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Yesterday, Lara Starr of Chronicle Books wrote to share the news that GOING OVER was included in the
BCCB Holiday Gift Guide, news I read while giving a very old friend a tour of the Penn campus. The entire list is worth reading, for those of you who are still in shopping mode.
(Buy books from real bookstores! Please!)
This morning, Twitter delivers this
incredibly gorgeous and smart review of the book that defined, for me, much of my writing and teaching year. These are words only Colleen Mondor—author, publisher, critic, woman deeply invested in history—could write. I share a final paragraph, but every single word she writes, the perspective she yields about this period, and the photo she used to headline her review matter to me. They put a tear on my face this morning.
Going Over is a teen novel of far bigger ideas than most I have come across. The setting is brilliant and the split narrative, between Ada and Stefan, provides readers with a close look at just how different Berlin became after the split. (Which also makes the reunification that much more impressive.) There are so many novels set during WWII, while the Cold War remains stubbornly overlooked. I'm thus delighted with what Kephart has done here and find these characters, in their decidedly European setting, to be different in the best way. It's a thought provoking title with exceedingly likeable characters and a great ending; all of which make Going Over a winner.
So many thanks, Colleen, and BCCB, and all those who believed in Berlin, and in me, this year. You allow me to keep dreaming forward in ways I'll never adequately explain. To keep writing these small books that take these big risks and hope to find readers who will willingly enter these worlds.
Today’s post is part of a blogosphere event, Why I Vote. I have to thank Colleen at Chasing Ray for inviting me to participate in this event and causing me to really think about somethings I’ve really taken for granted. This is why I vote. Here is why others vote. Why do you?
Why, indeed do I vote? I suppose I do because my parents did and the question then becomes: why did they vote? Why, indeed!
When my dad decided to fight for this country, he passed for White in order to get a more active role in combat. I guess the joke was on him though, because he ended up working in the morgue. After the years he spent providing final honors to his fallen “brothers” in arm, he came back to his hometown of Toledo, OH and got married. He and my mother soon found a nice little home in which to raise their children. My dad would study the banks to find the best rates and terms. He always kept his finances well organized and from his diligence, he would quickly be accepted for a mortgage loan. But, when he took my brown-skinned mother into the bank to sign papers, the loan would suddenly be denied. I never remember either of my parents missing a day of work. My dad rarely took a vacation, went to church every holy day and Sunday, never did anything in excess yet, it seemed he would never get a house for his family.
My mom grew up in the Mississippi Delta. Life was rough in the Delta, still is. The poverty her family faced was so difficult that my mom barely spoke of it.
My mom and dad knew they wanted their children to have a better life and they made sure we got an education. They gave us everything they believed we needed and sent all three of us children to college.
You would think that people back in the 60s and 70s would be less informed than people today, but those were times when new sources weren’t competing 24 hours for viewers and they were able to deliver real information. My parents always watched the evening news. No matter how much we children complained. they watched the news! They read the Toledo Blade daily, discussed politics at the union hall and always voted. Even with all that they lived through, they couldn’t lose their faith in America.
Like me, my mom and dad never, ever imagined they would see a black president in their lifetime. My dad passed away long before Pres. Barak Obama even came onto the political scene. Dad was a diehard Republican and I have no idea how he would have voted, but mom was a lifelong Democrat. She had moved to Indiana to live with my sister and during the campaign mom was glued to CNN! But, you know what? My mom couldn’t vote for him.
She came from the Delta, that ragged ol’ Delta and in one of the may fires in the churches, courthouses and other public buildings down there, her birth records burned. I remember as a child going with her when she tried to get a birth certificate re-created so that she’d be able to get a social security card, but it couldn’t be done. Consequently, when she moved to Indiana she couldn’t get a driver’s license and without the driver’s license, she couldn’t vote for that black man she never thought she’d see become president in her lifetime. She didn’t live to see him inaugurated, but she lived to see him get elected. For that matter, she lived to see her children do fairly well for themselves.
So, for her, and for my dad, for all they endured so that their children could have a better life, for my children and for the grandchildren I hope to see in my life time, I will vote. America may only be a dream, but I’m part of that dream. My parents let me know that.
Filed under:
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All moving, unpacking and getting settled in is hereby interrupted for the Summer Blog Blast hosted by Colleen at Chasing Ray. All posts for the Tour are being linked back to Chasing Ray so be sure to check there everyday to start you summer with interviews with some of your favorite YA authors!
My first interview this week is with Randa Abdel-Fattah. Randa is the author of Does my head look big in this? Where the streets and a name and Ten things I hate about me. Randa lives and works in Australia. Let me introduce you to this amazing woman!
What’s your favorite place?
I’m a Gemini and therefore I’m fickle and ‘my favourite’ questions are always so hard to answer. But I’ll have a go 
and say that in my Top 5 favourite places is a wonderful tree house in my mother’s home in Cairo, Egypt. It has views of a fruit market, several foreign embassies, beautiful tree-lined streets and the minaret of a mosque two streets away. Gorgeous!
What book(s) are you currently reading?
I’m re-reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, one of the most brilliant novels I’ve ever read.
As a child, what did you do for fun?
Obsessively played with Barbies, tormented my little sister, converted cardboard boxes into mansions for my Barbie collection, read anything I could get my hands on, watched Disney classics, rollerbladed, basketball.
Your writing has gained international success! In what countries are your books selling best? From which country(ies) are teens most likely to contact you?
First and foremost, the USA. Next would be the UK.
I am so impressed by your unflinching sense of self. Where did you get that?
My sense of self isn’t always unflinching. There are days when I feel confused about my life goals and choices. But the one constant is my identity as a Muslim woman. It centres me and grounds me- spiritually and emotionally. It’s only now that I’m a parent that I’m starting to really appreciate the way my parents raised me to be proud of my heritage and identity; to be aware of my responsibilities and rights; and to embrace all the opportunities that come my way with hard work and passion. Their own lives as migrants and, in the case of my Palestinian father, as an exile, undoubtedly drove them to instil a strong sense of identity in my sister and I.
I hate to admit that you were born the same year I graduated from college! A generation younger than me, a different ethnicity and thousands of miles away, I would like to think that you would have experienced less racism, had better opportunities and read more books with characters that look like you. From your writings, that doesn’t seem to be the case. What about the next generation of Muslim girls in Australia? Do they have more opportunities? More books with characters like them?
There is an exciting generational shift among Australian Muslims who are not just reacting to the negative discourse that surrounds Muslims in an increasingly Islamophobic world, but who are also creating, and defining themselves on their own terms, through the arts, comedy, writing, theatre, film, music, politics. It’s exciting to see this happening and to be a part of it.
I read your memoir “Living in a Material World”. While reading about how Muslim women are viewed for wearing the hijab, I couldn’t help but think of my Black sisters here in America, -here in 2012 no less!- who fa
There are an
extraordinary number of BBAW posts going up around the blogosphere today; you'll find many conversations sparking around the idea of community. You all know
how I feel about that, and how grateful I am for my rooting in among you. Today I'd like to formally thank one more special person and blogger (
and author!) who is both wise and kind—Colleen Mondor of Chasing Ray—who took the time to read
You Are My Only last week and had
this to say.
I was in Atlantic City a few years back when a friend sent a short note my way. There was a blogger, she said, whom I had to read—a smart one, a respected one, who was out there talking about something I'd written. When I followed the link,
Chasing Ray, the brainchild of blogger Colleen Mondor, came into mini focus on my Blackberry screen.
I already knew of Chasing Ray, of course I did; most anyone out here in the land of book blogging does. Colleen has always called it as she's seen it. She has waded in toward the important stuff, taken a stand, defended it. She has fought on behalf of books for boys, on behalf of nonfiction, on behalf of libraries, on behalf of greater transparency in cover art, on behalf of books she has believed in, on behalf of memory.
I have followed Colleen's blog for a long time now, and so I thought I knew her. But this morning I finished reading an advanced copy of Colleen's first book,
The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska (Lyons Press), and I find myself exhilarated by all that I didn't know, had not imagined. This is the story of the four years Colleen spent running Operations for a bush commuter in Fairbanks, Alaska. It's about the planes that rose and fell, the pilots that went missing, the cargo no one would believe. It's about defying the odds, the weather, the smash wall of mountains until those things rise up and speak and refuse to be defied. It's about vanishing, about vanishing's speed. It's about a daughter who loses her father too soon and who, in the end, writes stories down in search of some salvation.
It's a memoir, but it's a chorus. It's a we and a them on the rhythmic order of Tim O'Brien's
The Things They Carried, a book that brings us into itself (and keeps us there, utterly absorbed) with opening passages like this:
The things they had to know were endless. From their first day flying for the Company, they filled their heads with facts and figures of length and distance, knowledge of rivers and mountains, the locations of a hundred landmarks, or a thousand. They learned when it was safe to drop down through the clouds, when they might continue forward, when they must turn right or left, when they absolutely had to turn back. They made sure sled dogs were tied on short leases because one of them would jump on another and cause a fight at the worst possible time. They understood why they needed to strap down dead bodies extra tight after Frank Hamilton had one slip free on takeoff....
No one liked flying with bodies.
I said this was a memoir, and it is, but it's that
other kind of memoir—the kind in which the author is not the heroine, but the webber, the weaver, the voice for those who are no longer here to tell their own stories. That is not to suggest that there's any distance here, a single line that feels academic (though it has all been magnificently researched) or at emotive remove. Colleen's passion for those days and those people, her intimate knowing, is galvanizing. She's tough, and she's been toughened; she rarely puts her own self center stage. But when she appears, when she tells us something personal, the stories stick and matter.
So that this book has great affecting power and it also, I kept thinking, has all the stuff that would make for one heck of a great television series. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before—to set a series down in a place like Alaska, to cast a bunch of cra
A week or so ago, Colleen Mondor, Chasing Ray blogger and Bookslut reviewer (among other things), wrote to say that she would soon be able to share big news. And so I waited, knowing, as I did, that Colleen had been at work for several years on a book she'd called THE MAP OF DEAD PILOTS. It was a book inspired, in part by her work as co-owner of an aircraft leasing company, her knowledge of Alaska, her love for boundary-stretching literature, and her passion for melding fact and the imagination. And it was a book agented by one Michele Rubin of Writers House, whose belief in this project Colleen has described in posts spanning several years.
This was an author and agent who would not give up. Not in the face of so many almosts. Not in the face of a rapidly changing industry. Not in the face of so much that can feel so bleak when you are on the waiting side of a coin.
And so, this week, I waited for Colleen's news.
It came yesterday—news that this book, described in Publishers Marketplace as being "about Alaskan pilots navigating a world that demands close communion with extreme physical danger and emotional toughness" has been sold to Holly Rubino at Lyons Press. It will go on the fall 2011 list.
I could not be happier for Colleen, who has cheered so many of the rest of us on, has gotten us talking about important book issues (diversity in storytelling, honesty in jacket design, the value of nonfiction for the young), and has never bowed to envy or bitterness. Colleen Mondor has sold her first book, and she'll tell you more about it
here.
Colleen Mondor isn't just the force behind
Chasing Ray, and she isn't just an author in her own right. She is also a Bookslut reviewer—writing, for the rest of us, some of the most thoughtful reviews around. I spoke, at the Book Blogger Convention, about reviews that writers learn from. I learned so much from
these words about The Heart is Not a Size that I have reprinted them in full, hoping that Bookslut and Colleen don't mind. Colleen gives me cause (gives me strength) to continue to fight for a place for stories for "the quiet ones out there." That can be an enervating fight, a struggle that can at times overwhelm a writer like me. It is also an endeavor with enormous rewards. I am so grateful, Colleen, that you have reminded me of this.
From the review (and please follow the link for all of the reviews in Colleen's remarkable column this month, titled, "No Laughing Matter.")
Sometimes being a teenager is not just hard, it’s scary. Here is a stack of books about how serious the teen years can be, and why our younger selves deserve a lot more empathy then most adults are willing to give.
Beth Kephart is a National Book Award nominee who, in recent years, has been creating a name for herself as the writer who slices through the dramatics of teen life, and dwells instead on the quiet wonderment and worry of being a girl. While she does not neglect that age-old struggle to fit in, or defiantly embrace outsider status, her stories are much less about what everyone else wants and thinks, and instead look at the seriousness of being an individual. Her girls must find their way, and more often than not, that means letting go of what others hope and want for them. These are worrying girls, concerned girls, girls who want to do the right thing for everybody, but all too often find they cannot, because, after all, no one can. That is when Kephart’s girls grow up, and when readers who are just like them discover their own paths forward as well.
In
The Heart Is Not a Size, Kephart introduces Georgia, who has a very nice family; a fun, creative best friend in Riley; and academic achievements that make college an obvious choice. She also is being bodyslammed by panic attacks that defy all efforts at control. Georgia is losing her grip, and because she is holding on so tightly to her own worries, she cannot reach out to Riley, who is literally (and figuratively) losing herself.
In a desperate bid for authenticity, Georgia urges Riley to sign up with a group of volunteers who are traveling to Juarez, Mexico, to build a community washroom. It is, she thinks, the ultimate opportunity to gain “release from the narrow outlines of my life.” Georgia is half convinced she is going crazy, but doesn’t know how to stop the rollercoaster her achievement-oriented life has become. With a little arm twisting, Riley is along for the ride, which Georgia thinks is a good thing. Maybe Juarez will be a way for her to save her friend also, or at the very least, to force Riley to admit what she is doing to herself.
Colleen Mondor of Chasing Ray has an article, On The Other Side of the Mountains, in the Anchorage Press.
At Chasing Ray, Mondor says: "This particular chapter of the book, "The Other Side of the Mountains", (slightly altered for length and so it could standalone), is about a real historic event when two of AK's most famous bush pilots were feared lost while en route to Barrow in 1928. I wrote about similarities between that flight and modern times and how insignificant maps can be when you don't know where you are."
I got chills reading it; it's from her manuscript, The Map of My Dead Pilots. An awesome title, and as this excerpt shows, the writing matches the title for awesomeness.
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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
I don't, as many of you know, look for reviews of my own books, but every now and then one will filter in, and sometimes I'll be reading a favorite blog and come up short against my own name.
That's what happened a few minutes ago, when I was checking in with Chasing Ray, where I've had the privilege of appearing from time to time in a truly wonderful series of Colleen Mondor orchestrated think-a-thons.
I was reading along, about wish lists for Navajo and Apache teens and other typically important topics, when I happened upon this:
After finishing Beth Kephart's latest, The Heart is Not a Size, I have decided she is becoming almost her own little sub genre - a writer who creates stories around, and perhaps also for, a particular sort of teenage girl. The one who seems to have it so together but has numerous little worries, and concerns. Not the drama of violence or addiction ala Ellen Hopkins but of quietly going a wee bit unhinged while trying to hold it all together. Not that Georgia goes crazy in the slightest in Heart, but she worries. And in Nothing But Ghosts there was quiet worrying as well. This all strikes me as something that is perhaps more common than anything else among teenagers - the worrying about holding it all together, doing the right thing, not being a disappointment.
I am taken aback by the perceptiveness of this. It's true. This is what I've been up to. I just didn't know anyone had noticed.
Feminist Is Not A Dirty Word is the latest in the What A Girl Wants series by Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray.
What A Girl Wants began in June 2009, and is a series of interviews with authors about the "current status of books for teen girls and what it says about both what they want to read and what publishers think they want to read." Topics since then have covered everything from mysteries to favorite books to recommendations to the most recent entry, about feminism.
I cannot believe I haven't linked to this series before! If you've been reading it, you know how great and in depth it is, with an amazing array of authors. If you haven't been reading it, start now! You'll feel as if Colleen invited all these women to her house, and you're invited, also, and now you're sitting around drinking wine, eating good cheese, and talking about bookish things.
Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.
© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
You know you're too busy when you have to say "no" to things you really, really want to do.
Colleen at Chasing Ray has put up the schedule for the 2009 Winter Blog Blast Tour; and this time around, I'm not participating.
What is a blog blast tour, you may ask? Quite simple; over one short week, there are a ton of different author interviews at different blogs.
Who sets it up? The blogs; the bloggers decide who they want to interview and cross fingers that the people they ask want to participate. It's all voluntary and independent; but the people involved strive to have a good mix of authors, of various genres, etc. It's not about a publisher or author promoting a specific title; though goodness knows, new titles will be discussed.
Colleen is the main organizer and cat-herder, in terms of scheduling times, posting schedules, and posting round-ups. As the week goes on, each day she not only posts that day's schedule, but she also pulls a great quote from each interview. Half the fun is seeing which quote Colleen will choose.
Colleen has been organizing this since 2007; in Why I Organized the Summer Blog Blast Tour: Third in a Series on Reviewing, posted June 2007, Colleen explains the origin of the Tours.
As I reread Colleen's original manifesto, I think, Wow, was it only just two years ago we were being called maggots and cat people? That we were defending our experience and right to write reviews? Can you believe that in 2009 we are still defending ourselves?
In 2007, Colleen wrote about the "significant contribution that the kidlitosphere makes to the national literary conversation." It's still something we find ourselves defending, sometimes from interesting and unexpected accusations and sources. And it's why these blog tours will continue, because what Colleen said in 2007 is still true today: with the blog blast tours "we can show just one way that the blogosphere can accomplish a great and worthy task with relative ease, and get the word out on a lot of excellent writers in the process." It's about the books; it's about what bloggers can accomplish.
And I'd forgotten the earlier conversation in April 2007, when Colleen responded to the charges that bloggers could be bought with a cupcake, in You Can't Buy Me Love. Where Colleen notes what is the most important thing to her, and, dare I say, to most people: the readers and the books.
Interested in reading more about these blog blast tours? Colleen has tagged most of them either SBBT (Summer Blog Blast Tour) or WBBT (Winter Blog Blast Tour), so its under those two tags, SBBT/WBBT, at Chasing Ray.
Here is the week's schedule:
Monday
Jim Ottaviani at Chasing Ray
Courtney Sheinmel at Bildungsroman
Derek Landy at Finding Wonderland
Mary E. Pearson at Miss Erin
Megan Whalen Turner at Hip Writer Mama
Frances Hardinge at Fuse Number 8
Tuesday
Ann Marie Fleming at Chasing Ray
Laurie Faria Stolarz at Bildungsroman
Patrick Carman at Miss Erin
Jacqueline Kelly at Hip Writer Mama
Dan Santat at Fuse Number 8
Nova Ren Suma at Shelf Elf
Coleen Mondor (Chasing Ray), Liz Burns (A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy) and other bloggers are organizing a new “One Shot World Tour,” a multi-blog effort to promote children and ya literature from/about different parts of the world.
Some of you might remember their Australia edition in 2007, and the Canada one in 2008. This time they encourage everyone to explore Southeast Asia. Needless to say, we will be joining in on the fun (there’s even rumor of an interview with PaperTigers, which will be such an honor for us!). The round-up of posts will be hosted by Chasing Ray on Aug 12, so if you have book reviews, interviews or other content that relate to the region by way of author, illustrator or theme, make sure to send them your permalinks. For the sake of this project, the focus will be on: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines, so don’t miss out on the chance to participate and share your old favorites and/or new discoveries with all of us!
Do teen girls need YA books? Is there something innate in the genre that shapes growing up like nothing else can? Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray is asking that question today, and some really smart people are offering their perspectives. Here, for example, is Zetta Elliott:
The more YA lit I read, the more I’m struck by the split: novels that are about teens versus novels that are marketed to teens. The latter are often marked by “lite” writing and silly gimmicks that aim to make the novel seem experimental or innovative in terms of form. But real daring resides in the writing itself, and I think teens deserve novels on every topic, told from as many different points of view as possible. Books that offer narrative possibility (instead of filling in all the blanks) open the door for continued conversation, so I’d also say that we need adults who have the courage to face the daunting questions that teens need to ask.
I've contributed my two cents to the conversation as well, for what they are worth, and I encourage you to take a look—and to join in the discussion.
Yesterday was a high and low day—a business meeting that left me feeling hollow, a blog-world embrace that I will never forget. There is no sap in the kind of blog goodness that was sent my way yesterday. There is only strength.
There is also only strength in conversation, and there's a very intriguing conversation currently ongoing at Chasing Ray. The overarching theme, as you know, is What a Girl Wants. Today's conversation is called The Girl Detective Edition. Colleen Mondor, who hosts this dialogue among YA writers, is wondering about the apparent absence of Nancy Drew-style detectives in contemporary YA. Middle grade books feature them. Adult books do. What has happened to YA? What does it mean, and does it matter?
Earlier today I was walking the beach alone. The sky was (at last) blue. The ocean was frisky. The gulls paid me no nevermind. Fervency had replaced the fever of a pent-up winter.
I have been gone just 24 hours and my back isn't aching as much as it had, and I read a book, and I saw the sea, and I did nothing I was supposed to be doing, and it was good.
But two friends—a bookseller, a librarian—had happy news for me upon my return to reality, and I thank them both here. Em for telling me about how The Happy Nappy Bookseller has put in a long-shot Newbery wager for House of Dance. Charlotte for discovering (and then passing on the news) that Chasing Ray has today expressed hope for Nothing but Ghosts in her provocative (and wonderful) scouring of upcoming YA titles. I'm honored to be noticed by both reader-bloggers (and to have the friends that I do).
Fourteen months ago, when I first went blogging, I knew nothing, I knew no one, I scratched about and made my way. I'd fall through the rabbit hole of GoodReads, for example, and trip up against some smart reviewers. I'd find a comment on one of my postings from, say, Miss Erin, and travel over toward her blog, only to encounter others about whom I would sigh to myself, Oh, wouldn't it be nice to know a little about them.
Hipwritermama was one such force. She seemed so smart. So, well, hip. She thought a lot about books—the ones she was writing, the ones she was reading. She took her time to say precisely what she thought and how she felt. When she disappeared at summer's end for a brief vacation she returned—refreshed, rejuvenated, ever thoughtful. I noticed this.
I dared, at last, to reach out to her. She took the time to come my own blog's way. She was generous, encouraging me on with a passage I was writing, or commenting on something I'd openly been struggling with.
http://hipwritermama.blogspot.com/
I learned, about her, that she lives where I once did. She helped me locate (for my memory was fuzzy) the pond where I taught myself to skate (a memory I borrowed for UNDERCOVER). We talked about cooking, about expectations, about raising children, and recently, hipwritermama, who is also known as Vivian, took the time—she really takes the time—to read my books and to ask me questions for the Winter Blog Blast Tour.
I'm not the only one on whom she has showered such attention. I stand in the privileged company of Melissa Walker, Mark Peter Hughes, and Wendy Mass. All of us together being featured among many other wonderful writers over the course of this coming week.
I'm looking forward to reading these interviews. I invite you to take a look at the full line up, which is posted on the fabulous Chasing Ray.
http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2008/11/2008_winter_blog_blast_tour_sc.html
Blogging the Vote...
Click over to Chasing Ray today to find links to non-partisan thoughts on voting from all over the blogosphere (from authors, illustrators, reviewers, librarians).
As for me, I think it's important to vote for many reasons, one of which is that I live in Ohio, and pretty much no one can win the Presidency without winning Ohio. I feel like my vote counts! Voting makes me feel like a part of something. It make me feel important and powerful on some level. Tonight I'll be going over a sample ballot to make sure I have my ducks in a row when I get to the booth. Tomorrow I'll be getting up extra early to get to the polls. (There aren't many things that makes me get up extra early.)
By:
Kelly Herold,
on 2/10/2008
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The honorable Colleen Mondor (Chasing Ray) runs a great little awards process each February for a category of books that is broader than, say, Middle Grade fiction, or Young Adult fiction, or Graphic Novels. Last year, for example, Colleen called for the best in coming-of-age novels. This year, Colleen seeks to honor books "published for adults that work perfectly for teens."
I gave a lot of thought to my choice this year, mostly because this topic has been on my mind: I have a 12 year old who is venturing out into the world of adult books while still reading MG (fantasy) and YA fiction. William Boyd's Restless was one of her favorite books this year, and she also loved Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. So while I wanted to nominate either one of those titles, a book I read recently kept whispering in my ear, "pick me."
It's not like Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has been ignored by critics and readers. I think it's been on every top-10 list this year. It's one of those books that was reviewed twice in the New York Times (once by Michiko Kakutani, and once by A.O. Scott). Diaz has been interviewed everywhere about his "work of startling originality and distinction," most recently by Edward Marriott in the Guardian.
I'm not going to review The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao here, because I agree with almost every word of Kakutani's review. What I am going to do is give you five reasons why I think every teen over the age of 15 should read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
1. I found Diaz's presentation first-generation U.S. citizens in the late 20th century more accurate than anything else I've read recently. Oscar and his coevals were born in the States, but can travel back to their parents' country--in this case, the Dominican Republic. They're ambivalent about the U.S., sometimes romanticize the land of their parents' birth, but are ultimately more comfortable in the States. Their identity is more complex than that of their parents. As Kakutani writes at the end of her review,
- "This is, almost in spite of itself, a novel of assimilation, a fractured chronicle of the ambivalent, inexorable movement of the children of immigrants toward the American middle class, where the terrible, incredible stories of what parents and grandparents endured in the old country have become a genre in their own right."
Yes,
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao does tell the tale of the first generation. But it also shows what's different for many immigrants and their children today--the fluidity between two cultures, two countries, and two languages. Even the parents in this story return to the Dominican Republic. They choose to stay in the United States, but still call one another Dominicans.*
2. Respect for "genre." Diaz's semi-heroic hero, Oscar, wants to be the Dominican (note how this designation relates to #1) Tolkien. He reads and writes Fantasy and SciFi. He grew up on comic books. The fantasy world is there for him when times are tough.
3. The young adult heroes of
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are intelligent, flawed, and ambitious. Oscar is a smart kid, his mother's golden boy. He follows his amazing older sister--Lola--to Rutgers and studies writing. The book's most frequent narrator--Yunior--is also a writer, Oscar's roommate, and a ladies' man. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior strive to overcome their flaws and make it in this world as adults. If this premise doesn't appeal to Young Adult readers, I don't know what else will.
4.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has at its heart Oscar's attempt to score. (Hence, the arbitrary 15 and up age designation. Use your own judgment here.) Is this not a central theme of much of Young Adult literature? A coming-of-age story in its most literal sense.
5. The maturation of Oscar, Lola, and Yunior is grounded in the history of the Dominican Republic in the 20th century. They are part of a larger story--the "terrible, incredible stories of what parents and grandparents endured in the old country"--despite the fact they live in 21st- century New York and New Jersey. Diaz's contextualization of the personal in the historical and the political makes
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a novel every teen should read.
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*I do realize that not all first-generation Americans have the opportunity to travel back to the home country of their parents due to political, religious, or economic reasons. However, this global fluidity seems to be much more common than it was, say, in the World War II era.
Colleen Mondor and I don't intersect very often in the blogosphere. She dwells on adult and YA topics. I stick to kidlit with the occasional YA aside if I'm feeling distractable. But when it comes to insightful analysis from a cool clever head, there are few places better to head towards than
Chasing Ray. Colleen recently wrote out a rather beautiful piece entitled
A Question About the Big Picture which takes in hand the recent kerfuffle surrounding the notion of blog reviews vs. print reviews. The focus of the article is a
Critical Mass entry that seemingly came out of the blue by a less than wholly talented critic. I read Critical Mass when I've a chance but I missed this particular smackeral of tripe when it aired. Take a glance at Ms. Mondor's piece if you've a chance to do so. One of the finest pieces of writing I've seen in quite a while.
Do you have piles of books cluttering your house? Books you've read, but won't read again any time soon? Then consider Colleen's call for help over at Chasing Ray.
This bookdrive is a perfect opportunity for me, for example. I have a home for my picture books and MGs (the ones my children don't squirrel away), but did not have a place for the YAs I've read and reviewed. Now I do!
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Oh, no! Your poor mother! How insane — but once that birth certificate is gone, it’s so hard to prove residency, and everything else. I imagine the election coverage was a hoot for her four years ago. May the memory bring a smile this year.
Hi Tanita!
My sister and I really just pieced all this together. We both had parts of this puzzle but we didn’t put it together until very recently. Mom wouldn’t have admitted all this to anyone unless she had to because she would have been embarrassed about not being able to vote. It kind of makes me wonder how much else she just gave up on over the years.
I am going to vote and add your mom to the reasons why I vote and the person I am voting for. Thanks for sharing this story with us today.