Who's Messed Up?

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe

New York, NY : Balzer + Bray, an imprint of an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

372 p. ; 22 cm.      

I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this book when I first started it.  It has that YA "thing" of a main character who is so witty and facile with banter and snark that he makes Holden Caulfield look like Greg Brady after a nap. But the book got some favorable reviews and even won a prize from YALSA - the prestigious Morris Award (2020) for debut YA novel. 

Funny thing about this book, though, is that it has a way of growing on you.  The whole set-up of a Haitian-Canadian teen moving to Austin, TX for his junior year of high school has a lot of potential.  As Canada (the nickname Austonians gift Norris with) adjusts to the hellish heat and big strangeness of Texas, USA he starts to pick up some friends, a job, and even a smart, artsy girlfriend.  The relationships really make this novel work.  And some striking twists and turns in friendship and romance help Norris to see that maybe his condescension says something about his own jerkishness, not just everyone else's.  I also like how issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and racism are woven naturally into the story and handles with a light, but substantive touch. 

I couldn't help but like this book, it's clever, funny, and a bit overdone at times, but ultimately it has a lot of heart.  I'd definitely recommend it to a student.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia 

New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of Harpercollins Publishers, [2019]

363 p. ; 22 cm.      

To say that Mejia's debut YA novel has gotten good reviews would be an understatement. Booklist gave it a starred review, it snagged an excellent write up on NPR, and other less notable reviews also highly recommended it. 

I think the praise is well deserved for the premise and set-up of the book; the patriarchal world it creates has it's own origin religion story which underlies it's elite family set-up where husbands have two wives: a Primera who is hard-core business, brains, and no-nonsense, and a Segunda who must be gorgeous, entertaining, and ready to bear children.  The elite - a minority in this fictional world - rely on the exploitation of everyone else, an exploitation enforced by police, violence and legal privilege.  Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Which is exactly what makes it a powerful novel.  I also liked the main characters and the first part of the book's world building.  

My only issues with the book are with the plotting of the resistance and with the rushed descriptions of the rebellion.  I just never believed the main character's acts of joining the rebellion. And the major conflicts of violence seemed a bit rushed and confused to me.  

That being said, it's still an enjoyable read and one that should appeal to a lot of different readers.  It's also got an unexpected lesbian romance simmering away at the center which - though rushed to me - is sweet and unexpected.  

Finally the book is written by a Latinx woman and is touches on issues of xenophobia, border violence, resistance, dangers of patriarchy and economic exploitation - so it is very relevant to the times we are experiencing now in the US. Would I recommend it. You bet.

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

1st ed.

447 p. ; 22 cm. 

A mother and her two teen daughters relocate to the wrong island to move past the grief of the father's recent death. It's the wrong island because it has a history of being a place where every ten years or so a girl goes missing - and one more has just disappeared before they arrive.  And the pace of these crimes is picking up fast.

This is not a novel about any ordinary human serial killer.  The villain is a supernatural monster whose feasting on its victims is pretty gruesome stuff!  I won't give a ton of spoilers, except to note that the newly arrived family is soon right at the center of the action,  along with two other teen females who live on the island.  Though most on the island have no clue about the monster, it does have allies and enemies among humans - both on the island and back on the mainland.  

A lot of the "fun" of this novel is learning bit by bit what's happening and who's involved - and with the way the plot picks up its pace so that by the end you are turning pages to see just what's going to happen.  Along the way there are deaths, betrayals, love, romance and danger (of course).

For me, I didn't care so much for the supernatural elements of the novel - the natural world is tied up in the paranormal events in which horses, moths, the sea and even the rocks all get involved.  But there is a strong gothic-horror atmospherism to this tale, along with interesting characters, and a strong underlying feminism that keeps it all moving. So if you are into thrilling horror with a strong infusion of action and paranormal energies and monsters then this novel will keep you satisfied right to its last page.      

Heavy Lifting

Stamped from the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

New York : Nation Books, 2017.  

xi, 582 p. ; 24 cm. 

 

Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning is a long read [more than 500 pages], a painful read, a hard read, and yet a necessary and worthwhile read. As a Kirkus review noted, one can dispute that this is the "definitive" history of racist ideas, but the book is an indispensable tool for coming to terms with the anti-Black racism in the US - and is a powerful tool in offering ways to wrestle with it.  

Kendi, positioning himself as an anti-racist, posits that the project of racism in the US advances not only through the efforts of segregationists (who consider Black people as inherently inferior to whites), but also with the help of assimiliationists who consider black people/culture as being pathological (due to racism) and yet capable of eventually achieving the "standards" of  the best of white culture and civilization. For Kendi, anti-racism is the force that can dismantle the damages of segreationism and assimilationism.  It is a powerful idea.

Kendi traces the history of racism and anti-racism in the US through five historic persons - Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angel Davis.  I found the section on Angela Davis to be the most satisfying in that I think it best illuminates the way that capitalism and racism are inextricably bound up.  Davis is also a great role model for the importance of intersectionality. 

This book took me almost a month to get through, so it might be a struggle for most YA readers.  But I'll definitely get the YA version written with Jason Reynolds for this library and look forward to reading through it.

 

 

What Brown's Gonna Do With You

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

New York : Riverhead Books, 2014.

458 p. ; 21 cm.

When a book wins the National Book Award (2013), that definitely puts in on one's radar - and so I brought home The Good Lord Bird with me during the spring and summer pandemic lock-down.  

This novel is a rollicking, funny, provocative and hard to put down read.  It follows the adventures of Henry, an enslaved 12 year old freed in Kansas by the passionate and violent abolitionist, John Brown.  Mistaking Henry to be Henrietta, a girl, Brown "adopts" him into his band and nicknames her "Little Onion." The novel is told by Henry who - with his maturing over about three years, his change from enslaved to free, and his passing as a girl - allows McBride to explore many angles of John Brown's movement and eventual assault on Harper's Ferry.  McBride is able to present shifting and complex takes on fanaticism, recklessness, posturing, violence, racism, slavery, sexism, opportunism, danger, and sacrifice by giving his smart-alecky, wry and cynical main character center stage.

The cover of the book has a quote from the New York Times referencing Mark Twain, and I definitely felt the sensibilities of Twain's character Huck Finn in McBride's Henry.  

The novel is not without provocation.  Henry - suffering the harsh, spartan life of being with a paramilitary band on the frontier - at times wishes he were back being enslaved.  Fredrick Douglass comes in for some harsh treatment as a "diva" of the antislavery circuit and as an intemperate sexual harasser.  But all in all, the novel is a brilliant run through a historical episode in US history that still reverberates to this day.  I would definitely recommend it to a reader who wants a good literary read that will grab them and not let go.

Two Days by the Sea

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 

Boston : Mariner Books, [2005], c1955.

xii, 209 p. ; 21 cm.     

I decided to read To the Lighthouse during the stay at home time this spring since I haven't read Virginia Woolf in a long time and it seemed like a short read and a chance to catch up on a "classic." 

This is not a novel you read for the narrative.  Most of the book happens on two single days separated by an interval of ten years. Within those ten years Europe is ripped apart by WWI and one of the central characters of part one dies.  However the novel is more interested in the impressions of various characters and the complex inner life of the characters. Instead of narrative being the engine of the novel, the movement of the novel is driven by impressionist and poetic writing.

There is much to admire in Woolf's writing, but I have to say it took me longer to read than I expected.  It's a book one savors for its stylistic accomplishments.  I think reading it during the pandemic, made it harder to truly enjoy the rich artistry of the writing.  With all that said, it's not really a book I would recommend to a student, unless they are really interested in literature as an art form.  In that case, I would recommend it as a significant milestone in English fiction, one that charted new territory for the genre.

Cruel School

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

New York : Doubleday, [2019]  

213 p. ; 22 cm.

 

After reading Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, I knew I wanted to read his latest novel - The Nickel Boys.  Underground Railroad was brutal at times, but the fantastic nature of the novel helped me as a reader keep it's terror at bay - there is no such consolation in Nickel Boys, especially when you realize that the novel is firmly grounded in the real-life horrors that occurred in the Dozier School for Boys in the Florida panhandle. 

Whitehead's novel is set in the mid-60s and involves a stand-up African American high school student - Elwood- who is headed for college near Tallahassee.  But being a young black man in Jim Crow Florida lands Elwood in a reform school for boys that is run with sadistic cruelty, racism and corruption.  There, the idealistic Elwood faces the barbarism of the school and becomes friends with the more savvy Turner who is willing to help them both survive (boys in the school are sometimes killed by the staff both in real-life and in the novel). The novel is a taught and terrifying story of survival in the cruelest of environments. The reader never knows what will happen to the characters right up until the shocking ending. 

As I mentioned in my post about The Underground Railroad, Whitehead is a superb writer and - if you can endure the cruelty of the events - the novel is well worth reading.