Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

 

FFFM tells the story of Casey Han, a recent Princeton graduate who immigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. As the story opens, she’s at a family dinner with her parents at the beginning of her first summer as a college graduate. She’s moved in with them, but hasn’t told them that she’s deferred admission to Columbia Law School and has no plans for her post-college life. She also hasn’t told them that she’s been dating a white American, which would be an even more egregious offense to her traditional Korean parents. Casey is clearly of a different generation and a different world than her parents. As a result she felt 

If her rotten choices hurt her, well then, she’d be willing to take that wager, but it was hard to think of letting her parents down again and again. But her choices were always hurting her parents, or so they said. Yet Casey was an American, too -- she had a strong desire to be happy and to have love, and she’d never considered such wishes to be Korean ones (123).

This tension between the Korean values and wishes of her family and her American values and wishes runs through the book. We also see themes of religion, class, and race.

As this first night (predictably) ends explosively, Casey’s life is irrevocably changed and the rest of the book tells the story of her attempting to (re)gain a sense of self and purpose in a world that isn’t governed wholly by her parents’ traditions or her white American peers’ privilege. The things Casey knows best are shopping and hats, although she has an ivy-league education, and she has to reinvent her life a lot more quickly and urgently than she had planned.

This book was immersive in a way that, even though I really feel that I didn’t relate to Casey, I felt so invested in the characters that I couldn’t wait to keep reading. The characters were so real that at times they felt predictable, simply because they seemed like real people and they acted like real people would. Their flaws were real flaws, and their successes, therefore, were real successes.

I felt that there were some loose ends that could have been tied up more cleanly, or alternatively omitted altogether, but the book was panoramic in scope even despite these loose ends and gave us a comprehensive look at the immigrant experience for this family and their new community in New York.

Questions for Discussion: 

Is Casey’s spending (and possibly Unu’s gambling?) a unique result of the immigrant experience? 

What can we learn about the experiences of this family by comparing and contrasting Casey to Tina, and is this actually a valuable exercise? Or is Tina’s story so different that comparing to Casey cheapens them both? I felt as though Tina was almost entirely in the story as a foil to Casey and really wanted to know more of her story. 

What role did hats and millinery play in the story?

The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell

The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell

The Wolf Wilder has the feel of a Russian fairytale. It tells of turn-of-the-century Russia, a country just beginning to discover Lenin’s message, and a young girl named Feo who lives with her mother and teaches the pampered wolf pets of the Russian nobility how to be wild again when they outlive their appeal at court.

In this volatile political climate, Feo and her mother, Marina, have a run in with Rakov, a commander in the Russian army who commands them to stop wilding the wolves, and when they don’t, develops a personal vendetta against Feo and imprisons Marina with plans to execute her in one week’s time.

Feo embarks on a journey to free Marina from prison, with the help of some special friends.
Despite the fact that this book has the classic fairy tale trope of “get rid of the parent so the child can have an adventure,” I loved the way this book dealt with that tropey situation. Rather than adventuring in spite of her mother’s wishes and upbringing, it’s clear throughout the book that Feo is out adventuring because of her mother- not just to liberate her from prison, but because of the valuable lessons she was taught at her mother’s side. Despite her feral appearance, Feo shows her deep humanity and capacity for caring because of, not despite, the attentions of her mother.

I also enjoyed the degree to which natural elements, such as the wolves themselves, and the cold Russian winter, played key roles in the story. They were never anthropomorphized, but their influence was well felt and appropriately realistic (for a fairy tale in which riding on a wolf’s back is feasible).

Questions for further discussion:
How much did the political climate really matter to the story? Would this story have worked at another time or place in history?
What was the role of the ballet school in the story?
What do you think happened to the children after the events of the story? Does it matter?

He was Pretending to be a What?!

The other night I was in our living room with the 6 week old Bug, while Luke and the 2 year old Panda Bear were getting ready for bed. I heard a strange noise coming from the audio baby monitor and so I switched on the camera to see what on earth they were doing, and this is what I saw:

The cat was trapped under the big girl bed, and the dog was anxiously standing guard in the doorway making sure the cat couldn't leave the room. Getting the cat out was exactly what my husband was trying to do, so he was pretending to be a vacuum cleaner to evict the cat (she hates vacuum cleaners). Meanwhile, the 2 year old was jumping up and down on her bed throughout the whole thing because it was just so much fun.

It had been Luke's first day back to work after his paternity leave, so needless to say it wasn't the best day any of us had ever had. I'd had some not-great mom moments that I wished had never happened, and I while there were also some mom wins, I was still feeling guilty about the bad moments.

But, guys, seriously. My husband was pretending to be a vacuum cleaner. My child was clearly unscathed by my harsh words borne out of frustration earlier, since she was thrilled to be jumping on the bed through the commotion (no, she's not supposed to jump on the bed).

Did I mention he was pretending to be a vacuum?

We all survived. We were all mostly dressed, mostly fed, and mostly diapered/potty-d. There were tears, there was frustration, there were regretful words, but there were also snuggles, stories, and laughter. My girls got to love on each other and I got to love on them. It took a grown man imitating a major household appliance for me to realize that, all-in-all, it had been a pretty good day.

Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman

Dark at the Crossing tells a story of war, love, and second chances.The story begins with main character Haris landing in Turkey and traveling toward the Syrian border to join the Syrian rebels fighting against the Assad regime. From there the book recounts Haris’s movement forward toward joining the regime, and also flashes back to show how he came to this decision. Born in Iraq, he earned American citizenship by saving an American soldier, Jessica Lynch-style. He then worked with the U.S. Army in Iraq also to earn citizenship for his younger sister. When they move to the U.S., his sister flourished as an American college student and Haris, attempting to provide for her, worked as a janitor at the same college. Unsatisfied with this life, and his past role in the war in his own country, Haris waited for his sister to be provided for by way of a marriage engagement, and then left to join the rebels in Syria.

Haris has contacted a “fixer” to take him across the border and connect him with the rebels, but things don’t go as planned, and he meets Amir, a Syrian native living and working in Turkey for a think tank studying the Syrian conflict. Even more important than the connection with Amir, Haris also meets Amir’s wife, Daphne, who has a scarred back and sleeps with the light on. The relationships that develop between Haris, Amir, Daphne, and also the relationships which are explored through flashbacks with Daphne’s daughter, Haris’s sister, and an American soldier acquaintance of Haris from Iraq, explore different ways that people can love each other, and the lengths we’ll go to for a second chance.

This isn’t an own voices book- Ackerman is a white man from the U.S.- but although he isn’t from Iraq like his character Haris, he was a U.S. soldier and spent a significant amount of time in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters and currently writes about Syria. This familiarity with conflict and soldiering is apparent in the book. The reader is left with the sense that Haris, and the other characters, are based on people known to Ackerman, rather than being pure inventions.

Haris isn’t endeavoring to fight in the war because of any particular convictions, religious or political, and in fact “he believed in the war but not as a cause. He believed in it as an impulse, the way a painter paints, or a musician plays, a necessary impulse.” The Syrian conflict is a second chance for him- he is unhappy with his role in the war in his own country, and thus Syria is an attempt for redemption. The book further claims that “[a] true cause, meaning an honest cause, must be personal, specific.” We see this in both Haris and Daphne’s desire to return to Syria.

This book felt true to the conflict, for me. Syria isn’t at all my area of specialty, but Haris’s experiences and feelings came across as complicated and messy, not  a neat and tidy black and white package. The book wasn’t much about Syria in specific, but rather more about conflict in general in this day and age, and the toll it takes on survivors. It really shows well that escaping the physical fighting is only one part of survival.

Full disclosure (and possible spoiler): I like reading about wars (both fiction and non, in fact one of my masters degrees is in Diplomacy and Military studies), but I truly dislike reading fiction that doesn’t have a happy ending or a redemption arc or some kind of tie-up at the end. That being said, this book had none of those things, and I really enjoyed it.

Questions for further discussion:

Part of the book is an examination of belonging through citizenship or sense of place. What is the role of being an American for Haris? An Iraqi?

Some of the auxiliary characters in this story are intriguing. What could we gain by looking more into Haris’s sister, Amir’s boss Marty, or the child Jamil who also journeys into Syria with Haris and Daphne to join the fighting?

The Strays by Emily Bitto

The Strays follows a young girl, Lily, in Australia, beginning with her childhood during the Great Depression and then concluding with an adult retrospective. Lily is an only child and when she begins at a new school, she befriends the vibrant Eva who lives with her parents and two sisters. Eva’s parents, particularly her father, are artists and their house becomes a gathering point for many other Australian artists and their bohemian lifestyle.

Lily, although she feels disloyal, vastly prefers Eva’s family to her own, and her time with them forces her to examine her own ideas about growing up, family, friendship, and the complexities of isolation and togetherness.

I think I would have read this book differently had I not been a mother. My heart ached for both Lily and Eva, neither of home received the parenting that they deserved, and for their mothers who were simply unable to provide things for their volatile teenaged daughters. I had a hard time relating to either Lily or Eva- relating instead to the mothers who were more auxiliary characters. The mothers were, to me, more compelling characters than the daughters.

Maud by Melanie J. Fishbane

Maud, a young adult historical fiction novel, tells the story of the teenage years of L.M. Montgomery. The story follows 14-15 year old Maud as she is shuffled between family members from Prince Edward Island to Saskatchewan, while she strives to cultivate and maintain her sense of self and ambition.

This book shows, in particular, how many of Maud’s experiences led directly to the creation of Anne, and consequently at times (particularly in the beginning), it was difficult to separate the two. As the book went on, for this reader at least, it became easier to distinguish Maud’s experiences from Anne’s.

While I’ve heard this book, and therefore Maud’s life, described as ‘heartbreaking,’ it felt accurate to me for the time period. A difficult time for women, Maud didn’t have a head start on much of anything in life- but yet she was able to persevere and I think one of the strengths of this book was showing just how difficult that perseverance was. It captured her need for the act of writing to provide a release from the drudgery and hardship of everyday life. It showed that while family may not have always supported Maud in the way she would have liked, she was able to make valuable friends who became her allies in the most difficult situations.

Knowing the end of the story (as one does with the story of L.M. Montgomery), did a couple things for me. Perhaps knowing of her ultimate success made it easier to read about the early hardships and rejection. But certainly it made the book seem unfinished. While *I* know that L.M. Montgomery eventually because a successful author, the reader of Maud never got the satisfaction of seeing that come about. While this certainly was outside the scope of the project at hand, it left me wanting more from the story.

This Day is Our Day

I’ve been holding off writing a true First Post for this blog, wanting to do it the right way by having a proper introduction. That may or may not ever happen, but today is a day I want to reflect on, so perhaps this day will be a good first post day.

One year ago today, my Panda Bear was born. My life changed- my life now looks nothing at all like my life before this day a year ago, and it has been such a change for the good.

So much has happened in the past year.

Our Bear has grown into the small person she is becoming, and out of the tiny infant she was. She’s rolled over, started eating solid food, and started saying her first words. She’s stood on her own and walked with help. She’s squealed with delight when her River Dog comes running towards her and licks her feet, and she’s screamed in frustration when she’s tired and having a hard time coping.

We’ve grown as a family. We moved across the country seven months ago and haven’t looked back since. We’ve gone on adventures and seen all things through our baby’s eyes- as though for the first time. We’ve learned just how little sleep is needed for survival, and just how much cooperation is needed to thrive.

The best part is that we’re all still learning. Miss Bear is learning how to be a kiddo instead of a baby. She’s learning how to walk and talk and do things independently. As parents we’re learning how to parent, how to be married now that our marriage includes a small person, and how to be way more flexible than we ever imagined.

And that all brings us to this day. This one special milestone day in which our baby Panda Bear turns into a bigger Panda Bear. I know to her, it just seems like another day- marked only by the cupcake she’ll mangle after dinner and the special balloon we picked out this morning after our walk. But for me it’s so much more.

To me this is the day that my life changed, and I feel remarkably protective of it. It happens to be the solstice, which seems apt. Anything I read or hear about happening today, I hope that these events know how important of a day it is. It’s the day Bear was born and the world is better now. I just hope we can make the world into a place where she can thrive safely and happily.