I mentioned in the last blog that I have a pretty heavy reading list for fall, so I'm trying to get started early. I am going to be sharing my train of thought on these in preparation for anticipated assignments. For a while now, I have made an effort to find authors outside of my own nationality. I've also attempted to include books outside my preferred genre. This is going to be a huge dose of that. So, lets get into the reading lists!
Children's Literature: Tale of Desperaux
I'm surprised at myself for having never read it. I'm sure there will be more coming in the syllabus, but this is the only book they recommend getting.
Race, Ethnicity, and Culture: Everything I Never Told You, I have read this once and will reread it for class. It is a heartbreaking but beautiful look at familial expectations, race, and loss. You meet a family on the morning they discover their daughter Lydia doesn't come down to breakfast. The frantic calls to people they thought were her friends reveal that she hasn't spoken to them in years. They discover a life slowly turning to isolation, all while the pressure to excel in school pushes her under. The speculation about and pressure under the panic of searching for their missing daughter highlights each family members relationship with Lydia and shows the audience the weight Lydia was under, but also the weight each family member places on themselves and their relationship with her. It's not an easy read, but Celeste Ng is a beautiful writer. Her prose keeps drawing me in.
Ceremony, The Bluest Eye, Night of the Living Rez, Passing, Beloved, Walking on Cowrie Shells, The Water Dancer, Interior Chinatown, Postcolonial Love Poem, The House of Broken Angels, They Call Us Enemies, The Tradition, Martin & Meditations on the South Valley, The Underground Railroad, Woman Hollering Creek, The Book of Unknown Americans, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Yellowface, Bad Cree, Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem,
Pop Culture Literature - True Crime: In Cold Blood, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Helter Skelter. I just finished Helter Skelter, which was a retelling of the facts and events from the prosecutor's perspective. The book was well organized to give you a sense of the timeline and the mistakes investigators made, along with how the information unfolded to the public. The author was definitely biased in his account of his own part in convicting Charles Manson and was very clear he did everything by the book, argued and built the case from almost nothing, despite the hindrances from investigators and interference from supervisors more concerned with politics than wisdom. The author also doesn't shy away from events and actions surrounding Charles Manson that imply supernatural activity. He doesn't embellish or interpret the action for the reader, which I appreciate greatly, he just states a fact. This allowed me to take in the story without an emotional response that might have hindered my ability to take it in. It also allows the reader to draw their own conclusions without sensationalism trying to evoke an emotional response.
Feel free to join me in reading any or all of these. I have had some of these books on my reading list for a while so I am looking forward to them. I love to read and I think that reading is one of the best ways to grow empathy and understanding. Some of these are going to be hard to read. I have avoided Killers of the Flower Moon because I knew it was going to break my heart.
