What We’re Reading: Books for Our Current World
Life, am I right? It’s been especially catching up to many of us lately in all of our spheres: National. Global. Local. Personal. With so much heartache, I am struggling to find a way through it, to a better place. We all have our own way of dealing with struggles, and soul-searching. My way of soul-searching? Reading, of course. Here are three books that we at Hazel & Wren have reviewed in full before, but are finding new meaning and urgency with recent events. There are so many more, and I hope you’ll share with us what you’re reading in these troubling times.
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Full review here. As reviewer Timothy said, “This is poetry as documentary, as news story. At worst, poetry like this can feel dated, but Rankine has a knack for highlighting the stories that need to be remembered and turning them on us so that we see them differently.” Rankine focuses on microaggressions of racism within these pages, and again, Timothy said it best when he wrote: “This is the power of literature, to distill a lifetime of small frustrations into one body that will carry and enact those frustrations on the page.” It’s powerful language, that puts all of the things we hide underneath the surface on the page, where we can’t ignore it.
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
Full review here. I’ve been struggling in my personal sphere lately, and this book is one I go back to often to gain some perspective, levity, and understanding. It’s a collection that Cheryl Strayed penned under the column “Dear Sugar” for The Rumpus. Sugar responds to life’s chaos and universal questions with zinging humor, brutal honesty, and heartaching clarity. I found it refreshing to bounce between the different columns and questions, between dark depths and light-hearted sass. Each of Sugar’s responses is a glimmering gem that is so spot on that it’s hard to look straight at it without wanting to melt into a puddle of YES. As reviewer Taylor put it: “It is a rare and special feeling when a book can both fill you up and cleanse you.”
A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota edited by Sun Yung Shin
Full review here. This collection of essays from writers of color in Minnesota hits home yet again with the murder of Philando Castile in our state. Please read this, and listen to the human stories told by these talented writers. Absorb the different perspectives, and own up to your own prejudices that arise while reading them. Own up to them, so we can change that way of thinking. From the review: “Each writer is telling their own individual story, and as a composite, this collection provides a larger, more honest and complex picture of race in Minnesota, which we as the reader, start to see with more clarity through each essay.”
Which books am I missing? (There are so many!)
What We’re Reading: A Good Time for the Truth
A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota edited by Sun Yung Shin (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2016)
I don’t have a smooth introductory paragraph for this one, so I’ll just jump right in: this book is so very important, and I hope you read it.
Editor Sun Yung Shin has curated a powerful collection of essays from writers of color living in Minnesota. While experiences within the state of Minnesota is the core of this book, these stories should resonate across the country, where racism is on the minds and tongues of our nation. However, these essays aren’t told by mainstream media outlets or political candidates. These essays are personal stories. This is the crux of why this book left such an impact on me. It’s not a media outlet that I have to consider what their source is, or what their unintentional biases are…this is straight from writers who have experienced racism first-hand, have had to grapple with the complexities that is race and identity and culture. Each writer is telling their own individual story, and as a composite, this collection provides a larger, more honest and complex picture of race in Minnesota, which we as the reader, start to see with more clarity through each essay.
In the introduction from Sun Yung Shin, she writes:
It is hard to talk about race across racial lines. Race is ingrained in societal systems and institutions, conferring a system of advantages upon members of the dominant group. This means that people’s realities, their lived experiences, differ. Race is often invisible to those who benefit, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly. It is entirely visible to those who do not benefit.
This gets right to the heart of it. I am in a class right now for my graduate program on diversity in the workplace, and this Tedx Talk from Dr. Helen Turnbull on blind spots was brought up in our last class session. As a white, straight, middle-class woman, the more I grow as a person the more I see blind spots that I didn’t even know I had. It’s horrifying and disheartening to discover the blind spots that mainstream white culture, and our own complacency, has sneakily bred into so many U.S. citizens, myself included. And it can be even scarier to talk about them openly when conversations about race can be so charged. This collection of essays opened my eyes to many subtle but deeply embedded blind spots, for which I am grateful. I am a firm believer that while admitting mistakes or blind spots can be incredibly scary and vulnerable, that recognizing, apologizing, and correcting for those mistakes is what triggers growth. Growth is what makes us more human, and allows us to connect to our fellow humans on a deeper level. This collection opened up countless opportunities for me to learn, listen, and grow.
Shannon Gibney‘s essay “Fear of a Black Mother” is the first one in the book after the introduction, and immediately opened my eyes to blind spots. I am not a mother, but it’s something I can see in my future and have had frequent conversations about with my partner. Realizing what Gibney has to think about with her son as a black mother is something I didn’t even consider having to discuss with my future child.
[…] My child is six and a half now, thoroughly engrossed in Rescue Bots and Ninjago and bugs, but I am already getting twitchy about the upcoming talks that loom large, talks about holding himself in the classroom, engaging with his teachers and peers, and, most of all, making sure he is giving no one, especially white people, any extra reason to view him as a Problem or Threat. As a mother, I know it is my duty to protect him. As a Black citizen in a country that has never viewed Black bodies as worthy of protection, I know I cannot.
I fell in love with Kao Kalia Yang‘s storytelling previously with her first book, The Latehomecomer, and recently again after hearing her read from her brand new second book, The Song Poet. Her essay about the complexities of identity and racism while being in an interracial relationship points out yet another facet that isn’t easily seen at first glance. Venessa Fuentes‘ essay starts from the perspective of her childhood self, and the moment when she started to see her identity through the eyes of the white surburban culture she grew up in, and even in the eyes of those closest to her. Bao Phi‘s essay grapples with the perception of some that Asian Americans are less discriminated against than other people of color when his own experiences contradict that. All of these individual experiences grouped together show just how complex race and racism are.
But I don’t want to keep talking. These aren’t my stories, and you’d do better to listen to these writers’ stories yourself. They are all very talented writers, and in their deft writerly hands, listening isn’t very hard. Please read this book, reflect on it, and really, truly listen. It’s a conversation that has to happen, and one that mainstream white culture needs to listen to more than speak, if we are going to find any equity in this world. As Sun Yung Shin writes in her introduction,
A society that systematically suppresses the stories and wisdom of certain groups cannot make the best decisions for a shared future. We need a future in this state that leaves no one out. We are interconnected, we are interdependent. In the long run, on our earth, we will thrive or fail together. Those of us who have not always had places at the table, so to speak, want to be heard and understood.
This book is one very important step in that direction.
What other writers are opening up space to tackle complex, emotionally charged, and/or difficult subjects?
