This is a collection of eight short stories about young African-American women—and some men—navigating the difficult terrain of race, class, sexuality and coming-of-age. As the title implies, the characters face challenging situations in which they are their own worst enemies. Evans has a sharp wit and fresh voice that give an original spin to some age-old themes.

“Snakes” is my favorite of the bunch. A biracial woman reflects back on the fateful summer she spent with her rich, white, racist grandmother and beloved white cousin. “Snakes” makes you consider what a lasting impact a child’s split-second decision can have. It may be worth reading twice.

“Harvest” is also haunting. One beautiful, intelligent, healthy white Columbia University student sells her eggs to pay for her wardrobe and lifestyle. Her college roommates—equally beautiful, intelligent and healthy—cannot do the same. They are black and, simply put, there is no market for their eggs.  The story of the ethics and economics of egg donation is complicated by an unwanted pregnancy. Evans deals gracefully with the stark contrast of one young woman being paid for her eggs while her friend considers paying for an abortion. The story’s ending is surprising and poignant.

Fans of women’s coming-of-age story collections like Nell Freudenberger’s Lucky Girls or Julie Orringer’s How to Breathe Underwater will find much to savor in this collection. Although each of Evans’ stories feature different characters, plotlines and dilemmas, the stories occasionally blur together thematically. What Evans’ collection lacks in breadth it more than makes up for in depth. Help yourself out and give Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self a try.

Mindy

“Literature used in schools ought to teach high values and character,” Richland board member Phyllis Strickler said upon the decision to ban the book from classroom instruction. “I don’t see the appropriateness of gratuitous language and descriptions of sex,” she said.

Absolutely True Diary is a semi-autobiographical book of Alexie’s own past. It won the National Book Award in 2007. It is about an Indian kid that decides to leave his reservation because other kids tease and beat him, his father’s an alcoholic, and he’s seen forty-two funerals by the time he’s 14. He decides he’s got to leave the rez, so he starts by enrolling in a high school in a nearby town full of “rich farmers, rednecks, and racist cops.”

So given this setting, is Junior’s vulgar language gratuitous, or is it integral to the story? Without showing how bad rez life is, how can readers appreciate Junior’s first steps to redemption? Evidently most critics can’t fathom that this book’s theme is “high values and character.” But redemption must have a toehold in something genuine.

Critics seem especially offended by Junior’s joking about the violence and racism he sees and about his typically teen sexual obsessions. But Alexie’s use of humor, exaggeration and irony are just what connect readers to Junior so strongly. Most readers understand obsessions, and know that sometimes people laugh when they feel like crying. And most probably get that Junior wasn’t really just “an exciting addition to the Reardan gene pool.” Alexie is the master of these literary tools. But critics either don’t get this or don’t want to. They find it easier to dismiss Alexie’s message than to grapple with it.

Alexie said in a recent article that he thinks some people would rather count cuss words than feel the story. “People don’t listen well, people don’t engage with an entire argument…they’ve been taught how to pull out quotes to argue with. Not the totality of an argument.”

With humor as a shield, Alexie has clearly slain a lot of dragons in his own life. “I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life.” He says he wants his books to give people words and ideas that will help them fight their own monsters.

Unbanned! Eventually the Richland School Board reversed itself and allowed the book. Why? They got around to actually reading it. See:

“Richland Board Flips on Book Ban,” Tri-City Herald, 12 July 2011: A1.

Cameron

The Scar is the story of a child waking up to the news that his mother has died. It wasn’t an unexpected death but nevertheless has a profound effect on the child who decides that the windows of the house must be kept closed in order to keep the mother’s essence within. The father, coping with his own grief, is not much help. When the child falls and scrapes his knee, he is sure he hears his mother’s voice. He tells himself that as long as he has the scab and can make it bleed, he’ll hear her voice and be a little less sad.

Fortunately, the maternal grandmother arrives on the scene and teaches the father some of the mother’s habits, such as how to drizzle honey on toast. When the grandmother complains about the heat in the house and starts to open the windows, the child explodes with alarm and confronts her. She explains that his mother isn’t in the surrounding air but in the child’s heart.

Dog Breath is a tribute to a deceased dog who just might have been the worst dog ever. He escaped whenever the door opened a crack and when he returned he would smell like rotten cheese and need a bath. He also stole food, once a whole turkey, as well as anything else that he could pull off the kitchen table. Yes, he was probably the worst dog in the universe, but he’ll be remembered with affection and love.

Scrawny Cat is the tale of a lost cat who knows his name is not “Get out of here” even though that’s what he hears most of the time. He finds refuge in a dinghy just as a storm rolls in. As he huddles under the dinghy seat the rope tying the dinghy to the dock snaps and the boat rolls away from shore. After the storm, the dinghy washes up on a sandy beach. A woman comes down to see what the storm has washed in. Will she also tell the scrawny cat to “Get out of here?”

In The Flyaway Blanket, Jake is helping his Momma hang up his special blanket on the laundry line. He doesn’t want to let go of his “extra soft from so much love” blanket, but his Momma tells him it will be dry in no time, so they sit and wait in the sun. But then a wind comes up and snatches Jake’s blanket which flies high into the sky. Will it ever return?

Dad gives Douglas a brand new woolly hat in Don’t Worry, Douglas! and tells him to take care of it. Douglas’s hat, however, gets caught in a branch and unravels. What is Douglas to do? Other animals try to help him but the best advice comes from Rabbit, who suggests Douglas tell his dad just what happened.

In Pirates & Princesses, Ivy and Fletch have been best friends since they were babies. They do everything together, but when they both start kindergarten things change. All the boys play together as pirates and all the girls play together as princesses, but these games aren’t as much fun without your best friend. How will Ivy and Fletch reclaim their friendship?

Solomon Crocodile does not play well with others. He is considered a pest by all the animals in the swamp. Will he ever find someone to play with?
Finally, two new concept books: Small Medium Large deals with the concept of size from itty-bitty to colossal, while Into the Outdoors covers the prepositional world as a happy family spends time in the great outdoors.

These are just a few of the hundreds of new titles to be found in our library’s collection. Contact your friendly and helpful Youth Services Librarian for more new titles.

Suzanne

When westerners listens to music they expect it to follow certain rules, even if they’re unaware of this habit. If the rules are not followed to some extent, the music might sound confusing or unappealing. Presumably, all cultures expect music to follow certain rules. However, these rules differ from culture to culture.

Western music is extremely goal-oriented. Tension and resolution occur repeatedly until finally a climax is reached, with perhaps a short denouement rounding off the piece.

 Most non-western music, by contrast, is not goal-oriented. If one listens to Indonesian gamelan music with a Beethoven symphony as a model for musical expectations, one will be sorely disappointed. Gamelan, the name of the orchestra as well as the name of the music, is circular in nature. Patterns of a certain length repeat, and with each repetition new bits are added and subtracted. There’s nothing that a westerner would recognize as a melody, and there is no melodic or harmonic tension and release. The music can be stunningly beautiful, but confusing to the uninitiated.

African drum-based music relies on intricate variations in rhythm as a method of development. While each drum might be tuned to a different pitch, there is nothing readily recognizable as a melody in the music.

Bulgarian vocal music utilizes tight, dissonant harmonies and an extremely nasal vocal technique.

Tuvan throat singing showcases a single person singing two pitches simultaneously: one a low frog-croak of a drone, the other a high wispy melody.

Many cultures rely heavily on improvisation in their music. In India, classical musicians train furiously in the use of ragas (melodic scales) and the rules that govern ornamentation and improvisation over those ragas.

It seems odd to refer to Native American music as non-Western since it occurs geographically in the west, but stylistically the music does not fit under the “western” umbrella. Typically, Native American flutes are tuned to pentatonic scales, which produce melodies that are not goal-oriented but rather are in a somewhat pensive mood.

Native American flute music is often meditative, improvisational, and inspired by nature. If you’d like to experience this music in person, come hear Peter Ali perform at the Main Library Auditorium, Monday, February 6, 6:30-7:30 pm as part of the Everett Reads! progam. In addition to presenting flute music, Ali will share stories relating to his heritage and the flutes that he plays. Take advantage of this unique experience to gain insight into a possibly unfamiliar musical tradition.

Ron

]]> http://areadinglife.com/2012/02/03/how-we-hear-music/feed/ 0 raverill gamelan drums Bulgarian tuvan India Native American flute http://areadinglife.com/2012/02/01/2012-everett-reads-with-sherman-alexie/ http://areadinglife.com/2012/02/01/2012-everett-reads-with-sherman-alexie/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:00:40 +0000 kmossman http://areadinglife.com/?p=10781 Continue reading →]]>

In case you haven’t heard, our 2012 Everett Reads! author is Sherman Alexie. From his large body of work, we’ve chosen his National Book Award for Young People’s Literature winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian as the focus for this year’s program.

For many people Alexie first appeared on their radar with 1998’s film Smoke Signals (Alexie wrote the screenplay, based on his 1993 novel The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven). This was America’s first glance at Alexie’s accessible yet poignant humor and unique perspective on American Indian history.

Absolutely True has endured  since its original publication in 2007, and copies fly off the shelves at bookstores and libraries alike. Alexie’s often humorous-yet-serious insight into social issues, familial issues, teen angst, American Indian and popular culture continues to resonate.

Alexie is a renowned speaker, best known for his dry humor and honest,  genuine style. He is also an accomplished poet, having won several prestigious poetry awards. His work is also enjoyed by a wide-ranging age-group, and initially, this was one of the primary reasons we selected Absolutely True. Just a few months ago the library celebrated the grand-opening of its long-awaited Teen Zone, a space just for teens in the Main Library, and we wanted 2012’s Everett Reads! to compliment this momentous improvement. Alexie was the perfect choice.

There are so many great things that can be said about Absolutely True and Alexie’s accomplished body of work. But don’t take it from us, instead come discover them on your own. To aid you we’ve scheduled a series of events and speakers that will bring out Alexie’s many talents and that will hopefully inspire discussion throughout our community.

The fun starts this Saturday, February 4th at 7 pm with Alexie’s visit to Everett’s Performing Arts Center. After being inspired by the author, be sure to check out the other programs throughout the month of February. These include a fine selection of films, book discussions, programs on local tribal history, and, of course, a program about cartooning. 

Be sure to read, or listen to Alexie’s own narration of the book this month courtesy of the Everett Public Library. Until then, I leave you with one of Alexie’s recent poems to ponder (published in the May 16, 2011 issue of the New Yorker magazine):

A Facebook Sonnet

Welcome to the endless high-school
Reunion. Welcome to past friends
And lovers, however kind or cruel.
Let’s undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can’t we pretend
Every stage of life is the same?
Let’s exhume, resume, and extend
Childhood. Let’s play all the games

That occupy the young. Let fame
And shame intertwine. Let one’s search
For God become public domain.
Let church.com become our church.

Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness

Kate

At the center of Kelroy are the Hammonds – a newly widowed mother and her daughters Emily and Lucy who, upon the death of Mr. Hammond, suddenly find their high-living lifestyle in jeopardy. The calculating widow feels she is too old to stand a chance in the marriage market herself, so she hides from her daughters their financial problems (while proceeding ever further into debt) in order to keep up appearances in the hope that her daughters will attract wealthy suitors. Meanwhile, Emily has fallen in love with Edward Kelroy, who has also recently lost his father, but Mrs. Hammond forbids their marriage because of Kelroy’s financial difficulties stemming from his late father’s failed real-estate investments. Driven by a materialistic culture and personal greed, Mrs. Hammond becomes a truly reprehensible monster who will do anything to preserve her standing within her social circle. This book is filled with varied, complex characters and contorted, deceitful social situations that should be of interest to fans of Austen and other Regency novelists.

To avoid spoilers, readers might want to first read the novel, and only then return to Dana Nelson’s Introduction and Cathy Davidson’s Foreword which provide informative insights and historical context about the early years of our republic and our supposedly classless society.

____________

Very little is known about the life of Rebecca Rush. For other novels by early American women writers, you might try The Coquette by Hannah W. Foster (1797) and Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson (1794).

Heartwood | About Heartwood

Happily, I recently came across two excellent new documentaries that try to explore interesting topics and not just hit you over the head with ideology.

Last Train Home is an exploration of one of the largest human migrations ever. Every year, during the New Year’s holiday, 130 million workers in cities all over China return to their families in the country side. This is a monumental event, but the director, Lixin Fan, doesn’t examine it from the top down. Instead he records one family’s participation over several years. There is no narration to guide the viewer, but very soon you get immersed in the story of the Zhang family.

For 16 years both parents have been working in a garment factory to support their family. During all that time they have only been able to visit their children during the New Year’s holiday. The tension during these visits, not to mention the herculean labor of getting home, is intense. Add their teenage daughter Qin, who resents her parents’ absence and their emphasis on education, and you get a combustible mix.

Last Train Home offers no easy answers. Instead it allows you to take a peek into a different world and get immersed in a family’s struggle to survive.

Using a similar approach, A Film Unfinished examines a huge historical event, the Warsaw Ghetto, by focusing on the smaller details. In this case, the small detail is an unfinished propaganda film that the Nazis made in the Warsaw Ghetto just weeks before deportations to the death camps began. While the unfinished film was discovered in an East German archive after the war, another reel of outtakes came to light in the late 1990s.

Through interviews with survivors, testimony of one of the photographers and the disturbing outtake reel, A Film Unfinished does more than just document a historical incident. It illuminates the lives of those who lived through, and some who took part in, a pathetic attempt to obscure a horrible truth. This film is all the more powerful due to its refusal to offer a simple explanation of events. The viewer has to create any meaning or reasons why.

So take a chance and skip the partisan lecture the next time you watch a documentary. Your television will thank you.

Richard

At least I thought I was until I picked up Ilsa J. Bick’s Ashes.

At the beginning of this young adult novel we meet Alex who has a brain tumor and has been given 6 months to live. She’s an avid hiker and decides to go on a last hike to make peace with her impending death. She goes well prepared. I’m talking SURVIVALISM prepared. You throw me out in the woods and I wouldn’t survive more than five minutes unless you gave me a book to read.

Alex is settling down to camp when an older man and an 8-year-old girl come out of the forest. She is cautious (with good reason….anyone remember  the movie Deliverance and what a fun camping trip that was?). Alex listens to the man’s story, how he and his granddaughter Ellie have been hiking with their German Sheppard, Thor. The granddaughter has a gigantic chip on her shoulder (deservedly so since her father was killed in Afghanistan) and mouths off, sounding more like a bitter 40-year-old instead of an 8-year-old kid.

And this is where it gets interesting.

There is a humming in the air, a vibrating, pulsating noise.

Ellie’s grandfather goes into convulsions, blood bursting from his nose. Thor, the dog, also goes into convulsions. A terrifying sound flattens Alex to the ground. An EMP, electromagnetic pulse, destroys everything: electronics, digital watches, iPods, power grids. The world’s population is decimated but Alex, Ellie and Thor survive the EMP, although Thor goes a little nuts and acts like he is reenacting every scene from the movie Cujo. The survivors go in search of other people and answers as to what happened.

This is where the zombies come in. And not just any zombies but some of the best zombies I have ever come across.  Each survivor has been affected differently by the EMP: some have supernatural abilities, some are just plain lucky that they lived through it, and then there are those called The Changed. The Changed live to hunt the living. Forget about zombies lusting after brains, these zombies rip into any flesh they can find.

Along the way Alex and Ellie meet up with Tom, a soldier home on leave from serving in the Middle East. He has some demons of his own to exorcise. They form a weary group of survivors whose motto could be “If we survive the night…well, it’s just good that we survived the night.”

A lot of crazy stuff happens, things I didn’t see coming and I’m not going to ruin anything for you. Suffice it to say these zombies are fast and clever. Alex is one tough 17-year-old girl. I found myself thinking if I had to face an apocalypse I would want her on my team because if I was one of the Changed I’d live in terror of her abilities. But I might leave the 8-year-old brat behind.

This book is for anyone who is tired of the usual zombie and sparkly vampire books and wants a book with a meaty plot. But watch out for those zombies because I hear they like meat.

Jennifer

Ed King by David Guterson portrays the dark side of ambition and sexual attraction. Set in the Seattle area, the book’s main character rockets to success with the rise of the Internet as he becomes the “King of Search.”  He becomes a tycoon and a celebrity, but he knows nothing of his own origin. Namely that he was a foundling baby abandoned by a teen mother who used him to con child support payments from an older man. Years later the two meet in the dark shadow of incest, as Ed’s brilliant but impulsive life spirals out of control.

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks, is set in a sunny resort area of Florida and portrays a shadow life that few of us know about. The main character is a young sex offender who is living (with his huge pet iguana) in a colony of homeless men underneath a causeway. A sociology professor arrives to interview the men and is drawn to the fatalistic innocence of “the Kid,” as the man calls himself. “The Professor” patiently listens and yanks the young man out of his profound solitude, and we see hidden reserves of emotion tangled up in the secrets that both men hide. Is it possible to feel empathy for someone caught in the ranks of the “most hated” in our society?

Snowdrops by Andrew Miller takes us to a tense, threatening time in Moscow during the early 2000’s. Nick, a young attorney, has been sent by a London-based corporation to grab a share of Russia’s gushing oil revenues. All around him is the flash of new wealth, thriving on decadence and corruption, while the underclass stumbles through another cruelly cold winter. Dealing with businesses that may be shells, and with people who will do anything to survive, brings out Nick’s dark side. He savors the sensual delights of his lover Masha, but she seems to be hiding secrets from him. Then her strange family members pull him into a dangerous role that he does not want to play.

Esta

While there is no known cure for workplace-induced ennui, you may find some relief in these novels that take the languor and absurdity of office culture to a whole other level.

Something Happened by Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller’s second novel is a scathing satire on business life and American culture. It’s as inventive, but not nearly as well-known, as Catch-22. Something Happened takes readers inside the head of Bob Slocum, a man who has it all: a steady job, a beautiful wife, three children, a nice house, plenty of mistresses, and plenty more discontent…until something happens. Eavesdrop on Bob as he records the goings on in his life at home and at the office.

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

Dan Underwood, a computer programmer at Microsoft, narrates this novel that follows six computer whizzes. These “microserfs” work at least 16 hours a day as cogs in the machine until they decide to strike out on their own to form a high-tech start up in Silicon Valley. This will touch a nerve with any worker who remembers fondly (or not so fondly) slaving away during the 1990s tech boom.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

The employees of a Chicago advertising firm struggle to cope with a business downturn and multiple rounds of layoffs. Their solution? A rumor mill, covert romances, pranks, too many coffee breaks, and a fierce competition to score the best office furniture. If you’ve ever spent time hoarding Post-It notes in a cubicle, you’re sure to recognize someone you know among this large ensemble cast of quirky office workers.

Now stop reading this and get back to work. Or better yet, leave a comment and tell me about your favorite book set in an office. And then get back to work.

Mindy