Book Review: Greenland

 By David Santos Donaldson

• Pub Date: 2021

• Genre: Literary fiction, magical realism

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the cover art (by Devan Shimoyama)

• Bookmark used: Roebling Books & Coffee   

 ****** 

   The esteemed Edwardian-era author E.M. Forster wrote about shaking off the shackles of his time and place. His novels and essays revolved around humanism and man's place in the world.

    In this debut novel, Donaldson attempts to go further, wandering through time, space, and thoughts. His protagonist and budding Forster fictional biography, Kipling Starling, tackles issues of accepting oneself and asserting your color, your culture, and your sexuality in a world that isn't sure it wants to have you around.

    It starts with Kip explaining his novel-within-a-novel -- an examination of the three years that Forster, a conscientious objector, lived in Alexandria, Egypt, as a Red Cross volunteer during World War I. There, he met and fell in love with Mohammed el Adl, a tram conductor.

    Kip, under pressure from himself and his publisher to rewrite the novel in three weeks, locks himself in the basement of an apartment he shares with his lover, Ben. In doing so, he imagines himself taking on the persona of Mohammed -- both are young, gay Black men, and each has fallen in love with an older, more established white man. Even the settings pair the two men -- in 1919, Mohammed spent six months in an isolated prison cell.

    From there, the themes evolve as Mohammed speaks through Kip's novel, and Kip tells his own biography and evolution as a writer and gay man.     

    Kip is having an identity crisis and unable to define or accept himself. He says he is British because he was born and raised in "a perfectly Victorian house" -- and not British because his parents are of Caribbean and Indian heritages. He is named after one of the foremost racist and colonialist intellectuals of all time, the promoter and defender of the white man's burden. 

Take up the White Man's burden--

        And reap his old reward,

The blame of  those ye better,

        The hate of those ye guard--

     Kip is also aware that in his upbringing -- not unlike the times of Forster and Muhammed -- "if displays of desire were out of the question, homosexuality was unmentionable."

    Kip has additional problems. His closest friend, Carmen, a Spanish woman open about her need to express and flaunt her sensuous nature, is dismissive of men, gay, straight or both, who fail to do the same, in favor of being comfortable. She puts Kip and Ben into that category. Kip's literary hero was a closeted gay man who published his only book addressing the issue of his homosexuality posthumously. 

    And in his writings, and in Forster's love affairs, Kip sees himself as many characters, but always the object of affection -- the exploited Mohammed, and the potential lover of Mohammed -- through the aura of time.

    It all gets complicated, and you have to pay attention to the blending of dimensions, characters, and actions. There's a sense of magical realism here, even while Kip expresses his desire to be grounded in the reality of the present.

Book Review: Small Mercies

 By Dennis Lehane

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Noble, Florence, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I read about the Boston busing crisis in Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukas, so this one resonated with me

• Bookmark used: Hobart Book Village, in Hobart, N.Y., which I visited the summer of 2024   

 ********* 

    This novel, of course, takes as its theme the Boston busing crisis, in the summer of 1974, when a federal judge drew up a plan and ordered the Boston Public Schools to desegregate. 

    But it encompasses so much more: racism, the Boston Mafia, a family crisis, insular neighborhoods, drug addictions, poverty, and a hot, dry summer in a city already boiling over with racial turmoil.

    It's a rich character study of the Southie neighborhood, its denizens and its surroundings. It's moving, melancholy, sometimes funny, and a tale that reverberates today.

    It centers around Mary Patricia Fennessy, known to one and all as Mary Pat, a pillar of her South Boston community, a stout defender of her Southie heritage and all that entails. But as she gets older, having been abandoned by two husbands, seen one son fight in Vietnam and die from a drug addiction, and her only daughter in serious trouble, her rage ramps up. She begins asking questions.

    Is the Boston Mafia, led by Marty Butler and his men, a protector of Southie? Are the Black people over in Roxbury and Mattapan really just a bunch of lazy thugs? Is her Irish Catholic heritage, and its people, really something to lord over others? And most importantly: Did she raise her children right?   

    We get to know the leaders of the anti-busing brigade, some real and some fictional.  There's Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whom they call Teddy, because he was one of them. But since he defended busing, they now call him a race traitor, and we see as they assault and spit on him during the demonstrations.

    And we learn about the ugliness of the neighborhood kids who celebrate racism, and the Black folks who survive it. (Well, not all of them survive. There the mysterious death of one Black kid who was in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, and the impact it had on Black people, white people, and the cops who investigate it.)

    Lehane, born and reared in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, has written several novels exploring his hometown and its surroundings. His genres have included mysteries and crime, and topics have included violence, loyalty, and a gritty underworld. This one has them all.

Book Review: 1666

  By Lora Chilton

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, Lexington, during the Kentucky Book Fair 

• Why I bought this book: The author talked me into it  

 ********

    The thing you have to understand about this book, and what affected me the most, is that these were real people who survived the horrors within.

    The PaTow'O'Mek tribe of what is now called Virginia actually existed, and because of the people written about and their descendants, exist again. That is no small thing, considering how America was built on the wanton destruction of the native people and their lifestyles.

    The novel begins with the tribe living in a time of change, when the Strangers have come and expressed an intent to take the land, regardless of the desires of the current inhabitants. Several tribes live on the land, with similar lifestyles but with shifting interests and coalitions. The Strangers take advantage, and with superior weaponry and numbers (not to mention the diseases they bring), take what they want.

    In doing so, they massacre all the male members of the PaTow'O'Mek tribe -- now known as the Patawomeck. They capture the women and children they don't kill, and sell them into slavery in the sugar fields of Barbados.

    The survival story is told in alternating chapters through two women who lived through the massacre and whom we meet again aboard the slave ships. Ah'SaWei and Xo, tribal friends, are split up when they arrived. Xo has the harder enslavement of the two, being regularly subjected to rapes and beatings. Ah'SaWei's enslaver is a Quaker, who is less vicious in the treatment of the people he enslaved.

    Several parts are particularly difficult to read, as the author spares little in documenting the violence inflicted on those who were kidnapped and enslaved. But it's necessary to lay it all out, as it explores the inhumanity of the original colonists, and the suffering of those whose lives and lifestyles were uprooted and destroyed.

    Chilton, the author, is a member of the tribe, and she interviewed tribal elders, studied the language, and researched documents from the colonial era and beyond to put together the tale. It's quite an amazing work that reads like literary history, and marks the trauma, pain, sadness, and eventually triumph.

Book Review: Dark Parts of the Universe

 By Samuel Miller

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction

• Where I bought this book: Barbara's Bookstore, Lombard, Ill. 

• Why I bought this book: Actually, my daughter did, and she let me read it.  

 ********

    

    A writer from a younger generation tells us this  tale of growing up in small-town America, which echoes shades of the country's past and warns it to get its act together for the future.

    Miller explores issues of race and class, of myth and reality, of violence and control. It's set in a backdrop of algorithms and apps, texts and social media, viral realities amid summer expectations.

    And it throws in a touch of family quarrels, brotherly love, high school cliques, and looming adulthood.

    Miller takes on this monster task, and he does it well. His writing is clear and concise; his pacing is solid. He exhibits strong continuity and transitions between chapters without irritating drama. 

    He just tells the story and makes you want to keep reading.

    The core cast of characters is small but powerful, teenagers you know and like, as they struggle with a world that is jumbled and confusing. There's Willie, the so-called Miracle Boy, who was dead for several minutes after being shot and losing an eye. This part is a bit overdone, but it sets the stage for his relationship with his brother, Bones, who had accidentally shot him when both were children.

    Bones see himself as his brother's protector and guardian, ensuing that Willie and his eyepatch does not incur the wrath of bullies. Willie loves his brother, but starts to see him as controlling and manipulative.

    There's Sarai, a Black girl who recently moved to town; her boyfriend, Joe Kelly, (almost always identified with both names) a scion of one of the town's founding families; Rodney, a attractive girl who is inexplicitly the brothers' best friend. There's parents and town leaders and pastors.

    There's the town of Calico Springs, a river city in southern Missouri that's a stand-in for many small towns. It's isolated and insulated. It's remarkably proud of itself, seeing itself as  charming unique and its people as a special breed of survivors. 

    Then there's The Game. Called Manifest Atlas, it's a mysterious phone app that seems to know your secrets and can bring your heart's desires. 

    Together, these all comb a mystery that threatens to break up friendships and families, and reveal the town's dark if unknown history.

    The story unwinds slowly, but once he gets to its climax, Miller shows a remarkable talent for laying bare the soul of this small town, shining a light and trying to brighten its darkness.

Book Review: King of the Armadillos

 By Wendy Chin-Tanner

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl & Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: It's about Chinese immigrants in the Bronx, and it has a great title.*

 *******

    Hansen's disease has been around at least since Biblical times, and it's always been seen as a nasty, frightful, and stigmatizing sickness. It attacks both the body and mind, with painful skin lesions, muscular weakening, growths on or swelling of the nerves or skin, and potential blindness. 

    Formerly called leprosy, those afflicted had been damned as lepers. It was believed to be caused by sinful actions, wrongly thought to be highly contagious, and, more recently, to be spread by people from China.

    That last part is particularly meaningful to this novel, which tells the story of an immigrant Chinese boy who contracts the disease in 1950s New York.

    This self-enclosed novel takes places in that period, and oftentimes brings in the characters' pasts to explain their actions and choices. And those choices matter, whether immediately or sometime in the future. And while time goes by, we see the results and longer term implications of those decisions. 

    Victor Chin is the young boy who emigrated from China to New York with his father, Sam, and older brother Henry. Sam's wife and the boys' mother, Mei, stays behind in their  Chinese village of family obligations. She writes often, and everyone plans for her to one day join them in America.

    Sam works in and later buys a Chinese laundry. There, he meet Ruth, a Jewish woman who soon becomes his lover, and a maternal figure to the two boys.

    But their lives are turned upside down when Victor contracts Hansen's and is sent to a sanatorium in Carville, La.

    It is here where the story begins to move quickly. Victor finds friends, perhaps love, continues to write (never mentioning his disease) to his mother in China, and finds a new relationship with Ruth. He also exhibits a growing independence from his family in New York, and a love and genius for music.

He'd never been exposed to much religion, ... but Victor thought there might be something spiritual about what music made him feel. Maybe that was what people meant when they said they felt the presence of God. A feeling of not being alone, a feeling of being safe. A feeling that there, in the temple of sound he visited when he listened or played, he could let go of what he'd been holding on to so tightly.

    This is the strength of the tale, the heart and soul of the story. Victor begins to find his place in the world, and while knowing that his family may always be there, knows he must take control of his life. We learn more about the background of the other characters, and where they come from.

    Now, it is Victor's turn to stake out his life, to grow up, to come of age as a Chinese immigrant in American.

    The writing here is superb, and the story is about a life -- making decisions, growing and learning, not knowing what the future may portend, but willing to move forward while holding on to the memories and places and people that helped make you.

---------------------------------------------------

    *He considers himself the King of the Armadillos and takes them as a mascot after learning they are one of the few mammals, beside humans, who contract Hansen's disease.

Book Review: Learned By Heart

 By Emma Donoghue

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Point Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: Donoghue is one of my go-to writers

 ********

 

   Writing a work of historical fiction that closely hews to the truth about the time period and the people involved takes a lot of work and research, as well as imagination and writing skills. Donoghue nails it.

    Using letters from the protagonist, Eliza Raine, along with other explorations of her life, Donoghue puts together a story of young love, frustration, and gender non-conformity in a girls school in early 19th Century England. It's a story of melancholy, misunderstanding, and mischief.

    Eliza is the child of an English father and a mother from India. Her friend Lister is from Yorkshire, and is what was once called a tomboy -- daring, wild, and reluctant to conform to society's expectations and gender stereotypes. Both are orphans who live with male caretakers, and are shipped off to live in the Manor School for young ladies in York.

    There's a sadness in this novel, born of two girls trying to navigate a world that refuses to accept them, and in which they cannot live happily. The structures set for them ignore their wants, needs, and desires. For Eliza, there is the added nuance of race -- her Indian heritage is clear in the color of her skin, and it influences every facet of her young life. 

    She is seen as neither English nor Indian; every time she tries to assert her Englishness, she is rejected as a half-breed, a child of colonialists, a girl that belongs neither here nor there. Lister finds her own rejections sort of thrilling; she can fall back on her supposed high class and the wealth of her family's holding in York.

    We rarely know what is really happening. Some of the characters may be unreliable, or are holding back their reality. Situations change, and as the girls find love in each other, the world around them can be mystifying. 

    One metaphor comes from Mr. Tate, one of of the few male figures at the school, a  teacher and husband of one of the mothers of the dormitory. Despite his talents as a musician and instructor, he finds only sadness in his work, despite the joy he brings to others.

    Donoghue depends heavily on the time and place, the changing mores and structures of the Georgian period in Great Britain. Much in the tale is left to the reader's imagination, but it remains a thrilling and evocative read.

Book Review: Blackberries, Blackberries

 By Crystal Wilkinson

• Pub Date: 2000

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: For the cover art -- and the title

********

    Short stories comprise many a genre, providing an outlet for stylish writing, whether it be a character study, a self-narrative, a moment in time, or a profile of home.

    The writing may be descriptive or stark. The story may be complete or part of a larger whole. But at their best, short stories allow writers to explore a small slice of life, of time, or of place.

    The best ones are concise, and telling.

    This collection takes all the options, to the benefit of the reader. The tales are brief, most less than 10 pages, some just two or three. But the stories they tell.

    Wilkinson grew up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, poor and Black, surrounded by family and community. She watched and listened. She learned to read people and reflect on their nature. She did it for survival, for the times to come, and for the hereafter. She captured their words and their messages. 

      Writing in the vernacular is hard, and often writers fail miserably. But Wilkinson nails it in ways hard to express. Indeed, the English language has few words to describe dialect that aren't degrading or dismissive, an subtle acknowledgement those who make such linguistic decisions look askance at such speaking or writing.

    But Wilkinson pulls it off, and it adds texture and character to her writing. Take for example, her story, Women's Secrets, in which a grandmother, Big Mama, cautions her daughter, Mama, who is young and looking for love wherever she may find it. Mama's daughter, our narrator, pays attention when Big Mama speaks.

I seen that Adams boy sniffing 'round here at your skirts but he ain't no count. Him nor his brothers. His daddy weren't no count neither. What he gonna give a family, girl? Ain't never gonna be nothing. Ain't got no learning. Ain't gonna never have no land. Gambling and carrying like sin.

    Later, in the same story, Big Mama gets more down home, unleashing her tongue and giving Mama a big heap of learnin.

"Chile, mens these times just ain't like your daddy." Big Mama takes a big loud breath and starts in on Mama again. "Ain't nare one of 'em no more than breath and britches, specially them Adams boys. Watch my words now girl, I'm telling you. Ain't good for not a damn. God in heaven forgive me but ain't good for not a damn. Breath and britches all they are."

      The stories are personal, and depend much on the relationships between women, particularly mothers and daughters. Their stories, literally, are about life and death. One, Waiting on the Reaper shows Wilkinson at her best, telling the tale of an old woman waiting to die, which she could have learned only by listening to a old woman waiting to die. 

    "I'm ready now," she said. "Ain't got too much time. Gonna see Lonnie and my little girlfriend that drowned in a well when I was ten."

Book Review: Yellowface

  By R. F. Kuang

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Author's appearance, via the Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo. 

• Why I bought this book: I read Babel by the same author, and it was fantastic

****

    Every novel I've read about the publishing industry describes it as a steaming pile of horrors, awash with infighting, backstabbing, and bigotry. This one is no different.

    Still, Yellowface was disappointing. Kuang's previous work, Babel, was indeed worthy of high praise. So when she announced a tour to promote her latest book, I headed to the nearest location, Saint Louis, to listen to her speak. It was worth it.

    So I eagerly read her latest, which delved into issues of diversity, inclusion, and cultural appropriation. It was meant to be a light-hearted look at the industry and how it handles the works of female and minority authors. I am sorry to say it fell flat.

    It was bitter. It was whingey. It was lies, piled on top of thievery, with a heavy helping of social media vitriol, all with attempted justification. The main character, manuscript stealer June Haywood, comprised all of those traits, and then some.

    She was friends with the vibrant and beautiful, best-selling and highly praised author Athena Liu. Then one night, while partying at Liu's luxurious and spacious apartment, Liu chokes on a piece of food and dies. Liu, of Chinese descent, had told Haywood she was celebrating because she had finished the first draft of her new novel about Chinese forced laborers in World War I.

    After calling authorities and explaining how Liu died, Haywood was cleared of the death. As she left the apartment, she took Liu's manuscript with her.

    She did some research, edited it and cleaned it up, then presented it to publishers as her own. Publishers were wowed and gave her a big advance, and suggested she used the name Juniper Song -- a variation of her birth name -- to make her sound more ethnic. They used a photograph that made her look vaguely Asian.

    While enjoying all the attentions, Song also becomes afraid of being caught, using underhanded means to keep the truth hidden. Some readers either figure it out, or have inside knowledge of her deceit, and much of it is hashed out on social media.

    We follow Song along her path, as she struggles to come to grips with what she has wrought. We also follow her and others on social media, and they direct criticism, bigotry, and at times threats and hate about her book and ethnicity. 

    But because of her actions, and her deception, it's hard to care for or about her or the path she has chosen.

Book Review: Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

 By James Hannaham

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the optimistic title

******

    

    Carlotta Mercedes is a transwoman getting out of the joint in upstate New York after 20 years behind bars. 

    In her first couple of days of freedom, she has to return to her family's home in a changed Brooklyn, reintroduce herself to her son, Ibe -- who last knew her as his father, Dustin -- figure out the intricacies of the parole system, find a job, and stay on the straight and narrow path. All of this happens during the July 4th weekend, while her family is holding a combination holiday party and wake for a man she doesn't recall knowing.

    We hear her frustrations, her joys, her confusion, her anger, her bitterness, and her dreams as she explores Brooklyn and her old stomping grounds, the gentrified Fort Greene section.

    It's a new world for Carlotta, who last roamed the streets in the late 1990s, partying, dancing and listening to the latest music, while exploring and questioning her sexuality and gender identification. Then she got caught in her cousin's robbing of a liquor store, and wound up testifying against him but still getting a 20-year sentence because her cousin shot the clerk.

    So, in this award-winning novel, she talks about the hellhole that the state prison system is, a world of bartering, suffering, and danger. She is raped by both the inmates and the guards. She spends time in solitary, which for her is torture. She does find a lover, but wonders if he is worth it because he's unlikely to get out.

    All of this is told in flashbacks, in a long-winded, almost stream-of-consciousness style. We also hear her rambling about her current situation, wondering how she can get through the weekend, fix her problems, and still follow the parole rules. She is ill-equipped to do so.

    This is a story of transitions: Her gender transition. Her move from prison back to the streets, her youth now gone, but her mind still back in her early adulthood. The changes in her neighborhood, and her lamentations about all her friends who died too young over the years, including the rappers who helped make the neighborhood famous.

    Still, we can easily root for her, despite her flaws. She is in some ways not a good person, but she tries, and often her heart is in the right place. The book shows how the system isn't made for the likes of Carlotta, almost forcing her to break the rules that seem rigged against her.

    The book is her voice. Hannaham does a fine job of representing her, catching the cadence and rhythms of her language.

Book Review: Highway 61 Resurfaced

  By Bill Fitzhugh

• Pub Date: 2005

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I love old Dylan tunes

*****

    If you're going to call your novel "southern noir," it appears you should have the following themes or characters involved.

    * A kinda shady private investigator who performs the job as a sideline to his first love, which is in a dying profession that never was a lucrative life. 

    * A drugged out, wild-eyed killer who isn't very bright.

    * A rich, old, antebellum family that once ruled the roost in its small town, but since has fallen on hard times. If some of them are racist, all the better. 

    * A slightly pathetic, somewhat mangy, but still lovable pet. 

    * The plot must be convoluted and involve music -- particularly traditional, down-home music.

    * It must -- must. mind you -- have a racially-motivated injustice from long ago that is ripe to be avenged.

    * It should have guns. Lots of guns. And, if possible, a shootout.

    This sharp and sometimes comic mystery novel contains all of that, and more. Much, much more. 

    In short, the plot involves a 50-year-old murder, some lost tapes of a supposed blues recording from long ago, and a disc jockey-private investigator trying to make sense of it all. Rick Shannon, a radio DJ in the mode of Harry Chapin's W*O*L*D, has landed back in Vicksburg, Miss., at classic rock station WVBR-FM. To supplement his income, he opens Rockin' Vestigations to find missing personsand skulk around cheating spouses.

    That's how he gets involved in a case that includes several murders, lots of history and music, and the LeFleur family. The action takes him around the sweltering Delta of Mississippi, and Fitzhugh, Mississippi born-and-bred, describes its people and places well. 

    The writing is good and solid, moving the story along with ease. That story is complicated, but Shannon's steady, structured investigation, following one clue to the next one, pieces it together well.

    The result is a fun and easy read that could be used to train real investigators.

Book Review: Babel

• By R. F. Kuang

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: It called out to me

**********

   

     This is an extraordinary tale that uses magic and fantasy to explore the realms of language as it's used and abused to use and abuse people.

    It revels in the history and decadence of language, its twists and turns, its meanings and context. We see its glory and honor, and its brutalities and  tragedies. We see it as homey and friendly with a welcoming smile. We see it as elite and fastidious, with a smirk and ridicule.

    And in this story about the fictional history of the revolt and strike by the translators of Oxford, we see that language is used by the privileged and powerful for their own ends. And, of course, those privileged and powerful are white men. The translators include some women and a small cohort of people of color, but only as necessary to perform the difficult if unpretentious tasks.

    The setting is Oxford, England, a small college town some 50 miles from London, but several hundred years removed from what's described as a stinking, bustling, crime-infested city of thieves and thugs and foreigners. Oxford is determinately quaint, sophisticated, and, well, well-educated.

    The time is the early 19th Century. The Silver Revolution is in fill swing, its magic providing clean water, quick transportation, and a better life for those who deserved it. 

Book jacket photo

Author R. F. Kuang is a remarkable woman.

She is a translator with master's degrees from

Cambridge and Oxford in Chinese studies, 

and who is studying for a doctorate in East

Asian languages from Yale. She has written

six books, and has been nominated for 

the Hugo, Nebula, Locust and several other

awards for her works. She is 26 years old.

    The characters are few -- the translating cohort of Robin, "rescued" from the slums of Canton, China, who can pass for white if you don't look too closely; Ramy, a lad from Calcutta, proudly brown-skinned but aware of the dangers from the bigoted; Victoire, a Black French woman originally from Haiti, and Letty, the "English Rose," who is both part of the privileged high society but a second-class citizen because she's a woman.

    Other characters include the high-minded if mysterious Professor Lovell, who takes in Robin to prepare and raise him for a spot at Oxford. Others -- several who become instrumental to the plot -- come and go and are well-rounded, if there only to serve specific purposes in the story.

    Indeed, even the main characters are plot specific, and serve as representations of larger societal issues. Even the plot points are metaphors: the Silver Revolution is the Industrial Revolution, if more intellectual -- and magical. 

    (In this world, silver and words combine to bring power, and the translators do the dirty work. England obtains silver bars from elsewhere, through means nefarious, but which it deems legal. The translators perform the magic, inscribing paired words from various languages, which allows the bars to provide a way to make possible train travel, electricity, and other modern wonders.)

    The story is heavily about the class structure of the British Empire, and its exploitation -- for goods, for money, for knowledge -- of the rest of the world through violence. This England is relentless in getting what it wants, regardless of the cost to other cultures and lands. The book doesn't demonize England; it simply highlights is schemes, its murders, and its wars for its own purposes.

    Even our cohort of four translators are assimilated to exploit their own countries -- China, India, and parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas -- and accept their work as being the price of their comfort and intellectual life. But slowly, they come to realize what they are doing, and what the Oxford translators do.

    That realization and its consequences are at the heart of the book, and Kuang tears our hearts out as she tells the tale. We find ourselves sympathizing with the dilemma the four face, and understanding their choices, and why they are made.

Book Review: Quantum Girl Theory

 

•  Author: Erin Kate Ryan
• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the title, and the plot of a missing girl who finds other missing girls 

***

   This book tries really hard, but it turns out a muddled mess.

    Oh, it has its strong points. It's a great concept -- a women, who disappeared as a teen-ager, spends her life running and searching for missing girls. But it really doesn't know what it wants to do.

    Is it a tale ripped from the headlines of 1946? Is it a broadside against violence against women and the havoc and ruined lives it reaps? Is it a character study of how women rebel against that violence, and the harm that comes to them and society? Is it a tale of racism and questions about why some missing girls are searched for and others seem to disappear without anyone caring?

    Or is it a woman who has the gift of Sight, who can see and feel and experience the terror of being stalked and assaulted, and lives her life in fear of its  recurring?

    Yes, it's about all of them. Well, it tries to be. But over a short 257 pages, it roams and rambles, introduces new characters every chapter, mixes memory and reality, jumps around in time, and altogether just can't seem to keep a solid narrative for long.

    Indeed, it often reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. And as individual stories, they are quite good. The problem comes when you try to figure out what is happening and follow the overall story.

    It just doesn't seem worth it.

Book Review: The Last Barracoon

 

•  Author: Zora Neale Hurston

• Where I bought this book: National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Washington. 

• Why I bought this book: While doing research on Hurston, I found I wanted to read her books. This was a good start.

********

 

   The protagonist in this book is known by several names -- his African name and his slave name, which is the name he adopted for himself. But it is only because of Hurston's persistence that he gets to tell his story, although the books wasn't published until 2018.

    And it's a story that needed telling. 

    It's a horrific, devastating story about the last newly enslaved men, women, and children who were captured in Africa and sold in America. It's how, despite all odds, Africans have survived despite bigotry, hate, and oppression.    

    He was known as Olulae Kossula -- the English spelling is a transliteration from his native tongue -- the name his mother called him and that he used in Africa. But in America he became Cudjo Lewis -- a combination of his African name and a corruption of his father's name.

    He was born in 1841in the West Africa town of Banté, a member of the Isha group of the Yoruba people. In 1860, a group of illegal slave traders came to his area, and -- with the help of some tribal enemies called the Dahomey -- captured him and a number of his neighbors. Bear in mind that Cudjo had no idea what was happening, and when shoved into the hull of a slave ship, had no idea what was happening to him.

    Ultimately, he was taken to the United States by the Meahers, Alabama brothers who enslaved people, and he was owned by Jim Meaher. After freedom, he lived in Africatown, which the former slaves built themselves on the land of their former plantation, which they had worked and saved to purchase.

    The story is told mostly in Cudjo's voice -- with his dialect and pronunciations as close as Hurston can transcribe. It is moving and compelling. It is overall horrifying, sometimes angry, often sad, and exhibits a loneliness that he felt near the end of his life. Some of its accuracy -- particularly how much is Cudjo's words and how much is the author's -- has been questioned and defended. But the overall story is factual.

    It tells of confusion and despair. It shows how men, women, and children are ripped from the only lives they've known -- their family, their culture, their liifestyle -- and dropped into a hellhole. They are not told what's happening, are literally treated like cargo, then dropped off in a strange land and told they must now work for strangers or be beaten and tortured.

    But it shows the utter joy that Black people experienced when they learned they were free.

Know how we gittee free? Cudjo tellee you dat. Da boat I on, it in de Mobile. We all on dere to go in de Montgomery, but Cap'n Jim Meaher, he not on de boat dat day. Cudjo doan know (why). I doan forgit. It April 12, 1865. Da Yankee soldiers dey come down to de boat and eatee de mulberries off de trees close to de boat, you unnerstand me. Den dey see us on de boat and dey say, 'Y'all can't stay dere no mo'. You free, you doan b'long to nobody no mo'. Oh Lor'! I so glad. We astee do soldiers where we goin'? Dey say dey doan know. Dey told us to go where we feel lak goin', we ain' no mo' slave.

Book Review: Beasts of a Little Land

•  Author: Juhea Kim

• Where I bought this book: Busboys and Poets, 14th and V Sts., Washington

• Why I bought this book: Such a wonderful vegetarian-friendly restaurant/bookstore. Beyond the great food, I had to support it, and this book called out to me.

  

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    I knew nothing about Korea. Seriously, I was a bit ashamed about my unfamiliarity  regarding one of the world's major cultures and countries.

    Now, I am a little less ignorant. Not an expert by any means. But I now know that Koreans fought for centuries for their independence against their aggressive neighbors.

    Beasts tells the tale of commitment from a variety of Koreans. Kim weaves their stories into a traditional jagakbo from the silk, hemp, and muslin of her characters. Family, community, and tradition combine to bring fortitude and determination amidst wisdom, betrayal, poverty, and wealth.

    She uses vivid descriptions and extraordinary writing to depict her character's lives and how they change over time. They encompass many aspects of Korean society -- street kids, shop owners and soldiers; businessmen and courtesans; artists, actors, and activists.

    For a debut novel, this is quite a start. I look forward to her next work.

    Beasts begins in 1917 in a snowy forest in Korea, with a hunter seeking food for his starving family. He nearly dies in the cold, but when he somehow stops a tiger from attacking a Japanese military officer, he also is saved from a frigid death.

    The story follows their intertwined lives for the next 50-plus years, bringing in others who are memorable, masterfully drawn, and recognizable. There is Jade, a young girl sold to apprentice as a courtesan, but who winds up as so much more. JungHo is a boy who grows into a man as his life intersects with Jade's. HanChol starts as a rickshaw runner and moves ahead. General Yamada, a Japanese soldier, is personally changed after a lifetime of war. MyungBo grows from his beginnings as a socialist and peace activist to a major political actor.

    The story is Korea-specific, but tracks timeless themes: of a revolution in politics and relationships, between longing for the past but adapting to the future. It's about the connections between ruler and ruled, between men and women, and between family and duty and honor.

    The lives of the characters merge, bond, fall apart, and move on. Every character, even the tiger, has a purpose. The writing is exceptional, even poetic at times. The phrasing, the descriptions, and the linear narrative combine to make this novel a joy to read.

Book Review: The Book Woman's Daughter

 

•  Author: Kim Michele Richardson

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington., Ky.

• Why I bought this book: It is a sequel to a book I greatly enjoyed

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    I always a fear a sequel will never match up to the original, especially when the original is a unique tale is by a relatively unknown author. That fear is heightened when it seems the second book may be forced, simply to ride on the coattails of the first book.

 

    But with The Book Woman's Daughter, none of those fears is realized. Indeed, it is possible to say the sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a stronger, better book that its predecessor. 

    This one has better, more memorable supporting characters, tension in the overall plot, and a powerfully young female mainstay who can carry the story while showing fear, grief, foolishness, and wonder at the world.

    The first Book Woman introduced us to the Eastern Kentucky mountains, its traditions -- good and bad -- and its people, including the Blue People of Kentucky. It also told us about the Pack Horse Library Project, a WPA program during World War II to have women on horseback delivery reading material in the hills of  Appalachia. 

    It turned out to be one of my favorite reads in a while.

    The sequel returns us to Troublesome Creek, and the story of the Blue People. 

    This time, it's the book woman's 16-year-old daughter, Honey Lovett, who's in trouble. Her parents are going to prison for breaking the state's anti-miscegenation laws (her mother, who is blue, married a white man. They had been warned.) Honey risks being sent to the state orphan home -- basically, a children's prison. She'll be forced to perform hard labor.

    In a sense, the way the town, and the legal and medical systems, treat Honey and her family is a stand-in for the discrimination often faced by people who are different from the majority, or from the way things have always been done. At one point, Honey cries when she realizes her parents are in prison because they love each other, and wonders why people think they should have a say in such affairs of the heart.

    But Honey isn't the only one with problems. Her soon to be friend, Pearl, 19-year-old woman who is hired as a fire watcher in the forest, is being pursued and harassed by the family of the man who thinks he should have gotten the job. A woman on her book route, Guyla Belle, is being beaten by her husband. Another woman on her route, Bonnie, a young widow who is one of the few female coal miners, is sexually assaulted daily by her co-workers. 

    There are a few good men in her town. Her lawyer, who is looking out for her. Her doctor, who helps her stay in touch with her parents. And Francis, a young shopkeeper who fancies and respects her.

    There's also the books she delivers, which save a few people, delight others, and teach everyone who reads them.

    But it's the women who stick together, watch out for, and help each others

    It's a wonderful tale of a hard, sometimes nasty and unfair life. But it also shows how women cope, survive, bond, and fight for their rights and dignity. They are the community.

Book Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

• Author: Heidi W. Durrow
• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky.

• Why I bought this book: The title caught my eye; the story description caught my fancy

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    The thing about the title is it should be taken literally.

    We first meet our heroine and protagonist, Rachel, through the eyes of Brick -- then known as Jamie -- as she falls the nine floors from the roof of her Chicago tenament to the courtyard below. Jamie thinks she's a bird.

    Maybe she is. She survived the fall.

    How she came to fall -- was she pushed? did she jump? did she slip? was she thrown off? -- is the riddle of the tale. How she survives defines the story.

    Rachel is a young, mixed race girl, the daughter of a Danish mother and a Black, military father. She is light skinned, with her mother's blue eyes and her father's features. She doesn't define herself as Black or white. She allows others to do that for her.

    Who she is changes over time. Raised by her Danish mother, with a more-or-less absent father, Rachel looks, acts, and is treated white. She doesn't seem too concerned with that.

    But once her flight from the roof takes place, which kills her mother and siblings, Rachel is shuffled off to a new city and a new family. She is put in the care of her Black grandmother and aunt. In school, she is treated as an oddity, neither Black nor white, or perhaps both.

    The Black kids treated her as an interloper. The white kids see her as exotic.

    She sees herself as full of grief for her lost mother, and what may have been. She loves and admires her strict grandmother, but bristles against some of the changes in her life.

    Durrow is a compelling story teller and writer, but much like her character, Rachel, the tale doesn't reach any conclusion. The assumption is Rachel still has a long road ahead of her.

Book Review

The Underground Railroad, by Colin Whitehead

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It is written by Colin Whitehead

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    Whitehead takes the Underground Railroad literally.

    

    He imagines it as a subway, with underground tracks,  cobbled together train cars, and live conductors. It has hiddens entrances, stations, and a schedule.

    Moreover, he imagines some of the stations leading to havens for escaped slaves -- a place for them to stay, work, and put together a life of normalacy, in a town where Black people can grow and succeed, and raise a family.

    But this is no feel-good fantasy. Real life intrudes, even in their free towns. White supremacists hate Black success. They hound and harass them. Slaves catchers make a career of chasing them. The escapees from slavery fear being forced back to the savagery of their previous lives or the torture that will end them.

    Make no doubt, this is a painful, fearful book to read. The descriptions of the daily humiliations, sufferings, and agonies of the enslaved are difficult to read. One is presented with the inhumanity of the enslavers and those who support and defend them. The entire callous system that brought about and sustained chattel slavery is shown for the cruel, merciless abyss is was.

    The story is told throught the eyes of Cora, an enslaved person. Because her mother successfully escaped -- or at least ran, and was never caught -- Cora's life is particularly difficult, She is an outcast even among the other enslaved. The overseer on the plantation selects her for particular harassment, and others condemn her to the hob, a portion of the slave camps for the unfavored. 

    She describes her life on the plantation, the deaths, the punishments, and the rapes and assaults. She longs for her mother, but simultaneously hates her for running off and leaving her. When Cora is offered an opportunity to flee by a fellow slave named Caesar, she takes it. 

    The book follows her on the Underground Railroad. She describes the efforts by her enslaver to recapture her, and by the slave catcher Ridgeway to kidnap and return her to her life of hell. Even the towns along the Underground Railroad, which appear to offer refuge, are an illusion that hide a insidious scheme to keep the enslaved from ultimate freedom.

    One finds it easy to root for Cora, who shows tenacity to get what she wants, and overcomes much of her suffering. Her compelling story is a testament to her character, and by extension, the character of her fellow enslaved people.

    Whitehead's writing is superb. His stories alternate from Cora's tale, to the backgrounds and motivations of the enslavers, slave catchers, and others who participated in the system. His language is profound and gripping. He draws you in to the story, and with a mesmerizing narrative, compels you to stay there. Cora's detailed account is raw, riveting, and captivating. 

    He deservedly won the Pulitzer prize for this novel.