Dreams from My Father: a review

"Everyone was welcome into the club of disaffection." 

For the eight years he was in the White House, I watched Barack Obama with a mixture of admiration, gratitude, and curiosity. Did this man never lose his cool? Never display doubt or uncertainty? How could anyone be that ON all the time? I understood that as the first African American president he had to be better than any prior president in ways that I couldn't even dream mattered, but where was the passion? Reading Becoming last year helped me better understand the extreme pressure of that life for both the President and the First Lady. In many ways, those roles required the Obamas to give up a part of their humanity that allows the rest of us to breathe, to fumble, and to recover.

Dreams from my Father, written by Barack Obama before he entered politics, largely answered my questions about the man behind the Presidential podium. Barack Obama the fatherless son, the struggling teenager from a "broken home," the mixed-race American perceived as Black and raised white, the pre-public-figure author is real. He smokes weed, uses the N word, and questions his place in the world. He experiences anger, insecurity, and loss. He questions himself and the people in his life. He looks for learning, though not necessarily in the classroom.  

Obama of the White House always had the right words, even if he sometimes seemed to lack emotion in delivering them. Young Obama the author was allowed to combine his linguistic power with his very real frustrations with, questions about, and concern for the world. Dreams covers what Obama knows of his family background - his mother's parents from Kansas and eventually his paternal relatives in Kenya. It includes the stories he is told of his early life, his own remembrances from childhood and youth in Hawaii and Indonesia, and his development as a community organizer in Chicago. It ends with him ready to enter Harvard Law School. 

This Obama is articulate, funny, insightful and real. As a young man he struggles with who he is, knowing his place in the world, and that inescapable dichotomy of being Black in a white family and in a white country. Obama is forgiving of his grandparents, with whom he lived for most of his childhood and youth, for their blindness to their own racism. Theirs is the kind of racism we all have because of living in a culture that ensures the road for white people is laid smooth. It is insidious and alive just under the surface. He also forgives them and his mother for the impossibly perfect stories they told of his father, a man he met only once and about whom he later learns more honest apprisals. 

Like all memoirs, the structure and plot of this one are built into the telling. What makes this special is seeing the development, told with vulnerability and apparent sincerity, of a man who would go on to make history. This is the Barack Obama I wished for on TV as he attempted to rebuild America into what it might actually be, the one we only got hints of after countless school shootings. This Obama wouldn't let people compare his wife to a monkey or question his Blackness or his birth. Then again, this unpolished Obama probably wouldn't have been elected, and that's the real injustice.  

I highly recommend this book. It is pleasantly free of American jingoism, and it ends with an extended visit to Kenya, and that can never be a bad thing. 

How to be an Antiracist: a review

EB: I am writing this as a white woman in Canada learning about antiracism and confronting my own privileged naïveté and racism. Any missteps in this post are utterly accidental and borne of ignorance, and I invite feedback. 

Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to be an Antiracist (and other books) is one of the foremost academics working in the field of antiracism in America. He founded The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, and recently moved it to Boston University (where it has been renamed the Center for Antiracist Research). He is a professor of History, and has taught Africana Studies and African American Studies. He has written umpteen articles, given a TED Talk, and is the go-to guy on antiracism for American news and late-night shows. Besides all of that scholarship, Kendi has the lived experience of being a Black man in America. 

In this detailed - almost granular - primer on racism in America, Kendi uses his life story so far (he is only in his 30s) to frame his growth in knowledge and to link chapters. In some ways, this is not necessary, as most topics stand alone, but it does add some personal interest. I was especially thrilled to read that Dr. Yaba Blay, who has been essential listening for me all summer, was one of two women who taught Kendi about Black feminism, queer Black life, and his blindness to both. Black women are leading the current phase of the fight for racial justice in America, and they don't get the same air time as men. That mention really stood out for me. 

Kendi knows his stuff, but the whole time I was reading Antiracist I was wishing I had read it before I read Between the World and Me. Kendi is a scholar and a teacher. Coates is a writer. Kendi breaks things down, gives multiple examples, and builds up new definitions. Coates pulls you into his world. Both books are about racism and structured as life-stories, though Coates' book, because it is a letter to his son, is warm, personal, impassioned, and compelling. It is also visceral and raw at times, something Kendi never approaches but that to me feels appropriate for this conversation. 

Kendi is a good place to start. If hearing that race is made up (and understanding that that is NOT the same as saying you are "colour blind") is new to you, start with Kendi. This is not an either-or conversation read them both, and other things as well. White people need to be learning about racism from those who experience it, and since no one person speaks for their community, reading multiple perspectives is essential.  

On that note, please seek out Canadian, UK, Caribbean and other writers about racism, BIPOC* fiction writers, and podcasts with BIPOC hosts. The American experience is not the only experience, and finding alternative perspectives sometimes takes some digging.

If you want more of a reading list, Victoria Alexander shares one on her website. It includes articles and books, and covers everything from fiction to biography to history: Antiracism reading list.

*BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God: a review

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."

When a novel opens with a sentence that beautiful and revelatory, it's hard to imagine the author can maintain that high standard throughout. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston creates such poetry and truth on nearly every page. 

Beyond her mastery of language, Hurston's experience as an anthropologist, ethnographer, and folklorist give her an incredible insight into humanity, particularly the humanity of Black communities of the southern US in the 1930s, (though Their Eyes reaches back to the slave era in explaining the motivations of protagonist Janie's grandmother). 

I was fascinated to learn of Eatonville, Florida, one of the first self-governing all-Black communities in the US. I was even more fascinated with the way Hurston weaves Black folklore throughout the story without ever foregrounding it as such. The personification of Death. Community moments of song. Games. Nicknames. The depth of culture and the celebration throughout the story adds a richness like the soil in the great Floridian muck. 

Their Eyes has a framing story that begins at the end, yet the story moves with surprise. Janie grows and moves and makes free choices that women still struggle for 90 years on. The plot travels - literally and figuratively - it never hurries, but it keeps action happening even in simple domestic scenes.

Hurston's female characters, especially main character Janie, do have more fullness than the male characters, but that feels appropriate to the story. The males aren't flat, they are just peripheral characters. I love Janie. I wish I could sit on the porch with her and learn more from her. She is wise, unique, brave, strong, and honest.  

Their Eyes is simple, and it is incredibly complex. It is comfortable and unique. It is brief and deep. I understand why Alice Walker said "There is no book more important to me than this one." I will not be loaning my copy out. 

PS: I cut the earlier quote short so you could feel the power of it. In fact, the whole paragraph hangs together so beautifully that it should be enjoyed in its fullness: 

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

The Little Paris Bookshop: a review

Nina George's writing is a master class of the true meaning of sensuality. On each page you might smell a riverbank, taste the sea in a pot of mussels, hear the cry of cicadas, feel a cat purr against your belly, or watch the hair rise on a lover's arm. 

Having devoured Little French Bistro, I tried my best to savour The Little Paris Bookshop. I failed. Once again George swept me into a French adventure, this time leaving Paris via riverways and canals to Provence. Bookshop is the bigger selling of George's books, and perhaps if I'd read it first I would understand why. I do recognize, however, that my lack of engagement with the main character Perdu comes from my own particular circumstances and is probably unfair both to him and the author. Unfortunately, to explain that statement would require a spoiler, so you'll just have to ask me about it in private. 

The theme of healing, through relationships and literature, from the inevitable bruises of life is one with which I have deep experience and deep appreciation. The bookshop in the title is called The Literary Apothecary, and Perdu sees himself as a druggist prescribing the right book for the right reader at the right time. The knowledge of both people and of books that such a job would require is remarkable - perhaps only achievable in fiction, but still highly compelling. It made me understand a little better the drive to read that I've experienced in recent months. It's not a new drive, but it has definitely grown like an unsated hunger. I get hangry for books, but the right books. And Nina George's books satisfy. How she manages to combine light and depth amazes me. Most writers make you choose between being talked down to and having your spirit assaulted. Like Anne Patchett, Nine George does neither. 

High praise and gratitude aside, Nina George's world is shockingly lacking in diversity or awareness. No people of colour, only the most tertiary of lesbianism. There are no gay men in the arts in France? No trans people in Brittany or Provence? None of France's millions of immigrants have anything to say or do (besides producing cooking smells behind closed doors) or ever enters a popular bookshop? Seems implausible. Celebrating "Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas" was jarring, anachronistic, inaccurate and out of touch. 

Still, this book was pleasing and insightful and lovely. I look forward to whatever else Nina George writes, and hope her next story includes a more representative cast of characters. 

Little French Bistro: a review

Aaaaaaaah. Is there any more satisfying feeling than choosing a random book off a bargain pile and finding it the perfect read? That was exactly how Nina George's Little French Bistro felt. Charming. Encouraging. Refreshing.

It started out a little rocky for me - a suicide attempt. This is not a spoiler, it is on the book blurb and is the very first scene. In my world it's not the perfect way to open an novel, but the story really picks up from there. The theme of finding your true self at any age followed so nicely with having recently read Untamed, but George's writing (and, to be fair, the novel form) appeal to me SO MUCH MORE.

With moments in Paris, Bistro takes place largely in Brittany, a region of France I never read about without wanting immediately to book a one-way ticket. I want the wild sea. I want the wild woods, I want the wild people harkening back to their Celtic roots. Oh sure, that may all be fictionalized exaggeration, but it is exaggeration that appeals to me. The food*, the settings, the stories, the wine - it all just works.

This is a novel you read in two sittings, not because it is light and airy, but because it is deep and moving and keeps pulling you forward. The central love stories in Bistro happen between people in their middle years with baggage and scars and insecurities and sagging breasts. I love these people. Oh sure, there's a young couple, but their story isn't central, which is a nice change. Sadly, the  one spot of diversity (I'm not going to be more specific because that is a spoiler) is downplayed rather than celebrated, and I thought that was a missed opportunity. 

I loved this book. I will re-read this book, which I honestly don't do much with novels. I think everyone should read this book. I also think I should learn to speak French and Breton and move to Brittany and work in a bistro. That is all.
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* At the end of both this and The Little Paris Bookshop (review soon coming) George shares several regional recipes. Sure, gluten means some of them - like the fabulous sounding Breton pancakes - aren't for me, but it shows how essential food is to George's stories. Maybe have a snack before you read one of George's books as they will make you hungry.