Louise Erdich's THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

Louise Erdich (b Amer. 1954) is an award winning novelist.  Her young adult novel "The Round House" ('12) won the Nat'l Bk Award and "The Place of Doves" ('09) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in literature.  Erdich's beloved & literary novels all contend with Native Americans; their history of brutal annihilation and pervasive oppression by the US govt. intent on eviscerating their livelihoods and culture.  Erdich writes fictitious Native American characters that resonate with their humanity and struggles to survive and maintain their self-sufficiencies & dignities.  The factual events in the novel set in the 1950s in ND pit the Turtle Mt. Band Tribe of Chippewa Indians v. US legislation led by Sen. Watkins (Rep. UT) designed to displace, assimilate or annihilate them entirely.  "The Night Watchman" ('20) is Erdich's most recent novel.  Her novel deviates from her previous works as the protagonist, Thomas is based upon Ms. Erdich's own maternal grandfather.  Erdich is a member of the Turtle Mt. Tribe.  Thomas works as night watchman and is a galvanizing force to defend their tribal lands.  Erdich draws his portrait as deeply humane, intelligent, religious and devoted family man. There are a chorus of characters in the Turtle Mt. tribe.  In addition, there's a cacophony of ghosts, spirits and dreams woven throughout enriching the storytelling with Native language, customs, beliefs and a profound sense of dignity & tenacity.  The Turtle Band is mounting a legal defense to preserve their tribal land already endowed by the US govt. but now facing a Termination Bill orchestrated by Sen. Watkins (Rep. UT).   The members of the Turtle Mt. Tribe are very diverse.  Their lives arduous and their prospects tenuous.  Still, they're bond together with a deep respect & love for one another.  The women are shown as the stealth of their families. Patrice, a.k.a. Pixie, is on a quest to find her sister Verna who went missing in MN.  The coercion of abducted Native Amer. women into sex slaves was prevalent without having any protection or recourse.  The novel is more than a coming of age tale or a shameful history lesson of Native Americans' persecution.  It's ambitious, convoluted and confusing.  Erdich admits the book necessitated a difficult editing transition.  Some of the story's trajectories become overtaken and lost.  "The Night Watchman" is a serious study of man's inherent nature to obliterate any culture, race or religion that fails to conform or deemed indispensable.  Despite overriding, grave issues of importance there's heartwarming affirmations of kinships to behold.  Erdich warns of the demolition powers of legal documents determined to crush lives.  She also conveys inspiration & conviction that people, her people, are not powerless to protect themselves and prosper.

Myla Goldberg's FEAST YOUR EYES Nat'l Bk Critic's Finalist '19

"Feast Your Eyes" is a novel that's a collage of snapshots of a female photographers particularly in the 60s 70s superimposed on Lillian.  Lillian  a single, unwed mother living in Brooklyn in this era.  The story focuses a lens on what it means to be a maverick & creative genius.  Myla Goldberg's fictitious account of Lillian Preston best personifies the struggles of photographer Sally Mann and what she experienced in her groundbreaking controversial & later lionized career as a 21st C photographer.  The framing of the storytelling copies Jane Arbus' daughter's collecting and curating of her mother's works exhibited in the highest echelons of art museums.  The epistolary format is the golden light to Goldberg's storytelling pieced together through Lillian's letters to her daughter Samantha, a.k.a. Jane and to her few close friends who in turn shed light on Lillian's life through their correspondences.  These wide lens perspectives are subliminal to Jane's recount of what was happening in her & her mother's lives referencing Lillian's photographs at the time.  It's worth noting the dire circumstances before abortion was legal in the country.  The exposure into a coven of starving artists is also a bright spot.  Lillian's creative compulsivity elucidates a passion that manifest in a variety of beautiful ways that breaths life into these pages.  Lillian is mostly a loner. Her profound love for her daughter is overshadowed her keen proclivity for capturing images resonating a mote of pure awareness that lingers long after its fleeting moment in time.  Jane's bohemian lifestyle as her mother's daughter leaves an indelible imprint.  Jane's rebellious & unorthodox choices are doubly exposed in Lillian's diary where she express her intense love for her which appears hidden.  Lillian's journal reveals all she felt went unsaid.  Long estranged from her parents since choosing to keep her child out of wedlock, Jane is the catalysis for reuniting Lillian with her parents.  The many years of separation have left a negative space which slowly develops into healing.  Lillian notes in her diary to Jane "you {are} old enough to understand. 'I love you too' is only ever an echo."  Lillian's longest friend Debra is a budding poet and there is a lyricism in much of what Lillian  captures in notes.  Ideas regarding photography as immoral or exploitative are thrashed about and photography's annoying habit of corroding whatever real memories one possess.  Lillian's militant, avant-garde art dealer believes some people are artists whether they chose to be or not.  "Feast Your Eyes" was a Nat'l Book Critic's Pick ('19). I found it clever storytelling but not memorable or something to shutter esteem praise upon.

JoJo Moyes' THE GIVER of STARS - Don't Take It

THE GIVER of STARS stole my precious time. It wasn't worth the read.  Written by JoJo Moyes (b UK 1970) is a popular romance novelist and screenwriter.  Her novel ME before YOU (2012) was made it into a film.  It was a love story but it also examined the topic of euthanasia from various points of views with intelligence & heart.  THE GIVER of STARS is about a fictitious group of misfit women in rural KY during the 1930s.  This motley mix of formidable women band as librarians distributing books via horseback to those who would otherwise not have accessibility. Ironically, our heroine Alice is from the UK.  Alice is swept away quite literally by a handsome American, Bennett.  Alice & Bennet marry shortly after meeting & she returns to the US and the KY home of Bennet & his father George Van Cleve.  This is an ill-fated romance; not the true love stories within this podunk town saddled with stereotyped McCoy & Hatfield characters.  There's the ne'erdowell villain, George Van Cleve, who owns the local mine and has his hand in running the town and the people in it.  There are valiant, steadfast men, courageous female mavericks and a cast of moonshine drinking hillbillies.   Alice won't abide abuse from her father-in-law & neglect from her husband.  She leaves the Van Cleve household and moves in with Margery.  Margery is the strong leader of the ragtag group of women working with the library.   During the Depression Eleanor Roosevelt funded a program known as the Pack Horse Library Project to reach remote rural areas in the Appalachian region.  Historic tales of women who rode out on horseback to promote literacy is an intriguing premise to build upon.  The growing friendship & fortitude of these women is what drove a steadfast story.  Also worth noting was the pillage of the land & hardships for the miners & a subplot of racial segregation.  Unfortunately, THE GIVER of STARS was mired in sledge by sappy love stories, a trumped up trial and detritus of cartoonish or incredulous characters.  The story might work rewritten for young adults minus the sappy romances with a focus on the quotidian of lives & hardships during this epoch.   I don't recommend wasting time on Moyes' novel.  It's a Reese Witherspoon book club selection.  Keep in mind Reese selects with her eye on being given a role in making or starring in the forthcoming film.  Having said this, Reese's pieces are treats for the masses and not enticing for the literary asses.

Jason Reynolds' STAMPED Racism, Antiracism and You-Adapted from Ibram Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning

STAMPED: Racism, Antiracism and You written by Ibram Kendi with its abridged version by Jason Reynolds is NOT a history book.  It's a didactic, approachable conversion that addresses serious racist ideas and their historic impacts which have affected all of us. The perceived notion there's a natural human hierarchy which places Blacks at the bottom and Whites on top is a pernicious falsehood that's persisted like a plague on our nation.  Kendi & Reynolds have written a digestible historic & prescient book of detestable talking points.  These arguments dig in a deep & profound manner where the root of racism sprouted, how it has perseverated and the past & present carnage & oppression it has caused.  STAMPED enlightens without preaching, posturing or proselytizing for young adults and sensible people of any age.  STAMPED is a collaborative learning exercise that expresses the obvious flaws in White mentality driven by greed & and immoral justification of righteousness.   What dynamics contributes to racist hatred and suppression?  What has kept it alive for centuries in the US?  How has the construct of race & racial divides been misconstrued to maintain sovereignty through propaganda and our political & economic systems? When slavery was instituted it dehumanized Blacks endowing slave owners to treat them as chattel; birthing farming machines classified as livestock and not human.  The concept of one human being owning another is anathema yet it was not viewed as such, including many of our founding fathers.  This belief was maintained by Presidents Jefferson & Washington.  Both kept slaves throughout their lives maintaining the belief they were inferior by nature.  Is that taught in our school's history texts?  Propaganda perpetuated this thwarted mentality that relentlessly justified White supremacy and slavery.  The perpetuated myth was dark was synonymous with dumb & evil.  White was synonymous with smart & virtuous.  Laws have constrained black people from access to education, health care, housing, and equanimity in all wakes of society.  The authors clarify 3 distinct racial mind sets: segregationist (a hater) and assimilationist (a coward), or an antiracist (someone who truly loves) and how each group have rationalized racial inequality.  Segregationists argue (wrongfully) that Black people are inherently intellectually inferior & and irresponsible causing their own circumstances & inequities.  The history of racism in this award winning, not history book, is key to understanding how racism impacts individuals & society as a whole today.  Moreover, it's a sounding board for assessing how racism anchors us together and tears us apart.

GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Bernandine Evaristo

"Girl, Woman, Other" by British author Bernadine Evaristo received the 2019 Booker Prize in Literature.  Evaristo's novel is a menage of no less than a dozen women characters whose lives intertwine and ebb & flow from one life to the next.  Three central characters for whom you might connect the unending individual threads are Amma, Dominique and Yaz, Amma's daughter.  The plundering plot germinates from Amma & Dominque rebellious youths.  They considered themselves radical, anti-establishment, thespian lesbians.  Traversing decades, continents & multitudinous lovers, these black, bohemian, bumptious women discover themselves in their 50s now ensconced within the establishment.   Evaristo brokers a writing style that steps outside the constrictors of linear timelines, plot development or literary format. The writing is at times poetic & philosophical; free-flowing leading into unpredictable trajectories.  The punctuation is notably absent but the politicizing of feminism, sexism, racism, racial & cultural identities prevails amongst the numerous relationships, friendships & familial bonds.  It's fair to conclude friendships are the omnipotent connections that holds the human family together.  The convoluted, deconstructed storylines meander into various characters that are all so well construed we're willing sojourners in their lives.  Men are sublimated to the sidelines but not altogether dismissed. Men are also perceived as scapegoats.  Patriarchy is condemned as a system that oppresses all women.  There's a prevailing envy & awareness of living in a male dominanted society.  Only men are freely condoned to be polygamous. There's a cadre of those oppressed: women, black men & women, and the LGBTQ communities for starters.  Truth be told, hierarchies of power & privilege will never disappear. Evaristo foresees a future a world where restrictions of a gender-binary will dissolve.  Women will stop defining themselves by having a male partner and view dependance on a man a sign of weakness.  There are cunning observations on religion & evolution. "Christmas should be called Greedymas a time when people over-eat and over indulge in the name of Jesus Christ." It's worth noting despite outward appearances, mankind shares 99.9% identical genetic makeup.   GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER is a unique, imaginative, mind-blowing creation to marvel.
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Ted Chiang's EXHALATION -SciFi Metacognition

EXHALATION is a spectacular collection of sci-fi short fiction that covers.  Ted Chiang's clever & thought provoking stories encompassing theology, sociology, physiology, archeology, humanities and eons of possibilities.   Chiang's captures the reader's imagination & stimulates metacognition.  Chiang's stories gives us cause to marvel at human evolution.  He cracks open our craniums to ponder  the origins of thought and consider the omnipotence & onus of human decision making.  In the titled story "Exhalation" a scientist explores inside his own brain and found it tore "an engine undergoing continuous transformation, indeed modifying itself as a part or its operation."  We're made mindful of the miracle of free will and clarity of thought.  The clever writing leaves us with conflicting views allowing us to derive our own judgements.  Betwixt are some bemusing opines. "The Church as an institution has always been able to derive strength from the evidence when it's useful and ignore it when it's not."  The stories mirror our own tendencies to process in this fashion.  It's suggested there's merit in withholding information as well as disclosing it.  Some stories take opposing views.  The sci-fi intrigue of time traveling is broached in intriguing ways with emphasis on the possibility of changing our past and thus our future.  The cryptic consideration of the past and the future being the same or malleable are profound.  "The future and the past are the same.  We cannot change either, but we can know both more fully."   Repentance and atonement's power to erase the past are shrouded in doubt.  Chiang employs lyricism with wisdom. "Four things that do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity."  Serious & humorous considerations are given with the ability for technology to enable us to revisit our pasts.  Spouses used this technology to prove their points in arguments.  But then what is the point?  And grieving individuals are enabled to revisit loved ones or examine the trajectories their lives might have taken had they chosen the road not taken. These are very thought provoking conceptions.  Artificial intelligence (AI) is another anomaly the collection contemplates philosophically.  EXHALATION also examines the incredulous developments of man's abilities to read, write and process thought.  EXHALATION is a no brainer - it's a masterpiece of creative genius.  

The ILLNESS LESSON - Lecherous Treatments of Young Girls in the 1870 by

Just post Civil War in MA, a renown essayist Samuel Hood, decides to open a school for young girls to broaden their critical thinking & awakenings outside of merely marriage and motherhood.  It was the norm for matrimony & motherhood to suffice & tether women in society.  All Samuel's well intent does not end well.  This is on the heels of his dismal failure of a social experiment constructing a utopian paradigm.  Pearson, a famous writer of this time is highly critical of Samuel's proclamations.  Suffice to say Pearson's daughter, Eliza, joins the 'Trilling Heart School' in its nascent formation.  Eliza is an extraordinary girl and a natural leader of the others.  Clare Beams' novel had the materials to construct an intriguing novel: an interesting epoch, maverick young women and a lovely setting nestled in the New England countryside.  However, the novel crumbles with torrid adulterous affairs taken off the pages of Harlequin romances. There are red herring references to Hitchcock's haunting film THE BIRDS. And, even more egregious is the lecherous examinations Samuel permits Dr. Hawkens to perform on these young girls; not unlike Larry Nassar & the USA gymnastic team.  The ILLNESS LESSON is ill advised to perpetuate the myth that vibrators or clitoral stimulation were accepted treatments for females during the late 18th & early 19th C.  Furthermore, mistreatment of the women is made more heinous with the submissiveness of adult witnesses for whom their care was entrusted.  Samuel, in his most profound argument to enlighten the  presumed vapidness of young women said, "I would argue that it is always right to think."  What's missing was the formidable ability to question and for the adults to sensibly listen to the girls.  "The girls had adapted quickly to their new right to speak, think, question-as if all of it had been ready inside them and waiting only for someone to ask to hear."