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Lisa rated a book it was amazing I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A fairly even trade-out for the irreverent, adolescent narrative voice and some of the “enticing” YA content in True Diary, but rendered from a female protagonist’s perspective Highly current/topical, including depression, suicide, anti-immigr ...more
Jan 17, 2019 07:50AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Lisa rated a book really liked it Educated by Tara Westover (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this memoir for many reasons--primary among which is that Tara Westover provides a self-aware, scholarly testament to her own survival of American religious extremism. Somehow she conducts this work with empathy for the same people who abus ...more
Jan 17, 2019 07:05AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Educated by Tara Westover. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Educated by Tara Westover <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Lisa rated a book it was amazing The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I never would have thought that I would lead off describing this book by saying, "Griswold's writing is spectacular in its clarity." The author's trip around the middle band of the globe, and step-by-step dissection of the spots on that band in which ...more
Jan 17, 2019 07:04AM · 5 likes · like · see review
Lisa rated a book it was ok Shame by Salman Rushdie	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It was Rushdie, so wonderful in all of those expected ways (historical, literary, fantastical) but also not near the top of the Best of Rushdie.
Jan 17, 2019 07:03AM · like · see review
Lisa wants to read 30 books in the 2019 Reading Challenge She has read 2 books toward her goal of 30 books. 2 of 30 (7%) Create your own 2019 Reading Challenge »
Jan 17, 2019 06:50AM · like · view books
Lisa rated a book it was amazing There There by Tommy Orange (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
When I first began reading There, There, I felt that rush of freshness that comes from a new author providing what is (to me) a completely new narrative strain. My American Indigenous reading encompasses all of the works of Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexi ...more
Jan 15, 2019 08:20AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of There There by Tommy Orange. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — There There by Tommy Orange <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Lisa is now following Tommy Orange Author of There There
Jan 15, 2019 08:20AM · like
Lisa rated a book it was amazing The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I never would have thought that I would lead off describing this book by saying, "Griswold's writing is spectacular in its clarity." The author's trip around the middle band of the globe, and step-by-step dissection of the spots on that band in which ...more
Jan 15, 2019 08:19AM · 5 likes · like · see review
Lisa rated a book it was ok Shame by Salman Rushdie	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It was Rushdie, so wonderful in all of those expected ways (historical, literary, fantastical) but also not near the top of the Best of Rushdie.
Jan 15, 2019 08:17AM · like · see review

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Lisa rated a book it was amazing

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
by Erika L. Sánchez

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*A fairly even trade-out for the irreverent, adolescent narrative voice and some of the “enticing” YA content in True Diary, but rendered from a female protagonist’s perspective
*Highly current/topical, including depression, suicide, anti-immigr ...more

Lisa rated a book really liked it

Educated
by Tara Westover (Goodreads Author)

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I enjoyed this memoir for many reasons--primary among which is that Tara Westover provides a self-aware, scholarly testament to her own survival of American religious extremism. Somehow she conducts this work with empathy for the same people who abus I enjoyed this memoir for many reasons--primary among which is that Tara Westover provides a self-aware, scholarly testament to her own survival of American religious extremism. Somehow she conducts this work with empathy for the same people who abused her--no small feat, with no small benefit to readers, particularly if we assert that the study of literature seeks to hone the ability to identify and cultivate empathy.

And now for a bit more bluntness: this text is a welcome ~~replacement~~ addition to the self-aggrandizing, cliché poverty porn that is J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. Among the many things that recommend Westover's text is the care with which she describes the complexities of being female within Mormonism. Her writing offers two apparently contradictory vantage points: a snapshot of extreme misogyny AND a vision that is blandly representative of long-held (if submerged) American attitudes about women. The Westover women shimmer as a welcome counterpoint to the stereotypically rendered Mamaw ("Hillbilly matriarch") and sister character ("long-suffering survivor") in Vance's text.

The story unfolds in three parts. The background/backstory section, would be better rendered with thirty fewer pages. The cycles of violence that occur there would not miss the pages; the impact to both the people in the book and the reader would remain the same. That said, Westover likely needs these parts for herself--a radical concept, that the readerly desire might be secondary to the writerly one!--and this book is, in great part, a rendering sacred of her intellectual and writerly self. In 2019 America, that is a triumph unto itself.

I connect most deeply with the Westover who spouts brilliance while doubting herself. (I connect with the urge to be brilliant, and am angered by a world that does not usher her to that brilliance, but seeks to cancel it.) Because Westover must work for the rest of her life to keep hold of the self that she chiseled out of the mountain, this statement resonates loudest: "No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people" (328). ...more

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The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
by Eliza Griswold

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I never would have thought that I would lead off describing this book by saying, "Griswold's writing is spectacular in its clarity." The author's trip around the middle band of the globe, and step-by-step dissection of the spots on that band in which ...more

Lisa rated a book it was ok

Shame
by Salman Rushdie

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It was Rushdie, so wonderful in all of those expected ways (historical, literary, fantastical) but also not near the top of the Best of Rushdie.

Lisa wants to read 30 books in the 2019 Reading Challenge

She has read 2 books toward her goal of 30 books.

2 of 30 (7%)

Create your own 2019 Reading Challenge »

Lisa rated a book it was amazing

There There
by Tommy Orange (Goodreads Author)

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When I first began reading There, There, I felt that rush of freshness that comes from a new author providing what is (to me) a completely new narrative strain. My American Indigenous reading encompasses all of the works of Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexi When I first began reading There, There, I felt that rush of freshness that comes from a new author providing what is (to me) a completely new narrative strain. My American Indigenous reading encompasses all of the works of Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie. I have taught both authors in my high school literature classes (Erdrich: The Round House [11th grade]; Alexie: The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian [9th grade]).

With Alexie's YA text now headed for retirement in my school curriculum (a much, much longer discussion), we are left with another gap where the radically disappeared literature and culture of Native peoples should be filled. Not offering works by Native writers replicates the violent and purposeful disappearances of American history. At the same time, while there may or may not be an impulse to "teach a Native text," I believe that in a time-limited curricular landscape, attention should be paid to teaching the "right" text. This text is not only one that fits in with course themes, but also one that does not replicate the oppressions perpetrated in American history and/or the biases that have grow out of these oppressions.

So I have to begin here with an assessment of an author whose work does do these things. Erdrich's work fits with course themes and "un-disappears" a people who only appear intermittently throughout our history and literature curriculum. She does so in a way that offers fully fleshed-out characters who experience tragedy but who are not singularly defined or flattened by that element of their existence. (In addition to Alexie's reported mistreatment of women in his professional dealings, his outsized representation of reservation pathologies has always threatened to re-affirm the negative narratives our students have about American Indigenous populations--if they have any substantive narratives at all.

Personally, I found Orange's novel thrilling for many reasons: the crispness of style and image, the depiction of indigenous urbanity, the Oakland setting, to name a few. In some ways it reads like Junot Díaz . . . in most of the best and also in the not-so-best ways.

Whereas Erdrich offers characters who burn their way into the mind with humor, resilience and flawed-ness in equal measures, Orange almost categorically depicts people in various stages of broken-ness ... and there is no respite from that perspective. Orange does not need me to flag what he as doing as "true" or "not true," of course. As an educator of primarily White, middle class students, I always need to assess who is learning what, and *at the expense of whom.* While I relish the ability to peer into an ultra-contemporary depiction of Nativeness, I worry about offering the text as one of few ways for students just exploring the genre to conceive of Native peoples.

What I will certainly offer students in some form, however, are excerpts of There, There that render historical phenomena and events--Redskin as a concept ("Indian Head"), powwows and blood quantum ("Interlude"). No other text delivers this much culture and conflict in this elegant and efficient way--Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings comes to mind in its depiction of gang violence in 1980's Jamaica. In Orange's novel, the historical sections serve as ballast to the glimpses of characters whose memories and present experiences are sliced up and rolled out gradually. They are ironic and yes, beautiful, even as they capture the enduring American impulse to cancel its indigenous history. ...more

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Lisa rated a book it was amazing

The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
by Eliza Griswold

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I never would have thought that I would lead off describing this book by saying, "Griswold's writing is spectacular in its clarity." The author's trip around the middle band of the globe, and step-by-step dissection of the spots on that band in which ...more