I have this thing about White Male Authors. Sometimes their white male existential angst bothers me, and sometimes it’s not present enough in the writing to be noticed. It’s sort of like playing Russian Roulette, though. You never know when some weird sexual encounter, an act of bizarre masturbation, or mansplaining is going to arise. So, to help me work through some incredible shade I need to throw, I’ve recruited a guest star who knows how to throw incredible shade, whether it’s brushing off that […]
A Young Woman’s Dreams
Last year, my sister bought me the young adult memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming. And then it went on to win the National Book Award for young readers! Hooray! I have been meaning to read it again and again, and something else got in the way. So when I was at my conference, chilling in my hotel room, I decided to pull out the audio copy I had borrowed from the library and listen to it. It was a good choice. Jacqueline Woodson covers her birth […]
“War is too strange to process alone.”
I was intrigued by Redeployment when I heard that it was about the Iraq War. And then, when it won the National Book Award in 2014, my curiosity reached a fever pitch. How could a collection of short stories trump the magnificent Station Eleven or All the Light We Cannot See, both of which I read and LOVED before this book? As it turns out, the committee knew what it was about. To put it simply, Redeployment is haunting. It is gritty, hard-eyed, and unflinching […]
Charlie Brown Grows Up and Moves to Canada
This 1993 novel won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into a movie. The Shipping News is the story of a man named Quoyle over the course of a few eventful, transformative years of his life. Proulx’s unique writing style combines poetry and humor to create characters who might be from a folk tale or might be your next door neighbor. Hive spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramps, he survived childhood….” Quoyle is a lot like Charlie Brown […]