A Book A Week

"Knowledge allows remembering, and remembering is honoring."

I'm not one to stick closely to the daily news cycle. That being said, it has been hard to watch politicians fight over banning books and censoring history, especially as they do nothing to stop school shootings like the one that occurred this week. With so much hate and deceit in the world, it can be hard to remain hopeful. Still, our optimism must remain. How do we keep this positive outlook? I don't pretend to have the answers, but I do see plenty of things that help me maintain an enthusiastic mindset.  In the book world, more and more diverse authors are telling their stories, introducing readers to a wider array of realities. Even more promising, it seems like these tales are capturing a broader audience than ever before. Add Cecile Pin's debut novel Wandering Souls into that category. She's written a searing portrait of a family's history through war, immigration, and assimilation. It is the kind of story that demands to be read. One that is powerful and poignant in its perspective. 

In the years following the Vietnam War, it is clear to Anh's parents that the promises of a bright future rest outside of their home country. Anh's uncle has taken his family to live the American dream, a dream that Anh's father plans to pursue too. This is a huge, life-changing moment for the family. Anh's parents know that the journey to a better life will be as perilous as it will be rewarding. They send Anh and the other eldest children on the trip to Hong Kong first. They promise that they and the younger siblings will not be far behind. The full family will be reunited in China before embarking on the next leg of their trip. This promise, though, will not be kept. Anh's parents and younger siblings are killed during their travels, leaving the fragmented remains of the family left to journey ahead alone. 

Over the next several decades, Anh and her surviving siblings are left to pick up the pieces of their father's shattered dream. They land first in a resettlement camp, a place where they interact with other immigrants, struggling to hold on to their identities. When they finally are placed back into the real world they land not in America, but in the UK. Their new home doesn't offer the bright future they were promised. Instead, the siblings face anti-immigrant hate and systemic social inequality. Instead of coming together, to form their new life, each sibling slowly diverges from the other. Racked with survivor's guilt and a desire to pave their own path, they'll have to reckon with the ghosts of their past to find their way to a brighter future. 

I can't give enough praise to this book. I was entranced by the story told in Wandering Souls, and I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with a copy of it. Cecile Pin has written a novel that deals with the challenges of memory. How do we keep the memory of loved ones alive? How do we honor our past while moving toward the future? These are the things Pin grapples with. The characters in the book give us an insight into the realities of being an immigrant to a foreign country. Pin intersperses the third-person narrative of her main character Anh with the first-person voice of Anh's deceased younger brother. This ghostly voice ties everything that happens in Anh's life to her past, never fully allowing her to escape it. Also included in the narrative are snippets of factual articles from the time, grounding this fiction in the reality of the world it depicts. These elements come together to tell a visceral story of family, love, and loss. Wandering Souls is the best, most important book that I've read this month, and will no doubt be among my favorite reads of the year. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2023, 18)

What defines who you are? I've played piano for most of my life, studied music through two college degrees, and have worked as a professional musician. My love and understanding of music are intimately intertwined with my lived experience and have helped to shape me into the person I am today. There came a point in my life, however, when I had to learn that it was okay for me to separate myself from that art. By its very nature, art can be all-consuming, a 24/7 obsession that can be easy to lose yourself in. I am lucky to have found a balance in my life in which I know that being a musician is only part of who I am. It doesn't define the entirety of my being. Instead, I know that my life is a rich tapestry of the things I've done, the passions I've uncovered, and the people with whom I surround myself. Condensing the richness of that life into a single label does a disservice in defining the person I am. 

In A Song Everlasting author Ha Jin grapples with the mystery of defining a person through the intimate portrait of one man. Yao Tian is an acclaimed Chinese singer who is revered in his country as a brilliant artist and loyal patriot. Tian has built quite the life for himself, his wife, and their daughter. He approaches his art with the same duty with which he honors his country, a duty that drives him to sing nationalist songs and tour with the national choir. His traditional upbringing and culture also bind him to another kind of duty, the duty of being the patriarch of his small family. Tian has a comfortable life, but he's eager for more. Not more for himself, but for enough money to provide his daughter with the best college education possible. It is in this desire that Tian begins to lose himself and threaten all of the things that define him. 

On a trip to New York with the Chinese choir, things begin to unravel. Tian accepts an extra gig for a generous cash payout. He knows the money will help with his daughter's tuition. Plus, the event is advertised as a celebration of unity between China and Taiwan, a cause that Tian believes aligns with the priorities of his country. But as he attempts to return home, Tian is startled to learn that he's been fired from the choir and blacklisted by the very government that he's dutifully served. It turns out that the organizers of the private event he sang at are actually supporters of Taiwan's secession. In an instant, everything that has ever defined Tian is taken away from him. He is stuck in a foreign country with no feasible path back home. He has lost the career that defined him and worst abandoned his family. Now he'll have to carve out a new path, learning more about himself and what truly makes up a man in the process. 

I was drawn to A Song Everlasting by the summary that the publisher provided when they offered me a copy to review. I was instantly connected to the idea of a musician losing the means to a career that defined him. What I didn't expect was how deeply moved I would become by his story. Ha Jin writes with utilitarian ease that could be misconstrued as sparse. I found, however, that his words work in service to the story, disappearing from thought to allow the reader to focus more on the life that is being portrayed. In fact, I often found myself forgetting that I was reading a work of fiction at all, completely invested in the man and his situation. A Song Everlasting challenges definitions of tradition and duty and instead finds vibrance in the plainness of everyday life. Like a song itself, the book works not in a singular moment or event, but through the combination of its various characters, moments, and emotions. I left the novel stunned by the ideas that it contained, awed by the very splendor of its simplicity.

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2021, 35)

Since it published earlier this year, American Dirt has been mired in controversy. The novel by Jeanine Cummins led to a bidding war amongst major publishing houses and initially garnered glowing reviews. It was even chosen by Oprah to be part of her famous book club. The shimmering reception quickly gave way to harsh criticisms. Many argue that Cummins, a white woman, has no right to present a story about Mexican refugees, especially when the voices of Latinx authors who have lived this story have been consistently underrepresented or outright stifled by publishers. This controversy has forced the publishing industry to take a critical look at the way they acquire, print, and promote books, a conversation that has grown beyond even this one particular novel. Still, the question remains. Is American Dirt any good? Determined to draw my own conclusions about the novel, I decided to give it a listen.

American Dirt begins with a literal bang. Lydia clutches her eight-year-old son Luca from behind the shower curtain of the bathroom. The pair is immobilized by fear as gunshots ring throughout the house, murdering their entire family. If they make even the slightest move or sound, their fate will be the same. What started as a day of celebration with extended family has shifted to one of tragedy and grief. Sitting there listening to the sound of her family's slaughter, Lydia knows exactly what precipitated this violence. Her husband, a reporter, recently published an article about the notorious head of a Mexican drug cartel. This is clearly an act of revenge, a kind of tic for tac. When the sicarios finally leave, the house is filled with a silence that only comes from the absence of life. Lydia and Luca are the only surviving members of the family and the only lives preventing the jefe from finalizing his revenge. Lydia knows what she must do. She must escape the country and seek refuge in a place where she can't be found.

I think that it is best to critique American Dirt on two levels. One based purely on the novel itself and the second being a larger reflection on the controversy that has surfaced because of it. Jeanine Cummins sets her immigrant story within a thriller. Yes, there are obvious commentaries about the plight of refugees and their reasons for undertaking such a perilous journey, but at its heart, the novel is a thriller. As such, it is the kind of book that keeps you reading, unable to look away (or in my case stop listening) until you've finished the entire thing. Cummins deserves credit for presenting a story about refugees in a way that grabs the reader's attention and forces them to face the harsh realities that it presents. Whatever your thoughts about the novel, I think it is important to recognize that this is a story that often is untold and that the book's success means that many people will connect and be exposed to a story that they would otherwise be ignorant or indifferent to. At its best, American Dirt humanizes immigrants in a way that seeing throngs of people detained on the news fails to.

All that considered, I found many flaws to the narrative itself that I couldn't ignore. Luca is an incredibly bright child who is imbued with knowledge that felt like it was more in service of advancing the plot than developing his character. The child has an almost savant-like predisposition to understanding maps and sensing direction. Cummins attempts to present this as a way for us to connect with Luca as if to say, " Look at how bright this kid is. He deserves our admiration." In reality, his predisposition to direction was more in service of helping the family navigate their way to freedom, a trait that I found to be a bit too convenient to be believable. There is also the fact that Lydia comes from a family of financial privilege. She isn't escaping poverty and violence in search of better opportunity. She has already been afforded that opportunity, even drawing on her sizable bank account to buy safe passage at several points in the book. These two particular characteristics aided in the pace of the novel, but detracted from the sense of reality.

Finally we come to the controversy of American Dirt. There are many criticisms to be made about the novel, but I don't think the flaws of the book itself warrant any kind of cancelation or hate. They simply make it a so-so read. Where the real controversy lies is with the publishing industry at large. It is odd that the book by a white woman about Mexican refugees has garnered this kind of acclaim and prominence when many Latinx authors have written about the same topic to little fanfare. The publishing system in place tilts the scales in favor of white creators. I think that American Dirt has simply brought this conversation to a boiling point that has made more people take notice of this problem. What really matters now is what we and the people in power choose to do next. Publishers must take a hard look at how they can diversify the authors and content that they present. They must do more to give voices to a variety of authors who present a variety of stories. We as readers, in turn, must support these voices. Support the places and publishers who value diversity by publishing and selling books by diverse authors. Buy the books by these authors and share these stories through whatever means you have available. At the end of the day, American Dirt will not be remembered as a great work of literature, but it just might be remembered for the movement and change that it inspired.

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2020, 26)