The Best Laid Plans: Diversity in Reading

Yeah, so I had grand plans to read all these great books in honor of Diversity in YA's summer challenge. But I didn't count on the lingering, existential twitchiness I've been feeling lately, twitchiness that means I'm mainlining crime dramas on DVD, rewatching some Ten and Martha action, dealing with some unforeseen fall scheduling drama (good by Montaigne, hello Chaucer and a 9 credit semester -yesssss!), lingering pall of my Dad's illness, etc. Still, I got some good books in, starting with...


1. Vanished by Sheela Chari (2011)

from Goodreads

 Okay, so Vanished is technically juvenile fiction, but when it came across the new book cart at work, I had to snatch it up. I was drawn by the cover art (yes, I judge a book by its cover). The same artist who illustrated this cover illustrated the covers to the most excellent Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series and I hoped this was a new book in the series. It was not, but I was not disappointed in the story. The book focuses on eleven year old Neela Krishnan and her veena, a traditional Indian instrument. But her veena is no ordinary veena. It is an instrument with a curse. The veena is stolen one wintry afternoon, and the book follows Neela's search to reclaim her missing instrument. Neela is a first generation Indian American and the story is set mostly in Boston, though the exciting conclusion takes place in Chennai, India.

I really enjoyed the story -- it was fast-paced and nicely developed. And I think I'd like to visit India one day. I didn't think I would want to visit because my whole impression of India is a mix of Bollywood and Slumdog Millionaire -- chaotic and colorful, sure, but that sort of thing tends to stress me out rather than inspire me. But I think if I picked a city like Chennai instead of trying to take in the entire country in one go, I'd have a wonderful experience.

And yes, this is a J Fiction selection, so if you're interested in reading more about Indian and Indian American culture from a YA perspective, try Born Confused by  Tanuja Desai Hidier, which I read several years ago and really loved. Now, in Vanished, Neela is encouraged by her parents to embrace both Indian and American culture, while Neela's best friend Pavi is encouraged by her parents to really embrace her Indian side over her American, so I think that Pavi might have grown up to be like Dimple in Born Confused. There's no caper or curse in Born Confused, but if you're interested in the meeting of Indian and American cultures, I can't recommend this book enough.

2. Dreams of Significant Girls by Cristina Garcia (2011)

from Goodreads

Synopsis of this book, from a vapid teenage girl: So we, like, seem to be different? But we all have drama? So we're, like, really the same? Sisterhood rocks!

Yeesh. This was one giant book of crazycakes. This novel plays out over the course of three summers in the early 1970s and tells the stories of  Shirin, Vivien and Ingrid and their "adventures" in a posh Swiss boarding school. And by adventures, I mean total dramarama. Broken homes! Political exile! Attempted suicide! Promiscuity! Sexual assault! Attempted murder by drowning! Clandestine abortion procured from back alley herbalists! Brazen midnight theft of marzipan gnomes! (Yes, that really happened.) I finished this book in about two sittings, because train wrecks are compelling, but I can't say I'm glad I read it. The multicultural group of girls, despite their insane dramas, manages to come off a little too It's-A-Small-World, in part because I suspect that great wealth smooths over many of the frictions of culture clash. And the epilogue was really trite.

The other thing that really kept me from investing in the story is that the narrative bounced among the main characters so quickly I found myself humming "Pinball Wizard." The book clocks in at 238 pages, and if each girl gets equal print, they get about 80 pages of narrative each, and coupled with the hyper-dramatic storyline (did you notice the bit about the headless marzipan gnomes?), I couldn't really bond with any of the characters.

I never did understand the title of this book. Why are these girls significant? Given the amount of print given over to the discussion of the poshness of the school and the richness of the girls attending the camp and the respect commanded by the parents (particularly Shirin's parents), I got the sense that these girls were significant because they were rich. I don't want to believe the author intended readers to get that message, that the characters' wealth and access to opportunities like a fancy-pants Swiss boarding school gave the girls significance, but it's one of the main takeaways I got from the book.

And another thing (she said, swaying from her soapbox), this story is set in the early 1970s, yet the cover photo clearly depicts a trio of 21st century teens in all their skinny jeaned, hoodied, and rubber braceleted glory. I know this is in no way the responsibility of the author, but come on, publishing people! Would it kill you to read a synopsis at the very least to get the cover accurate? (descends from soapbox)

Lastly, as I zipped through the story, I couldn't help but think of books that took on some of the issues raised and handled them much better. If you liked Vivien's story (Vivien is the daughter of Jewish Cuban exiles), try Julia Alvarez's novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. I know that book is about Dominicans, and I don't mean to conflate the two, but I haven't yet read a book set in Cuba, and the one I thought I'd try, The Firefly Letters, is actually set in the 1850s. But Alvarez's novel is beautiful and heartbreaking and fascinating.

If you wanted to know more about Shirin, you might try Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas. This book is actually a memoir, and Dumas was 7 in 1972, but I learned a lot about the Iranian Revolution and was inspired to read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which is an amazing memoir in graphic novel format.

Ingrid is a pretty typical wild child, and no replacement books come to mind at the moment.

And Marzipan Gnomes would be an excellent band name.

3. Tutored by Allison Whittenberg (2010)

I didn't finish this book. I got a goodly way into it, but even though it's short, 192 pages, I just didn't buy the characters enough to push through to the end, and then I got hammered with reading right at the beginning of the semester (500 lines of Chaucer in Middle English, two plays, a book of French theory of eroticism -- all due at the beginning of the second week!), so I didn't finish. Wendy and Hakiam unfortunately come off as stereotype characters from an after school special -- a good girl and a boy from the bad part of town meet in a tutoring center. There were some interesting questions to consider as I read, but in such a short book, I really didn't get a clear sense of the characters enough to care whether they Overcame Their Differences and Found Love Despite the Odds.

And finally...
4. The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan (2011)

On the heels of his wildly successful Percy Jackson series, Riordan brings us a series based on Egyptian mythology. The protagonists, biracial siblings Carter and Sadie Kane are once again at odds with the House of Life and the forces of Chaos as they try and save the world...again. I haven't yet finished the book, but I'm listening to the audio book in my car, so I'll finish it here soon. First, can I just say that the actors reading Carter and Sadie's parts are awesome! Audio books are really hit or miss for me because if there's a stinky narrator, it ruins the whole book for me. So awesome there. The story is as action packed as any of Riordan's other series. I've read all the Percy Jackson books and I'm 96th on the hold list for The Son of Neptune. I particularly enjoy the Kane Chronicles because I don't know as much about Egyptian mythology as I do Greek and Roman, so this is a fun way to learn about it.

As for Carter and Sadie's ethnic background, Riordan discusses what it means to be biracial siblings who don't look like one another (Sadie resembles her white British mother while Carter takes after his African American dad), but issues of race don't get in the way of the action. Riordan seems to have made a very conscious decision to include multiracial main and major secondary characters in his books, definitely in the Kane Chronicles (African American teen Walt joins the Kanes in The Throne of Fire) and also in the Heroes of Olympus series (one of the main characters is Mexican American). Like I said, Riordan doesn't let any discussions of ethnicity overshadow the action, but he's pretty overt about including diverse characters (no disabled or queer characters, though -- the target age range is upper elementary and middle school, but you never know, maybe in later books...)


What I Learned

In the end, even if I didn't particularly enjoy all the novels I read, I did enjoy the experience of reading outside my normal choices. And I've read more than I give myself credit for, although I do read a lot, so sometimes it's hard to keep track.

I imagine some of you might think I've been too critical of the novels and that I need to lighten up and read for fun instead of looking for lessons. I've addressed this issue somewhat in previous posts, but I'll say more. The whole point of consciously diversifying your reading is to learn more. Despite the total crazycakes story, I enjoyed counting up the many different backgrounds of the girls in Garcia's book (though in all honesty, it also felt like a punch card -- find 12 different nationalities, get one free!), and it's always good to think about worlds outside your own.

I also thought more about the expectations we (as a greater culture) have of children's and young adult literature, and I think these expectations are far too low and far too lax. I recently had to defend my request to sub a literacy class that was a study of children's literature for one of my English electives as part of my MA, and my advisor wanted to know why I thought this literacy class fit in with a rigorous course of study in the MA program. I told him that I took my literary criticism skills and applied them to this oft-neglected corner of literature and found that, just like the canon of Dead White Guys taught in universities, the scope and quality children's and young adult literature was worthy of academic scrutiny. Books shouldn't get a pass because they have pretty cover models or illustrations. We should be intentional about our reading (including intentionally choosing something because it's fun and fluffy, or better yet, fun and smart and compelling) and intentional about our interactions with text. A junk food only diet is, in my mind, as bad as a strict raw vegan diet. Well, not really as bad, but that strict limiting of the world is bad for the soul. Come on, (non-lactose intolerant) people of the world! There's room for fresh mozzarella and Kraft singles, and there's room for the literary equivalent!

And that, friends, is the Lesson of the Day.

Riders to the Sea

Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge (1907)

I'm gonna be up front here. I was probably predisposed to like this play because I tend to like literature of the Irish Renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th century. I like the mythic quality these works, often because they draw from Irish mythology as a source material.

And compared to Strindberg, J. M. Synge is a pretty cool dude, although I can't decide who would win in a beard-off. Facial hair notwithstanding, it's interesting that both of these men produced work that caused riots. Folk rioted after the premier of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, and there were protests after Strindberg published a story considered blasphemous. I don't think that Synge was misogynistic in the way Strindberg was, but I'm not sure his work did women any favors. According to my Norton, "those in the audience who rioted were clearly outraged at Synge's portrayal of rural Ireland, a representation at odds with the idealized images championed by Irish nationalism. One reviewer called [it] 'an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men and, worse still, upon Irish peasant girlhood'" (390).

Yeah, if you're still keeping a peasant class around in the 20th century and idealizing that class, there's something wrong with your philosophy. Famine and emigration aren't sexy. And upholding the Madonna/Magdalen duality for women does women absolutely no favors.

Frankly, mythologizing suffering and elevating suffering through art doesn't really do those who suffer any favors, either, but that thought leads down a prickly path which examines the worth of art, the place of story and the purpose of human suffering, and that's a path I'm not willing to go down at the moment. If I go down that path, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting off it.

That said, I enjoyed imagining this very short (6 or so pages) one act play, wondering how it might play out. The lines are written in an Arran Islands dialect, so I tried to imagine how that might sound. I have a rubbish Irish accent, but even with my poor attempts, I can begin to hear how lyrical the lines would be when spoken by someone with a proper Irish accent, someone who can capture the cadences.

Reading the play has put me back on a Celtic kick, with my Chieftains Pandora station. I might even get out my viola and play a tune or two tonight, after I spend some quality time with Troilus and Criseyde for my Chaucer class, of course.


***
And to cast the play.

Maurya: Fionnula Flanagan
I imagine Maurya as a combination of the creepy-ass housekeeper from The Others and a fiercely protective mother figure. Also, she's been on three different Star Trek series! Not that that gives her theater cred, but still. I am impressed.

Cathleen:Michelle Williams
I loved her performance in Brokeback Mountain. She carries tragedy amazingly well, capturing the sadness with dignity. And Cathleen as to take charge when her mother goes to pieces. I suspect she could carry off the Irish accent as well.

Nora: Saoirse Ronan
Nora is just noted as being younger than the 20 year old Cathleen. I've seen Saoirse in a few movies, and she has a maturity that radiates from the screen. I imagine in a family that has known as much tragedy as Nora's, she'd have to grow up pretty quickly.

Bartley: Domhnall Gleeson
I have only seen Domhnall briefly in the last Harry Potter movie, but Bartely isn't on stage for more than ten or twenty lines. Domhnall is Irish, he looks to be the right age, and beyond that, I don't have strong feelings about him as an actor, which is appropriate, because Bartely is really only the object of the tragedy. He doesn't have a presence beyond as a symbol of loss, even when he's alive.

And I have no place for him in the play, really, but I just like looking at Aidan Turner so I'd put him in a crowd scene. Or hire him to sell tickets or paint sets. Whatever.  I'm pretty sure I'll find him sexy as a dwarf. Oh man, that's going to be a weird movie-going experience.

Oh dear.

Miss Julie

Miss Julie by August Strindberg (1888)

And so begins the semester reading! A brief word about how I see the "reviews" of my school reading playing out here. I'm probably just going to spit out some quick ideas here, before we've discussed the plays in class, and use this space as a place to begin gathering thoughts and ideas for seminar papers. So these ideas will be loose and not fully formed. If any of you, my lovely readers, have studied theater or literature and want to pass on thoughts or articles relating to the readings, I would be super thrilled to look through them.

I'm counting the plays I read as individual titles even though they are mostly from a Norton anthology. And my theater theory prof started us off with Miss Julie by Swedish playwright August Strindberg.

And may I just say, Yowza?! I read the introduction to the play by the Norton editor, and I wish I'd just read the script of the play first, because Strindberg is, in my modern feminist eyes, a misogynistic looney. Actually, according to the intro, it's not just me that thinks he was a M.L. But damn. Even in Strindberg's preface to the play, he's a jerk. His writing is just short of being a manifesto. In one part, he writes "If my tragedy makes most people feel sad, that is their fault. When we get to be as strong as the first French Revolutionists were, we shall be perfectly content and happy to watch the forests being cleared of rotting, superannuated trees that have stood too long in the way of others with just as much right to grow and flourish for a while -- as content as we are when we see an incurably ill man finally die." This is in reference to those who would replace the conventions of theater with new and innovative dramas.

He devotes a good page to describing women as wholly inferior to me, completely incapable of rational, intelligent thought. It's not particularly groundbreaking in its misinformed nastiness, but nonetheless, I found myself itching for a TARDIS so I could go and punch him in the neck, even though it would prove, in his eyes, that women really are lesser than men.

But what I really thought about, as I read the play, was of a blog post I read this spring on the Guys Lit Wire blog, asking the story, can you like stories written by unlikeable people? Blogger Kristopher Reisz talks about loving the stories of HP Lovecraft but being really put off by Lovecraft's obvious racism. Reisz asks "So should we do away with art created by distasteful people?" Strindberg is most definitely distasteful. Even if I didn't read his preface and the editorial intro before the play, Strindberg's depiction of Miss Julie as a crazycakes woman ruled by hysteria and a defective intellect and upbringing (Strindberg makes a pointed reference to Miss Julie being on her period during the action of the play, leading the reader to conclude that she is at least in part not able to control her actions because she's bleeding) would have been enough to put me on edge. Couple that with his offensive preface and the bio provided by the Norton folks, and I'm hard pressed to find the value of this play.

Reisz concludes his blog with this paragraph: It would be a better, more just world if artistic talent was only granted to the people who deserved it, the Vincent Van Goghs and W. B. Yateses who solemnly swear to use their art only to lift humanity up. But as long as we're living in this world, I don't think we lose any moral ground trying to understand people we don't like. In fact, we can learn a lot about them and ourselves in the process.


I don't think I believe that it would be better if art was used only to lift up, but I kind of wish that was the case. However, in light of previous discussion in class about reading things in context (and basically, we're never able to read something in it's intended context unless we are reading a just-published article online or in a magazine or something because we're never able to go back to the conditions in which the artist created the play, TARDIS or no), I do think it is the job of a literary scholar to learn about ourselves in the process of experiencing art, whether we like it or not.


***


And since theater is about performance as much as the words, I'm going to take this space to cast the play, simply to amuse myself.


Miss Julie: Emily Blunt
I think Emily Blunt can portray Miss Julie's sexy flirtation and babbling crazycakes without falling into caricature, despite the fact that Strindberg clearly thinks of Miss Julie as such. And Emily has the perfect sheen of poshness that befits the daughter of a count.

Jean: Jude Law
Jean also swings from dominating to servile over the course of the play. I can picture Jude being cruel and when he cries, as he does in The Holiday, he looks like a total pansy, and I imagine that dichotomy in Jean. And while Jude is certainly easy on the eyes, he seems like kind of a d-bag in real life, and that's how Jean came across as I read the play.

Christine: Clea Duvall
Christine is only on stage for a short while, but Clea looks like she could be the strong, no-nonsense woman Christine appears to be. Christine is the cook in the household, so I imagine her a little rough around the edges, but not hideous. At the end of the play, Christine starts spouting Bible verses at Miss Julie. I can't decide if Christine is seriously religious or if she is sarcastic, but I can imagine Clea playing either effectively, depending on how the director chooses to stage her character.

Illustrations in Children's Literature

I love illustrations. It is so sad that most illustrations are confined to children's books and that too often, illustrators are deemed as lesser artists. So I was delighted to find this website, Uncovered Cover Art. The blog hosts artwork that reimagines or reinterprets well-known works of children's fiction.  Here are a few of my favorites. I'm intensely jealous of the artists because I can only manage stick figures, and not even funny stick figures like those of xkcd. I would LOVE to buy some of these to decorate my apartment.

I really like the black/white/gray/red palette.

Chinese reimagining of Goldilocks.

What will she do now that she's collared the wolf?

Want!

Mash up of Wild Things and Calvin and Hobbes FTW!

LOVE the minimalist take here.

And after I went through the submissions on this site, I went back to look at the work of some of my all time favorite illustrators like Aubrey Beardsley, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie M. King, Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham, etc, on this time-suck of a website, the Children's Book Illustrators and Illustrations Gallery.

Edumund Dulac

Florence Harrison

Jessie M. King

Jessie Wilcox Smith

Kay Nielsen

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham

Alice B. Woodward (I used to have this edition of Peter Pan -- I wonder where it is?)

The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)

From Goodreads

"I got my heart's desire, he thought, and there my troubles began" (220).

I can't decide if I liked this book. I certainly liked the premise -- a teenager weaned on books of the Narnia-like mythic land of Fillory suddenly finds himself admitted to Brakebills, a college of magic. Yes, Quentin is astonished to find, magic is real and he is a magician (or magician in the making).  As a person who, for years, checked her closet for a door to Narnia and, even though she was far too old, sort-of-kind-of hoped she'd still get a Hogwarts letter, or at least a university equivalent because we all know that you don't learn all you need in high school, I wanted to be Quentin, or at least one of his classmates, because frankly, Quentin isn't very likable. He comes off as a cross between Holden Caulfield, Harry Potter of books 5-7 and Eustace Clarence Scrubb (irritating privileged teen male). He's selfish and whiny and indulgent. And yet, somehow I managed to find sympathy for him, long before the choices he makes (and he acknowledges his role in the events) leads in part to a rather horrific conclusion of the book.

So, as a casual reader of fantasy fiction, I can't say that I loved this story.

But of course I'm not just a casual reader of fantasy fiction, as well you know. I'm a literary scholar (in training). I took courses in the theory and analysis of myth and fairy tales. I've read loads of books that deconstruct the pieces of folk lore and folk tales, and I suspect Grossman is a scholar of folk lore, myth and fairy tales as well as a scholar of psychology. Through Quentin, who is a certified genius and pretty self aware (though that self awareness doesn't get in the way of his spectacular fuck ups), Grossman explores just what happens when people get what they want.

I can't quite get my head around what I want to say about this book because I want to go back and read the Narnia books and read the criticism of the allegory of that series. I want to read Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment and reread The Catcher in the Rye, even though Holden annoys the fuck out of me, and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And I definitely want to read second book in the series, The Magician King. And I really wish my professor and mentor Bill was still alive, because I'd really like to know what he would say about the story and because he was really good at challenging me to tease out my thoughts on story and myth.

Frankly, I'm surprised at how many ways this story has gotten its hooks into me, and so, while I can't be sure if I liked it, I know I'll be thinking about Quentin and company for a long time to come.

Back to School

School starts up again on Monday, my final year (fingers and toes crossed) in my MA in English Literature program! I narrowly escaped a 12 credit semester with a timely swap of a literacy class for one of my English electives. My university offers a coursework option, project option, portfolio option and thesis option for MAs -- I took the coursework which means I have to take one extra class. There's really no one thing that interests me enough to stress out for a year writing an 80 page thesis, or at least nothing that I could find enough faculty members for a thesis committee.

I went to the bookstore to pick up my books -- thank goodness for the rental option. Would that I had had the rental option as an undergrad! Given the dismal resale value for used textbooks, I probably only saved about $10 per book rental, but it saves me trying to figure out what to do with a giant Riverside Chaucer I won't want to lug around after the semester is over.

It's like a building cornerstone -- literally, not metaphorically

So I'm taking three classes -- Chaucer, 20th Century American Film and Drama, and the Form and Theory of Poetry. I ordered a few books from Amazon that have yet to arrive, and I'm not buying the Shakespeare poems because I can get that from the library. But here's the great stack of books I'll be working through this semester.

Because nothing says serious like Thor's hammer

From top to bottom:

Unexpected Elegies: Poems of 1912-13 and Other Poems About Emma by Thomas Hardy
Vita Nuova by Dante
Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille
The Norton Anthology of Drama, Volume Two: 19th Century to the Present
Theater in Theory: 1900-2000
The Riverside Chaucer

Not Pictured:
Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
The Complete Poems and Sonnets of Shakespeare
(And, as I found out today, a crap-ton of other books like Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and more! Grrrr! Argh!)

Five more days, then it's fun fun fun! And I'm still trying to finish The Magicians and one more book for my Diversity in YA reading challenge. AND I'm visiting my folks for the weekend! Good thing I'll have The Throne of Fire on  CD to keep me occupied on the long drive.

Anya's Ghost

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol (2011)
YA Graphic Novel, Ghost Story!

From Goodreads

*I finished this book back in June, but what with my dad's surgery and my trip back East and all, I forgot to post this.*

Normally, I don't read scary things. I don't watch  scary movies. I am a scaredy cat of the highest order. But I couldn't resist Anya's Ghost. The story beings with Anya, a teen who immigrated to the US from Russia when  she was a little girl. She never feels like she fits in with the cool and popular kids at her private school -- well, you know the story. Only Anya gets an unexpected ally in the ghost of Emily, a long dead girl who was just as awkward and disaffected as Anya. Emily uses her ghostly powers to help Anya become more popular, do better in school. And everything is great. Until Emily wants a little more. And Emily is much more than she seems.

I've said before that I don't generally care for graphic novels, but I did like Anya's Ghost. I liked the cartoony illustrations because they let me in on the creepiness of the story without being too graphic or frightening, so I got to creeped out without being terrified and unable to sleep. In fact, I chose this book because I really enjoy Brosgol's illustration style. I do think the story could have benefited from the fleshing out that prose allows, but as far as graphic novels, this one had great art and a nice, full story. It's definitely worth a read. And do yourself a favor and check out Brosgol's blog. There are really lovely samples of her illustrations for your perusal.

Diversify Your Reading: Update

Look what came in on the new book cart at work today:


from Goodreads

 Vanished by Sheela Chari

Missing instruments? India? Legendary curses?

Yes please!