Dancing Free

Every Body Looking by Candace Iloh

New York : Dutton Books, [2020] 

403 p. ; 22 cm.

This is a book that gets better and better as you read it.  I wasn't really hooked at the beginning, but by the end I was turning the pages, and really rooting for college freshman, Ada, who is in her first year of college at the esteemed HBCU, Howard University.  Ada is a first generation Nigerian-American and has a devoted (but intensely religious) father who is divorced from her toxic mom. 

I really loved Ada's journey of embracing her real passion - to be a dancer - in the face of expectations from family to be a studious accounting major.  She also has to figure out her sexuality and what will make her life meaningful.

The book has received outstanding praise. It is a Michael Printz 2021 honor book and a 2020 National Book Award finalist! Like Elizabeth Acevedo's Poet X, it is written in verse, but it is organized in sections that have a staggered timeline - moving back and forth from high school, to college, to grade school. I liked Poet X better, but someone who likes dance, or a first year college experience, etc. might like this book as much or more. 

I would love to see how students respond to this book.  I will definitely recommend it to any student looking for a coming of age novel, a novel in verse, a book with a strong female lead, or just a read with a lot of heart.

Talent and Ego

Drawing Blood by Molly Crabapple
New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2015]
338 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 23 cm.

I added this book to our collection this year since it had received such glowing reviews.  Booklist in a starred review stated, "Jaw dropping, awe inspiring, and not afraid to shock....There's no one else like her; prepare to be blown away by both the words and pictures."

I was not so taken with this memoir.  Crabapple is a talented and hardworking artist, and she does have a lot of daring and moxie as she jumps into risky adventures of international travel and pushes and pushes to have her intense drawing-based artworks accepted in the competitive New York art world (and she works constantly at improving her drawing and painting skills). So far so good, but her tale is also one of a massive ego, and also one of ethical contradictions where she is both entranced with the debauched world of the super-rich, while at the same time disdainful of it.  It's interesting, but problematic.  

There is also her use of her conventional attractiveness to both support herself and gain access to the exclusive realms of the super rich.  She works as a nude model, works with strippers and burlesque performers - and writes about the interesting, hard, exploitative and dangerous work that entails, but also seems to accept and at times endorse the sexualization and commodification of women.  Again, it makes for interesting reading, but it is troubling in that it goes largely unchallenged.

So would I recommend this memoir?  Well, I'd definitely mention it to someone curious about contemporary bohemian life and about ways that people make it in the art world.  Did I find it inspiring or wonderful?  Not so much.

Too Sunny, but It is the Sun!

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
New York, N.Y. : Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, 2014
371 p. ; 24 cm.

This is a book that won me over.  Thirty or forty pages in, I was thinking, "It's just too overwrought; the writing is trying too hard." However, by the time I finished it, I was lost in it, and - honestly - kind of sad to be done with it.  Nelson achieves something that is very hard to do: the writing style captures the inner and emotional life of the narrator's point of view - and does this with two alternating narrators. Additionally, her novel manages to be interesting, thoughtful, emotional, and at times, truly profound.

I told a friend that I had really enjoyed I'll Give You the Sun, and they said, "What's it about?" I ended up saying things like,  "It's about a family falling apart.  It's about the passion for art.  It's about the secrets people keep.  It's about making art.  It's about falling in love.  It's about coming of age.  It's about death." So you get the idea.  There's a lot to like about this book.

I recommend checking out Jandy Nelson's web page, where you can see all the crazy praise that her book has received, and - what I loved best - take a look at the "Gallery" to see some of the art and hard work that inspires this novel.

This is definitely a book I'll be pointing students to. And yes, that is a hanging preposition!

    

A Terrible Time

All Involved by Ryan Gattis
New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2016.
372 p. ; 21 cm.

Gattis' novel won an Alex Award this year, an award recognizing books published for adults which have a high appeal for young adult readers.

All Involved is a powerful read and the author's site for the book is a good place to go for links to some of the history behind the novel.  

I can see why Gattis' book won an Alex Award, but I would definitely note that the content is very mature.  Set in the lawless, violent days of the LA upheaval (riot? insurrection? uprising?) the novel is gritty, violent, vulgar and disturbing.  However, it is hard to imagine a book about the LA Riots of 1992 that would be able to avoid some very upsetting and graphic episodes.  What makes this novel exceptional its use of seventeen interconnected 1st person narratives that tell the story of six days of unrest that followed the acquittal of police officers unknowingly filmed as they savagely beat Rodney King nearly to death.  In this novel we see gangs settling old scores, sweeping in innocent and not-so-innocent people with savage violence and betrayal.  We also see the humanity of people working to save the injured, the dying and buildings that have been set ablaze.

I found this a compelling read, even if somewhat demoralizing.  It is a book that would appeal to students who are interested in urban violence, gang life and extreme situations - think Rodriguez's Always Running or Reymundo Sanchez' Once a King - and, like those books, it is one that is for mature readers.

Another Great Graphic Novel

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
232 p. : chiefly ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Alison Bechdel has been creating comics for many years for her syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For which has a small but significant following.  Her book Fun Home, which had both popular and critical success is likely to bring her work to a much wider audience - something she apparently was not prepared for.

The praise for this work - which calls to mind another standout graphic novel Stitches - is well deserved.  It is a rich memoir/graphic novel which is subtle and nuanced as it tells the story of Bechdel's complex, rich, and troubled family of origin - led by parents whose frustrated dreams and repressed sexuality created an intense environment of simmering anger and emotional detachment.

The amazing thing about Fun Home is that in addition to illustrating the conflicts and tensions in her home,  Bechdel is able to convey what a rich and tangled upbringing she had.  Her father and mother were both aspiring intellectuals/artists and much of the power of her work lies in her ambivalence toward the legacy of her family - and her refusal to either condemn or condone the shortcomings of her parents.  Her memoir also deserves praise the ways in which it circles around themes and events the story instead of following a singular straightforward narrative and the ways in which she finds echos of her upbringing in film, myths and novels.

I would highly recommend this graphic novel to students who are interested in a multi-layered, complex coming of age stories and family stories dealing with secrets, conflict and even death - since her father's apparent suicide (possibly an accident) is at the heart of this fine work.  The novel does deal with some mature emotional and sexual issues, so it might not be suitable for immature readers.

Hardy with Heart

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
New York : Signet Classics, c2006.
xxi, 407 p. : map ; 18 cm.

It had been quite awhile since I read a Thomas Hardy novel, but I have such fond memories of reading his Jude the Obscure during a summer when I was in college. Hardy's writing style is a bit florid at times (after all he was writing in the late Victorian period) but the payoff is that his writing is poignant, lush and very attuned to the beauty of the English countryside and the complicated texture of human relationships.

Tess was no exception and did not disappoint me.  The novel shocked his contemporaries with its frank treatment of the double standards of sexual morality experienced by the main character, Tess.  Tess is clearly the heroine of this novel, and the tragedies she suffers expose the hypocrisies of social attitudes toward sexuality, class, marriage and gender.

One of the things that makes a Hardy novel so enjoyable is its lively and riveting plot.  There are many scenes where the dramatic impact of the plot hinges on one circumstance that - if slightly different - could have dramatically changed the outcome of the novel and the fortunes of its characters.  In that sense it is sometimes like reading good history where the reader is always thinking, "If only...."

Tess is a very readable, engaging novel and should appeal to any high school student who is looking for something readable, but "literary."