Tag: culture

White Teeth

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Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. Quality Paperbacks Direct, 2000.

Reason read: February is Immigration month. Whether it be Bangladesh, Britain, Jamaica, or the good old United States of America, we are all immigrants of some kind.

Hang onto your hats! White Teeth is a roller coaster ride, sure to rid you of your spare change with all of its twists and turns. Within the pages of White Teeth Zadie Smith takes you deep inside the concept of cultural identity through her characters and their dialogue. As an aside, I want to know how Smith conjured up these characters with such perfection. Where did they come from? People like Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim practically jump off the page, they are so real. I can’t give it away, but that final scene with the gun!
White Teeth is like a four-room banquet with endless amounts of food choices. At times I felt overstuffed dealing with all the characters and their various dramas, but I don’t discredit Smith’s storytelling. She was culturally spot on with little details like the tag for Levi’s jeans. What exactly does “shrink to fit” mean anyway? I could see how someone would be confused, especially if English isn’t their first language.
All in all, White Teeth was a fun ride, worthy of all the accolades.

Author fact: Smith has written a bunch of stuff since 2000. I am only reading White Teeth for the Challenge.

Book trivia: White Teeth has won numerous awards and been adapted to television and the theater.

Playlist: “As Time Goes By”, Barbra Streisand, Bay City Rollers, Beatles, Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”, “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen, “Buffalo Soldier”, Canned Heat, Chuck D, Diana Ross, Donny Osmond, Englebert Humperdinck, Elvis, Johann Sebastian Bach, “Waterloo Sunset” by the Kinks, Madonna, Michael Jackson, “Purple Rain”, Ringo Starr, Roger Daltry, Scott Joplin, “Sexual Healing”, Slick Rick’s “Hey Young World”, the Small Faces, and the Who.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about White Teeth.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “First Novels” (p 88).

A Good Fall

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Jin, Ha. A Good Fall: Stories. Pantheon Books, 2009.

Reason read: Jin’s birthday is in February. Read in his honor.

Twelve stories with themes like immigrants in transition, culture clashes, vanity, identity, and family traditions. Ha Jin’s characters are so well drawn they keep speaking to me after I have closed the book. I could see A Good Fall as a movie with interconnecting stories of Chinese immigrants living in Flushing, New York. Maybe they are all living in the same apartment and pass each other on the stairs? Each suffering their secrets in silence?
I do not think it is a spoiler to say that A Good Fall surprisingly ends on a hopeful note.

  • The Bane of the Internet
  • A Composer and His Parakeet
  • The Beauty
  • Choice
  • Children as Enemies
  • In the Crossfire
  • Shame
  • An English Professor
  • A Pension Plan
  • Temporary Love
  • The House Behind a Weeping Cherry
  • A Good Fall

Lines I liked, “After Zuming came, she would have to become a faithful wife again” (p 177). That sentence is packed with so much drama. And then there is this one, “Keep in mind, yours is not the worst sorrow” (p 236).

Author fact: Ha Jin is also a poet.

Book trivia: Many people have mentioned that the short stories of Ha Jin are very repetitious. For that reason I am spreading out my reading so that it does not become tedious. I have already read Ocean of Words and The Bridegroom. I am also reading Waiting but not until September of 2042.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about A Good Fall.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “China: the Middle Kingdom” (p 61). Except…most of Jin’s stories take place in Flushing, New York. The characters are immigrants from China.

Za’atar Days, Henna Nights

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Masood, Maliha. Za’atar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East. Seal Press, 2006.

Reason read: October is hero month and I would consider Masood a sort of superhero for traveling around by the seat of her pants.

Masood straddles that line between American and Pakistani, Pakistani and American. Born in Pakistan, her family moved to America when Masood was in middle school. Now, eighteen years later, Masood is traveling haphazardly through the Middle East. She bought a one-way ticket with no intention of having a specific itinerary. It was a journey just be to on a journey. One could call it a trek to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey as some sort of spiritual quest to find herself or get back to her ancestral roots. Did she? I’m not really certain. To be sure, Masood had some crazy adventures (some more dangerous than others), she had a few cultural misunderstandings, and she relied heavily on the natives she befriended (I felt bad for the men who fell in love with her). All in all, she survived her seventeen months of travel relatively unscathed.

As an aside, I had no idea pollution was a thing in Cairo.

Confessional: Tommy Rivs got me interested in the poetry of Mary Oliver. Masood includes one of Tommy’s favorites, “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and call it a life?”
Second confession: Because of Natalie Merchant’s album “Keep Your Courage” I have been paying attention to mentions of Walt Whitman. Masood also reads Walt.

Reason read: there is such a thing as za’atar days, the celebration of the spice.

Playlist: “Staying Alive”, U2, Phil Collins, Pavarotti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake”, Umm Kulthum, “Enta Omri” (as an aside, Masood spelled Umm’s name as Om Khoulsoum and the song as “Inta Omri”. I couldn’t find singer or song with those spellings) Amr Diab (as another aside, this guy is very good looking), Fairuz, Saleh, Wadi al Safi, Jose Fernandez, Elvis Presley, and Billy Joel.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Za’atar Days.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 148).

Born to Run

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McDougall, Christopher. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Reason read: A trip to Mexico deserves a book about something that takes place in Mexico.

Ann Trason. The Tarahumara runners. Caballo Blanco. Scott Jurek. These names spark my running imagination. Then there is Mexico and the allure of a different country’s culture. Christopher McDougall writes as if he has stepped beside you in the middle of a twenty mile run and launches into telling you of his adventures in the jungles of Mexico chasing the mythology of Gordy Ainsleigh. His tone is casual, conversational, and warm. The reporting reporter has been left behind for the moment, but he has an ulterior motive. Yes, he will tell you about a race you have probably never heard of, and he’ll talk about people you are vaguely familiar with, but what he really wants to do is tell you about barefoot running. As a long-distance runner he was always injured. He learned of the Tarahumara runners and how they ran with only thin sandals, but they never knew a single injury.
As an aside, I was taken aback by the information in Chapter 25: expensive, high-tech running shoes do not save runners from injuries; in fact, they may be the cause of them. Is there truth to the theory that foot control is king, so the thinner the sole, the better? That would make sense if your foot strike changes with every shoe. It’s the reason why I rotate four pair of shoes.

As an aside, I have always been curious about the Leadville 100 so it was nice to learn a little of the history behind this historic race.

On a personal note, I could relate to Christopher when Dr. Torg told him to take up cycling instead of running. Dr. John told me to take up swimming instead of running when I hurt my knee.

Author fact: McDougall has his own website here. You can find videos about Born to Run.

Book trivia: There is a Born to Run 2 book out there somewhere. I think it supposed to be a training guide.

Playlist: the Beatles, Valentin Elizalde, Zayda Pena of “Zayda y Los Cupables”, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”, Christina Aguilera, Charlie Parker, and “Strangelove”,

Nancy said: Pearl said Born to Run is a must-read for runners.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go on the chapter called “Postcards From Mexico” (p 184).

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

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Farina, Richard. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Penguin Classic, 1996.

Reason read: I just finished the biographies of Farina, Baez, and Dylan. This seemed like the natural choice for the next book to read.

Which is better? To know more about the author than his work or vice versa, especially when starting to read his debut novel? I had just finished reading a biography that included Farina and it seemed like a natural progression to dive into his novel. But before I began I questioned, was this a good idea? What if my reading and interpretation would be skewed by knowing Farina’s life more intimately than not? Pynchon admits Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is transparently autobiographical. Gnossos Pappadopoulis (“the G is silent”) is Richard Farina in more ways than probably the author intended. Art imitates life in this case. There is a collision of blood with the manic boo to make everything a little more celestial in its demise.
In addition to being autobiographical, Been Down So Long is a tribute to the culture of the late 1950s. Drugs, relationships, music, college, sex, religion, all show up and parade past the reader waving their colors of glory. Amidst the electric blue imagery seethes black comedy. There is a jaunty style of half lying that simply cannot be believed. Buzzy. I am sure with all the farmland there are plenty of rainbows and you should not forget about the umbro horrors rocks in the roots that fall down like marshmallows in cloudlike wisps. Gnossos, like Farina, was the king of tall tales, as he says “ovarian doom waiting to be fertilized” (p 12).

Quotes to quote, “Wise mother, though, hanging on in Athene, existence through academic osmosis, eluding the asphalt seas outside” (p 106). Amen. Another, “In the cobalt night he dreamed of disaster to come and cursed her sweetly into the sulfur cauldrons of hell” (p 233). Sure. Last one, “The loose beads of perception seemed to be falling through a hole in the tangible surface of the world and spilling all over the four-dimensional floor” (p 303). My favorite.

Author fact: Farina died in a motorcycle accident two days after the publication of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.

Book trivia: Thomas Pynchon wrote the introduction to Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.

Playlist: Harry Belafonte, Corelli, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis (the best of all the jazz cats), Peter Yarrow, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Buddy Holly, Leadbelly, Mose Allison, Weill and Breck, and of course Mimi Baez. “Peggy Sue” and “Silent Night”.

Nancy said: Pearl mentioned Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me because he is the subject of a memoir from the 1960s. Been Down So Long… shouldn’t be in More Book Lust (or at least the chapter on the 1960s).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The 1960s In Fact and Fiction” (p 178).

Memoirs of a Geisha

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Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

Reason read: Confessional – this is a reread for me. My sister loaned this book to me back in 1997 and I haven’t given it back. However…my rule is if I can’t remember the ending of the book, I have to reread it for the Challenge. So, in honor of Japan’s Culture Day on November 3rd, I am rereading Memoirs of a Geisha.

The concept of Memoirs of a Geisha is brilliant. One of Japan’s most celebrated geisha decides to tell her life story from the beginning. Even as a very young child Chiyo Sakamoto was smart. She knew her mother was dying of cancer and her father was too elderly to support her future. A chance encounter with Mr. Tanaka Ichiro put Chiyo and her older sister on a much different trajectory than if they had stayed in their poor seaside village. At nine years old because of her startling gray-blue eyes, Chiyo is sold into a geisha house. There she is forced to live like a 18th century scullery maid, catering to the glamorous geisha of the house. Another chance encounter, this time with a wealthy businessman nicknamed the Chairman, leads Chiyo to becoming one of the most famous geisha in all of the Gion geisha district.

Line to like, “I was just a child who thought she was embarking on a great adventure” (p 96).

Author fact: Golden started his Japanese journey studying the culture’s art.

Book trivia: Everyone knows Memoirs of a Geisha was a national best seller and was made into a movie in 2005. What people may not remember is that Memoirs of a Geisha was Golden’s debut novel. Pretty spectacular.

Nancy said: Pearl compared Memoirs to Snow Country as a romantic portrait. In the More Book Lust chapter “Men Channeling Women” (p 166), Pearl includes Memoirs in a list of good books.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Japanese Fiction” (p 131), and More Book Lust in the chapter called “Men Channeling Women” (p 166). As an aside, Memoirs of a Geisha could have been included in the chapter called “Maiden Voyages” as it is Golden’s first novel.

White Tiger

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Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger: a Novel. New York: Free Press, 2008.

Reason read: There is a festival in October that celebrates women called the Sanjhi Festival.

Much like Between the Assassinations, The White Tiger takes place over the course of seven nights. Balram Halwai, also known as the White Tiger, is writing a nightly letter to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao prior to the Premier’s visit. Does Balram want the Premier to see India for what it really is or is there a different motive, one that is more personal? The reader isn’t 100% sure until the end. In these letters Balram explains his life and how he escaped servitude as a rich man’s chauffeur to become a cocksure and wealthy businessman. He makes no excuses for his methods for success or the sacrifices he (and his family) had to make. Even from a young age Balram knew he was destined to make his way out of the slums of India, even if it meant murder and corruption and betrayal.
As an aside, I am intrigued by Balram’s frequent references to his favorite poets: Muhammed Iqbal, Rumi, Mizra Ghalib, and a fourth whose name he can’t remember. The known three are actual middle eastern poets.

When stand-alone novels have a ring of familiarity across them I question if the author is striking the formulaic bell.

Edited to add the one quote I liked: “Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books” (p 218). Yup.

Author fact: Adiga also wrote Between the Assassinations which I read in 2017.

Book trivia: White Tiger was adapted for film in 2021. Of course, I haven’t seen it.

Playlist: Sting, Enya, Eminem.

Nancy said: Pearl mentioned The White Tiger winning the Man Booker Prize in 2008.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sojourns in South Asia: India” (p 213).

To See and See Again

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Bahrampour, Tara. To See and See Again: a Life in Iran and America. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999.

Reason read: The Portland Public Library Reading Challenge has a category called “a book by an Iranian or Iranian American author.”

Tara Bahrampour was eleven years old at the height of the Islamic Revolution. As the bullets flew over garden walls, she and her family escaped Iran to the Pacific Northwest with one suitcase each. Old enough to remember her Iranian culture, but young enough to embrace America’s freedoms, Bahrampour balanced two very different lifestyles in her heart and mind. Having an Iranian father and American mother partially helped Bahrampour navigate the divide while she was young. When Bahrampour returns to Iran for a wedding, she is the first in her family after fifteen years to do so. The perspective from a twenty-six year old woman blossoms from remembered street games and childhood toys into the realities of the treatment of women, ceremony surrounding meals, and the strict regime after the Islamic Revolution. She is understandably nostalgic for the Tehran of her youth but fiercely protective of her Americanized viewpoints and attitudes. At first Bahrampour is naïve to the changes of her homeland’s rule and is shocked when she has trouble repossessing her American passport or when she hears stories of people escaping the military by wearing sheepskin and crawling over the border with a herd of sheep. Reality sets in when she is detained for talking to two blond tourists. As a Moslem Iranian woman officials fear her morality could be in danger. In the end, aside from rebuffing marriage proposal after marriage proposal, Bahrampour comes to an understanding about where she belongs. The Iran of her youth has left an indelible mark on her memory. At the core, it is who she is no matter where she goes.

Quotes to quote, “Everyone was so dazzled with what they wanted Iran to be that they missed seeing what it was” (p 248) and “…if that is how it is with loss – that you never really let go of the thing you are missing” (p 356).

Author fact: Bahrampour has written for predominantly New York-based publications. To See and See Again is her first memoir.

Book trivia: Each chapter is introduced with a black and white photograph. Nothing more, nothing less.

Playlist: “Love Story,” “Grease is the Word,” “You’re in My Heart” by Rod Stewart, “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys, “Take a Chance on Me” by ABBA, “Slip-Slidin’ Away” by Paul Simon Iron Maiden, Slayer, Boney M., Supertramp, REO Speedwagon, the Bee Gees, “Carry on Wayward Son,” “I am a Woman in Love,” Chris Isaak, Michael Jackson’s Thriller,” “Tavern in the Town,” “Cider Through a Straw,” Ace of Base, Metallica, Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, and of course, Bahrampour’s mother, Karen Alexander.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about To See and See Again except to describe the plot.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Iran” (p 107).

When Rain Clouds Gather

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Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather. Oxford: Heinemann Education Publishers, 1995.

Reason read: Confessional – For weeks I have been calling this book When Storm Clouds Gather. I have no idea why.

In the most rural part of Botswana, untouched by western agricultural technologies, political refugee, Makhaya, and Englishman Gilbert Balfour try to revolutionize traditional farming methods. For the tribespeople of drought-ridden Golema Mmidi, this change is not always welcome, even if it means the end of entrenched poverty and the threat of starvation. Traditions run deep and when your tribal chief doesn’t approve of the new ways, the battle is more uphill than ever. Set against the backdrop of farming is the subject of love. Despite unrelenting unfavorable climate, the tribespeople of Golema Mmidi are passionate people. Head drew details for When Rain Clouds Gather from her own experiences as a refugee, living at the Bamangwato Development farm. It is hard to tell if the romantic parts are autobiographical as well.

Quotes to quote, “He was a platform speaker who never got down from the platform” (p 58), “It meant that if you loved people you had to allow complete invasion by them of your life, and he wasn’t built to face invasions of any kind” (p 67),”There were too many independent-minded people there, and tragedies of life had liberated them from the environmental control of the tribe” (p 141), and “You have to be loved a bit by the time you die” (p 179).

Author fact: Bessie Head was a biracial South African author and lived as a refugee like her character, Makhaya.

Book trivia: When Rain Clouds Gather was Bessie Head’s first novel.

Nancy said: Pearl said When Rain Clouds Gather is Bessie Head’s best-known novel. She also included what a librarian said about the book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Botswana” (p 42).

On the Bus

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Perry, Paul. On the Bus: the complete guide to the legendary trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the birth of the counterculture. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1990.

Reason read: Allen Ginsberg’s birthday is in June. He was not a bus rider with the Merry Pranksters, but he was on the scene and subsequently interviewed for the book. Additionally, the famed bus trip started on June 14th, 1964.

Written in 1990, twenty-five years after the famed Kool-aid acid trips, Paul Perry pulls together interviews from the most influential mindbenders of the day: Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Ram Dass, and of course, Neal Cassady…to name a few. They look back on the time when a total of thirteen free spirits (fourteen, if you count the teenaged neighbor) called themselves the Merry Pranksters, boarded a psychedelically painted school bus, and hit the road in search of the ultimate trip. What started as acid parties in Neal Cassady’s San Francisco home soon became experimentations on the road in the converted bus they christened, “Furthur.” Traveling through Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, New York, and Calgary before heading home to Big Sur, California, they conducted their LSD tests, made new friends, connected with musicians like Wavy Gravy and Jerry Garcia, and rode the wave of the psychedelic revolution. By the time the Merry Pranksters got home they were never the same again.
What I am constantly wondering about is how much of the tapes and recordings of the trip survived?

Line to linger over, “Arvin Brown, who drank several [cupfuls] of the green stuff, tells me what he didn’t recover full consciousness for 24 hours” (29). Good times. Here are a few more, “Mercy and goodness were swallowed by cannons and bombs” (p 84), “I live in a world where there is no error, so that is what was meant to happen” (p 102). Last one, “Speed was the thing keeping him awake” (p 190).

Author fact: Paul Perry was once the editor of a running magazine. Cool.

Book trivia: my copy of On the Bus was so weird. There wasn’t any publishing information anywhere within the book. I could only find the last name of the author on the spine and I needed to look at the marc record from the library I borrow the book to find more information.

Playlist: “Love Portion Number Nine,” Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, Jefferson Airplane, Wavy Gravy, Country Joe and the Fish, Rolling Stones, “Turn on Your Love Light,” and “The Flower.”

Nancy said: Pearl included On the Bus in a list of books she said “no discussion of books about the 1960s would be complete without” (More Book Lust p 179).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The 1960s in Fact and Fiction” (p 178).

Bastard of Istanbul

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Shafak, Elif. The Bastard of Istanbul. Read by Laural Merlington. Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Audio, 2007.

Reason read: I needed a book by an author with my initials for the Portland Public Library 2019 Reading Challenge.

This is an example of getting so caught up in a book that you forget to take notes while reading. I finished this a week ago and never wrote a single note. Which means I didn’t capture favorite lines either. Bummer.

Two teenage girls with more in common than they think. Asya, born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey is surrounded by an eclectic family of overbearing, opinionated women with not a man in sight. Asya rages against her current life and past history because she thinks she doesn’t have an identity she can believe in. Nothing is of permanence. She has never known her birth father, she cleaves herself to a relationship with a married man, and calls her mother auntie, like the other three of five women in her household. Two grandmothers round out the chaotic family household.
Meanwhile, Armanoush is of Armenian descent, living in Tuscon, Arizona. She, too, is struggling to make sense of her roots as her stepfather is Turkish. There is no avoiding the historical significance of having an Armenian father and Turkish stepfather. This stepfather happens to be Asya’s uncle as well.
When Armanoush decides to visit Asya and her family for answers, the past rolls back in like a tsunami, taking down everything in its path. As I mentioned before, this is a captivating story and it will sweep you away with its twists and turns.

Author fact: Shafak also wrote The Forty Rules of Love which is on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: This should be a movie.

Nancy said: Pearl said The Bastard of Istanbul is one of three novels of note. Specifically, BoI is “engrossing.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Turkish Delights” (p 240). I don’t know if anyone else was reminded of this when they read the title of this chapter, but I immediately thought of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe. If I ever meet Pearl again, I will have to ask! Because if she meant the reference as I thought it, it is subtle and clever and I love it.

November Nope

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I don’t have writer’s block. I have writer’s apathy. I have nothing to say. Here are the books already underway for November:

Fiction:

  • The Sporting Club by Thomas McGuane – in honor of the Mackinac bridge being built in November of 1957.
  • The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak – I needed an author with my same initials for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

Nonfiction:

  • Four Corners: a Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kira Salak – in honor of November being a decent time to visit PNG…if you are into that sort of thing.
  • Israel is Real: an Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History by Rich Cohen – in recognition of Resolution 181.
  • Silverland: a Winter Journey Beyond the Urals by Dervla Murphy – in honor of Murphy’s birth month.

Series continuation:

  • Master of Hestviken: the Snake Pit by Sigrid Undset – to continue the series started in October. I needed a translated book written by a woman. Voila!
  • Echo Burning by Lee Child – to continue the series started in July in honor of New York becoming a state.

Early Review for LibraryThing:

  • Teaching Empathy: Strategies for Building Emotional Intelligence in Today’s Children by Suzanna Hershon, PhD.

American Chica

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Arana, Marie. American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood. New York: Dial Press, 2001.

Reason read: August is called the selfish month by some. Nancy Pearl called her autobiography chapter in More Book Lust “Me, Me, Me” which made me think to read American Chica in August.

Marie Arana grew up in an intercultural family with a South American father born in Peru, and a North American mother. Her parents met in Boston, Massachusetts of all places. This all sounds exotic and fun, but it wasn’t always easy for Arana to know how to fit in on either side of the cultural divide.
The very first sentence of American Chica sets the entire tone of Arana’s memoir, “The corridors of my skull are haunted” (p 5). Indeed, Arana’s family history hides ghosts and her story prods proverbial skeletons out of closets. I won’t give away the details but there was one moment in Arana’s story that had me holding my breath. She has a brush with impropriety that is tinged with the guilty question of did I bring this on myself? Is it somehow my fault? I could relate.The most poignant pieces of Arana’s writing was when she was remembering her innocence; the times when prejudice didn’t darken her childhood.

Other lines I liked, “It is more than a simple resentment, less than an all-out war” (p 63).

Author fact: According to the back flap of American Chica, Arana served on the board of directors of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Book Critics Circle.

Book trivia: Arana’s memoir does not include any photographs except a family portrait in the beginning.

Nancy said: Pearl called American Chica “a beautifully written memoir” (More Book Lust p 167).

BookLust Twist: As mentioned earlier, from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Me, Me, Me: Autobiographies” (p 167).

Bintel Brief

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A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters From the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward. Isaac Metzker, ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971.

Despite its small size (214 pages), A Bintel Brief contains the very essence of Jewish-American New York. Between its pages the culture, society, ideals, hopes and dreams of immigrants struggling to call America their own come pouring out. As a section in the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper, the Bintel Brief was a section of letters to the editor, edited by Isaac Metzker. Many of the letters were based on ethical conundrums; people seeking advice on issues like relationships, work ethic, and the daily struggle to make ends meet. The writers of these letters placed a high value on the opinion of the editor, seeking his advice, his blessing, his approval. However, some are attempts at communication with a missing loved one; a calling out of sorts. The Bintel Brief was a vehicle for exposing mistreated spouses, publicizing petty family arguments, and searching for loved ones.

Author Fact: When Metzker was 20 years old he came to America as a stowaway.

Favorite photo: “Shopping on Hester Street, 1895” (p 10-11). Looking into those eyes I can almost touch the desperation.

Most striking letter: “This is the voice of thirty-seven miserable men who are buried but not covered by earth, tied down but not in chains, silent but not mute, whose hearts beat like humans, yet are not like other human beings….” (p 110). how can that not draw you in?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 133).

Fifth Chinese Daughter

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Wong, Jade Snow. Fifth Chinese Daughter. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950.

I have to start of with a confession: Chinese culture makes me think Americans are unspeakably rude.

Fifth Chinese Daughter is an autobiography written in simple and straightforward language in the proper Chinese third person. As a result I read it in two day’s time. It covers the first 24 years of a Chinese-American girl, Jade Snow Wong. From the very beginning, growing up in San Francisco, California, Wong struggled with cultural differences between modern America and the Old World Chinese of her parents. Everything from food, physical contact, gender discrimination, mourning the dead & burials, order of names, to education was contradictory and Wong had to wade through it all during her most formative years. While she didn’t mean to disrespect her parents she struggled with independence in a new world, especially when she sought an education normally expected of males in her culture.

I am borrowing this book from a school so it shouldn’t surprise me that someone has drawn in it, and yet it bugs me just the same.

Favorite moments in the book: first, I love the cat in the illustration on page 22. Second, I found the description of the treatment of rice (p 58 – 59) to be very interesting.

Book Trivia: Fifth Chinese Daughter is actually the first volume in a two-volume autobiography. The second volume is No Chinese Stranger but, sadly, Pearl only recommends Fifth Chinese Daughter.

Author Fact: Wong was an accomplished potter and some of her pieces made into museum shows.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called ” Asian American Experiences” (p 26).