Two Dozen from 2011 (Pt. 2)

African American and Civil Rights history seemed to form a theme in some of my 2011 reading, but the underlying theme here was economics. (Also fitting into this category was Five Miles Away, A World Apart by UVA professor James E. Ryan, the story of how Richmond's Freeman and TJ high schools were -- or weren't -- integrated. Though a worthy volume, it didn't make the list mostly because of its dryer tone and legalistic focus.)

5 In American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, journalist Jason DeParle finely balances the personal work and life stories of three "ordinary" women with historical background and 20th Century politics. He goes back to the origins of welfare legislation (originally intended mainly for widowed (white) mothers) in the 1930s and charts how welfare programs grew during and post WWII, "exploding" by the mid-1960s. At the same time, DeParle describes the hardships facing ex-slaves in the South and African Americans' eventual great northern migration, interviewing stalwart Hattie Mae Crenshaw, born to Mississippi sharecroppers in 1937, who traveled north, eventually settling in Chicago. As DeParle chronicles "welfare reform" and "welfare-to-work" programs of the 1990s, he interweaves the stories of Hattie Mae's descendents, Jewell, Opal, and Angie, three mothers who move to Milwaukee in search of better government benefits and find themselves trying to make ends meet despite legislative upheavals. Crucially, DeParle makes the point that "no one survived on welfare alone." For the women DeParle profiles, welfare becomes one resource among others, like (unreported) minimum wage jobs of various stripes and (unreported) earnest or mercenary relationships with men with (legal or illegal) sources of income. Importantly, DeParle also takes a look at the government and social worker's perspective, spending considerable time profiling a caseworker. While DeParle find evidence of many well-meaning official representatives, and even a few that are marginally competent, overall he paints an entirely fact-based picture of hideously incompetent and corrupt buerocracies. DeParle's overall story is nuanced and thought-provoking: challenging readers to think critically and seriously about social justice and public policy and on par with Carol Stack's All Our Kin in making understandable an urban, African American way of living that might seem incomprehensible to outsiders. Even if the particular legislative battles described are no longer making headlines, American Dream is still a book I'd recommend.

6 Although nonfiction, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc reads like a soap opera. At times, I had to shamefacedly ask myself whether I was getting too much enjoyment out of the salacious details of who was who's baby's daddy and who was going to jail next. However, this book is really a remarkably detailed, sympathetic but far from rose-coloured profile of Americans with limited options trying to find success and meaning in their lives. Jessica, the proud girlfriend of a rich drug kingpin; Cesar, her ambitious younger brother; and Cesar's sometimes girlfriend, family-minded Coco, form the central cast; before the book is done, two of the three spend time in prison. Intergenerational violence and addiction have their place alongside individual hopes and passions. LeBlanc lets her characters (her subjects) speak and act for themselves.

7 The voice of preacher's son Timothy B. Tyson in Blood Done Sign My Name rings authentic and familiar. Writing a white perspective of the Civil Rights Movement (even a small part of it) can be tricky, but Tyson fully acknowledges the awkwardness and ambiguity of his position. He writes meaningfully of white, Southern churches divided, churches actively promoting white supremacism, and churches trying to do the right thing (perhaps largely ineffectively) by promoting desegregation and racial cooperation through peaceful means; as he introduces the character of black freedom fighter Ben Chavis, whose positions and actions are far more radical than those of Rev. Tyson, the younger Tyson questions whether equal rights could have been achieved without violence. Tyson gives his childhood impressions alongside adult research and reflections as he chronicles the 1970 killing of black veteran Henry Marrow and the trial and events that followed. Especially in a region that prides itself on remembering its history, the story of riots in Oxford and mobs in Wilmington, North Carolina, is one that should be much more well known. (I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, which just arrived from Netflix, and finding out what viewpoint it takes!)

8 The Help by Kathryn Stockett is another entry in the ambivalent field of white writers taking on the African American experience -- though Stockett's novel is really about the not-so-parallel experiences of her white characters as well as their black "help." It may be problematic that these black women speak in dialect, while Stockett's white middle class and society ladies use only the occasional Southernism, but Stockett's afterword explaining her choices shows at least that she's not thoughtlessly appropriating others' experiences. However well Stockett succeeds in her task of representing a black point of view, she definitely tells an enjoyable story. Stockett's strength is in telling the details of everyday life, from table decor to Junior League intrigue, and the small indignities (think: bathrooms) and larger injustices of servitude. The heart of the story is the friendship that develops between spoiled-but-not-rotten would-be-writer Skeeter and the maid Aibilene (but the most enjoyable characters are Minny and Celia). Though violence is not entirely ignored, Stockett probably underplays the real danger; if she gives us a story that is more inspirational tale and tribute to domestic help than realistic depiction of the Civil Rights movement, you'll want to read it nevertheless (even if just to find out what's in that cake).

9 Colson Whitehead is a delightful wordsmith, and in Apex Hides the Hurt, he finds a story that encourages wordplay. Our protagonist is a "nomenclature consultant," a namer of names who despite such career successes as the title slogan (Apex being the brand name for a Band-Aid rival that comes in shades reflecting ethnically diverse skintones) is going through a rough patch. He is challenged to choose a name for the small town now known as Winthrop after the industrialist family that founded its once-thriving barbed wire factory, but originally known as Freedom, a haven for former slaves. If the local millionaire entrepreneur has his way, Freedom/Winthrop will become New Prospera. Whitehead's meditation on market forces, multiculturalism, and "political" correctness is smart, sarcastic, funny, and all too honest in its appraisal of the challenges and absurdities of modern life.

Two Dozen from 2011 (Pt. 1)

The winter issue of Poets & Writers highlighted Maine writer Joshua Bodwell's annual annotated "Baker's Dozen" list of top reads for the year. In challenging myself to put together my own Top 13, I found myself struggling to pare it down below 14 -- so I decided to expand instead. Based on a quick perusal of my Goodreads account, this list comprises about one quarter of my 2011 reading. While I re-read and enjoyed some favorite series (by Jim Butcher and Diana Gabaldon) in 2011, the titles that made it to the list were all new reads. In not-quite-but-almost random order:

1 & 2 To address my own pet interests first, I'll list David Damrosch's The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh and Theodore Ziolkowski's Gilgamesh Among Us. The Buried Book was a Christmas present I'd been saving, and it turned out to be a highly readable account of the epic's discovery and translation by George Smith; its excavation and the discovery of Ninevah's palace library by Hormuzd Rassam, the assembling of the library by Ashurbanipal, and the epic's beginnings in ancient Sumer. To mimic an archaeological excavation, Damrosch begins in the mid-19th century and moves back 3,000 years toward what can be surmised of the historical Gilgamesh. Damrosch paints both Smith and Rassam as underdogs in conflict with the British elite; while this approach probably made for good storytelling, I was ridden with sympathetic angst while reading of some of the academic, political, and even legal battles! I was familiar with most of the names, but the book helped put them in context (especially the 19th century Brits Layard, Rawlinson, Smith, Rassam, and Budge). While much of the information about the sources and interpretation of the epic itself can be found in other places, Damrosch brings together insights from experts in various disciplines, and his epilogue on Gilgamesh in the context of the second Gulf War provides a thoughtful conclusion. (It also kind of makes me want to read Saddam Hussein's novel Zabibah and the King, now apparently available in German translation.)

Ziolkowski picks up where Damrosch leaves off, writing a "reception history" of Gilgamesh in literature and popular culture, from its early translation through to the 21st Century. I'm still in first chapters, but it seems that, while the earliest interest in Gilgamesh was based on the flood account and how it reinforced or undermined Biblical authority, later interest was motivated in part by the epic's position outside of (and prior to) Christian tradition in all its Western interpretations. Although Gilgamesh influenced early modernist writers including Rilke and earned a place in Jung's Symbols of Transformation, it has perhaps been brought to the fore more by postmodernists than modernists, due in part to its existential themes, opportunities for exploring issues of gender and sexuality, and fragmentary nature. We'll see how Ziolkowski's argument develops: the highlight is sure to begin on p. 164, where Ziolkoski notes "American poet Hillary Major's 'Gilgamesh Remembers a Dream' (2000)" as a "proud entry" in the tradition of lyric poems inspired by Gilgamesh. After quoting from the poem, Ziolkowski gives a summary analysis: "The poem appears to take the homosexuality for granted--as well as the shortness of human memory--but leaves it open to speculation whether the plant of eternal youth--and by extension the entire visit to Utnapishtim--was real or simply a dream."

3 I was fully prepared to hate The Magicians by Lev Grossman, expecting a satiric exploitation of the fantasy genre with the oh-so-common "postmodern" cast of universally unlikable characters. Instead, I loved it, probably because Grossman's love for his subject (fantasy, yes, most specifically Narnia with a dollop of Hogwarts) shone through so clearly. Grossman undercuts the conventions of the coming-of-age fantasy while also embracing them. Instead of the usual underdog protagonist, Quentin is a privileged nerd; if less time is spent battling evil than exploring (and usually bungling) interpersonal relationships with his fellow magicians, that doesn't mean the stakes are low. The question of what magic is, and of what to do with it in a world where dark lords and evil queens may be hard to find, turns out to be epic worthy.

4 We Don't Know We Don't Know begins with epigraphs from Pliny the Elder and Donald Rumsfeld. Nick Lantz manages to give us timely, socially conscious, intellectually challenging and emotionally engaging poetry that doesn't lose track of the musicality of language itself. He makes us question the nature of knowledge, the role of science, and language's communicative power and purposes. Most of all though, he writes poems that can be read and enjoyed.