"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis (2012)

Mathis follows a matriarch, Hattie, and her kin in a series of short story-esque chapters that show the hardships and complexities of trying to raise a family during the first half of the 20th century. The locations vary between primarily Philadelphia and Georgia, with sprinkles of New Jersey and Baltimore as the characters try to find their place. This text is a bildungsroman for not only Hattie, but her children and grandchildren and continues to show the evolution of the family unit over decades.

The book is haunting in its depictions of war, Jim Crow, loss, grief, anger, and love. Each chapter is dedicated to a member of Hattie's family, some are dedicated to two ("Philadelphia and Jubilee" and "Alice and Billups") as the title character undergoes a transformational time in their lives. Mathis' ability to have clear, defined characters that are rounded enough to sustain each chapter is impressive enough, but I found I wanted more of all of them. Mathis also experiments with changing formatting and POV throughout, keeping the reader engaged as they zoom in and out from the family. The chapter, and my personal favorite, "Franklin" gives present tense, past tense, third person narration, first-person narration, and most astoundingly, they all fit together in a way that enhances the emotion and tension of the piece.

Not enough good things can be said about this text. I would recommend it to anyone at any time.

"How to Write an Autobiographical Novel" by Alexander Chee (2018)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Chee's essay collection, though framed as a craft book, is most alive when he isn't giving writing advice at all. In fact, his two essays dedicated to the writing process (one of which being the namesake of the collection) bring the momentum he builds in the other pieces to a halt.

From his discussions about being mixed race from an immigrant family (both living in America and Korea), his advocacy involvement in the AIDS/HIV crisis, being in NYC during 9/11, to his healing journey explored through writing and therapy, Chee is excellent at showcasing his autobiographical prowess. Chee is unflinching looking inward as he does not skew occurrences to paint him in a more flattering light, using historical parallels to help make sense of his internal (and at times external) crises. He takes horrific truths and makes them digestible, but never comfortable. The primary theme of the entire collection is "complexity." According to Chee no one is a clear hero or villain, privileged or disadvantaged, or even fully aware of who they are and what they are doing with their lives (or how that affects their place in the world). We exist in these essays alongside Chee, drifting in that nebulous grayness.

The layout of the collection is predominantly chronological for the first half, but as the essays progress the timelines begin slipping into one another, not unlike how we tend to remember things ourselves. If anything, this collection is pieced together through patterns: historical, personal, traumatic, and observed.

"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" by Adrienne Rich (1980)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" is a thorough dive into the gaps in feminist study during the time period (1970s-early 1980s). Rich defines "compulsory heterosexuality" and evaluates the ways that it informs gendered expectations, the impact it has on how we interact with others, and the real-life manifestations and implications of this practice. Most shocking is the similarities we see between the environment that inspired this essay from Rich and gender/sexuality studies of the modern day.

Rich's main complaint is the interdisciplinary assumption of heterosexuality as "default." She argues that this has major implications for how women, especially lesbian women, navigate the intersections of femininity, sexual orientation, economy, and identity. She mentions how historically women did not have the luxury of loving what is natural to them as heterosexuality was required for economic survival via marriage. Failure to adhere to social expectations often resulted in social or even violent consequences, vastly skewing older studies about femininity, sexual orientation, and "womanness."

Rich also believes that how "modern" gender and sexuality studies are built on a foundation of female (particularly lesbian) sexuality as viewed through the male heterosexual lens. In other words, Rich wants future scholarship to consider heterosexuality as a "political institution" as scholarship does with lesbianism (637). She continues this by listing concrete examples of how female/lesbian sexuality is evaluated in erudition with the masculine heterosexual tilt.

Rich's article shows the shift between more archaic gender and sexuality studies to where we are today which, even by Rich's standards, is better but not where we need to be. This is most important to her as gendered discrimination is akin to other forms of domination. She ends the article by prompting the reader to achieve a better "grasp of the politics and economics, as well as the cultural propaganda, of heterosexuality to carry us beyond individual cases or diversified group situations into the complex kind of overview needed to undo the power men everywhere wield over women, power which has become a model for every other form of exploitation and control" (Rich 660).

"How Fiction Works" by James Wood (2008)

James Wood's "How Fiction Works" is simultaneously a wonderful and horrible starting guide for what to pay attention to as you embark in fiction writing. His use of examples can be inaccessible to those who are not familiar with the authors, but his use of example quotes is helpful in identifying some of his more challenging concepts.

This book works to serve as a step-by-step guide of considerations for fiction writers and readers, giving the reader a better vocabulary to discuss primarily realism or "lifeness" in fiction. He looks at characters, language, narration, narrative styles, detail, dialogue, and convention along with the history of literature that led us to what we recognize as a contemporary novel. This book focuses less on making a clear argument, instead dissecting the contradicting approaches to fiction by notable authors. If there is any concise argument to be found here, it's that Wood does not believe in a right or wrong way to approach fiction, just good and bad writing (all of which can only be delineated through context).

Perhaps what stood out most to me is the recurring theme Wood brings up: fiction makes us better at noticing life and articulating our experiences. He gives countless examples of authors describing the mundane, the extravagant, the pure, the horrific, all of which involve close attention to human experiences in the "real world." For Wood, literature is not only a tool for escape, but a way to call attention to what we tend to overlook in our daily lives.

"A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid (1988)

Kincaid's "A Small Place" is a masterclass in blending history, culture, place, neocolonial critique, and autobiographical essay. De-romanticizing and re-centering the history of a place known, practically solely, for its tourism globally is no small feat, but Kincaid makes it look easy. While the book was written in 2008, there are details that show not only the lasting neglect of public spaces and care (the library, is the most notable example) over decades of administration after becoming a sovereign nation from the British. Her prose blends the reality of corruption, the impact of the British, the intergenerational trauma of slavery, personal experience, and shows how the current understanding of Antigua and its residents is shallow, only truly benefitting the colonial powers that brought Antigua to this place.

The last chapter/essay is perhaps the most dramatic. Kincaid zooms in on the "unreal beauty" of Antigua and illuminates the horrors that lurk in the shadows of that beauty. She continues by showing how each element of Antiguan life is representative of a colonial past. Speaking English, the newness of all surroundings that are free from "revolutions of any kind," Kincaid is showing the reader that a colonized nation, even if not currently under foreign rule, exists at the mercy of a culture, language, and belief system that was never representative of the native population.

When examining multicultural literature, particularly from non-Western authors, the perspective and lens offered by Kincaid is invaluable. Her analysis transcends economy, history, or culture as she uses the final moments of this powerful book to emphasize the scars that cannot be washed away from generation to generation.

"Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza" by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987)

Anzaldúa's "Borderlands/La Frontera" is informational, harrowing, dramatic, and sourlful. Remarkably, she is able to weave together essays and poems that inform the reader about her culture and how the modern understanding "Chicano" came to be. This book flows between Mexican, American, and Indigenous history into Anzaldúa's life, giving the writer a vivid picture of the foundation of her identity. To Anzaldúa, she is everything: an insider and outsider, indigenous and foreign, soft and strong.

This book has a lot of similarities to other female writers of color from this era: Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" are the most recognizable. All three discuss culture, violence, gender and its expectations, whiteness, heritage, and Capitalism. For anyone who has read similar novels or collections, Anzaldúa's poetic, blunt yet purple language allows her to remain striking and individual. What emotions and images she doesn't have room to capture in her prose, she covers in the second half of the book with her poetry and lyrics, reminding the reader that her experiences are both individual and collective, reinforcing the theme of "everythingness" throughout the piece.

"The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston (1976)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Kingston's collection of essays is a beautiful blend of culture, folklore, and memory in this bildungsroman. Difficult enough, Kingston excels at becoming an omniscient third-person narrator for stories her family does not want to tell, as most clearly evidenced in the essay, "At the Western Palace." Paired with her use of first-person in essays like "No Name Woman" and "White Tigers," the reader has to remind themselves that the Orchid sisters are not characters from Kingston's imagination, but her mother and aunt. The skill with which she blends the essays together feels as though they are a larger story, told in succinct parts that tell us what we need to know about Kingston, her family, her ancestors, and their culture. "White Tigers" is the most excellent with blending culture and folklore with personal story as Kingston embodies Mulan as a form of establishing her identity.

While the previously mentioned essays may best demonstrate Kingston's ability to shift between real and imaginary without leaving any seams, the final essay, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe" is the one that tells the reader the most. Kingston hints at her individualism throughout the collection, but she always remains in relation to something else: folklore, her family, China. In the final essay, that is stripped and we can see how being a child of immigrant parents affects her as an individual. She has been told to be more demure by her aunt, has had her tongue cut by her mother in an effort to expand her linguistic capabilities, she has remained "boring" and grateful that she, a self-perceived family failure, was not still in China for fear of being turned into a daughter-in-law or slave. This tension is what leads her to torment another girl at her school, torturing her in a basement for what feels like an eternity to Kingston, the girl, and the reader. Having this scene precede her blow-out argument with her mother, the reader is witnessing how feeling like someone who cannot belong, either with her ancestral culture or her transplanted one, can result in anger, desperation, and outsiderdom. The final essay is the ending of Kingston's coming-of-age arc. The history of her family and the foreignness she experiences stop pushing her into a box she does not fit within and she becomes, as she imagined in "White Tigers," a warrior in control of her own destiny.

"Lost in the City" by Edward P. Jones (1992)

Lost in the City is a collection of fourteen stories written by Edward P. Jones. The collection shows a personal look through various protagonists into the Black community in Washington, D.C, taking place between the 1950s and 1980s. The collection is predominately told in third-person omniscient point of view with only two stories deviating. The protagonists are a wide range of ages, from a child entering kindergarten to the elderly. Jones is unflinching in his writing, showing the dichotomy of “good” and “evil” within each character. He deconstructs the ideas that one who has run-ins with the law is inherently a “bad guy,” just as someone who seems to be a productive member of society can do strange, occasionally cruel, things. All the stories stand alone, but together, they paint an image of Washington D.C. that does not, as discussed in the story “Young Lions,” appear on postcards.

His intimate knowledge of place allows him to use Washington as a symbol for his characters, so the reader, just like Lydia in the title-story, finds it impossible to get lost in the city. Even if the reader is unsure after an initial reading of what the narrative spine is that holds the stories together, they can remember the vivid descriptions of the characters as if they were real people telling their real stories. At first glance, it appears that exploring interpersonal relationships and the location of the stories are the only two things connecting the stories within. However, the meat of every narrative is how the protagonist interacts with other members of the Black community within the city and the disconnect many of them feel with both the community and city alike.

"Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott (1994)

Lamott’s book walks the line between a fiction craft book and memoir. The book comprises four main sections, “Writing,” “The Writing Frame of Mind,” “Help Along the Way,” and “Publication—and Other Reasons to Write.” Though the book is organized by writing tips, the heart of the book is in Lamott’s experience as a writer, friend, daughter, and mother. The primary benefit of this book is being able to see the applications of Lamott’s writing advice through her experiences she shares. She finds inspiration for her work in tragedy, humor, and the relationships she builds with other creatives primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York.

Lamott advocates for the creepier parts of the writing process, like eavesdropping and adding non-favorable details about people to avoid libel, while giving credit where it is due, citing the people in her life that helped her be a better writer. Writing is an isolating venture, one that is frequently plagued by negative feelings of self-doubt and isolation. Lamott comforts the reader, letting them know the horrible parts of writing are real and your feelings are valid. Though the tips Lamott gives may not make the entire process of writing easier, it makes being a writer feel easier, more communal, and authentic. After reading this book, I have new techniques I look forward to trying for my weak points—like ways to try turning a string of scenes into a cohesive plot and ways to combat writer’s block—and the reassurance that the difficulties I may feel as a writer are not mine alone.

"Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination" by Toni Morrison (1992)

Toni Morrison’s monograph is mostly concerned with the intersectionality between what she refers to as “American” and “Africanist” literature. The text is broken into three sections, “Black Matters,” “Romancing the Shadow,” and “Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks.” Morrison argues that without African Americans, there is no “Americanness,” and thus, the Africanist presence is essential to deciphering the American literary canon. She uses examples like Willa Carther, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway to demonstrate the explicit and implicit nods to African Americans.

Morrison’s goal with analyzing the work of famous American authors is to highlight how American literature is inseparable from the presence of African Americans, emphasizing that African Americans were part of the foundation of creating what it means to be “American.” Consequently, Morrison is addressing what it means to write, read, and analyze American literature. She does this by breaking down “American” and “non-American” literature, looking closely at how social status and race are what determines “Americanness.” Morrison concludes by stating that her analysis is not to condemn American authors or the American literary canon, but to call for further analysis by present and future scholars to consider Africanism within that canon.

This book is useful when assessing the past of American literature, determining whose presence was the focal point and whose presence was erased or written about only in subtext.

"The Third Life of Grange Copeland" by Alice Walker (1970)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Alice Walker’s first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, looks at the consequences of Black subjugation in the South from 1920 until the Civil Rights Era, focusing on the Copeland family. The text exists in eleven segments, beginning when the protagonist, Brownfield, is a small child and ending upon Brownfield’s death at his father, the title character, Grange’s hands. The book is written in a third person omniscient point of view, primarily following Brownfield, but occasionally featuring the perspectives of those close to him, such as his wife, Mem, or his daughter, Ruth. Grange Copeland, though not physically present throughout the novel, is the catalyst for the plot.

It’s Grange’s inability to care for his son and Granges’ anger at the inability to progress in Southern society that causes him to abandon Brownfield at a young age to head North to New York City, a decision that ultimately is the cause for his wife’s suicide. On his own and fueled by his anger, Brownfield mirrors his father, even turning to the same woman, Josie, for sex and companionship until he gets married to Josie’s niece, Mem. Mem represents the idealized version of Brownfield’s mother from his youth, though she is more educated than his mother, Margaret. He connects with Mem as she teaches him to read and write, leading to their marriage and shared children. As with Grange, Brownfield takes on work and lives on the property of the same White man, Mr. Shipley. Just as Grange grew tired of being worked to the bone without anything to show for it, Brownfield grows resentful and becomes just as abusive to his own wife and children as Grange once was to Margaret and Brownfield. While Brownfield grows up, Grange is in New York, unable to find any more success than he had in the South. After a turn of events, he witnesses a pregnant White woman begin to drown and after she refers to him as a racial slur, he allows her to die. This event prompts Grange to return to the South and re-enter Brownfield’s life. Grange buys a farm with his newfound wife, Josie’s, money and begins spoiling his grandchildren with fruit and attention. After Brownfield snaps and murders Mem, two of Brownfield’s daughters are sent North to live with family while only the youngest, Ruth, stays behind and lives with Grange. Grange and Ruth’s bond grows as he teaches her everything he’s learned and advocates for her independence and education. This relationship marks the third life of Grange, after his first life with Margaret and his second life in New York. Both Grange and Brownfield’s lives come to a violent end at Grange’s hands after Brownfield tries to take Ruth from Grange after being released from prison for Mem’s murder.

Walker uses her characters as examples of victims, heroes, villains, and martyrs, all demonstrating how easily one can fall into a toxic, violent cycle of abuse and the challenges one faces when attempting to break the cycle. Walker humanizes horrors, showing the complexity of a Black family in the South, struggling to be seen as people. Toward the end of the novel, Walker instills hope through Ruth and the time period, the Civil Rights Era, as if to tell the reader that work must be done, but it will not be for nothing.

"Understanding Edward P. Jones" - "Lost in the City" Chapter by James W. Coleman (2016)

James Coleman’s chapter argues that Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City is tied together by more than location, but by Black tradition, community, and storytelling. To Coleman, these elements are what ties the collection together as a cohesive whole and allows Jones to explore the overarching theme of “lostness.” Coleman dissects each story highlighting the “lostness” theme along with justifying the story’s placement in the collection.

Coleman argues that the ambiguity and seeming disjointedness of Jones’s collection is not just beneficial to emphasizing “lostness,” but is also verifiably intentional. Coleman points out the flaws of the primary characters, driving home that their satisfaction, or lack thereof, can be directly contributed to their relationship to Blackness in Washington. This informs the focus of the chapter: showing how the movement through Washington, D.C. in Jones’s collection mimics the Great Migration from South to North. Depending on the relationship between the protagonists and Black culture and tradition, their position in the city changes. Coleman believes that Jones’s collection is a masterwork of weaving past, present, future, and individual relationships of Blackness. This chapter illustrates how a fiction collection can be organized and how seemingly unrelated stories can belong together and strengthen one another.