Book #52: Little Woman in Blue

I was planning to finish Thoreau's Walden this week - a book I have never read in its entirety despite growing up within miles of the site where he lived his life in the woods. We're going to be discussing it in book club in a few weeks.

But, I got sidetracked when my sister gave me this novel based on May Alcott's life for Christmas.

I figured it was an appropriate book to read in the middle of reading Walden. The Alcotts were Thoreau's transcendental contemporaries and neighbors in Concord. He even turns up on page four of the novel (though he's dead by page 16).

While this is a novel, author Jeannine Atkins drew heavily on writings from the era, including May Alcott's letters and diaries.

It would be nice to separate fact from fiction in this account, but I trust that Atkins reflected the overall spirit of who May Alcott was and how her life unfolded accurately (which, by the way, was not exactly how Amy March's story unfolded in Little Women).

Two key themes emerged, which are consistent with everything I've learned over the years about her family, her geography, and her era, and to which I very much relate.

One, Alcott grapples with the tension between wanting to live a finer and larger life and being raised with the belief that there is virtue in poverty and sacrifice for others and that nature can provide all the beauty one needs.

Two, she grapples with the tension between wanting to pursue her life as an artist (her passion, though she is not so confident in her ability and receives little encouragement early on, surprisingly not even from her sister Louisa!) and also to have a husband and children.

I'm looking forward to finishing Walden with this book fresh in my mind.

Book #51: Essays of E.B. White

I bought this book at Shakespeare & Company a few years ago while I was traveling with my sister and it disappeared into Roger's reading stack when I got home. He turned it up for me a month or so ago and I've been reading a few essays here and there since then.

Coincidentally, I'm sitting in a hotel room with the same sister as I write this. Traveling again, though in Charlotte, NC, not in Paris.

E.B. White, who is probably most well known for writing Charlotte's Web, wrote many essays on a wide variety of topics and was often published in magazines like The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's.

Most of the essays in this collection were written in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Basically, he wrote about the world my generation was born into.

What struck me as I read is how the more things change, the more things stay the same. Nature. Technology. World peace. Progress. Resistance to progress. Gentle nostalgia. Harsh reality.

Seriously. The details may be different, but we're repeating the conversations.

"All I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world," White once said. "I guess you can find it in there, if you dig around." 

I wish we still had E.B. White around to add his reasonable and often delightful two bits.

Book #50: Jim the Boy

This week's selection comes with a confession: This is not my book. I have a copy lent to me by my sister-in-law years ago and that I unearthed from my Grammie's old desk in our front hall.

It doesn't happen all the time, but once in a while I become a black hole, and it can be risky lending something to me. Beware.

It's serendipitous that this particular book caught my attention this week. It's a gentle novel about a boy being raised by his mom and three uncles on a farm in North Carolina in the 1930s. In the first chapter he turns ten, and bit by bit as the story unfolds over the course of a year, his world gets a little bigger.

It's serendipitous because I happen to be leaving Jack and Roger behind and heading to North Carolina in a few days. Not only that, the reason I'm heading there is my cousin's daughter's Bat Mitzvah, which will mark her coming of age in her Jewish community.

Her world (and all of ours) is getting a bit bigger.

In a moment he was lost amid the uncles, who swarmed around the table and hustled him to the door, their voices combining into a single, unintelligible din of laughter and teasing. Mama handed him his notebook and his ball glove as the uncles jostled him across the porch and down the steps.

When Jim reached the state highway, he turned and looked back. Mama and the uncles waved from the porch.

"Be good, Doc," called Uncle Zeno.

"Study hard," said Mama.

"Pay attention," said Uncle Al.

"Don't get a paddling," said Uncle Coran.

"'Bye," yelled Jim, waving back. "'Bye, everybody."

And when he turned and looked up the hill toward the school, he wished for a moment that he did not have to take another step, that he could stay right where he was and never have to leave again.

It's nice, this idea of staying wrapped up in a safe, comfortable place. Growing up can be hard, sometimes scary, even painful. And it doesn't actually ever end, not that I know.

But, honestly, the widening world of experience? Even when it's hard? Maybe especially when it's hard? It's amazing.

Book #49: Frankenstein

A little over two years ago, I invited my friend Boyd to talk about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at a library lecture series I used to host called "So You Want To Read." I meant to read it then, but didn't.

Last year, Jack read Frankenstein for his sophomore English class, and I started reading it in solidarity. I meant to finish it then, but didn't.

A couple of months ago, Roger reviewed this edition of Frankenstein, illustrated by Gris Grimly, for BYU's Children's Book and Media Review. I meant to read it then, but didn't.

This week, though, I was in a bit of a funk and a horror story seemed like good medicine. So I picked it up and read it (and thoroughly enjoyed Grimly's fabulous steampunk illustrations).

My timing ended up being just right, at least in terms of maximizing the impact of the Rorschach test that is Frankenstein and his creation on me. The past few months have been tough, and now I have a few new metaphors I can use to help process it all.

At times I saw myself and others in Frankenstein, who misunderstood what he created, who wanted to ignore the consequences, and who never realized that he actually held the power (love) to reverse the course he had set.

At times I saw myself and others in the monster, who, when he revealed himself, could not be seen for who he truly was. People feared him, and in his resentment and isolation, he became something he regretted.

At times I saw myself and others in the ship captain, who rescued Frankenstein in the frozen north and who took on the weight of Frankenstein's tale.

Several times I was startled by how much I saw myself and others in both Frankenstein's cousin, who became his unwitting bride, and the unrealized female monster he started to create as a companion to the first, but ended up destroying because she would dangerously have a mind of her own.

I'm quite sure I saw all sorts of things in the text that Shelley never dreamed of, as I viewed her work through the lens of modern day politics and the history that informs our struggles to see "the other" as fully human, the uneasy relationship between organized religion and people who do not fit in prescribed boxes, and, of course, the challenges I create for my own self that would not be so destructive if I faced them head on and made peace with them.

But that is the mark of a good universal and enduring (and cautionary) tale.

Book #48: Shakespeare Saved My Life

A while back, I put this on my reading list upon the recommendation of a friend, then I was inspired to pick it up after attending a staged reading of a new play about Shakespeare's later years, written by my niece's husband, this past Monday evening.

The book is by a college professor who drew high-security prison inmates, particularly one lifer named Larry Newton, eventually her teaching assistant, into a deep study of Shakespeare's works over the course of ten years.

The stories she tells embody truths that I believe, made manifest in real life:

(1) That reading well written fiction enables us to develop empathy for others and to look squarely at our own selves.

(2) That someone who commits crimes is not simply a criminal and nothing else.

(3) That people generally respond favorably to being treated like adults who are capable of learning, growth, and positive change and to being given substantive, challenging opportunities to do just that.

Here are two excerpts that give a little hint about the journey:

And then [Newton] threw out his curve ball: "But why do you think [Hamlet's] seeking revenge?"

I held my breath. The group did not outright reject his question, but no one, not even Green, had an answer. This group consisted of seven men who were serving murder convictions; the eighth was convicted of attempted murder. To these prisoners, it was a no-brainer: murder requires revenge, and revenge requires murder. Duh!

"This guy killed his father, so Hamlet should kill him?" Newton prompted them.

"That's right!"

"Sure!"

"That's what you do!"

"So, what? It's the 'honorable' thing to do?" he nudged them a bit more.

"Hell, yeah, it's honorable!" said Bentley, taking the bait.

"But why is it honorable?" he challenged them now. "What makes it honorable? And what is honor anyway?"

The group went quiet, thinking. No one had ever asked them to question such fundamental concepts that drove their lives and motivated their criminal choices. No one, that is, until Shakespeare--and Newton. Through the cuff port, he turned to me and gave me a wink. I nodded. We both knew the Shakespeare program was entering a whole new dimension. We were going to be changing lives back here.

Then a few years later Newton says this during an introduction to a performance the inmates gave of some scenes they had adapted from Romeo and Juliet.

"So the last few years that I was in segregation I spent analyzing and discussing Shakespeare through a hole in a steel door with a group of other prisoners. We'd discuss what we read, and everything would come up for discussion. We'd try to define these terms like honor, integrity, etc. It really forced me to find some kind of substance to these terms that shape our lives. I was forced to look in the mirror, basically, at myself, to give these things real meaning. That changed the way I felt about everything, about others, about myself. I was literally digging into the very root of myself while digging into Shakespeare's characters. For instance, I couldn't say that Hamlet's impulse for revenge was honorable if I couldn't tell you what honor is, and I couldn't. I still can't tell you what honor is, but I can tell you some of the things that it's not, and Hamlet's revenge is one of them."

Book #47: Just Mercy

This week's book club selection was actually not at my recommendation, but I seconded the motion because I had a copy already on my nightstand.

If we don't look too closely, we can easily go through life assuming that our criminal justice system is working well, administering punishment objectively and fairly.

In too many cases, though, it's not.

Bryan Stevenson, the attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, recounts, among others, the case of Walter McMillian, an innocent black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a white woman. Ironically, the crime occurred in Monroeville, Alabama, hometown of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

I think we are waking up as a nation to at least the worst of the injustice--people on death row being found innocent, our disproportionate and unsustainable incarceration rates, heavy handed law enforcement in certain towns and cities, the destructiveness of solitary confinement, etc.

I think we are starting to respond, if tentatively.

I think we've got a long way to go.

While I have not been privy to gross injustice here in Utah, I have definitely witnessed uneven justice, and that uneven justice is typically connected to financial resources and legal representation.

A bit of evidence for this from the recent October 2015 report on the right to counsel prepared by the Sixth Amendment Center: "more people accused of misdemeanors are processed through Utah's justice courts without a lawyer than are represented by counsel - upwards of 62 percent of defendants statewide, according to the state Administrative Office of Courts' data."

I know many people, including myself, are big fans of our Constitution.

We've got work to do.

Watching this TED talk by author Bryan Stevenson can be a good place to start galvanizing ourselves to get to it.

Book #46: Lila

Marilynne Robinson is a good author to turn to when one is in need of spiritual contemplation and renewal, and so, this week, Lila.

Lila tells the story of the second wife of minister John Ames, the main character in Robinson's earlier novel Gilead. Until Lila meets and marries John, she lives a life of basic survival, without the context or the language to explore any larger sense of who she is or meaning in life.

--------

Once, when they were out walking, he asked her what was on her mind, because she had been so quiet, and she said, "Nothing, really. Existence," which made him laugh with surprise and then apologize for laughing. He said, "I'd be interested to know your thoughts on it."
 
"I just don't know what to think about it at all sometimes."

He nodded. "It's remarkable, whatever else."

"Remarkable," she said, considering the word. . . . It had begun to seem to her that if she had more words she might understand things better. "You should be teaching me. . . . I had to learn that word 'existence.' You was talking about it all the time. It took me a while to figure out what you even meant by it."

--------

Sometimes I contemplate this passage in the Bible and its relationship to the development of human consciousness: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

In a very real sense, words create the universe. We use language to describe that universe as we see it, our own known universe. Language defines but also elevates us, enabling us to transcend what we knew before. Language is key to understanding who we are, what it means to exist, what it means to exist together.

It is all of a process, an evolution, an ongoing creation.

The Word is with us.

We are in the middle of all of it, grappling, imperfectly conveying our perspective, imperfectly receiving from others. This past week especially. What is peace. What is moral. What is just. What is obedience, freedom, opportunity, equality, solidarity, truth, pain, safety, grace. What is love.

It can be so damn hard to figure out how to speak our own meaning, how to hear another's. Excruciating even.

But whenever we do, whenever we truly do, our known universe expands.

And that is remarkable, whatever else.

Book #45: No More Goodbyes

How ironic it was to be in the middle of reading this book when the news came out a few days ago that the LDS Church has new policies for how they will be handling membership decisions for same-sex couples and their children.

It was not ironic in an entertaining or thought-provoking way. It was deeply, painfully ironic.

I thought about reading a different book to write about today, but then I thought, no. This is too important.

The whole premise of No More Goodbyes, written by well-known LDS poet and playwright Carol Lynn Pearson, is that across religions, people of faith should be circling the wagons around our gay loved ones, not circling the wagons against them.

I do not want to write about the LDS Church's policies here, other than to say that the implications of them are much more far reaching than readily appear, and that it has been difficult to watch so many faithful Mormons share posts on social media that have minimized and even mocked the pain of their brothers and sisters who have been grappling with it all.

I do want to write about two experiences.

The first one I learned about over lunch with a dear friend of mine who is LDS and who has a gay son. She's very involved in the USGA group at BYU and had recently attended a meeting in which all the participants filled out a survey anonymously. The papers were gathered up and redistributed so that everyone ended up with a survey reflecting another person's answers. When each statement was read aloud, people silently stood if it was marked on their paper.

"I have considered committing suicide."

More than 90% of the 200 or so people in the room stood up. More than 90%.

Just sit with that a moment.

The second experience happened a month or so ago. I was honored to participate in a program at a local bookstore for a group called the Mama Dragons. These are LDS women who have LGBTQ children, and who are fiercely and lovingly navigating unknown and difficult paths with them.

After inspiring talks by author Carol Lynn Pearson and Tom Christofferson, a gay man who is also a brother of prominent LDS church leader D. Todd Christofferson, several Mama Dragons read essays about their experiences. These essays will be published in a book along with beautiful portraits of them by local photographer Kimberly Anderson.

Then I read the essay I was asked to share. It was written by a Mama Dragon who can't reveal her identity because her son is still closeted outside the family and is serving a mission for the LDS Church. The agony in her words was palpable.

"No one can see me because I am invisible," she wrote. "I still have to protect my son from the church that will eventually tear him apart. This is my darkness and my loneliness. This is being the Mormon mother of a gay son."

"No one can see me because I am invisible."

Please, please do not minimize or mock the pain. It is real. You may not see it, but it is there. Circle the wagons around.

Book #44: The Boston Girl

Seriously, how could I not read this book? A favorite author, a favorite setting, a favorite kind of story, the life of an interesting woman, one with dreams that didn't fit expectations.

The main character, Addie Baum, tells the story of how she met her husband, a good and easy match for her after two painful misses. But the more part of the story she tells is about her meandering but ultimately satisfying career, and her friendships with sisters, peers, and the women she met along the way who mentored her.

As I read, I kept remembering different women I've met over the course of my life that I've connected with, learned from, shared confidences with, laughed with, loved. They are all so different from one another, and they've all helped bring different parts of me into better focus.

I am deeply thankful for all of them. And I hope I've done a bit of the same in return.

One of the most exquisite moments in the book for me came when Addie was reunited, after a 10-year separation, with her old friend Filomena, who tells her this:

"That time I almost died in the bathtub, what kept me going was the look on your face and Irene's and that wonderful nurse. I could see how worried you were, not mad or angry or disappointed. You just didn't want me to die. And afterward, too, you never looked at me with anything but love: no pity, no judgment. I've thought about this a lot, Addie. You made it possible to forgive myself."

I want to move through the world that way, like the Boston girl.

Book #43: This I Believe

I picked up this collection of essays from NPR's This I Believe radio project when I went home to New England last fall for my uncle's funeral. (I bought it at the independent bookstore in the town where I grew up because, as I've mentioned before, I believe in voting with my dollars.)

This I Believe, in the 1950s and then again during a recent revival of the series, invited a variety of people to share something they had learned over the course of their life. They specifically asked people to "frame [their] beliefs in positive terms" and to "refrain from dwelling on what [they] do not believe."

Writers focused on a range of ideas, from "I believe that doing practical things can make the world a better place" to "I believe in feeding monkeys on my birthday."

The book was a good selection this week, as I've been alternating between fondly remembering my uncle and psyching myself up to read another and another and another student essay that barely scratches the surface of whatever complex topic they've decided to research this semester.

I've been wondering what my uncle would have said if he'd written a This I Believe essay. And I've been reminding myself that my students are just at the beginning of figuring out what they will learn more about over the next couple of months. It's okay to start out barely scratching the surface.

I've also been wondering what I would write. Maybe something like this?

In class on Wednesday, I talked with my students about moving into more serious research, understanding how people come to know things in the academic realm.

The reliance on evidence and logic and accurate measurement. The demand for reproducible results and independent verification. How personal experience and observations can be a good place to start, but aren't enough.

I put the word know in quotations marks.

"know"

I put the word know in quotation marks because I believe we will understand more if we never assume we've arrived at the place where we know. We can reach a point where we are reasonably confident, enough to take action. But I believe human progression depends on always being open to new information, new insights, new possibilities.

If we are too certain, we might stop asking questions.

And if we stop asking questions, we might stop altogether.

Book #42: In the Name of Sorrow and Hope

I've had this book on my shelf for nearly 20 years. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's granddaughter Noa wrote it the year following his assassination at the hands of a right-wing Israeli extremist after a peace rally in Tel Aviv in November 1995. She was 19.

Had I read it when it first came out, it would have been a very different experience. Then, I wouldn't have known what the next 20 years would bring, like I do now.

"I cannot answer all the questions I am asked, nor even those I ask myself," Noa writes. "I do not want to address 'What if . . .?' questions. Saba [Rabin] hated that sort of speculation. He always said that one should confront reality as it is and respond to the challenges it offers."

I can't help but wonder, though, what would have happened with Israeli-Palestinian relations if Rabin hadn't been assassinated.

What if he had been able to continue with the peace process he had been engaged in? What if, despite real and challenging setbacks, he had ultimately been able to keep internal opposition at bay? What if he had held onto his position as Prime Minister long enough to give peace a chance to take hold?

Yes, yes, what if questions are futile.

And so I will ask these questions instead: Why are genuine peacemakers the kind of leaders who are most at risk in our world? Why are too many of us not ready for them? Can we change that? How?

When you died, Israel stopped to catch its breath . . . if you could see, Yitzhak, if I could tell you everything that's been happening in the country this past week, you wouldn't believe me. . . . Thousands of people have been coming from all four corners of the world, Jews, Muslims, Christians . . . can you believe it? Please believe me. -  Leah Rabin at her husband's burial

Erasure

The other day, I say to my class at the jail, "Invest in a good erasable black pen."

We are talking about filling out job applications, and I am speaking from experience. My brain and my hands are not always in sync. I often make mistakes when I write.

After class, I drive to campus to hear author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams speak. She shares some excerpts from her book When Women Were Birds.

"I am writing on the blank page of my mother's journal, not with a pen, but a pencil. I like the idea of erasure," she reads. "The permanence of ink is an illusion."

While she is signing books, she tells us about the project she's currently working on, a piece about our national parks. It's gotten complicated, she says, because these treasures are rooted in some of our country's most grievous acts. We need to acknowledge what we've done, remember hard-earned lessons, and embrace what we have moving forward.

We talk in my class about handling questions about criminal records in job interviews. "I hear you just got out of jail," a hiring manager might ask. "What's up with that?" Own what you've done, I say, but instead of being defensive, or justifying yourself, or minimizing, focus on what you've learned from your experiences. Get the conversation on terms that help you create a future instead of trapping you in the past.

We talk about the dreaded question on job applications. Have you ever been convicted of a felony? A check in the box marked "yes" looks so stark, there in the black ink on the white page, the applicant not yet a real human being in the eyes of the person sorting through stacks of applications, looking for ways to pare them down. But hiding the truth and marking "no" doesn't make anything go away. And it's risky. It is too easy to be found out in the age of the Internet. The goal is not just to get a job; the goal is to have a job.

We talk about the possibility of getting records expunged, and how the judge will want to know what you have been doing in the meantime to set your life straight. According to the state bureau of criminal identification, "Once the expungement is complete, you may respond to any question pertaining to the expunged record as if it never happened." And yet, when a person is granted full permission to check the box marked "no," it will never be possible to do it without being conscious of the fact it once was a "yes."

In life, we are bound to remember what we've written.

The permanence of erasure is an illusion.

But with a good erasable black pen, we can make corrections.

Book #41: No Tourists Allowed

Ah, I scratched three itches with this book!

First, I'm always looking for ways to better understand people in my community who deal with addiction, especially when their addictions land them in jail. Shannon Egan grew up Mormon in Utah. She couldn't figure out how to make herself fit inside it all, and as she grappled with that for years, she numbed her pain with alcohol, and she ended up with a felony DUI.

Second, I'm always up for a vicarious adventure. Hopping on a plane to take a tenuous teaching position in the heat and civil unrest of Sudan? Check. Jumping into a career in international journalism without any actual experience? Check. Heading into Darfur while the war there was raging? Check.

Third, I'm deeply curious about how people in various parts of the world struggle to live in community with one another, especially when they have vastly different world views and corrupt political leaders who have their own agendas. Egan delivered an accessible and emotionally wrenching front-row account of the divisions in Sudan that eventually led to South Sudan's independence. She learned her trade well!

Early in the book she writes about a couple of epiphanies she had growing up:

"I don't want to walk in a straight line for the rest of my life." And, "I never liked the idea of having everything figured out and decided upon. I wanted the experience of seeking and finding and knowing for myself. I wanted to get to the heart of matters without being shamed for it."

Her epiphanies totally resonate with me.

Those and the scandalous crush she has on Steven Tyler that she reveals toward the end. I don't know what it is about that guy . . .

Book #40: Daring Greatly

I've long been a fan of Brené Brown's TED talks on vulnerability and shame, and have checked posts on her website from time to time, but until now I've never read one of her books.

The library had this one on CD, so I borrowed it and listened to it in the car. So many times I thought, "I need to write that down!" and "I need to write that down, too!" so I ended up buying a copy I can mark up.

It might be surprising to some--because I do things like write here on my blog, often enough about tough subjects, and I speak up in various meetings I attend, usually in a spirit of advocacy--but mostly I don't "dare greatly."

Mostly I am content to fly under the radar.

I tell myself that flying under the radar gives me more flexibility to accomplish things I care about. Plus, I want a lot of private wiggle room to evolve what I think and believe about, well, everything.

But with increasing frequency, I wonder if I'm letting valuable opportunities slip through my fingers because I don't want to deal with the inevitable push back, especially if it's public.

And I wonder if keeping fundamental aspects of my world view private is just smart strategy, or whether I risk undermining my integrity by letting people make false assumptions about me when I fear what could happen if they know what's really in my head.

I truly value my integrity.

But do you see how even so, I write obliquely here?

Book #39: Orphan Train

This is a triumphant story. It weaves together the lives of young woman named Molly, who is close to aging out of the foster care system, and an old woman named Vivian, who was placed with several families during the tail end of the Orphan Train Movement.

Both were at the mercy of strangers, many of whom were inclined to assume that they were wayward children simply by virtue of the fact they did not have parents to look after them.

I teared up in several places.

This may be why: the author explored a bit, though not particularly overtly, the idea of children becoming wayward as a result of being considered wayward.

They might internalize the idea and meet expectations. Or, in an effort to defend themselves, they might act out in ways that simply end up confirming the assumptions people have made about them.

Vivian triumphed, and by the end of the book it seems Molly will as well.

I think a lot about the people who don't.

But--and I'm lucky this is actually in my job description--I also think a lot about how they still can.

Sometimes I tear up in those real life places, too.

Book #38: Negroland

Shortly after I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' book (week #36), I heard an interview with Margo Jefferson, a professor of writing at Columbia University, about her new book.

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (week #32), who often explores in her work the varied experiences of black immigrants in America, rightfully argued that there is danger in relying on a single story to understand people and cultures.

I agree. Ergo this week's read.

Jefferson's memoir, like Coates', is also about growing up black in America, but from a very different perspective. Jefferson is part of an earlier generation than Coates, she was born in upper-crust black Chicago rather than in a poor, tough neighborhood in Baltimore, she is a woman not a man, and while Coates' grew up concerned about his physical safety, Jefferson grew up concerned about being perfect.

My generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little or no notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public. . . . Even the least of them would be turned against the race. Most white people made no room for the doctrine of 'human, all too human': our imperfections were sub- or provisionally human.

Her story is not ancient history. She's not even as old as my parents. Her own parents had crosses burned on their lawns. Jefferson writes about the myriad ways she lived a life despite this framework she was steeped in, but it persists. It persists.

And in the meantime, while both she and I have felt pressure to be perfect from other quarters--as women, for example--I have never had to think about how my life reflects on the rest of white America nor have I ever had to think about how "unacceptable" behavior on the part of other white people reflects on me.

White people wanted to be white just as much as we did. They worked just as hard at it. They failed just as often. They failed more often. But they could pass, so no one objected.

Book #37: The Namesake

And now for a book that has been sitting on my shelf ever since it came out in paperback about 10 years ago. I'm not quite sure how I could forget I had an unread Jhumpa Lahiri, because I love her work.

She typically explores cross-cultural themes, like figuring out who we are independent of where we come from. Usually her main characters are from India living in the United States or vice verse.

As I read, Lahiri's writing kept tapping into that place in me that is hungry to know and experience how other people live. Then about half way through the book, I slammed headlong into this passage:

"She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way. This, in his opinion, is the biggest difference between them."

I am more like him than her. There are so many good things I appreciate about my life, but I confess I am a restless soul.

Maybe there is a part of me that is Hindi, like most of the characters in this book. I am not so enamored with the idea of life after death (perhaps I just lack imagination?), but the idea of starting fresh and living more than one life here on earth totally appeals to me.

Book #36: Between the World and Me

I drove home today after a short visit to Telluride, Colorado. On the way, I passed a town called Paradox, and for the next couple hundred miles, I thought about how it was an apt word to describe many aspects of race in our society.

Even the concept of race is a paradox: it is both not real (in the sense of being an artificial social construct based on the false notion of racial supremacy) and very real (in the sense of lived experiences).

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a black man who grew up in Baltimore. This is his story of his experience. It is a worthwhile and challenging read.

Coates wrote this book as a letter to his teenage son. Early on, he acknowledges that he and his son have and will experience race differently--different generations, different life circumstances.

That's another paradox. We collectively and systemically experience race, but we each see (or fail to see) our experiences through our own individual lenses, all of us with our own perceptions and understanding.

And we often have a hard time believing that what other people experience can exist simultaneously with what we experience.

While I was in Telluride, a family member mentioned an editorial about the book by David Brooks. As I read Brooks' resistance to some of what Coates wrote, I found myself resisting Brooks' resistance. I had not read Coates the same way. In part, my lens was shaped by my experiences as a woman living in a patriarchal society and having empathy for the struggle to have your voice heard (all heightened by watching a screening of the upcoming film Suffragette at the Telluride Film Festival while I was in the middle of the book).

So not only do we personally experience race differently, we experience the stories people tell about their own experiences with race differently. More paradox.

Then perhaps the greatest paradox of all: we can only disappear artificial racial constructs by seeing them very clearly.

Book #35: How To Be a Bad Christian and a Better Human Being

I discovered Dave Tomlinson, an English vicar, when I listened to him speak at St. Paul's in London. (To clarify, I listened here, not here.)

What he said was intriguing, so I decided to read one of his books. (I confess I picked this one because of the provocative title.)

"Bad Christians," he writes, "may struggle with much of the religious paraphernalia that surrounds the Christian faith, but their vision of life, the way they wish to follow, is based on the person of Jesus."

It is deeply ironic that for some people--a growing number of people, in fact--organized religion can be a barrier to finding a connection to the divine. But it can be. I know. First hand.

Tomlinson, who himself has struggled with a counterproductive relationship between organized religion and spirituality (also deeply ironic considering his chosen profession as a man of the cloth), lays out a beautifully unorthodox approach to finding God by way of Jesus.

If you are not a Christian and read the book, you may be surprised at the various ways Christians view their faith.

If you consider yourself a "bad" or hopeful Christian, you may be inspired.

If you are a traditional orthodox believer, you may be shocked.

He's a bit of a heretic.

Funny. Jesus was too.

Book #34: Letters to a Young Poet

This week's selection is brought to you by a series of synchronous events. In fact, four separate events just this week led me to this book, including it catching my eye as I browsed a shelf at a bookstore, seeing it on a recommended reading list, reading a quote from it that someone posted online ("be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves"), and re-discovering it was already on my "to be read" list that I keep at the back of my journal for this project.

I'm not sure what that all actually means, except that as I read Rilke's letters, I was reminded about another series of synchronous events that have also occurred during the past week, prodding me to listen to my own instincts--not the voices of others--as I sort through some issues that have challenged me as long as I can remember, but especially recently.

As Rilke mentors the young poet, he keeps revisiting this idea of going inside, of solitude, of finding answers there. Just a few examples:

. . . all I wanted to do in the end was advise you to go through your development quietly and seriously; you cannot disrupt it more than by looking outwards and expecting answers from without to questions that only your innermost instinct in your quietest moments will perhaps be able to answer.

. . . trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgment, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time, lead you to other insights.

What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours--that is what one must arrive at.

It may all be pure coincidence. Or it may not.

After all, according to Rilke's own words, I shouldn't be listening to him.

But then, he also says, "Irony: don't let yourself be ruled by it."