Best Books I Read in 2015

It is the last day of 2015, and I finally feel ready to actually post what I think are the best books I read in 2015. I read a lot of amazing books this year, many of which I loved and thought were extremely well-written, but these books listed below specifically are ones that always seem to pop into my mind, that frame my thinking of other books, and whose images, characters and words keep me thinking/guessing. I'm also going to include a quote from each to entice you to read them, of course! They are in the order in which I read them.

Aside from these amazing books, peep my new bedsheets as the backdrop,
where were a gift from one of my best friends. Who wouldn't want
lovely bedsheets for Christmas?!

The City in Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint? ('A Story' 15-18)

Li-Young Lee is one of my absolute favorite poets of all time. I want to say that Lee's poetry deals with a lot of big issues, such as being a refugee (he and his family fled from Indonesia when he was a baby, and knocked around a few countries in East Asia before settling in the US), religion, love, etc. But to just say that, to say Lee is a political poet, is not enough. All of his poetry are grounded in specific moments, images, and relationships, that when I think of what 'humane' means, I think of Lee's poetry. The City in Which I Love You exhibits, I think, Lee at his best. With stunning poems such as 'My Father in Heaven is Reading Out Loud,' which conflates the image of his own father with a Heavenly Father, Lee teases out the complexity of his relationship with his father, religion, and the legacy of his family's history.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

'That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine.'
'Ought we to have different ones?'
'Different beginnings? I think we must.'
'Will there be more of them?'
'A great many more' (832)

I read this book at the very beginning of 2015, and have not forgotten about it - images, characters, themes, and sentences recur in my mind, and connect with other things I've read in the past year. This novel has truly stayed with me. I don't think more than two days go by without me thinking about it. The Luminaries is an intricately plotted novel, that follows a sprawling cast of characters - there is a character list in the front of the novel! - in the gold-mining town of Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866. Catton uses the zodiac and astrology as the bones of her novel - each character is associated with a zodiac sign, for example - in order to showcase how they interact, collide, and circle one another in the events of the novel. The basic plot is there is a missing rich, young man named Emery Staines, and the other main characters are invested in him being alive or dead for whatever reason. The use of the zodiac and astrology is brilliant, and makes you think about the connections between the characters in new ways (although, do not be mistaken, this is not about horoscopes), and I think propels the basic narrative of the missing persons case in interesting ways. This novel is an odyssey, and by the end, I believe all the traveling you will have done with these characters is well worth it. 

Mariana by Monica Dickens

'At first she had thought that her heart was dead. She told herself that she had been through a searing experience which had left her as a woman set apart from love - a tragic figure. This sustaining vision had tided her over the misery of the end of last summer' (189).

This is the first novel published by Persephone Books I have ever read. I found it randomly in The Strand when I was looking for a Charles Dickens book - Monica is his great, great granddaughter! If you don't already know, Persephone Books publishes forgotten novels by (mostly) women. I am all for supporting women, and not letting women's contributions to literature be forgotten. This book was simply lovely. There is nothing like reading a satisfying romantic book that is not condescending towards its heroine (the titular character, Mariana), nor its audience, and it does so because it acknowledges and beautifully portrays the flaws and desires of its characters. We follow Mariana through ups and downs as she desperately tries to gain independence, and find a man she can truly love and who truly loves her. It's a well-written story about wanting a man, but not needing a man, which is a distinction too rarely made in novels about women, or in women's lives in general.

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

'Some religions call life a dream, or a dreaming, but what if it is a memory? What is this new world isn't new at all but a memory of a new world?' (87).

This is a bit of an odd one. A post-apocalyptic novel that jumps back and forth in time, between worlds (or maybe the same world? Never quite sure). For the most part, the novel follows Billie Crusoe, who falls in with a 'Robo sapien,' Spike, as they embark on a mission to find a new inhabitable planet, since Earth is dying after being ravaged by war and greed. In this novel, we basically get a queer android love story that investigates the nature of war, time, and humanity, itself. Really everything is in this novel.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

'The pleasure of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again - not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life' (112).

I knew this book would be one of my favorites. Last year, I read Nelson's Bluets - which if you haven't read YOU SHOULD - and absolutely fucking loved it. It's a brilliant book, which I will hopefully talk about on here soon, but haven't yet since I have so many thoughts on it that they are like an avalanche in my mind. Which is also my situation with The Argonauts. But anyway, this book is what Nelson calls a book of 'autotheory,' meaning it is an autobiography of sorts, in which she uses critical theory as a lens for her life, and as a way to shape her life. The autobiographical part deals in particular with Nelson's marriage to her partner, Harry, who is fluidly gendered, and their having a baby. Nelson is interested in what it means to make a family, and is interested in how the language shapes family relationships, and queer relationships. Nelson is brilliant at weaving her personal story with critical and literary texts, and the effect is a richer, and more comprehensive understanding of her life.

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

'The stories simply happen, period - produced by the sovereign power of chance unleashed, operating outside time and space, at the dawn of a new age, as it were, in which spatio-temporal perception is undergoing transformation and even becoming obsolete' (123-124).

At least one Bolaño was going to be on this list, and this year, it's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a fictional encyclopedia of right-wing authors. Bolaño makes up entire histories, and creates a tapestry of a literary world that never existed. In this endeavor, Bolaño pushes the boundaries of fiction. What does it mean to have a made-up encyclopedia? Something that is meant to the record the world as it is, but made-up? There seems to be a paradox of fiction and reality. And I don't even know where to begin to unpack why he decided on right-wing authors - the role of politics, fascism, and the specter of WWII and the Holocaust are dissertation-worthy + ten books of criticism.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

'"Catch you all next time.' Luisa is going. 'It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself"' (418).

I've just finished this book last week, and it blew my mind. The construction of the story is brilliant: 6 stories-within-stories, spanning centuries, and the globe. Each story leads into the next, and we see how people are connected across time and space. It's a very lofty goal, and the execution is perfect: never clinical, and never a slave to its conceit, this novel is so rich in its characters, and so brilliant in the way it shows their connection. Many talk about this novel in terms of how it discusses the 'universality' of human beings, reincarnations, that there is some deep, mysterious connection between us all. I'm not sure about all of those things, but what I am sure of is that this novel discusses brilliantly how we all become stories, passed on, retold, and forgotten.

_____

I also want to say a thank you to those that have been reading along, as I post my thoughts and theories on this blog. I'm excited for the new year, and more books!

Also, some time in the next few days I'm going to post more of a statistical analysis of the books I read in 2015. And by 'statistical analysis' I mean tally marks. So get ready!

J.G. Ballard's HIGH-RISE: A Few Recombinations

This is second Ballard I've read. The first was Crash, which I thought was brilliant in all of its grotesque, fucked-up glory. In case you're curious, Crash follows people who get-off by getting into car accidents. It's a strange book, but also very important, because it explores how technology has affected our lives. The novel was published in 1973, so it's not necessarily about how social media or smartphones are affecting our lives (which I feel is often written about in a completely condescending way and totally unproductive in actually trying to understand how they do affect us, because how could they not?), but more about urban landscapes: highways, buildings, cars. 

High-Rise, in particular, zeroes in living in high-rise apartment buildings, and the growing culture of convenience and accessibility in cities. Published in 1975, High-Rise is about the residents of a new high-rise outside of London that is specifically meant to suit the needs of all of the residents. Within the 40-story structure is a supermarket, salon, restaurant, bank, school, swimming pools, recreation courts, etc. People do not necessarily need to leave the building, save for work. 

The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the collective body of the tenants, but the individual resident in isolation. Its staff of air-conditioning conduits, elevators, garbage disposal chutes and electrical switching systems provided a never-failing supply of care and attention that a century earlier would have needed an army of tireless servants (17).

The quote above not only shows how the high-rise functions as a replacement of human labor, it is also meant to serve the individual, not a collective body. There is not necessarily a community built in to the fabric of the high-rise - it is actually meant to lessen human contact as much as possible. Furthermore, Robert Laing, one of the main characters of the novel, notes that although he feels a bit ambivalent about living in the high-rise, that one of its appeals is that it is 'an environment built, not for main, but for man's absence' (34). And Anthony Royal, a tenant of one of the penthouse suites in the high-rise, and a contributing architect to the building, says that Laing is 'probably its most true tenant' (91). There are kind of two implications in Laing's observation that the high-rise, and the block of high-rises it is a part of, is meant to imply man's absence:

1. Laing desires less contact with other human beings. He want to be alone, and feel the absence of others
2. Laing desires an obliteration of mankind, including himself

These two possibilities are really interesting to me because the conditions of the high-rise make the residents regress. Over time, people break more clearly into socioeconomic classes: the residents of the top floors vs. the middle floors vs. the lower floors. There are outbreaks of violence, the residents stop leaving the high-rise altogether, and the residents form 'tribes.' There is a complete breakdown of 'civilized' conventions, as people stop bathing, throw their garbage in the hallways and vents, shit and piss anywhere and everywhere in the building, and the men commit an absurd amount of sexual violence toward women (which is a lot, considering the real world problem of sexual violence against women). Throughout the novel, there is a sense that there people are regressing to a more 'primitive' state, but it is only achieved through the contained nature of the high-rise, a distinctly modern invention. So there is this question of whether these modern conditions of the high-rise is actually a regression to a primitive state, or a sense of an obliteration of mankind, or whether the high-rise is an evolution of sorts for humanity to a more individualistic/android state.

This paradox of technology and primitivism makes the high-rise atrophy. The residents begin to kill each other off, or die of starvation, and the only ones that survive are those that have formed 'clans' of two or three people. The bodies pile up just like garbage, with all of the garbage, and the last of the survivors forage for scraps of food among the garbage and bodies, and live among the filth that has gathered in their own apartments. Laing, one of the characters that is alive at least until the last page of the novel, has a hard time remembering the original functions of the things in his apartment like the washing machine or refrigerator,

To some extent they had taken on a new significance, a role that he had yet to understand. Even the rundown nature of the high-rise was a model of the world into which the future was carrying them, a landscape beyond technology where everything was either derelict or, more ambiguously, recombined in unexpected but more meaningful ways ... he found it difficult not to believe that they were living in a future that had already taken place, and was now exhausted (176).

The original purposes and facets of the high-rise - everything available, convenient, and perfectly functioning so that there is no effort on the part of the residents - are lost, or rather, made it possible for their meanings to be lost. And in that above passage, I think Laing sees a bit of that, but there is more. Not only have these meanings been lost, and Laing is bewildered at their existence, they also make new meanings in losing their original meanings. All of these things made it possible for there to be a future made for 'man's absence,' the next evolutionary step, 'the future that had already taken place, and was now exhausted.' The language of the passage suggests that the future has reached back to the past to bring the residents of the high-rise into the future: 'the future was carrying them.' Something has gotten mixed up, something in evolution has gone wrong, the future is reaching back, and the past can't handle it, hence the exhaustion, and maybe why this situation is incomprehensible in many ways to Laing, and the other surviving residents. 

The atrophy of meaning, and then recombination of meaning, is the crux of the discussion of the influence of technology. But these are not necessarily only 'modern' problems. Laing's confusion of the future happening too soon, and being exhausted, points to the fact that they are not so separate, that there is not so clear a distinction. It's not necessarily about the regression, progress or evolution of mankind, but about recombinations of meanings in mankind.

Please let me know if you've read this novel, or any of Ballard's novels, especially Crash! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

'All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table'

Prayers or Oubliettes by Natalie Diaz

1
Despair has a loose daughter.
I lay with her and read the body's bones
like stories. I can tell you the year-long myth
of her hips, how I numbered stars,
the abacus of her mouth.

2
The sheets are berserks with wind's riddling.
All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts
at my table. Their breasts rest on plates
like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at.
Instead of grace, we rattle forks
in our empty bowls.

3
We are the muezzins of the desert
crying out like mockers from memory's
violet towers. We scour the earth
as Isis did. Fall is forever here -
women's dresses wrinkle
on the ground, men fall to their knees
in heaps, genitals rotting like spent fruit -
even our roots fall from the soil.

4
The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark.

5
Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue.
The taste of a thousand moths is chalk.
The mottled wings are the words to pain.

6
We have no mazel tov.
We call out for our mothers
with empty wine jugs at our heels.

____________

Iterations // All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table

All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table: to overcome her ghosts, she attempts to parody them, by making them into cartoonish figures made out of bedsheets - it doesn't work

All the beds of the past: Not just evoking the image of white sheets, but of a bed, emphasizing the place of rest as what can be made a ghost - what we take comfort 'dresses' ghosts, covers them

at my table: she dines and communes with her ghosts

All: not just invoking the speaker's history, but everyone's

cannot dress: It doesn't work, and can only do so much

dress: something done every day

dress: treat, as in dress a wound; tender

____________

This line fascinates me because it is elliptical in its imagery: one thing leads to another, but then leads back to something else. Diaz evokes an image of beds stretching into the past, which transitions into the image of sheets being thrown over ghosts, which then leads back to the beds of the past also being ghosts, and all of these exist together at her table. It is image in which time stretches backwards and forwards, and stands still, as they all sit together at her table. This is an example of the confusion between prayers and oubliettes in the title, the mixture of pleasure and pain ('The year-long myth / of her hips' (lines 3-4), 'Their breasts rest on plates / like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at' (lines 8-9), 'Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue' (line 23). 

____________

I wanted to try a more impressionistic approach to talking about poems. I find it hard to write mini-essays about poems (as I usually do with the various novels I've written about here), because poetry makes the most impact on me in images, in the lines that leave behind the most dynamic, distinct images, and I wanted to try and capture those images as I see them in my mind, in order to interrogate some of what is going in any given poem. With Iterations, I am hoping to merely present the possibilities and dynamism in any given line of a poem. 

Please let me know your thoughts, and impressions from this poem! It is from Natalie Diaz's collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, published by the always amazing Copper Canyon Press.

One Body, One Immunity: Eula Biss' ON IMMUNITY: AN INOCULATION

In my attempt to read more non-fiction, I picked up On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss, a book that I've been eyeing for about a year, but wanted to wait until it came out in paperback to buy.

If the cover is at all familiar, it is one of Rubens'
most famous paintings, Achilles Dipped into
the River Styx.

In general I have a hard time making myself read non-fiction. For reasons I have yet to figure out, fiction is just more compelling to me than non-fiction, but I want to keep learning about things I don't know about. One reason On Immunity particularly interested me was because it speaks to debates going on now. On Immunity details the history of vaccinations, and how that history involves how we as human beings have conceptualized our own bodies, others' bodies, others' bodies in relation to our own, disease, and health. Biss is especially concerned with the metaphors we use, such as the war metaphor, of our bodies battling against an invader or enemy. This project started when she was pregnant with her son, and wanted to know more about vaccinations, considering there is a growing number of people against vaccinations. Biss is pro-vaccinations, but she explores the anxieties behind those that are not, and clearly presents the overwhelming amount of evidence that vaccinations are in no way dangerous.

The most powerful aspect of the book is Biss' exploration of how there is this fallacy that we as individuals are self-contained, and that our bodies do not necessarily effect others, and they don't effect us, this fallacy that we can make our own choices (in terms of vaccinations) because we are individuals, when in reality we are a community of bodies, making up one body. In order to protect the health of many, we need to vaccinate, we 'owe our bodies to each other' (18). This issue intersects with race and economics, as those who tend to choose to not vaccinate their children are white, college-educated, and have annual income of upwards of $75,000 a year, which can then affect those who cannot afford to give their children all the recommended vaccinations, and they tend to be black, younger unmarried mothers, and live in poverty (27). Those that come from a place of privilege put those that do not have access to proper healthcare at risk. 

One reason people tend to be wary of vaccinations is their belief that it is a purely capitalistic venture, that 'Big Pharma' just wants to make money off of everyone by saying that vaccinations are absolutely necessary. Biss rejects this as a conspiracy theory, and actually talks about how pharmaceutical companies do not see huge profits from vaccinations (113). Vaccinations in fact, are in opposition to capitalism: receiving vaccinations is 'a system in which both the burdens and the benefits are shared across the entire population. Vaccination allows us to use products of capitalism [private pharmaceutical companies] for purposes that are counters to the pressures of capital' (96). 

This all makes think of a passage from World War Z by Max Brooks. Now now, hang in there with me for a second: be open to this. World War Z is a book that is actually very smart in its discussion of disease, health, humanity as a community, and democracy. Brief summary: World War Z is about a zombie outbreak that almost decimates the human population on earth. The story is told from the point of view of many survivors detailing the various aspects of the catastrophe. At the end of the novel, one character says that there isn't anyone to blame. Not the politicians or businessman that used the outbreak for their own ends, but that everyone is responsible: 'That's the price of living in a democracy; we all gotta take the rap' (334). That line has stuck with me for a long time, and often echoes in my mind. I'm reminded me of this because in my mind, democracy is on the opposite side of the spectrum from capitalism, but at the same time, it is democracy that allows capitalism to exist. (Also take note this is definitely through the lens of democracy in the U.S., as is Biss' book, which largely focuses on the vaccination debate in the U.S.). Through the lens of Brooks' quote, I think it is important to note that in the foundation of the U.S. is a responsibility for each other, to consider others in our decisions. One cannot just ask, 'what is best for my child?', but 'what is best for all children?' It also points to the fact that one cannot stand by and simply berate those that would choose not to vaccinate their children, but actually take responsibility and work toward mending the systems and conditions that would push them to make those decisions, i.e., SES inequality, racial inequality, education, medical-industrial complex, and so on and so on.

Backwards and Forwards to MAD MEN

Last night, I went to a talk at The Strand about Mad Men Carousel, critic Matt Zoller Seitz's new book, which is a critical companion to the television series Mad Men. The book contains recaps and analysis for each episode of the series, and provides extensive footnotes for each episode. Every episode of Mad Men is jam-packed with references and allusions - the footnotes begin that work of breaking those down, though one book is certainly not enough to do that.

 


Seitz spoke on a panel with fellow critics who love Mad Men and contributed to the book. They talked about when they first started to watch the show, what made them keep watching, spoke generally and specifically about themes in the series, and took audience questions. It was a really fantastic talk, and I just wanted to note a few interesting points made throughout the night. And if you haven't watched Mad Men, please do! Yes it is another show (mainly) about privileged sad white people problems, but the show is so humane and brilliant in that the characters in the show are so fully realized. The subjectivity of each is believable. And the structure and composition of the show is unparalleled, in my opinion. It is one of those few experiences where I have felt like I am watching a novel happen on the screen (if you couldn't already tell, novels are IT for me - there is no other medium as beautiful and profound to me). But Mad Men is also a very good example of what the medium of television can do.

Anyway! Here are some things from the talk:

• Seitz and Co. talked a lot about how many think Mad Men can be very 'on the nose' about its themes, about how it goes about connecting the lives of the characters to the various historic events of the 1960s. Seitz and crew disagreed, and Seitz said, 'Mad Men is smarter than anyone who thinks they're smarter than Mad Men.' I think at first glance, Mad Men can seem very on-the-nose, or it can be dismissed because come on, do we really need another show about white people? We really don't, but I think there is so much in Mad Men that is still valuable to consider, and can be revisited over and over again to mine for new meanings and connections.
• [Slight spoilers for the finale] Seitz and Co. were asked about how they felt about the ending of the finale, which, like any series finale, was contentious among fans. They specifically addressed the point as to whether or not the ending was meant to be read as highly cynical, suggesting that our protagonist Don Draper has made no progress. Seitz argued against this by pointing out the very first shot in the pilot vs. the very last shot of the finale. At the beginning of the pilot, we get a close-up of Don, but it is a close-up of the back of his head. When we first meet him, we do not actually see his face, meaning that he is closed off from us and others around him, as he is in a restaurant. While the last shot in the series finale is a close-up of his face; he is meditating with others, and smiling, suggesting a new openness. How much of a better person Don is, despite the fact that he goes back to McCann and commodifies the hippie movement for a Coca-Cola ad, there is still growth, or at least an awareness of who he is and what he's doing. Wow.

I really love going to talks, because they remind me a bit of college, in that you are with others who are (hopefully) just as excited about something as you are, and the conversation and insights that derive from that kind of enthusiasm are always so interesting. It's also nice to be in conversation with others because they will reveal things and spark thoughts that you could never have on your own, which is why it is so important to me to talk about books. And I haven't re-watched any Mad Men since the finale in April, but it might be time...

Signatures from MZS and contributors!

A Glimpse into NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS

In my quest to read everything by and about Roberto Bolaño ever, I recently picked up Nazi Literature in the Americas, a very odd, fascinating, detailed book about people and things that do not exist. So basically, it does what fiction does, but on a whole other level. 

Nazi Literature in the Americas is meant to be an encyclopedia of right-wing authors, carefully detailing their lives, works, and political views. The thing is that none of the authors are real. The intricate details of their lives, the lists of various book they've written or read are also made up. In the back of the novel, is not only a glossary of 'secondary figures' in the lives of the authors already written about, but a glossary of all of the works, real and imagined, that are mentioned in the novel, including their supposed publisher and year released. The ability to make up this kind of detail, to create this entire web of lives, is a great example of what makes Bolaño such an incredibly important writer.

In Bolaño's writing, I am perpetually fascinated by the narrative voice in his works. As in By Night in Chile, Amulet, or parts of The Savage Detectives, we get a first-person narration, and in many other of his works, there seems to be a third-person omniscient narrator, although that is never quite the case. As we zoom in and out of the lives of the numerous characters in Bolaño's works, there is a sense that the narrator is close to the characters in that they overlap and run in similar circles in the universe of the story or novel. This is really salient in Nazi Literature in the Americas, and by the end, we even find out that this narrator has been Roberto Bolaño himself, though most likely that is still a persona, as Arturo Belano is Bolaño's surrogate/persona in many of his stories, and most prominently in The Savage Detectives and Amulet.

Let me provide an example. In Nazi Literature in Americas, we get what seems to be a simple retelling of the events of their lives. But then we get lines from the narrator that are interpretive because of a personality. For example, the account of Silvio Salvático (47-48), a prolific poet who died in an old-age home, and whose 'books were never published. His manuscripts were probably thrown out with the trash or burned by the orderlies' (48). A simple third-person omniscient narrator would be able to tell us whether those manuscripts were trashed or burned, but we are left with the narrator speculating - the life of Silvio Salvático and his works are still a mystery to our narrator, and to us.

Little moments like the one above are peppered throughout the novel, and in the last story, the account of Carlos Ramirez Hoffman (179-204), the narrator is a part of the story, and named Roberto Bolaño. Hoffman was a poet that would write his poetry in the sky with an airplane, and was also a murderer. Bolaño's character is asked to help find Hoffman, because he knew him at one point.

This tenuous, gradual reveal of the narrator actually being Bolaño, or as I said before at least a persona Bolaño takes on, especially considering Hoffman is not a real person, is so fascinating to me because it perfectly showcases this kind of smashing of fiction and reality in the endeavor that is Nazi Literature in the Americas. All of fiction is about reading about people that are not real, but Bolaño makes that the very foundation of this novel: the constant acknowledgement and participation in something that is not real. The verisimilitude of the novel would make you think that you could get lost in the novel, but I think the effect is much more in 1) making you kind of wish these people and their works were real, because their lives are rendered so lucidly, and their works seemingly so interesting 2) wondering why are you are reading account after account of the 'biographies' of people that do not exist. So as a reader, we are never 'lost' in the world of the novel, and the lives of these characters, while Bolaño is our unknown, mysterious guide. 

As with all of Bolaño's works, I never walk away from them feeling comfortable or sure of what I've read. I think because the characters and the loping paths they take are so perfectly rendered, that as a reader, you become aware of a profound inability to understand them and their world, which I think is a crucial element of Bolaño's works. With Nazi Literature in the Americas, we only get a glimpse into the enormous and sprawling world these characters inhabit, and perhaps the only thing to do is to make the effort to see into that world.

Revisiting CARDCAPTOR SAKURA Pt. II

All right, so I've finished all of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga! It was incredible. The more I read, the more I remembered how important Sakura was to me when I was younger. I've always loved witches, and any stories about witches, and Cardcaptor is a classic. Sakura as a character is naive and smart, embraces her emotions, and uses them to be strong, without letting them cloud her judgment. I would say a central theme of the manga is coming to terms with your emotions and your relationships, and embracing them as strengths. It is a manga for young girls, so this theme is not surprising. 

Though, what is surprising, as I talked about in my last post about Cardcaptor Sakura, is the amount of underage student-teacher relationships. Holy shit are there so many. By the end of Cardcaptor we have:

1. Fujitaka and Nadeshiko: Sakura's parents. Fujitaka was Nadeshiko's teacher. When they married, she was 16 and he was 25.
2. Rika and Terada:  Rika is Sakura's age, aka 10 years old, and Terada is their teacher. He gives her an engagement ring.
3. Toya and Kaho: Toya is Sakura's 15 year-old brother. He had a relationship with Kaho while she was a substitute for his class in his first year of high school.
4. Eriol and Kaho: Eriol is a transfer student to Tomoeda Elementary, and at the end, he and Kaho confess their love to each other. Eriol is not a typical 10 year-old, but either way it's creepy.

A lot of manga tend to have very questionable relationships, but it is really pronounced in Cardcaptor Sakura. This is still an important manga to me, and a classic, even though the mythology is kind of ridiculous, and the arc of the whole series is very contrived. This is a series to read to find joy in the ridiculousness of it all.

Revisiting CARDCAPTOR SAKURA

Can you tell I took photo this with my
phone considering the terrible dimensions
of this photo? Why would anyone think
these dimensions looks good?

For the past few months, I feel as if I've been having a renaissance of sorts in terms of my interests. I've been listening to all of my middle school and high school music, full of angst and screaming and overly earnest, potentially creepy lyrics. It's been bringing me pure joy to listen to such songs as Paramore's 'That's What You Get', The Spill Canvas' 'This is For Keeps', and Alexisonfire's '.44 Caliber Love Letter'. Aside from music, I've been revisiting some of the manga I used to read, and anime I used to watch. I recently decided to pick up the Cardcaptor Sakura manga from Kinokuniya, since I've only ever watched the anime, and wanted to try out the manga. I picked up a beautiful omnibus edition (meaning there are four volumes of the manga in one book), in order to test whether or not I'd still enjoy the series, because in revisiting anything beloved from your formative years, there is the large possibility that you will not enjoy it, and maybe even hate it - I'm looking at you Halloweentown, you let me down! 

I am so happy to say that reading Cardcaptor Sakura was awesome. I felt joy the whole way through, and have subsequently bought the next three omnibus editions in order to finish the series ... woops. 

So for those who have maybe never heard of Cardcaptor Sakura, it's about a girl named Kinomoto Sakura. She's in the 4th grade, and secretly has magical powers. Sakura's mission is to collect the Clow Cards, magical cards that each have abilities, originally created by the sorcerer Clow Reed. Cerberus, a magical beast and guardian of the Clow Cards, helps Sakura to collect the cards after they escaped when Sakura accidentally set them free when she found the book holding all of them. 

As I said, this series did not disappoint. It was joyous to read, and I felt so proud of my younger self for loving this series. Sakura is a really great character. Though she's young, she's powerful, and the vast spectrum of adolescent emotions are part of her strength. Another reason this series did not disappoint was because of the surprising adult content I did not remember at all from the series. Now, I watched the anime of this in my first year of high school, so I wasn't totally naive, but I feel like I would have remembered some of the scandalous aspects of this manga. For example:

1. There is an alarming presence of student-teacher romantic relationships. For example, Sakura's parents married when her mom, Nadeshiko, was only 16, and her dad, Fujitaka was 25. Fujitaka was Nadeshiko's teacher! Like, maybe that could be okay? But not really ... The truly alarming thing is ....
2. ... the relationship between Sakura's classmate Rika and their teacher!!! Who legit gives Rika an engagement ring ... whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. This is a ten year-old and at least an early twenties dude. 

From what I've read so far, these relationships aren't a big deal in the story. The only time it's questioned is when we meet Tomoyo's mom, Sonomi, who was Nadeshiko's cousin, and completely disapproved of the marriage, but mostly because she was in love with Nadeshiko and wanted to be with her. So the relationships in this manga get a little complicated ...

More complicated, is that everyone is in love with someone who is in love with someone else. Which is really par for the course for this kind of manga. What is a pleasant surprise in the manga is the emphasis on queer love and relationships. We have the one case of Sonomi being in love with Nadeshiko. And Sakura's older brother, Toya, is in love with his best friend Yukito, who's the guy that Sakura is in love with. And Tomoyo is in love with Sakura, in much the same way her mom was in love with Nadeshiko - which is another questionable aspect of the manga. I could make a chart of who is in love with who, and who ends up with who. Let me say now, if Toya and Yukito don't end up together I'll be pissed, but I think they will, if only for the reason that Sakura is simply too young for Yukito, and he clearly views her as an amusing younger sister. Besides, Sakura has another love interest, whom I do remember, Syaoron Li. Li is kind of her competition in collecting the Clow Cards, and is thankfully her age. 

Please let me know if you've ever read/watched Cardcaptor Sakura, and your thoughts! I'm so happy I'm revisiting this series, and am fascinated to be reading this series as an adult, and much more aware of what is actually going on in the series. I'm also happy to just be reading manga again. It's been years, and I want to have intelligent conversations about them because I think they deserve them. My reading contains multitudes!

Interesting or Stupid/Problematic: Narration in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

The nonexistence of the American Dream, the crippling loneliness of existence, the crippling conformity of the suburbs. All things associated with what is supposed to make the novel Revolutionary Road an American classic ... I'm half-convinced. 

Revolutionary Road is about April and Frank Wheeler, a young couple who have reluctantly settled down in the suburbs of Connecticut, despite dreams of traveling, and living a bohemian lifestyle. The book explores their extremely flawed relationship, and eventual end of their marriage. What really captivated me about this novel was the amount of acting in the novel, how each character in the novel is attempting to perform and fulfill a role they feel they are supposed to be playing, and in attempting to live up to those roles, no character can really seem to know who another character is, there is no real communication, no real acknowledgement of anyone's humanity. With April and Frank, they are desperately trying to play the roles of wife and husband, and live up to the expectations of femininity and masculinity. The novel is especially preoccupied with delusions of masculinity, and conveys how both men and women play into illusory ideas of what men and women are supposed to be like. For example, the axis of the novel is when April convinces Frank that what they really need is to move to Paris in order to finally live the life they were meant to. One way in which she convinces him is to say that he needs to leave his mindless job, which he got to support their family, and move to Paris so that he can finally have the time to find himself and his ultimate purpose in life. Frank is not so convinced because he has no 'definite, measurable talent' to be successful in Paris, but April says, 'I don't care if you decide after five years that what you really want is to be a bricklayer or a mechanic or a merchant seamen ... it's your very essence that's being stifled here. It's what you are that's being denied and denied in this kind of life' (121). Frank then asks April what is it that he is, and says, 'You're the most valuable and wonderful thing in the world. You're a man' (121). And of course after this, Frank gives in, he feels as if he's had a victory, and he becomes excited. This moment is so ridiculously absurd, which makes it a perfect example of the toxic masculinity the novel conveys. In this moment, too, it does seem like April is really laying it on thick to convince Frank to drop everything and move to Paris, which means there is without a doubt a lot of self-interest here, and that she knows how to play to the right instincts to convince Frank. 

Aside from great moments like the one I mentioned above, the novel still does not go far enough to make these moments stick the landing, and arrive at a place where, as readers, we can put aside the expectations of masculinity and femininity that are actually very harmful to relationships, and rebuild. I am not convinced for a simple reason: we barely get any of April's point of view. I would say about 80% of the novel is narrated by Frank, 10% by another character Shep, 8% by an omniscient narrator, and 2% by April. Honestly, what the fuck is up with that? In a novel that is about two people and their inability to connect, about, according to Richard Yates himself, the fact that 'human beings are inescapably alone,' why are we offered so little of April's perspective? Is it that the only way to convey how inescapably alone human beings are is by only offering one perspective in a relationship? Does barring April's point of view until there are only 30 pages left, truly, truly convey their estrangement and disconnect, or does it make her a vague figure? And if it was purposeful to make her a vague figure to convey that disconnect, would it not also be powerful to have more of her narration, to make Frank a vague figure to her? And when we finally get a glimpse into her perspective, we get a flashback of her absentee father visiting on her birthday, thus automatically adding a distinct 'daddy issues' flavor to the novel, which no one ever needs. This all seems like a glaring oversight to me. What could potentially be an interesting point about human beings as fundamentally alone and unable to know each other, comes across as a distinct indifference to April's perspective, and ultimately, indifference to the consequences of toxic masculinity on women. So what ends up happening is a half-assed critique of all of those things I listed way back in the first paragraph of this post. The novel doesn't go far enough. Especially with theme of acting, and these roles of masculinity and femininity. 

That's all there is folks.

NORTH & SOUTH (BBC 2004)

LISTEN UP. Watch the 2004 BBC version of North & South RIGHT. NOW. It is incredible, and romantic, and political, and romantic, and EVERYTHING. 

North & South is based on the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Gaskell, an underappreciated, oft forgotten Victorian author. Charles Dickens published many of her works through his journal Household Words. Gaskell was well-known in her time, though her works were considered merely to be 'women's fiction' aka light, stupid, fun, and not at all serious, complex literature. Gaskell is, of course, an incredible author, and her works contain complex themes of class, tradition vs. modernity, and the role of women. Gaskell generally spends her time destroying stereotypes, and it's awesome. North & South is a pretty great encapsulation of those themes.

North & South is about Margaret Hale, a young woman from the countryside in South England, who is forced to move to the Milton, a fictional town in North England. Milton is an industrial town, in which many of its citizens live in poverty, and work in mills. Margaret meets John Thornton, a master of one of the mills. Margaret is compassionate and opinionated. Mr. Thornton is self-serious and brash. You might be able to guess just from the juxtaposition of those characteristics what happens next. [SPOILERS NOT REALLY] They fall in love, and their romance is so beautiful and moving to watch on-screen. Everything else in the show is pretty good, too, but I honestly cannot get over them as a couple. I've been rewatching clips of them together, and listening to this beautiful song on repeat which plays at the very end of the series:

I could say a million other things about this series, and its competency as an adaptation, but all I can say at the moment is that Margaret Hale and John Thornton are my new OTP, and they are beautiful, and you should watch this series. I have been bursting with emotion over these two for the past 24 hours since watching it. Also, I mean, this is Richard Armitage as Mr. Thornton:

COME ON. 

Quick Chat: SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE

You know when you go into a book really knowing nothing about the plot, or the tone, or have any idea about what kind of book it will be, and then as you begin reading the characters seem as if they're falling into certain roles, and if those roles are what you think they are, then the novel will be a particular kind of story, and you don't want it to be that particular kind of story, because then some of the characters whom you have an affection toward will not end up so well, and the one character that you feel might be the interloper, will actually unravel and smash everything good and pure in the world, and as the reader you'll end up feeling stressed and emotionally mashed up by the end of the book? Yeah that is Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple. I mean that in the best way possible because it is a seriously fantastically written book, but as I began to read the novel there were so many small indicators that the novel would be much more than a beautifully written diversion, which I did not want to admit.

Please note that this is another beautiful edition from Persephone Books.

1/3 of the way through the novel, one of the main characters revealed herself to be evil, terrible, and ready to break up a marriage. That character is Louise Lanier. She is a from a small village in France called Amigny. Louise is desperate to get out. She thinks everyone and everything there is provincial and dull. One way in which she does this is by answering an ad placed by Old Mrs. North, a wealthy aging widowed matriarch looking for companionship. Louise goes to stay with Old Mrs. North in her estate in the country. While there, Louise meets Old Mrs. North's youngest son, Avery, his wife, Ellen, and their teenaged children Hugh and Anne. They make up the main cast of characters.

Louise believes the entire North family is foolish, because they are too rich and too happy. Now for the first part of the novel, she is mostly harmless, or at least I wanted her to be, but the she said something that is a guaranteed sign of her evil nature. In reference to the famous novel by Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Louise notes,

It was a book she knew by heart. The only character in literature for whom she felt a profound sympathy, with whom she felt an affinity even, was Emma Bovary. No one, she said to herself, understands better than I do why she did as she did. It was the excruciating boredom of provincial life (132). 

Emma Bovary is a notorious character in literature. No doubt she is an amazing character, extremely well-written and fully-realized. I love her. I love the novel. But she is a terrible person. And the novel is basically her being a terrible person, and using things such as 'the boredom of provincial life' as an excuse to do bad things. So the fact that Louise seems to completely empathize with her is a serious warning sign. After reading that, I froze and said to myself, 'Nooooooooooooo.' From that point on, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of dread, of just waiting to see how exactly Louise would do her damage. And she does all right. The rest of the novel is watching the North family unravel in slow motion, in which Louise is the main catalyst. It is a beautifully written trainwreck, and I love this novel. I just won't have the emotional faculties to re-read it any time soon.

The Lack and Abundance of ONIONS AND CUCUMBERS AND PLUMS

Onions and Cucumbers and Plums is one of those books that is like a one-in-a-million book. One of those books that so few people have read - my review on Goodreads is one of two - that there is no real scholarship on, and you just think, why have I been chosen by the Book Fates to read this? I say that because I loved this book, but in many ways, I am not the target audience for this book, there is nothing I can contribute to its legacy or subject matter, because its experiences are not mine, though I can relate here and there, and can touch the beauty of the poems. In something as intimate and personal as poetry, I want to find myself in them more so than novels, though that is not the ultimate aim of reading poetry. It is an experience, then, to read a collection like this and be so far removed from its origins and heartaches and dreams. All of this is especially important to recognize with this book, because it is partly about the loss of meaning, the loss of culture, the loss of language. Can we get to a point where something in inscrutable?

This book is a collection of poems by Jewish poets that have been translated from the original Yiddish. All of the poems were written in the twentieth century, and were translated by Sara Zweig Betsky for her Masters thesis that she was getting during WWII. She did it in reaction to the war, because she felt she could do nothing else but try and preserve something that was being destroyed. The Yiddish language, once spoken all over Eastern Europe, is a language largely lost - few speak it and study it. Partly lost because so many Jews killed in the Holocaust spoke Yiddish, and partly lost because of assimilation in the aftermath. The poems in this collection reflect the language and experiences that are largely gone. When we have books in translation, we know there is something missing. Not everything can be translated and saved, there is always a gap in understanding, but my profound misunderstanding contributed to my loving this book. There is a comfort in being the other, when it means that I can hear the stories of those I would not necessarily have ever heard before.

An example of a poem that I appreciated more because of the distance I felt from it is 'In Soft Moss, Muted Steps' by David Einhorn:

In soft moss, muted steps,
a whole week of Sabbath rest. 

You light candles every night --
your face in rosy light. 

Between the green pine tree boughs
the blue of God's blue roof top shows. 

There too someone lights Sabbath tapers --
on your face blue shadows vapor. 

So we sit, keeping watch,
waiting for a wonder night. 

Through the forest a rustle goes,
the sky splits apart and glows. 

In soft moss, muted steps,
a whole week of Sabbath rest. 

You light candles every night --
your face in rosy light.

With this poem, we see Einhorn applying the ritual of lighting candles on the Sabbath to the love he has for a woman, to her lighting candles everyday. Her daily candle-lighting is as the Sabbath rest to him. There is an intimacy and holiness to this love that is mirrored in the meaning of the Sabbath. As I'm not Jewish, I don't have this kind of connection to the idea of 'rest,' but this lack of understanding helps me feel the desire for connection in the poem, because I too have this desire to understand and connect as I read the poem.

There are a lot of gems in this collection. Since this collection is a bit hard to find, I would suggest seeking out some of these poets from the collection that were some of my favorites: J. Glatstein, Kadie Molodowsky, and Itzik Manger.

August Books

Here we are again: another month, the summer rolls on, a heat wave is breaking over New York City, I am sweating all day, and my only solace is to gaze upon the beauty of books. And with that, here are the books I bought in the month of August.

All of the books.

Books by women of color.

Books by women.

Books by white dudes.

Quick Chat: ONGOINGNESS #2

I’m interested in things that seem impossible, that seem as if they can’t coexist, that are paradoxes, but I think the truest things are the ones that seem like they shouldn’t be able to coexist together. Take, for example, one of the major dilemmas in Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness: do we arrive at ‘pure experience’ through language or in spite of it? I would say it’s both at the same time. 

First, let me unpack what ‘pure experience’ is referring to. In Ongoingness, ‘pure experience’ is used to mean making the most meaning out of one’s life by transcending one’s subjectivity in order to get at the essence of feelings, events, and memories. This is, of course, against the backdrop of death. Limited time compels maximum experience. 

Manguso kept detailed diary entries for 25 years because she felt that the days were too full, that she needed ‘extra days, buffer days, between the real days’ (11) in order to process what she had experienced, in order to be ready for what was next. What she wanted to achieve through her writing was ‘Language as pure experience, pure memory’ (16). The idea being that through meticulously going over the details of her experience, remembering and arranging what seems important, would make the most meaning out of her life. The fault with this, though, is that experiences never stop – one thing happens, and then another – so no one thing can be understood without the context of everything before and everything after. ‘Pure experience’ is not a collection of beginnings and ends, but of ongoingness. 

Now, let’s try to make this a little more concrete. After maintaining her meticulous diary entries, Manguso is forced to write significantly less because she has a baby. She needs to feed him, and simply watch him – these interactions are wordless. Through these wordless interactions, Manguso begins to remember things she did not even know she could. For example, on page 66, when feeding her son, she remembers a moment when food was dribbling down her face, and the food was scooped up back into her mouth. The implication is that the memory is deeply ingrained in her body, but inaccessible through language. Language is unable to encompass everything, so trying to use it to reach ‘pure experience’ is not enough, but it is something. We have this book. And for the most part, I think we read and write because we know it gets us closer to ‘pure experience.’

‘Ongoingness’ in the book as it relates to ‘pure experience’ involves language and no language. Working through language, while also allowing for the lack of language, and going against language. And in response to my previous post about this book, about whether or not having a baby is the solution to the existential crises one has about time and death, I think this paradox of language and no language helps. It seems that part of what having a baby made such an impact is the interaction of one who views things through this prism of language, and one who does not. There is a confrontation there of what language does and does not do, and what it means in that interaction. 

Okay that’s it for Ongoingness. I hope all of this made sense somehow. Let me know your thoughts!

Quick Chat: ONGOINGNESS #1

So I've already finished this lovely book to the left. I legit bought it last night, read it last night - which took me a whole 45 minutes to read. I've decided to make this a Quick Chat rather than a more long-form critical piece, because I want to reread this before I write anything too substantial, but I still needed to write something. I approached the book knowing I would love it, and oh, I did. 

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso is a memoir*...of sorts. This book is about the diary Manguso meticulously kept for 25 years: why she started it, what kept her going, and made her stop, which is (spoilerz not rly): she had a baby. The book is comprised of short meditations on the nature of time, birth, death, the past, memory. Basically, all of the BIG. IDEAS. ABOUT. HUMANITY. In the book, Manguso tries to figure out 'ongoingness': a way of accounting for the present which immediately becomes the past, and a way of being present in her experiences. It's really fascinating, and I think could be an interesting lens through which to analyze our use of social media...but that is a conversation I do not feel like having. 

From my first fevered 1AM reading of this book, I love this book. I'm really interested in this kind of memoir writing: it's deeply personal introspection that is also very removed, because Manguso is really trying to get to the exact meaning of things, which is even more interesting because that's what she wanted to do with the diaries she kept. In a review from The Atlantic, the writer says Manguso's prose feels 'twice distilled; it is whiskey rather than beer,' which is perhaps the most accurate description I could read for this book.

For now, let me leave you with a line from the book that is haunting me - which is always a beautiful and daunting feeling from a book. Towards the end of the book, Manguso, who has frantically for the past 25 years been concerned with remembering the right things so that she could make sure she was experiencing life fully, gives in and says, 'the forgotten moments are the price of continued participation in life' (85). I mentioned before that what sparks the end of intense diary-writing is having a child. In order to more fully participate in the life of her child and be a mother, she needed to let go of the need to obsessively document and revise her life. I have a feeling it's a little more complicated than that, or at least I hope it is, because can it really be that all of the fears she held about dying, time, and living her life fully can only be alleviated because of a baby? Are children really the answer? I don't know. That's one of the things I'm trying to think about from this book, which really does have so much in it.



*Note: My tag for this post is difficult to figure out. This book is technically a memoir, but it is more than that. It's a book that resists strict genre definition, which is fine with me. For now, and for the purposes of this blog, I will simply tag it non-fiction. This may change. I'm still deciding.

Pick-Up Line: 'It is a small country.'

Welcome to Pick-Up Line! My newest feature to this blog, in addition to my other features Interesting or Stupid?, Meta Moment, and Quick Chat, which you should catch up on *wink wink* In Pick-Up Line, I will discuss in-depth one line, or several, of a poem, or a sentence(s) of prose. I have found that when I read something, a line or two from it echoes in my mind after I've finished reading it for one reason or another. And I've named this feature Pick-Up Line to intrigue you, reader, to read the poem or book or collection. This feature will most likely feature poetry, because I think we all need more poetry in our lives, and it can be hard to get into poetry, I admit. So I'm hoping my focus on a line or two is enticing enough to have you read more poetry. Hence, my cheeky title.

Let us begin our first installment! I posted yesterday about The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forché. This book is seriously beautiful, and if you can, read the whole thing. The line I will discuss from The Country Between Us is from the poem 'The Visitor,' which you can find here.

'It is a small country' (line 8)

As you might be able to tell from the title, the idea of a country is central to the text. The title implies distance, and over the course of the collection we see what physical and emotional distance can mean between people. We also see a country being made and unmade, as this book is partly about the Salvadoran Civil War. In the poem, 'The Visitor,' a country is the hand of a lover, the imagining of a hand of a lover, or the wind imagined as the breath of a lover. The wind against the walls of the prison is

                                      ...his wife's breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country (lines 6-8).

There are two definitions of a country here:

1. It is a physical place, but it is the physical body and breath of his wife.
2. It is an imagined place, as Francisco is imagining the body and breath of his wife with him.

These ideas of a country are interesting because they imply that our 'citizenship' is tied with those we love. It reminds me of something Roberto Bolaño said - one of my absolute favorite authors of all-time. Bolaño was from Chile, and he grew up in various countries in Latin America. He supported the socialist regime in Chile, which was eventually overthrown by dictator Augusto Pinochet. Subsequently, he left Chile, fearing for his life, and because he was dissatisfied and antagonistic towards the prominent literary figures of Chile. Bolaño essentially put himself in exile. In his last interview ever, Bolaño said, 'My only country is my two children and perhaps, though in second place, some moments, streets, faces or books that are in me.'

In Bolaño's quote, and in Forché's poem, what we're seeing is that when you are stripped of the 'country' you were born, maybe even imprisoned by that country, it calls into question your citizenship and allegiance, not in a legal sense, but an existential one: what exactly does the borders and land of a country do for you when they are seemingly against you? When to be on one side of a wall or another means imprisonment or exile? And if we take into account the idea of a country being imagined - as it is implied through Francisco imagining the wind as his wife's breath, and imagining her hand - then that problem is only exacerbated. These delineations are illusory, but in our respective societies, we all commit and agree: yes, this a country. But it is also because of those agreements that a 'small country' can be made out of relationships.

Can I also say how beautiful it is that Forché specifies a small country. The inclusion of the word provides the perfect beat to slow the line and provide space for the gravity of the word 'country' and all that it implies for the poem. Including the word 'small' also shows a tenderness to the relationship, that it is concerned with the small things of feeling someone's breath, of holding someone's hand.

Let me know your thoughts, and if you've read anything by Carolyn Forché, or Roberto Bolaño, who I ALWAYS want to talk about. 

On Whose Authority?

Recently, I decided I wanted to re-read Carolyn Forché's book of poetry The Country Between Us. I first read it a few years ago for a Creative Writing class, and wanted to revisit it because I didn't remember much about it, and I just generally need to punctuate my typically fiction-centric reading with poetry, whether it's just going back to my favorite collections and reading a few poems or (re)reading a full collection.

The Country Between Us is partly about Forché's time working as a journalist in El Salvador as it was on the cusp of a civil war in the 70s. Poems about unrest in El Salvador between its people and leaders are told along with poems about the unrest and distance between two lovers. With this book, Forché is renowned for her weaving of the 'personal' and the 'political,' which is a popular topic in literary criticism. When we talk about the personal and the political in a text, we are acknowledging that there is not as a neat a distinction as we'd like between our personal lives, even our subjectivity, and the larger world - we are saying that maybe the sensibilities or function of the two are not so different. And in the case of Forché's book, we can say that the way the personal and political function are as metaphors of each other: the political situation in El Salvador can be a metaphor for the relationship between the lovers, and vice versa. It is also good to note that Forché is known for coining the term 'poetry of witness,' meaning that poetry is necessary in dealing with things such as war and conflict, and that it is a tool for social justice.

This book is beautiful. Because it is pretty short - just 59 pages - I decided to read it out loud to myself over the course of a few days, to really savor the language and imagery. I loved reading this book, and think it definitely warrants your attention. But one thing preoccupied my reading: Forché is a white woman writing about El Salvador, and she may be one of the most known voices on the Salvadoran Civil War. Even on the back of book, there is a blurb that says,

'Latin America needs a poet to replace the man who represented in his writings the beauty, sufferings, fears and dreams of this continent: Pablo Neruda. Carolyn Forché is that voice.' -Jacobo Timerman

This praise is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to say that Latin America needs a voice that is not their own, that Latin America needs the voice of a white person from the U.S. Latin America has plenty of voices, it is up to us whether or not we listen to those voices, whether we support them and give them a platform to be heard. This is not to say that Forché is not allowed to write about El Salvador because she is not from there, or that these poems are not good because she is not from El Salvador. It is that Forché should not be considered an authority, which is what the above blurb suggests. No one author should ever be looked at as an authority on a subject - people and events are too complicated to look to one person or one perspective. Each of us has a certain amount of privilege and gaps in our understandings, which is why it is so crucial read widely and diversely. In this blurb, we can see Forché's privilege of being considered an authority on something she does not actually have authority over. And while this book is certainly beautiful and important, it does not make it the authoritative poetic text on El Salvador, or Latin America.

Read widely, read diversely, read critically, read skeptically. Some may think that reading in these ways reduces the experience of reading, but I think it enhances it, and it pushes me to read new books to love.

A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD by Sigrid Nunez

There are about 30 different conversations I could have about A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez, which is quite perfect considering that part of the undertaking of this novel is to account for the complex identities of its characters, what it means to remember the past and how the act of trying to remember and account for the past and present has a sort of prismatic effect. For the sake of you, my readers, instead of veering off into all of these conversations, I want to just interrogate the meaning of the title of the book. The title does what it should and offers an excellent gateway into the themes of the novel, and I think will make you want to read this book.

Some logistics about the novel: we have an unnamed narrator, and she guides us through the story of her parents, her childhood, and then a bit of her adult life. The narrator's father, Carlos, is half-Chinese, half-Panamanian; he was born in Panama, lived in China for 10 years, and the moved to America. Her mother, Christa, is German, and grew up in Nazi Germany. They meet in Allied-occupied German after the war. Christa gets pregnant, they marry, and move to America. So, the least we can say is their family life and identity is complicated...And in this book is a beautiful rendering of the complexities of immigrant life, being part of a mixed family, and being second-generation. 

One of the ways these complexities manifest is in the idea of fate, and there are kind of two definitions, or two sides of a coin, that we get from the novel:

1. Fate as being pulled along against your will toward something you don't necessarily want 
2. Fate as an offering up of oneself to the will of something higher 

The first idea of fate we see through the lens of the narrator's parents, especially her mom, who vocalizes how much she does not like America, should have married someone in Germany and stayed there, especially since Carlos is extremely reserved, he works too much, drinks, gambles, and generally does not talk to his wife and children. He seems broken, but never voices his feelings or thoughts. The narrator notes that her mom would wonder how she got to where she was in the first place, and would 'place her head in her hands, truly bewildered; as if she had blown here like a feather' (72).

The second idea of fate comes from the narrator talking about the years she spent doing ballet. She is obsessed with the control it offers her over her body, with the idea that through ballet one can attain the perfect body, and she would challenge and push herself to attain this. The narrator says, 'To see how long I could go without solid food (up to five days) was a favorite game. How beautiful the hollowed gut, the jutting bones. To be light as a feather, light as a soul – "a feather on the breath of God" (Saint Hildegard)' (106).

With these two ideas of fate coexisting in the novel, what we are seeing is an inconclusiveness to the direction and choices of one's life. To commit fully to one idea or the other is harmful – surely Christa bears responsibility and has made choices that led her to where she is, and for the narrator to have continued on her path to be 'light as a feather' would mean she would eventually physically not exist at all. Christa and the narrator are trying to make sense of their lives, but they will never fully be able to, and both are chasing after visions of what life could be like. To give in to visions of what it means to be married, to move to a new country, to go back to a country, to make a family, to leave a family, to become your own person, to have a body that is yours. You can make a choice, but that choice is within the context of something else – you have a choice and you don't at the same time. So looking back on their lives, Christa and the narrator must begin to attempt to understand how their choices and their circumstances are woven together. 

Let me know if you have any thoughts about this. If you know of a book that is similar in theme and content, let me know! Once again, I might write more about this book because there is just so much to talk about, and I can't stop thinking about this book.