The Bookhive List: 'Americanah' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has absolutely exploded in popularity in the past year due to a little ditty by one Beyonce Gisele Knowles Carter called 'Flawless.' If you're unfamiliar with it, I'm not sure what you're doing here...? Anyway, the song features an excerpt from Chimamanda's extraordinarily important and influential TedTalk from a while back (which is how I came to know of her). To hear someone articulate the meaning of feminism so clearly and beautifully was striking, and the fact that the speaker was young and gorgeous and very fashionable resonated with so many young women who had previously felt that Feminism had no room for them.

Meanwhile, as her definition of Feminism became part of a pop cultural anthem, Chimamanda published her third novel to universal praise; most people had never heard of her before 'Flawless' but in the publishing world, Chimamanda was a talented young writer whose first two novels had set high career expectations for her (and 'Half of a Yellow Sun' is truly, truly excellent, but one of the toughest books on war I've ever read. I cried so much while reading it. It is criminally underrated, and I haven't read a better, more insightful narrative of the moral ambiguities of warfare).

I read 'Americanah' immediately after it was published, and for me it was very directly linked to a conscious effort on my part to read more contemporary fiction, especially by women. It was a good choice in that sense because it feels so modern (not Modern). I would liken it to something by Zadie Smith, but with less stylized prose, although that's not to say the prose is not stylish because every sentence is perfect and beautiful. It all comes across so effortlessly, and if you're a writer she will make you very jealous. It is also a really genuine, human love story and at no point does it indulge in any kind of sentimentality or emotional shorthand. The two central characters fall in love and grow apart and evolve and meet again and it all feels so organic and real. As if that weren't enough of an accomplishment, it is also a novel that fearlessly and insightfully takes on race and succeeds. It is certainly one of the best novels in the recent past and I feel certain it will become a Classic. 

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

What I'm Reading: 'Changing My Mind' by Zadie Smith

I've said it before -- I prefer Zadie Smith's essays and non-fiction to her novels. The fact that anyone even needs to make the distinction is pretty significant. In other words, she is such an incredibly talented writer that she produces both fiction and non-fiction that is very much worth your time. And if I had to recommend only one Zadie Smith book to someone, it would still be White Teeth, a novel everyone should read.

Part of what attracts me to her non-fiction though, is that Zadie Smith is one of the coolest women in the literary world today. She's friends with Lena Dunham and profiles celebrities like Jay-Z, and her non-fiction reflects the reality of being a mother and an English professor in New York City so much more than her fiction does. It seems like her fiction is largely preoccupied with the world of her younger self. Zadie Smith as an adult today would never be the type of character to appear in a Zadie Smith novel, so in a way I guess I'm responding positively to her more than to her work. Either way, I'm really enjoying ambling through this book of her essays.

This Week in Books I Forget My Obligation to Write About Books

This post is going up rather later than usual; apologies to Tracy, the only person who likely checks in on Bookhive every morning at work.

Emma Thompson wrote more Peter Rabbit stories because she is the greatest human alive. And when she was invited to read the stories to a bunch of children at a bookstore, she brought a tiny blue jacket as proof that Peter Rabbit is real and asked her to write the stories. This reminds me of an amazing idea I had for a running app; instead of having Olympic athletes chiming in with motivational talk, like the Nike app, mine would have women like Emma Thompson and Beyonce and Hilary Clinton sayiing their motivational catch-phrases. Emma Thompson could get me to do anything, even run 3 miles. 

I just a copy of Changing My Mind, Zadie Smith's book of essays. I've always enjoyed her nonfiction more than her fiction, and just in time, she published a new essay about New York for the NY Review of Books. 

Finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Patrick Modiano; I am not too proud to admit that I had never heard of him, and I enjoyed the Twitter reactions from folks in writing and publishing industry in the US immensely. 

This Week in Books, Portland Catch-Up Version: Zadie Smith is a reading addict...

A Prayer Journal

By Flannery O'Connor

Apologies all around for missing the last two "This Week in Books" posts. I know you live for them. It was hard to keep track of what was going on in the world of books while prepping to travel, doing the travelling itself, and then recovering from travelling, but I'm finally back to normal, for a day, and then I prep for a weeked Up North. At the very least I did my best to accumulate some good links the past two weeks, and here they are:

Oprah! Zadie Smith! What they want you to read this summer! Her comments about reading and prison are particularly chilling because that was my primary takeaway from reading Orange is the New Black-- she got to read so many books in prison!

If you, like me, have Joan Didion fever this summer, check out this essay on Play It As It Lays  from Alice Bolin and The Believer. There is a short write-up on it over at The Millions as well, and they recommended it as one of this summer's "Burnt Out Reads."

Hilton Als reviewed the posthumously published Flannery O'Connor book A Prayer Journal. It's behind a pay wall but you can read the intro and if you're a NYT subscriber, you  can enjoy the whole thing (and maybe share some quotes in the comments? Just a thought). This combines one of my favorite contemporary essayists with one of my favorite female authors, so I might even consider paying to read it.

Here's a brief piece on book hoarding from the LA Times. I found it to be abysmally depressing, but that's just me. Also, I tend to read the books I won, so that might disqualify me.

Finally, the thing I am most excited about -- Matter and MSNBC.com are doing a public book club reading of Susan Faludi's recent feminist classic Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women, and have invited plenty of intelligent and inspiring female writers and thinkers to contribute (Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, etc.). You can read along, tweet along, and read their lively discussions of each chapter.

#ReadWomen2014: Zadie Smith

Because I posted about White Teeth earlier in the week, I figured it was a great time to recommend Zadie Smith for #ReadWomen2014, despite my own admitted ambivalence about her.  Maybe ‘ambivalence’ is too strong a term-- I really have enjoyed White Teeth quite a lot, but there have certainly been passages that have dragged along, despite the deftness and wit of the prose. I think what I struggled with in both White Teeth and NW was an inconsistency in my response- I was gripped so much more by certain characters and their passages than others.  If White Teeth had been entirely from Irie’s perspective, for example, or NW from Natalie’s, I think I would have engaged with them more fully. Even so, I would strongly recommend either title, and have every intention of reading On Beauty soon. Part of the reason I recommend her so strongly is that I don’t think it’s possible to be a literate young woman in the US today without having read Zadie Smith. She is so ubiquitous and serves as a cultural touchstone -- she gets brief shout-outs on HBO’s ‘Girls’ and ‘Bored to Death,’ two comedy series about writers in NYC. Her essays deserve as much attention as her novels, and any fan of her would do well to subscribe to the New Yorker to enjoy a fuller breadth of her work.

Shelf Hues: Orange (is the new black)

This week, in honor of the June 6 premiere of Season 2 of Netflix's 'Orange is the New Black,' I put together some of my orange reading material.

What I'm Reading: 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith

I broke my own rule regarding an author’s chronology by reading NW by Zadie Smith immediately upon its release, instead of backtracking to White Teeth and On Beauty. Afterward, many Zadie Smith fans told me I had made a mistake, and shouldn’t let NW dictate my impressions of her.  Although it received very mixed reviews, I enjoyed NW; it didn’t make an enormous impression on me, but there were certain elements of it that I absolutely loved, and most importantly, and whetted my appetite for more Zadie Smith fiction.  And as a New Yorker devotee, I have always loved her essays, and am looking forward to finally reading some of her published essay collections in the coming months.

Much like NW, White Teeth explores the intertwining lives of Londoners, particularly in regard to their immigrant experiences.  I found that the chapters devoted to Irie, the daughter of a British father and Jamaican mother, really came alive most for me, and I wonder if this has anything to do with the obvious similarities between Irie and Zadie Smith herself.  Even so, I’m still finding myself in this weird Zadie Smith limbo; I like her writing, but I’m not losing my mind over her, which seems to be the most popular reaction among women my age.  She certainly has incredible style and charisma, and she’s one of those enviable young female writers who is heaped with praise at a very young age (see also: Tea Obrecht, Karen Russell, Chimamanda Ngzogi Adichie and a few dozen more; come to think of it, this might warrant its own post).  Objectively, I can tell it’s good writing, and I certainly want to keep reading more of her work, but I’m just not as overwhelmed by her as so many others seem to be.  Am I missing something, or are there others out there?

#ReadWomen2014 Non-Fiction: 'Redefining Realness' by Janet Mock

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LGBTQ activist Janet Mock gained national attention when a profile of her experience, ‘I Was Born a Boy' was published in Marie Claire magazine in 2011. I didn’t become aware of her until the press tour for her new book Redefining Realness, when Mock gained notoriety for her very bad-ass takedowns of Piers Morgan and Katie Couric, whose misunderstanding of trans issues was utterly embarrassing.

I was really anxious to read her book, purely for its educational value. Trans culture is deeply complex and demands so much understanding and sensitivity. In my own efforts to be respectful I am often too scared to say or think anything about it, assuming that I cannot, and will never, understand trans experience. So I really appreciated the opportunity to gain her perspective from a memoir that is so deeply personal. 

While I wanted and expected lots of didacticism, I was really blown away by its sheer literary merits; that sounds like a backhanded compliment, which is not my intention. Good writers are few and far between, and Mock happens to be an excellent writer and a great trans activist.

Not only that, her own literary experiences are woven throughout and comprise major components in her personal development. I could read literary memoirs all day long, so it was a nice surprise to find that her memoir about gender and identity happened to also veer in that direction. And most importantly, she read and loved many books that I also loved at the same age, and cites Zadie Smith as her number one author crush.  

Her tone establishes a kind of intimacy between author and reader that is so hard to form and maintain, and yet it never impedes her authority as a trans woman. More generalized information about trans culture is incorporated into her own experiences so organically that it manages to be both enlightening and simultaneously pleasurable.  

My only criticism is that I dearly wish the publisher had gone with a different cover; in many ways this looks like a generic memoir, which it isn’t.  It will probably look dated ten years from now, and such a landmark book in LGBTQ culture deserves better.