To Read & To Write

Here is a link to a book list I created for Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month at the Harold Washington Public Library (Chicago) this year (May 2018). All the annotations are my own:  Celebrate Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May with Teen Fiction Titles!

“…assertions skate over the very real — and still dismally insufficient — progress that has been made… in fact, his book often reads like an internal dialogue or debate…” – Michiko Kakutani (New York Times – July 2015) “The narrative focuses the experience of black subjectivity in the visceral, constructed fact of ‘the body’, a device derived from Foucault by way of feminist discourse… Coates admits that he didn’t really know any white people when he was a child: he only saw them on television. That is an indictment of the segregation that still exists in many American neighbourhoods…” – Thomas Chatterton Williams, “Loaded Dice” (London Review Of Books – December 2015) “Between The World And Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates is the second book I’ve read by a black man. The first book I read about black life in America was Richard Wright’s “Black Boy”. The two offer very different perspectives. Wright’s first person autobiographical narrative describes his childhood through adulthood as a haz...

J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Beren and Luthien”, published for the first time as a standalone novel by his son, Christopher Tolkien, last year (2017), is a romantic fairy-tale and fantasy story about the love and journey between a mortal man – Beren - and an Elfin maiden – Luthien. The tale is included in Christopher Tolkien’s edition of his father’s other work, “The Silmarillion”, but is, in this publication, told in full detail, with most of J.R.R. Tolkien’s editions, revisions, embellishments and subtractions included. Reading this publication is like listening to the same piece of music over and over again. Though it is the same song being played, each time it is played the song sounds quite different, with each unique articulation changing the mood, tone, and pace of its story, allowing the listener, or here, the reader, to pay attention to the intricate details, from which an infinite amount of meanings and renderings can be produced. “Beren and Luthien” was notably written a year after...

“Tolkien On Fairy Stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes”, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, is a great reference resource for anyone seriously studying fairy-tales, or for anyone who just enjoys them. Included is an introduction by Flieger, which goes over “On Fairy-Stories”, a lecture which Tolkien presented to an audience at the University of St. Andrew on March 8, 1939 for the Andrew Lang Lecture. Flieger breaks down the essay, addressing each section such as Tolkien’s answer to the question “what is a fairy story” and “what is the origin of the story”. Then, she goes into immediate context, larger context, and publication history. Suffice it to say, there is enough here to even do without reading the actual essay, for the introduction sums it up comprehensively and succinctly. But there’s nothing quite like reading Tolkien’s own writing on the matter of fairy-stories itself. Even without taking studious notes, it is possible to read this essay and...

“Roadside Picnic”, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, was originally published in 1972. It is the book that Andrei Tarkovsky’s cult classic movie, “Stalker” (1979), is based off. The story describes a Planet Earth made strange by the visit and quick departure of an unknown alien race. The title – “Roadside Picnic” – comes from the idea of a family picnic, in which the family has its blanket and foods (sandwiches, containers, baskets, grapes, cigarettes, wine, etc.) while the animals – the squirrels and the deer, etc - watch from behind bushes and trees. The family abruptly leaves, not picking up after themselves, leaving their trash and litter behind. In the book, two of the main characters liken the alien visit to the roadside picnic. What the aliens leave behind after their picnic are objects so technologically advanced no one really understands how any of it works (such as a ring that, once spun, never stops spinning), as well as strange pockets of time and even stranger sp...

“Symbols, Signs, & Signets: A Pictorial Treasury With Over 1350 Illustrations” by Ernst Lehner (1950) is a book as impressive as its title. Lehner’s categorization system of these phenomena does not tend toward geography, which gives the text as a whole a holistic feel. Rather, the book is organized by subjects of universal value, i.e. “Symbolic Gods & Deities”, “Astronomy & Astrology”, “Alchemy”, and the “Magic & Mystic”, to name just the first few subject matters out of thirteen. The phenomena themselves, the “Signs, Symbols, & Signets” of his title, are simplified reproductions of the images, made to be viewed in their most basic and simple form: black and white, and without embellishments of any kind save for whatever was provided by the print press. What may be understood at first glance as an encyclopedic and thus exhaustive account is incredibly softened by Lehner’s introductions, one might call them editorials, which begin each chapter. He is sentim...

At first “More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales” by Robert Bly (2018) may seem like an over-analysis of children’s stories. Even taken as the psychologically dense stories for adults that they really are, Bly’s writing is a bit jarring at first, to the point of one wondering whether his opinions have come out of unreflective musing, or the thin air, being too far-fetched to be graspable. But rest assured – the man knows damn well that he is right in his thoughts on the power and depth of these tales as pieces of cultural history worth the time of true poetic examination. Readers will pick up on this feeling of righteousness presented within the pages. Slowly, Bly no longer is seen as the crazy professor but instead, a sage of interpretation, believable if only because of an honest to goodness obscurity that finally brings a special common sense grounded in critical thought. Simply, it is hard to detect any of Bly’s ideology at work here – which makes this the perfect book for ...