How Do I
miguel's Picks
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Dillies, Renaud and Regis Hautiere Abelard: a Magical Graphic Novel Graphic Novel |
| A beautifully illustrated tale of a (French?) bird and
bear who journey to America for very different reasons. Each counteracts
the other, and so present a kind of extreme antithesis: the bear embodies
a cynicism painted in brushstrokes of gloom and doom, while the bird
emits a naïve optimism through love and light (levity? illumination?),
pulling apt and eternal wisdom (literally) out of his hat at random.
Artistically this book is gorgeous, but to put such profundity in
this aesthetic context is to play a brilliant trick on an equally
naïve reader: a book this beautiful shouldn't be this profoundly bittersweet.
The irony continues within the story as well: how successful are we
at navigating our world to accommodate a metaphysical stance? A smart,
simple fable of life and the pursuit of all those leaves of greener
grasses. Recommended May 2013 |
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| Selimovic, Meša The Fortress Fiction |
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| This historical novel is an astounding testament of the
Individual. Selimovic, a Bosnian Muslim, writes the first-person narration
of Ahmet Shabo, a man whose experience in war has predicated a dissolution
of the auspiciously moral bonds of social custom. In the absurd living
and dying of the battlefield, habitual normalcy is undermined by the
unpredictable behavior of necessity. Returning home to his eighteenth-century
village, Shabo conflates innocence and purpose in declaiming perceived
order and personifying contingency. The intimacy of the narrative
allows the reader to wonder at the motivations behind such voluntary
suffering. Selimovic seems to confront the mirage of a hegemonic sphere
with a sledgehammer of love: our flights of angels edified in the
titular fortress. Recommended April 2013 |
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Eagleton, Terry Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate Nonfiction |
| This recommendation is of a limited nature, due to the
subject matter at hand — but Eagleton addresses even this peculiar
situation within these pages. Originally delivered as one of the ongoing
(and extremely prestigious) "Terry" (no relation) lectures at Yale
University, in 2008, this book further develops many of the arguments
originally presented there, and provides more context, while at 169
pages, Eagleton doesn't belabour the point. In essence, the book demonstrates
a sophisticated, irreverent weapon in the defence of faith and theology
as against the blunt and ignoble attacks of the "New Atheism". For
Eagleton's purpose, this "bloodless" rationalism is best embodied
in the writings of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, whom
Eagleton humorously (but deliberately) conflates as "Ditchkins" throughout.
To be fair, though, Eagleton spares no quarter, and resituates religion
outside the grasp of religious fundamentalism (addressing both Christian
and Islamic varieties) and firmly within a theological context, "one
whose subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity
itself". A truly powerful contemporary philosophical statement that
deserves to be appreciated (and wielded as necessary). Recommended April 2013 |
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Dudycz Lupescu, Valya The Silence of Trees Fiction |
| Nadya, the matriarch of a large Ukrainian-American family
settled in Chicago, has witnessed the horrors of the twentieth century
first-hand, but cannot share her past for fear of disappearing completely,
of drowning in the humiliation of powerlessness overwhelming every
inclination to individual enfranchisement. Nadya's twisted visions
recall too many possible interpretations, all horrible, and an unceasing
regret. She succumbs to a shame pursuing her from a homeland fled.
The narrative is a first-person confession of the causes and resolutions
to which the reader is witness, a testimonial encounter that reveals
a redemption impossible to live without. The communication between
generations is at the heart of the story, and Nadya's perspective
grants us an ability to more fully appreciate the precious flow of
time from life to death, oftentimes all too rapid and sometimes seemingly
still. Her children, American-born, become her salvation, and the
stories that she eventually confesses will, in turn, be echoes of
the stories that fashioned her own youth. The children of immigrants
always face these silent ghosts, ever-present yet desperately ignored.
Not just the existence of stories, but their expression and sharing,
are what give us life, and bestow our immortal souls unto the hearts
of future generations. This story of the disintegration and reintegration
of a woman in mythology and history conquers that trepidation of silence.
This book is a beautiful homage to a particular experience well familiar
to many families in the Pittsburgh region (and every/elsewhere). However,
Dudycz Lupescu writes with a simplicity, respect, curiosity, romance,
and authenticity resonating with a well-rewarded audience of diverse
readers. Recommended March 2013 |
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Morley, Christopher Parnassus on Wheels Fiction |
| An adventure story that has a great deal to say about
education, writers, writing, reading, and books. An early road novel(la)
that has as its primary and featured mode of transportation a wagon
suitable for living and for shelving (and selling) books. Three extraordinarily
feisty characters who prior to the action in this novel have spent
the majority of their time cooking, farming, rambling, and writing,
and with whom the reader becomes best familiar through their fighting,
selling, landing in jail, or lying to the authorities. This tongue-in-cheek
account of the metamorphosis of a provincial spinster is a delight
to sentimental book-lovers and romantic types alike (particularly
the late-blooming). This book proved so popular when published that
Morley would write a sequel, The
Haunted Bookshop. Recommended February 2013 |
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Kerouac, Jack On the Road Fiction |
| The author Jack Kerouac, while helping to introduce "beat"
to the world, was hardly a "beatnik." The man knew how to think and
(despite Capote's weak witticism) how to write, and with On the
Road, did for the U.S. stultified 1950's society what the atom
bomb did for conventional warfare: made people think twice about the
consequences of living — and dying — with presumption. One doesn't
simply read Kerouac; even when you're slap-happy from his amphetamine-driven
plot and babbling rants and swaggering ignorance and would rather
be reading something else anywhere else, there is something unmistakably
honest in his observations. In this overture to the "Duluoz Legend,"
"one enormous comedy" consisting of the majority of his novels (ending
with the spectacularly muted final chord, Vanity
of Duluoz), Kerouac begins an asymptotic narrative approaching
a felt truth of the twentieth-century American experience. Recommended February 2013 |
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Becker, Jean (director) My Afternoons with Margueritte DVD |
| In a world devoid of love, Germain has been groping his
way blindly. Functionally illiterate, knowledge eludes him. Meeting
Margueritte during an introduction of pigeons in a park, the two share
a friendly moment and the completion of an education. Margueritte
is everything Germain is not: old, thin, poetic. The antithetical
pair will redeem one another in ways that neither could ever anticipate.
Margueritte will feel love, and Germain will feel brilliance. A perfect
movie for those who believe in the power of language, and the inspiration
of all kinds of love. Recommended February 2013 |
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| Demarest, David P., (editor) From These Hills, From These Valleys Fiction |
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| An illustrated literary album of western Pennsylvania,
this anthology presents fictional snapshots of Pittsburgh and environs
from earliest European settlement to the late 20th century. Each selection
– either a short story or an excerpt from a longer novel – provides
an incisive glance into shaded narratives refracting the echoes of
a diversity of people and experience. Here, history is just another
character, the hills a mood, the valleys an improvised event. The
book serves as a warm invitation to pursue the authors and works receding
into the past, while anticipating the creativity that our region continues
to inspire. Recommended January 2013 |
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| Villagers Becoming a Jackal Music |
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| "Becoming a Jackal" is the debut long-play presentation
of the songwriting of Conor J. O’Brien, an Irish singer and multi-instrumentalist
with the band Villagers. Comfortable manipulating multiple harmonic
forms integrated into deceptively simple melodies, Villagers plays
to open minds while shifting sonic structures to demand attentive
listening from even the most cynical listener. With ambiguous personal
themes and fragile voice alternately buoyant and submerged, O'Brien
understates microcosmic observations draped in dark metaphors – a
musical analogue to Christopher
Wool's stenciled text painting hanging inside the rear entrance
to the Carnegie Museum of Art: both provide beautiful puzzles to reconsider
those moments simultaneously past and anticipated. Recommended December 2012 |
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McCleery, William Wolf Story Fiction |
| Originally published in 1947, and now republished after
years in and out of print as part of the incredibly generous efforts
of the New
York Review Children's Collection to reinforce the indispensability
of children's literature as a touchstone for a life enriched by the
imagination, Wolf Story is, quite simply, the story of a
man telling a story to his son. McCleery clearly draws upon experience,
and this saccharescent little tale is saved from devouring its full
weight in guilty pleasure by a warm but thoroughly biting sense of
honest observational humor throughout. McCleery wrote a book for his
son that is, essentially, about the narratives, explanations, and
justifications told (or read) to children when they are young. The
father in the story, patiently creating an entertaining whopper of
a "wolf story" at the request of his son, is almost constantly interrupted
by the young listener, put upon by the child to embellish, contort,
alter, and otherwise have the story conform more to what the boy wants
from the story, than what his father's imagination invents, including
moral and practical editorial asides, for the sake of his child. The
edification of the book lies within this tension, much to the merriment
of the reader. Presumably, both (author / father and reader / child)
emerge happily satiated, albeit in strikingly distinct ways. A glorious
book: read it to yourself, or to another, but read it. Recommended December 2012 |
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Larcenet, Manu Ordinary Victories Graphic Novel |
| With Ordinary Victories and its concluding volume,
Ordinary
Victories: What is Precious, Manu Larcenet describes the
common state of humanity in our contemporary moment. Ordinary
Victories is a primeval and profound story of a young man whose
wounds of anxiety – both psychological and physical – are both caused
by and exposed to a world in which descriptions of reality do not
satisfy sense observations, and the twisted rhetoric of reason opposes
empty allegiances and convenient justifications. Marco, a young documentary
photographer – struggling to bridge equivocal worlds between which
lie the chasm of a profound insecurity witnessed in unpredictable
panic attacks – and the son of a shipyard worker, presents the foil
from which the conflicts arise, and those we meet through him expose
the vulnerability of our own lives: with so many of our families separated
by distance, Marco’s mother explains the root of rootlessness, as
she unsentimentally divulges the necessity of workers to follow the
money; with so many of our soldiers abroad, and many returning home
damaged, Marco’s neighbor confesses the fathomless pain of political
necessity, as he recounts participation in a futile war and its tortured
aftermath; with so many of us thrown out of closing mills, factories,
and corporations, the shipyard workers express frustration at economic
realities, embodying the desperation of confronting seemingly anachronistic
skills. Predictably, his psychoanalyst, and less predictably, his
aging parents, his brother, his girlfriend, his neighbor, and his
cat (named, appropriately, “Adolf”), are behind and around him, both
supporting and forcing him to find a way of navigating a moral ambiguity
that he’d until now been indulging in photojournalism, isolation,
and medication. In art as sensitive as Marco himself, Larcenet depicts
these battles and others, and in Marco offers a spark of hope. Larcenet
is not exploitative in peeling apart the folds of skin to expose wounds;
he allows the curious and vulnerable reader to appreciate both pain
and sublimation by unsettling the eye with aesthetic nuance, as Marco’s
tectonic states of mind and shifting realities are revealed in distinct
graphic styles. The medium, a graphic novel, belies the notion that
serious literature is strictly textual by capturing emotion in turns
of attentive art. The reader’s glance is enraptured by the eyes of
the characters, each betraying the honest expressiveness of which
the heart is capable in the most desolate silence, beyond words. Larcenet
illustrates the struggle in all of its various perspectives, and succeeds
brilliantly: arguably, nothing has yet been published in the 21st
century that so purely and transparently records the fragility of
our decisions and lives as insecure individuals. This essential work
of art successfully represents the tangling ambiguities of the sources
of fear and love, attraction and repulsion, and unravels how these
emotive responses cling to each other to create authenticity within
the person. A beautiful story about all the colors of life, Larcenet
illuminates and celebrates all of our “ordinary victories”. Recommended November 2012 |
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| Rolland, Romain Jean-Christophe Fiction |
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| As we enter the fall months and look about for various
means to defeat the isolating influence of the approaching cold winds
and heavy snows, I wonder if readers might accept the testimony of
a recent experience of mine in their efforts to abide. For a few months
this summer, I closely followed the words of Romain Rolland in his
novel, Jean-Christophe, about the life of a composer in the
early years of the twentieth century. The geography of the novel is
a large palette of Western Europe, and the approximately 1,500 pages
offer the broadest canvas upon which a writer can manifest a description
of his vision. In contrast to other novels of this epic length, Rolland
does not overpopulate the text. He is more interested in exploring
and sharing the vast spectrum of human experience from a microcosmic
perspective: Jean-Christophe Krafft (born on the first page, he dies
on the last). The relatively few actors are each revealed in all of
their glorious complexity. Rolland's brilliance is demonstrated on
each page, as his speculations, meditations, and interpretations offer
a rebirth of the spirit. The narrative follows the mind of Jean-Christophe
in his attempts to make sense of life, exploring the tension between
collective existence and individual reason. In spite of his artistic
aspirations and blustery personality, the empathic Jean-Christophe
agonizes and celebrates a youth, an adolescence, and an adulthood
that immediately resonate with any reader — not because the character
is so immediately universal, but because through him, each reader
will identify with the truths so profoundly described by Rolland.
Rolland writes of a context that reflects, and a particular character
who embodies, what it means to be alive to all people and at all times.
A glow emanates from deep within the core of the story that slowly
warms the heart with a dedicated sense of self-appreciation and -compassion,
even to renewed respect and understanding. Jean-Christophe
is an insanely detailed portrait of existence; while both brilliant
and maddening, Rolland (and so the reader) considers everything. A
reader cannot evade the effect of this book, but will be filled with
a grateful humility towards the struggles and ambitions that life
implies, and the worth and significance of hope and resignation, living
and dying: passionate reading, from the highest pitches to the lowest
depths of the soul. Rolland won the Nobel Prize for literature in
1915, "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production
and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described
different types of human beings" (so said the Scandinavians). Recommended October 2012 |
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Bonosky, Phillip Burning Valley Fiction |
| Burning Valley is perhaps the most political
novel of Southwestern Pennsylvania ever written. Published in 1953,
the book is set in the depths of a hollow on the outskirts of Duquesne,
Pennsylvania, in the years after World War I. Bonosky structures his
story around the various ties that bind: a cat's cradle strung between
actors. At issue is the character of Benedict Bulmanis, a son of Lithuanian
immigrants. He desperately attempts to flee from the poverty and consequent
degradation and disintegration of his community by withdrawing into
the Church. Benedict grows increasingly despondent as the institution
fails to provide him with the convenience of clearly drawn lines between
good and evil. The adolescent obsessed with being worthy of the otherworldly
salvation offered by the Catholicism of his heritage is unable to
apply traditionally absolute moral tenets in a reliably predictable
way and falls unceasingly short of recognized ideals. Benedict's ability
to maintain the boundaries between worlds – moral and immoral – gradually
weakens as the community in which he lives betrays the universality
of the laws it professes. The letters that arrive in the houses of
the hollow announce a threat by the bank (and the accompanying force
of the police) – serving a company in its efforts to expand – to evict
the diverse residents from their uniform homes. With justifications
ripped from headlines past and present, the company advertises itself
as the lifeblood of the community by providing employment, yet simultaneously
adopts policies that destroy the land, the people, and their aspirations.
Bonosky is most successful in underscoring the ambiguity of self-proclamations
of institutions that insinuate their way into our lives surreptitiously.
In conclusion, Bonosky illustrates a worldly salvation offered by
a union leader; for the local reader, however, the story more immediately
recalls an aspect of regional history guiltily fed down the memory
hole of our collective consciousness as rapidly as the hollow of Benedict's
birth is filled by the slag of the steel company. Ultimately, the
question of identity remains the same: between the groups we are born
into and the groups we choose, an individual reconciles the realities
and falsehoods of social, economic, and moral fluidity; in our attempts
at redemption, to Whom do we belong? Recommended September 2012 |
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Mitchell, Joseph Joe Gould’s Secret Nonfiction |
| From 1965 until his death in 1996, Joseph Mitchell never
published another word for The New Yorker, the magazine that
hired him in 1938 (and, importantly, never fired him). After the title
story in this volume originally appeared in the issue of September
19, 1964, Mitchell would steadfastly continue to appear, daily, at
his office, producing only an unnerving absence on blank leaves of
paper. The silence was considered (at least by others) to be a profound
case of "writer's block". Mitchell moved to New York City from North
Carolina at the age of 21 to be a reporter, and from 1929 until 1938
wrote for a variety of newspapers; in 1938, he was hired by The
New Yorker. His specialty was long-form journalistic portraits
of the fringes of the social order, humanizing “characters” neither
contemptuously nor out of pity. Mitchell offers no psychology, just
friendly introductions. These articles and stories are now collected
in two volumes: Up
in the Old Hotel and My
Ears Are Bent. He wrote for 35 years, and no more. Joe
Gould's Secret is a collection of two articles, the first ("Professor
Sea Gull") published in 1942, the second his last article from 1964,
both about Joe Gould, the sort of individual a reader simply cannot
imagine... he would have to be real in order to exist. Gould is a
bohemian (enough to sufficiently embody and personify any conception
of the word), an eccentric of tremendous acumen, and a writer – of
what he calls "An Oral History of Our Time" ("already," Mitchell writes
– in 1942, mind you, "eleven times as long as the Bible") – himself:
seemingly, in short, Mitchell's ideal subject. In these pages, Gould
manages to both define and destroy Mitchell's career as Mitchell unveils
the titular "secret". An underappreciated and underacknowledged artist
of nonfiction writing, Mitchell should certainly be considered a pioneer
of the form now described as “creative nonfiction”. This book is a
funhouse mirror... filled with reflections simultaneously enchanting
and horrifying, and an opportunity for the reader living in a meta-post-ironic
culture to experience at least some of the passion that comprises
and confounds genius. Recommended August 2012 |
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Rosenberg, Tina The Haunted Land: facing Europe's ghosts after Communism Nonfiction |
| After Tina Rosenberg spent years in Latin America researching
her equally provocative book, Children
of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America, her second
book, titled The Haunted Land, unravels as a kind of sequel
set in central Europe. Both books investigate the various methods
that societies have employed in confronting and condemning the actions
of recently collapsed despotic regimes. As a journalist, Rosenberg
explores the rather profound ramifications of truth extraction in
a simple and direct manner – mainly through interviews with some of
the most renowned dissident factions and deposed leaders of the various
regimes – and triumphs in her reflections and conclusions. The
Haunted Land is historically, politically, and philosophically
revelatory, and the writing is crystalline. In illustrating the mechanisms
of justice, Rosenberg details the relevant background, providing the
necessary historical and cultural contexts, and exposes the vulnerability
inherent to individuals obliged to the state. The kaleidoscopic interpretations
of the past reveal an aspect of a present political reality merciless
in its application: justice is a bitter pill to swallow; no one escapes
the diagnosis of complicity. Recommended July 2012 |
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Keillor, Garrison (editor) Good Poems Poetry |
| I hate poetry / (am not a poet, / nor do I want to be),
/ but this collection / is a stunning work indeed. / I read these
selections / without worry of elusions; / in fact, just the opposite
occurs / (I'm captivated, I suppose) — / my own life echoes / these
textual inner intimations / of existence, often silent, / or crowed,
or cursed, / writ large in verse. / In Keillor's introduction, / with
refreshing honesty / you can sense / as he pelts with his two cents
/ of the poetic pretense a repudiation. / This book I show / to the
amateur reader (like me) / who fears / lines too short to fill a page
/ or words that lend a rhyme. / Reassured now give it another go;
/ randomly, your brow will rise / in pleasant surprise. / Here you
are welcomed / by some who simply insist / that life can be quite
stunning / in its proud pedestals / in its humble crumbling / (and
sometimes even in words / plain enough to praise): / in a book! Recommended June 2012 |
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Troyanov, Iliya The Collector of Worlds Fiction |
| Sir Richard Francis Burton was an improbably larger-than-life
British explorer and writer of the nineteenth century, of so many
accomplishments and failures that any list attempting completeness
would be a fool's errand and, anyway, too long to string out here.
While the twentieth century effectively demonstrated that the stories
that constitute "history" depend largely upon the narrator, Troyanov,
writing in the twenty-first century, brilliantly demonstrates the
subjective nature of reality (without resorting to post-modernist
disorientation) by recounting Burton's life on three specific journeys
from various perspectives: that of Burton himself, and those of three
very different men who served his individualist whims. In South Asia,
the Middle East, and Africa, this fictionalized account of his life
tells a tale, with both devotion and escapism, of the translucent
boundaries between an anthropological curiosity and an imperialist
hubris. Combining the best of travel literature and historical fiction,
every reader will return from this journey altered in their appreciation
of the various facets that together make up a world, unmistakably
ours. Recommended June 2012 |
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Döblin, Alfred A People Betrayed Fiction |
| This epic novel forms the first part of November 1918:
a German revolution, a historical fiction of the failed socialist
uprising in Germany of 1918. A spectacular exercise of the literary
imagination of the long-neglected author Alfred Döblin, best known
for his book Berlin
Alexanderplatz, the story is told in a series of snapshots
— photographic in idea, but purely literary in execution; a collage
of portraits- and scenes-in-words builds a papier mâché wall upon
which Döblin slowly pieces together a pointillist mural. The montage
is an invaluable construction of one of those mysterious moments in
history when the masses decide to take the reigns of power and pilot
the state from the gutters of society. Döblin takes no pity on any
of the characters who enter and exit the stage -- some fictional,
some all too real -- and isn't attempting to toe a party line or remain
faithful to any particular historical interpretation of the events.
He merely wishes to preserve in a collective memory, utilizing a collective
process, a series of specific events following the bitter and humiliating
defeat of Germany in World War I, which led, eventually, to various
of the most tragic and inhumane events of the twentieth century. The
story is completed in its sequel, Karl
and Rosa. Recommended May 2012 |
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Poole, Ernest The Harbor Fiction |
| Ernest Poole won the first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,
awarded in 1918 for a second novel, His
Family. Most critics, however, assumed that the prize was
awarded to Poole in belated recognition for the excellence of his
first novel, The Harbor, published in 1915. This "proletarian"
novel doesn't merely tell another story of the working classes, but
attempts to describe the education of a middle class boy growing into
adulthood, and the simultaneous transition from an individual to a
social conscience that this development should imply. Oftentimes,
these revealing literary glimpses into the unpleasant living conditions
of the poor directly pitted uneducated masses against an impossibly
stubborn oligarchy. Poole succeeds here by writing the gray areas
of the ambiguous humanity strung out between a desire for security
and an inability to ignore injustice. A unique story, the reader is
not made susceptible to an overly sentimental vision, but is slowly
taken along a path immediately recognizable -- the definition of the
individual as a member of his community. Recommended April 2012 |
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Asimov, Isaac Foundation Science Fiction |
| Isaac Asimov's original "Foundation Trilogy" of novels,
consisting of Foundation, Foundation
and Empire, and Second
Foundation, is an interesting meditation on building a society
and civilization upon the collapse of a previous one. Inspired by
Edward Gibbon's monumental The
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Asimov
plays an optimistic twentieth-century Hobbes, curious about the causes
and interpretations of the fall of the Roman Empire. Perhaps more
significantly, he investigates the ingredients that humans consciously
and unconsciously select and neglect in their aspirations and inspirations
for progress. While all this may sound too heady, Asimov's greatest
success lies in couching profound macrocosmic considerations in conjoining
stories, like dominoes, filled with action and intrigue, love and
lust on an epic scale (centuries! galaxies! psychohistory!), involving
all sorts of characters betrayed by their microcosmic perspective—one
the reader can immediately relate to, despite the "science fiction."
The trilogy eventually expanded to include a wealth of other books
that take place within its universe, but these three are the only
recipients (ever!) of the Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" of
fantasy or science fiction. Recommended February 2012 |
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Tuten, Frederic Tintin in the New World: A Romance Fiction |
| In this meditation on adulthood, Frederic Tuten describes
the process of maturation as it might effect Tintin, the world-famous
boy reporter. This book provides a timely and important foil to Steven
Spielberg’s new movie. In flawless prose, Tuten attempts to describe
an intellectual adventure, rather than another pedestrian exploit
pursuing criminals that have won Tintin international acclaim. While
the main characters remain (Tintin, Captain Haddock, and of course,
Snowy), Tuten introduces a supporting cast of international types
from Thomas Mann's The
Magic Mountain, who alternately represent familiar ideas
and entirely confuse any discussion. It is not easy to say what exactly
is going on here. Ecology, history, sex, politics, art, economics,
dreams (and much more) are at least briefly considered. This novel
is, in a sense, "high" art (the rarified setting for much of the novel
is Machu Picchu). Yet its original cover art by the pop artist Roy
Lichtenstein suggests an experiment in appreciating the unexpectedly
profound depth of the most common terrains while highlighting a commonality
of the most sublime: take a beloved character, known and familiar,
and surprise us with how little we know. Recommended January 2012 |
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| Habe, Hans The Mission Fiction |
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| 1938: President Franklin D. Roosevelt extends an invitation
to the governments of the world to attend an international conference
at Évian-les-Bains, France, in order to address the growing problem
of refugees – particularly Jewish refugees – fleeing Nazi-occupied
Europe. While Germany officially boycotts the conference, the Nazis
secretly arrange to send a Jewish representative instead, with the
mission to offer up all of the Jews of Europe to the governments of
the world: salvation for sale, with a price list. According to the
author, only three newspapers bother to report the events. Hans Habe
was one of the journalists filing a report. In this novelization,
Habe provides an interior description of an international political
confrontation. Yet it is not a novel of history or politics, but a
novel about the opposition of the personal and the political, and
how this hostility defines our lives, and our living, every day—mostly,
with tragic consequences. Recommended December 2011 |
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Yang, Belle Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale Graphic Non-Fiction |
| In this one book, Belle Yang writes and draws two parallel
stories about two places. First and foremost, it is the author’s own
story, set in California: a memoir of personal redemption. After moving
back home to live with her parents, following college and a traumatic
relationship, she faces the desperate challenge of living up to failed
expectations, both her parents' and her own. Also, it is her father’s
story of his own arrival, set in China — a family history of generations
struggling against history, and with each other. Yang is easy to relate
to, as an imperfect being grappling with herself and fighting with
her parents — particularly with her father — despite her prior unsuccessful
attempts to escape the environment she continues to think is part
of the problem. She can't uncover a constructive method of belying
her insecurities or safely expressing her sense of self. The various
arguments with her father, however, ultimately prove rewarding: stories
begin to break through, underscoring the combative words. Yang, intrigued
by apparent similarities despite differences of time, geography, and
culture, begins to pay closer attention to the stories than to her
sense of frustration. The family stories, which Yang and her father
eventually agree to share (without the necessity of a shouting match),
demonstrate to Yang the subtle continuity with and participation in
the wider world that she, in her isolation, has never felt. Ultimately,
the responsibility she feels toward preserving these stories — in
effect, her own story — leads her out of painful isolation. The family,
separated, unites in this narrative to bring Yang's two halves back
together, writing and drawing. A story of finding your place in the
world should always be shared. Recommended November 2011 |
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