[identity profile] seekingferret.livejournal.com
1). Five Equations That Changed The World by Michael Guillen

This is a book I rather wish had been written when I was 13. I grew up with a decidedly similar book by Isaac Asimov, a collection of ten-page stories about important scientists that presented their great discovery in historical, social, but most importantly in personal context. It's one of the most treasured books in my collection, even though I've long outgrown the storybook approach to history. I'm pretty sure it's the book that turned me into a scientist. Asimov transformed these great scientists into heroes. He wrote of Lavoisier braving the mobs in the French Revolution to achieve scientific breakthroughs, and Marie Curie risking her own life to study radium. And despite the focus on the individual, despite the pat reductionism, Asimov kept his eye on the prize, drilling in through rote repetition the ideal of the Scientific Method.

Guillen's book, as I said, is remarkably similar in scope and style. He tells the story of five scientists: Newton, Bernoulli, Faraday, Clausius, and Einstein. And I think that's a very telling set of five names. Newton and Einstein are obvious, but the other three, while important, are not quite the household names. These are quite clearly Guillen's personal heroes. And his text is an act of beatification.

He focuses, for example, in the story of Michael Faraday's beautiful law of electromagnetic induction, on the class boundaries that separated Faraday and his mentor Sir Humphry Davy. And recalling the more memoirish elements of the other Guillen book I've read, where he describes his childhood in a working class Chicano family in California, I kept seeing the parallels Guillen was building in. And again and again, as he develops the story of these equations, Guillen spends time exploring the way the religious beliefs of these scientists shaped their thinking about scientific discovery. Family life is important, too. Loves and lost loves, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters litter the pages. These are very intimate portraits, painted with enthusiasm and extreme care.

2)The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy

Part travelogue and part modern physics explanation, this was a hell of a lot of fun.

A few years ago, an astronomy geek friend told me of her plan to travel around the world to visit radio telescopes and write a book about it. A couple years after that, she reported to me half-crestfallen that someone had beaten her to it. Only half-crestfallen, though, because she said the book itself was terrific. This is that book.

It describes a pilgrimage (The first site visited is a California observatory known as The Monastery. The last site visited shares a mountaintop with a Buddhist temple.) to the remote sites around the world where cutting edge physics is being done in unusual places whose geography has given it value, as the ambition of our scientists has grown to the point where we need lab structures bigger than we can build. The 'labs' the book describes include mineshafts deep beneath the Earth, mountaintops high in the sky, a vast swath of Lake Baikal, the South Pole, and others.

Ananthaswamy makes the science so clear and moreover, makes it so clear why it matters. He never loses sight of the real world, of politics, economics, culture. When he visits South Africa he explores the way apartheid intersected with astronomy. When he visits Chile he shows the climate change and its associated changes in weather patterns have presented new challenges for the observatory.

And he tells the stories of the little heroes with energy and sympathy. The human calculators, many of them women who were barred from doing 'real science', who made some of the important early 20th century discoveries in astronomy because they were the ones who got their hands dirty with the data. The researchers who drifted out of doing calculations into administration and became the ones who enabled the increasingly massive instruments to be built. The drillers braving the subzero temperatures at the South Pole to allow instruments to be placed deep inside the ice. The graduate students working long, hard hours doublechecking results while their PIs present them to universal acclaim. The Edge referred to in the title doesn't just refer to the locales he visits, but also to people who have forsaken comfortable lives in academia or industry for the challenge of pushing the boundaries of our knowledge. And as Ananthaswamy stumbles to the peak yet of another mountain whose thin air makes it hard for him to breathe, you appreciate just how arduous a task they have taken on as scientists.
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
 #30. Luba: The Book of Ofelia (Vol. 2 in the Luba trilogy; Vol. 21 in the Complete Love & Rockets)

2005 (material originally published 1998-2005), Fantagraphics Books


Warning: Long and obsessive plot details ahead!  This is a crazy long book -- 240 pages -- and incredibly dense, for a graphic novel.  Also, the storytelling modalities are highly refined and self-referential, full of interweaving, flashback and allusion; and also it's Part 2 of a three-part series-within-a-series.  So I take these reviews as an opportunity to parse the plot, to assure myself that I've actually followed what the hell is going on.
 

So!  This is the second part of Gilbert ("Beto") Hernandez's trilogy about the latest adventures of Luba, his protagonist, in America.  (For basics about Luba, you can see my earlier post about the previous book in this series.)

At this point in time, Luba and her children are in the United States, but her husband Khamo is stuck in immigration limbo.  Luba continues her quest to figure out what she must -- or can -- do in order to untangle his shady past, police record, and hazy criminal associations, so that she can bring him to join them.  (Like most of Luba's accomplishments, this is not really hindered -- and is perhaps made more impressive -- by that fact that, like some of the other main characters living in the United States, she still can't speak a word of English.)

 

Much of this section's narrative mechanics is fueled by the announcement that Ofelia, Luba's long-suffering older cousin, has decided to finally try being the writer she has always wanted to be.  This in-progress "book of Ofelia" gives, perhaps, the collection its title, although the phrasing also seems to imply (in its Biblical cadence) that she is instead the main subject of the book.  (Except that she isn't, really; she's not present throughout.  I keep thinking about the way that, in Spanish -- as I think I understand it, anyway -- this phrase, "el libro de Ofelia," does not make a distinction between the book *by* Ofelia and the book *about* her.  So this book, perhaps, is both.)

 

(On that note: one other thing I like is how much of the book's dialogue and internal thought-monologues are in Spanish.  The switches back and forth are frequent but consistent: the Latin American-born children tend to speak in fluent English to each other, but use Spanish with their parents, and to think in it when introspection is called for; the American-born children and adults think in English, although they frequently and fluently use Spanish with their relations.  Hernandez indicates the switches with the widely used comics convention of putting the "second-language" dialogue within brackets (and, in this book, some double-bracketing for other languages, like French).  When Hernandez' stories were set entirely in the Central American village from which many of the characters hail, he used to just put a note at the bottom of the first page that everything was in Spanish unless otherwise indicated -- a convention that Jaime has also sometimes used, e.g. in stories set among recent immigrants and jornalero workers -- but now that they've migrated to America, there's a lot more use of both tongues.)

 

So.  What's happening in the Book of Ofelia?

 

 

Obsessive plot details! Avoid if you fear spoilers! )

 


[Tags I'd like to add: a: hernandez gilbert, i: hernandez gilbert, california, children [*not* "children's"], magic realism, disability, meta-literature]


[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
#27. The Education of Hopey Glass (The Complete Love & Rockets, Vol. 24), Jaime Hernandez

2008 (material originally published 2005-'08), Fantagraphics Books

 

Okay, here I go about Love & Rockets again.  I feel a little dumb writing in so much detail about each new volume of the series I devour (being on a ten-year catch-up binge as I am), since I'm not sure anyone else is interested.  But at the same time, it's hard for me to resist it.  Half of the books -- the ones by Jaime Hernandez, about his post-punk ambisexual working-class Latina chicks in L.A. -- I've been following for so many years and love so much that I can't help gushing on and on.  And the ones by Gilbert Hernandez, about his ever-more-convoluted Lynchian psychosexual post-magic-realism Mexican American and Central American émigrés in L.A. -- the ones who all seem to sport big breasts, huge butts, impressive penis sizes, and an increasingly complicated array of fetishes... well, those are so involuted that I can't really follow the story line unless I break it all down for myself.

 

So here we have  Volume 24, all about Maggie's best friend and one-time lover Hopey Glass.  The overarching narrativethrust comes from the fact that Hopey has a new job.  It's a real job, which is really strange for her!  As long as we've known her, Hopey was living either with or on other people; or playing bass with a band; or off a small inheritance; or, more recently, bartending and working odd jobs.  But apparently she recently took up temping, and now she has -- of all things -- studied for, taken, and passed an exam to become certified as a teaching assistant in the state of California.  It's a new school year now, and her job is about to begin.

What this volume's all about... )
 
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
#26. Luba in America (Vol. 1 of the Luba Trilogy), by Gilbert Hernandez
2001 (material originally published 1998-2000), Fantagraphics Books

Ha!  Man, I just never stop referencing myself, do I?  (Well, well: the internet wouldn't be as much fun if it weren't so easy to be intertextual.)

This is the third Love & Rockets book I'm reviewing, since I am indulging in a catch-up binge on my favorite comics series after years of only-sporadic reading.  The first two I reviewed were by Jaime Hernandez, the half of the Hernandez brothers whose work I consistently adore. Luba in America, by contrast, is by Gilbert Hernandez, whose stories, characters, style and subjects are quite different.  In an earlier post I discussed my feelings about Gilbert's work, including and especially my ambivalence about his increasingly sexual and sexualizing vision of his female characters' lives.  

But, heh, Gilbert was also a bold, compassionate and masterful storyteller at one time, and perhaps is still.  If his "weird id display" (as a previous commenter called it) doesn't put you off, there is still a lot of story to admire.  So here I am: taking a careful breath, and plunging into the now-complete "Luba trilogy" to see what Gilbert has recently been up to.

Venga conmigo! )
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
#25. This Bridge Called My Back, ed. Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa
1981/'83, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

This is another book that is so full of... ideas and thinking and newness, and that has so many visions and so much emotion in it, and that contains both so much I can identify with and so much that seems deeply foreign -- I don't mean only the experiences and attitudes of the women who wrote it, but also, which is harder for me to assimilate, the lens through which they view the world: the moment of history, cultural and political, in which thy formulated these ideas and these manifestoes -- that I feel overwhelmed when I try to think about posting a review of it.

But I also feel kind of like a coward for backing out of reviewing it. What to do? I think I will let it simmer for a while. I may also read the much more recent companion book to it (this bridge we call home, used, I see, as an icon for this group ;), and see if that helps me understand, and bridge the thirty years of historical difference between these women and me.

[tags I would add if I could: assimilation, sociology, spirituality [or: religion/spirituality], puerto rican, a: morales rosario, a: rushin donna kate, a: wong nellie, a: lee mary hope, a: littlebear naomi, a: lim genny, a: yamada mitsuye, a: valerio anita, a: cameron barbara, a: levins morales anita, a: carillo jo, a: daniels gabrielle, a: moschkovich judit, a: davenport doris, a: gossett hattie, a: smith barbara, a: smith beverly, a: clarke cheryl, a: noda barbara, a: woo merle, a: quintanales mirtha, a: anzaldua gloria, a: alarcon norma, a: combahee river collective, a: canaan andrea, a: parker pat] 


(Also, apropos of nothing: Whoo! Halfway through! This book feels like an appropriate one for that milestone.)


[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
21. !Ask a Mexican!, Gustavo Arellano
2007, Scribner

I actually finished this book months ago, but I couldn't figure out what to say about it.  I guess I still can't, really.  There are some things I really like about this book, and some things I find very disappointing, so I guess I'll just talk about that.

The book is centrally made up of a collection of columns by Arellano, who writes a kind-of-advice column for the OC [Orange County, CA] Weekly, whose putative mission is to answer questions from clueless gabachos (white people) about Mexican culture and mores.  That's a part of the country where many Mexican immigrants and their Mexican-American descendants live side-by-side with white (and other) Americans, and where there seems to be a virulent ongoing culture clash, fueled in part by arguments about immigration policy and illegal immigration, and in part by the stuff that fuels any culture clash (confusion, fear, tribalism, bigotry, language barriers, racism, and all the rest of that awesome stuff).   So tensions can run high there, and if one can judge by the tone of the questions The Mexican gets asked -- if even one-third of them are actual questions written in by actual white Californians -- there are lots of people who are happy to let their racism just hang out.

Given that background, I admire Arellano's "straight-talk" approach, which deals candidly with insults, epithets, stereotypes and racist language, in order to talk about them.  Wab and gabacho (insulting words for "Mexican" and "white person" respectively) are frequent in the column.  Questions like "Why do Mexicans have so many fucking kids?", "Why do ghetto-poor people spend money on their trucks instead of their families?," "Why do your women insist on wearing low-riding jeans with their fat bellies spilling out?," or "Why don't you illegal immigrants have enough respect for the United States to learn English?" -- these questions get serious answers.  Arellano doesn't spend a lot of time berating anyone for intolerance or racism; the premise seems to be that the racism is obviously there, that's the ground-zero starting point, so let's talk about the actual questions.  He maintains his dignity by addressing his interlocutors in the same tone -- which is not particularly polite -- but the answers often have a lot of actual content: Arellano talks about cultural, social, and historical issues and themes in Mexican culture, and frequently quotes sociological studies and government demographic data (Arellano has an MA in sociology).  That's presumably the aspect of his approach that merited the cover blurb from the L.A. Times, "A sassy mix of Lenny Bruce rant and civil rights manual."  For my part, it reminds me of the early days of Dan Savage's "Savage Love" sex-advice column, when he invited -- nay, demanded -- that his interlocutors address him as "Hey, Faggot!"  The theory again being: we both know you have private opinions about me, so let's get it all out there up front so that it won't become the subtext to the rest of our conversation.

I was disappointed, though, by some aspects of Arellano's answers.  For one thing, he doesn't always address the actual question asked: sometimes you can see him quickly veering the discussion around to fit in with something he apparently really wants to quote or write about that day.  That's not great advice-columnist manners, I think: dude, it's not all about you.  Also, some issues that questioners bring up he just kind of fails to deal with.  The ones that were of most interest to me -- where I happened to notice him falling down or just evading, over and over again -- were the ones that had to do with ingrained gender inequality in Mexican culture, and the ones relating to homosexual behavior and attitudes toward it.  He just kind of evades, man, over and over again -- and every now and then he says something that's just concretely insulting.  "As for the Mexican women being sultry and spicy -- that's all documentary, baby."  "Any man who breaks the shackles of propriety and... grabs his crotch is the kind of immigrant we want... Wolf-whistling Mexican men are our modern pioneers, and gabachas are their new frontier, their virgin soil."  "As for our young men's current fascination with pansy-ass K-Swiss sneakers and the color pink... blame metrosexuality, the biggest threat to machismo since the two-income household."  You know what, man, fuck you, too.

That said, I did learn a lot from this book.  One of the most interesting parts are the longer "investigation" pieces Arellano wrote for the book, and includes at the end of each chapter.  A lot of them include discussions with currently living-illegal Mexican immigrants about issues like living on a tiny budget or doing jornalero work (manual day labor).  The most amazing one, for me, is undoubtedly the ten-page essay on the huge Mexican and Mexican-American fan base of Morrissey.  (Yes, Morrissey, the fey, depressive Englishman, who remains sexually ambiguous decades after it's stopped being cool.  THAT GUY.  Morrissey and Mexicans?  I would never, in a thousand years, have guessed that one.)

So anyway.  As you can see, this book gave me quite a lot to think about. 

Below is a short sampling from it, to give an idea of Arellano's style:

Q: "Why are Mexicans known as greasers?  Is it because they spread rancid lard from their dirty kitchens all over themselves after bathing instead of baby oil or cologne the way clean, civilized Anglos do?"

Dear Gabacho: Mira, güey [Look, man], the only grease we put on ourselves is the Three Flowers brilliantine Mexican men use to lacquer up their hair to a shine so intense astronomers frequently mistake the reflection off our heads for the Andromeda Galaxy.  That puts us in brotherhood with the 1950s gabacho rebels whom mainstream society also denigrated as greasers.  But the reason greaser maintains such staying power as an epithet against Mexicans -- etymologists date its origins to the 1830s -- is because it refers to, as you correctly imply, our diet. Sociologist Irving Lewis Allen devotes a chapter in his 1990 compendium of linguistic essays... [Etc.]
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
[Note: Tags I would like to add, when it eventually becomes possible: a: hernandez lea, i: hernandez lea, steampunk.]

#20.  Cathedral Child, Lea Hernandez
Cyberosia Publishing, 2002 (?)

Cathedral Child
is a very curious graphic novel of somewhat confusing provenance.  It is also, I think, unfinished.  I gather that it was meant to be the first volume of a series that Hernandez called "Texas Steampunk Trilogy," but there were a long series of delays in publishing the book and I don't think the second and third volumes were ever produced.

Which is a pity, because Cathedral Child is full of interesting ideas, and has a unique sensibility and a lot of heart.  The ending is very confusing to me, but I don't know how much of that comes from its being supposed to continue on later, or perhaps from the artist having been obliged to cram some extra plot points in where they hadn't been planned.  (Babylon 5 season four, anyone?)

So anyway, I can fault this book on several counts of clarity and pacing. On the other hand, conceptually it is fantastic.  It is set in nineteenth-century West Texas, where a white engineer, Nikola (I see what you did there!), and his investor/partner, Stuart, have set up shop to build an "analytical engine," which in this setting seems to mean an AI. 

They are building their AI inside a mission-style Spanish church, which is referred to as Cathedral, and the "machinists" and "tutors" -- who do the work of teaching and training the young artificial intelligence --  come from among the ranks of the so-called natives, who seem to be Hispanicized Indians.  (This is not entirely clear to me, but on the other hand I am not entirely clear on the distinction between "Hispanicized Indians" and the people we now call Mexicans, so maybe that means I have to do some more research myself.)   In any case, they are brown people, with Spanish names.  And there are really not nearly enough representations of brown people with Spanish names in steampunk at all, much less drawn in a manga-influenced American style, so even if it were just for this I applaud Lea Hernandez a lot.

I won't summarize the whole story here -- I guess I should just recommend reading it yourself, if it seems interesting to you.  I do admit I find the book somewhat confusing.  Some of the story concepts aren't as clearly brought through as they should have been, and I think that unclearness resides both in the storytelling and in the artwork.  On the other hand, I like many of the characters, and some of the ideas are just sublime.  It's really too bad the trilogy seems never to have been finished.

(Also: this book, and its writer, raise a "Who's P.O.C.?" question for me.  Is Lea Hernandez a writer/artist of color?  I am assuming, from her name, her place of origin, and -- here's where it gets really tricky -- from the content of her work, that she is Hispanic, and probably Mexican American.  But does that mean she's necessarily a person of color?  I don't know.  All the (smallish) photos of her I've been able to find online show her with blonde hair.  But I don't know if that means anything; many Mexicans have blonde hair... So here I am, including her, but without really knowing.  For all I know, I could be wrongly assuming.  And we all know what assuming does.  I could be making a ming out of my ass.)
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
#19.  Locas in Love, Jaime Hernandez (The Collected Love & Rockets, Vol. 18)
2000, Fantagraphics Books (material originally published in Penny Century, Measles, and Maggie & Hopey Color Fun, 1996-2000)

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I have loved Love & Rockets since I was about thirteen.  It's one of the great joys of my life that this series (that's what it is, a black-and-white comics series written and drawn by California-based Mexican-American brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez) is, despite all odds, still going; that it has no obvious end in sight, and that I can imagine (though I realize it's unlikely) that it may be with me all my life.

My ability to follow the series closely has varied with my own circumstances, and with the circumstances of its publication.  Since about 2000, for various reasons -- the brothers were publishing several different series, the schedule was irregular, I was out of the country -- I have only been able to read issues every now and then, when I came across them in a shop; or, occasionally, spend several hours in a bookstore reading whatever recent compilations they had on hand.  With the double inspiration of this 50books project, though, combined with the realization last month that the university library to which I have access (through my job) is willing and able to get even graphic novels for me -- quickly and easily! -- through interlibrary loan, I've begun a binge of catching up.  This is freaking awesome, people.

So, even though I have already read Vol. 22 (Ghost of Hoppers, which I own), and the last post I made was on Vol. 20 (Dicks And Deedees), this post is about backtracking all the way to Vol. 18, Locas In Love, which I figured I should read anyway because I thought there might be some material in there I'd missed.  (I'm only talking about even-numbered ones here because those are the ones collecting Jaime's work and storylines; the odd-numbered ones are Gilbert's collections.  Um, I realize this is incredibly involuted.  That's because I'm a comics dork, OK???  And I own all the volumes up to #15, Hernandez Satyricon, so...  OK YES I AM A DORK!)

So anyway.  Below are some spoilers.

Spoilers, spoilers... )

I LOVE LOVE & ROCKETS, PEOPLE.  And I still hold out hope that someday, someday, those stupid MacArthur people will get their heads out of their butts and do something for the Hernandez Brothers.

[Note: Tags I would like to add, when it becomes possible: superheroes; magic realism.]
[identity profile] b-writes.livejournal.com
I listened to the unabridged audiobook by this, read by the author. When Cisneros first spoke, I was taken slightly aback and afraid I wouldn't like the book: her voice is light, sweet, girly. I thought it might be twee, or goofy-sounding.

But I was quickly won over by her warmth and excellent reading. She has a deft, smart delivery, and she treats her listener like a confidante or best friend. The introduction was especially affecting (I am not sure if it's just in the audiobook or is included in newer editions of the book as well), where she talked about the reactions her book has inspired in readers over the years.

[livejournal.com profile] osprey_archer sums up the book very well here; I want to recommend the audiobook as a good car read, because the short chapters lend themselves well to short trips around town, and again, because Cisneros is such a good reader. I felt like I'd gained a new friend by the end of the book.
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
#16. Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya
1972, Quinto Sol

It is the 1940s.  Antonio, who is almost seven, lives with his family in a small riverside community in "the llano" -- a vast, green plain where sheep, goats and cattle graze, and vaqueros make their living herding them out in the freedom and silence.  Antonio's father comes from the Márez family, which has always roamed the llano, but his mother comes from the Lunas, settled farmers and town-builders, and she wants her youngest son to become a farmer or a priest.  Antonio doesn't know which way his blood will pull him, but he is on the brink of many changes: he's about to start making the walk across the river every day with his sisters to attend the school up in town, where, the kids say, they make you learn English; he will start catechism in preparation for his first communion, and enter into the privileged community of those with whom God shares secrets; the end of the war might bring his older brothers home; and -- most immediately and excitingly -- Ultima, known as la Grande, the venerated curandera, is coming to live with them.  Ultima is a medicine woman, a healer, and a sage -- not, Antonio is convinced, a witch, as some people call her.  But not everyone agrees with him...

More on magic, rivers, wide plains, fish... )
[identity profile] wordsofastory.livejournal.com
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.
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
Dicks and Deedees: Vol. 20 of The Complete Love & Rockets, Jaime Hernandez
2003, Fantagraphics Books (Material originally published 1999-2002)

Where can I even begin about Love & Rockets?

Love & Rockets is... this art form that we don't have very much of in the United States, and maybe not anywhere else.  And it's difficult to come up with analogies to explain it.  What Love & Rockets is, is a creator-owned comic that has been written and drawn by the same two guys -- Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, a pair of brothers from Oxnard, CA (outside Los Angeles) -- ever since it first began publication in 1982.  So it's kind of like a soap opera, except it's on paper.  And it's a little like a superhero comic, except it is not about superheroes.  And the most, the most important thing about it, in terms of distinguishing it from these other forms and media, is that it has never, never been a product created by committee.  It is a story -- or, rather, a set of interrelated stories -- created by two authors, each one drawing and writing the histories and vignettes of his own characters, against the backdrop of the world and setting he created, moving forward and backward in time, deepening, developing, experimenting, extrapolating.  So each half of this story, what it is, is most like a book -- a drawn one -- that has been being written for over twenty years. 

(So, as a reviewer put it once, and I thought at the time he was being flip, but I think I see now his authentic meaning: what it is actually most like is life.)

This is gonna be a long review, so here for the cut. )
[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com
The House on Mango Street is a series of vignettes told by Esperanza, a twelve-year-old Latina girl whose family has just moved into a house in a halfway shady neighborhood. Each vignette takes a chapter, and each chapter is very short, two to three pages with pretty big printing. The structure sounds choppy, but it builds to a surprisingly satisfying whole: characters recur and the vignettes connect back to each other like a series of ribbons knotted together.

I liked it a lot. Not only were the story and the structure interesting, but Esperanza has an excellent voice: believably childish but also clearly growing up. One of my favorite vignettes was a story about a family party. Esperanza had a nice new dress but her mother forgot to get shoes to match, so she sits, miserable, her feet hidden under her chair, refusing to dance because this was not how things were supposed to be.

I iked the scene both because it was so spot on – I did things exactly like that as a child – and because it was presented so empathetically: the understanding that yes, the wrong shoes are that big a deal when you’re twelve, and no smug superiority about silly kids freaking out about small silly things.

So I liked the book very much. I would recommend it to people who like books about children that aren’t necessarily children’s books; people who like books with odd, interesting, elliptical story-telling methods; and, in the Spanish translation, to anyone who reads Spanish semi-fluently and wants to practice.
[identity profile] icecreamempress.livejournal.com
Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! by Sandra Tsing Loh
(New York: Random House, 2008; ISBN-13: 9780609608135)

Orange County: A Personal History by Gustavo Arellano
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008; ISBN-13: 9781416540045)

I happened to read these books right next to each other, and it was an interesting juxtaposition. Both writers use wit to underscore their social observations and critiques; both have wide-ranging media presences, from public radio to the Huffington Post to the Los Angeles Times. And both were writing about a particular California experience.

California here we come )

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