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Dear friend —
I was in eighth grade when I went through one of the most grueling experiences of my life: a geography test on the 50 states and their capitals. Rote memorization — argh!!! But I was a dutiful girl then with cramming skills, and so for a few glorious hours during which this test took place, I could fill out a U.S. state map in under five minutes!
I passed, forgot my geography, and grew up to be an adult who wasn’t sure where the Dakotas were but believed them to be somewhere on the east coast. This continued to be the case until I became a nomad and started driving through the country, turning geography into something actually useful and experiential! Turns out, I can remember the names of states — so long as I’ve been or are actively planning to go to them. So far, I can accurately place 32 states — so I have just 18 left to learn. 17 actually, because I know where Alaska is despite not having been there — yay! And let’s be real — am I really missing anything by not visiting the rest? (feel free to convince me I’m wrong here!)
With the U.S. more or less conquered at a D level — a passing grade — I decided to turn my attention to the rest of the world, starting with Asia in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Sadly, I could place only seven of the 48 countries in my initial test.
This is bad, I know. How to remedy my stupid Americanness? The only solution seems to be to go on a round-the-world voyage once Covid restrictions end to improve my sense of world geography.
Should I do it? And how well can you do on the 50 states typing quiz?
In the meantime, some books that’ll let you travel via your mind —
Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen (FSG Originals, 2021)
Do you enjoy reading about depressing childhoods? Have you perhaps survived a depressing childhood yourself? “Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning like a little animal that’s locked in a cellar and forgotten, writes Danish writer Tove in this slim beginning to her three-part memoir. Moaning, of course, can be a reaction to either pain or pleasure — which is to say Childhood manages to transmute traumatic memories into a complex, haunting literary treat.
An unhealthy proclivity toward rumination is probably a requirement for loving this memoir, though Childhood’s poetic language provides its own rewards. Trove details the first eighteen years of her life growing up in Copenhagen — in a home with just one bedroom shared by all four members of the family. A punitive mother, a kind but distant father, an enigmatic brother, and a girl who escapes through books and poetry. Read it if you love the feel of a bruise, pressed gently in secret while a Fado singer sways.
Buy Childhood from Bookshop
The Impossible Fairy Tale by Han Yujoo (Graywolf, 2017)
One random fact of my early childhood education is that snippets of it — parts of first and fifth grades — happened in Korea. I don’t remember what I learned, but I do remember the classrooms were big — I want to say 40 kids or so? — and remarkably quiet, all of us sitting two to a desk, attentively facing front. What made us all so docile and obedient at such a young age, I wonder? And what’s happened to me since? In any case, this book brought back a bunch of dormant memories for me because it follows two elementary school girls in Korea as they go about their typical yet confusing young lives.
Yujoo’s quiet classroom is suffused with violence. The kids hurt little animals, hurt each other. How vicious and sadistic children’s play can be! Throughout the novel is a strong metafictional element which, in the second part of the work, takes over, making you ask — what makes writers so violent, always imagining killings and accidents and assaults and other terrors? This is a poetic, experimental, and imaginative story. Read it if you enjoy books that leave you stunned still and staring at a wall afterwards, wondering what it is you just let yourself read.
Buy The Impossible Fairy from Bookshop
Cockfight by Maria Fernanda Ampuero (Feminist Press, 2020)
The TBR list on my phone is long and eclectic, a motley mix of recommendations from reviews I’ve read, friends with great taste, and strangers who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about but nonetheless have opinions I feel compelled to type down to pretend I care. Which is to say I’m not sure how this fiction debut by an Equadorian writer made my list, but I’m glad it did! Dark, dirty, and kind of disgusting is how I’d describe the stories in this slim collection, in which female protagonists navigate treacherous relatives, shitty jobs, and and the constant threat of sexual violence.
A couple stories are retellings of Biblical tales from women’s perspectives, while many others seem pretty contemporary — a juxtaposition that highlights just how little has changed for women. Expect frightening father figures, unforgiving class structures, and a lot of devilish humor. Read it if you’ve always thought the Bible would have been a lot more interesting had it been written by Jezebels.
Once a month, I share book recommendations. Shape it by recommending a read!
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
Take a surreal trip through Copenhagen and Bucharest via this dreamy short story, “Alvin,” by Jonas Eika.
The repressive politics of emotional intelligence. “By turning ‘emotional labor’ into ‘emotional intelligence,’ [Daniel] Goleman replaces the concrete social relation between an employee and her employer with a vague individual aptitude.”
Cesar Chavez and his conflicted legacy. “He opposed undocumented immigrants to the point of urging his followers to report them to la migra,” writes Gustavo Arellano in an L.A. Times opinion piece — a counterpoint to cancel culture that reminds us to remember our heroes, too, are human.