Reading List: Some Recommendations

Life is busy. Between full time work, summer classes, serious creative projects, and maintaining some semblance of a social life (and also sleeping, occasionally) it’s been hard to find time to read recently. I’ve been told this is part of being an adult, though I reject that notion. I know plenty of adults who continue to devour a half dozen books every month.

Still, making time for reading takes some concerted effort. Even harder, often, is deciding what books to use that precious time on. Nothing is more upsetting than wasting a solid ten hours reading a bad book. As such, here are a few books I’ve recently read and enjoyed.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

Perhaps one of Steinbeck’s lesser known and most underrated works, Travels with Charley is an entertaining and insightful portrait of the United States. Thoughtful yet accessible in distinctly Steinbeck fashion, the book is a semi-fictional account of a road trip the author make to “rediscover his country” towards the end of his life. Spending several months touring America in a camper van with no company but his dog Charley, the author’s tone is reflective. This book was clearly written towards the end of his life and career, as one sees his growing disillusionment the longer his journey goes on. Such disappointment in the new generation is profound coming from a man who consistently provided a voice for America’s unheard populations.

For anyone who enjoys American literature or memoir, this book is an excellent choice. It blurs some of the lines between novel and biography, fusing elements of both to create profound yet enjoyable book. I also highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Gary Sinise.

On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood by Richard Harrison

Calgary based writer Richard Harrison’s latest collection of poetry is a deeply compassionate exploration of grief, marriage, and family relationships. While each poem stands strong in its own right, this collection provides a memoir-like tale of a man attempting to process the loss of his father while realizing his own flawed mortality. Harrison uses the medium of narrative poetry to tell a deeply relatable story. This collection’s combination of insightful observation and profound imagery serves to create a cohesive and accessible whole. I recommend that even those who are not fans of poetry give this one a read.

Favourite pieces: “Found Poem” and “A Poem is a Story that Sometimes Happens to Someone”

Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas by Fredrick Douglas

As much an important historical document as it is a memoir, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas is one of those books everyone should have to read at some point. Describing the author’s childhood (such as he remembers it) and early adulthood as a slave in Maryland, Narrative is one of several autobiographies written by Douglas during his career as an abolitionist in the mid-1800s. Heartbreaking and often sickeningly visceral, this book is not a pleasant read, yet it is a crucial one for understanding the origins modern racism. We cannot forget what happened, and we cannot allow ourselves to forget just how sickening the institution of slavery was. It is important to remember that for every Fredrick Douglas who escaped to tell their story, there were a million men, women, and children left beaten, raped, and starved for the entirety of their short lives.

OK by Kool AD

One of the more absurd books I’ve ever read, Victor “Kool AD” Vazquez’s postmodern novel OK (yes, I read a postmodern novel written by a rapper) is an intriguing series of experiments in form. Any attempt to sum up this novel is largely doomed to fail. The book is bizarre in a unique way that one has to experience for oneself. For many readers, the frustrating liberties OK takes with linguistic and narrative conventions will be a turnoff. But those who can make it through the confusion and disorientation will almost certainly be rewarded. At the very least, the book should provide an entertaining if bemusing experience.

Reading like a bizarre memoir written during an acid trip (which it might well be), OK features rap battles, gigantic eagles constructed from precious metals, literary and musical references galore, existential angst, moral ambiguity, and a lot of drugs. Any plot and character development is vague enough that the reader can draw their own conclusions. Throughout the novel, Vazquez consistently provides us with a series of vignettes arranged to encourage us to ask questions of everything.

Book Review: Between the World and Me

I recently reread this book as part of a travel study done through the University. The theme of the course was "Slavery, Freedom, and Civil Rights," with the goal of understanding the ongoing legacies of racial conflicts. I attempted to synthesize some of my thoughts on Coates' work in an academic review of the book:

Book Review: Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

In his timely work Between the World and Me, national correspondent for The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates examines a black man’s place in a modern world plagued by a legacy of racial oppression. In light of recent high profile events and modern racial tensions, Coates perfectly captures the struggles faced by African Americans in today’s America. Framing the work as a letter to his son, Coates’ prose has a poetic imperfection that lends to the creation of an aching poignancy. The father’s love for his son lives on the page. The fear he feels for his child’s life, the pain he feels at the loss of so many other children, gives the work an intensely personal appeal. Between the World and Me is a deeply insightful examination of how the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow have resulted in a continued economic, social, and intellectual segregation in modern America. In the book, Coates illustrates with painful clarity the insidious dangers faced by black men and women in the Untied States now more than ever.

One part autobiography and one part a defiant reckoning, Between the World and Me is Coates’ attempt to convey to his son a haunting legacy of violence intrinsically tied to their very identity. Taking inspiration from the works of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and other African American writers, Coates seeks to succinctly synthesize four hundred years of oppression while capturing a specific modern political moment. His outlook is bleak. His prose is not cluttered by sentimentality, and, unlike many of those who write on similar issues, he does not suggest the inevitability of justice. Between the World and Me is painfully aware that significant progress is neither inevitable nor likely.

Coates attempts to convey this harsh reality to his son, in order that his son might safely navigate a world that resents his existence. Though at many points Coates tends towards poetic abstraction, he centers his letter on a physical theme of the body. The brutal reality that Coates confronts can be seen in this motif. As Coates puts it, amongst all the economic, social, and historical issues, it is the physical, worldly vessel that suffers. Here, we see the titular implication, that the black body and the world around it are entirely separate. In a sense, there is something solidly between Coates and his son, and the world around them; thus, because they are not truly a part of the world, they are inherently endangered by it.

Coates’ bleak but realistic outlook is seen in this theme of physical danger, and illustrated poignantly in his discussions of the issues of domestic discipline and police brutality. For African Americans, both matters are inherently physical problems informed a multitude of factors. These physical problems are illustrated by the high profile killings of black men such as Treyvon Martin and Tamir Rice, to name a few. These deaths, Coates says, are emblematic of the systematic devaluation of the black body, both economically, socially, and, ultimately, physically. Simply put, it is less costly for a police officer to accidentally kill a black man than a white man because the world values one body over the other. This suggestion is the lynchpin of what Coates tragically conveys to his son. He wishes his son to understand this reality, so that he may best protect himself in the wider world. Indeed, Coates suggests that this is all that African American parents can do in a hostile world: prepare their children for how best to deal with that hostility. As Ta-Nehisi Coates painfully illustrates, the black mother beats her child so the child knows how not to be beaten by the police. Such brutal illustrations abound in the book.

Framing the work as a letter to his son is, perhaps, the most effective literary choice made by Coates. This gives the reader a sense of Coates’ personal investment that might otherwise have been missed. The theme of childrearing and parental love is a widely accessible one, and provides the author a method of reaching those outside of his frame of experience. This stylistic choice is one way Coates attempts to reach an audience outside of the African American community. Indeed, it is one way in which he attempts to bridge the gap to which the work’s title refers, between himself and the world.

However, the intensity of Coates’ investment should give the reader pause. It is important to acknowledge that, as poignant and effective as the work is, it is ultimately a conveyance of Coates’ own opinions. These opinions are, of course, coloured by the biographical details that Coates mentions. As such, the book cannot necessarily be read as an introduction to the study of race relations. Coates is not a neutral voice, and his own biases seep into how he addresses these issues. Once this fact is understood, however, Coates’ biases ultimately work towards the book’s purpose. Between the World and Me is an attempt to capture a unique perspective. To understand that perspective, one must understand the historical and social connotations it entails. In order to appreciate the work fully, the reader must be at least somewhat familiar with the subject of race relations. If the reader is well informed, Coates’ biases matter little, as he does not try to hide them. Ultimately, Between the World and Me is an attempt to illustrate the experience of a specific segment of the American population and convey that experience to an audience largely incapable of understanding it.

Updates

Those of you who follow my humble little domain on the internet might have noticed a slight absence recently. This happened for a few reasons, namely that I was out of the country for much of May and the beginning of June. Never fear, constant reader (and intermittent reader, because I’m fairly sure my only constant readers are my mother and grandmother). I am back, and I’m going to try to post more regularly than I have been the last few months.

My escapade through Trump’s America was a (relative) success. I saw some incredible things, met some wonderful people. Aside from hoeing a field, meeting an elderly civil rights activist, and accidentally seeing the orange man in the flesh, I got to spend a lot of time in museums contemplating memory and history, the role these things play in our everyday lives.

All of us, regardless of how or where we live, are affected, in one way or another, by the stories of those who came before us. Museums, hallmarks of how a particular area chooses to remember its history, shape that memory. Take, for instance, Richmond’s Museum of the Confederacy. This example is incredibly relevant, given the controversy that has been steadily growing around Confederate monuments. A blatant shrine to the separatists of the Civil War, my impression of its visitors was that they had little exposure to the darker side of Civil War history.

Yes, these people think, of course the Civil War involved slavery. But it wasn’t about slavery. The war was fought by a brave few who wished to preserve their state’s independence.

First time hoeing a field...

Yes, perhaps state’s rights was an aspect of the War: the right for a state to condone slavery. And yet it is not hard to see where skewed understandings of history, like the example above, come from. If all one understands is the history one is shown, that being a skewed story that excuses a racialized institution of slavery, it is to be expected that such history becomes the dominant memory of the Civil War.

It is for this reason that Confederate memorials and Confederate flags are being removed. Not to dampen the spirit of state’s rights, but to avoid condoning the continued manipulation of cultural memory. Such attitudes must no longer be normalized. By moving these artifacts to places where they can be viewed in a well-rounded context, we are helping to avoid this normalization.

So, there’s my two bits for today. Read history, and read all sides of history. Try to understand where the other is coming from. Whether you are Jeremy Corbyn avoiding disaster in the general election or a hard core libertarian arguing with your leftist friends, try to see the other side.

On that poorly written and sleep deprived note, stay tuned over the next few weeks as I try to post a bit more regularly.

As always, thanks for reading.

Wise words

Replica battleship at Historic Jamestowne

House of Burgesses, Colonial Williamsburg

Monticello