, but probably not entirely by, her words).

The only story that didn’t work for me was “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU.” Maybe I haven’t watched the show enough. I don’t think I made it through more than 100 of the plot descriptions before I abandoned ship. It felt like an inside joke that I just wasn’t getting.

Machado’s voice is original and powerful. I can’t wait to read what she does next. Once in a while, I wondered what would happen if one of these stories was made into a movie. And I got afraid.

Solar Bones (McCormack)

Be prepared. There is not a single period in this whole 217-page, chapter-less book. Now there’s a reason for this, one that becomes clearer as you read (and I admit, I read the back of the book and had an idea about why this was happening ahead of time). Still, it’s a challenging experience. It, quite literally, makes it a book that’s hard to put down. I mean, where do you stop? In addition, the paragraph breaks are not always in familiar places and, at times, there are (I think) time and voice shifts.

If you’re still with me, then please know that it’s a very good book. It is a man’s nuanced reflection about where he is in his life and how he ended up there, as a son, a husband, a father and a professional. There is not so much regret as recognition. I found it sad, honest and true. We construct a way to make sense of the world, a way to move through it, and the world rarely cooperates. There are consequences for our (lack of) action, both on this personal level and a more political one. We are, in the world McCormack has created, the sum of our parts and our interactions and a successful life, whatever that means and however an individual vision becomes compromised, requires a strong foundation, something that proves very difficult to build and sustain.