going home

Book 38 for 2024: “James”, Percival Everett

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If you ever read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, then you already know the characters in this new novel. If you have not read about Huck, then I suggest you might want to read Cliff Notes or some other synopsis of Twain’s novel. “James” takes its title from the name of one of the main characters, a slave who lives in Hannibal, Missouri. He is generally called Jim, but in reality prefers the more formal James. Basically, Everett’s novel is written from the viewpoint of James, e.g Jim. Most of the major events in Twain’s original novel are followed in this novel, but from James’ viewpoint. Huck, a poor kid, runs away to avoid his violent father and finds James hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Together they live off the land, float in their handmade raft down the Mississippi River, mostly at night to avoid anyone seeing them, and meet all sorts of folks, including two men, who are criminals pretending to be European royalty. It is hard to imagine how a novel about the horrors of slavery could possess any humor, but this one does. It is a quick, enlightening, and entertaining read filled with “lessons” that do not seem to be lessons because they are so intertwined with the James’ story.

Book 35 for 2024: “Woman of Interest: A Memoir”, Tracy O’Neill

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In 2020, the author, Korean, adopted as a child, nearly 30, decides she needs to find her biological mother before her mother dies. Finding few leads, clues, she hires a private detective who disappears. Then she takes the task of investigating on her own. This book details her investigation, her long relationship with a Serbian furniture mover, life with the parents who adopted her, and her career as a writer, plus going to South Korea to meet her biological family.

Her writing style is a bit different and somewhat rambling. However, for those who have experienced the same sort of search, this book provides details on how to go about finding “the lost”.

Book 34 for 2024: “The White Mosque”, Sofia Samatar

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This memoir tells the tale of an unusual tour for a specific purpose, to follow the path of Mennonites who left Europe to escape conscription into the army since the Mennonites are pacifists. The author’s own life is unusual. Her mother was a Swiss Mennonite missionary to Somalia. Her Muslim Somali father taught the Mennonite missionaries Swahili. The two met and married. Samatar grew up and lives as a Mennonite. She teaches African and Arabic literature at James Madison Un. She is most famous for her fantasy novels and short stories which is how I discovered her writing.

In the late 19th century a group of German speaking Mennonites left Russia for Central Asia where their leader believed Christ would return. They suffered many hardships, rejection, abuse, but finally found a place that welcomed them in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva in what is now Uzbekistan. There they built a white church which the locals called Ak Metchet, the White Mosque. Their village lasted 50 years.

If you go online, you can find tours today that follow the route of these Mennonite travelers, trace their route. This book details Samatar’s experiences on the tour, the tour guides, the food, the architecture, the culture and the history: a 15th century astronomer king, the first Uzbek photographer, Mennonite martyrs. She also discusses her own unique upbringing, local beliefs and culture, how people develop their own personal identity, and the surprising interconnections people sometimes discover.

Book 33 for 2024: “Three Daughters of Eve”, Elif Shafak

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Shafak is a popular Turkish writer. One of my all time favorite books is her novel about the life of Rumi.

“Three Daughters of Eve” takes place one evening in Istanbul in 2016. Peri, one of the daughters from the title, is on her way to a fancy party when a thief snatches her purse out of the back seat of her car which is stalled in traffic. She parks the car and chases him through back alleys. As she fights him for her purse, an old photo falls to the ground. It portrays three young women and their university professor. This photo jars her mind, takes her back to her time at Oxford University when she was a student there in 2000-2002, her childhood in Istanbul in the 1980s and 90s, and her life. She thinks back to her life with her two friends, Shirin, an adventurous Iranian young woman, and Mona, a devout Egyptian Muslim who word a headscarf out of choice. And then there is the famous professor Azur, whose class on God either makes students hate or love him and the scandal that caused Peri to return to Istanbul.

Until her daughter, who was in the car and eventually chases her mother down in the alley, sees the photo, no one, except her husband, seems to have known Peri even went to Oxford. Her daughter mentions it at the party while everyone is arguing about East and West and politics and who has the most money and how they acquired it. Peri tries to deflect questions, changes the subject, and keeps remembering her past: her parents, a father quite irreligious, her mother a devout Muslim, their endless arguments and hostility, her brothers, her childhood and her stint at Oxford.

Through the story of Peri’s life, this novel explores personal identity, East-West history and politics, the meaning of marriage and friendship.

Book 20 for 2024: “The Midnight Library”, Matt Haig

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Regrets and depression seem to have overwhelmed the main character, Nora. She’s lost her job, a car ran over her cat, she thinks she has failed at everything, and she says she wants to die. But does she really. Through a series of parallel universe experiences she gets to try out many different lives based on her long list of regrets. None really work because none of them exemplify her real self. She thinks she might like this new life or that new life, but none fulfill her, reflect her true self. She learns that money, fame, riches are not necessarily the answer. But what is the answer? What is the best way to live?

One Book a Week-49: “Anything Is Possible”, Elizabeth Strout

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Her books are deceptively simple with so much to say about people and life. This is the fourth book I have read of hers this year. It interweaves many of the characters in the books I previously read back to the towns where they were born and grew up. One part of the book discusses one family who were so poor the children dug food out of dumpsters and everyone made fun of them at school. Only one truly escapes and finds success. One lives a lonely life at the home place, and the other is filled with anger and resentment. Much of the book is about how even if persons escape a horribly poor and dysfunctional family and find success later in life, the terrible things that happen to them as children are always there lurking in the shadows. This includes a lot of resentment and anger from some family members who do not manage to escape. Other parts of the book detail the lengths to which people will go to find solace often secretly with few or no one having a clue about how their lives really are. How well can we really know another person?

One Book a Week-44: “The Unsettled”, Ayana Mathis

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To say this novel is intense is an understatement. It begins with Toussaint, a 13 year old boy left to survive on his own then switches to Ava, his mother, who grew up on the road following her mother’s singing in Southern clubs until her mother settles down with Caro in a Black country Alabama town where all the Black people own acreage and are not only self sufficient but also sell their goods in many places. The nice life they have in this town changes suddenly when disaster occurs and her mom, Dutchess, goes into a prolonged mourning period. Eventually, Ava goes to college, obtains various jobs, wanders all over the country, and meets Cass, a doctor and Black Panther whose charisma draws people to him. He disappears, she and their son, Toussaint, wander from place to place as she goes from job to job. She marries, Cass reappears, and one bad event after another occurs.

This is a story of mother and son love, women who become ensnared with the wrong men, self sufficiency in spite of many obstacles, angry men, hope, and redemption. It is a story of this country.

One Book a Week-34: “If I Survive You”, Jonathan Escoffery

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After reading about this book and its author in a recent issue of the Sunday “Los Angeles Times”, I saw it while wandering around the local library and checked it out. Although the author’s work has been published in various magazines, this is his first book.

This collection of short stories reads like a novel because the characters in the stories are either identical or related from Trelawny and his brother Delano to their ill-fated cousin, Cukie, all of whom are the descendants of Jamaican immigrants living in or near Miami, Florida. Sometimes excluded because they are Black, they face other challenges, e.g. Trelawny because people cannot figure out what he is ethnically or racially due to his complexion and hair, light and only somewhat curly. All struggle to discover who they are and where they belong, if anywhere.

While many of their experiences remain heart wrenching, Escoffery has the ability to also make their stories funny. I kept think of some works by Sherman Alexie whose stories are both horrifying and hilarious.

Note: The next three books will remain anonymous and no blogs about them because they are for a project and I cannot report about them. I will be blogging poems and essays about other topics.

One Book A Week-28: “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane”, Lisa See

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My view of this book remains somewhat mixed. I know it was a best seller, but some parts of the storyline seem extremely contrived rags to riches stories without evidence to back them up. Nevertheless, it is a powerful novel about the ritualistic Akha tribal people of the southern Chinese region of Yunnan who were viewed as backward and remained mostly unknown until their superior Pu’er tea was discovered. Additionally, the novel explores Chinese adoptions, issues Chinese children experience when adopted by white people, and how so-called primitive practices, e.g. killing twins and banishing their parents, can change over time even in remote areas.

I prefer to read books that provide me the opportunity to learn something new. This book definitely provided that. Before reading this novel, I knew nothing about the Akha people, even though I have visited tribal areas not too distant, nothing about Pu’er tea or tea processing and how tea can be as valuable a commodity as gold. Pu’er tea is different from other teas because of the types of trees from which it is harvested and its unique fermentation process which makes it a probiotic.

One Book a Week-26: “Holding Fire: A Reckoning With The American West”, Bryce Andrews

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If you LOVE the West, but sometimes struggle with its violent history, this is the memoir for you. Here is a quote from page 178: “I’m embarrassed at how long it has taken me to notice that a rancher’s view of the natural world is blindered in comparison to the hunter’s perspective; that driving livestock from one field to another is nothing like stalking free-ranging herds; that finding, gathering, and preparing a hundred different wild plants bears no resemblance to growing alfalfa or oats…”

Andrews also discusses the difference between sustainability and reciprocity. Before reading the book, I had never thought about this. He notes that sustainability is taking without damaging. Reciprocity entails giving back, e.g. nature, asking, “What can I give back? What can I do to take care of this place that feeds and shelters me?” This is quite different from “How much can I sustainably take?”

Andrews grew up in the West. However, after cowboying on several ranches in Montana, hunting annually, and later inheriting his grandfather’s Smith and Wesson revolver, he begins to question the gun violence and destructiveness of Western culture. This book details his journey. He continues to live on a farm in the Montana mountains, slowly transforming the land to make it profitable but also a place for nature, for wildlife to prosper.