20. Alex Sanchez, The God Box

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20. Alex Sanchez, The God Box

Paul (not Pablo, although he used to go by Pablo before he moved to America) is living a pretty content life as the boyfriend of Angie. He's a devout Christian who attends a charismatic church and is part of Bible Study at his high school, and lives in a small town in Texas. His only problem is that he does not feel much of a sexual attraction for Angie, or any other girl. But when Manuel, a openly gay student, moves to town, things start to change.

A lot of this book is taken up with various characters making the Christian arguments against homosexuality, and other characters then refuting them. Which, since I've heard all of these points before, made me start to skim certain spots. I can imagine that for someone who hasn't heard these arguments, though (such as the small town teens who I presume are the intended audience), this book could be a great resource, because the points are stated clearly and made well.

What I thought was most interesting about this book was actually its portrayal of Charismatic and Fundamental Christians, since that's a world I have very little experience with. I like that the book is very firm in emphasizing that it's not Christianity or faith itself which causes people to be bigoted, as the gay characters and their allies continue to strongly identify as Christian at the end of the story.

Overall, a bit of a simple story, but one I found sweet.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Wow. This collection is amazing. Adichie makes good use of the form of the short story, with well-wrought characters and just the right balance of detail and compact plotting. The stories all have Nigerian women as protagonists (except for "Ghosts", which featured a Nigerian man), some of whom live in America, many in disappointing marriages or otherwise difficult circumstances. While that could easily become repetitive, the author makes it work well--each woman's voice and situation is distinct, and while many of the stories deal with similar issues, they all approach them in different ways. It's a difficult thing to pull off with a collection of stories, but Adichie succeeds admirably.

There's a sustained note of simmering, tightly restrained outrage held through these stories. The women are often caught by their families, husbands, governments. Their lives are sometimes comfortable, sometimes horrific, and always claustrophobic. The women living in Nigeria witness the horrors of Abacha's regime, of corruption, of the loss of their culture and oppression. The women living in America are silenced, the comforts and memories of home, the details of their culture commodified, twisted, sold back to them by white folks. Each woman reacts to her situation differently, and none of these stories offer right and wrong, or fixes for them. In most cases, we don't even see how it ends up--the time of each piece is restricted to a few days or months, in which the character's dissatisfaction and horror come to a head, she (or he) is finally confronted by it, and then...?

( Cut for rest of review containing a few spoilers for some stories )