CURRENT VOICES IN LITERATURE
The goal of this initiative is to support MDC professors across the disciplines. The Center recommends books that may further themes explored in the classroom, often bringing the authors to engage in dialogue with the students. If you are interested in using any of our fall selections in classes, please contact Paola Fernandez Rana at paola.fernandezrana@mdc.edu , Lissette Mendez at lmendez@mdc.edu or Nicole Swift at nicole.swift@mdc.edu.
Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale
by Belle Yang (memoir)
Children's book illustrator-author Yang neatly layers family history across several generations in this graphic memoir. Returning to her parents in China in the wake of a stalking ex-boyfriend's threats, she attends to teasing out the details of family stories she has often heard but never deeply asked about. She wants to know how her grandfather's family dynamics during his youth echoed down the generations, the effects of Mao on the family's social as well as economic fortunes, the roles women have played and been denied traditionally, and her own father's progressive and loving attitudes. Rather than approaching this in a linear manner, Yang spins out the story in concentric eddies and whorls, an excellent reverberation of her black-ink style, with its repetitious patterns and unusual angles of vision. This is an excellent book for those intrigued by family stories or by the history of twentieth-century China as well as anyone who likes memoirs made more dynamic by incorporating more than just the writer's perspective on events.
From Publishers Weekly:
With a lilting voice and a strongly etched fairy tale hand, writer/artist Yang weaves a riveting true-life tale of ancestral jealousies and familial woes from her father's recollections of growing up in China. Her book begins with Yang in her 20s, recently graduated from college but unable to get herself out into the world, wounded by self-doubt and bad memories of an ex-boyfriend turned stalker. Back living with her immigrant parents in Carmel, Calif., Yang listens to her father's stories about his grandfather, a man of wealth and stature whose many feuding sons left the family dismally ill-prepared for the winds of change that WWII and Mao's revolution sent violently whipping through the land. Betrayal and infighting pockmark these stories of woe, though they're buttressed with an appreciation of an uncle's Buddhist disavowal of material possessions or desires. Yang's story, which balances her own struggles with those of her ancestors without clumsily trying to equate them, echoes both with the tragic darkness of King Lear and the clean austerity of classical Chinese poetry. (May)
We think Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale covers a number of General Education Outcomes especially numbers 5: Demonstrate knowledge of diverse cultures, including global
and historical perspectives, and 9: Demonstrate an appreciation for aesthetics and creative activities.
For more information about the book and the author, please click here.
To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg (non-fiction)
Casey and Steven met in Morocco, moved to China then went all the way to Timbuktu. Her words and his illustrations tell the story of their first two years out of college spent teaching English, making friends across language barriers, researching, painting, and learning to be themselves wherever they are.
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review: Fusing travelogue and personal exploration, this entertaining chronicle covers the nearly two-year odyssey debut talents Scieszka (daughter of Jon) and Weinberg embarked on after graduating from college in 2006. Their goals? “One: get out of the country. Two: pursue our creative interests.... And three: be together.” After a six-month stint in Beijing teaching English, the couple journeyed to Shanghai, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand before landing in Mali, where Scieszka (with a Fulbright grant) researched the role of Islam in the educational system. Impressively witty, perceptive, and candid, Scieszka’s present-tense narrative catapults readers into each setting, as do Weinberg’s fluid cartoon sketches, seamlessly incorporated into every page. The author introduces the various countries with clever q&as (“[M]ake sure you check out my Mae Kong River parties,” advises a personified Laos) and explores each nation’s language, politics, traditions, and food. Yet at the heart of the book are the friendships that Scieszka and Weinberg forge, as well as their own maturing relationship.
We think To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story covers a number of General Education Outcomes especially numbers 5: Demonstrate knowledge of diverse cultures, including global
and historical perspectives, and 9: Demonstrate an appreciation for aesthetics and creative activities.
Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg will make class visits in October. For review copies of the book, or to otherwise indicate interest, please e-mail Lissette at lmendez@mdc.edu
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
by Bill McKibben (environmental)
Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010: Since he first heralded our era of environmental collapse in 1989’s The End of Nature, Bill McKibben has raised a series of eloquent alarms. In Eaarth, he leads readers to the devastatingly comprehensive conclusion that we no longer inhabit the world in which we’ve flourished for most of human history: we’ve passed the tipping point for dramatic climate change, and even if we could stop emissions yesterday, our world will keep warming, triggering more extreme storms, droughts, and other erratic catastrophes, for centuries to come. This is not just our grandchildren’s problem, or our children’s--we’re living through the effects of climate change now, and it’s time for us to get creative about our survival. McKibben pulls no punches, and swaths of this book can feel bleak, but his dry wit and pragmatic optimism refuse to yield to despair. Focusing our attention on inspiring communities of “functional independence” arising around the world, he offers galvanizing possibilities for keeping our humanity intact as the world we’ve known breaks down.
We think Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet covers a number of General Education Outcomes especially number 10: Describe how natural systems function and recognize the impact of human on the environment.
For review copies of the book, please e-mail Paola at paola.fernandezrana@mdc.edu
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua (fiction)
One of the last decade’s ten most influential books in China, this internationally acclaimed novel by one of the mainland’s most important contemporary writers provides an unflinching portrait of life under Chairman Mao.
A cart-pusher in a silk mill, Xu Sanguan augments his meager salary with regular visits to the local blood chief. His visits become lethally frequent as he struggles to provide for his wife and three sons at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Shattered to discover that his favorite son was actually born of a liaison between his wife and a neighbor, he suffers his greatest indignity, while his wife is publicly scorned as a prostitute. Although the poverty and betrayals of Mao’s regime have drained him, Xu Sanguan ultimately finds strength in the blood ties of his family. With rare emotional intensity, grippingly raw descriptions of place and time, and clear-eyed compassion, Yu Hua gives us a stunning tapestry of human life in the grave particulars of one man’s days.
We think Chronicle of a Blood Merchant covers a number of General Education Outcomes especially number 7: Demonstrate knowledge of ethical thinking and its application to issues in society.
For review copies of the book, please e-mail Paola at paola.fernandezrana@mdc.edu
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (fiction)
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review: See’s engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or “old sames”) Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily’s voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women’s ceremonies and duties in China’s rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women’s inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters’ foot binding (“Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace”), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See’s incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province (“My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see”).
We think Snow Flower and the Secret Fan covers a number of General Education Outcomes especially number 5: Demonstrate knowledge of diverse cultures, including global and historical perspectives.
For review copies of the book, please e-mail Paola at paola.fernandezrana@mdc.edu