[Whatever else
2018 brings for us all, I hope it brings lots
more great writing and voices to read and engage with and learn from and
share. To that end, here are five recent or upcoming books that I’m excited to
read—please share your own nominees or suggestions in comments for a
crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]
1)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, We
Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy: Coates has been in the
news quite a bit recently for (to me) a particularly frustrating reason: Cornel
West’s attacks on him for focusing too narrowly on white supremacy as the
fundamental American ill. But whatever one’s stance on that particular contest
(and I’ll say that I’m thoroughly Team Coates and leave it at that), we cannot
in any case lose sight of the vital role that Coates plays as one of our best
public writers and scholars. His latest book on both the Obama presidency/era
and the transition into the Trump one extends and deepens that role, and I’m
excited to delve into more fully in the new year.
2)
Attica
Locke, Bluebird,
Bluebird: The post hyperlinked under her name reflects how long and how
fully I’ve enjoyed Locke’s mystery novels, which (as Matthew
Teutsch has argued) consistently link race, community, and history to genre
conventions in unique and deeply compelling ways. Her newest novel, which has already
been picked up as a
potential FX series, is #1 on my list of fiction I need to read as soon as
possible in 2018.
3)
Jesmyn
Ward, Sing,
Unburied, Sing: Ditto what I said above about Locke when it comes to
Ward’s books, both her fiction (as referenced in the post hyperlinked under her
name) and her family
and cultural memoir. With Sing
Ward has returned to fiction, and by all accounts written another great
American novel, one both located in longstanding traditions such as the road
novel and passionately engaged with our contemporary moment and society. What
else is there to say?
4)
Francisco Cantu, The
Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border: I know significantly
less about the last two (both forthcoming in early 2018) books I’ll highlight
here (and again would love to hear about more new or upcoming titles in
comments!), and won’t pretend otherwise. What makes this book so interesting to
me is that it’s written by a former Border Patrol agent but seems willing and
able to consider with nuance and empathy the circumstances and identities of
those individuals, families, and communities seeking to cross the US-Mexico
border in both documented and undocumented ways. We need voices and texts like
that much, much more than we need big, beautiful walls.
5)
Alexander Chee, How to Write an
Autobiographical Novel: We also need great writing about writing—about how
to do it, the overt subject of novelist Chee’s collection of essays; but also
and especially about why we do it, about the individual and collective stakes
of writing and reading and books and literature. I look forward to seeing how
Chee presents those broader topics alongside his more specific literary and
writing subjects.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. You know
what to do!
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