Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 196

July 2, 2019: 4th of July Contexts: The Adams Letters

[In honor of the 4th of July—a holiday that, contrary to certain presidential proclamations, we’ve been celebrating for a good while now—a series highlighting various historical and cultural contexts for July 4. Leading up to a special weekend post on the 4th in 2019!]On the myths, and the realities, revealed about the Revolution and its leaders in the Adams letters.Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3rd, 1776 (she was back at home in Braintree managing the family farm and raising their children), the day after the Continental Congress had drafted the Declaration of Independence, John Adams argued that “the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epoch, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”On one level, the letter reveals just how much myth-making is inherent in any national celebration—we celebrate independence on July 4th because the Declaration was signed, dated, and sent out to the American public for the first time on that day; but Adams’ emphasis makes clear that the date was and is an arbitrary one, and of course that Revolutionary acts, like all historical moments, develop over time. On another level, however, Adams’ letter reveals quite impressively how aware the Congress was of the significance of what was happening: not only in his quite thorough prediction of the celebrations that would come to commemorate the event; but also in his recognition of all that would follow the Declaration. “You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not,” he wrote. “I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means.”Reading the Adams’ correspondence offers even more Revolutionary realities than those. For one thing, it deeply humanizes the second President (and by extension all the framers); I defy anyone to read John’s heartfelt July 20th, 1776 letter of concern for both his ailing family and his own separation from them and not feel differently about the man and moment. For another, the letters provide a visceral and compelling argument for the Revolutionary era’s hugely impressive community of American women—Abigail was not as publicly minded as peers such as Judith Sargent Murray and Annis Boudinot Stockton, but she makes a thoroughly convincing case for what Murray called the equality of the sexes: in her overt arguments for such equality, but just as much in her intelligence, her eloquence, and her strength in supporting both the family and its business and her husband and the nation’s. Many of my posts in this space have sought to complicate our idealizing national myths, but the Adams letters remind us that some of our realities have been just as ideal.Next July 4thcontext tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 4th of July histories or contexts you’d highlight?

July 1, 2019: 4th of July Contexts: Slavery and the Declaration

[In honor of the 4th of July—a holiday that, contrary to certain presidential proclamations, we’ve been celebrating for a good while now—a series highlighting various historical and cultural contexts for July 4. Leading up to a special weekend post on the 4th in 2019!]On important historical contexts for a frustrating founding text, and why the frustrations remain nonetheless.In this July 4th, 2015 piece for Talking Points Memo, my second-most viewed piece in my year and a bit of contributing bi-monthly columns to TPM, I highlighted and analyzed the cut paragraph on slavery and King George from Thomas Jefferson’s draft version of the Declaration of Independence. Rather than repeat what I said there, I’d ask you to take a look at that piece (or at least the opening half of it, as the second half focuses on other histories and figures) and then come back here for a couple important follow-ups.Welcome back! As a couple commenters on that post noted (and as I tried to discuss further in my responses to their good comments), I didn’t engage in the piece with a definitely relevant historical context: that the English Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, had in November 1775 issued (from on board a warship anchored just off the Virginia coast) a prominent Proclamation both condemning Virginian and American revolutionaries, declaring martial law in the colony, and offering the prospect of freedom to any African American slaves who left their owners and joined the English forces opposing them. A number of slaves apparently took Dunmore up on the offer, and so when Jefferson writes that “he [King George] is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us,” he might have been attributing the idea to the wrong Englishman but was generally accurate about those English efforts. Yet of course Jefferson’s misattribution is no small error, as it turns a wartime decision by one English leader (and a somewhat unofficial one at that, as it’s not at all clear to me that Dunmore had the authority to make such an offer nor that the Crown would necessarily or consistently have upheld it) into a defining feature of the relationship between England and the colonies.There are significantly bigger problems with Jefferson’s paragraph than that misattribution, however. And to my mind, by far the biggest is his definition of African American slaves as a foreign, “distant people,” not simply in their African origins (and of course many late 18th century slaves had been born in the colonies) but in their continued identity here in America. Moreover, Jefferson describes this distant people as having been “obtruded” upon the colonists, an obscure word that means “to impose or force on someone in an intrusive way.” And moreover moreover, Jefferson then directly contrasts the slaves’ desire for liberty with the colonists’ Revolutionary efforts (and thus their desire for liberty), a philosophical opposition that excludes these Americans from the moment and its histories just as fully as his definitions and descriptions exclude them from the developing American community. As I’ve highlighted in many different pieces over the years, a number of prominent slaves—from Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley to Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker—had already proved and would continue to prove Jefferson quite wrong. But for as smart and thoughtful a person as TJ, it shouldn’t have required such individuals to help him see how much African American slaves were an integral, inclusive part of Revolutionary Virginia and America.Next July 4thcontext tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other 4th of July histories or contexts you’d highlight?

June 29-30, 2019: June 2019 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]June 3: Jewish American Journeys: Louis Brandeis: For the anniversary of his Supreme Court confirmation, a Jewish American series starts with three social and legal legacies of the People’s Lawyer.June 4: Jewish American Journeys: Abraham Cahan: The series continues with the pioneering author who crossed numerous genre and social boundaries.June 5: Jewish American Journeys: Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska: The many distinctions and one telling similarity between two early 20thcentury books, as the series rolls on.June 6: Jewish American Journeys: Hank Greenberg: Why we should better remember one of the first and greatest Jewish American athletes. June 7: Jewish American Journeys: Philip Roth and Sarah Silverman: The series concludes with humor, gender, and Jewish American artists.June 8-9: Jewish American Journeys: Michael Hoberman’s Books: A special weekend tribute to my colleague and one of our most prolific Jewish American Studiers.June 10: Boxing and America: A Clear but Troubling Association: A boxing series starts with why AmericanStudiers can’t forget the sweet science, and why I wish we could.June 11: Boxing and America: Jack London and Jack Johnson: The series continues with an ugly moment when white supremacy took precedence over athletic competition.June 12: Boxing and America: Ali and the Draft: What led up to a pivotal 1967 moment and why it still matters today, as the series fights on.June 13: Boxing and America: Cinderella Man and the Depression: On the anniversary of James Braddock’s stunning upset victory, narratives of hope in one of America’s darkest times.June 14: Boxing and America: Tyson and Celebrity: The series concludes with three stages in the bizarre public arc of an 80s champion.June 15-16: Boxing and America: Boxing Movies: A special weekend post, on how three boxing films present vital American stories and themes.June 17: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Ian Williams’s Reproduction: My annual Beach Reads series kicks off with the acclaimed debut novel from my friend and former colleague.June 18: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Emily Page’s Fractured Memories: The series continues with a multi-genre, multi-media book by a middle school friend.June 19: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God: The funny, thoughtful spiritual memoir of a fellow Charlottesville High School alum, as the series reads on.June 20: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Tammar Stein’s YA Novels: The popular and ground-breaking YA novels of another middle school friend.June 21: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Recent Books by FSU Colleagues: The series concludes with three recent works by some of my many talented FSU colleagues.June 22-23: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads: As always, one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year—add your Beach Read nominees there or here, please!June 24: 21st Century Lit: Americanah: A series on great contemporary lit kicks off with two of the many reasons why Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel is a must-read.June 25: 21st Century Lit: The Underground Railroad: The series continues with historical fiction, speculative anachronisms, and Colson Whitehead’s wonderful book.June 26: 21st Century Lit: Homegoing: How Yaa Gyasi’s innovative, multi-generational novel reveals the limits and the possibilities of historical fiction, as the series writes on.June 27: 21st Century Lit: Jericho Brown: Three ways to connect with the work and voice of one of our most talented contemporary poets.June 28: 21st Century Lit: Five Great (American) Novels: The series concludes with five recent novels that stake their claim to the elusive title of the Great American Novel.4thof July series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

June 28, 2019: 21st Century Lit: Five Great (American) Novels

[In honor of my about-to-conclude grad class on Analyzing 21st Century America, a series on great recent literary works, with the same Af Am lit through-line that I brought to the class!]Five recent novels that stake their claim to the title of Great American Novel.1)      Behold the Dreamers (2016): Imbolo Mbue’s stunning debut novel is a historical novel about the 2008 financial crisis and recession, a multi-generational immigrant saga of a young family from Cameroon, a novel of manners about class and inequality in contemporary New York, a bittersweet romance, and a moving depiction of the promise and limits of the American Dream. Among other things!2)      Lovecraft Country (2016): It might be enough just to note that Jordan Peele’s first project after his Oscar-winning Get Out will be to produce an adaptation of Matt Ruff’s supernatural historical novel for HBO. But if I need to say more, I’ll note that Ruff’s gripping page-turner combines John Bellairs and Ralph Ellison, among many other influences (including of course the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft and his peers), to produce something entirely new. Some critics might argue that genre fiction can’t also compete for the Great American Novel crown; those critics would be wrong, as Ruff illustrates perfectly.3)      Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017): I’m not gonna lie, I haven’t yet had a chance to read Jesmyn Ward’s acclaimed new novel. So I won’t pretend otherwise or say too much here, other than that anything Ward writes is to my mind an automatic contender for any and all accolades, and that from everything I’ve read Sing takes her talents to one more level still. You’ll be the first to hear when I do get to check it out, dear readers!4)      The Sympathizer (2015): As Philip Caputo (one of our foremost authorities on the Vietnam War) argues in that hyperlinked NYT review, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel offers a strikingly new lens through which to read Vietnam (in relationship to the United States and the world, and on its own complex terms). That’d be enough all by itself to make this a crucial and great American novel. But Nguyen’s book is also funny and moving, engaging and challenging, and utterly unique from start to finish.5)      What is the What (2006): I know I’m stretching the meaning of “recent” a bit with this one, but I don’t believe Dave Eggers’s novel has gotten the attention it deserves. Perhaps that’s because of its unsettling genre ambiguity: Eggers’s book is defined as a novel, but is written in the first-person voice of a real person, former Lost Boy of Sudan Valentino Achak Deng (just to add to the ambiguities, the book’s subtitle is The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng). I get the potential landmines of those choices, but to this reader the blurrings of genre and voice are part and parcel of this book’s unique identity and greatness, and its engagement with some of the most pressing 21stcentury issues (refugees and international crises, cross-cultural identities, war and violence, history and hope). Like all these contenders, at the very least What deserves to be read and responded to by as many American readers as possible!June Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other recent literary works you’d highlight?

June 27, 2019: 21st Century Lit: Jericho Brown

[In honor of my about-to-conclude grad class on Analyzing 21st Century America, a series on great recent literary works, with the same Af Am lit through-line that I brought to the class!]On three ways to connect with the wonderfully talented poet whose first book-length collection, The Tradition, was published this year:1)      Read his poems: Duh, I know. But still, there are so many ways to gain access to contemporary writers (see items 2 and 3 in this post, natch) that it can be easy to miss out on the literary talent and voice that make them such vital contributors to our contemporary culture. In the case of Jericho Brown, I first learned of him through the poem “The Tradition,” which serves as an epigraph of sorts for Jesmyn Ward’s wonderful collection The Fire This Time . That remains one of my favorite 21st century poems, and it seems to be a favorite of Brown’s as well, since he named his whole collection after it. But with each subsequent Brown poem I’ve read, I’ve found something new, distinct styles and forms as well as expansions and extensions of his central thematic threads. If you’re able to click on some or all of those hyperlinks and check out those poems, this post will have done everything I could hope for.2)      His TED talk: Brown delivered a May 2015 talk at the TEDxEmory event, and it’s one of the best TED talks I’ve seen, a multi-genre combination of poetry reading, autobiographical one-man show, literary critical analysis of the genre of poetry, sermon, and more besides. Since I’m asking you to watch a 16-minute video, I’m gonna stop writing this paragraph now so you can get to doing that!3)      Twitter: Welcome back! Like many of his fellow contemporary writers, Brown is also a devoted and compelling Tweeter, using the social media network not only for its standard purposes (sharing his own work, highlighting the work of fellow authors, reaching out and responding to readers and communities) but also (it seems to this Twitter follower anyway) as another space in which to compose. I’m not suggesting he’s gone as far as the novelist Teju Cole, who wrote an entire short story on Twitter (and honestly, who else has gone that far???). But nevertheless, to connect with Brown on Twitter is to gain access to his perspective and voice, his creative process and ideas, his evolving career in ways that would have seemed impossible just a decade or so ago. There’s a lot that’s frustrating about the 21st century, but these multi-layered connections to our greatest writers ain’t one of them!Last 21C texts tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other recent literary works you’d highlight?

June 26, 2019: 21st Century Lit: Homegoing

[In honor of my about-to-conclude grad class on Analyzing 21st Century America, a series on great recent literary works, with the same Af Am lit through-line that I brought to the class!]On an innovative multi-generational novel that reveals the limits and potential of historical fiction.I’ve written in a couple different posts about Alex Haley’s semi-autobiographical historical novel Roots (1976), which at its core represents Haley’s sweeping, ambitious attempt to tell the multi-generational story of his African American family from its African and slave trade origins down to his own late 20thcentury moment and identity. In so doing, Haley makes the choice to focus a good deal of his book’s mammoth length on one particular ancestor, Kunta Kinte, the Gambian man who experiences the turning point experiences of enslavement, Middle Passage, and life as an enslaved person in the Americas. I don’t have the book in front of me and so am not sure exactly what percentage focuses on Kinte, but I remember it being a substantial amount, far more than he devotes to any other figure or generation between Kinte’s and Haley’s own. The choice makes sense, since it was this figure whose story began—served as, y’know, the roots of—the family’s multi-generational African American experience. But it nonetheless means that a lot of history, both familial and national, gets more short shrift in Haley’s telling. Homegoing (2016), the acclaimed debut novel from Ghanaian American writer Yaa Gyasi, sets itself an even more ambitious task: telling the multi-generational story of two (interconnected) families across roughly the same period as Haley’s book, one family that likewise experiences the Middle Passage and enslavement in the Americas, one that remains in Africa until the early 21st century. In contrast to Haley’s focus, Gyasi chooses a much more overtly sweeping structure: she focuses in each chapter on a new character and generation (or rather two chapters per generation, one for each family), meaning that with each such structural shift we are carried forward something like 25-50 years until we arrive at the 21st century protagonists. And I can’t lie—the AmericanStudier in me had a hard time with just how quick and (at least at times) over-simplified those chapter-long depictions of historical moments can feel; I can’t speak to the African-focused chapters as much, but the chapters on (for example) Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance feel painfully brief and like they barely scratch the surface of those hugely complex periods. That’s always gonna be a limit of historical fiction compared with a nonfictional historical work, of course, but Gyasi’s structural choice certainly amplifies that issue.Yet at the same time, the best historical fiction can both open up the past and connect it to the present (and us as readers) in ways that, as I’ve long argued in this space and elsewhere, are unique and vital to this literary genre. Gyasi’s novel certainly achieves those goals in numerous ways, and it does so most inspiringly in precisely the ways that Haley’s book sought to (and in at least one striking passage did). That is, these glimpses into lives and stories across centuries of historical periods and two continents, brief and quick and partial as they may be, made this AmericanStudier feel the idea of connections—of the links across generations, across history, across an ocean, between ancestors and descendants, and ultimately between all 21stcentury world citizens—as potently and movingly as any literary work I’ve ever encountered. The British novelist E.M. Forster begged us all (in his 1910 novel Howard’s End) to “only connect,” and I’m not sure any task remains more vital more than a century later. Like much of the best art, Gyasi’s novel can help us find and strengthen such connections, and that alone makes it a 21st century text well worth reading.Next 21C text tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other recent literary works you’d highlight?

June 25, 2019: 21st Century Lit: The Underground Railroad

[In honor of my about-to-conclude grad class on Analyzing 21st Century America, a series on great recent literary works, with the same Af Am lit through-line that I brought to the class!]On when anachronisms don’t work, when they do, and how to parse the difference.As I wrote in this post a few years back, my unhappy reading of Charles Johnson’s National Book Award-winning historical novel Middle Passage (1990) was one of my more surprising literary experiences, given how many elements of the novel seemed geared to my particular interests and passions. That unhappiness stemmed almost entirely from Johnson’s use of anachronisms, purposefully a-historical words and details (focused especially on his narrator Rutherford Calhoun’s voice, perspective, and identity) that thoroughly pushed me out of the novel’s historical setting and themes (despite Johnson’s stated goal of “clos[ing] the distance between the past and the present” with those anachronisms). While of course much of that response has to do with my own personal perspective and preferences, I argued in that post—and would reiterate here—that such anachronisms risk damaging the project and potential power of historical fiction; or, at the very least, place the emphasis so fully on the “fiction” side of that generic category as to render their novels not at all “historical” in the more meaningful senses of that term.Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016), the historical novel that was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prizefor Fiction (among its many honors to date), has more than its share of such anachronisms. The literal railroad on which slave runaways like our protagonists Cora and Caesar travel in the novel’s antebellum world isn’t quite an anachronism, although of course it’s a metaphorical twist on the Underground Railroad’s historical details. But each stop and setting along that journey does explicitly and drastically shift those characters, and thus the novel’s readers, in time—beginning with a Charleston, South Carolina that features skyscrapers and medical experiments on African Americans, and continuing through a number of other such time period shifts that I won’t spoil here (but that eventually include 21st century elements). I had found out about those elements of Whitehead’s novel prior to reading it, and was thus prepared for a similar experience to that of reading Johnson’s book (although I likely would have minded Johnson’s anachronisms a bit less had I been aware of them going in). But that wasn’t at all the case—I found The Underground Railroad to be not only moving and shattering, beautiful and awful, but also one of the most evocative and effective historical novels or cultural works about slavery I’ve ever encountered.You could make the case that my very distinct experience here had to do, again, with my preparation for these elements; or with the undeniable fact that I’m a different reader at 41 than I was at 13 (meaning I should likely give Johnson’s novel another chance). Both of those are fair points to be sure, but I would also argue that Whitehead uses these shifts in time in a more comprehensive and even genre-related way than did Johnson. Indeed, I would argue that Whitehead’s novel has more in common with Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), as both could be described as works that use science fiction tropes and storytelling both to immerse their audiences in histories of slavery and to link those histories to broader themes of race, identity, memory, and nation. While Kindred’s science fiction story takes a contemporary woman back in time to the antebellum South, and Whitehead’s brings historical characters from that setting across and forward in time to many other moments (including his and our own), both works employ their genres in service of a deep and potent examination of the specific and overarching histories. The question of whether and how any 21st century American can truly understand the world of slavery remains an open one; but both Butler’s and Whitehead’s books offer groundbreaking, genre-bending, impressive contributions to that ongoing challenge.Next 21C text tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other recent literary works you’d highlight?

June 24, 2019: 21st Century Lit: Americanah

[In honor of my about-to-conclude grad class on Analyzing 21st Century America, a series on great recent literary works, with the same Af Am lit through-line that I brought to the class!]Two of the many reasons why Americanah (2013) is on the short list of most important 21stcentury American novels to date.Part of me feels that the best use to which I could put this post on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah would be simply to implore you to go out and read it as soon as possible. I’m not promising that you’ll love it as much as I do—I know at least one AmericanStudier’s madre who was not particularly blown away by it, and of course as the Romans knew de gustibus non est disputandum—but I believe I can promise that you’ll find it a unique novel that’s as engaging and readable as it is important and innovative, a page-turner that’s also literary fiction of the highest order. So first and foremost, check it out, and if and when you do—or if you’ve already read it and have thoughts on it right now—please share your review and perspective in comments!Without spoiling any specific aspects of Adichie’s novel, however (a great deal of the pleasure lies in discovering her characters, plots, and themes), I do want to make the case here for two particular elements that make the novel as important as it is. The more obvious element, and a vital part of Adichie’s novel in every sense, is its transnational, dual settings of Nigeria and America. It’s not just that Adichie’s novel offers a fresh and compelling take on the immigrant experience (although it does), or on the relationship between old and new worlds for its characters (although ditto), or on cultural and ethnic hybridity (yup), or on the fraught relationship between Africans and African Americans (definitely). It’s that she’s written a novel that is deeply reflective of, influenced by, and contributing to our understanding and conversations about both Nigeria and America, two widely distinct worlds that she treats as distinct yet also brings together in potent and convincing ways. I know few other novels that have been able to pull off those joint feats for any two cultures, feats which are so crucial to our fraught global moment, and Adichie’s success there makes her novel hugely impressive and important.If Americanah is very much of its 21stcentury moment in its settings and themes, I would argue that it is perhaps even more contemporary in one of its key stylistic elements. Ifemelu, Adichie’s female protagonist, creates a popular blog entitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations about American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black,” and Adichie intersperses blog entries of hers throughout and alongside the more conventionally narrated sections of the novel. These blog entries allow Adichie to create a multi-vocal and –perspectival narration and text in a way that feels fresh and engaging, and at the same time to engage specifically and compellingly with questions of digital voice, identity, community, and conversation, and how those do and don’t line up with our more private identities and relationships. It goes without saying that I’m a pretty natural audience for any novel that makes use of blogging in these layered and thoughtful ways, but I believe the questions and forms that this stylistic element allows Adichie to include would be of interest to any and all 21stcentury readers. A great deal has been made, rightly, of the uniquely 21stcentury style that Junot Díaz invented for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008), but I would say that Adichie’s version is just as unique and successful, and one more reason why I’m thankful for her must-read novel.Next 21C text tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other recent literary works you’d highlight?

June 22-23, 2019: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads

[I’ve got some very talented friends and colleagues. So for this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight works by friends old and new and colleagues at FSU (I’m a poet and I don’t know it!). Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, featuring the nominations of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]First, one more nomination from me; it wasn’t written by a friend, but it was shared with me by my favorite writer and reader, Ilene Railton: Richard Powers’ wonderful, justifiably acclaimednovel The Overstory (2018). Ilene also adds another nomination, Normal People by Sally Rooney. Kent Rosenwald nominates “Black Mountain by Laird Barron, so good I read it twice!”AnneMarie Donahue shares The Woman in Cabin 10 !Jonathan Silverman writes, “For non-fiction: Boom Town by Sam Anderson; Educated by Tara Westover; Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker; Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottleib; Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris; This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. Also really liked Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker. These are all thoughtful, often funny, well-written, and easy to read (I listened to most of these on audiobook). It's a really good era for serious, interesting non-fiction!” He adds, “And for baseball people, The Only Rule is That It Has to Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Anderson is very good.”Shirley Wagner writes, “If a book doesn’t send me hunting for a recipe or remind me of a recipe or give me a recipe, it probably isn’t calling my name this summer. Frances Mayes’ Women in Sunlight sent me looking for a lemon pistachio pasta recipe. Perfect summer food. Read, eat, read some more!”Ian Bashaw shares, “The Girl from Aleppo by Nujeen Mustafa was excellent. You’ll finish it in one sitting.”Lara Schwartz writes, “Just read The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner and loved it.”Natalie Chasehighlights Text Me When You Get Home by Kayleen Schaefer. Shayne Simahkshares The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah. Jenny Fieldinggoes with The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker. Kate Smith highlights “Call Me American by Abdi Iftin. Just because you're on the beach doesn't mean you can't learn and expand your horizons! It's an engrossing, easy (albeit heavy) read, but so very important, especially given the drought and humanitarian crisis in Somalia and the rise of hate crimes against Muslims in the US and abroad.”Irene Martyniuk shares, “I want to plug international mysteries. Jo Nesbo from Norway is my favorite, although anything from Iceland is usually a good bet (very literary nation). Barbara Nadel has a really sharp series based in Istanbul. The mysteries are great, and she incorporates historical events and the various cultures and religions of the city (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Yezidi). Top drawer stuff. There are so many great Swedish series—Henning Mankell is terrific to start. Colin Cotterillwrites about a coroner in 1970’s Laos. The stories are actually hilarious. And Vaseem Khan’s mysteries set in Mumbai are just plain fun. Unfortunately, for many Asian and Southeastern Asian cultures, the mysteries available in English are written by Europeans but that is slowly changing. And Agatha Christie is always a great beach read.”Tamara Verhyenwrites, “We’re doing a family book club this year. We are all so busy with camp and work and this gives us another way to connect. I mean it’s not summer light reading but we are starting with The Hate U Give . I think its essential reading for a 13 yo girl to read.”Shelli Homerhighlights, “Etaf Rum’s new and first novel: A Woman is No Man .”Ryan Railton recommends “ Dark Tide , about the Boston Molasses disaster!”And finally, here’s a list of Beach Read recommendations from great contemporary authors!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What else are you bringing to the beach this year or would you recommend we bring?

June 21, 2019: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Recent Books by FSU Colleagues

[I’ve got some very talented friends and colleagues. So for this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight works by friends old and new and colleagues at FSU (I’m a poet and I don’t know it!). Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, so make sure to share your Beach Read nominations, please!]I’ve highlighted lots of books by my talented FSU colleagues over the years, and recently shared Michael Hoberman’s latest as part of my Jewish American series. Well, we’re a prolific bunch, with interests and publication records as varied as our disciplines, so here are a few additional, recent FSU books worth adding to your beach bag:1)      Josh Spero’s Middle Powers and Regional Influence: Critical Foreign Policy Junctures for Poland, South Korea, and Bolivia (2018) 2)      Walter Jeffko’s Contemporary Ethical Issues: A Personalist Perspective (New 2018 edition)3)      Katherine Rye Jewell’s Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century (2017)Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: What are you bringing to the beach this year or would you recommend we bring?