This Week in Books, 10th Ed. Black Authors

Black Authors White People Should Read

In the past few years I have made a concerted effort to read more female writers and writers of color. Last year, I started counting, and half of the authors I read were women, and more than a quarter were people of color. I am improving from the days of reading almost exclusively white male authors.

So in honor of Black History Month, I am recommending several writers of colors and their books, and what I have learned from them.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan: With this novel, set in the 19th Century, Edugyan gives us an extraordinary work filled with powerful and explosive  writing, Through the title character, Edugyan shows some of the true horrors of slavery, not just in the routine dehumanization of people of color, but in the lifelong impact it has on them, She shows the depravity of its systemic brutality. She shows how it allows white people to decry its savagery while simultaneously benefiting from it.


Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson: Woodson goes a step beyond the present, and shows how history and family and ancestory affect black lives today, She shows how bigotry and hate and violence in the past impacts the present and the future for black Americans. Bonus book: Read her Another Brooklyn, about groing up black in Brooklyn.


On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas: Thomas uses Bri, the smart, hip, talented, and ambitious protagonist, to show us what it's like to grow up as a 16-year-old black girl living in black ghetto in an otherwise white world.  Bri discoves how people judge her through lenses tinged with bias and outright bigotry. Her teachers condemn her as "aggressive." White parents claim her rap lyrics causeviolence. Many -- even her fans and neighbors -- see Bri as little more than a ghetto hoodrat.

My Name is Leon, by Kit De Waal: A British writer of Irish and Kittian descent, De Waal writes about a mixed-race child in England trying to find his way. After Leon's mother falls ill, social services take him and his younger, white brother, who is adopted almost immediately. Leon stays with his white foster mother. He learns the difficulties in being a black boy in white Britain while bonding with a group of black men from the West Indies.


Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi: It tells the stories of a multi-generational family growing up in Oman at a time of massive societal change in the Middle Eastern country. It's the first book originally wriitten in Arabic to win the Man Booker prize, It's mostly about three sisters trying to adjust to the changing culture, and it also explains the village of al-Awafi where they live. It does so through many voices, which reach a cohesive whole that is sad, but compelling and illuminating.

This Year in Books: 2019 Edition

My Best Books of 2019

I like to begin the year reading a favorite story about one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Roberto Clemente died New Year's Eve 1972 when he boarded a plane to take supplies to Nicaragua, which had been recently devastated by an earthquake. The plane crashed, killing the 38-year-old Clemente, the pilot, and three others.

Fifteen years later, writer W.P. Kinsella, working off the idea that Clemente's body had never been found, wrote "Searching for January," in which a tourist sees Clemente coming ashore in 1987. In a touch of magical realism, they discuss what happened and what might have been.

Ready for breakfast and the yearly reading of Kinsella's work.

OK, that's a long intro/aside to my first Year in Review blog post, featuring the best books I have read this year. According to my Goodreads profile, I read a book a week, which, according to one estimate I have seen, means I read about 50 pages a day. Sounds about right.

Anyway, of those, I have selected eight as my books of the year. Why eight, you ask? Why not, I respond.

So here were go.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Robinson. This novel, about a WPA project that paid women to ride mules into the hollers of Eastern Kentucky, became one of my favorite of all time. The writing is extraordinary, vivid, and sensitive. Richardson reaches perfection in her use of dialect -- just the right amount to give flavor to the speech of the people, but never too much. In addition to her keen ear, Richardson has a keen heart and mind in creating and letting her characters live their lives. Full review.

The Bees, by Laline Paull. Paull gives us a hive of honeybees that are feminist, pro-labor, and loyal, and presents them to tell a story of love, hope, and commitment. It's a book not about bees, but about us. It's about how we are locked into a caste at birth and struggle mightily to escape. Full review.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan. With powerful and explosive writing, Edugyan tells the tale of George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados in the 19th Century. From that beginning, she follows Wash through the United States, Canada, and England, as he tries to escape slavery and live the life of a freeman. But melancholy and a haunted, hunted existence follows him. Full review.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. This is today's story of what happens in the years of The Handmaid's Tale and its government of Gilead. It is told in various voices, from a top aunt in the organization to members of the resistance. They include children, who only know Gilead after the revolution, as they are taught little about the previous life. It's an inspiring tale from a top-notch writer. Full review.

Elevation, by Stephen King. This is an unusually short Stephen King book, but it's also the ultimate Stephen King book. It has great characters in a great story that's well written, with a little supernatural sprinkled in. It's a short novel packed with intensity and issues. Full review.

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver melds past and present into a sentimental yet unsparing tale, exploring how our present determines our future and influences interpretations of the past. In her literate prose, with a gift for the narrative of empathy and understanding, Kingsolver touches on what moves us all -- our family, our homes, our beliefs, and our hopes for the futures. Full review

Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry. In the long, extraordinary history of great Irish writers, Barry is finding himself among the elite. Night Boat tells about  two old Irish drug dealers and wanderers, who have made it good, then lost most of it. As they wait in a Spanish port for one character's daughter, Barry tells their story in writing that is ravishingly beautiful. He makes every word count, and causes you to use your five senses to take it all in. Full review.

Music Love Drugs War, by Geraldine Quigley. Quigley introduces us to a group of young friends and acquaintances in Derry, Northern Ireland, at the start of the 1980s. Most of them are in their late teens and on the cusp of adulthood, but unsure of their futures. They live in a city where jobs are scarce, the violence can be thick, and the hope can be slim. Their pleasures lie in drugs, music, and each other. Their fears and realities lie in the violent struggle that has engulfed Ireland for 400 years. Full review.

Book Review: Celestial Bodies

Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi

This can be a difficult if enjoyable novel to read. Its style -- combining several voices and perspectives jumping around in time, along with its setting of a different culture in an unfamiliar place -- forces one to read closely.

Several times, I had to go back and re-read paragraphs or whole chapter -- which tend to be short -- to comprehend the time and voice. Helping immensely in this is the inclusion of a family tree that connects most of the characters. I bookmarked this page so I could refer to it early and often.

The story is ostensibly about three daughters in a changing Oman, an Islamic country on the Arabian peninsula. But it's really a multi-generational tale about the village of al-Awafi and its people. The clans intermingle, slaves who were bought and sold and recently freed live and work with their former owners, and women are married off, usually not to a man of their choice.

The book is the first novel originally written in Arabic -- it was translated by Marilyn Booth -- to win the Man Booker prize. The award called it "a coiled spring of a novel, telling of Oman's coming of age through the prism of one family's losses and loves.

We meet sisters Mayya,  Asma, and Khawla, representative of different women who are changing along with the country. We also hear from and about others in the town, from the poorest of former slaves, to other who try to maintain their dignity over time, to those who are leaving behind their traditional culture for a new way.

We have Abdullah, whose voice ties the novel together, who married Mayya and talks about his abusive father, a slave trader. We have London, the eldest daughter of the couple, who becomes a doctor and enjoys western culture. We have Zarifa, a former slave who raised Abdullah after his mother mysteriously died, and whose place in the village is inconsistent.

As the novel moves along its path, the intertwined stories become clearer, and we reach a cohesive whole that becomes more familiar, at times sad, but always compelling and illuminating.

This Week in Books, 7th Ed.

My reading list for the rest of the year is out.

I have been slumming as of late and not reading as much as I would like and should. Life has been getting in the way, and my TBR Stack is stagnant.

But on Wednesday, the  Booker Prize for Fiction -- formerly known as the Man Booker Prize -- released its longlist for 2019. It's given me back my excitement for reading. Soon, every damn one of the 13 novels should make it onto the TBR Stack.

Several already are on the TBR list: Margaret Atwood's Testaments, a sequel to her classic, The Handmaid's Tale, which has received much attention of late, what with the television series and the current political climate; Northern Ireland author Kevin Barry's Night Boat to Tangier; and An Orchestra of Minorities, by Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma.

I have raved several times about the prize, and its awarding of deserving books, now from around the world, as long as the novel was written in English -- previously, one had to be a member of a former nation of the British Commonwealth to be eligible. The expansion has just increased the breath and scope of the books and the authors, leading to a diversity of riches. The list will enhance my reading of authors of color, of woman, and of people from outside the United States.

Just listen to some of the titles and authors on the 2019 longlist: The Man Who Saw Everything, by Deborah Levy, which weaves together two stories of a similar event -- a man being hit by a car on Abbey Road in London. There's Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli, about several Mexican children on a journey to cross the U.S. Border. Then there is 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in The Strange World, by Elif Shafak, which gives life to the thoughts and remembrances of a sex worker as she lays dying after being murdered and dumped.

Let's get to reading.

Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

This is a strange, but ultimately compelling and readable novel. It won the Man Booker literary prize in 2017, so you know it's good.

It's only peripherally about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862. Lincoln took the death hard, and for several days, visited his son's crypt. From this snippet of history, Saunders leaps off into the realm of fantasy, hope, longing, grief, and despair.

The bardo of the title is a Tibetan word for the transitional state between life and death. It can last days, weeks, even years. The being in such a state is unsure about his existence, and throughout the book refers to the coffin as a "sickbox." It's a way that Saunders can explain how a person reviews the life, and can sometimes see images of a past that did not exist and a potential future that never came.

The novel takes the form of citations from books written and imagined, and discussions by various spirits. Those spirits watch as Lincoln visits his son; they try to influence Lincoln's actions, and they attempt to encourage Willie to move on. A young boy in such a state is unusual, the spirits allow.

They seem drawn to Lincoln's sadness, and use it to examine their own lives -- full of lost loves, missed opportunities, squandered time, and prejudices and bigotry that continue to plague them in the bardo.

It's a difficult book to get into. But once you read through a couple of chapters, the book comes into focus, and the characters grow and develop as we learn about their lives. 

Book Review: Silence of the Girls

The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker

Another Man Booker prize winner, and another fine read.

I enjoy novels that tell a different side of the story. In this case, Barker tell the story of Achilles and the Trojan Way from the perspective of Briseis, a high-ranking woman from Troy whom the Greeks captured and gave to Achilles as a war prize, as a slave.

It can sometimes be confusing to read such a book, as it gives details and tells anecdotes that are new, and sometimes contradictory to the stories you have heard before. But that's the point.

Barker tells it well, in succinct, well-written prose. Briseis' anger, her regret, and her longing for her past life and her family come through loud and clear. She also tells of the women with her, who are living a life as bad or worse than her own. Briseis is unflinching in her disgust at the men and their killing, at the viciousness and thoughtless hatred that fills the rage of Achilles and the other warriors. 

This is Briseis' story, as she explains near the end of the book.

"What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know; they won't want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won't want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won't want to know we are living in a rape camp. No, they'll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were. His story. His, not mine. It ends at his grave."

It's a fascinating read that tells the experiences of the captured women, whom no one listens to and no one hears. Silence becomes a woman, says Ajax, one of the Greek fighters. Barker replies with the  sounds of silence.

Review: Washington Black

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan

If this book has proven one thing, it is to appreciate the Man Booker Prize for selecting some of the finest contemporary fiction available. Whether a novel is on the longlist, shortlist, or is the actual winner -- Washington Black was shortlisted for the 2018 prize -- rest assured it's going to be good.

But Edugyan has shown much more with the powerful and explosive writing in her extraordinary work. Through the title character, Edugyan has shown some of the true horrors of slavery, not just in the routine dehumanization of people of color, but in the lifelong impact it has on its victims. She has shown the depravity of its systemic brutality. She has shown how it allows white people to decry its savagery while simultaneously benefiting from it.

Set in the 19th Century, the book follows George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados. It's a cruel, grueling life, and Wash is confused and alarmed when he finds he is assigned to be a manservert to the master's younger brother. He fears he will be assaulted and abused, with no way out, because he is always forced to go along. Even when he finds that Titch -- which his new master insists that Wash call him -- is not the vicious master he feared, he cannot rest easy.

"I thought of my existence ... the brutal hours in the field under the crushing sun, the screams, the casual finality edging every slave's life, as though each day could easily be the last. And that, it seemed to me clearly, was the more obvious anguish -- that life had never belonged to any of us, even when we sought to reclaim it by ending it."

Titch discovers Wash has natural artistic skills, and he encourages his talents. But he does so because he sees a benefit to his own scientific endeavours.

When a tragedy occurs on the plantation, Titch and Wash flee, leading to their adventures through America, Canada, and England. The tale is told in brilliant, colorful, descriptive language.

For instance, later in the book, Wash recalls his experience in the Canadian Arctic.

"I had been warned ... that snow was white, and cold. But it was not white; it held all the colours of the spectrum. It was blue and green and yellow and teal; there were delicate pink tintings in some of the cliffs as we passed. As the light shifted in the sky, so did the snow around us deepen, find new hues, the way an ocean is never blue but some constantly changing colour. Nor was the cold simply cold -- it was the devouring of heat, a complete sucking of warmth from the blood until what remained was the absence of heat." 

It's that writing, showing the melancholy, the bitterness, and the haunted, hunted existence that follows Wash throughout his life, that makes this book worth buying and saving, so one can read it again and again.

Book Review: Mad and Furious City

In Our Mad and Furious City, by Guy Gunaratne

Gunaratne's debut novel is both sad and angry, full of hope and full of despair. It is beautifully written in the voices of the old and the young, those who revolt in violence and those who see courage in running from the gathering storm. It displays the voices of those united in their poverty, who have lived its hatreds, its futility, and its destructive impulses.

This is London at its inner core, with the story of the dispossessed, growing up in the shadow of massive towers built for the unwanted. It's the story directly told by those involved -- the children and the parents who know the violence and the heartbreak of being outside the mainstream.

The story is told in five voices: There are Selvon and Ardan, who are both looking for a way out. Yusuf is torn between the comfort of and the growing oppression of his religion, and the influence it is having on his older brother, Irfan. Nelson and Caroline are the remnants of an older generations who have seen it all before.

At the start, the style is a bit confusing: the characters take some time to become individually known and recognized. Their occasional use of British slang muddles the issue; here Google was my friend, as I looked up the words and learned something. Those terms quickly became well-known, innit?

The voices soon become familiar and reassuring, and their temperament becomes soothing as the story increasingly grows edgy. Here comes the aftermath of a soldier being killed and his body hanged. An angry white mob wants revenge, and descends upon the council estate (public housing) of mostly immigrants of color from Southwest Asia. Those residents, who simply want to move on with their lives, either stay and battle or avoid the fight. Complicating the issue is the new leadership of the local mosque, which wants its membership to become more insular and conservative.

The writing complements the book's rhythm and flow. As the struggle nears its climax, the chapters get shorter, the writing tighter, and the action more intense. You feel yourself in the midst of everything, as you are hearing from all the characters' perspectives. It's a strong ending for the story, by a brilliant writer.

The book's blurbs are filled with comments about how we will hear a lot from this young writer. I agree. This novel was on the longlist for the 2018 Man Booker prize. He is off to a fine start.

This week in Books 6th Ed.

TBR's Stephen King
bookcase

So, I finally persuaded my daughter to give Stephen King a shot. She doesn't like horror. I kept telling her King is much more than a horror writer

We have shared books since she was in her late teens. When she comes home now, we often go straight to my library, where I offer some suggestions, and she can browse for more. At times, she'll recommend a book for me. It works for us.

She's a runner (a good one, I might add; a Boston qualifier). So I gave her Elevation, telling her it had a running story arc that was well done. It's one of King's shorter works, so it's a quick read. Here is my review.

She liked, it. No, she loved it. I am happy, although not surprised. It is a good read.

The best description of King is that he puts regular people in abnormal situations. I think King's strength as as writer is simple: He writes well, has great characters, and tells a helluva story. What more could you want? Despite his reputation, he's not solely a writer of horror, which I've always seen as bloody, slasher stuff. Instead, he's a writer of the supernatural -- the paranormal, if you will.

Anyway, now I have to decide what King work to suggest next. Perhaps one of his earlier works -- perhaps Dead Zone, which could be appropriate in the current political climate? Or perhaps a later work, Sleeping Beauties, which he co-wrote with his son, Owen King? It hits the high points of a King book, and I credit Owen King with taking out some of King's flaws, particularly his weakness in crafting a credible ending.

As for the TBR stack: It's getting bigger after a trip to a local bookstore this past week. I found three books that weren't even on the horizon:

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek tells the fictionalized tale of the first travelling library in Kentucky (my home), and how one of the (real-to-life) blue people of Kentucky was its librarian. They Said it Couldn't be Done is about a time I remember well from growing up in New York City in the summer and fall of '69, when man landed on the moon and the Mets won the World Series. Fifty years later, I cannot read enough about the latter. And Washington Black continues my excursion into books by and about people of color. This one tells the story of an 11-year-old field slave who becomes his master's brother's servant, and their ever-changing relationship. It was nominated in 2018 for the Man Booker prize, always a great place to find a good read.

This Week in Books, 4th Ed.

When the longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction was announced this week, I saw that two of the nominations are shelved in the TBR library. Not only that, but my current read, The Bees, by Laline Paull, was a shortlisted finalist for the award in 2015.So I wanted to know more.

                                                                   Photo from Women's Prize website
 The judges with their selection of the 16 books longlisted 

The award, dubbed one of the most prestigious in the UK, is given annually for the best novel written in English by a woman of any nationality.

Book awards in the UK have interesting logistics. First off, they announce a longlist, about a dozen to 18 novels of the best of the best. About six weeks later (April 29 this year for the Women's Prize) comes the shortlist, with the top five books becoming finalists. After a buildup, a ceremony is held to announce and honor the winner (June 5, 2019). The Man Booker and other awards use a similar method.

It's sort of the way the Oscars are heralded, and it's nice to see literary awards get the attention they deserve.

Such lists also are a great method to find new novels one might otherwise overlook. For years, I've used the Man Booker lists and found great novels written from different perspectives. The search will now include the longlist and shortlist of the Women's Prize, which seeks out and honors women writers from around the world.

"Written by women. For Everyone" is its motto. Previous winners include Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in 2007, The Song of Archilles, by Madeine Miller in 2012, The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver in 2010, and last year's top novel, Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie.


I have read two books on this year's longlist. Circe is the story of a minor Greek goddess, the daughter of the Titan sun god Helios. Because she is the goddess of witchcraft, she is banished to a deserted island. Here, Miller tells the story from Circe's perspective, including her meetings with Greek gods and heroes, such as the stories of the Minotaur, Medea, Icarus and his doomed flight to the sun, and one of her lovers, Odysseus. I read it last year at a time I was not keeping up with this blog, so I have not written a review. But it is top rate.

Milkman also tells its story from the perspective of its main character, a teen-age girl growing up in a split community very much like a 1980s version of Northern Ireland. My review is here.




Before I wrote this blog post, I went for a four-mile run to clear the head and think. It was cold, 20 degrees when I started -- that's seven below for you guys outside the United States.


 Also, it started to snow.

Book Review: The White Boy Shuffle

The White Boy Shuffle, by Paul Beatty

I felt uncomfortable when I started reading this book.

I bought it because I had read Beatty's award-winning novel, The Sellout, which in 2015 won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award. The White Boy Shuffle is his first book, written in 1996.

It concerns Gunner Kaufman, the blackest white surfer dude in Santa Monica. Kaufman is a novelty in his hometown, being the only person of color in his neighborhood and on the beaches. He regales his friends and classmates with his blisteringly funny stories about his ancestors.

But it's the telling of those stories that make me uneasy. Yes, Beatty is black, and he has the right to write about African-Americans, their history, and their culture in whatever way he pleases. And he does, using racist epithets, tropes, and colorful language. It was hysterical. And I laughed. But I felt horrible doing so. As a white man, I cannot simply and easily share his use of such racial terms, and I probably should not admit I laughed out loud more than once at his doing so. But at least I looked around to make sure no one saw me chuckling.

Anyway, Kaufman's mother thinks he is losing touch with his blackness, and to remedy it, she decides to move the fatherless family to a black neighborhood in Los Angeles. A poor, crime-ridden, ghetto neighborhood in South-Central L.A. There, his first visitors are two police officers, who demand to know which gang he's in. When he claims none, the cops reply that because he's a free agent, they'll be watching him.

Also watching him are the gangs in the 'hood, who promptly beat him up for talking to the cops.

Eventually, he settles in, trading his surfing skills for the basketball court, and honing his poetry. He becomes widely popular, and when asked to speak at a demonstration, reluctantly does, turning himself into a self-described Negro demagogue.

Widely funny, sometimes somber, often outrageous, White Boy Shuffle is an intense novel addressing questions of race, class, and identity that are as relevant today as they were 24 years ago.

Book Review: Milkman

Milkman, by Anna Burns

In tribute to this wonderful book, I will start this review based on a conversation middle sister had with her mother's dating the real milkman, "Yes, but..."

Yes, I really liked this book, the winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize. But ...

Yes, I loved the story about a young woman who attempts to navigate through the sectarian and political minefields of her home by pretending to ignore them. She walks. She walks-and-reads. She jogs. She hangs out with maybe-boyfriend (whose relationship defines the word "complicated.") But ...

Life keeps interrupting middle sister's plans. Her brothers are killed or escape to avoid being shot or kneecapped. Her sister is exiled because she married into the wrong religion. Her father dies -- but because his death is from a disease, not terrorism, it doesn't count as a political loss.

All of this is told in a deadpan, humorous matter, as befitting the tale's location in a thinly-disguised Northern Ireland. All the signs are there: The casual acceptance of the daily absurdities: The sly descriptions of the participants in the unpleasantness. The knowing mocking of the religious hypocrisies. The battles over minor details of life, from the flag on your junked car to the color of the curb in front of your house.

Oh, and the fact that the the author's native city is Belfast cliches the deal.

Now, middle sister's life gets more complicated when a community leader known as Milkman (not a real milkman) comes into her life. Middle sister (yes, she is identified that way throughout the book) rejects the thought of any relationship, but the entire neighborhood thinks otherwise, and that is the thread that keeps the story going.

Yes it's well told, both funny and knowledgeable about the subject. But ...

The author does have a tendency to go off on tangents. Sheesh, even her asides have asides. Yes, they often are pointed, sad, or telling. But she does wander.

Yes, you find yourself chuckling, nodding, or lamenting during her digressions. But, you also think, "get back to the damn story. Please."