2019 has been a busy year. Between raising a 4 year-old, investing in my adult relationships, making Head of Content at my day job, and trying (always) to keep writing, I have not blogged here as much as I’ve wanted to. I have been reading, though, and I thought I’d take one quick pass at sharing all the things I loved most with you in one fell swoop. I’ve linked to longer reviews that I did manage to write, and at the end of the post I’ve included links to where my own (recent-ish) work can be found.
On Being an Artist
Witches’ Dance by Erin Eileen Almond
Classical music, madness and a tale of genius that doesn’t go quite the way you think it will? Mix that all up with some great writing and you have Witches’ Dance. This book helped me get past some of the fears I have about committing to the artist’s life (and I’m so grateful).
What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World by Robert Hass
This book sits in the precarious pile of “books I can’t live without” to my right as I type right now. Bob Hass is always thoughtful and intelligent and this collection of essays covers so many topics I love—from poetry to fiction to art—and reading it was like spending an evening in deep conversation with the dearest of friends. In one essay where he’s writing of Judith Lee Stronach, Hass says, “the practice of poetry was for her, a centering, a way of being clear-eyed, of discovering feeling in verbal rhythm” which helped me see why I’ve returned to this essential practice in recent years.
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat
There are many things to admire about this collection of essays by Danticat, but what I connected to most was the connection she made between being an immigrant and being an artist. “Self-doubt is probably one of the stages of acclimation in a new culture. It’s a staple for most artists” perfectly captured for me the combination of humility and striving for better that drives my own artistic practice. Danticat’s insightful reflects on her own experiences and those of other artists living between cultures is a worthwhile read, whether you’re interested in art or simply the human condition.
Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet by Christian Wiman
Somewhere in the middle of musings on the loneliness of poetry, the need for technique in writing, and the importance of the negative space that silence imparts in poetry, Wiman accomplished the very rare achievement of making me laugh aloud while reading. He also reminded me that part of the beauty of America (which can be hard to see these past years) is how much change is part of our very essence. This is a good book to read to osmotically improve your work while growing your own artistic survival suit.
On Womanhood Today
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Red Clocks is the dystopia we all fear is right around the corner. It’s brilliantly constructed to portray a myriad of women’s individual experiences while also reflecting the many sides of what could happen if we don’t protect the rights of women. It scared me right into action and I’d highly recommend it if you need a kick in the pants.
Landscape with Sex and Violence by Lynn Melnick
I read this book in a hospital in Spokane while someone I love was being ravaged by a surgeon’s knife. It was strangely appropriate and adequately devastating given that the book is about the life of a sex worker. It’s a painful book to read and also an important one as it humanizes the women we so often fail to see. It’s helped me look more deeply at the lives of those forgotten women in my own community, like learning about the number of serial rapists victimizing them within a few miles of my home.
What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence
Mothers and daughters… it’s a fraught landscape that’s ripe for literary mining. The essays in this book do just that. From abuse to deep love, it’s a worthy read that’s helping me heal.
blud by Rachel McKibbens
I saw McKibbens perform one of the poems from this collection at AWP this year… about the rape of her grandmother and how the man helped her make sandwiches for her boys after. The mundanity of the violence against women in this book is devastating, because it’s everywhere and it’s accepted and because McKibbens is brave enough to look it right in the face and name it.
The Guineveres by Sarah Domet
Being a teenaged girl is hard. Being a woman trying to love the teenaged girl you once were is not easy either, but this book put me sweetly in the mindset of that time in my own life in ways that helped me heal a bit (all while telling a compelling story). I loved the myriad portraits of the different Guineveres—they were a good reminder to look deep into any group to see beyond the stereotypes you think define them.
Educated by Tara Westover
If you haven’t yet read this memoir of growing up in a fundamentalist LDS household in Idaho, you might be alone. I read it while flying over Idaho and Montana and it brought back so many memories of what it was like to live in a place where individual rights are paramount to everything. Westover’s writing is really, really good and her portraits of a very flawed family are as loving as they are terrifying.
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This little book speaks big, even just from its title. I was gifted this book during a semi-annual Ladies and Literature event that I live for because it’s an evening filled with intelligent, worldly women talking about the books they’ve loved. The premise seems so obvious and yet I know how necessary it is. The woman who gifted it to me said she was glad I was getting it because someday my son should read it, too. It’s based on Adichie’s TED talk, but goes deeper, so start with this video and then commit to the full 52 pages some afternoon when you have a moment to become a better human:
For the Craft
The Story of My Face by Kathy Page
If you struggle at all writing compelling suspense, this book is deeply educational (and it’s a great read to boot). We learn very early that this strange story begins with the protagonist’s face being horribly disfigured as a teenaged girl. As the book weaves between the now of her adulthood investigating the odd religious sect she once encountered and the then which led to her injury we are constantly reminded that there is a story to her face. But Page knows that all the details leading up to that story (both in the then and in the now) are compelling enough that she can dangle the mere mention as we follow her like salivating dogs through the full narrative. It’s a fascinating read for a non-writer. For a writer, it’s essential.
Shapes of Native Nonfiction
I could have put this book, deservedly, under any number of categories, but I chose this one because the essay by Stephen Graham Jones shook me to my artistic core. It’s a gorgeous collection of writing by Native authors and I learned many names I should have known long ago. This anthology is filled with artful essays about everything from literary craft to the deep pains inflicted on Native peoples as the US was colonized. I am grateful to the editors (one of whom I call a friend) for expanding my reading horizons and allowing me to read much more deeply about the country I call home.
The Paris Review, Issue 228
I’ve been reading The Paris Review for ages, because it made me feel smart, cultured, and literary long before I had the guts to just write already. But I haven’t always connected with the work in the magazine, especially the poems. This is the best issue of the magazine I’ve read to date. The interviews introduced me to new and exciting ideas, the stories were fascinating, and I think I loved every single poem.
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Is there any fame in saying I loved Tokarczuk before the Nobel? This book is layered and complex and exceedingly well written. I wanted to read it because it reminded me of the Poland I once knew, but what I got was a much better understanding of how telling a story from a wide variety of perspectives yields nuance and beauty.
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
I already wrote in depth about how very much I enjoyed the braided narrative of this book. It’s accessible and yet complex and I was recommending it to a friend just this week. I love Ozeki’s work. This might be her best book yet.
Field Notes on Science & Nature
I learned about this book in a session on poets who cheat on poetry with prose during AWP. Or maybe it was about prose writers cheating on prose (with poetry) but the upshot is that there are so many ways to see the world that we ignore if we’re just looking at literature. This book included a wide variety of scientific perspectives that were fascinating and also very enriching. I loved it so much I bought if for my sister-in-law. I also shoved my copy into my husband’s to-read pile. When asked recently what was the thing I loved most about my son I said, “He’s curious about the world.” This book is for the curious. Enjoy!
To Love Widely the World
McSweeney’s #52
This particular issue of McSweeney’s focused on stories of movement and displacement and I adored it. I met authors I’d never read before (particularly a couple from Africa that blew my mind) and felt that glorious thrill of seeing how very similar and how very different we are at the same time. I learned new techniques of storytelling and dug into histories I’d never really understood before. It’s a fantastic read that only lacked for not including anything by Elena Georgiou.
Night of the Golden Butterfly by Tariq Ali
When I started this post I’d only read this last book of Ali’s Islam Quintet and I wanted to recommend it here because I loved the ways the diverse array of characters helped me look at modern-day Pakistan anew (and also because it reminded me of travel tales my dad would tell me about the Khyber Pass when I was a kid). But the holidays wore on and I continued to be obsessed with this series and I’m now almost done with three more books in it. I’ve learned about Muslim Spain, Saladin, and turn of the (last) century Turkey and I can’t get enough. The best books are the ones where Ali really flexes the dialogues between the characters, but I’m loving them all and how they’re adding layers and layers to my understanding of the world.
Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X. Walker
A poet friend recommended this book to me at AWP this year and I was very glad I read it. Not only did it help me expand my own understanding of the Civil Rights era in the US (something we could all use a refresh on, it seems), but I learned specifically about Medgar Evers. The switching of voices between Evers’ wife and that of his killer and his killer’s wife was devastating and rich. Read this to break through “our great tradition / of not knowing and not wanting to know.”
Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East by Pico Iyer
I love Pico Iyer’s way of looking at the world as a sort of permanent exile. The experience of being in-between cultures is something I always relate to and it’s in his work that I feel most at home. I don’t know if this book is better than The Global Soul, but it’s the book of his that I’ve most recently read and I very much enjoyed the throwback feeling of reading about a completely inaccessible China (among many other things) and thinking about how far we have (and have not) come.
BOMB Magazine, Number 146
BOMB has to be my A-1 magazine for inspiration. Although it’s only published quarterly, I carry it with me for weeks on the bus as I read interviews between artists of all types to learn about the synchronicities in artistic practice and what parts of the zeitgeist different disciplines are feasting off of now. This particular issue is one of the best so far. I don’t know if it’s because the throughline of water helped me look deep into the very many ways that one subject can be approached or if it’s because it raised my environmental and social awareness or maybe because it exposed me to more Native artists than I’ve ever encountered. But it was fantastic and I hope to carry it on the bus for many weeks to come.
If you’re interested in reading any of these books for yourself, please visit Powell’s and I’ll earn a small commission.
My Own Publications
Touting your own work is always a little weird, but I am proud of my writing and this has been a good year for getting poems published with 34 submittals (most of which contain multiple poems) and four acceptances. Two aren’t yet published, but here’s where you can find the two that have been, plus some other work I may have forgotten to ever mention.
“Bhanu Kapil in the Night.” Minerva Rising: Issue 17. In print only.
“Kenneth Patchen on a Bookshelf.” {isacoustic*}. Online.
“Re: Emergence.” Riddled with Arrows. Online.
“The Needle.” antiBODY. Online
“Swans.” Towers & Dungeons: Lilac City Fairy Tales Volume 4. In print only.
“Marco Polo.” Poetry on Buses, 4Culture, King County. Online.
I also published “Yet All Memory Bends to Fit” at Cascadia Rising Review. Their site is currently under construction, so I’m including the text here:
“Yet All Memory Bends to Fit”
Reading Harjo I see
the end of my memory—
her ancestors, my severed line not
at the ocean, but even after.
Though we paint pysanki, our
frozen pierogi are served with a side of
poppy seed cake, courtesy of Moosewood.
And the branches more established?
Daughter of the American Revolution,
I once ran a welcome wagon (kind of)
until my wealth ran out,
or I was given up, my siblings too many.
I Rosied rivets and spoke Welsh with the old
nostalgic for an accent I’d never heard.
What can I claim? How can I know
where I start if I can only love
the memory of coal dust
that darkens upper leaves.
And maybe that’s what’s with this city
wrong, where so many of us came
to start anew—
severed, floating while all around us
Natives hunkered down, frozen
shadows, street corners and basements—
a tripline of roots we’d rather not see.
Cheers to a new year of reading adventures in 2020. Please always feel free to share your favorite books with me. It’s a wonderful way to connect to what makes us human.
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