writing

One Book a Week-29: “We Are Not Like Them”, Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

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A heart wrenching Prologue begins this contemporary novel about race, family, and friendship. Two children, one white (Jen) and one black (Riley), became best friends in kindergarten. Their close friendship endures to adulthood and through distance. Finally, once again in the same city, their bond is tested when Jen’s husband, a police officer, shoots an unarmed 14 year old black boy. Riley, a TV reporter, is assigned to interview the boy’s mother.

Their story, told from the viewpoints of both women, covers the effects of such a tragedy on family and fellow police officers and the community, illustrates the trauma of current events, and demonstrates how such a disaster tests all involved.

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-27: “Lucy By The Sea”, Elizabeth Strout

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A short, honest, realistic view of life, this book by Strout, written from the viewpoint of Lucy
Barton, continues the story started in her book, “Oh, William”, where Lucy and her ex, William, go to Maine to seek out his long lost sister whom he did not know existed until he took a DNA test. Once again they head to Maine, but for a much more stressful reason, the Covid pandemic. They both live separately in NYC where Covid hit early and hard. After accurately assessing the danger, William finds a large, old house to rent on the Maine coast and convinces Lucy to go with him there to save their lives. He convinces one daughter to leave NYC but the other insists on staying.

The book addresses the issues of isolation brought on by the pandemic and how people deal with stress and isolation differently and with the difficulties which arise when once close families can no longer see each other. It also shows that isolation can bring the positives that can be found in a more quiet life. Strout’s uniquely simple style emphasizes the emotions and stresses as well as the joys life can bring to all of us.

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.

A Book a Week-24: “The Water Museum”, Luis Alberto Urrea

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What an amazing story collection!! As I read these incredibly diverse stories featuring so many different types of people, I kept wondering how does he know so much about different sorts of individuals:

-An older white lady in a tiny town in Idaho who runs a little restaurant.

-Chicanos in San Diego–this one I “get”; he grew up near there in Tijuana.

-A divorced white guy, wandering aimlessly cross country.

-A teen in Arizona who loves a nice girl from a dangerous family.

-A “weird” old man in a Mexican village.

-A young man trying to save his dead dad’s possessions from questionable friends.

-A strange magical realism Mexican story. I love magical realism so if I think it strange…

-A kids’ trip to a water museum ( the title) in the drought ridden plains.

-A sad South Dakota story of a white man married to an woman from Pine Ridge.

-In Iowa a widowed farmer trying his best to befriend and understand his Mexican neighbors.

One Book a Week-23: “The Devil’s Highway”, Luis Alberto Urrea

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Even though the events described in this non-fiction work occurred exactly 22 years ago in May in southern Arizona, not much has changed except the nationality of the immigrants. Few Mexicans try walking across the Arizona desert these days. Now it’s mostly people from certain Central American countries, Venezuela, and various other countries, generally places where the climate of the Sonoran Desert is unknown.

In 2001, a group of men, mostly from the state of Veracruz, tried it. More than half died and the coyote who led them remains in prison. This book tells their story. It also describes in detail the networks that lure immigrants to attempt the long journey to the US border, who benefits, who gets paid, the geography and climate of the desert–a true tale of deceit, disillusion, desperation, and loss.

4000 migrants have died in the last two decades trying to cross the Arizona desert. This number equals bodies found; many tell tales of others whose bodies remain lost. 2021 saw a record number of deaths. 2022 data is not yet published.

Note: I like Urrea’s books and have read most of his novels. I recommend starting with “The Hummingbird’s Daughter”.

One Book a Week-22: “The Neuroscience of You”, Chantel Prat, Ph.D

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The subtitle of this book is “How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours”. Prat explains in detail and with humor how every brain is different. Little quizzes and tests help readers explore their own brains. The results of most of the quizzes did not surprise me except possibly one. I do not think I am as extraverted as the test indicates. You can find some of the tests and quizzes on her website, CHANTELPRAT.COM–without reading the book.

Research details how brains differ and how this difference controls individual behavior. Two people faced with the same potentially threatening situation react differently because their brains differ. Although many of these differences are genetic, brain research also suggests that the ability to understand others and comprehend social cues is learned. For better or worse, brain research also reveals that people with brains that work in a similar way are more likely to spend time together. However, people can learn to understand others whose brains are quite different. She calls this mind modeling (reverse engineering the minds of others)–sort of like what is commonly called walking in another person’s shoes. Being able to “read” correctly another person’s nonverbal cues helps with this and it can be learned. So the next time you find someone behaving in what you consider an idiotic manner, try thinking this: they have a different brain shaped by their own unique genetics and experiences. This might help me at least come to some understanding of behavior and views I consider intolerable.

Book a Week-21: “Boy, Snow, Bird”, Helen Oyeyemi

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A unique and sometimes frightening story with a surprising ending, this is another tale of the lengths to which people of color will go to pass for white to gain the benefits of whiteness. For one New England family this has succeeded quite well by sending a too dark daughter back South to live with relatives and never allowing her to come to the town where the rest of the family lives. It fails when a too dark child is born and the parents keep her with them. It is also a tale of gender identity and how rape and abuse can destroy and deform and of resilience in the face of endless obstacles. This is not an ordinary novel.

Book a Week-20: “Sankofa”, Chibundu Onuzo

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After her mother dies, Anna searches through her mother’s belongings and discovers a hidden diary written by the African father she never knew and about whom her white mother, who never married, told her nearly nothing. She travels to Scotland to have the diary authenticated by an expert, researches, and discovers her father had to return to Africa, became a revolutionary, and then president (or dictator, depending on the source) of a small African nation. She also learns that he is still alive.

Leaving behind a daughter and white husband from whom she is separated, Anna decides to travel to Africa to find her father. Treated unequally as a biracial child in England, in Africa she is seen as “obroni”, white. Thus, the book addresses issues of racial identity, family acceptance (she does find her father) and belonging, and tells a tale of the adventures of a middle-aged woman in search of self.

One Book a Week-19: “The Round House”, Louise Erdrich

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Winner of the National Book Award in 2012, and narrated by the 12-13 year old son of a tribal judge and a professional, tribal woman, this novel details the story of a family nearly destroyed by the brutal attack on the boy’s mother. Even after the identity of the attacker is known, he is set free because she will not tell or cannot recall where the attack occurred, whether on tribal land or just outside its boundary. This leads to the boy’s determined quest to obtain justice for his mother. This page turner perfectly illustrates the continual problem of justice for indigenous women who are 2-3 times more likely to be raped (and often killed in the process) than white women and with no one ever charged.

Given the seriousness of the novel, it is surprisingly funny at times with the antics of teen boys and other characters, including some colorful and interesting older tribal members and an ex-Marine priest. The reader will also learn a lot about Ojibwa culture. Once you start, you have to keep going in hopes that somehow justice will prevail in the end.