Memoirs

          When I first read a memoir, it was a book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller and I was fourteen years old.  I just remember thinking that nothing really happened in the book, yet I was enraptured all the same.  I couldn’t put it down.  It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me hope.  This confused me.  I was in a stage of life where all I wanted to read was books that had lots of fighting and action and dragons and there I was, reading a book with seemingly no plot whatsoever, and completely falling in love with it.  What I slowly realized was that the reason I was drawn in so strongly is because the power of experience.  The power of listening to someone’s story.

Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild, which is an excellent book and movie, said that bad memoirs are narcissistic.  They are only for the author.  Good memoirs are for all of us.  This statement perfectly captures what makes a good memoir so enticing and relatable.  Memoirs, good ones, have the uncanny ability to take someone’s experience and making it everyone’s experience.  We, as readers, get to share in someone else’s story.  Some memoirs are about small, trivial things told with whit and charm, while others still are about unbelievable and unforgettable things that seem impossible.  Either way, the best writers are able to tell their story in such a way that reminds all of us of the agency that we have in our own lives.  Whether it is in the small, mundane moments or in the massive, life changing ones, each person has a story.  It is up to us to listen to the stories of others just as much as it is our responsibility to make our story the best that it can be.  Here are some of my favorite memoirs that remind me why life is worth living, and worth living well:

1. Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss One Song at a Time, by Rob Sheffield

            Rob Sheffield is a writer who is most known for his work in Rolling Stone magazine, but this is the memoir about his relationship with his wife and music.  Each chapter begins with a different mixtape that he made for his wife at various times in their relationship, which he uses as a springboard to discuss love in all its various forms.  Sheffield writes with compassion and conviction as he forces you to fall in love with his wife and music alongside him.  If you find yourself jaded and cynical, that will disappear as you read this delightful tale that will equally crush your soul and compel you to laughter, smiles, and joy.  This book is driven by a perceptive spirit, a hopeful disposition, and an incredible knowledge of music through the generations.

 

2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

            This small book is one of the most powerful narratives that I have ever read.  It is the tale of Maya Angelou’s childhood told in such a way that only Angelou is capable of.  If you have never read anything by her before, stop whatever you are doing and go get this book.  Utterly dripping with poetry, this story describes one of the more singular lives of the last century.  Angelou travels from the south to San Francisco and beyond as she catalogues both joys and horrors with a voice that is impossible to forget.  She takes her readers on a visionary journey through the most important parts of her life; all of the good, all of the bad, radiantly connecting the two so as to remind us how love, joy, and hope can ultimately overcome some of the most overwhelming situations.

 

3. Night, by Elie Wiesel

            In the most haunting 100 pages ever written, Wiesel wrote the seminal memoir about life under the Nazi regime and in concentration camps.  Young Elie traces his life from the beginning of the Nazi occupation, being corralled into ghettos, and finally being shipped off to the concentration camps.  Filled with brutal truth and darkness, this is one of those works that you read and never forget because, as disturbing as these details are, we must remember them collectively so that we can keep this sort of violence and insanity from ever happening again.  This is one of the most important books from the 20^th century.

 

4. Through Painted Deserts, by Donald Miller

            Donald Miller is most famous for his book Blue Like Jazz, which is also great and you should read that too, but personally, I liked this one more.  It is, on the surface, a memoir of him driving around the country in a broken down van, but below the surface it is a beautiful look at solitude, solidarity, spirituality, and life in general.  With Miller’s accessible prose and irreverent yet compassionate tone, this book takes you on a journey through the deserts of the American southwest and beyond.  The scenery and the landscape dance off the page, as do numerous life lessons that we’ve all thought before, but never really had the words to describe.

 

5. The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

            This novella isn’t specifically a memoir in the fact that the title character, Esperanza, is fictional.  However, the stories that she tells are steeped in memory and imbued with experience.  Told through a series of disparate vignettes that seem, at times, more like poetry than prose, this tiny book tells the story of a young girl growing up in inner-city Chicago.  It tells stories about youth, love, family, race, gender, and so much more.  Some are hilarious, some are tragic, some are both, but all of them are beautiful.  Sort of like the mind of a child, this book seems to happen all at once and it is that much more insightful because of how the stories are spun.  Drawing upon her mastery of poetry, Cisneros tells a myriad of stories that all speak the same compassion and hope.  This book is a quick read and a delight, but it will also challenge any reader that picks it up.

 

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.