Disoriental by Negar Djavadi
Kaleidoscopic storytelling swirls through the entire 20th-century history of Iran, as well as four generations of a Persian family, giving context for the punk rock lesbian main character--Kimia Sadr--who's living in exile in Paris where she has to lie about her marital status in order to receive treatment at a fertility clinic. I was totally engrossed in this delightful translation by Tina Kover.
I devoted myself to studying the way he handled the shaving brush and razor, trying to memorize his technique so I could duplicate it when I was a grown-up. Basically, before other developments occurred, I knew I was a girl--but I was sure that, when I grew up, I would become not a woman, but a man.
"He went to America?!"
"That's what I just said."
"What does he do over there?"
"What do you think he does? He's a Sadr. He shakes his little pipe and makes babies."
To really integrate into a culture, I can tell you that you have to disintegrate first, at least partially, from your own. You have to separate, detach, disassociate. No one who demands that immigrants make "an effort at integration" would dare look them in the face & ask them to start by making the necessary "effort at disintegration." They're asking people to stand atop the mountain without climbing up it first.
What perfect serendipity for me to read this book and the next one concurrently. Both are by queer nonwhite authors, writing about experiences of exile and how global politics have shaped individual lives.
If They Come for Us by Fatima Asghar
An outstanding collection of vibrant poetry--in forms that range from traditional to experimental--and cover a spectrum of emotions: fierce, sad, hopeful, raw, vulnerable, angry, playful and joyful. Orphaned young, Pakistani American Asghar tackles issues of identity, belonging, racism, misogyny, and the trauma passed down through generations by the Partition of India.
I promised myself I'd be naked,
here, in all this nature, but the first day
I found a tick clinging to my arm hair for dear
life & decided no way I'm exposing
my pussy to the elements. My love
for nature is like my love for most things:
fickle & theoretical. Too many bugs
& I want a divorce.
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
A unique and poetic novel told in fragments, a collection of experiences of an Inuit coming of age: from childhood through to motherhood, and of learning shamanism along the way. Gritty realism with fantastical touches. Illustrations by Jaime Hernandez are a bonus. Debut author Tagaq is an internationally-known throat singer.
The windows have garbage bags taped over them for curtains and we lock the door by jamming a butter knife into the door frame. We stuff some socks into the hole where the doorknob used to be. We have some naphtha, gas, nail polish, rubber cement, and Wite-Out. It's a Bring Your Own Solvents party and I want to let the colours shine.
After death my body is the newborn of inanimate objects. Maybe my minerals will come back quickly as a plant or insect. Maybe parts of me will become the Old Blood in millennia, the Old Blood we suck out of the earth to burn and destroy the surface, to burn and eviscerate the clouds. Leave the blood in her. Let the deep black of time stay where it belongs. Compressed and ancient, we force the Old Blood to work in the wrong time, at the wrong pressure.
Tuesday evening I venture with my dog out onto the tundra. The summer night is dusty and dry. The clouds make patterns that look like a Morse code warning: The summer will not last. This is life. Eat it now.
I realize that birds see in a completely different way than we humans do. We are slow and lumbering, our language is deep and muddy. Our confinement to the ground elicits pity. They look at us as we look upon the trees, slow but full of longevity. The trees look at the rocks that way. Rocks look at the mountains that way. Mountains look at the water that way. Earth looks at the sun that way. Everyone has an elder.
There is a celebration when we bring the babies home. People come over and bring food. Auntie brings fresh muqtak and uujuq. There is baked char, fried char, frozen char, and dried char.
Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
Ghosts and shapeshifters and psychopaths, oh my! Outstanding Indigenous literature. Second in a trilogy, this held me enthralled. Start with the first, Son of a Trickster, before jumping into this one, in which newly-sober Jared moves to Vancouver from the tiny community of Kitimat, B.C. Jared is the son of Trickster--Wee'git--and a powerful Heiltsuk witch. Will he ever step into his magical potential?
There's a brilliantly comic passage that involves a Tim Hortons drive-thru, but I'm saving that for my next (the third!) compilation of Timmies cameos in CanLit. (See here and here for the first two installments.)
The continent of North America rides on a giant shell called a tectonic plate, one of the great slabs of mantle and crust separating all living things from the earth's molten core. The speed at which the North American plate crawls across the planet makes glaciers seem like rabbits on Red Bull.
We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night by Joel Thomas Hynes
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| Shawn Mooney at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon in August 2018. Our buddy read selection is in his stack. |
It's bleak, violent, and very funny. The narrative voice is in a distinctly scrappy Newfoundland dialect. One of my favourite expressions is when Johnny describes someone as the "toughest motherfucker ever tried on socks." My heart went out to Johnny, a petty criminal on a cross-Canada pilgrimage. (Of course there was another Tim Hortons reference for my collection. Stay tuned.)
He wants to know where Johnny is from and when Johnny tells him he roars laughing and thinks it's great and right away says how he heard a wicked Newfie joke and starts tellin it to Johnny. Johnny cuts him off though, wont let him tell the joke, but instead asks him if he heard the one about the fella who picked up a hitchhiker and got his face smashed in for tryna tell a Newfie joke.
Do you know that one? Stop me if youve heard it already.
Milkshake is about all I can handle these days. And no chewing going on in our John-John's immediate future, that's for sure. Thank Christ me teeth are bashed out cause all I gotta do is move my top lip outta the way and poke the straw in the gap where the teeth used to be. Life is good.
On the Camino by Jason
This is a wholly different kind of pilgrimage than in We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night. Jason, the pseudonym for Norwegian cartoonist John Arne Saeternoy, is a very different kind of man, too: extremely introverted. This is a memoir in comics format about his experience walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain when he turned 50. As in his fiction, Jason draws his people as anthropomorphic animals. His black and white clear-line art depicts encounters with other pilgrims that remind me of my own adventures on walking trips. He also includes wonderful flights of imagination: humorous insights into what goes on inside a brilliant mind with nothing to do but walk and think. Quiet and lovely.
In San Justo de la Vega I discover that I have a hole in one of my socks. In Astoria I buy a pair of sports socks for 21 euros and a Ryanair plane ticket from Santiago to Barcelona, which costs 23 euros.
My Brother's Husband, Volume 2, by Gengoroh Tagama
The story is laid out in right-to-left Japanese manga. The black and white art is highly realistic with a pleasing balance of funny and poignant scenes. Start with volume 1, if you haven't yet read it. And, if you are new to manga, this is an easy entry into the format.
Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica LoveA heartwarming picture book for all ages, in which a little boy is encouraged to celebrate his inner mermaid. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. The story starts wordlessly on the endpapers and there's even a epilogue on the final endpapers. A cameo on the inside dust jacket shows a mermaid in Julian's selection in the mirror. It's details like this that add up to a glorious package that would make a great gift.
And the Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick NessA re-read. I listened to the audiobook last month and enjoyed it very much. (It's only about 3 hours long, performed by Cassandra Campbell.) Rovina Cai's expressionist illustrations in the print edition made my re-read an even better experience. A thought-provoking and powerful twist on Moby Dick, told from the perspective of a whale. The fable explores blind loyalty, obsession, revenge, and our capacity for violence.
For there are devils in the deep, but worst are the ones we make.
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver Audiobook [17 h] performed by the author
Alternative ideas about family, plus issues of social justice and environmentalism, give lots of depth to this dual narrative set in the same New Jersey urban location, separated in time by nearly 200 years. Fascinating characters and a thoughtful storyline--just what I've come to expect from Kingsolver.
"Vineland does not need a second newspaper. Can you see any reason for it, Thatcher? It causes confusion about everything and encourages shadows of doubt."
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
Audiobook [10 h] performed by the author
Most lexicographers had no clue that such a career path existed until they were smack in the middle of it.
If I--who read the dictionary for pleasure from a young age--had known such a career existed, lexicography would have been my number one career choice, so it's no surprise that I loved this memoir/documentary/social commentary. It's hilarious and full of fascinating trivia. If you are the kind of person who reads my blog, I'm sure this is the kind of book you would like.
People do not come to the dictionary for excitement and romance; that's what encyclopedias are for.
Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions
by Alberto Manguel
Audiobook [4 h] performed by James Cameron Stewart
When Manguel and his husband had to permanently leave their home in France, their huge library had to be boxed up. I enjoyed these fragmentary musings about books and reading so much that I listened to the audiobook twice. It's only about 4 hours long.
If every library is autobiographical, its packing up seems to have something of a self obituary.
I had on the shelves dozens of very bad books which I didn't throw away in case I ever needed an example of a book I thought was bad.
In literature, dreams often serve to bring the impossible into the fabric of everyday life, like mist through a crack in the wall. Unfortunately, it often happens that dreams are brought in as an alibi for the unbelievable plot.
Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Thompson-Spires writes with refreshing verve, tackling troubling issues of contemporary society, unafraid of unlikeable protagonists. Her loosely interlinked short stories showcase the diversity of middle class African Americans. Whip smart, innovative and funny.
He was two shades lighter than Brian, but also believed himself two shades blacker, as far as those things can be measured.
I really hope that in addition to help for her lies and early signs of psychosis, you will get Christinia some help for her weight problem before she ends up--and I say this respectfully, so I hope you won't be offended in the least--like you.
The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O'Neill
Until I read this, I didn't know that what was missing from my life is this gentle, oversized graphic novel from New Zealand, featuring children interested in unusual careers (blacksmithing; tea dragon husbandry), people living with disabilities (memory loss; parapalegia), and two wise gay men in a long-term relationship (one is a tea expert). And, oh yes, only one among all of the characters is human. A story about friendship, suitable for ages 8 and up, with beautiful full-colour art in rich tones of green, teal, cinnamon and salmon pink.
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