Currently Reading: Between the World and Me

I encountered Ta-Nehisi Coates on two separate occasions before picking up his book. The first encounter was in San Francisco; I was in my friend’s bedroom with nothing to do but run my eyes over her bookshelf, up and down, left and right, and I noticed a copy of The Atlantic with its infamous cover story, “The Case for Reparations.” The second encounter was in the August issue of Rolling Stone (what do our magazine subscriptions say about us?) that features a Q&A with Coates, and this recollection stuck with me:

“I remember sitting in a library at Howard University and reading The Fire Next Time in one session. It was such a pleasurable experience, to be lost in a work of art. And in this age, where the Internet is ubiquitous, it’s very hard to have that experience. I had this vision of some 19-year-old kid in a library somewhere, picking this book up and disappearing for a while. That was all I wanted.”

Coates’ Between the World and Me is divided into three parts, each styled as a letter to his son. The book is a historical and personal study of race in America: “Americans believe in the reality of ‘race’ as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world,” and the outgrowth of this belief is racism (p. 7). He continuously contrasts his upbringing to “the Dream,” which involves “perfect houses with nice lawns,” “treehouses and Cub Scouts,” and in general a profound detachment from racial injustice. When describing a friend he meets at Howard University, Coates seems to also describe the mission of his book:

“He was, like me, from one of those cities where everyday life was so different than the Dream that it demanded an explanation. He came, like me, to [Howard University] in search of the nature and origin of the breach” (p. 49).

I read to expand my experiences, to learn and to feel. Between the World and Me offers all of those things and also reads beautifully, each word carefully chosen, each sentence carefully woven. I’ve just finished the first part, and I have a feeling there is far to go.

Currently Reading: The Girl Who Slept with God

“I’m surrounded by people whose minds are too small to accept anything other than what the newspaper or the television or, excuse me, the science books tell them” (p. 67).

There are keywords that readily sway me when selecting a book to read, including coming-of-age and family saga. The Girl Who Slept with God offers both, as well as a casual study of religious fundamentalism, another favorite subject of mine (see The Poisonwood Bible and A Complicated Kindness). The all-knowing, impenetrable quality of religion forever intrigues me, and I love stories that capture this within the context of growing up, asking questions, and shaping one’s own life.

The Quanbecks are a devoutly religious family living in small town Idaho. There is the kind husband, the depressed wife, and three sisters, Grace, Jory, and Frances. Early in the book, Grace’s faith proves feverish, and she travels to Mexico as part of her “freakish obsession with becoming the world’s youngest evangelist.” She returns home not only pregnant, but also believing that it is the result of providence, hence the title of the book. Though a seemingly sensational set-up, it is not treated as such, and in fact the book largely follows Jory, the middle child who daydreams of things “modern and current and popular and fun.” Jory and Grace are sent to live alone on the outskirts of town to preserve the family’s sanity and reputation, and what ensues is what I am in the midst of. I find myself continously turning the page, a highlighter poised to capture all that is noteworthy and beautiful, and I cannot wait to resume.

Currently Reading: A Master Plan for Rescue

Regardless of what book I am reading, I always find the perfect place to pause, an invisible intermission, that has nothing to do with page numbers or chapters. I sense a pending shift in the book, so I pause to reflect, to prime my mind for what comes next. To refresh my memory, I flip back to random pages and re-read from wherever my eyes land, a few paragraphs, maybe a few pages, and will do this several times.
 
Janis Cooke Newman’s A Master Plan for Rescue (Riverhead, 2015) is unique in that I did not reach that pause for a very long time. In fact, I’m almost finished with the book. It is divided into two parts that ultimately intertwine, and though the story unfolds slowly, it is good enough to want to push forward, to feel eager for more information. The first part follows Jack, a twelve-year-old boy in Manhattan who loses his beloved father to a freak accident as WWII ramps up. The second follows Jakob, a Jewish mechanic in Berlin who falls in love as his life descends into the hell that is Nazi Germany.
 
A Master Plan for Rescue suggests that when faced with untold difficulty, people resort to magical thinking, as if our minds try to shield us from pain that we cannot handle. Jack, faced with the death of his father, continues to communicate with him via code-o-graph and tells himself that he left to hunt down Nazi spies. Jack’s mother, faced with the death of her husband, joins the “Desperate Catholics” who rush to the front row of church and look to the ceiling as they loudly repeat scripture. Jakob’s love, Rebecca, has a weak heart and knows that if the Nazis do not kill her, her heart will. She becomes fixated with escaping to Paris and desperately begins every conversation with, “When I go to Paris…” The pace quickens when the two stories merge in New York City, and I’m eager to discover whether the magical thinking can sustain itself. I always enjoy historical fiction more than I think I do, and A Master Plan for Rescue is making me consider that all over again.