Tag: Memoirs

Kate’s Review: “Feeding Ghosts”

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Book: “Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir” by Tessa Hulls

Publishing Info: MCD, March 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the stories of her grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself.

Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory. After eight years of government harassment, she fled to Hong Kong with her daughter. Upon arrival, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival, used the proceeds to put Rose in an elite boarding school―and promptly had a breakdown that left her committed to a mental institution. Rose eventually came to the United States on a scholarship and brought Sun Yi to live with her.

Tessa watched her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi’s unexamined trauma and mental illness. Vowing to escape her mother’s smothering fear, Tessa left home and traveled to the farthest-flung corners of the globe (Antarctica). But at the age of thirty, it starts to feel less like freedom and more like running away, and she returns to face the history that shaped her.

Gorgeously rendered, Feeding Ghosts is Hulls’ homecoming, a vivid journey into the beating heart of one family, set against the dark backdrop of Chinese history. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, it exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together.

Review: I sometimes find a book that doesn’t exactly fit the expectations I have based upon the circumstances in which I found it. “Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir” by Tessa Hulls is a great example of that, as I saw it for the first time on the social media feed of horror influencer Sadie Hartmann, aka Mother Horror. Since she is such a huge presence in the horror lit community I assumed that it was a horror graphic novel (and I mean, the word ‘ghosts’ in the title added to that). But when I did research on it, I realized that it wasn’t a horror story, but a story about three generations of Chinese and Chinese American women, and the trauma that is passed down between the three of them. Sure it wasn’t a horror novel, but the premise still very much intrigued me. So I got it from the library, thinking I’d work through it pretty fast. Little did I know that it would be one of the harder reads of 2024. But not in a bad way by any means.

So I’m immediately going to clarify what I mean by ‘harder’, because I know that it makes it sound like a chore to read. And it is by no means that. When I say harder I am more talking about two things. The first is that this is a VERY dense book. Like on the page, there are SO MANY WORDS for a graphic novel. The most recent graphic memoir I read before this was “Worm” and I was able to read that in one night. That was NOT the case for “Feeding Ghosts”, as Hulls wants to tell three individual stories of herself, her mother Rose, and her grandmother Sun Yi, as well as the story of their relationships due to the trauma that is passed down through them, AS WELL AS a compact history of China in the 20th Century and how that influenced Sun Yi and Rose. The other is that the subject material is very, VERY heavy, with lots of themes that are very difficult, and Hulls approaches them with a matter of fact cadence and tone. Sun Yi was living as a reporter in Shanghai when the Communist Party took over, and after giving birth to Rose out of wedlock (and with a foreigner, as Rose’s father was a Swiss diplomat), and being an undesirable person for other reasons on top fo that, the new government spied on, intimidated, harangued, and harassed her until she and Rose could escape to Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter Sun Yi wrote a memoir speaking out against the Communists, and then had a severe mental breakdown that left Rose to her own devices in a boarding school, and then as a caregiver after they moved to America. In turn, Rose raised her own daughter Tessa with a lot of fear, anxiety, and a clinging fear of losing her to mental illness, which in turn pushed Tessa away and gave her her own set of traumas. Tessa writes this memoir with lots of honesty as to all the things that all of them went through, and how trauma and mental illness can keep reverberating through generations and progeny. With the combination of the jam packed pages and some VERY heavy themes, it took me longer to get through this than I anticipated. But again, that’s not a bad thing. I appreciated the care and context that Hulls wanted to give her family, as well as herself, and I thought that she did a really good job of pulling it all together, as well as allowing herself vulnerability to open up about some very tragic truths about her family history that is still present to this day. It’s quite the achievement, and I found it to be deeply fascinating and moving.

I also quite enjoyed the way that Hulls weaves in the history of 20th Century China into this tale, as so much of that time period had an effect on Sun Yi, and in turn Rose and Tessa down the line. She does a good job of laying out the timeline from the jump as almost an outline, and then diving deeper into the various parts of it, including the invasion of Japan to the Communist Revolution to the Great Leap Forward, and showing how these events shaped Sun Yi’s life, and the repeated traumas in all probability led to her complete mental breakdown that she never recovered from. It’s by no means a deep dive into this time period or the events, but she does make them very accessible and takes some pretty complex moments and parses them out without disrupting the flow of the story of her family. Lord knows I don’t know that much about this time period outside of learning about it for a unit when I was in high school, and I liked having the basics laid out. It’s also so important to the overall story I really like how she made sure it was all there, even if it did contribute to the aforementioned denseness.

All in all, “Feeding Ghosts” is a deeply personal and moving memoir, a magnum opus for an author who was trying to untangle some complicated histories in her family. If you like memoirs, this is absolutely one to check out.

Rating 8: An emotional memoir about cycles of trauma that went through three generations of women, “Feeding Ghosts” is dense, deeply personal, and very well done.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Feeding Ghosts” is included on the Goodreads list “Memoirs Published in Year: 2024”.

Kate’s Review: “Miracle in the Andes”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and my Long Trek Home” by Nando Parrado

Publishing Info: Broadway Books, May 2007

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.

Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying—among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off.

As time passed and Nando’s thoughts turned increasingly to his father, who he knew must be consumed with grief, Nando resolved that he must get home or die trying. He would challenge the Andes, even though he was certain the effort would kill him, telling himself that even if he failed he would die that much closer to his father. It was a desperate decision, but it was also his only chance. So Nando, an ordinary young man with no disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snow-capped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to find help.

Thirty years after the disaster Nando tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes—a first person account of the crash and its aftermath—is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure: it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.

Review: This past winter a friend and I kind of became momentarily obsessed with the story of the Old Christians Rugby Team from Uruguay whose plane crashed in the Andes. It started when “Last Podcast on the Left” covered it and we were texting back and forth, then we both watched “Society of the Snow” separately, and THEN we got together to watch the 1992 film “Alive”, the first movie adaptation about the amazing survival story, which stars Ethan Hawke. Hawke plays Nando Parrado, one of the rugby players who eventually trekked down the mountain to find help. Mind you he did this with his companion Roberto Canessa after being on this mountain for two months, in the cold, and becoming weaker and weaker and more and more malnourished (yes yes we will talk about that in a bit). I decided that the next obvious step in my hyperfixation was to read about it, and I got Parrado’s memoir “Miracle in the Andes:72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home”. Because Nando Parrado is such a badass, and I wanted to read it from his perspective. So this Spring I finally got around to reading it, and yep. Badass.

Nando Parrado tells an immersive and intense story, jumping right in from when he awakens for a multi-day coma and finds that the airplane that was carrying his rugby team, as well as some fans and family members, has crashed in the peaks of the Andes during a flight from Uruguay to Chile. If you’ve seen “Alive” or “Society of the Snow” or have ready any of the other books about this crash, you know that for those who didn’t die on impact it was a grueling ordeal to survive, and in order to do so the remaining survivors had to resort to anthropophagy, or the consumption of the dead (it’s not cannibalism; that implies killing specifically for the food or with some ritualistic purpose). Parrado talks about the time on the mountain, his memories of his experience being brought to vivid life through his descriptions and his ruminations, reading like a Krakauer book (and I mean, the new edition has a cover that looks a LOT like the style you see on Krakauer’s books, AND it quotes him, so I’m not far off at all). I felt like I was seeing everything he was talking about, and while I was familiar with the story due to my hyperfocus on it this past winter I still found him recalling details that I wasn’t aware of, and having his insight added a whole other layer to it. Especially since he was so insistent on going by foot to find rescue almost from the jump, and was almost always one of the ones to be honest and pragmatic even in the most horrifying of situations. Parrado doesn’t mince words when it comes to how he lobbied to eat the flesh of the dead passengers because he knew that it was the only way to survive in the long term while developing a plan, and I really enjoyed how matter of fact he was about his experiences and the huge role that he played without seeming like a blowhard. Because if anything he has earned the right to be a blow hard, as their ultimate rescue was due in large part to him and his tenacity and bravery, marching down that mountain with Roberto Canessa after two months of being stranded in the middle of nowhere while their environment did everything it could to kill them. It is such an amazing story, and from his POV it’s all the more amazing.

But what struck me most about this memoir was Parrado’s candor about the way his survival experience reshaped the way that he thought about faith and God, and how he redefined (or the very least reexamined) his own faith and views of fate, destiny, and what a miracle is. While many of his teammates seemed to lean more into their faith after they were rescued, Parrado had a different circumstance than many of the people on the plane, in that he was traveling with his mother and sister, and they both died. So while many of those survivors were thinking that their survival was an act of God, Paraddo felt differently. To him, he couldn’t wrap his head around a miracle of survival not including everyone on the plane, and decided that it wasn’t going to be God to save everyone, and it had to be themselves. Parrado had the inner strength and drive to get off that mountain, and he and Canessa surely achieved a miraculous feat by traveling for MILES in the state their bodies were in, with no climbing experience, in treacherous environmental conditions, and getting a rescue mission started with their journey down, but he is very honest with being basically unable to credit a higher power with the survival. That isn’t to say that he’s a full on cynic; on the contrary, he does believe in the miracle of a human’s ability to love and how that can drive a person to do amazing things, and finding the miraculous within that. His love for his father and other sister really kept him going, as he wanted to be able to come back so that their grief, while still monumental, wouldn’t have included grieving over him along with his mother and sister. It struck me as a different conclusion than so many survival stories come with, and while those experiences aren’t bad by any means (experience is, after all, subjective), it was just fascinating seeing a different perspective that felt almost humanist at its heart, especially when so many of his compatriots feel like something divine was at work. All of this being presented in his own words makes it all the more fascinating, and his writing style is so easy to follow that I felt like I had no problem getting into his head as I was reading.

“Miracle in the Andes” is a nail biting and inspirational memoir about survival in a nearly hopeless situation, told by a man who not only lived it, but also led the way to salvation. I cannot recommend it enough to people who love survival tales.

Rating 8: An immersive and awe-inspiring (and at times devastating) tale of survival against the odds and the triumph of the human spirit, “Miracle in the Andes” is a heart pulsing memoir with lots of honestly, introspection, and hope.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Miracle in the Andes” is included on the Goodreads lists “Best True Survival Stories”, and “Non-Fiction Disaster Books”.

Book Club Review: “Born a Crime”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing book club running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is song inspirations, where we were given a random song from a random genre and had to pick a book based on the song.  For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah

Publishing Info: One World, June 2016

Where Did We Get This Book: The library!

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Song Inspiration: “Mama Tried” by Merle Haggard

Book Description: The memoir of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

Kate’s Thoughts

This wasn’t my first time reading Trevor Noah’s memoir “Born a Crime”, as I read it around the time it came out, but it was fun revisiting it for book club for a couple of reasons. The first was that we always have pretty good conversations during our meetings, and I was interested to see what people had to say. The second and more pressing was that when I last read this book it was before I was a mom, and now that I am a mom I was curious to see if that would change my perceptions of the novel. And it did, for the most part.

One of the strongest aspects about this book is how Noah presents his childhood in South Africa in the waning and post-years of Apartheid, and how he finds humor, vulnerability, and introspection in his story of being a biracial child in a system that criminalized his very existence. He doesn’t hold back on describing how discriminatory, oppressive, and horrible it was, but as a comedian he also is able to pull out humor, whether it’s dark humor or just the general humor of growing up and the moments of joy and happiness he did have (as let’s be real, even in horrible societal situations, there is still joy and life to be lived). I still found this to be a really good and accessible take for the unfamiliar on Apartheid, South African colonialism, and the ways those things interacted and whose effects are still being felt today.

And yes, it was different reading it this time through the lens of being a mother. Noah was clearly very influenced by his fiery mother, who did so much and sacrificed so much and stood up to SO MUCH to keep Noah safe amongst a lot of hardship, danger, and heartache. I loved reading the various anecdotes that he had about her, and while I think that she and I are VERY different people with very different approaches to parenting (a lot of this has to do with my privileges as a white woman with a white child in the U.S.), Noah makes it clear that the choices that she made were rooted in the racist society that they were living in, and were just the reality of their situation. It’s moving, heart wrenching, hopeful, and humorous all at once, and his love and respect for his Mom jumps off the page as they both navigate hardships and triumphs.

“Born a Crime” is a great memoir that I enjoyed reading a second time. If you haven’t really taken the jump into memoirs but are curious to do so, this is a good one to start with, as it has a lot of depth, heart, and, yes, humor.

Serena’s Thoughts

I also really enjoyed this one! I made sure to get the audiobook version, as it was too much to resist getting to listen to Noah himself narrate this story. He’s a wonderful voice actor and really brought the text to life in a way that added to the already powerful stories. As Kate said, this book is a tricky balancing act between humor and tragedy. Being a comedian, it’s clear that Noah’s approach to his story was to lean into his own talents and career in this way. But the story also covers some truly horrific incidents of his past and the realities of life in South Africa during this time. There were definitely scenes that were difficult to get through, but then Noah always managed to balance these with a well-timed, more comedic anecdotes. In this way, the reader is better able to absorb the entire tale without getting bogged down in only the darker moments.

Also like Kate, it was interesting reading this book from the perspective of motherhood. There truly is a new level of terror that comes form having a child. Yes, you have much new responsibility. But it also quickly becomes clear just how little control you truly have over them and their lives. You can do the best job in the world and still not control for what goes on around them or, even, the choices that the child ( or adult child) will make as they grow up. And, of course, this is coming from a parent who lives in one of the most wealthy, safe countries in the world. Very different than the challenges Noah’s mother faced trying to raise her son in a part of the world that was very dangerous for him. Her decisions were often of the sort that are difficult to understand from parents in the U.S. who do not face the conditions she was living under, but I think that’s part of what makes it an important read. Yes, apartheid is now over, but there are many parts of the world where parents face similarly dire situations every day.

Overall, I thought this was a very effecting read. The ability to balance the heavier notes of his life while also bringing out the humor to be found in every day situations was truly impressive. I definitely recommend this read for anyone who enjoys memoirs!

Kate’s Rating 8: At times a very funny but also very emotional and personal memoir about a young man growing up in very difficult circumstances, and being raised by a mother whose strength enables growth, change, and, ultimately, liberation for both of them.

Serena’s Rating 8: The ability to pair laugh-out-loud humor with truly harrowing tales of the past has to be rare indeed; Trevor Noah makes it look easy!

Book Club Questions

  1. Much of Noah’s story explores a very specific point in South African history. How familiar were you with this history? What did you learn that was new?
  2. Noah’s mother plays a huge role in his life, with her approach to parenting very much shaped by the dangers her son faced in the world. What stood out to you about Noah’s family life?
  3. The story is framed with one very important aspect of Noah’s life, with his mother and his step-father. How did the bookended style of this this tale affect your experience of the book?
  4. Noah is an excellent comedian, however the book also touches on very dark themes and scenes. How well did you thing these different tones stood out to you? Were there any stories that stood out as especially humorous or dark?
  5. Identity plays a big role in this book, and Noah touches on this in many ways, including how language shapes us. Do you find yourself speaking in different ways in different situations? Did you relate to any of these anecdotes?

Reader’s Advisory

“Born a Crime” is included on the Goodreads lists Best Audiobooks Ever and Best Memoir / Biography / Autobiography.

Next Book Club Pick: “The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch” by Melinda Taub

Book Club Review: “Big Friendship”

We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is “Outside the Genre Box”, in which we each picked a book from a genre or format that we don’t usually read.

For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close” by Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Publishing Info: Simon & Schuster, July 2020

Where Did We Get This Book: The library!

Genre/Format: Self-Help Memoir

Book Description: A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.

Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls.

An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.

Serena’s Thoughts

I’m not a big nonfiction reader and when I do read in the genre, it’s usually more history-based. But I was intrigued by this book when it was selected for bookclub. You can throw a stone any direction and hit a book talking about the trials and tribulations of romantic and family relationships. What you don’t often find are books that discuss the work involved in maintaining friendships.

The backstory behind this book in particular was interesting. The two authors have co-run a successful blog for many years before deciding to write a book about friendship and the challenges they in particular have faced and overcome in their many years working together and being friends. And, I think, this is a bit where the concept fell off for me. The book was much more focused on the ins and outs of their unique stories and situations. While they confronted issues such as race and the balance of roles in friends who also work together, the story was also very narrowed down to their own experiences. As such, I felt it was only marginally useful as a general topic book about maintaining friendships.

I also wasn’t familiar with their blog. That being the case, I was perhaps even less interested in the details of their situation. To me, it read simply as two random people writing about their friendship, which started to feel a bit strange as I went on. Fans of the podcast are likely going to get much more out of this book, as they would already have an established interest and investment in these two individuals. But for me, I had been hoping for a bit more of a general examination of the unique aspects involved in friendships.

The writing also threw me off. They made the choice to write the book in third person, essentially referring to themselves in third person throughout. I could see glimpses of the humor and style that must be part of what has made their podcast such a success, but I struggled with the process of actually reading this book.

Kate’s Thoughts

Unlike Serena, I do like to dabble in non-fiction a fair amount, though more often than not it’s usually true crime with the occasional memoir, or a history book. I’m really not big into self help, or memoirs that delve into relationship dynamics. So “Big Friendship” was definitely going to be stretching my reading muscles a bit. My experience with the book was pretty similar to Serena; it didn’t really connect with me the way I had hoped it would.

Serena covers a lot of the same qualms that I had with the book (the writing style drove me a bit batty, to be honest). I thought that it was very much based on their own relationship and personality dynamics, and therefore am not sure that I was getting much out of it from a complete ‘this is how you nurture friendships’ angle. Which is too bad, because I really do think that our culture doesn’t value a platonic friendship relationship in the same ways it does familial or romantic ones. I went into this book with no idea as to who these two women are, or what their friendship is like, and therefore didn’t really have any investment into their thoughts on how they’ve maintained it. All of that said, I am pretty certain that were I familiar with their podcast and had I formed that kind of attachment to them as people, this book probably would have connected better.

And that isn’t to say that I got absolutely nothing from it. I really liked how they talked about how different friendships have ‘rituals’ that help maintain it, like perhaps a favorite bar to go to or a certain routine that applies to a get together or meet up. That section definitely had me thinking about the rituals that I have in my own friendships (Chinese food, video games, and LGBTQIA+ movies with my friend David immediately came to mind during this section), and it kind of made me appreciate the routines that we do have that make our friendships unique to us. I also appreciated the honest talk about the extra work and care it takes between friends of different cultural backgrounds and racial lines, and how exhausting it can be for POC when their white friends aren’t being as supportive or empathetic as they think they are being, and how these white friends need to do the work of listening and applying changes to how they act after letting their friend down.

Overall, while there were a couple of things I felt were insightful, “Big Friendship” wasn’t a hit for me. Fans of the podcast will probably find more to love here than I did.

Serena’s Rating 6: Unfortunately not for me, but it has inspired me to seek out other nonfiction books that discuss friendship.

Kate’s Rating 6: While it had a couple bits that I could apply to my own friendships, overall “Big Friendship” wasn’t my literary cup of tea.

Book Club Questions

  1. What did you think about the progression of these ladies relationships and lives in the book? Did you relate to either of them more than the other?
  2. The authors talk about the concept of ‘low drama mamas’ who don’t thrive on drama within their personal circles. Do you see yourself that way, or have you had times where you do find yourself drawn to drama?
  3. What do you think of their idea of ‘shine theory?’ Do you see yourself trying to apply it in your life and relationships?
  4. Do you think that social media draws us closer, or pulls us apart?
  5. Moving forward, do you think there are any components of this book that have to do with friendships that you think you will try and apply to your relationships?

Reader’s Advisory

“Big Friendship” is included on the Goodreads lists “Better Friendships: Essential Nonfiction on Friendships”, and “Feminism Published in Decades: 2020s”.

Find “Big Friendship” at your library using WorldCat!

Next Book Club Book: “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler

Book Club Review: “I Will Always Write Back”

We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is “Around the World”, in which we each picked a continent and had to match a book that takes place there and/or is written by an author from that continent or of that continent’s descent.

For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives” by Caitlin Alifirenka, Martin Ganda, and Liz Welch

Publishing Info: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, April 2015

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Continent: Africa

Book Description: The true story of an all-American girl and a boy from an impoverished city in Zimbabwe and the letter that changed both of their lives forever.

It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin’s class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place. All the other kids picked countries like France or Germany, but when Caitlin saw Zimbabwe written on the board, it sounded like the most exotic place she had ever heard of–so she chose it.
Martin was lucky to even receive a pen pal letter. There were only ten letters, and forty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one.

That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives.

In this compelling dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became best friends –and better people–through letters. Their story will inspire readers to look beyond their own lives and wonder about the world at large and their place in it.

Kate’s Thoughts

Well when we started our “Around the World” Series for Book Club, we thought that it would outlast quarantine and that it would be a fun way to pass that time. The reality is that we’re in an even worse place than we were back when we started once this session ended. But even if we have more COVID times ahead of us where we have to meet virtually, I’m glad that we did our “Around the World” cycle, as we got to read books that I may not have read otherwise. Our last book was “I Will Always Write Back”, a dual memoir by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda, two pen pals whose friendship became so much more.

I went into this book with a very rudimentary knowledge of Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s regime, and with the unease that we may have been starting a ‘white savior’ narrative. But “I Will Always Write Back”, I think, did a good job of walking that line without crossing it, and I think that the main reason for that is because we got both Caitlin’s perspective, that of a teenage white American living in a comfortable economic situation, and Martin’s, who is a Black Zimbabwean who was living in abject poverty. Getting to hear Martin’s side of the story in his own words and getting his perspectives and experiences really helped keep it away from centering Caitlin’s journey in the narrative, which was good. Martin’s chapters were the ones that I most looked forward to, as while Caitlin was relatable (we are the same age, so I was doing and experiencing similar teenage America girl things that she was in this book), I wasn’t as interested in her story. I think that there could have been a little more introspection on her part at times, but then again, she was a teenager and young adult through the crux of it, so maybe throwing that in would have felt out of place. Luckily Martin’s sections gave the reader a lot to think about, and I feel like I got more from this story from him.

I was interested in seeing their friendship grow and change, however, and liked seeing the two of them interact with each other. You can feel the love and care they have for each other within this books pages, and seeing the two of them have each other’s backs was absolutely uplifting. Given that any pen pal situation that I had in grade school completely floundered, the fact that they kept this friendship going and changed each other’s lives so much is a lovely story in and of itself. This is the kind of book that I would recommend to teens who are wanting to start looking at cross cultural themes and issues, as I think it’s a good introduction to the idea of reaching out to others who may not have the exact same life as you, but could have very similar goals and dreams that you have.

Kate’s Rating 7: An undeniably uplifting memoir about friendship and cross cultural connection, “I Will Always Write Back” has heart and earnestness, though not as much introspection as I was hoping for.

Book Club Questions

  1. What were some of your reactions to the comparisons and contrasts when it came to the lives that Caitlin and Martin were living when they started their correspondence?
  2. Were you knowledgable about the history and the cultural and societal situation of Zimbabwe during Mugabe’s rule?
  3. Do you think that teenagers today would relate to the teenage voices of the people in this book who were teens twenty years ago?
  4. As the book goes on, we learn that Caitlin and her family help Martin out in many ways. How do you think this changed and affected their friendship?
  5. Recently there has been criticism of publishers elevating and publishing ‘white savior’ narratives in books and the publishing industry. Do you think that “I Will Always Write Back” could be considered a white savior narrative? Why or why not?

Reader’s Advisory

“I Will Always Write Back” is included on the Goodreads lists “Must Read Memoirs”, and “Southern Africa”.

Find “I Will Always Write Back” at your library using WorldCat!

Next Book Club Book: “Sailor Moon: Eternal Edition Vols. 1 &2“

Kate’s Review: “Know My Name”

50196744._sx318_sy475_Book: “Know My Name: A Memoir” by Chanel Miller

Publishing Info: Viking, September 2019

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.

Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.

Review: Honestly, when I started “Know My Name” by Chanel Miller, I realized that while I wanted to review it, I had a conundrum in front of me. How do you fully review such a deeply personal memoir about a very personal event in someone else’s life? For those who may be unfamiliar with the name Chanel Miller, perhaps you know the name Emily Doe, the woman that Brock Turner raped, and then was only sentenced to six months in jail (he eventually only served three, by the way). His sentence set off a firestorm across the world, and was one of the many focuses on the disparities in our justice system when it comes to class, race, gender, and sexual assault. I really wanted to read and review this book because Miller’s story is so important. But again… how does one review a story such as this?

Chanel Miller has such a powerful and all consuming writing style, and her story focuses on the night she was raped and what followed afterwards, from having to process her trauma, having to go to court, and having to be dragged and scrutinized in the public spotlight, even if she was technically anonymous. She is unflinching and candid about what happened the night that Turner assaulted her and how it was in the days afterwards, and while those moments are especially hard to read in this book Miller does such a great job of really laying everything on the table. She isn’t afraid to put herself completely out there, and her honesty about what her experience was like really hits the reader in the heart. Her writing style is beautiful, and really gets her sadness, anger, incredulity, and fortitude across. You saw glimpses of this in her victim impact statement that went viral shortly after it was made public, but now seeing it with the complete context of her life and experience just shows how very talented she is as a writer.

She also really emphasizes what it is like to be a victim of a high profile sexual assault case, and how trying and awful it can be. From having to see her actions before the assault dissected and laid out in the open, to having people imply that she asked for it because of said actions, to seeing how Brock Turner’s potential was held in higher regard than her experience of being victimized by him, Miller shows how hard it is for victims to come forward. The entitlement of Turner and the way that the judge sentenced him based on his potential as a wealthy white man is infuriating, and Miller gets to address these issues with her own words. And in the process she shows the world the story that a lot of people may not think about when a man with ‘high potential’ or high profile is outed as a predator: the story of a victim who will have to live with a traumatic event for the rest of their life, and how the fallout is going to effect them. Miller emphasizes how society favors protecting men like Turner at the expense of victims like her, and while we may know that, it doesn’t hurt any less to have it reaffirmed.

I highly recommend “Know My Name”. It is going to be a hard read, and it’s going to probably hurt, but it’s an important story, and Chanel Miller deserves to have her truth amplified.

Rating 9: A very personal, powerful, and beautifully written memoir.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Know My Name: A Memoir” is included on the Goodreads lists “Breaking The Silence: Talking About Violence Against Women”, and “ATY 2020 – Books Related to News Stories”.

Find “Know My Name: A Memoir” at your library using WorldCat, or a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Book Club Review: “My Invented Country”

16528We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is “Around the World”, in which we each picked a continent and had to match a book that takes place there and/or is written by an author from that continent.

For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile” by Isabel Allende

Publishing Info: Harper, May 2003

Where Did We Get This Book: Kate owns it;

Continent: South America

Book Description: Isabel Allende’s first memory of Chile is of a house she never knew. The “large old house” on the Calle Cueto, where her mother was born and which her grandfather evoked so frequently that Isabel felt as if she had lived there, became the protagonist of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. It appears again at the beginning of Allende’s playful, seductively compelling memoir My Invented Country, and leads us into this gifted writer’s world.

Here are the almost mythic figures of a Chilean family — grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends — with whom readers of Allende’s fiction will feel immediately at home. And here, too, is an unforgettable portrait of a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit. Although she claims to have been an outsider in her native land — “I never fit in anywhere, not into my family, my social class, or the religion fate bestowed on me” — Isabel Allende carries with her even today the mark of the politics, myth, and magic of her homeland. In My Invented County, she explores the role of memory and nostalgia in shaping her life, her books, and that most intimate connection to her place of origin.

Two life-altering events inflect the peripatetic narration of this book: The military coup and violent death of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a writer. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on her newly adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author’s past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

Kate’s Thoughts

I am sorry to say that while Isabel Allende has been on my reading list for a long time, I haven’t actually picked up any of her novels. So “My Invented Country” was my first interaction with her as an author. In terms of the history of Chile, I did have a small familiarity with the Pinochet government/dictatorship, as in high school we learned about him. But all of my experience reading about him was through an American lens, which is problematic enough on its own without even adding in the fact that the CIA was the one to help put him into power in the first place. So I went into this wanting to get familiar with Allende, and to see a perspective on Pinochet through a Chilean’s eyes.

“My Invented Country” is a collection of recollections of Allende’s childhood in Chile, and what her life was like when she had to flee after Pinochet came to power. She also makes a lot of connections to how her childhood influenced her books, with a lot of references to “The House of the Spirits”. Given that I haven’t read her other books, I didn’t feel like I was getting as much from this book as one who had read them might have. Along with that, it took a long while to actually get to the information about Pinochet and what that dictatorship did to the country. By the time we did get to that, however, I really liked seeing her insights and how complicated it was in society, and even within her own family. And it’s undeniable that Allende’s writing is gorgeous. The way she described the people in her life, the people in Chile, the landscapes and settings, I felt like I was there and getting a full view.

So while I probably didn’t get as much from “My Invented Country” as I might have, it has encouraged me to actually pick up some of Allende’s books in the near future.

Serena’s Thoughts

I have to echo a lot of what Kate already said. I had heard of Allende before, but of all the subgenres of fantasy, “magic realism” is probably my least preferred. So while her books have been on my radar for a while, I’ve never actually gotten around to reading any of them. And, like Kate said, that might have helped my reading experience with this.

In many ways it was clear that Allende was directing this book almost exclusively to her fans. There were a lot of references to her previous books, and this type of insider knowledge is just the sort of information I would gobble up if one of my favorite fantasy authors wrote a biography of this sort. It was also clear in the overall tone of the book. The writing was often light and witty, obviously tailored to be appealing to even the most strident “only fiction” readers out there who may be new or less used to memoirs. I think she was very successful in this regard, as I would fall in that category of readers who rarely picks up memoirs, and I found her writing to be very engaging.

On the other side of that coin, however…I also know very little about Chilean history, and I had been looking forward to learning more. Like Kate said, it takes quite a while to really get into the more informative aspects of the story, and here the writing style worked a bit against what I was looking for. She had some very good insights here and there, but all too often the actual deeper analysis of the time, people, and political upheaval was only briefly skimmed over. She would often continue to throw in the light, airy commentary amidst all of this. And while still entertaining, I was left wanting more.

Overall, while this may have not been the best introduction to Allende’s work, it did confirm that I enjoy her writing style itself. Her books will remain on my reading list, and I hope to get to one of them soon!

Kate’s Rating 7: Her writing is gorgeous and I really liked the information about the rise of Pinochet, but having not read other books by Allende I feel like I didn’t connect as much as I could have.

Serena’s Rating 7: Struck an awkward balance between a great writing style but one that seemed to, at times, work against the more informative take on the country and times that I was looking for.

Book Club Questions

  1. Had you read anything by Isabel Allende before reading this book? Did you see the connections that she made between her life and her other writings?
  2. How familiar were you with the history of Chile before reading this book? Did you feel like you got a sense of the history and the people who live there? Why or why not?
  3. What kinds of parallels can you draw between Allende’s childhood and your own childhood?
  4. Did this book make you want to visit Chile someday? Why or why not?
  5. Allende talks about moving from one place to another, and how having two homes an sometimes make you feel like you don’t quite fit in perfectly in either. Have you ever experienced anything similar?
  6. If you haven’t read anything else by Allende, did this book make you want to explore her bibliography more?

Reader’s Advisory

“My Invented Country” is included on the Goodreads lists “Chilean Literature”, and “South America: History and Culture”.

Find “My Invented Country” at your library using WorldCat, or a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Next Book Club Book: “Picnic at Hanging Rock” by Joan Lindsay

Book Club Review: “Almost American Girl”

40030311._sy475_We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is “American Girl Readalikes”, in which we each pick an American Girl book and a book that can be connected to it, however tenuous as it may be.

For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “Almost American Girl” by Robin Ha

Publishing Info: Balzer + Bray, January 2020

Where Did We Get This Book: The library!

American Girl Book: “Felicity Saves the Day” by Valerie Tripp

Book Description: A powerful and timely teen graphic novel memoir—perfect for fans of American Born Chinese and Hey, Kiddo—about a Korean-born, non-English-speaking girl who is abruptly transplanted from Seoul to Huntsville, Alabama, and struggles with extreme culture shock and isolation, until she discovers her passion for comic arts.

For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up in the 1990s as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together.

So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation—following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married—Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends at home and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily. And worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to—her mother.

Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined.

Kate’s Thoughts

I had not heard of this book before it was picked for our book club session in March, and therefore going into it was a bit of a blind dive in. I had heard of Robin Ha’s previous book, “Cook Korean! A Comic Book with Recipes” but I knew that this was going to be a bit different. I figured I’d read “Almost American Girl” over the course of a few days, but then I ended up devouring it in nearly one sitting. I loved it that much.

The first thing that struck me about this book was how gorgeous and unique the art was. The colors are a watercolor-esque aesthetic, and it had both a calming effect as well as really evoking the emotions that were coming off the page. Robin’s transition from her life in Korea to her sudden shift to America was emotional and very difficult, and Ha used the imagery in both the pictures themselves and the color schemes to portray all of the ups and downs of Robin’s feelings during that time. From stark reds or darkness during difficult times, or almost glowing and bright colors in times of happiness, Ha uses the artwork to her advantage in her storytelling, and I really liked it.

The story, too, was compelling and very readable. While I was absolutely interested in Robin’s story as a girl who has to completely shift from one culture to another, Ha also makes a point to show the point of view of her mother, who made the decision to take her daughter from her life in South Korea and move them to Alabama without any hint or forewarning. I thought that at first I was going to have a hard time with her mother (while still trying to recognize the cultural differences between my experience and hers), but, like Serena mentions below, Ha was very deliberate in wanting to give a full picture as to how hard she had it and why she would take such a huge risk. And, on a personal note, I think that now that I’m a mother to a daughter (who is still just a baby, mind you) I was especially moved by their relationship, through the good times and the bad.

Ha also did a very good job of showing the straddling of traditional cultural expectations, and the different expectations that the children of immigrants may have. Ha’s step family was a mixed bag of those who thought that Robin and her mother should be adhering to the traditional roles they would have had back in South Korea (even though Robin’s mother didn’t feel like she had a place in that society as an opinionated single mother), and those who wanted to just fit in in American society. That was a theme that I wasn’t really expecting from this story, and I thought Ha was very careful in making sure not to say whether these expectations were right or wrong. Well, except in the case of her step-cousin. That girl was just mean. But we also got to see Ha make connections to other Korean-American kids her age as time goes on, and how once you do find that place in a community that ‘gets it’ it can make a world of difference in one’s life.

“Almost American Girl” was a moving and wonderful graphic memoir. I am so, so glad that we read it.

Serena’s Thoughts

As I’ve said many times before, a big part of my appreciation for bookclub is how it challenges me to read outside of my typical genres. Unlike Kate, I rarely get around to graphic novels, even though I tend to enjoy them when I do  read them. I was excited, then, when I saw that we’d be reading this book next!

This book had a lot of great things going for it, from the excellent looks into a girl’s experience as an immigrant coming to the U.S., to the exploration of her mother’s life and choices, to the beautiful use of the artwork to display the myriad of emotions that Robin experiences as she adjust to her new life. I’ve read a handful of other “immigrant experience” novels and they have all had something unique to offer as no “experience” will be the same, obviously. One thing that I think this story really highlighted were the challenges of language for Robin and the impact this had on her adjustment to life in the U.S. The use of the graphic novel format was cleverly used in this instance to replace speech bubbles with nonsense jargon to highlight how difficult it was for Robin to follow along in conversations, especially when the speaker was talking quickly.

I also really liked the inclusion of the mother’s story. From the beginning, seen through Robin’s eyes, it is challenging to understand the choices Robin’s mother has made that has lead to the complete upheaval of their lives. But as the story continues, we learn more and more about Robin’s mother’s past, the challenges she faced living in Korea as a single mother, and the values she saw in coming to raise her daughter in a completely foreign and new country. And even after that one major choice was made, we see the struggle and the myriad of choices, both good and bad, that Robin’s mother faces in the U.S. while trying to make a new life here.

Lastly, I really enjoyed the last portion of the story that shows Robin briefly returning to Seoul when she’s in college and finding that she no longer fits there either. It’s an interesting look again at the differences between Korean and American culture, and touches on a side of the immigrant experience that is often skipped over. How, on returning to one’s nation of origin, many can find that they no longer fit in within that culture either.

I really enjoyed this book. I think the artwork was beautiful, and I loved the story itself. I highly recommend it to pretty much everyone!

Kate’s Rating 9: An emotional and personal memoir that tackles culture, the immigrant experience, identity, and the importance of community, “Almost American Girl” was a heartfelt and moving read.

Serena’s Rating 9: Through beautiful artwork, “Almost American Girl” presents a moving story of the immigrant experience full of challenges, sorrows, and joys

Book Club Questions

  1. How does “Almost American Girl” compare to other “immigrant experience” novels that you have read?
  2. What did you think of the artwork in this book? Was there anything in particular that stood out to you?
  3. How did you react to Robin’s mother’s parts of this book? Did you feel like you understood the choices that she made?
  4. How did you find Robin’s step family and the way that they treated her and her mother?
  5. Do you think that today Robin would have had the same experience when coming to a completely new culture and country? Why or why not?
  6. How did you feel about where she ended the story in terms of where she was in her life at the time? Did that seem like a good way to wrap the story up?

Reader’s Advisory

“Almost American Girl” is included on the Goodreads list “Great Graphic Novels Released in 2020”, and would fit in on “Books and Boba Reading List”.

Find “Almost American Girl” at your library using WorldCat!

Next Book Club Book: “This Place: 150 Years Retold” by  Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Sonny Assu, et al.

Kate’s Review: “The Third Rainbow Girl”

37655694Book: “The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia” by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Publishing Info: Hachette Books, January 2020

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Book Description: In the afternoon or early evening of June 25, 1980, two young women, Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero, were killed in an isolated clearing in rural Pocahontas County West Virginia. They were hitchhiking to an outdoor peace festival known as the Rainbow Gathering, but never arrived. Their killings have been called “The Rainbow Murders.”

For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted, though suspicion was cast on a succession of local men. In 1993, the state of West Virginia convicted a local farmer named Jacob Beard and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Later, it emerged that a convicted serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin had also confessed. With the passage of time, as the truth behind the Rainbow killings seemed to slip away, its toll on this Appalachian community became more concrete—the unsolved murders were a trauma, experienced on a community scale.

Emma Copley Eisenberg spent five years re-investigating these brutal acts, which once captured the national media’s imagination, only to fall into obscurity. A one-time New Yorker who came to live in Pocahontas Country, Eisenberg shows how that crime, a mysterious act of violence against a pair of middle-class outsiders, came to loom over several generations of struggling Appalachians, many of them
laborers who earned a living farming, hauling timber, cutting locust posts, or baling hay—and the investigators and lawyers for whom the case became a white whale.

Part “Serial”-like investigation, part Joan Didion-like meditation, the book follows the threads of this crime through the history of West Virginia, the Back-to-the-Land movement, and the complex reality contemporary Appalachia, forming a searing portrait of America and its divisions of gender and class, and its violence.

Review: I’ve mentioned this in the past about how my mother likes to send me book reviews from the New York Times or the Washington Post or what have you if she thinks that the book will be of interest to me. Such themes have included cults, murder, and a first scene which involved two men hooking up in a Bulgarian public restroom. Suffice to say, I’m always intrigued when a new review shows up in my inbox. So when she sent an article about “The Third Rainbow Girl” by Emma Copley Eisenberg, I knew that it was bound to be a spot on recommendation. And not only was it spot on, it was about a true crime cold case that I had never heard of until that moment! Mom comes through once again with the creepy and salacious reads!

giphy-1
Who knows what kind of story will arrive in my inbox next? (source)

“The Third Rainbow Girl” is a dual narrative. One is the examination and dissection of a cold case murder from 1980 in which two women were found murdered in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and the woman who was their friend and narrowly missed being murdered herself. The other is a personal memoir by Eisenberg, who spent a few formative years working in Pocahontas county decades after the fact. These two narratives come together to paint a portrait of the community, the culture, and the various hardships and struggles the people have, as well as how the murders and the fallout affected those who live there. But they also tell the story of women trying to find their freedom in different ways, and how misogyny and violence can have a hefty price. The story of Nancy Santomero and Vicki Durian is a familiar one of women who meet a violent end, but the way that Eisenberg slowly peels back the layers of their story is haunting and depressing in how incomplete it feels, even if it’s kind of solved. From thrown out charges to an overturned conviction to the confession from notorious serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin (that ultimately was never pursued as charges because he was already on death row for two other murders), Santomero and Durian’s case has been a mystery, even if the case is technically closed. And the idea of the ‘hillbilly monster’ trope has been one that haunted it from the get go, as everyone in town was sure that it was someone local who was taking aggression out on the ‘hippie’ girls. And yet, if Franklin is to be believed, he was an outsider and certainly not the monster we’ve come to associate with pop culture depictions of Appalaichian predators, though far more dangerous than some “Deliverance” backwoods hick. For whatever reason, be it misogyny, or two victims who didn’t fit the ‘missing pretty white woman’ mold to a t (as while they were both white, neither Santomero nor Durian were seen as ‘pretty’ by media frenzy standards, and as hippie chicks had certain stigmas around them), or a community that had turned on itself, this murder is still incomplete, and still haunts Pocahontas County.

The other narrative, that of Eisenberg’s own experiences in Pocahontas County while working for VISTA, gives a little more context to the culture of the area, though it sometimes treads into ‘this could have been ME!’ territory. The title of the book refers to the Third Rainbow Girl, a woman named Elizabeth Johndrow who had been friends with Durian and Santomero but narrowly missed becoming a victim due to timing and sheer luck. You can see that Eisenberg relates to Johndrow, and on other levels Durian and Santomero, because of the need to explore the world and to find herself when she was young and living in the area, without knowing what would come of that need for adventuring. She experienced first hand the highest highs of living in Pocahontas County, and also saw the way that women are both taught to be tough while being cut down because of circumstance and the misogyny that is rampant in that culture, as it is in other American cultures, though Appalachia gets more scrutiny than some supposedly more progressive parts of the country. I thought that the memoir section of this book, along with the history lessons, definitely made me approach the subject matter with more compassion and a more open mind that I would have had it not been there. But that said, I did find some of the comparisons made between her life and the victims lives, even if not overtly, to feel a little self centered. Because of this, I wasn’t as connected to this part of the story, and wanted to get back to the case at hand as it unfolded and shifted.

Overall, “The Third Rainbow Girl” is a unique take on the true crime genre, and it examined themes that many true crime books don’t. I think that if you are looking for straight true crime it may not be the best fit, but if you want a little reflection and contextualization, you should definitely give it a whirl.

Rating 7: A cohesive and deep dive into a cold case that I was unfamiliar with, and while I liked the background provided to West Virginia, the memoir aspect felt a little shoehorned in.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Third Rainbow Girl” is included on the Goodreads list “True Crime by Women and POC”.

Find “The Third Rainbow Girl” at your library using WorldCat!

Book Club Review: “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood”

9516We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is “American Girl Readalikes”, in which we each pick an American Girl book and a book that can be connected to it, however tenuous as it may be.

For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for book club. We’ll also post the next book coming up in book club. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own book club!

Book: “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” by Marjane Satrapi

Publishing Info: Pantheon, June 2004

Where Did We Get This Book: The library!

American Girl Book: “Samantha Learns a Lesson” by Susan S. Adler

Book Description: Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love. 

Kate’s Thoughts

While it’s true that I read and reviewed “The Complete Persepolis” a couple years back, I really wanted to read it for book club. It was my turn for the American Girl theme, and I knew that I wanted to do “Samantha Learns a Lesson” (as Samantha has always been my favorite American Girl). So I decided that “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” would be the match up, as both are about girls from upper classes who have to learn hard social justice lessons about the lower classes in the society in which they are living.

My opinion of “Persepolis” hasn’t changed since I last addressed it here. It’s still one of my favorite graphic novels of all time, like top ten no question. But with the focus specifically on Satrapi’s childhood for this reading, mixed with the lens I had on social class, AND the current tensions the U.S. is having with Iran, this reading was all the more meaningful for me. Satrapi does a very good job of disseminating how Iran changed so fundamentally as a society in the aftermath of the fall of the Shah, and addresses the complexities of those changes, showing how it isn’t a black and white, right or wrong situation. She also points out her own privileges within Iran during the Cultural Revolution. While she was a girl and her family wasn’t as socially favored as some, they had enough wealth and means that not only could she carefully rebel against societal norms with little repercussions (though some of this was pure luck), she also wasn’t part of the social class that was being used as cannon fodder during the war with Iraq. Along with all that, she also had the means to be sent away for school in Austria when it was becoming clear that being a teenage girl was becoming more and more unsafe.

I’m so pleased that we read “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” for book club! It fostered a lot of good conversation, and I will take any excuse to revisit this stunning memoir.

Serena’s Thoughts

My only previous familiarity with this book was through reading Kate’s glowing review of the complete collection. But with that strong recommendation, I was excited to finally get the excuse (more like the push, but “excuse” sounds better) to finally read it myself. And, put simply, like always, Kate was spot-on in her stamp of approval for this title!

I will admit to having only the barest understanding of the events that happened during Iran’s Cultural Revolution. I knew the end result, of course, but had very little clarity on the progression of events. In that way, this book does a fantastic job at bringing reader’s down to the street level of a topic that is often discussed, at least here in the U.S., at very global levels. Her life also offers an interesting window, coming from an educated and modern family who have many privileges at their finger tips that can help mitigate the experience.But, with those privileges, we also see the increased strain of a change that is felt quite acutely, especially for a young girl growing into her teenage years. We see the burgeoning of the obligations towards social justice weighed against the practicalities of safety and one’s own welfare.

I also loved the illustration style of this book. The choice to use only black and white colors not only parallels the movement of a society towards a more black and white way of thinking about life, but leaves the readers to focus largely on the content before them. It is not “prettied up” in anyway that could distract from the fact that this is based upon a woman’s real life experience. That said, the style of drawing is also very approachable to young readers and nicely balances out the stark color palette.

I really enjoyed this book and am so glad Kate picked it for bookclub. Like the broken record I often am, I’m yet again thankful to be part of a group of readers who expose me to books that I would likely not get around to reading on my own.

Kate’s Rating 10: An all time favorite of mine that I will happily revisit over and over.

Serena’s Rating 10: A must read for fans of graphic novels and those looking for more insights into life growing up in Iran during the Cultural Revolution.

Book Club Questions

  1. What did you think of the choice to tell her personal story in graphic form? How do you think it would have been different had it been written in a traditional narrative structure?
  2. “Persepolis: A Story of a Childhoold” is set before, during and after the Cultural Revolution in Iran. How much did you know about this historical period before reading this book?
  3. Like Samantha, Marjane is a child who has to learn some hard truths about the society she’s living in as a child. Are there any obvious differences between how Marjane experienced this period vs other Iranian children from other backgrounds may have?
  4. In an interview Satrapi said that she wanted “Persepolis” to show that Iran wasn’t only the society and culture that is shown through western lenses (that of a fundamentalist culture). Do you think she succeeded? Why or why not?
  5. Captivity and freedom are themes that are prevalent throughout the narrative. What are some of the ways they are presented within the story?
  6. How does a persons personal history interact with the history of a society or a culture they live within? How do you think your own personal history ties with the history of your country?

Reader’s Advisory

“Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” can be found on the Goodreads lists “Best Memoir Graphic Novels”, and “Reading Recommendations for a Young Feminist”.

Find “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” at your library using WorldCat!

Next Book Club book: “It’s Not The End of the World” by Judy Blume