Latin America Archives - A Geography of Reading

Immersing Myself in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun

May 13, 2023 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Fantasy has never been my go-to genre. While I deeply respect the massive creativity that goes into building a strong fantasy world, my own brain doesn’t work that way and I often find fantastic novels hard to engage with—to surrender to. So when I say that I loved Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse with my whole heart, I mean this book leapt over all my fences, grabbed me by the hand, and dragged me (wonderfully) into a richly-imagined world I could not get enough of.

Fantastically American Mythology

In her end notes, Roanhorse describes her own love of fantasy and how there’s remarkably little of it written about the Americas. So she wrote the book she wanted to read. I wish I knew enough about the mythology and folklore of the pre-Columbian Americas to draw direct comparisons between the book and specific tribes, but also I know that Roanhorse took creative liberties in making her own world. The fragments I did recognize—the importance of the sun and crows—put me in mind of the shelves of kachina dolls my mom has in her home, gorgeous representations of immortal beings. So, for instance, when one character wears a cape fashioned from the feathers of a gigantic crow, I had a jumping off point. When Roanhorse describes the regalia and mask of the sun priest, I know enough to take my imagination farther than I normally would and try to soak up the details on the page so I can match the vision she has. An experience totally worth the effort. The various clans, religions, and locations in this book very much became real for me and I had so much trouble putting the book down (ask my kid).

Vivid Characters and a Compelling Plot

The opening scene of this book is visceral. Serapio’s mother is cutting her young son’s body and exposing his eyes to the sun to make him into a vessel for a god. As the mother of a young boy, it was a lot, but it was also richly described and layered enough to be fascinating. This was not gratuitous violence, this was the determined act of a woman trying to change the destiny of her people.

Other characters are equally interesting and nuanced. Naranpa, the sun priest, is a woman from “the wrong side of the tracks” grappling with some fascinating “palace intrigue” while trying to alter the relationship of the priesthood to the population entire. And Xiala, a drunk ship’s captain from a matriarchal culture that may or may not eat their lovers, is the hope on which Serapio’s plan hinges. There are also many side characters—including two nonbinary characters (it took me longer than it should have to get used to the “xe/xir” pronouns)—that complete and complicate this world, each with a story and a motivation interesting enough to earn them a place in the book.

Black Sun is a page turner in the best of ways as Roanhorse takes us from scene to scene in alternating locations from the point of view of alternating characters as the story weaves towards its conclusion. I had the pleasure of being stuck on a train with this book. It was thicker than I would usually carry downtown with me, but I couldn’t part with it. By the time I reached my destination I’d read more than 60 pages and I read another 40 on the way home. I also stayed up late reading because I wanted so badly to know what happens next.

Of course more happens than I can know at this minute because this is the first book of a trilogy. I’m holding off on buying the second book because the third won’t be out until next year and I want to pace myself. But you know if I’m planning my book buying for the next year around a series…it’s really fucking good.

For my friends and family who are fantasy readers and writers (hi Natasha, Roxana, and Nikki!) and interested in pre-Columbian history (hi Tosh and Dad!)—check out Black Sun, I really think you’ll love it as much as I did.

Disappearing into a Good Book with Idra Novey

April 18, 2020 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

Even though nothing much seems to change these days, radical shifts are happening in the undercurrent of my moods and most of the books on my original pandemic reading list are things I don’t even want to face right now. Yes, I still wonder about small details in The Great Influenza, but I know I’ll never re-read that book and have given it to our local Little Free Library (from whence it was quickly snatched up). Instead, the book I find myself recommending most right now (and most want to re-read) is Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey. Let me tell you all the reasons why…

Reading is Escape

I think we all intellectually understand that reading takes us out of the moment we’re in and immerses us in something else. For a while I needed to be immersed in the worst that could happen to remember that anything else is better. Right now I want to explore the world that exists beyond the one mile route I walk every morning with my family.

Ways to Disappear is set in a steamy Brazil where American translator Emma Neufeld goes in search of Beatriz Yagoda, a Brazilian author who had climbed a tree and then disappeared. Emma is (of course) also searching for herself as she tromps around Brazil and it’s easy to get wonderfully lost in the antics that ensue and in the locations. Even as I type this, I’m remembering how the book recalled for me a time when I ate a fresh papaya on Ipanema Beach (a sensation no papaya since has ever matched – à la Proust).

Before the virus, we’d been planning on maybe finally taking my son to Europe this year. He’s only four, but I haven’t traveled internationally with my husband for eight years and we were ready. We won’t make it this year, and my son would not be interested in this book, but the ways that reading this book felt like being abroad are making me misty right now.

It’s Really Funny

If you’re not yet at a place where you need/want a laugh, buy this book anyway for the day that you do. Emma is delightfully, poignantly messy and lovable. The well-constructed plot (including a very colorful loan shark) is worthy of a 1940s romantic comedy. And it’s wonderfully sexy. One taste of the humor is the moment in the book when a second-rate Brazilian author also climbs into a tree to see if their book sales will also skyrocket. I smiled throughout this book. That alone was worth the cover price.

Novey Writes Beautifully

There are a number of things I could have titled this section: Novey and I clearly love some of the same authors (Clarice Lispector to start), Novey does a wonderful job of inhabiting the worldview of a translator in her characterization, this book feels effortless and also smart. They’re all true. It’s rare for a book to hit both the “escapist” and the “damned well put together” buttons at the same time and Novey definitely accomplished both with this book. I look forward to reading it again and also to ordering more of her books from my local independent bookstore.

This is the place where I usually suggest that you order the book from Powell’s so I get a small commission and you support a great bookstore. But now is an especially important time to give extra support to the bookstores in your local community. Many of them will have shipping specials or other creative ways to get you the books you need. If you’re in Washington, here’s a list of bookstores that are still open in some way.

Life at Home

If you’re wondering what life is like where I’m at, I published a poem this past week. The moment it describes is about two weeks old and many things have subtly shifted, but it captures the then as well as I could.

Happy reading!

Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey and Life After Growing up Abroad

February 1, 2020 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Liang reached out to me about her solo show, “Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey,” in the week I finished reading Humiliation by Paulina Flores, a book I’d sought out because I wanted to reach into the psyche of a country I once lived in and can never quite let go. Like me, Liang is a TCK, a “Third Culture Kid,” someone who grew up in more than one culture and doesn’t really feel like they have ownership in any culture. In Liang’s case, she is a global nomad who was born in Guatemala to a Chinese-Guatemalan father and an American mother and lived in six countries before going to college. I was born in the U.S. and only lived in two other countries but I felt a deep connection to Liang and was glad to journey with her through her childhood to try and understand mine.

The Intimacy of Personal Address

The majority of “Alien Citizen” is a direct address from Liang to the audience as though she was telling us her life story at a cocktail party. There’s a minimal black set and what look like family photos projected on a screen behind her to ground us in whatever country she’s currently been transplanted to. Liang uses accent, gesture, and language to characterize other people in her life, most evocatively her mother’s waved cigarette and her father’s pointed finger.

The difference between a cocktail party and a show, however, is that the latter requires the performer to keep the audience engaged for the entirety of the performance. Liang delivers on this exceedingly well. She is nakedly honest and sincere about her story and I was riveted as she took me through the highs and (many) lows of her life abroad as Xerox moved her family back and forth between Central America, North America and North Africa. Liang’s emotions are at times raw in all the ways they must have been when she was wrenched from a beloved home or friend or when she found herself becoming in a woman in two cultures that are not friendly to women.

Living an Unreal Life

I don’t talk about my own upbringing much at cocktail parties. When I consider telling people I grew up on three continents, I assume they’ll think I am lying or that the privilege of living abroad will be so unfathomable that I’ll seem like an awful little princess if I discount about any aspect of it. This is the same reaction I had while watching Liang. Even though I should know better, I found myself rankling she seemed to be complaining about her extraordinary life.

It was only by watching through to the end that I realized I was perpetuating (for both of us) the “trying to be the good guest like my parents taught me” that many TCKs feel. That we’re supposed to be cheery and positive and nice because we’re experiencing something beyond most people’s dreams—even as we’re being forcefully pulled away from most of the things we know at a time in our lives when we barely know ourselves. We become so “good at blending” that we “feel like [our] life never happened” and it’s our “fault because [we’re] so good at adapting” and the result is a feeling of “playing make-believe without knowing I’m playing.”

I wasn’t letting her be myriad in the ways that I don’t let myself be myriad.

Once you give yourself “permission to feel the pain, you can be so much more grateful” – Elizabeth Liang, Alien Citizen

I do feel many wonderful things about having had the privilege to travel and live abroad, so much so that I’ve wondered how I can incorporate this into my son’s life. But Liang helped me remember, too, that I don’t spend my spare time seeking out books that will help me understand the cultures I feel like run through my blood (even though I’m certain anyone from those places would consider me a mere Dolezal) because I feel complete and happy and understood.

Liang for allows us inside her struggles and triumphs brings them full circle in a way that helped me more fully understand mine. By being real about the pains, she freed me to experience the joys in the rich, nuanced way that is real life (and to think more holistically about the life I want for my son).

Multilingual Communication

Now that I feel more free to enjoy the fullness of the extraordinary childhood I was treated to, I will say also that I loved how Liang took the freedom to break into Spanish or Arabic during her story. When I was writing Polska, 1994, this is one of the big questions I had to answer—if I break into the language the way I feel it in my body, will I lose people? And the obvious answer is yes, you can, but if you’ve already built trust and momentum with an audience, as Liang did, the audience can and will follow

Geovani Martins addressed something similar in a recent interview in BOMB in reference to his use of Portuguese slang:

Every time a writer explained some slang, I felt like he was telling me: I’m writing this for a specific reader, someone who doesn’t speak like this. I told myself, “Man, I’m going to do the opposite, and use every word I want to use.” Because that’s what literature does. I love Shakespeare, right, but he didn’t make an effort to explain anything to me. If I don’t try to understand it myself, I won’t like him or read him. No great writer in the history of literature has explained things to people in that way. They just wrote their stories in their chosen language and people who liked reading them did so because they were willing to step into the story on those terms. I didn’t understand why it had to be different with me.

By using all her languages in “Alien Citizen,” Liang brings closer the people who can follow her and also envelops the stragglers, carrying them over the hump into something more—a world where we are not just different but also the same, one where tone and gesture speak as loudly as vocabulary.

I could go on for pages about the things I related to in Liang’s show (her relationship with her maids, an irrational fear of conflict, self-silencing and shyness, and more) and some of the things I did not (being racially “other” in the U.S. and transition fatigue). But I don’t want to rob you of the experience of watching it and seeing what you, global nomad or not, might relate to, too. Because we’re all a little alien sometimes, no matter where we come from or where we’re living right now. I learned a lot from Flores’ gorgeous book about the Chile I’ll never really know. From Liang I learned about who I was, am, and want to be. And I’m grateful.

Treading Lightly While Traveling through Haiti in Maps Are Lines We Draw

September 8, 2018 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

What does it mean to leave no trace? This laudable goal of many a traveler can go awry when we get caught up in the “what does it mean” and forget that “leave no trace” is meant to apply to the outer environment and not to ourselves. In reading Maps Are Lines We Draw: A Road Trip through Haiti, I have no doubt that Haiti left traces on Allison Coffelt’s heart and soul, but the book gets caught up enough in the headiness of her experience that I too often missed what the journey felt like. Worse, I missed the opportunity to feel myself transformed by her journey.

To be fair, much of Coffelt’s most obvious travel transformations probably happened before she even left home when she read Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, the book that inspired Coffelt’s trip and in the international journeys she undertook before this one. And I deeply appreciate that she was trying to give us a more complex experience than the standard “I went abroad, I saw a lifestyle unlike my own, I was transformed” trope, but the fact that she’s visibly still processing this complex experience makes it harder to follow along with her, as does the fact that we are exposed as much to her thoughts about events (or even her thoughts on thinking about events) as we are to events themselves.

Scene vs. Summary

One of the lessons drilled into me in an early writing class is that readers need scene (the depiction of events) in order to engage with events rather than summary (the narration of outcomes) which can keep a reader on the outside of a story. It’s a lesson I rebelled against (like most lessons) and we can all cite examples of long, in-depth narrations that made a book for us. In truth, though, those examples are rarer and in our modern life of direct access to video and other first-person accounts, not to mention the unreliability of many “truths” spouted at us from innumerable political mouths, scenes connect readers with events in ways that allow us to both feel what’s happening and to trust the experience (even though all books, like all photographs, are in some way framed). Or maybe I’m just one of those “need to see the foreign brilliance before it’s spoiled by visitors” kind of people.

So in the moments when Coffelt is sharing glimpses of the scenes she experienced while in Haiti, I’m right there with her as she and Dr. Gardy pull to the side of the road to sample douce macoss or as she uses a headlamp to illuminate a man’s medical treatment. These scenes allowed me to feel like I myself was the traveler (without even a single visit to the travel clinic).

Contrast that with the moments where she’s reflecting on the tropes of the mission-trip story or the self-interrupting nature of travel writing (something she’s consciously doing). This latter brings me as a reader back to the level of watching the book being constructed—separating me from experiencing what I think Coffelt wants me to experience of Haiti.

Other Comments on Craft

Because I was often engaged with this book more at the craft level than the experience level, I was very interested in what Coffelt was doing with tense. In the moments when she does use scene, especially as she’s traveling with her guide, Dr. Gardy, the action that makes up the spine of this book, she uses present tense narration, which is a wonderful way to squeeze the most immersion possible from those scenes and a strong way to counteract the distancing effect of the rumination that intercedes. It’s a trick a lesser writer would not have thought to use.

Coffelt also knows her way around a metaphor. Whether it’s turning a moment of crushing garlic into a commentary on the messy history of Haiti or the staging of a photograph that encapsulates what it means to even write a book like this. These comparisons can allow us to fathom some of the complexity she’s grappling with without having it narrated for us.

Travel is Complex

Was it Pico Iyer who called out the difference between a tourist and a traveler? Maybe not, but it’s an important distinction in this type of literature. While many will feel that a book like Eat, Pray, Love delves into the realm of traveler, I’m actually looking for narratives that go even deeper than looking at how experiencing other cultures changes us as humans. I want the Anthony Bourdain effect of literature—to see those cultures as much as possible as they are and to learn from them what I’m missing about the world at large. This is something Lindsay Clark does brilliantly on No Madder Where and it’s something Coffelt clearly values as well.

I loved the way she included quotes like “The poor don’t want you to dress like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water.” reminded me of the Mormon missionaries we came to know in Chile. There was something so interesting and complex about these young, white, tie-wearing boys’ success in converting the poor that continues to inform my own (evolving) thoughts about religious fervence. I also appreciated her reminder about the roots of travel: travail (to work), and I was interested to learn about Haitian’s relationship with the American culture of disposal and the dependence of relief organizations on having a population that needs relief.

Before reading Maps Are Lines We Draw I knew about Haiti only from one chapter in Ann Hedreen’s Her Beautiful Brain and from decades of news accounts of disasters there. I’m glad to now have a fuller picture of the place. Do I love how honest Coffelt was about the inability to form a pat narrative about her Haitian experience? Yes. I actually do. Do I also wish that I’d been able to engage deeply enough with the book to come away with my own picture of Haiti? Yes. That too. But I did learn a lot about Haitian history, watch a fellow traveler grapple with some larger questions about travel, and get to pay some careful attention to craft, so there’s a lot to recommend in this book.

If you want to learn more about Haiti or just the intricacies of structuring a travel memoir, pick up a copy of Maps Are Lines We Draw from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Narrative of Genius in Chef’s Table on Netflix

June 7, 2015 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

I started watching Chef’s Table because of the “cover” art—a beautifully constructed and impossibly tiny dish of food. Like many Americans, I’ve become enraptured in our recent conception of food as art and this show seemed like the culmination (or at least a new level) of that art. What I didn’t realize is how much I’d learn from this show about our culture of genius worship and how that translates to the characters we seek out in fiction, nonfiction, and life.

There are many sides to the genius character and his narrative, and it surprised me how neatly each of these chefs fit into the categories (or how neatly they were edited into them anyway).

The Misunderstood

I still thought I was watching a cooking show when Massimo Battura showed up on screen in the first episode. Although the voice of a food critic had already been introduced to help me understand that this man was special. We see him in the kitchen of his restaurant, Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy. We see him in the market gathering the best ingredients. We see him in the fields chatting with farmers. But it isn’t until we meet his wife, Lara Gilmore, that we really get to know Massimo. Because she is literally interpreting his actions for the people around them. Don’t get me wrong, their relationship is actually very charming and their love for each other is palpable, but it is their very closeness that highlights how far the rest of the world is from understanding him. At one point, I’d swear Bottura admits that he’d be nothing without her explaining his vision to others.

Bottura is the classic misunderstood genius. Filled with ideas too big for his small town, he has to travel to New York and then Paris to get recognized. He comes home with even bigger, more refined ideas and then he’s really too obscure for those at home who just want their Italian food the way it’s been cooked for thousands of years. A critic comes in and demolishes him. Finally, at long last, an even bigger critic comes in and sees the genius of the man.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? In some ways it’s what we all strive for—to be extraordinary and to have the world finally recognize it. You get the feeling that the world will never fully understand Bottura, but once we accept that he’s beyond us, we can worship at his feet and trust in his genius (now that it’s been recognized if not fully understood). In fact, he might lose some of his charm if we did understand him. He might become more like one of us.

The Intellectual

I didn’t understand what rankled me about environmentalist/chef Dan Barber until my husband started talking about him. The man, at least as edited for this series, comes off as a condescending prick. See, he knows things about food and the land that the rest of us are failing to see. He wants to educate us through his food (at two restaurants named Blue Hill in New England) and to help us save the world by eating good ingredients that are actually in season and good for the earth.

I can’t disagree with his basic premise, what tastes best about a strawberry in January is the memory of strawberries past, not the greenhouse grown, artificially huge one in front of you. But the way that Barber positions himself as a preeminent thinker (espousing ideas that got lost somewhere between my great-grandparents and me) drives me nuts. And I think it’s because I’m preconditioned to want to be this type of genius‐so I want to take down others I see as false.

It wasn’t until my husband remarked on how awful he was to the people around him that I realized both the fault in Dan Barber and how closely it relates to my worst days.

The Loner

The most beguiling genius of the series so far is Francis Mallmann—Patagonian-raised, French-educated. When I saw him make a panqueque con dulce de leche over open flame on an island surrounded by snow-capped peaks hundreds of miles from anywhere, I nearly bought a plane ticket.

Mallmann’s narrative focuses very much on him as a restless loner. It’s the only episode where we barely see the inside of a restaurant. The mother of his youngest child lives a country away and they see each other for maybe ten days a month. He espouses the open relationship and likes his freedom. But there are holes in this narrative, because out on La Isla (yes, I love the name of his island), he’s surrounded by acolytes. And it seems that he never actually stays out in that paradise of “isolation” for more than a few days at a time. Mallmann is a loner, but he is never alone. Because what is genius in isolation?

By far the most beautiful of the episodes of Chef’s Table, I wrestled with the distance between the image of his life and the actualities and this is the episode that got me thinking I need to write about this series. I needed to understand what was the call of these geniuses. I needed to know if their lives were really what I should strive for.

The Masculine

Niki Nakayama is the first female chef to be featured in the series. So why did I put her under the title “The Masculine”? It’s because in the world of genius (and even much more so in the world of chefs), the true genius is expected to be male. Nakayama has fought against that perception, but very quietly. She comes from a patriarchal family (her brother was supposed to succeed, they let her play at chef to get it out of her system) and was educated under sexist conditions (every one of her mentors, even the proudest, is still a little shocked that she’s a woman). There’s even stories of people walking out of her restaurant when they find out that the chef is a woman.

So what does Nakayama do? She closes the shoji screens and cooks quietly in the background. According to the critic assigned to her episode, she is no less of a genius chef than any man, but she fits outside the narrative enough to actually highlight how constrictive our expectations of greatness are.

The Cult of Genius

What I found interesting about each of these four types of genius is that each of these people actually has all of the characteristics to some degree. Nakayama is deeply misunderstood, Bottura is an intellectual, Mallmann fits a wide range of male stereotypes. It made me wonder if there are actually different types of genus, or if there is one archetype sitting atop a mountain that we’re striving for.

I also began to wonder why we’re striving to be at the top of that mountain and if we should be. There is great joy in the lives of some of these chefs (especially Bottura and Nakayama) but there also appears to be great pain either in getting where they are or in staying there. And there are so many people working with and for them who will never achieve those heights. Are we creating a culture of Captain Kirks when we really need are more Uhuras, Boneses, and Scotties?

The Genius in Literature

And of course the genius ties in so closely to literature. Our archetypal hero (and writer for that matter) is so often this brilliant, misunderstood loner—so beguiling, so out of touch with the world. He’s a godlike figure we strive to get to know even when he cannot know himself. Why do we worship this?

My Family, My Son

I was raised in a family of geniuses. Brilliant, highly educated parents, aunts, and uncles. Even more brilliant cousins and siblings. Our intellect and superiority was cultivated and honed (often at the expense of our emotions and communication skills). I like this world. I like the idea of mastering something and using that to express what’s deep in my soul. But I wonder, too, if that expression would feel even better, more natural, if it wasn’t such torture to access it and then express it. Could I be satisfied with good enough?

It’s something I think about more and more as my son’s due date approaches. I hope he’s brilliant and creative. But most of all I hope he’s happy and fulfilled. I wrestle with what happens if he decides that frying potatoes is his highest ambition and he gets really good at it, but I also think I’d envy some of that inward looking satisfaction.

I’m going to go eat some strawberries from my back yard now (Barber sank in a little), but I’d love to hear your thoughts on genius below.