Tag: book lust ii

Absalom, Absalom!

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Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York: Library of America, 1984.

Reason read: September is Southern Gospel Month. You can’t get much more southern than Faulkner!
To be honest, there was some confusion as to when I really read this book. On LibraryThing I had marked it “accomplished” and the detail of tags indicated I had read it at some time…but I couldn’t find a review. Not here, nor on LibraryThing. Plus, it was still on my challenge list. Weird.

Every town has their legends; the stories passed down from generation to generation. The Mississippi town of Jefferson has the story of Thomas Sutpen and his “Sutpen One Hundred.” All told, Thomas Sutpen was seen as a strange, mysterious and even evil man. When he first arrived in Jefferson no one knew his story. He bought one hundred acres of land and then disappeared, leaving the townspeople to talk, talk, talk. When he returned again he had a crew of slaves, materials, and a plan to build a mansion, a legacy. All the while he continues to be secretive and uncommunicative causing the townspeople speculate as to what he’s really up to (as people are bound to do when left to their own devices). The gossip subsides only a little when Sutpen finishes his beautiful home and marries a respectable woman. Quietly he starts a family when his wife gives birth to a son and a daughter. But the chatter can’t escape him. New rumors crop up when word gets around of Sutpen encouraging savage fights between his slaves. There’s talk he even joins in for sport. And that’s just the beginning.
Ultimately, Absalom, Absalom! is a story of tragedy after tragedy. Faulkner described it as a story about a man who wanted a son, had too many of them & they ended up destroying him.

Author fact: Faulkner realized his hometown had a wealth of stories to tell.

Book trivia: in my opinion, this was the most complicated of Faulkner’s books if only because the plot was so involved.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Southern Fried Fiction” (p 206).

Black Faces, White Faces

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Gardam, Jane. Black Faces, White Faces. New York: Abacus, 1975.

Reason read: Gardam’s birth month is July.

Black Faces, White Faces loosely links together ten short stories, all taking place in Jamaica; all involving vacationing Brits completely out of their comfort zones. What is special about Black Faces is that Gardam interlocks details as well as characters. For example, a character in one story leaves behind a toy. Another character from another story finds it.
“Babe Jude” – encountering crude vacationers & a language barrier.
“Missus Moon” – foreigners witnessing a funeral.
“Best Day of My Easter Holidays” – a boy’s essay about meeting crazy man Jolly Jackson.
“The Pool Boy” – Lady Fletcher doesn’t want to be so prim and proper.
“The Weeping Child” – Mrs. Ingram tells the story of the ghost of someone who is still alive.
The House Above Newcastle” -Newlyweds Boofey and Pussy are unrecognizable to each other on their honeymoon.
“Saul Alone” – a sad story about a stroke victim observing the people around him.
“The First Declension” – a wife suspects her husband of having an affair while he visits Jamaica.
“Something To tell the Girls” – two teachers on holiday in the mountains of Jamaica.
“Monique” – a woman mourning the loss of her lover.

Quotes I liked: from “Babe Jude” – “He foresaw an agitated lunch and felt depressed” (p 6), from “Best Day of My Easter Holidays” – “We seemed somehow after a very long time to get back to the same place, I don’t know how” (p 19), and from “The Weeping Child” – “Imagination was her rarest occupation” (p 34).

Author fact: Gardam is a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Literature and an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Book trivia: Black Faces was a little harder to get from a library. I requested my copy from the Boston Public Library.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jane Gardam: Too Good To Miss” (p 96).

Coast of Chicago

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Dybek, Stuart. Coast of Chicago. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1990.

Reason read: June is short story month.

Coast of Chicago consists of fourteen stories. I read “Blight” and “Hot Ice” for the Challenge. While every short story has well rounded and thoughtful characters, it is the city of Chicago that steals the show. It is the largest personality in every story. Everyone describes Dybek’s language as “gritty” and I couldn’t agree more.
“Blight”
Remembering Chicago in the late 50s.

“Hot Ice”
The legend of the girl frozen in a block of ice ice.

Quote I liked from “Hot Ice”: “He’d been a butcher in every meat market in the neighborhood, but drunkenly kept hacking off pieces of his hands, and finally quit to become a full-time alky” (p 126).

Author fact: It should come as no surprise that Dybek was born and raised in Chicago. He illustrates the city intimately in Coast of Chicago.

Book trivia: Coast of Chicago is comprised of fourteen stories. “Hot Ice” won first prize in the O. Henry prize story collections in 1985. “Blight” won in 1987.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Natasha: and Other Stories

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Bezmozgis, David. Natasha: and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.

Reason read: June is short story month.

Natasha and Other Stories is comprised of seven short stories. I read “Tapka” and title story, “Natasha.” The interesting thing about all seven stories is that they all center around one family, the Bermans. “Tapka” and “Natasha” center on Mark, the son.

“Tapka”
Six year old Mark Berman falls in love with Tapka, his neighbor’s tiny white Lhasa-apso, at first sight. He cares for this animal so deeply he and his cousin are bestowed care-taking duties of Tapka. Until tragedy strikes.
Best line, “With no English, no money, no job, and only a murky conception of what the future held, he wasn’t equipped to admire Tapka on the Italian Riviera” (p 5).

“Natasha”
Ten years later, sixteen year old Mark develops feelings for his fourteen year old cousin, Natasha. She is wise beyond her years; much more experienced than Mark. She teaches him a thing or two about coming of age.
Best line, “She was calibrated somewhere between resignation and joy” (p 90).

Author fact: Bezmozgis was born in Latvia.

Book trivia: Natasha and Other Stories is Bezmozgis’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Birds of America

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Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1999.

Reason read: June is national short story month

The two short stories I read are “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens” (p 111) and the incredibly sad “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk” (p 212).

“Four Calling Birds…” –
Aileen mourns the death of her cat, Bert. She has him cremated and sees a therapist to get over his passing. It just goes to show you how much like a family member a pet can be. The very last scene is the best part.

“People Like That…” –
Despite the fact everyone in this story is nameless, this one is even sadder than “Four Calling Birds”. “Peed Onk” is actually “pediatric oncology.” Parents of a baby boy are faced with his cancer diagnosis. A child having such a serious illness seems unfathomable.

Lines that got me, “When a baby gets cancer, it seems stupid to ever have given up smoking” (p 225) and “The synapses between minutes are unswimmable” (p 235).

Author fact: Where do I begin with Ms. Lorrie? So many things to say about this woman. Here are my favorite facts: She is from an area I used to frequent often, Glens Falls, NY and she goes by her middle name.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Oblivion

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Wallace, David Foster. Oblivion: Stories. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2004.

Reason read: June is short story month

“Mr. Squishy”
The complexity of “Mr. Squishy” has been compared to a Magic Eye poster. Reading and rereading will yield varying results. Getting up close will show you something different than if you backed away or circled it, growling like a battle-ready rabid dog. As readers, we step into the scene as it is already underway, a focus group talking about an initially unnamed product. Then we discover we are focused on a chocolate dessert food product under the brand name of Mr. Squishy. The company is trying to market a chocolate dessert with the name “Felonies!” At the same time, unrelated to the scene on the inside is an individual climbing the outside glass wall. The duality of scenes implies an inside looking out/outside looking in desire.

“The Suffering Channel”
There are more ironies in this story than I know what to do with. when faced with writing a review for “The Suffering Channel” I soon found that I was suffering. How do I even begin to describe this short story? Having said all that, here is my feeble attempt:

Brint Molke is an artist. His medium is not oils or watercolor. He specializes in his own excrement. Not to say he is a sculpture in sh!t. He just happens to defecate art. This astonishing feat caught the attention of Skip Atwater, writer for Style magazine. The title of Wallace’s short story comes from Skip’s coverage of a cable channel called…wait for it…the suffering channel. A 24/7/365 channel where, you guessed it, one can watch images of all kinds of suffering. There is more to the story than this, but the overlaying detail that shrouds everything is Style magazine is located in one of the World Trade Center Towers and it’s September 10th, 2001. In other words, nothing in the story matters because in a day’s time everything will change.

Author fact: Wallace wrote “Mr Squishy” under the name Elizabeth Klemm.

Book trivia: there are six other stories in Oblivion that I did not read.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Love Medicine

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Louise Erdrich. Love Medicine. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984.

Reason read: Erdrich’s birth month is in June. June is also Family Month, so take your pick.

This is such a powerful book on so many different levels. It is the story of two different Native American families, rich with culture and tradition. Even though June Kashpaw dies within the first chapter, her spirit threads through the entire rest of the story. Just like the history of the land they live on, every subsequent character is complicated and vibrant. This isn’t a plot-driven novel. Instead, the characters with their robust personalities and passionate life experiences make Love Medicine come alive.

Quote worth mentioning, “She always used the royal we, to multiply the censure of what she said by invisible others” (p 7).

Author fact: Erdrich also wrote Beet Queen which is also on my Challenge list. Another piece of trivia – Erdrich was married to Michael Dorris who wrote Yellow Raft in Blue Water one of my all time favorite books.

Book trivia: Love Medicine was a national bestseller.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “American Indian Literature” (p 23) and also in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 106)

Nine Stories

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Salinger, J. D. Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1948.

Reason read: June is Short Story Month

 

Both short stories I read share a central theme of a soldier who is more comfortable conversing with a child than any adult.

“A Perfect Day for a Bananafish”
He is a soldier who strikes up a conversation with a young child on a Florida beach. The phone conversation his wife has with her mother early in the story indicates he is suicidal, although the reader doesn’t clearly see this until the end. For that reason, it is worth rereading. Clues become clearer with a second read.
Line I liked, “She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing” (p 4).
“For Esme – with Love and Squalor”
He is a soldier who strikes up a conversation with a teenager in a restaurant. She is precocious and intelligent. Wise beyond her years. Through letters with Esme the soldier is able to cope with the squalor of war.

Author fact: Everyone knows Salinger penned Catcher in the Rye because everyone has read Catcher in the Rye. Right?

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Lucky Girls

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Freudenberger, Nell. Lucky Girls: Stories. New York: Harper Collins, 2013.

Reason read: June is National Short Story month

“The Orphan”
This is the short story of a family splintering in different directions. The parents are separated and on the verge of getting a divorce. The nearly adult children are in Thailand and Bangor, Maine – worlds apart from one another. When the family converges in Bangkok it is an orphan that shifts the tide for them all, individually and as a family.
I can’t decide if I like Alice or not. As a mother, what should she have done when her kid calls up and says not only has she been assaulted, but raped as well? That’s not the sort of thing you let drop when the kid suddenly changes her story and says it’s no big deal.
Lines I liked, “She drops the dog, possibly robbing him mother of his life” (p 31) and “…often, when you step around the conventional way of doing things, you end up with something worse” (p 56).

“Outside the Eastern Gates”
The protagonist in “Outside the Eastern Gate” is like any 40 year old person facing the deteriorating aging of a parent. There is a sense of bafflement at the role reversal; a sense of sadness about being away for so long. Upon returning to Delhi she remembers the desperate longing for her mother’s love while simultaneously coping with her father’s Alzheimer diagnosis.
A line to like, “The bogeyman appears in the first forty seconds after nightfall” (p 68). Good to know.

As an aside, did you see Jimmy Fallon’s tribute to Prince (otherwise known as the ping pong story)? Now, whenever anyone mentions ping pong (as was mentioned in “Outside the Eastern Gate”) I will think of the last line of Jimmy’s story, “Ask your boy.”

Author fact: Feudenberger has taught English in Bangkok and New Delhi.

Book trivia: Lucky Girls is Feudenberger’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Perks of Being a Wallflower

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Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. New York: Gallery Books, 1999.

Reason read: May is considered “Birds and Bees Month” and oddly enough (or coincidentally?), some schools chose to teach their sex ed at this time. Spring is the time for renewal!

This is one of those books you can read cover to cover on a rainy afternoon but be forewarned, once you hit the last page you will flip back to page one and start all over again. At least I wanted to…Even though this was, “best for teens” as Nancy Pearl says, I loved it.
Charlie is a typical shy teenager on the eve of his first day as a freshman in high school. With a strong desire to unburden his life he’s writing letters, diary style, to an unknown person he has chosen out of the phone book. Why he writes these letters we’ll never know, but what emerges is a portrait of a sensitive kid just trying to make it in the world. Like a diary we are privy to his coming of age, his intellectual growth, his emerging personality. As I got to know Charlie better and better I found myself constantly sucking in my breath, willing him to not get hurt. I came to care about him that much. Even though the ending is a clear as an oncoming rain storm I didn’t want to believe in its terrible beauty.

Lines to mention, “Then, I turned and walked to my room and closed the door and put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be” (p 26), “So I guess Zen is a day like this when you are part of the air and remember things” (p 43), and the sentence that sums up Charlie the best, “I was just quiet and I watched him” (p 60). Typical wallflower behavior.

As an aside: Every book that Bill asks Charlie to read is a favorite of mine and when Charlie makes Patrick the mixed tape I knew every song (except I though he could have added more. Who ever heard of a mixed tape with only 13 songs?)

Author fact: Chbosky also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of rent.

Book trivia: Perks was made into a movie which I haven’t seen…yet.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23)

King Lear

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Shakespeare, William. “King Lear.” The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. 1249-1305

Reason read:Billy the Bard was born in April.

I think I have had to read King Lear half a dozen times in my academic career. It keeps coming back. It is interesting to note that this time I didn’t read it as a Pearl pick, but rather as a Pearl comparison. King Lear is compared to a Jane Smiley novel in More Book Lust in the chapter, “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Iowa) (p 27).

So, back to Mr. Shakespeare and his brilliant tragedy. To sum up the play in one sentence: this is the story of a king seeking to divide his kingdom among his three daughters based on who could articulate her love for him the best. Beyond that it is the tragedy of emotional greed – of wanting to be loved at any cost. It is the tragedy of politics and family dynamics. Youngest daughter Cordelia is unwilling to conform to her father’s wishes of exaggerated devotion. Isn’t the last born always the rebel in the family? As a result Cordelia’s portion of the kingdom is divided among her two sisters, Goneril and Regan. The story goes on to ooze betrayal and madness. Lear is trapped by his own ego and made foolish by his hubris.

Author trivia: it makes me giggle to think that Shakespeare was married to a woman named Anne Hathaway, only not that Anne Hathaway.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called (as mentioned before), “Big Ten Country: the Literary Midwest (Iowa)” (p 27).

The Brontes

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Barker, Juliet. The Brontes. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Reason read: March is national literature month. You can’t get any more literary than the Bronte sisters, right?

The repeating word to describe The Brontes is “thorough”. Because of its length, over 1,000 pages, many readers are filled with trepidation at the thought of even starting such a behemoth. They should know there is nothing to fear. While the narrative might be dense it is far from boring or solely didactic. One does have to keep in mind, however, that this is about the Bronte family and not just the famous sisters. With limited information, Barker tries her best to also include father Patrick, mother Maria and brother Branwell.

Author trivia: According to the dust jacket, Juliet Barker spent eleven years researching the Bronte family for this book and several others.

Book fact: Of course The Brontes has photographs. My favorites are of the various houses, Haworth Parsonage, Blake Hall and the Pensionnat Heger.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Literary Lives: The Brits” (p 146).

Naked Lunch

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Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch. New York: Grove Press, 1959.

Reason read: let’s see if this train of thought makes sense: Jack Kerouac was born in March. Burroughs hung with Kerouac. Burroughs + Kerouac = Naked Lunch in March.

I was not around during the height of the Beat Generation’s rein. Oddly enough, beat writers were avoided during my educational career. Not on purpose, though. I wasn’t assigned Kerouac or Ginsburg or Burroughs in high school or college so I didn’t read them. As a result, reading Naked Lunch made me feel sort of crazy. Like riding on a roller coaster backwards. This is brilliant, for there is no real plot to speak of; you bounce from vignette to vignette of chaotic satire and drug & sex fueled imagination. The text is punctuated by copious notes explaining different things, but do the explanations really matter? No. Not really. It’s a fun ride if you are okay with not knowing where you are going. You need to be comfortable naming body parts  like cunt, dick and asshole (those things are in use a lot). You must be okay with all things putrid, bloody, stinking, infected and/or rotting. You definitely need to be tolerant of rampant drug use, vivid homosexual/heterosexual lovemaking and rape and copious suicidal tendencies and other deliveries of violence. In other words, have an open mind and just go with it. You won’t regret the ride. Or maybe you will. I don’t know.

For the serious, need-to-know types, the semblance of a plot goes like this: Willie Lee is a drug addict who has tried every narcotic under the sun in an attempt to find his true identity. [And speaking of identity, off topic, here is a sampling of the characters in Naked Lunch: Shake Man, Paregoric Kid, Eager Beaver, and Old Bart.] But back to the plot, Willie Lee travels from New York to Tangier and ultimately to the nightmarescape of Interzone to find himself.

Another fun exercise I had was to list all the real and imaginary places Burroughs mentioned in Naked Lunch:

  • Addis Ababa
  • Amazon
  • Amsterdam
  • Andes
  • Annexia
  • Arkansas
  • Beirut
  • Brooklyn
  • Bronx
  • Butte
  • Chicago
  • Cincinnati
  • Columbia
  • Cuba
  • East River
  • Ecuador
  • Edinburgh
  • England
  • Ethiopia
  • Holland
  • Hollywood
  • Hong Kong
  • Honolulu
  • Houston
  • Illinois
  • Interzone
  • Istanbul
  • Jersey
  • Kansas City
  • Lake Charles
  • Liberia
  • Lincoln Park
  • Los Angeles
  • Louisiana
  • Madrid
  • Mecca
  • Mexico City
  • Missouri
  • Montana
  • Mozambique
  • New Orleans
  • New York
  • Pakistan
  • Panama
  • Paris
  • Philadelphia
  • Peru
  • Pigeon Hole
  • Shanghai
  • Sioux Falls
  • South Pacific
  • St Louis
  • Tangier
  • Tierra de Fuego
  • Texas
  • Timbuktu
  • Tripoli
  • Washington Square
  • Westminster
  • Yemen
  • Yokohama
  • Zanzibar

[Benign] quotes to make you think (or not): “Catnip smells like marijuana when it burns” (p 5), “Scalpel fight with a colleague in the operating room” (p 26), and “Traffickers in the Black Meat, flesh of the giant aquatic black centipede – sometimes attaining a length of six feet- found in a lane of ricks and iridescent, brown lagoons, exhibit paralyzed crustaceans in camouflaged pockets of the Plaza visible only to the Meat Eaters” (p 45).
Here’s something a little less safe, “The screaming skull rolls up to the back stairs to bite the cock of erring husband taking dour advantage of his wife’s earache to do that which is inconvenient” (p 110).

Author fact: If you know anything about Burroughs and his life you know I could be here all day listing interesting and horrible tidbits about him. Here are a few of the more G-rated and mundane details: Burroughs suffered from depression, he was bisexual, had a drug problem (duh), and died the day after suffering a heart attack.

Book trivia: touted as one of the most important books of the century, it is also listed as one of the 1001 books you must read before you die. It was made into a movie in 1991.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Beats and Their Generation” (p 18).

The Art of Dying

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Weenolsen, Patricia. The Art of Dying: How to Leave This World with Dignity and Grace, at Peace with Yourself and Your Loved Ones. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Reason read: February (in some circles) is Psychology Month.

Do you need to be terminally ill to read this book? I hope not. But, I would think having a terminal illness would help to read this book more effectively, especially when performing the “Meaning of Disease” exercise 40 pages in. It’s the first of many exercises surrounding the subject of terminal illness. It’s difficult to answer some of Weenolsen’s questions as a seemingly healthy person. But, back to my original question. It prompted another: how many healthy people have read this book and stored information away for when a life threatening illness eventually  settles in? As it stands right now, we are all terminal, but does anyone plan (beside the hypochondriac) for a terminal illness?
This book is chock full of information but probably the biggest surprise was Weenolsen’s humor. Sometimes snarky, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, there was a lightheartedness to some of her chapters; as if humor would make the subject matter easier to swallow. [Note: in my case it did, once I identified why death made me so squirmy.]

Before reading The Art of Dying I had to wonder what prompted Weenolsen to devote her life to the subject.

Quotes that put things into perspective immediately: On the subject of dying: “We can look neither into the sun nor death directly” (p 3) and “People want to name the disease” (p 48). On the subject of letting go (in this case, a neat house): “If you’re not dust-sensitive, think of the layers as mounting thick enough to hatch something – and then to keep them around as pets” (p 66).

Author fact: Weenolsen is a psychologist who specializes in death and dying and counsels people on both.

Book trivia: As I mentioned before, I didn’t expect humor from The Art of Dying. The jokes come out of nowhere. Weenolsen has this quirky sense of humor that emerges every so often.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 100s” (p 64).

Her First American

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Segal, Lore. Her First American. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

Reason read: my college celebrated “Immigrant Awareness Week” in February.

Ilka Weissnix is a twenty one year old immigrant from Vienna. Arriving in New York City for the very first time, she is hungry to learn everything she can about America. Her cousin, Litvak, arranges for her to travel cross country by train to the wild, wild west. It’s in Nevada where Ilka meets her “first American”, Carter Bayoux. This is the 1950s so meeting Carter is blessing and a curse. Being an intellectual he is eager to show Ilka the world of artists and scholars. Being a heavy drinker  and a reckless romantic he also exposes her to jokes that aren’t always funny and a world that sometimes is unfair and unpredictable. Needless to say she is confused a lot of the time. But, it’s his drinking that really hit home for me. I live on the fringe of other people’s addiction and Segal does an amazing job bringing that harsh reality into the spotlight with subtle grace. Carter’s bouts of loneliness and helplessness are amplified through his constant summoning of Ilka to his hotel room as if there is a dire emergency. His brother’s inability to be around him is an indication of the shame Carter has brought to his family. And yet, Carter is surrounded by friends who obviously adore him.

I found this to be a fascinating read. At times I caught myself pondering American slang and thinking how strange it must sound in the ears of a foreigner.
As an aside, I have no idea why Lore wanted Ilka to travel all the way to Nevada to meet Carter. They both live in New York City so wouldn’t it have been easier to have them bump into each other there? The trip out west is just an odd blip in an otherwise mostly New York-centric story.

Most profound quote, “Like the series of points that make a line, the moments in which Carter did not pick up the glass made half a minute, a minute, five minutes, half an hour – became the morning Carter Bayoux stopped drinking” (p 82).
More quotes, “She was moved by the delicacy of his enormous sleep” (p 106) and “The prospect of sending her voice out among so many strangers made her heart beat and strangled her breath” (p 171).

Author fact: Segal was born in Vienna. Could Her First American be somewhat autobiographical in nature? Does she have a “first” American?

Book trivia: The cover of Her First American is from a painting called “City Activities with Subway” by Thomas Hart Benton (1930). Even though the story takes place twenty years later, the scene still works.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter simply called “The Immigrant Experience” (p 124).