Race

           Race is, has been, and most likely always will be a hot topic in society.  What I find to be the problem with most “hot topics” is that people spend way too much time talking about them and less time listening to others who are more knowledgeable and educating themselves about the subject.  Worse than that, the spend even less time actually doing something about the problems at hand.  What this leads to is rampant naivety mixed with arrogance, a crippling lack of helpful dialogue, and a scarcity of positive action.  Now, race is an incredibly complex concept that covers a wide range of people groups.  That being said, this particular blog is focused expressly on hearing voices from the black community and is aimed at the white community.  I do not claim to be an expert on race in any way and am, in fact, less informed than any person of a minority people group our there for the simple fact that they live this problem every day and I do not, which is the definition of white privilege and informs why I am writing this blog in the first place.  Allow me to elaborate…

So many people (specifically those perceived as white) in this day and age are obsessed with clearing their name of racism that they turn a blind eye to the unbelievable systemic issues that are still undeniably prevalent in our society.  People everywhere are so quick to say, “I’m not racist!,” that they shift the focus to themselves rather than fixing the problems at hand.  Racism is alive and well, and the cultural trends in most educational, economic, and political spheres demonstrate that every day.  There are definitely bigots who are still explicitly racist and that is a huge, obvious problem, but a more extensive and subversive problem are the people like me who grew up with white privilege without ever knowing it.  Once again, ignorance and closed-mindedness cause all the problems.

            Race is a funny thing.  What it comes down to are social constructions more than anything.  For example, I’m not even predominantly white.  I’m Spanish and Mexican, but I look white and am therefore perceived as white; and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.  Growing up, I didn’t understand how or why people could be racist.  I mean, people are people, regardless of how they look, right?  So when people generalized about the white community being racist, I would get immediately defensive.  “Me?  No way!  I mean, I have a black friend!”  Oh young Luke, you stupid ignorant fool.  The problem at hand is that through my immediate defensiveness, I neglected to recognize the problem.  And as any twelve-step program will tell you, the first step is recognizing that you have a problem.  The problem to me became fear; fear of being labeled as racist and bigoted.  God forbid some one judge me because I seem white!  Come on!  Just because of the way I look you are going to label me as racist when you don’t even know me??  Oh, wait… I see now.

            This small, tiny, insignificant affront against my race calling us out for being what we actually are, which is racist (or simply uninformed) is the most minuscule example of prejudice possible.  It’s not even prejudice, it’s just truth.  The truth that we become so self-justifying that we are blind to the real problem which is that society, in and of itself, is imbued with undeniable biases and prejudices.  Therefore, if you are a member of society, you should be constantly checking these biases, which are sometimes painfully obvious, yet overlooked.

            One tangible example is something called the achievement gap.  This gap is an educational concept that people of racial minorities are less likely to succeed in school and it is mathematically and empirically proven every single year in the form of graduation and dropout rates across the country.  The amount of factors that contribute to the gap are staggering, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to mention the one that pisses me off the most.  The majority of government funding allotted to any given school is determined by the property taxes of houses in the district.  What this means is, schools that are in areas with higher property values will receive that much more money just because of the affluent nature of the area.  Therefore, schools in poorer areas receive less money, and schools in nicer areas receive more.  This creates a defined economic gap that only gets worse and worse, and we have yet to change the laws of funding for schools.

            I went to a nice school in a nice area.  I was completely unaware of the achievement gap until I went to graduate school.  Through my perspective, everything was hunky-dory and some people were just unlucky.  Luck has nothing to do with it.  Race, as much as you may want to fight against it, plays a major role in society and the blind cry of “But I’m not racist” is not helping anyone.  If you are a person who is perceived as white like me, there is nothing that we can do on our own to “fix” racism.  We are the oppressors and we have been for centuries.  The first step is recognizing that, accepting it, and then going to people from racial minorities with contrite hearts, willing spirits, and open minds ready to shut up for a moment and listen to someone else’s experience.  We will never fully understand persecution of this nature.  We will never truly experience what it is like to, day in and day out, be a member of a racial minority with all of the prejudices and persecutions that go with that.  We simply won’t be able to solve this problem alone because we caused it.  All we do is perpetuate it with our apologetics and impotent attempts at being the savior.  We need to stop talking and start listening.  Here are some of the amazing voices that have taught me how blind I was and still am in certain ways.  Stop being defensive and open your eyes to this issue, which is the root of so much violence and hate.  Then, maybe we can become a part of the solution instead of just worrying about ourselves and how people see us.

1. Race Matters, by Cornell West

It is important to note that the title of this book is double entendre.  West means that race really does matter as much as this work is about racial matters.  This book was written right after the Rodney King riots of the early nineties, but it is just as insightful and transcendent now as it was back then.  Cornell West is one of the most amazing thinkers of our time and more people need to hear his voice.  Race Matters elaborates on the racial issues in society, how they are perceived by different sides of the political spectrum, and how we as a whole need to recognize how our own skewed perceptions get in the way of us constructing a beneficial solution.  West tears apart these problems and offers remedies that are founded in love and respect, which he argues are the main ways that any person can commit to racial reconciliation.  He also brings up the vacuum that has resulted with a lack of leaders such as Malcom X or Martin Luther King Jr. and the need for a central rallying cry in this post-modern civil rights movement.  Lastly, he highlights the need for simple education.  An academic himself, West acknowledges the fact that misinformation and obliviousness are driving catalysts behind the racial dilemma.  With incredible compassion and unabashed truth, West created one of the most important works on race from the turn of the century. 

 

2. The Beautiful Struggle, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

            Ta-Nehisi Coates is an amazing contemporary voice in not only racial issues, but also literature in general.  I featured his other book, Between the World and Me, in my blog about diversifying my reading list and you should read that one too because it is incredible and also about these racial issues in our culture.  The Beautiful Struggle, however, is different in the fact that it is a memoir about his life growing up in the crack-age of inner city Baltimore.  With beautiful poetry and lyricism, we as readers see the world through young Ta-Nehisi’s eyes complete with his complex relationship with his parents, his brothers and sisters, and the world at large.  Tracing his life from childhood to college, we see what it was like for him growing up young and black during a pivotal time for his city.  Steeped in musicality, this book is so much more than just informative: it is inspired, visionary, and eye-opening.  This book helped me to realize that I know nothing.  I am simply an uneducated part of the problem and I need to change my tune and listen.

 

3. Native Son, by Richard Wright

            There are certain books that are so visceral, so powerful, and so vivid that you will never forget them.  This is one of them.  When I read Native Son, it easily jumped to the top of the list of my favorite books of all time.  Bigger Thomas is a young, twenty-year-old black man living with his family in a dilapidated, one-bedroom apartment on the South-Side of 1940s Chicago.  The lines between the white world and the black world are painfully obvious to Bigger and the anger and fear that this causes in his consciousness are palpable.  When he commits a vicious crime, we as readers are thrown into a tumultuous and unforgettable storm filled with racism, panic, and violence.  Wright wrote a masterpiece when he wrote Native Son.  Word of caution, this book is disturbing and haunting in a way that is hard to describe, but it is ineradicably important.  This is a must read.

 

4. Beloved, by Toni Morrison

            In this fearless novel, Morrison plunges courageously into the depths of slavery, shedding a lyrical light on an excruciatingly violent time in our nation’s past.  Sethe is a recently escaped slave living with her daughter whom she gave birth to while on the run.  Her sons have left because the house that they now occupy, which is simply called by it’s address, 124, is haunted by the memory and ghost of the daughter that didn’t survive named Beloved.  The address itself echoes the fact that her third child is missing and memories that are too disturbing bubble beneath the surface as Sethe tries to adjust to a life of freedom.  Identity, remembrance, and the supernatural play an authoritative role in this outstanding novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and contributed to Morrison winning the Nobel Prize in literature.  Widely heralded as the greatest American novel of the late 1900s, this book exudes evocative poetry and engulfs its readers in a haunting, ominous, yet hopeful look at one of the bleakest times in American history.  Few people command the English language with as much mastery as Morrison.  She is one of the true artists.

 

5. The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson

            Wilkerson is an award winning journalist who has dazzling powers with the non-fiction genre.  In this, her masterwork, she weaves the true story of America’s Great Migration.  In the century between emancipation and the civil rights movement of the sixties and seventies, black people left the South in droves and headed North and West to escape Jim Crow, segregation, oppression, and violence.  Since then, it became one of the most overlooked and misrepresented movements in American history.  Through painstaking research and endless interviews, Wilkerson gives us the first comprehensive look at this Migration that affected and continues to alter so much of our country.  What is most amazing is how she utilizes people’s stories as a lens to analyze this seminal time in our country.  Driven by compassionate narrative, this book shows the reader how non-fiction is anything but dry and mundane, but instead is filled with heart, soul, and necessity.  This book taught me so much that it would be impossible to put it into words.  Just read it, and listen to the true stories of these millions of lives.

 

As usual, happy reading everyone!  See you next month.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

           The genre that first interested me the most in reading was, without a doubt, sci-fi/fantasy.  As a kid, I ate it up with a silver spoon and continue that obsession to this day.  The wonderful thing about fantasy books is that they allow the authors to generate entire worlds.  We as readers can simply dive in and be immersed by something new, something exciting, and yet nostalgic and real at the same time.  I don’t mean real in the sense that Daenerys Targaryen is real and we should all be on the lookout for dragons.  I mean real in the sense that the characters can become so visceral, so well-developed that their emotions and reactions to circumstances remind us of everyday life.  We have shared experiences, even though we will never actually have a ring of power or ride a hippogriff, as much as we may want to.

I think that this is the thing about fantasy or science fiction that is so enticing: it is still reality, still humanity, that we are dealing with, it’s just an altered reality that takes us outside of ourselves.  In this way, it is an escape from reality, but not one that we use as a way to completely avoid our lives (although it can seem that way at times).  Instead, these worlds teach us things about our existence that we wouldn’t normally want to think about or engage in a way that generates strong, tangible memories.  These memories become the intercession between fantasy and reality.  I still vividly remember the first time I read Lord of the Rings, especially the battle of the Pelennor Fields (I think the copy of that book still has my grip marks on it).  I remember being amazed at the fact that four humble hobbits saved the entire world, which was an incredible revelation for a chubby middle school kid who used to get food thrown at him.  When I re-read Harry Potter, I still hear all the voices that my dad used when he read the first four out loud to us (he had the best Dobby, and and even better Hagrid).  I also remember being super bummed when I turned eleven and didn’t get my letter to Hogwarts.  Now that I’m older, I realize that I did go to Hogwarts!  And I can go back whenever I want!  All I need to do is curl up with the book and let the words take me away to a world that is so fantastical and so magical, yet at the same time so familiar because it is indelibly a part of all of our lives.  So here are some new memories from different authors that I really enjoy:

1. The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wrecker

            Two immigrants arrive in New York in 1899 who couldn’t have more different backgrounds.  One is a golem, a being straight out of Jewish folklore, brought to life by a twisted master of Kabbalah to be the husband of a lonely immigrant.  The other is a Jinni, trapped in a flask thousands of years ago by a wizard, unknowingly released by an Arab metal worker.  The two find that they need to hide their true nature from everyone for fear that people would either try to exploit them or kill them.  However, when they meet, they find an unlikely bond in the fact that neither of them are truly human.  Wrecker places this narrative directly in history, shedding light on a pivotal time in America, all the while spinning a delightful tale of fantastical beings.

 

2. The Alchemy Wars, by Ian Tregillis

            So far there are only two books out of this trilogy, The Mechanical and The Uprising, and I am stuck here waiting for the third with bated breath.  This is a brilliant example of speculative fiction where Tregillis re-writes history by asking the question: what if alchemy were real?  Jax is mechanical being brought to life by the mysterious powers of alchemy.  His life and his soul are bound to humans, whom he is forced to serve along with the rest of his mechanical kin.  He lives in an alternate world where the Dutch rule through their ownership of alchemy and the French are gripping for control of what is, in our world, America.  In this world, a war that has been on hiatus starts to bubble again through a few catalytic clandestine operations, one of which somehow gives Jax’s soul freedom, changing everything.  Tregillis manages to weave a wonderfully suspenseful story all the while asking the question: what is a soul without free will?

 

3. A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E Schwab

            This is the first book in Schwab’s trilogy, Shades of Magic.  I really need to stop reading trilogies that aren’t completely published yet because I’m practically living on pins and needles at this point and it’s killing me.  In this series, there are four alternate worlds grounded by the fact that they all have London.  There is Grey London, which forgot magic a long time ago, Red London, which is flourishing though the use of magic, White London, a desolate world in which magic is based on power, hierarchy, and tyranny, and Black London, which was obliterated and sealed off years ago.  No one goes there now.  A select few beings are able to cross over between worlds, and they are responsible for carrying information from one world to the next.  Kell is one of these “Travelers,” with the illegal side hobby of smuggling artifacts from the differing worlds.  When he receives an artifact from Black London, a dark magic that was forgotten long ago leaks out into each world.  Complete with magic, wonder, and a total badass female lead named Delilah, this book has it all.  Give it a read, and then wait with me for the others to come out.

 

4. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

            Bradbury is one of the original sci-fi kings.  You may have read his book Fahrenheit-451 in high school, which is also amazing, but this is one of his collections of short stories and it is absolutely dazzling.  Every story is told by a moving tattoo on “The Illustrated Man” and each is as disturbing as it is wonderful.  A planet where men are driven insane by constant rain, a room made to entertain children becomes all too real, a world in which dying authors try to fight off humanity using the monsters in their stories, even orbs of light with the secrets of God, life, and happiness.  All this and more color the pages of this singular collection from one of the most memorable voices from the genre.  You’ll come for the exciting science fiction and leave with more realizations and truths than you know what to do with.

 

5. The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

            So, Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors.  He is as hilarious as he is insightful.  You can read any of his books and be amazed.  Slaughterhouse Five is his most famous book and you should definitely read that too, but I put The Sirens of Titan on here because it doesn’t get as much notoriety but is just as good.  In this story, Malachi Constant is the richest man in America.  Haughty and naïve, he doesn’t care much for others and Mrs. Rumfoord knows it.  When her husband, Winston, selects Constant to join him on a series of adventures through time and space, she has no idea why, but complies due to the fact that her husband is caught in a Chrono-Synclastic Infundibula and only materializes on Earth once every fifty-nine days.  While materialized, he informs his wife that he knows Constant and met him on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn and needs to meet him on Earth during his next materialization.  What follows is a bizarre series of escapades in which time and space become irrational, but morality and humanity are laid bare.  With characteristic whit, Vonnegut asks some of life’s biggest questions, all the while bringing his readers on an unbelievably believable journey.

 

As usual, happy reading everyone!  See you next month.

Gender Studies

            Gender is one of the most complex concepts in human development.  The reason that it can be so convoluted is that it is tied up in so many aspects of a person’s life.  It affects their style, their relationships, their orientation, their job, and the way that they live their life.  A person’s identity is, for better or for worse, inseparably linked to their gender identity.  Now, because of these complexities, it can be a divisive issue with a wide range of arguments that go along with it, running the gamut from parenting to social constructionism to if pink and blue really relate to girls and boys.  I am not here to argue any of these points.  If you’ve ever been to a bar with me, odds are you’ve heard my opinion on all of that stuff (sorry).  The reason that I am writing this is because I know that my perception of gender used to be very myopic.  It wasn’t necessarily that I was ultra-conservative and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that boys would be boys and girls would be girls and that was that.  It was more the fact that I hadn’t even engaged the topic of gender enough to even formulate that opinion.  I was, for all intensive purposes, uneducated.  I hadn’t taken the time to think critically about a concept that directly affects me and everyone around me day in and day out.  Because of that, I lived a blissfully ignorant life that marginalized people and myself without me even knowing about it.  The problem with naivety is that it can be incredibly damaging and you wouldn’t even be aware of it.

            I believe what started my interest in gender studies was actually my relationship with my mom.  For those who don’t know my mom, she is a total badass.  I was a pastor’s kid growing up, with the notable difference that my mom, not my dad, was the pastor, which I didn’t understand was non-traditional until much later in life; I just accepted it as completely normal.  Nowadays, she runs an international faith-based women’s leadership organization called Lifesprings Ministries (check them out, it’s amazing).  Anyway, I went to college at a private Christian university, which had some good and some bad just like any collegiate experience.  While I was there I learned a lot more than just what I was studying.  Primarily, it wasn’t until college that I realized that I was liberal.  It wasn’t that I was conservative and then changed my opinions.  It was that I genuinely didn’t know that I leaned left politically.  The main catalyst behind this revelation was the fact that I met a lot of Christians who told me that my mom couldn’t have been a pastor because she was a woman.  Upon meeting these people, confused is much too weak of a word to describe my emotions.  Flabbergasted?  Dumbfounded?  Definitely.  But also unbelievably livid.  What do you mean my mom can’t be a pastor?  Like, seriously?  People believe this?  It was at that time that I knew I needed to deconstruct my concepts of gender and figure out how to prove to everyone in the world that my mom is absolutely amazing and the fact that she is a woman is nothing but more empowering for her profession and life.  Naturally, I didn’t know what deconstruction was at that point.  And I thought that I knew what gender was as well, but little did I know how wrong I was.

            The following five books are a select few that really helped me understand what gender is and how it manifests itself in each individual person and in society as a whole.  These are genuinely some of my favorite books in the world simply because they shifted my entire paradigm of what I thought I knew.  Whatever your political persuasion, it is important to analyze concepts and constructs of gender.  Find what you agree with, what you disagree with, but more than anything just be aware.  Be aware that of the weight that gender can hold, and the freedom that it can offer if we all just learn a little bit more.

1. The Purity Myth, by Jessica Valenti

            In The Purity Myth, Valenti breaks down our culture’s obsession with purity, specifically as it applies to young women.  For those who lean right, a fair word of caution, Valenti is very liberal and can be quite caustic (which is why I like her), but aside from this, she makes some incredibly important points about how we oftentimes teach girls to be obsessed with their purity as the end all be all of if they are good people or not.  Valenti posits that this develops a strong rhetoric that tells young girls that their only worth is in their sexuality and virginity.  Which begs the question, if that is your logic, once virginity is gone, what value do you have?  Valenti tackles everything from purity rings, to any analogy involving a lollipop or flower or tissue, to truly shocking things such as fathers virtually “owning” their daughters’ virginity until the day they pass it on to another man.  While Valenti is well known for being one of the most vocal feminists of this age, she is, at the same time, very considerate in her arguments.  She never says, “go be wild and who cares what happens.”  Instead, she redefines purity as it should be, which is a mentality of education, awareness, and putting value in women as people, not just objects of sexual desire.  A must read for anyone who has ever felt damaged by a hyper-sexualization of purity.

 

2. A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans

            First off, I LOVE Rachel Held Evans and every word that she has ever written.  I’d say that’s an unnecessary superlative if it weren’t completely true.  She has written several books and maintains an incredible blog that tackles some of the toughest issues in society today.  This is the book that she is most famous for.  In it, Held-Evans decided to live for an entire year exactly as the Bible says that women should live, including everything from learning how to cook to camping outside while she is on her period.  Initially, this book is absolutely hilarious.  We as readers are welcomed on this journey with Rachel as she narrates her experiences with her characteristic whit and accessibility.  I laughed out loud in public places and people thought I was weird.  Secondarily, and more importantly, Held-Evans manages to put archaic biblical conceptions of womanhood in a modern context.  In this, she denotes an ideology of what it means to be not only a woman, but a better person and Christian in the most empowering way possible: through the truth.

 

3. The Will to Change, by Bell Hooks

            I was first introduced to Hooks through her writings about education, a couple of which I had to read while going through teacher education and others which were given to me by friends.  I then delved into an entire world of Bell Hooks that was amazingly enlightening, and this one was my favorite.  The Will to Change is all about concepts of masculinity as they exist in society and how damaging it can be for men everywhere.  Hooks started off as a die-hard feminist who blamed men for most of the problems in society.  What she realized through her studies, however, was that the patriarchy controls men just as much as it does women.  Men are told to be emotionless, hardened, loveless, and callused, which leaves them with little to no idea as to how to love or emote.  In this book, Hooks tears apart what it means to be a man and offers a way for men to become fully themselves.

 

4. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, by Michael Kimmel

            If I could force the whole world to read one book, it would be this one.  Seriously, I have three copies and I am constantly lending them out because I want everyone to read it.  Michael Kimmel is essentially the leading scholar on masculinity.  This book analyzes young men from the ages of sixteen to twenty-six and how those formative years determine so much, yet it is also where so many boys get stuck between being a boy and being a man, leaving them in “Guyland.”  Kimmel deconstructs all sorts of social constructions of masculinity going from sports culture, to pornography, to father son relationships and beyond.  In that, he informs so much about horrific problems such as gay-bashing, bullying, abuse, and rape. This book is unbelievably well-researched, drawing upon years of studies, interviews, and analyses.  Somehow, Kimmel manages to be considerate yet relentless as he destroys false notions of masculinity and calls men everywhere not only to be better men, but also better people.  Everyone needs to read this book.

 

5. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

            Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and it was well-deserved.  This is the only book on this list that is fiction, but it is fiction that turns gender on its head.  It is a multi-generational story about the Stephanides family as they go from Asia-Minor to Detroit and beyond.  This narrative is made singularly unique by the fact that the narrator, Callie, is a hermaphrodite.  Due to the unique sexual and gender identity of the narrator, things that are normally mitigating factors in fiction become either ambiguous or obsolete.  This queering of gender in the narration allows the real meaning of this phenomenal novel to stand out.  Themes such love, loss, and family shine brilliantly with one of the most delightful voices of contemporary fiction.  Even if you aren’t interested in gender studies, this is still an amazing book with a beautiful story.

 

Biographies, Graphic Novels, and a Touch of Fantasy

I've done some sporadic blogging throughout my early adulthood.  It was never anything consistent and it definitely never had one cohesive theme or subject with which to guide it.  Nowadays, my life is filled with being a teacher, going to Disneyland, or whatever whimsicality approaches me at any given time, which leaves me with little to blog about lest I resort to the played out teacher blog.  However, there has always been one thing that I will do my whole life no matter what, and that is reading.  With that in mind, I've come to realize that my favorite thing to talk about, whether it be with other people, through writing, or whatever other medium, is books.  So, instead of trying to maintain a dying blog, I've decided to re-brand and try to stick to something more consistent.       

In my other blog, I had a couple posts titled "Ten Books Everyone Should Read."  I thought to myself, "What if I just kept that going and stuck with the idea of doing a monthly or bi-monthly list?"  Then I realized I'd probably run out of books and would be left with another dying blog as I tried to catch up on my reading.  So, five is the new number that I estimate I will be able to keep up with and the following is your first list of five books that everyone should read:

1. Persipolis, by Marjane Satrapi

            This is a graphic novel which tells the story of the author’s childhood growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution.  She effortlessly weaves humor, tragedy, art, and masterful storytelling in this delightful, yet powerful novel.  Also, it’s super short.  You can definitely knock it out in a day or two.

 

2. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

            I used to read a lot more fantasy growing up, and this book was me jumping back into the genre.  Oh my, how I was surprised by so much more than just a fantasy novel!  Gaiman somehow managed to write a brilliant story of mythology and religion as they manifest themselves in the jaded American context.  Spinning tales of a dizzying number of characters as they careen down an inevitable path that hovers somewhere in a palpable mystery throughout the story, Gaiman keeps you on your toes and stays right in your heart as you go on this fantastic journey with Shadow, the main character.  A must read for everyone, not just fantasy fans.

 

3. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler

            Now, take this with a grain of salt because I am an admitted Disney fanatic, but this is the best biography I have ever read.  Not only does Gabler give you all the information you could ever hope to know about the indelible man who was Walt Disney, but he does it in a way that is compelling and profound, elaborating on society at large through the lens of Disney as opposed to just a mundane catalogue of his life.  It’s pretty long, so I understand if you really don’t want to read it, but if you’ve ever thought about curling up with a thousand-page book about Disney, this is the book for you.  And the last couple hundred pages are just notes and citations that nobody but a crazed Disney obsessed lunatic would read (*cough).

 

4. The Round House, by Louise Erdich

            There are some books that never really leave you and you can’t tell whether they are haunting your dreams or making them better, but either way you’re kinda okay with it because it makes you a better person in the long run.  This is one of those books.  Erdich is a genius storyteller and her characters become so visceral that you can’t help but feel every joy and every sorrow just as much as they do.  The basic plot takes place on an Indian Reservation in North Dakota and begins when an adolescent boy’s mother is viciously attacked.  We as readers are forced to ponder the unreachable themes of justice and hope alongside the whole family as they grapple with the fear and confusion that plagues them following the incident.

 

5. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire

            Now, this book is ostensibly about education, but it ultimately encompasses sooooooo much more than that.  Freire was an educational theorist from Brazil whose teachings are taught, to this day, in virtually every single educational program out there.  This is, arguably, his most important work.  The basic premise is essentially about how those in power can never truly teach those who are “below” them.  Instead, the oppressors and the oppressed need to work together to break the barriers between the classes so that everyone can be educated.  Told with such knowledge and wisdom, this book not only proposes a theory, but puts forth tangible ways in which to go about putting it into practice.  This guy was incredible and everyone needs to read this book.