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juushikaTitle: Humans of New York
Author and Photographer: Brandon Stanton
Published: St. Martin's Press, 2013
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 240,795
Text Number: 767
Read Because: borrowed from my dad
Review: Portraits of New York residents. The highlight is color and character: the quirky, distinct personalities and self-presentations of certain individuals; Stanton gives a fair bit of page time to people of color, the elderly, and other minority groups like the homeless, largely without the sense that he's objectifying difference. The staging doesn't always work, and the accompanying snippets likewise; it combines with the feel-good atmosphere to verge on hokey and inauthentic. But there are moments—in particular the two portraits of young women with annotations like "she had the most beautiful awkwardness"—where that artificiality loops around to compliment the subject, revealing authenticity within the artificiality. (And moments where it doesn't work at all: the group shots of adolescents are especially awkward.) Gimmicky and saccharine are acceptable in a coffee table book, to be honest; this is perfectly adequate. But why are there so many portraits of dogs?
Title: The Bird's Nest
Author: Shirley Jackson
Published: Penguin Classics, 2014 (1954)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 260
Total Page Count: 241,055
Text Number: 768
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The story of a young woman and her emerging alternate personalities, reminiscent of prototypical Atwood—a dark humor combined with magical realist approach to mental health and feminism. I can't speak to whether or not this is an accurate depiction of dissociative identity disorder, but I appreciate that it at least isn't treated as a throwaway plot device—it's a sympathetic lived experience, and as representation could be significantly worse, especially for the time period. Also like Atwood, the tone is bitterly humorous, even comedic; and Jackson of course excels at the eerie. This is keenly unsettling, sometimes in ways never explicitly addressed by the text—particularly the psychiatrist's PoV: an unreliable male narrator, profoundly flawed and limited, but also made the authority over the female protagonist's condition, even to the reader; natural and even necessary in a narrative about the intersection between gender and mental illness, but unaddressed and so all the more upsetting and oppressive. I can't say I by any stretch enjoyed this—it's harrowing and labyrinthine, comedic and mundane—but I appreciate it; it achieves much in few pages. And what a good title and central conceit!
Title: The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Author: Michael Twitty
Published: Amistad, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 465
Total Page Count: 241,520
Text Number: 769
Read Because: author discovered through Townsends channel, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An exploration of the history of African American cuisine via one man's investigations into his enslaved ancestors. Memoirs are usually compulsively readable, even if grim; despite appearances this is too broad in scope to be a memoir, and it's certainly not quick reading. Twitty makes some attempts to justify the book's messy structure, and he's right that the subject, particularly the genealogical focus, is by nature disjointed and complex; this still wants for a refined introduction, a stronger roadmap, and better flow within its component parts. At the same time, it effectively combines individual narratives with larger historical setting with the author's personal framework; it's the clearest glimpse I've had into the true scope of slavery in the United States. It makes for a devastating, unremitting reading experience, but Twitty is driven by obvious passion. A complicated book! I'm not convinced it's very well written, but it achieves its lofty central ambition, tying culture to cuisine to African American history, primarily as it informs one individual's worldview. (So it is, in some ways, actually a memoir.) It's exhausting; I'm glad I read it.
Author and Photographer: Brandon Stanton
Published: St. Martin's Press, 2013
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 240,795
Text Number: 767
Read Because: borrowed from my dad
Review: Portraits of New York residents. The highlight is color and character: the quirky, distinct personalities and self-presentations of certain individuals; Stanton gives a fair bit of page time to people of color, the elderly, and other minority groups like the homeless, largely without the sense that he's objectifying difference. The staging doesn't always work, and the accompanying snippets likewise; it combines with the feel-good atmosphere to verge on hokey and inauthentic. But there are moments—in particular the two portraits of young women with annotations like "she had the most beautiful awkwardness"—where that artificiality loops around to compliment the subject, revealing authenticity within the artificiality. (And moments where it doesn't work at all: the group shots of adolescents are especially awkward.) Gimmicky and saccharine are acceptable in a coffee table book, to be honest; this is perfectly adequate. But why are there so many portraits of dogs?
Title: The Bird's Nest
Author: Shirley Jackson
Published: Penguin Classics, 2014 (1954)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 260
Total Page Count: 241,055
Text Number: 768
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The story of a young woman and her emerging alternate personalities, reminiscent of prototypical Atwood—a dark humor combined with magical realist approach to mental health and feminism. I can't speak to whether or not this is an accurate depiction of dissociative identity disorder, but I appreciate that it at least isn't treated as a throwaway plot device—it's a sympathetic lived experience, and as representation could be significantly worse, especially for the time period. Also like Atwood, the tone is bitterly humorous, even comedic; and Jackson of course excels at the eerie. This is keenly unsettling, sometimes in ways never explicitly addressed by the text—particularly the psychiatrist's PoV: an unreliable male narrator, profoundly flawed and limited, but also made the authority over the female protagonist's condition, even to the reader; natural and even necessary in a narrative about the intersection between gender and mental illness, but unaddressed and so all the more upsetting and oppressive. I can't say I by any stretch enjoyed this—it's harrowing and labyrinthine, comedic and mundane—but I appreciate it; it achieves much in few pages. And what a good title and central conceit!
Title: The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Author: Michael Twitty
Published: Amistad, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 465
Total Page Count: 241,520
Text Number: 769
Read Because: author discovered through Townsends channel, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An exploration of the history of African American cuisine via one man's investigations into his enslaved ancestors. Memoirs are usually compulsively readable, even if grim; despite appearances this is too broad in scope to be a memoir, and it's certainly not quick reading. Twitty makes some attempts to justify the book's messy structure, and he's right that the subject, particularly the genealogical focus, is by nature disjointed and complex; this still wants for a refined introduction, a stronger roadmap, and better flow within its component parts. At the same time, it effectively combines individual narratives with larger historical setting with the author's personal framework; it's the clearest glimpse I've had into the true scope of slavery in the United States. It makes for a devastating, unremitting reading experience, but Twitty is driven by obvious passion. A complicated book! I'm not convinced it's very well written, but it achieves its lofty central ambition, tying culture to cuisine to African American history, primarily as it informs one individual's worldview. (So it is, in some ways, actually a memoir.) It's exhausting; I'm glad I read it.
