1 February The Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
I have both read and listened to the audio version of this brilliant book by Geraldine Brooks. Brooks is possibly the most thorough historical fiction writer I have yet to encounter. She takes readers deeply into the experience of a small North England village during the final major plague of 1666, recounting the events through the eyes of Anna Frith, a maid-of-all-works who is hired out by the wealthy rector and his wife, and who is also wife to a miner and mother to two children. Perhaps it is the eyes of a post-pandemic reader, but there is something so vitally true about this book and its experience of community and isolation during plague times that just tears at my heart each time I experience this book. Whether reading or listening, you will be transported to this world, which is deeply and beautifully arrayed before the reader with the level of detail and humanity only Brooks can achieve.
1 February Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down by Anna Dickson James
This collection of short stories is a combination of speculative fiction and realism in which the elements of fabulism are woven so tightly into the realism of life, they feel like a world we could climb into or out of. And by comparison, the real world is pushed so far to its extreme that it feels fabulist, magical, both dark and beautiful, frightening and erotic. These are stories of desire – the things we desire and the way those impulses bubble up from places we don’t understand; the things we are told we should desire by our family and culture and all the influences constantly bombarding us; and finally, the things we desire but cannot attain because of our own limitations, be they body or mental. What’s particularly striking is Dickson Jame’s scalpel blade upon the experience of female bodies, excising their experiences one deft stroke at a time, revealing all the ways women desire and are denied or neglected or rejected or told their desires are unimportant, negligible. And each story is richly told with language that is nothing less than deeply, vividly sensual. These stories slide across the skin, caress the mind, and rake their fingernails through our visions of our culture, our future, and our lives as we live them now. A beautiful read that will make you think and feel, and most importantly, think about what it is that you are feeling.
28 December 2023 Unsettled by Laurie Woodford
Laurie Woodford’s memoir is a funny, heartfelt, and punchy tromp through her mid-life adventures as an English teacher in South Korea, Mexico, and the US, as well as a couple of her international volunteer stints at an Ethiopian orphanage and South American animal rescue. Woodford delivers her accounts of each location with vivid, compelling detail, leaving the reader feeling as though we are right there beside her, laughing along with her moments of discomfort as she navigates language barriers and cultural differences. Her comparisons between her aging body and the cultural expectations, particularly in South Korea, are blunt and incisive. Throughout the work, we feel the pulse of what’s beating at the core of Woodford’s search – for home and for a partner. As so many of us can relate to, she pinpoints the irony of searching for home while longing for movement and change, eventually finding the balance that works for her. With its bright details and punchy, unexpected humor, this was a page-turner.
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18 December 2023: How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
Sinclair’s stunning debut memoir recounts in poetic prose the experience of growing up poor in Jamaica within the Rastafari religion. With poignant honesty and forthrightness, she describes the experiences of her family under the domineering presence of her father and his oppressive religious beliefs. In striking irony, Sinclair and her siblings both cowered under their father’s abuse, but were simultaneously encouraged by both parents to dominate within their academic settings, a feat accomplished multiple times over by Sinclair and her siblings. The love, support, and celebration of her family in striving for and achieving these goals lay in sharp contrast to the otherwise substantial abuse and oppression suffered by Sinclair for being female in a religion which emphasizes male dominance. Where many memoirs lay blame for their abusive and neglectful childhoods at their parents’ feet, Sinclair’s approach is far more nuanced and forgiving, recognizing that her own father and mother suffered under generational oppression as impoverished Black Jamaicans during a time of unrestrained and unregulated development by white post-colonialists who bought up Jamaican shorelines, built resorts for white patrons, and walled them off from native Jamaicans. Not only did they face this more commonly understood post-colonial racism, but as members of the Rastafari community, they were simultaneously shunned by fellow Black Jamaicans. As a white American woman, reading this memoir was an education in the Rastafari religion – let’s be honest, most of us know little more than what we glean from Bob Marley lyrics, which are wildly more positive than the actual experience of being a woman in this religion, at least for Sinclair and her particular experience. In addition, it was a celebration of her womanhood, her expression of herself as a Black person, a Jamaican, an immigrant, and above all else, a poet. The words on each page are so beautifully wrought, they bypass the brain and root deeply in the heart.
Amy Foster Myer 