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Beyond The Story: The 10-Year Record of BTS

A few weeks ago I was chitchatting at work about how I was reading this book and my friend Caleb asked me whether there was anything in the book that I didn’t already know. This question gave me pause, and a moment of appreciation for the fact that he saw me as a super fan, somebody very well-informed about BTS, which I am (naturally obsessive and deeply obsessed with this, in particular, for nearly 9 years), but I so rarely think of myself in this way. More often, I feel aware of how little I actually know about BTS and how much more I wish that I could know about them. There’s a part of this book where a similar sentiment is expressed by BTS about their fans, ARMY. The writing of “Boy With Luv,” lead single from the Map of the Soul: Persona album, is framed around this curiosity; BTS is turning their attention back on the fans that have been with them for so long. They’re aware that their diverse global fan base lives so many different lives, and yet has some thing unshakable and special in common.The song “Boy With Luv” begins with questions as the members of BTS wonder about ARMY’s days. This moment in the book was, in a certain sense, something I did know about because I’d experienced the first iterations of these questions back in 2019. I remember being in The Galapagos on vacation when I took time to reply to Jimin and J-Hope’s posts on Twitter including these lines from the yet-unreleased song. They seemed to be just asking ARMY about their days. I remember being excited because my day had been so exciting (I had something to share!) and I remember posting a photo I had taken of a beautiful, iridescent crab that I wished Namjoon could see. It was such an interesting moment: I felt this longing, this need to share with BTS, this wanting to be closer to them. To now see this moment framed from BTS‘s perspective in this book and to understand this as a deliberate choice on their part to begin the song in this way made me smile. Yes, of course I knew BTS wanted to ask ARMY these questions, but to read about their curiosity and their thought-processes in this book took me outside of myself and reframed that moment. My experiences were filtered through BTS’s eyes, which was the key thing that was new to me in reading this book. The threads of connection they perceive, and the care and forethought in planning certain things and making certain choices—so much of that was new to me, even though the things themselves were familiar.

In this vein, I remember noting early on while reading that the interviews with the members of BTS and their direct quotes reflecting on how they felt during certain periods of time throughout their careers were the most revealing and the best parts of this book. I also particularly enjoyed the quotes from Bang PD and his perspective on BTS, as individuals and as a collective. Of course, these quotes give me a new understanding of how the members felt as they struggled through some of the darker moments of their careers. I reflected that my favorite BTS albums, namely Dark & Wild and Love Yourself: Tear, seem to be the products of the darkest eras. I don’t think I was aware of this, at least with the level of concreteness communicated in this book that allowed me to draw a clear link between BTS collective mental/emotional state and the artistic out-put of these albums. While this book repeatedly emphasizes BTS’s professionalism—they show up and they do the work, regardless of anything else going on—these albums seem connected with BTS’s most pivotal emotional traumas and I wonder whether that is something I’m connecting to in these particular albums and, if so, is my love for these particular albums a strange way to feel? These albums have been ones I’ve turned to in moments of emotional disorientation, confusion, and trauma in my life, yet something I have always valued about these albums is the fact that though several of the songs are sad or emotionally-fraught, they are still addictive. I can listen to these albums over and over again and internalize them. These songs aren’t sad in a way that makes me sadder, but in a way that makes me calm, reflective, and engaged with my own feelings. I am feeling and I feel with more self-awareness, as “Outro: Tear” loops in my car.

BTS’s interviews in this book, in addition to revealing to me a new and intimate understanding of how they felt or how they struggled (though I should say less “new” than simply “different,” as I’ve clearly felt for years the articulation of these emotions through their songs and through their performances), also granted me new windows into their self-perception and their perception of each other. I love those golden insights into who they are and what they care about as they perceive each other. I was struck, yet again, by how carefully the members of BTS perceive each other. Again, this is something I already know, but now I know it in a new way because of this set of interviews. I remember reading V's description of how different Jimin is from him, and I felt how confused he was at a certain point to see Jimin’s overwhelming drive, even desperation, to succeed, contrasted to V’s self-perception that he lived in the moment, accepting things as his fate. Jimin, V saw, struggled against everything, took everything so deeply seriously. I remember Jin’s way of describing going fishing with Suga; I remember Jungkook talking about his trip to Japan with Jimin and how seriously he took his decision to come to Big Hit because of RM. I’m consumed by J-Hope talking about his full immersion in the world of rap and hip-hop when everyone in that first dorm lived and breathed music. These are stories that I know, but I know them in a new way now.

A third thing that I knew, but re-learned, about BTS (like an affirmation of something that I’ve always known) is their ability to take risks to reinvent themselves and to pivot as artists. This is something that Doris and I have talked about before, the risks BTS has taken at moments in their career when they’ve done something dramatically differently than what they did before. For example, there was no precedent for the Love Yourself series, which seemingly came out of nowhere, as if BTS completely reinvented the wheel to create this approach to lyricism, aestheticism, and narrative. The same thing could be said for The Most Beautiful Moment in Life series. HYYH was the time at which I was just becoming a BTS fan and so I didn’t understand in listening to that music how what they were doing with these albums was such a dramatic choice to try something different, to express something authentic but new. This book helped me see how deliberate those choices were; those choices were not made blindly, but were deliberate creative leaps, and it wasn’t enough for BTS to just think of the next step slightly ahead, but to reach for something out of a wholly different lifetime and reality. I have such strong appreciation for BTS’s capacity for reinvention, in part because of this book.

Something that surprised me, however, was the book’s focus on curated promotions centering these deliberate directional, artistic choices made with each album in each era. The book emphasized the role of Big Hit in the curated promotional schedule. This effort and planning was framed as being deviated from dramatically with the release of the BE album in 2020. For BE, there was no longer a planto follow a particular promotional schedule with set traditions around types of promotional content, and, instead, interested was generated organically through individual members uploading YouTube Lives, in which they did things like paint or dance or talk about the album, that were simply the product of their daily lives during the pandemic.I think this way of talking about curated promotional content surprised me because I have always felt BTS to be so deeply organic. Yes, their work is carefully crafted and curated, full of thoughtful artistry, but to me that has never seemed like anything other than the natural byproduct of wanting to present polished work with layers of artistic nuance. To think of the things that came before an album as carefully curated promotions, done on behalf of the company, surprised me, but I could also see how the perspective of this book would be more centered in the “behind the scenes” (pun intended) aspects of work at the company and the philosophy behind the collective artistic choices that were being made.

I realized that something that may be contributing to this difference between how I have viewed BTS’s promotional content and the way this book describes this content is that BTS’s promotional content is so human-centered. Their promotions feature themselves, showing parts of their artistry and their decisions and showcasing their work process for the viewers. Even a BTS photoshoot is done with real artistry because the members are thinking carefully about how to express their emotions in a still photo, while deconstructing and exploring the roots of these same feelings through music on the album. When someone says “promotional content” I think of something much less human and much more artificial; I think of the way Western promotional content rarely puts the artist front and center. Western promotional content might be, on the whole, less curated than fragmented, as companies make financially-driven decisions and try to engage the audience through the cheap gimmick of unanswered questions or a tantalizing glimpse into the aesthetic that the viewers or listeners should expect from the upcoming tour or album. BTS’s promotional content, on the other hand, has always felt more like textured world-building surrounding the album than fragments of the thing itself. One excellent example of this is the way ARMY have joked for years that the teaser for a MV doesn’t sound anything like the song itself. The teaser doesn’t work like “a tease” of the song, and instead works like complementary content for the song, to get you wondering about the creative landscape that is beginning to come into focus for you, the fan.

Perhaps a narrative is inevitably created in retrospect when we look back on the project of 10 years. It’s easy to draw connections, to see the way in which BTS built on something that had come before while making a huge creative leap and taking a real risk (the risk being whether or not an audience, who is familiar with and enjoyed a certain type of thing, would follow the same group of creators to a totally different thing and enjoy that, too) at every turn. For BTS to have succeeded in their wide-ranging creativity, ARMY must be people who like, and will engage with, a variety of kinds of art and music. I feel this to be true of myself (I often say “I read anything,” “I listen to anything,” I’m here for something that is high-quality and thoughtful and moves me and it doesn’t matter what genre it is, that genre itself seems irrelevant—existing only so far as to be questioned and recombined, to be thought inside of and outside of simultaneously). I am glad to see that there are so many fans who love and identify with this creative breadth. I remembered while reading the section about CONNECT: BTS (an effort BTS made in 2020 to work with visual artists on a global scale) that I thought at the time how it was almost surreal the way in which BTS were the perfect artists for me, emotionally and intellectually, producing the exact kind of thinking about art that was exciting and rewarding to me, as somebody who cared about interdisciplinary connections and philosophical exploration of the self and why human beings create and why we care about foraging connections with other humans through art.

I can’t separate myself far enough from BTS to know whether or not BTS became who I would most want them to be or I became who would best be able to see them. It’s a kind of co-evolution, and isn’t that bizarre? How could it be? That I would be influencing them, in turn? And yet, of course I am, as one of millions of diverse ARMY, somehow on a collective wavelength, curious about each other, meeting to intermingle and spark new directions.

On page 335 - 336 of this book, J-Hope talks about the process of coming to “know one’s self” and how connected self-knowledge is to self-love. J-Hope says, “LOVE YOURSELF, while it has the message to love yourself, on the one hand I thought, 'what kind of person am I?’ I studied myself a lot during that time and I came to the realization that I had a bright energy and that I was someone who could pass that energy on to others….Also, as I looked at ARMY, I came to think once again, ‘that’s right, this is who I am.’ That was the journey.” The book says “like j-hope says, it was actually a process to ‘know yourself’ in order to find out if you can ‘love yourself.’ No matter who you are, this is a process that is inevitably ongoing, and there isn’t one single answer.” This is what I expressed and realized in my writing last summer in the poem that says, “I have come to realize, shamefully late, / that to know myself/ is the central act of self-love.”I know that BTS has helped me to see this, and also somehow, in some small way, I have helped BTS to see this. That is a bizarre thought, but it also makes sense because this understanding is not something that we are creating, but a truth we are uncovering. Somehow the set of experiences of being BTS and being ARMY over this past decade is a process through which this truth is uncovered: that the effort of getting to know one’s self is worth any degree of effort, as it means you love yourself if you engage with discovering who you are, if you show yourself the care of thinking deeply about who you are so that you will come to know yourself.

This book, I assume for BTS and also for me, is part of that process of self-discovery, of knowing how to reflect on oneself to process and engage with one’s own thinking. For me, then, to reflect on BTS and, through them, on myself is an act of self-love and self-knowing. This book is “the 10 Year Record of BTS” and I’m sure that BTS would be the first to say, “it is also, therefore, the 10 Year Record of ARMY.” This is not because BTS “owes their career to ARMY” or something so simplistic, but because BTS has ARMY like a mirror that we hold up to each other. If I spend time learning new things about BTS, as I long to, what I’m doing simultaneously is learning new things about myself. So, of course, there were things in this book I didn’t know; there were the things that I didn’t know about myself, and Caleb was right to ask me that question because he thinks of me an expert, just like he’d be right to ask me if there were things I didn’t know about myself. Aren’t we surely experts on ourselves, we all assume? And yet, the more I learn, the more I come to know how much more there is to learnabout me.

Rescuing Socrates by Roosevelt Montás

Octavia Butler’s Kindred was our family’s recent read (my choice!) for our Anti-Racism Book Club. I’m glad I read this book in a context in which I was able to discuss it, as the process of talking about this book with my family helped bring the themes and topics into different, and meaningful, focus. One notable example: Two-thirds of the way through our discussion, one of my family members pointed out that this book is called kindred. Our kin—those people grouped with us, sometimes seemingly so random and so different, still deeply, painfully connected with who and how we are in the world—who we can’t cut off, as much as we might long to at times, through whom we come to know and to understand ourselves…what does it mean to directly, personally confront our kin? What if our kin were not who we might wish them to be?

Through the magical conventions of time travel, Dana’s life is entangled with the life of her ancestor Rufus, who is able to somehow summon her to his side to intervene when his life is at risk. Without her intervention, it seems that Rufus would die. Dana’s first intervention seems a “no brainer”: Rufus is a small child who is drowning. But while Dana doesn’t overthink this first simple rescue, each subsequent rescue builds in context and complexity, so that Dana must repeatedly analyze her decision to save Rufus at each turn of his risk-ridden life. Alice is as much a part of Dana’s history as Rufus, yet Rufus is the one Dana is summoned back to save, the one ancestor whose saving is likely the most fraught, emotionally and ethically. While Dana would likely have saved a Black ancestor of hers—particular an ancestor like Alice, female and enslaved—with a similar conviction with which she saved the drowning child, Rufus does not remain simple and worthy as he grows into an adult, slave-owning white man in the antebellum South. It’s unknown why Rufus is the one who benefits from Dana’s magical link with him—although, of course, it is somehow the hapless young white man who cannot manage to stand on his own, and repeatedly inconveniences, interrupts, and risks the life and happiness of the Black woman on whom he depends—except that this is a dynamic that best reveals the complexities inherent in their kin connection.

Throughout the novel, the character portrait of Rufus is well-crafted and complex, and—interestingly, troublingly—one of the most compelling aspects of this book. As Dana engages with him throughout about 20 years of his life, we the readers get to know Rufus as thoroughly as she knows him, understanding his softness that was absent in his father Weylin, as well as his inability to accept a “no,” to retreat, or to let go. Rufus is both compassionate and unable to override his own neediness when this conflicts with the needs of others. He exercises kindness, on his terms. He is capable of inhuman cruelty, but gentle when he gets what he wants. He is entitled, humble, depressed, spontaneous, deeply committed, unhealthily single-minded, surprisingly self-aware. All these complexities are contained within Rufus’s character portrait, as he is both the product of his times and uniquely shaped by his relationship with Dana.

Alice is also three-dimensional and engagingly realistic in her inherent contradictions. Like Rufus, she is someone who Dana both tolerates and loves in spite of herself. Alice is hurtful to Dana, speaking to her with a sharp edge she doesn’t unleash on anyone else. It was striking to reflect that Rufus and Alice were equal parts of Dana, equal contributors to her genetic heritage. While other characters often point out how much alike Dana and Alice look, reinforcing this genetic connection, Dana’s willingness to keep Rufus alive as she awaits the birth of Hagar (her ancestors she knows is their biological child) keeps reinforcing both what Dana is able to tolerate for the safety of herself and her family line and the inexplicable connection she forms with Rufus. Both Rufus and Alice form uniquely dependent relationships with Dana—they are willing to lean on her in ways other characters, even her husband Kevin, are not—and this, I feel, also reveals them as kin. Kin are those who see the worst of us, who accommodate for our flaws, who open their deep insecurities to us, who ask more of us than we would accept from anyone else.

The narrative choice to have Dana’s modern relationship be with a white man, and the characterization of Kevin as both “forward thinking” (for the 1970s) and inevitably shaped by his racial-gender privilege, throws the tensions of the past into sharp relief—as Kevin and Dana both choose to adhere to the conventions of the past (Dana, for her safety, needs to pose as belonging to Kevin, needs to speak to the white people around her in a particular manner), and they internalize these dynamics, to an extent, over time. While there is some exploration of the difference between Dana and Kevin’s experiences in the past and the roles they fall into (particularly in the scene where Dana and Kevin discuss their “playacting” involvement in the past after seeing young Black children playing at a slave auction), their “modern” relationship often felt outdated to me. When the story first moved back in time to develop the beginning of their relationship, I found myself to flipping to the front of the book to check the publication date (1979) and I felt I needed to repeatedly contextualize some choices about their contemporary relationship into the context of the publication date.

I’m very familiar with Octavia Butler’s book Parable of the Sower (1993), as I’ve taught this in my 10th grade English class. Parable of the Sower feels shockingly prescient; one of those “dystopian” novels that feels sharply aware of its time-period and context, and painfully forward-thinking, speaking beyond the concerns of its day in a way that feels timely and urgent when teaching this novel in 2023. While aspects of Kindred felt dated, unlike Parable of the Sower, discussing the character development in this book and the theme of family connection helped me see a timeless quality of this novel. I saw how relevant this book would feel for any modern Black reader confronting the alarmingly common truth that their ancestry includes white slave owners who raped the women they owned. How can a Black person today—rightfully proud of the strong community of their forebears—understand the existence of these white ancestors? Must they also, with these people, feel some type of connection? What if that connection became actual, literal, and influential in their daily lives? How terrifying and troubling must that be. This book felt like a literal attempt to confront and reckon with the presence of white slave-owning ancestors in the ancestry of many modern day Black Americans.

Protagonist Dana often felt to me more like a “stand-in for the reader” than a character, the vehicle through which we experience the world of the antebellum South. Perhaps this is due in part to the book’s effort to explore an applicable Black American experience, but this also reflects back on the observation that Rufus is—in contrast—such a well-drawn character. Like Dana herself, we readers are deeply involved in observing him (as observing his every move becomes the thing on which her life depends, whether through ensuring he stays alive, or ensuring he dies and cannot harm her). I wished, at various points, that we would see more of the impact these time travel experiences have in the “modern” day, that we would see more of how Dana was changed by these experiences, and how her relationship with Kevin evolved. I wasn’t sure if the “invisibility” of Dana as a character was partly due to my short-sightedness, or deeply ingrained racist thinking that perceives the supportive Black woman as placeholder rather than agent. Or was this proximity between Dana and the reader—the erasure of this common literary distance—a deliberate technique to plunge us fully into Dana’s world, to guide us to feel directly the experience of a supportive, yet morally conflicted, Black woman?

The major evolution of Dana’s character, I realized upon reflection and discussion, is the change in her perspective about and emotional sense of responsibility for Rufus. It seemed inevitable, at a certain point, that this book would end with Dana killing Rufus—not just allowing his death through passive inaction to save him, but raising the knife herself. Yes, Dana’s character evolution is dependent on Rufus’s evolution, and the complex character portrait of Rufus developed across the arc of his life and the arc of the book, but her changing perspective on him is also a key evolution for Dana herself. (Interestingly, time moves independently for Dana and for Rufus, and years of his life pass during mere days of hers, which partially accounts for—or symbolizes—his change and her relative stasis). Yet, within this timeframe, Dana comes to the emotional place where she is capable of severing the tie with Rufus. Is this a metaphor for the ties of kin, which we cannot truly sever? Or that we can sever, but only at the extreme far reaches of emotionally-traumatizing distance? Her killing of Rufus, though, doesn’t feel quite like complete severing, but a kind of reckoning, a necessary (inevitable) leveling of a relationship, the only exit (for either of them) from this jarring collapse of distant time into immeshed fellowship. For Rufus, too, is as entangled with Dana as she is with him, and he knows this. He knows his life’s continuation depends on hers. That dependency was made clearer to me near the end of the book—when Rufus confesses his nightmare to Dana following in the wake of his realization (“…I realized you could help me or not, just as you chose” (pg. 255))—and I saw the reversal of the dynamic as we, and Dana, first understand it: that her life is “put on hold,” redirected, for Rufus’s needs. And while that, too, is true, the dynamic is not one-sided, as Rufus’s entire life is shaped by understanding that Dana could, at any moment, walk away from him—and, in doing so, let him die.

The magical time travel in this book creates a dynamic in which a supportive Black woman is jerked around to save a hapless young white man AND a dynamic is which a white male slave-owner experiences living decades of life afraid that a Black woman will choose his death. The arc of this book follows that dynamic from its beginning until its conclusion, in which the Black woman frees herself by obliterating the white man, severing the tie. In this reversal of the more familiar power dynamic, we see a complex ethical exploration of what it means to not choose our own kin, and to still choose freedom. Octavia Butler uses the power of literary imagination to center the choices and agency of her Black characters, in a historical slave narrative set in the oppressive antebellum South.

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

Wake by Rebecca Hall

This month’s read for my friends’ book club, The Marriage Portrait is well-research, well-drawn historical fiction with contemporary themes. This book includes the production of a literal “marriage portrait,” one commissioned and completed upon the advent of a marriage, but it is also the portrait of a marriage: a detailed, psychological depiction of the union between two very different people and families. My favorite aspect of this book was its gripping choice to include a short, direct, and chilling note about the historical context: fifteen-year-old Lucrezia married the Duke of Ferrara in 1560 and “less than a year later, she would be dead.” And while her cause of death was attributed to sickness, rumors swirled that she had been murdered by her husband. The historical context sets the reader up to think we know the ending—throughout, as Lucrezia grows up, marries Duke Alfonso, and comes to understand the horrors of life at his court, we must keep wondering about and imagining past the ending that we have been told about up front. Does this upfront reveal prepare us, brutally, for an inescapable reality? (And is that inevitable death due to sickness or murder…Did she marry a loyal and misunderstood husband, or a deeply evil one?) Or does this historical note operate like a straw man, ready to be cast aside for some alternate explanation of events?

As we read, we’re propelled by our curiosity. The structure of the book is interesting, flipping back and forth between Lucrezia’s chronological life story and the events of a two-day period in 1561, when Alfonso has taken Lucrezia to his country hunting lodge and seems poised to kill her, and get away with this. These parallel timelines—one expansive, one short and tightly charged—allows the reader to simultaneously see Lucrezia’s loss of innocence, as she comes to understand what her husband is capable of, and the high-drama events of a day in which she has already realized the incredible danger she is in. As one timeline catches up with the other, we are able to see what’s at stake, as Lucrezia makes her final set of decisions in the novel.

Lucrezia’s childhood before her marriage to the duke is characterized by being misfit for her family, although this isolation is nothing like the pressure and alienation that she is soon to face at Alfonso’s court. Lucrezia’s family members are captured in broad strokes and a handful of unforgiving details. Like Lucrezia and Alfonso’s marriage, her parents marriage portrait is also painted by the story. Cosimo and Eleanor’s relationship is very different, with a clear affectionate bond as its foundation. While Cosimo seems more devoted to Eleanor than she to him (at times, Lucrezia’s mother seems more in love with her position, her role, and herself than her husband or family; she is a bit distant and detached, poised, self-important), it’s also clear that she respects her husband, as he does her. Once, forgetting herself, Lucrezia bursts out at Alfonso that her parents share information and responsibilities, that her father tells her mother about his business at court, about his worries and concerns, about the particulars of his work, and that her mother is confident in advising and strategizing with him.

Lucrezia and Alfonso’s marriage, on the other hand, is deeply distrusting, and increasingly so over the course of the novel. At first, Lucrezia feels love, or at least care, for Alfonso, as he is capable of being very charming and gentle. More significantly, he is astute and perceptive. He sees Lucrezia for who she really is. In their very first meeting, Alfonso passes Lucrezia on the terrace during one of his visits when he is engaged to Maria and Lucrezia is only a child. Lucrezia is clutching her pet mouse as the engaged couple passes by and, noting Lucrezia, Alfonso makes a “mouse face” at her. She is shocked, both by his noting of her and by his quirky, light-hearted gesture in this moment. It’s a romantic moment, one that shows some similarity of temperament or preference between the future spouses, as Alfonso, like Lucrezia herself, has observed animals so closely as to imitate them. But this promising first gesture, doesn’t counter all that Alfonso is progressively revealed to be. Alfonso is later described like Janus, the two-faced god, pivoting between charming and cruel without warning.

The reveal is gradual. Alfonso continues his good first impression with his betrothal gift of the stone martin painting. Lucrezia is baffled to receive this unusual gift from her new fiancé, and, again, the gesture shows a shocking awareness of Lucrezia herself and her character. Alfonso sends her a painting, one of a wild creature. In this, he honors Lucrezia’s wild-hearted nature and her love for and appreciation of art. The painting is also one, he shares, that he has treasured since he was a boy, yet he gives it generously to her. This gesture does much to endear Alfonso to Lucrezia, at first. Even after reading the whole book, I am as unsure as Lucrezia of how to interpret this first gesture. What does Alfonso mean by this? Is he a confident, sly manipulator even in this moment? Or is his psychology two-sided as it sometimes seems to be, so that he is able to be loving and thoughtful with his wife, and then deeply cruel when he is thwarted or challenged, a switch that seems to increasingly occur within a single heartbeat?

One of the most alarming things about Alfonso is his ability to perceive those around him, so precisely, so thoroughly that it seems no small indiscretions, even thoughts that undermine him, will escape his notice. Several of his similarities with Lucrezia seem genuine—and it’s clear that Alfonso spots and celebrates these immediately—namely, their shared love of visual art, and the couple’s appreciation of the evirati who sing transcendently at Ferrara’s court. Both love horses and riding, both dote on Lucrezia’s white mule, and both seem to treasure the freedom of the outdoors, yet each of these are things that Alfonso turns on Lucrezia and seeks to control in her, when it fits his own interests to do so. In a foreboding conversion with Lucrezia’s physician when she has not yet become pregnant after nearly a year of marriage, Alfonso points out the wild, free nature of Lucrezia’s heart, some piece of her that seems wholly independent and impossible to tame. He wonders whether this aspect of her nature might prevent her from getting pregnant, if she might hold off pregnancy through sheer stubbornness of will. Alfonso does accurately see Lucrezia; he knows of that part of her which she strives to keep hidden from him and that he does not, cannot, own. Yet, he attributes their failure to produce an heir to her wildness of spirt, and not—as all evidence seems to indicate through the absence of any children born out of wedlock—to his own biological failure to procreate.

This wild piece of Lucrezia’s spirit is a frequently returned to grounding concept throughout the novel. It seems traceable to her formative childhood experience with the tiger her father buys. Lucrezia is brought along to visit the tigress in the animal sanctuary below their palazzo, and for a moment while her siblings move away to admire the lions, she comes face-to-face with the wild animal and reaches her hand through the bars of the cage and touches its fur. Animal and girl share a moment of recognition, an echo of familiarity between trapped wild beings. Alfonso, in his charming moments, understands this core of Lucrezia, and his spirit seems to be fundamentally wild, like hers. He can be energetic, funny, determined. The physical descriptions of him made me, the reader, fall, too, for his presence, his precision. He seems charismatic, compelling. Yet, even in the early days of their relationship, when they seem in sync at the delizia, Alfonso is keeping Lucrezia in the dark. As they travel to his court after their luxuriously depicted wedding, Alfonso hurries off in response to a letter from court, and without word to Lucrezia, he leaves her to travel alone with Emilia to the villa.

The emotional gap between Alfonso and Lucrezia increasingly widens. Leonello Baldassare, Alfonso’s friend and closest confidante, appears at Alfonso’s side, suspicious of Lucrezia, he dislikes her without knowing her, threatened by her position. Unlike Alfonso, he doesn’t playact at following conventions, and after Lucrezia sees him smash the face of a servant boy who mistakenly dropped some official papers—and Alfonso sides with Leonello, telling Lucrezia not to challenge him in public—Lucrezia is shaken, beginning to glimpse what the two men are collectively capable of. Lucrezia’s spirit first separates itself from her body—a psychological trick she uses throughout her troubled marriage to main a sense of herself, while her body undergoes something horrifying—when she and Alfonso first sleep together. Alfonso repeatedly promises not to hurt her, and then he does. Lucrezia never seems to take pleasure in sex with her husband, and sex grows more traumatizing as she realizes Alfonso’s nature. Even in this first coupling, she sees herself from above, and then she—her spirit—is free, floating outside in the night wind above the villa, while her body stays in the bed.

Lucrezia’s trust of Alfonso is further shaken as the situation with his mother and his sister begins to unravel. Alfonso’s mom wishes to be a Protestant, returning to her religious roots, and she hopes to take his sisters with her to France. Alfonso refuses to let them leave, other than on his terms. Lucrezia hears him telling Baldassare that he will beat them publicly should they attempt to flee. Yet, when they eventually arrive at Alfonso’s court, it is revealed that the mother and the eldest sister have gone to France, and Lucrezia doesn’t know the terms on which this happened. As Lucrezia navigates life at court, and the confusing attentions of Alfonso’s remaining sisters Elisabetta and Nunciata who seem to compete to be in her good graces and have her ear, Alfonso’s dark side is increasingly revealed. He needs to control Lucrezia, who can’t disagree with or disobey him, while he continues to refuse to share any real information with her. These tensions reach a peak with the discovery of Elisabetta and Head Guard Contrari’s affair. Lucrezia needs to learn of these events from Emilia who gathers information from the other servants. Alfonso has Contrari strangled to death in front of Elisabetta. Baldassare performs the act while Alfonso instructs guards to hold his sister so that she must watch. In the wake of this tragedy, Elisabetta tells Lucrezia that she feels sorry for her—while Elisabetta can flee to her other brother’s home, Lucrezia is married to Alfonso and trapped. As their marriage progresses, and no heir has been conceived, Lucrezia, Elisabetta tells her, will be the own who is blamed.

As Lucrezia’s circ*mstances grow more grim, there are two bright shining spots: Emilia and Jacopo. Emilia is the maid who travels with Lucrezia from Florence to Ferrara to care for her particularly. Emilia’s mom was Lucrezia’s wet nurse, and these two girls played together at a young age, cementing a deep bond between them. While Lucrezia loves her immediate family members, it’s the nursery maid Sofia that Lucre wants most to reach out to in her times of need. When Lucrezia does reach out desperately to her mother, her fearful letter is dismissed as overly imaginative. Emilia stays by Lucrezia’s side until the end. At great personal risk to herself, she arrives at the country fortezza where Alfonso has taken Lucrezia to kill her, and she nurses Lucrezia after Alfonso poisons her. There is significant foreshadowing of the possibility that Emilia would die in Lucrezia's place. The girls look alike, and, as part of Lucrezia’s treatments when she does not become pregnant, her hair is cut…to the same length as Emilia’s. The history of their friendship has lead to Emilia being harmed, while Lucrezia experiences a near miss: while they were children playing together in the kitchens, the hot pot fell and scarred Emilia’s face, barely missing Lucrezia. During their time in the castello, Lucrezia realizes that she can don Emilia’s clothes and sneak about and no one will stop her or look twice at a servant girl in a brown dress. Despite this foreshadowed ending, I felt it deeply (Emilia is so likable!) I was shocked that in real time it didn’t occur to Lucrezia that Emilia might be killed in her place. Lucrezia sneaks out and Emilia is left sleeping in Lucrezia’s bed, hair spread over her face. Yet, Emilia’s death likely saved Lucrezia life, as it stopped Alfonso from coming after her. Having smothered to death one girl in his wife’s bed, Alfonso never looked too closely.

Jacopo is one of the two apprentices to the artist Il Bastianino who Alfonso commissions to complete the marriage portrait of his “first duch*ess” (a slip of Alfonso’s tongue). Jacopo and Maurizio arrive at the villa to complete some early sketches, and Lucrezia saves Jacopo’s life when he falls into a mysterious faint by giving him water sweetened with honey. Jacopo is believed to be mute, but it’s revealed that he speaks the Neapolitan dialect that Lucrezia learned from Sofia. The two form a strong connection even before they realize they’re able to communicate with words, and Jacopo proposes a plan for Lucrezia to flee from the fortezza at the end of the book, following Jacopo and Maurizio out of a servants’ door they have left unlocked. Jacopo is just as alluring as Alfonso was at the beginning of the story when he is described by this author. Perhaps it is Lucrezia’s attention to details, her painter’s ability to notice small visual clues, that evokes both of these men so powerfully in my mind’s eye. Jacopo is clearly very different than Alfonso, but he is just as vivid, just as captivating, to both Lucrezia and the reader. He is sharply bright, talented, empathetic. Unlike Alfonso, he knows how to fade into the background and his silence causes others to repeatedly underestimate him. It’s a hopeful ending to see Lucrezia sprinting from the fortezza, escaping to join him.

As I read this book, I was struck that this was taking place in a very similar time period, yet in a different culture on the opposite side of the world, as our book club’s previous choice Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. These books exhibited many of the same themes, and dealt with horrifyingly similar social structures, showcasing how trapped women were by their circ*mstances and their broader cultures, expected to endure whatever at the hands of their husbands. What, for any of these women, would be the alternative? As the threat of Alfonso’s violence escalates, it’s clear that Lucrezia has very little chance for survival, and no realistic options. Lucrezia begins to see the true underside of the castello when she sneaks about in Emilia’s outfit and while she loves this freedom, but she also begins to understand the court’s dark underbelly, and how both her life and the lives of others might be utterly transformed by the cruelty that Alfonso’s gentle veneer hides.

In one of the beautiful metaphors in this novel, Lucrezia feels she has eventually uncovered the “wrong side of the embroidery,” the one with knots and ties, the one showing the work and truth that creates and maintains the false perfection of the side we normally see. While the powerlessness of women in these worlds—the conditioning from their educations to obey, adhere, and follow—is well discussed and well-developed in both books, The Marriage Portrait’s ending feels more modern. The ending is not unforgiving, and it does not forget the brutal power of men in charge (look at poor Emilia’s fate), but is allows for imaginative alternatives, the possibility of a happy ending. In another memorable metaphor, the concept of the overpainting and the underpainting, a technique Lucrezia repeatedly uses in her artwork, is used to develop the possibility of a hidden under-story. The truth we know from history may be only the overpainting. This hopeful ending affirms Lucrezia’s spirit, and wishes the best for a character who was always painted with that deep wildness about her, that precious part of her heart which could not be tamed. This ending is a cathartic processing of dark history, through which the author hopes for a better, hidden story for a girl who died far too young.

I’ve anticipated reading this book for months! I first heard about The Firekeeper’s Daughter from a co-worker who arrived to work one morning looking irregularly harried. She’s normally well put-together and organized, but this morning she showed up late, hair tangled, eyes blood shot. When I cautiously asked her if she was okay, she said, “yes, but oh my god, I stayed up all night reading this book!” I, of course, immediately asked what book it was, and the answer was The Firekeeper’s Daughter, which she had made the “mistake” of starting the previous evening. Another coworker of ours promptly read it, with a similar experience, and also raved about it. I somehow never got around to the book during the school year, but—in those intervening months—it was chosen as one of our high school’s summer reads for students and faculty. Without having read it, I signed up to lead one of the discussion groups on the book, so I excitedly dove in this summer.

I knew, as I discussed this book with students selecting their summer read, what some of the key themes would be: racial and cultural identity, the indigenous experience, the violence all women—and particularly indigenous women—face at the hands of men. I was particularly motivated to recommend this book to young male students; it felt like an important book for them to read, and one that would engage them through the mystery plot and backdrop of sports culture, while also exposing them to the experiences of a teenage girl that would be essential for them to empathetically consider. I like to talk about hockey with a certain set of my male students, so this book was an “easy sell” to these students, and I’m curious to hear about their experiences reading this. I plan to take some hockey pucks to our book discussion, so everyone can reflect on how familiarity with the weight of a hockey puck is a key point in solving the crimes at the center of this novel. I think this is a perfect summer read for high schoolers, as it will lead to fruitful and nuanced discussions.

[PLOT SPOILERS BELOW]

I recommended this book strongly to students before I read it myself, and I was glad to see the nuanced development of the key themes, paired with energetic writing, and a “gasp-out-loud” plot. There were also aspects of the book that surprised me, and played out in different ways than I expected, which was wonderful. I loved how the first fifty pages “lulled you into a false sense of security” with “this is a normal YA book” energy. Then, in the wake of Lily and Travis’s deaths, the book pivoted to reveal the truth about Jamie’s identity and his job in Sault Sainte Marie working for the FBI and BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs). This sequence of the book had me on the edge of my seat (quite literally). I had anticipated Lily’s death—Travis is such an ominous figure, equally addicted to drugs and to Lily’s emotional support—but I expected a more localized drama to play out, one dealing with the emotional repercussions of violence toward women, instead of the high-drama of a FBI and BIA drug bust and Daunis’s role as a Confidential Informant. To center this plot on the action and mystery felt like a powerful choice, as the themes of racial and cultural identity and sexism were still ever-present, but they became the fabric of the setting rather than the plot focus. I think this will be critical in engaging a diverse audience, and impacting readers’ thinking about race and gender on a foundational level. It’s unfortunate that this may be true (why can’t diverse readers engage simply because they’re not familiar with a particular cultural experience?), but also reveals author Angeline Boulley’s thoughtful approach. She has crafted a mainstream YA story that deliberately shows an indigenous female protagonist engaged in a contemporary adventure, which includes—and is inextricably tied to—her identity, but does not limit her story to this topic.

Once this first pivot occurs in the book, a thread of tension and anxiety runs through the rest of the novel until its resolution. From the point onward, Daunis understands that she should question her assumptions about those around her, that she should cautiously consider who to trust. Yet even this awareness is not enough to fully protect her, to stop her from being surprised and betrayed when people she loves are not who they seemed to be. Daunis faces betrayal at close quarters: her brother Levi, his mom Dana, and her beloved Coach Bobby are all tied up in the meth operation in Sault Ste Marie. Others are involved too, who are less surprising: the shady, entitled white Edwards family’s behavior immediately raises Daunis’s suspicion. Yet, in one of the most starkly jarring moments of the novel, the characters Mike and his father Call-Me-Grant Edwards are still “at large” at the end of the book, despite their crimes. We feel their crimes on an immediate and visceral level, particular Grant’s grotesque sexual assault of Daunis, which occurs on tribal lands (premeditated on his part) and is, therefore, not punishable by federal law. Instead of Mike and Grant, it is the indigenous characters who face the consequences. These consequences are not ill-fit; Levi’s actions, in particular, are shocking and harmful (I felt how Daunis was particularly haunted by his choice to ask Travis to take the fall for him a few years earlier when he blinded a woman with a BB gun). Yet, it’s clear that both truths can coexist; the indigenous characters involved in the drug ring can deserve retribution, and they can disproportionately bear the brunt of the Federal government’s punishments for the harm caused by the meth drug ring.

Loyalty and truth work in mysterious ways, however. Despite how often Daunis is suspicious of Jamie, and reminds herself that he has already hidden his true self from her and gone so far as to propose the strategy of getting close to her when the FBI and BIA began their investigation, Jamie proves himself to be honest, overly-invested, and deeply committed to Daunis and their relationship (perhaps too committed, as Daunis maturely realizes at the end of the novel). Stormy Nodin, too, stands against his closest friends Levi and Mike and helps Jamie, but—at the same time—refuses to speak and condemn Levi for his role as the drug mule in the meth ring. Daunis’s mother is quietly supportive throughout, in a way Daunis grows to increasingly appreciate; where once she was frustrated by her mother’s passivity in the face of her demanding parents, Daunis comes to see the strength in her mother’s quiet devotion. Her aunt Teddie is more obviously the strong women Daunis herself strives to be, and this puts the two at odds while Daunis keeps secrets and works with the FBI and BIA (two federal groups who, Daunis acknowledges, have very rarely had indigenous peoples’ best interests at heart).

In one of my favorite moments of the book, it’s the loyalty of the tribal Elders that matters most in a critical moment. When Levi is taking Daunis back to the mainland from Sugar Island, three Elders coordinate a daring rescue. Seeney Nimkee, Minnie Manitou, and Jonsy Kewadin block in Levi’s car and help Daunis escape. Their awareness of others in need, the bond they have built over the time Daunis has spent with them when she takes Granny June to the Elder Center, and their quick thinking in this moment dramatically change the course of events. I love how they might have been easily underestimated—and likely were by someone like Levi, who, handed much of what he has wanted from a young age and treated like a demigod by his hockey community, is disinclined to think beyond his frame of reference. Yet, the slow, patient work Daunis has done with her community results both in them supporting her application to join the tribe, despite her father being left off her birth certificate, and in their understanding that she is in the car with her own brother against her will and orchestrating her rescue on the ferry boat. It’s a poignant testimony to the importance of community trust and collaboration, and to the book’s exploration of how power is used for either ill or for good.

One surprising aspect of this novel was that Daunis’s inter-racial identity was less of a focus than I expected. While she does need to undergo special consideration to join the tribe, and the disdain her Fontaine grandparents had for their precious daughter’s choice to date Levi Firekeeper (the elder) is mentioned, Daunis doesn’t exist between two cultures. In Sault Sainte Marie, these communities often meld into one complex cultural space. Discriminatory statements are made against the indigenous Ojibwe people, and ignorance abounds, but this is the backdrop and not a source of conflict for Daunis herself. She is whole-heartedly Anishinaabe. Instead, the character for whom identity is a question is Jamie. Adopted out of his tribe, Jamie is struggling to find his Cherokee people and reconnect with them. He has real questions for Daunis about exceptions that are made for adults around tribal membership. This choice to de-emphasize an identity struggle for Daunis felt like part of the author’s project to create a fresh story with an indigenous protagonist. While stories by indigenous writers published by big name literary presses are still few and far between, those that have been picked up and distributed often focus on identity, on historical conflicts, on cultural roots for young people today, or on the suffering and drug addiction on reservations. I appreciated how The Firekeeper’s Daughter could acknowledge the existence of all these things, but not make them the focus, instead giving Daunis an adventure story that focused on her cleverness and her connections with her community.

The Firekeeper’s Daughter is a figure who exists in Anishinaabe lore. This is, of course, also who Daunis literally is; her father’s family plays the role in their community of lighting and protecting the ceremonial fires. In the traditional stories, the Firekeeper’s Daughter has the job of raising the sun each day, and Daunis resents her passivity in this story. Daunis, at various points in the book, exhibits a kind of unforgiving (and limited) feminism, as she has a particular idea of what feminine strength ought to look like. We see this is her dismissal of her mother’s passivity, her routinely scathing comments about “the anglerfish” (the term she uses for the girls who date hockey players and seem to desperately latch onto them), and her enthusiasm about joining her aunt’s Blanket Party early on in the novel (as she sees this as a group of powerful women enacting a punishment). All of this thinking is challenged at points in the book, particularly her appreciation that a Blanket Party is not an empowering activity, but a response to tragedy, something all the women involved wish would die out and cease in its need to exist. I felt least satisfied by the challenges to Daunis’s thinking about the anglerfish. There are moments when she is surprised by these other young women—by their inclusivity and kindness to her once she is “dating” Jamie, for example—but I would have loved to see them, just as underestimated as the Elders, make a similar move and use their collective power (a kind of power that is harder for Daunis to see and understand) to support each other, their community, and their futures. The anglerfish feel like Daunis’s blind spot, in spite of her feminism. She is quick to act dismissive of them, rather than critique the patriarchal system that offers so few choices and so little support to young women that one of the roles that they feel able to play is one that relies on and caterers to men (furthermore, some or many of these women may be engaged in more nuanced relationships than Daunis would assume).

Despite Daunis’s frustrations with the legend of the Firekeeper’s Daughter (who doesn’t even get her own name in her own story), the book as a whole takes on this title, alluding, perhaps, to Daunis’s role as someone who brings light to her tribe, who shines an exposing spotlight on a secret and hurtful heart of the community. Her name even sounds like “dawn.” One of my favorite aspects of this book was the routine of Daunis’s morning prayer, as she releases semaa and asks for a particular blessing, whether it’s courage or honesty or love that she needs for that day. The routine of her morning prayer creates a through-line through the novel, but it also grounds Daunis. I could see her processing her experiences and feeling more deliberate in her actions. It inspired me, and made me consider a similar approach, inspired by Daunis, but drawing on my background and traditions. It felt like a powerful and meaningful way to begin each day, and I’m grateful for the self-awareness Daunis’s actions encouraged. She was so thoroughly developed as a character; I felt like I got to know her as a real, rather than fictional, person.

One of the most fun aspects of this book was its engagement with the fake dating trope. This is often an overwrought trope in which the premise on which two characters fake date seems shaky at best. When Daunis agrees to be a confidential informant for the FBI and BIA, and to pose in a relationship with undercover agent Jamie, I chuckled aloud about how convincing this fake dating premise actually was. Yes, it was absurd, as fake dating always is, but it was a surprisingly practical reason to fake date, with real and high stakes in being caught. Daunis’s Uncle David, the previous CI, had already turned up dead with meth planted on him, and I assumed at this point that he had been discovered and murdered (although it’s later theorized that he took too much meth in order to commit suicide, once he had been discovered by the meth drug ring). Daunis and Jamie’s fake dating, despite being surprisingly essential and serious, also allows the novel to play around with the romantic aspects of the trope, as Daunis and Jamie grow closer while they pose as a couple and navigate which aspects of their connection are real and which are fake. The end of their story, in which Daunis tells Jamie that they each need to be healthy on their own, was a satisfying resolution. It felt both romantic and realistic. It’s clear both of them hope and long for a reunion someday, when they are each in a better and more stable place. However, Daunis has learned from Lily and her mature words to Travis. It’s not love, she knows, if someone is deeply and unhealthily dependent on their partner. In telling Jamie that he needs to be healthy on his own first, Daunis is standing up for herself and for their relationship. And while this appears painful for Jamie, he also understands it, and walks away. The book ends with the promise of healing for many scales, as the tribal council makes changes, the drug ring has been broken up, Daunis makes plans to study both science and tribal medicine, and in the final scene Daunis burns peonies with the other women who are victims of sexual assault and dances a special dance to remember those whose lives were cut too short.

This month’s read for my family’s Anti-Racism Book Club, Lot, is a compelling, well-crafted portrait of place, family, and the immigrant experience. Somewhere between novel and short story collection, these chapters shift point of view, blending the larger narrative of protagonist Nicolás with other stories from his neighborhood. While the perspectives vary, similar themes unite the work, particularly discussion of queer identity and the intersectional experience of young, gay, men of color. The author’s narrative tone and style is confident, visceral, and stark at every turn, while still exhibiting transcendent moments of love, beauty, and hope against a dark canvas of poverty, infidelity, drug addiction, and violence. The writing uses untranslated Spanish—a literary move I appreciate, as it makes insiders and outsiders of the readers themselves. You know when you are or are not the ideal audience. You know if this book is both for you and deeply not for you as a reader.

The interwoven narratives and the shifting of points of view was, at times, confusing. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that Nicolás’s narrative was spaced out every other story, and we were often cued in to his narrative through the mention of his family members: Jan, Javi, and his Black mother and Jamaican father. One section of Nicolás’s story is told from Jan’s point of view, capturing another angle on the same family. I read the entirety of Chris’s story (with older sister Nikki, and cousin Gloria) thinking that this was the same narrative point of view, and later on I had to look back and sort this out. While this was confusing, it had an interesting effect of blending characters and experiences. Nicolás’s narrative was also out of order and circled throughout his memories. The threading together of all these experiences meant that the book as a whole felt less like a portrait of a family or a plot arc for a single protagonist—all though I felt the presence of these elements—than a portrait of the concept of “shared ground” (ground is shared, literary, in this Houston neighborhood, but also figuratively in the common threads in the experiences of these characters.)

Nicolás’s plot arc does end with hope (a lot more hope than is contained in some of the other narratives). His name is not revealed until the final story, which focuses on his blossoming love with Miguel, and the possibility that he might be able to trust again, to open his heart to another person after lifelong experiences of broken trust with his family members. At the same time, this is not some kind of heroic “make it out” story, which is also a tension that appears in other characters narratives: TeDarus and his buddy Mix drop out of community college; Avery takes young teen Raúl under his wing, but then stops showing up for their drug distribution route; Poke moves in with Emil, but is unable to save his friend Rod from the streets. Don’t make the mistake, this book seems to be saying, of assuming we’re telling the heroic story, the one where someone is an exception and not the rule, the one were miracles happen, the one where people overcome and escape their very natures. The terrible power of circ*mstances, of utter lack of resources, of no perceived alternatives is clear: “there’s the world you live in, and then there are constellations around it, and you’ll never know you’re missing them if you don’t even know to look up.” Yet, these stories—the familiar, the everyday, the common, the shared—are just as worthy of being told as the miraculous exceptions. This is an important project of the book as a whole.

Despite the fatalistic nature of life in this neighborhood—where it might feel like everyone, eventually, is pulled into drugs, just scrapping by financially, normalizing violence and abuse—there is real and tangible life and hope in these stories. One of my favorite stories was Bayou, in which two young men discover an injured, earth-bound chupacabra. Sprung from the pages of Latin American folklore, the chupacabra, in such a realistic book, is surely a suggestion of these kids’ imaginations, an unusually large dog playing tricks on their minds. But then, at the end of story, the chupacabra is very real; its brethren run to collect it, and the two young men stand in shocked awe of their presence. They weren’t able to share their discovery with either the local news or an ex-girlfriend (those who they want most to impress), but these witnessed the fantastical. I loved this twist, which put me in mind of the transcendence of the mongoose in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The gritty realism of the hurt chupacabra that the boys collect made me think of Gabriel García Márquez’s brilliant short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.

Change is also a threatening and driving force in this book. As much as the theme of “being stuck” pervades these pages, so does the forward march of time and the process of change that is out of the narrators’ control. The gentrification of this neighborhood seeps into the book as Nicolás ages. In a cringey moment, a whiteboy (always written like this) date tells him he’s “living in history.” The impact of hurricanes—Harvey, Rita—is cataloged, showing how the damage to this impoverished area spells the end of a way of life—of a once vibrant cultural community—that was hanging on by only a thread to stability. Nicolás struggles with being the one who remains, at his family home and in the neighborhood, as the demographics change: “and when I was gone, that’d be it—that would be the end of our story.” There is a fatalistic sense of the passage of time, as powerful as the fatalistic sense that Nicolás and Miguel both experience that they will never leave, that they can’t even choose this option, even when they—logistically—could.

In addition to Bayou, my favorite of the stories was Waugh, the story about Poke, Rod, and their ring of young male prostitutes. While this story, on the surface, was one of the most grim, one that revealed the dark underbelly of the neighborhood and a level of desperation to which Nicolás never fell, it was also poignant and devastating. Poke’s middle-aged lover Emil is a figure with a lot of hope; he doesn’t pressure Poke to be something he’s not and he consistently treats the boy like a human being. Their story ends with real hope for their bond—although also with the possibility that things will fall apart and Poke will be right back where he started. The strongest cause for hope is Emil’s backstory, which reveals the stakes for him in showing care to Poke. Emil’s story about his family fleeing their country (that doesn’t exist anymore), and watching his dad and uncle shot on the side of the road, while his mother took the wheel and took her children to safety will continue to weigh on me. You feel, in the narration of this story, that Emil understands abuse and violence and loss in a different way than the “johns” Poke works for. Yet, Poke is unable to find Rod—his friend, his fellow prostitute who has fallen sick—at the end of story. While perhaps Poke “made it out,” Rod doesn’t, and perhaps Rod’s choice to not join Poke at Emil’s house will be part of Poke’s successful escape. We’re left to wonder this, while Rod certainly believed that he could not impinge on Emil’s kindness and Poke’s delicate position with him.

Another moment of deep tragedy is Avery seeing his son strung out on drugs at the end of Avery and Raúl’s story, South Congress. Avery, an older drug dealer, takes the young undocumented teen Raúl under his wing. Avery seems to have real hop, in spite of his circ*mstances. He asks Raúl about his plans for the future. A lot of Avery’s hope rests on his estranged son, who has been raised by the boy’s mother. Avery expresses conviction that his son could “get out,” proud he was a college kid, with a different kind of future. Then, they see him: on the street, completely drugged out of his mind. Furious, Avery beats him, and then he disappears from his and Raúl’s drug circuit. A later mention of a Raúl working at the restaurant where Nicolás and Miguel work made me hope that Raúl’s fortunes slightly improved, but this—like so much in these stories—is no guarantee.

These stories embody and express complex nuances, insisting on both change and stasis, agency and entrapment, hope and failure. One such nuanced relationship is that between protagonist Nicolás and his older brother Javi. When Javi dies halfway through the book, I found this to be so sad. It’s made clear that Nicolás doesn’t want to sell the restaurant because he doesn’t want anything to change, because if nothing changes maybe his brother will somehow, miraculously, return. At the same time, despite Nicolás’s love for and dependency on his brother, Javi is incredibly abusive and deeply unaccepting of Nicolás. But Nicolás still loves him. I felt Javi’s death through Nicolás, felt the tragedy of the loss despite rationally understanding the terribleness of Javi’s as a brother. This showed how much narrative proximity to Nicolás’s character is developed throughout the book, even as the broader portrait of the neighborhood is painted.

Appropriately, Nicolás reflects in the final story on the essential nature of the self, and how we each are what we have to live with: “You bring yourself wherever you go. You are the one thing you can never run out on.” As a character who has tried desperately to avoid looking at certain aspects of his life, his decisions, and his emotions, this self-realization is poignant and is what left me with the most hope at the end of the book. No one is exempt from facing themselves, just like no one is exempt from certain risks, whether these be drug addiction, familial death and loss, or mental illness. While there is a disproportionate number of hardships facing those low socio-economic and non-white racial backgrounds, there is also the fundamental nature and experience of being human, which includes tragedy. As I read this book, I thought: some people get lost so far in themselves that they can’t figure out the way back out. And this could happen to anyone. At the end of the book, we see Nicolás symbolically and literally at the edge of the sea and land, trying to do exactly this—find his way back out of himself, so that he can open himself up to love again.

Han Kang does it again! And I am obliterated every single time.

Of the Han Kang novels I’ve read, this one felt the most hopeful, and also the most personally relevant to me. I think this is because the focus is literary and linguistic: the painful power of words, the impossibility of creating them, the tension between witnessing the world and embodying a self—these central themes are questions and confusions I have also confronted throughout my life. Both characters, therefore, felt relatable in a way that is not the norm for my encounters with Han Kang characters. That being said, both characters are pushed to their emotional extremes through situations I can’t relate to: growing blindness and silence. Yet, the questions that come from these experiences felt familiar (and perhaps there are things in my life and my nature that have led me to a similar set of questions).

As is always the case, I barely know where to start with writing about a Han Kang novel, as the individual threads of the book, and even individual words and phrases, are so powerful and charged as to send my thinking and feelings off into so many different directions. I’m glad, at least, to be writing this sitting at a table in a sunlight-infused cabin, by myself, with a beautiful view of saturated green trees in Bancroft, Ontario. This was a great book to read on my self-designated “writer’s retreat,” as it is so deeply introspective and so centering in the types of concerns I share as a writer and human being.

Early on in my reading, I quickly began a kind of meta-analysis, tracking symbols and relevance to the process of literary creation. Yet, this is something that Han Kang cautions us against, I believe. In the very beginning of the novel, the Greek lecturer describes the symbol of the sword that Borges requested on death’s door be used as his epitaph, and which was taken by critics to be a symbolic key to unpacking Borges’s writing. Yet, the Greek lecturer feels this request to be far more personal, not a key to one’s career and creation, but a key to one’s self: it’s the sword that calves the world from self. Is Han Kang cautioning us in this moment against the appeal of symbolic analysis? Reminding us that sometimes symbols are not charged with literary power, but personal resonance? Sometimes objects just are; they are not symbols at all… We make symbols of our own objects and memories, like we make narratives to understand and articulate ourselves…and that can be dangerous. My instinct to search for and read for symbols is so deep, just as it is to make them of my own life, that I know I cannot resist this process in my reading of this novel. However, I did want to state that I recognize this as an approach, and not, inherently, the right or best one through which to read books and to read one’s own life. I think Han Kang might struggle with a similar tension…how are we both embracing this understanding of language (isn’t language inherently symbolic?) and rejecting it? Like our silent protagonist student, the terror of words quickly overwhelms as we start to confront the inherent contradictions in speaking or writing at all…

This caveat being given (weak, weak), I jump into my analysis. Does the original impulse of this novel come out of writer’s block for the author? It’s terrifying to reach inside and find no words. It’s terrifying to spit out words, to force them out. It’s terrifying to look at each word and find it to be so deeply insufficient for the complex concept/emotion it is supposed incapsulate. It’s terrifying to try honestly and still be misunderstood. It’s terrifying to realize the harmful power of words, where even a small mistake can cause devastation…and what would happens if you tried to harness that harm into language? Irreversible. What is the response but to retreat into silence?

Yet, in the face of this crisis of language, there is true fascination with language and words. The descriptions of tenses in Greek unlock layers of articulation, the parting of roads under sheets of ice. The way Greek’s “middle voice” operates, referring to the self, reflexive, inspires a meditation on impact and change. Just so, the concepts in words become the concepts in our selves, or the reverse. To change something is to change the self, the Greek lecturer reflects, and he applies this to love/foolishness (recalling his first love that went south when he spoke a question he should not have asked). Love/foolishness: two sides of the same coin in which his foolishness destroys love and love destroys his foolishness (himself). The student (neither protagonist is ever given a name—perhaps names are too personal, too specific and insufficient) feels a similar fascination with the structure and nature of language, as it was a singular new word, bibliothèque, that drew her out of her silence as a teenager, that gave her words again. She pays attention to grammar, to language itself, to the act of translation. Both the Greek lecturer and the student have this in common, although the Greek lecturer longs more for literature, for narrative, for world (as it fades from his eyes, as it is relegated to dreams and memories). The student exists in a more immediate and practical sphere, experiencing the necessity of language itself.

This difference in desire is reflected in the narrative structures of the interwoven stories of both protagonists. The Greek lecturer’s sections take a direct “you” address to different figures in his life: his first love, his sister, his best friend in college. Each of these letters (missives, unsent) captures an array of memories and a portrait of deep love, which sustained and drove him. Each is also infused with tragedy and loss—the break-up with his first love after he asked her to speak, using the experiences she had at speech therapy as a young deaf child; the distance from his sister after he moved back to South Korea from Germany; the death of his college friend at age thirty-eight—and in unfolding each confessional, it is clear how much the Greek lecturer wants to say to each of these people. Some is shared, much is left unsaid. His is a different kind of silence.

The portrait of sibling-hood in the section addressed to the sister moved me deeply, both in its portrait of connection and in its individual lines: “it was in the company of your scowling, crying, laughing face that my childhood cracked, broke, was put back together unharmed, and so passed” (pg. 73). These siblings understand each other deeply, beyond language, having passed through their alienation in “togetherness.” This section—and the description of the shock of the father’s loss of eyesight, the Greek lecturer’s dread of his future—made me remember something I don’t think about often (I think I blocked it from my mind) that happened maybe seven or eight years ago. My younger sister had a disturbing eye doctor appointment and, for a brief time, we all thought she was going to go blind. During the two or three weeks until her follow-up, she wore dark sunglasses every time we went outside. I recall the devastation of this news—it was a kind of tragedy I would have never seen (ah) coming. I thought a lot at the time about how my sister was so fundamentally someone who saw the world; I thought about her life-long love of colors, visual art, drawing and painting, and her field work as a scientist in which she excelled at identifying plants, particularly grasses with nuances in green that no one else could see. She lived with, honed, and internalized an advanced ability to see and transmute her seeing—through details, lines, colors, and shapes—into both art and science. Seeing was part of her identity. Who would she be without this? The happy ending of this story is my sister had only a fleeting condition and the first optometrist she visited was overly dire. Her eyes recovered fully. It feels impossible to imagine the inverse narrative, and yet I did for a brief window of time.

While the Greek lecturer’s story hinges on introspective accounts of memories, the story of the student is revealed to us in little practical bursts: she has recently lost her mother (to cancer) and her son (in a legal battle with her ex-husband). She experienced a similar silence as a teenager, so that when she cannot force out the next word as she lectures at the blackboard her first thought is, it’s happening again. Throughout the book—until the very end—she is silent, and her sections are written in third-person, as if experiencing her life externally. Her words that we do hear, that she says “from a deeper place than throat and tongue,” are italicized and few. When she begins to communicate with the Greek lecturer by writing on his palm, her words are focused on practicalities, caring for him and helping him. This practicality feels both part of her nature and a part of the minimalist relationship she has developed with words. Words are, for her, so deeply buried that she can’t speak even to say her child’s name. She can’t speak in order to stand up for her son when he tells her he’s going away for a year, as his father has planned. In this moment, the language she wishes to use on her ex-husband is violent, angry. Which thing, I wondered, between silence and fury is powerlessness? In silence, we cannot defend ourselves. In anger, the words take over us and, bursting into the world, cut in ways that are terrible and unforeseen and final. We’re at the mercy of words. I wondered whether her silence (a removal of language) was an attempt to buffer herself from feeling? If we cannot put voice to feelings, does silence destroy feelings, just as feelings destroy silence (another set of reflexive inverses, interlocked, and self-impacting)? She dreams, in horror, of a singular word that contains all language. This is not a promising possibility, but a kind of nuclear bomb of language, with the power for infinite destruction if unleashed. This is the thinking of someone who understands how powerful and central language inherently is to ourselves.

When her therapist attributes her silence to the recent losses in her life, the student says, “it’s more than that” about her silence, but throughout the novel the losses of her child and her mother seem so acute. Later, the memory of the violent words her husband said to her—labeling her as insane, a “crazy bitch,” and ill-fit to care for her child—are recalled. She doesn’t want to remember this and she doesn’t want to feel the emotions of that memory. She also recalls the violence with which she wanted to respond in that moment, and the words cutting her up inside before they ever had a chance to get out. This memory may be the heart of her silence, yet, it is, as she herself shared, so much more complex than any one moment: an all-encompassing realization of the terrible nature of language.

While the unfamiliar and awe-inspiring grammar and structure of the Greek language is what the student seeks as a cure to her silence, time is also given in this book to the content of the writings of Plato and the philosophy of Socrates. These two thinkers form a compelling backdrop for this book, and the Greek lecturer views them as key thinkers that he circles around and around, facing his impending darkness. The Greek lecturer demonstrates the nearly identical verbs in Greek: to suffer and to learn. In pointing out their visual and aural proximity, the Greek lecturer points out how Socrates brings these words together, asking us to see the similarities in their actions. This was one of many moments in the first part of this book that reminded me of BTS (thinking here of RM’s word play with live/love in Trivia: Love). This was the point at which I realized this wasn’t a new Han Kang book—just a new translation—and she actually wrote this back in 2011. So, I came to conclusion that I just see BTS in it (the organizing narrative/symbolism of my brain), although perhaps RM has read this book. I found it interesting to consider Socrates’s famous reframe and philosophical position, “I know nothing,” as the basis for this book…beginning from a state of “knowing nothing” is an approach that takes the teeth out of words and language, by positioning oneself as not an authority or cause, but as a recipient or effect. Yet, I think Plato was the more central philosopher for the Greek lecturer. His longing for the “Forms” of things, of Beauty, which can only be understood cognitively and not seen in this world seems like a poignant obsession for the thoughts of a man on the brink of blindness. And the Greek lecturer is, like my sister, a man so in love with sight, with seeing, with imagery, with the visuals of the world: his memory of the beauty of the Buddha’s Birthday night, when he sat underneath the strings of lanterns with his mother and sister, and which he tries to revisit years later, is his most formative early memory.

During the Buddha’s birthday scene, I reflected on my life-long impulse to write. I think I have encountered writing as a response to the kind of desperation brought on by the sublime that the Greek lecturer experiences in this scene. What are we to do with those transcendent moments that haunt and transform us? That seem beyond our ability to contain inside ourselves? That will drive us to insanity, we fear, if we just hold them inside. I’ve tried to write that feeling out of myself. I’ve tried to transmute that experience I had into words. I have treated my writing as alchemy. I have tried to state change the memory moment into language. I have tried to reach across the “separateness of persons” and will that memory moment into you, or at least summon up your parallel moment with identical feelings. There is a similar self-intrinsic need to speak for Plato who the novel describes once as “know[ing] this is a dangerous soliloquy, that he is, in fact, answering his own question, as do we who are reading” (pg. 85). Writing feels like trying get into some impossible space, to leap and hope you find the parachute on the way down. For the Greek lecturer, like for Plato, words remain the impulse, as what else can he use to search for answers in the face of gigantic questions? For the student, words are smothered by the questions, by the horror of the answers. Both understandings of language can coexist.

The student remembers a kaleidoscope she made in school as a child, and she uses this memory to explain the way the worlds appears to her—“fragmented, each piece distinct and separate” (pg. 91)—once she loses words. I began to treat the kaleidoscope as the symbolic key to this text, operating like the scholar of Borges who I mentioned above. Han Kang writes, “The shards of memories shift and form patterns. Without particular context, without overall perspective or meaning. They scatter; suddenly, decisively, they come together” (pg. 92). Yet, borrowing the Greek lecturer’s interpretation of Borges’s epitaph as deeply personal, I strove to see the kaleidoscope symbol operating on a personal level in addition to a literary one. As the Greek lecturer writes to his loved ones, and accumulates their memories by jumping around in space and time, the structure of the writing mirrors the fragmentation of a kaleidoscope, making a point of the structure of memories contained within a singular being. Yet, isn’t it the very self, too, that is in fractals? Fascinatingly, as the Greek lecturer and the student arrive at his home and he begins to tell her the stories of his life, her memories, too, start to interweave and intersperse, again like the fracturing effect of a kaleidoscope.

While the first half of the novel assembles the characters and their situations, like a reverse kaleidoscope effect of bringing the pieces together, it is the sprint to the finish—after the bird incident, when our two protagonists come together—that is so powerful. I had to read the second half of this novel in one sitting because the momentum builds, like two magnets drawn closer and closer together, invisibly and forcefully. As one being, our two protagonists navigate the world together, pairing an outpouring of words with close observation, pairing dream-like intensity with practical reality. In this scene, they remind me of a poem by Mary Szybist called The Cathars Etc.:

The Cathars Etc.By Mary Szybistloved the spirit mostso to remind them of the ways of the flesh,those of the old godtook one hundred prisoners and cut offeach noseeach pair of lipsand scooped out each eyeuntil just one eye on one man was leftto lead them home.People did that, I say to myself,a human hand lopping at a man's noseover and over with a dull bladethat could not then slicethe lips cleanbut like an old can opener, pushedinto skin, sawedthe soft edges, working each lipslowly off asboth men heavily, intimatelybreathed.My brave believer, in my private re-enactments,you are one of them. I pick up in the aftermath where you're being ledby ropeby the one with the one good eye.I'm one of the women at the edge of the hillwatching you stagger magnificently,unsteadily back.All your faces are tender with holesstarting to darken and scaband I don't understand how you couldbelieve in anything that muchthat is not me.The man with the eye pulls youforward.You're in the square now.The women are hysterical,the men are making terrible soundsfrom unclosable mouths.And I don't know if I can do it, if I can toucha lipless face that mightlean down, instinctively,to try to kiss me.White rays are falling through the clouds.You are holding that imbecile rope.You are waiting to be claimed.What do I love more than thisimage of myself?There I am in the square walking toward youcalling you out by name.

Poetry is the right place to go during this unspooling of the novel, during this near-magical coming together of the protagonists into one strange, incredible, better being. The interspersing or memories and dreams becomes stranger…the student leaves, and the lecturer’s memories become dreams. She returns and the descriptions grow even more fragmented, like poetry in their structure— solitary words in a line down the page. Is this spaced-out writing mirroring what the lecturer’s eyesight has become—fragmented, seeking space for clarity—like the concept of writing in the dark that the novel describes, handwriting with cautious extra space, so that no lines overlap, so that each word can be understood? The logic of this novel, whether kaleidoscope or sword, linguistic or literary, is inherently deeply poetic, I feel.

The novel’s ending is stunning as the protagonists progress into a hopeful interwoven state, described like rising to the surface of a lake. And, on the final page, we resolve with a section labeled 0 and, for the first time, narration is included in the first person point of view of the student. Language seems to bubble up in her in this final moment, in a reclamation of herself, but the book ends and we are left to interpret, to reach our own conclusions, in silence. It’s a powerful ending that feels less literal than gestural and emotional. I think there is so much I could get out of this book from re-reading it, from reading it in reverse, from reading it out of order. It raises more questions than it supplies answers, but it does demonstrate a central enduring faith in human connection, which both relies on and rejects language in order to be born, to bloom.

This was the July book for my “Words with Friends” book club, and it’s the first one—in a while, because of the busy end of the academic school year—that I’ve been able to read at a leisurely pace (my preferred reading pace of “reading every word,” in hard copy book format, and letting the language and imagery soak into my brain). In terms of language and imagery, this book was a good one to digest, but there were also some strange aspects of this book, particularly as a book marketed on feminist ideals (well, at the very least a book, in the title itself, celebrating female friendships and support networks). I’m glad I got to discuss this with my friends’ book club, as aspects of my thinking were challenged, illuminated, and refined through that process. I think I ended this book with a strange kind of disquiet that I wasn’t quite able to articulate, and the discussion process helped me parse these areas of concern and areas of enjoyment.

Areas of concern:

Racial ambiguity of the author: Early in my reading of the novel, I noted the author’s photo on the back flap of the book where she appears white, or white passing. I read the bio and concluded that she was Chinese American, given the accolades she has received from the Chinese American community and focus of all of her work on Chinese identity and history topics. At our book club, my friends were quick to point out that she is one-eighth Chinese, which I then read about on her Wikipedia page. We reached the general consensus that what is strange about this is the “left to ambiguity” nature of her race. Her work on China is scholarly and well-researched. I don’t think I would be concerned to read this book written by a white person. It feels respectful and realistic. I felt this, but also noted this was something that my non-white friends in the book club also felt. (I can see there could be disagreement on this, but it is at least a distinct problem from that of the racial ambiguity at play in this situation.) What’s odd, to me, is the space left for the reader assume that the author IS Chinese (which is exactly what I did, probably helped along by my unwillingness to question anyone’s statement of their racial identity. The author, though, doesn’t claim a racial identity directly. Her bio mentions the history of her “Chinese American family” and her works’ accolades from Chinese American organizations. All of this suggests a racial identity, but it’s not quite the one I would assume if some said “I am Chinese American.” Are we supposed to be assuming more “Chineseness” that the author knows we would assume if we knew she had only one great-grandparent who was Chinese? What is the motivation in letting readers assume more “Chineseness”? Has this ambiguity benefitted the author’s career, income, and reputation? (If so, that seems like the real heart of the problem.)

Internalization of the “rules for women”: This book begins, and ends, with a focus on education. Throughout the novel, women learn by repeating lessons (often word-for-word) learned from other women. These lessons sometimes come in the form of adages or proverbs, which are applied to everyday life, as well as guiding principles for living and decision-making. These lessons reveal the central tenets by which women and men understood gender roles and the nature of the two sexes at the time. The protagonist Yunxian internalizes and lives by these rules. She does not question them. There are glimmers of moments in the book in which other women do. One of my favorites of these was Miss Chen’s critique of men during the smallpox outbreak in their household; she argues that men—who travel and frequent taverns and whor*houses—bring these diseases home to their vulnerable families in the inner chambers. Yunxian, interestingly, instead blames mothers who do not vaccinate their children through smallpox planting methods. One aspect of my book club discussion that helped my understanding of this aspect of Yunxian’s characterization was the centering of Yunxian’s socio-economic status within our discussions. Yunxian experiences more privilege than nearly every woman around her. Within a system that she has been educated to believe in and which elevates her in real and meaningful ways in terms of socio-economic resources, she has much less reason to reflect on and critique this system. That the criticism we do hear is spoken by women of different social classes, women who are bought and sold and shamed for working, makes sense. These women have both the daily experiences and a different kind of freedom that causes them to raise these critiques. While an interesting and accurate choice to maintain Yunxian’s belief in her society’s values and her adherence to them, her characterization did make this an emotionally-tiring book to read.

Predictable plot reveals: In addition to following the pathway of protagonist Yunxian’s life, the central conflict-resolution of the novel centers on the actions of Doctor Wong. When Yunxian is pregnant for the first time, she is pregnant at the same time as the first concubine of her father-in-law, Miss Chen. While Yunxian, shamefully, gives birth to a daughter, Miss Chen gives birth to a son. Because Yunxian’s husband is the only son in the household, his “half-brother” (his father’s child with the concubine) is next in the line of succession. From this first encounter with Doctor Wong and his interactions with Miss Chen, it was obvious to me that he was the biological father of her child (she calls out to him, “You helped me get with child,” and Yunxian (and the reader) note this interaction). When the two women who deliver Miss Chen’s son, in the presence (behind a screen) of Doctor Wong, are later silenced—Spinster Aunt mysteriously dies and Midwife Shi is discredited and no longer able to work—it was transparently clear what was going on. Seeing this “big reveal” coming made for some frustrations, as it felt like the “solution” was just under Yunxian’s nose the entire time (and, then, Doctor Wong’s attempt to abort Yunxian’s son, which backfires and impacts her friend Meiling, would never have happened…)

Absentee father saves the day: In the resolution of the Doctor Wong conflict, Yunxian (once she has spotted the truth) reaches out to her high-ranking scholarly father for help. Despite not having seen his father for twenty-two years, her father shows up in his official role as a member of the Board of Punishments that enacts justice throughout the province. After solving everything publicly, he also points out to Yunxian aspects of the scenario that she was not aware of, namely Lady Kuo’s involvement in bringing in Miss Chen as a concubine and planning for her to have a biological son with Doctor Wong. Collectively, this created a scenario in which a man came to the rescue in the end, and he was a male figure in the book for whom I felt very little sympathy (despite his claims to depression and withdrawing from parenting in the wake of his first wife’s death…) While Yunxian was an empowered figure for her day (through her socio-economic privilege, her scholarly family, and her unique form of medical training), she is inherently bound by the social conventions, cultural influences, and powerfully constraining patriarchy. In spite of this, for a novel targeting a modern audience, I’d hoped for an ending that in some way centered Yunxian’s agency. Perhaps, in this regard, Meiling’s story—her rise in social standing through her own skillset—would have made the better central story? At the very end of the book, it’s Meiling who is training another Young Midwife (Miss Chen’s one surviving daughter) whereas Yunxian has not passed her skills on to any of her daughters.

Areas of enjoyment:

Beautiful writing: The language and scene-building propelled me through each page. I constantly felt as if I were inside the novel, witnessing the events firsthand. The imagery and specificity is so well done and, even when I was frustrated with Yunxian’s actions or horrified at the events themselves, I felt this book was a poignant exposure to the world of Ming Dynasty China. I was genuinely interested in the medical cases themselves and the solutions developed to help women. I could imagine an alternative version of this book that would be a slog to get through, but I found this book very easy to keep on reading. The medical details felt individually interesting, vivid, and surprising rather than technical or hollow.

Excellent research: In a similar vein, the research conducted here is thorough and engaging. I was impressed by how well the world was drawn and how naturally the specificity of terminology was integrated into the story. The research never felt heavy-handed or forced into a scene, but felt textured and realistic as the backdrop of every moment, every description, every character interaction. From terminology like “child palace” to diagnoses differentiating blood and Blood, the research was thoughtfully present and carefully crafted on every page.

Medical and historical realism: As described above, a huge joy of this book was the concrete and historical nature of the writing, the commitment to staying within the mindset of the protagonist, and the gritty realism of the medical cases. There were moments that were incredibly jarring (vivid depictions of childbirth, the removal of the parasite from Lady Kuo, the treatment of Meiling’s slashed back), but the most emotionally-lasting concrete depictions were those of the foot-binding process. While foot-binding is widely known of, this book brought the physicality of the process to life. I went so far as to Google Image Search bound feet and look at some pictures (telling myself that as many women have lived with and implemented these foot structures, the very least I can expect of myself is stomaching looking) because of how these descriptions captured the process. And while the images were disturbing, this book was actually more disturbing because of the articulation of the process, the descriptions of the emotional investment of the mothers, and the daily pain experienced by the daughters (Ailan’s foot binding descriptions in particular, as she lives through the four days between the tightenings of the bindings, will stay with me). The way this novel guided me through the emotional landscape of the research was memorable, impactful, and well done. I’m glad to have read this book, as it raised several areas of nuanced reflection and consideration.

It took me far too long to read this book (nearly 7 months, as I put it down for months and came back to it), which is tragic because the ending was brilliant. There were complex details that I was struggling to piece together from the early sections of the book, as I picked it up again, but—like all good murder mysteries, which is this truly, at the heart—the unfolding and explaining of what was “really going on” the whole time helped me to reconstruct the plot across time and my own memory.

I asked for this book as a gift from my dad for Christmas (he always wants a few suggestions) because I’d read Embassytown a few years back and loved it. I’d found it memorable, and strange, and resistant to my assumptions about what fiction is and does. The City and The City had similar strengths, namely China Mieville’s familiarity with linguistics, metaphysics, and genre conventions that allow him to create an original and culturally-textured world. In this book, there were more things that looked familiar (i.e. the detective genre and the murder mystery plot structure), but, brilliantly, these familiarities seemed to exist to allow readers to examine, question, and challenge them.

Plot spoilers below!!

Police Inspector Tyador Borlú becomes, by the end of the novel, both criminal and investigator. He describes as he arrests Bowden with Breach’s authority that the crime (a Breach) he is still investigating, that he is still gathering relevant evidence for, is his own. In addition to the crime of his Breach, Borlú solves the case he has been on since the very beginning of the novel (the murder of a young woman whose body was dumped in his district). We readers hoped at many points for the explanation of the death of Mahalia, but so much happens in the middle of the novel—so much expansion into international intrigue—as to almost obscure this central mystery, so that when the murderer finally was revealed, I felt the added layer of shock at my realization that, of course, that was what we’d been looking for all along.

Above and beyond clever genre commentary and the metaphysical complexity at the heart of the Besźel-Ul Qoma relationship (this seems to expand in twists and turns, giving us Breach and Orciny), a big draw of this book was the actual emotional investment I developed for these characters. This surprised me. It's often not the draw of a crime procedural. We’re here for the clever plotting, the rationalism, the detailed hints dropped along the way, the joy of the conventions and the breaking of them…on top of that, Borlú is a fairly stoic figure. He doesn’t seem to be someone with heroic qualities at first, just that logical no-nonsense rationalism, and an unflagging commitment to the truth that makes him a good vehicle for crime procedurals. “Vehicle” is the right word; his characterization is secondary to carrying us through the plot. Little time is directly spent on Borlú’s inner life or on his relationships, and yet these show up, blossoming like flowers pushing through cracks in urban pavements. Borlú is rational, stubborn, and committed…and curious, confident, matter-of-fact, and incredibly able to motivate others to act, to bend the rules. He inspires incredible trust. We want him to win. His secondary cast of characters are as matter-of-factly drawn. Corwi, his second in Besźel, is competent, young, and a bit exasperated with Borlú’s willingness to color outside the lines. Little is made of her gender; she just does her job, and Borlú relies on her, trusts her at every turn. There is never any “romance” between them, but I felt their deep bond, something both loving and beyond love, prevalent in their belief in each other.

Borlú travels to Ul Qoma and, over the middle section of the novel, forms another partnership like this, which feels like it isn’t the focus of the book and yet is, at the same time, somehow deeply the focus. Dhatt is, in temperament, far more different from Borlú. Dhatt’s dramatic, grandiose, sarcastic, quick to complain and just as quick to act, larger than life, and bombastic in a way that overshadows his high skillset. Quietly, naturally, Borlú and Dhatt come to trust each other with information and then to trust each other with their lives. Just like with Corwi, not much is made of their friendship and bond; it simply is, and in this simplicity it is a huge and pivotal part of this novel. Like with Corwi, there is never any “romance” between them, but Borlú’s deep connections with Dhatt and Corwi eclipse his stated romantic connections with Sariska and Biszaya (deeply respected as individual women, but inherently separate from the most central aspect of who Borlú is, which is his job). This difference is echoed in the goodbyes at the end of the novel, as Borlú binds his two romantic loves farewell with letters—kind, vague—and appears to both Dhatt and Corwi, without spoken words, with a gesture (a wave, a tipped cup) of respect, of “I see you.” And true seeing is the hardest thing to do in the worlds of Besźel and Ul Qoma.

My favorite scene of the entire book was when Borlú went to capture Bowden, walking between the cities, in neither of them in his resistance to adopting the features or mannerisms of either. As Borlú is also uniquely able to inhabit this in-between space at this point of the book, he is the one who is able to corner—and tempt—Bowden into Breach with him. As he stalks Bowden, Dhatt closes in in Ul Qoma and Corwi closes in in Besźel. It’s such a wonderful and poignant image that Borlú is able to call upon his two partners, in two parallel worlds, and both answer his summons, following Bowden and watching for a misstep into their world to issue an arrest, keeping Borlú updated on his whereabouts as Borlú hurries to the scene. Dhatt and Corwi—such different characters in temperament and style, yet so similar in their powerful collaboration with Borlú—seem to embody their cities in this moment, as they walk along the same street (yet two different streets), physically so close and metaphysically so distant, both unseeing each other, both wholly contained within their own worlds, both fully present for their half of the task to which they’ve been summoned, like a strange mirror image of each other. Brilliant.

The other scene from this book that will stay with me most powerfully—in addition to the pervasive texture throughout this book, the topographical structure of the city and the city, the descriptions of cross-hatching and the architectural, cultural, linguistic, and human inter-weaving of Besźel and Ul Qoma—is the scene of Yolanda and Bowden’s attempted border crossing. This scene was so spatially clear (spatial clarity being something that is, unsurprisingly, a central tenant of the writing and imagery of this novel) as Dhatt and Yolanda moved through the check point and Borlú moved back through the lines of travelers to deal with Bowden…and all the way through the check point, in the distance, Corwi was already visible, waiting, ready as she was trusted to be. And along the long perfect line of sight, Yorjavic could take his precise aim and shoot. After these shots, Borlú follows him—seeing enough, seeing out of the corners of his eyes—to take the shot in turn that is Breach, that changes his life forever.

There were several aspects of the resolution of this novel that feel like “poetic justice,” by which I mean well-placed solving of the puzzles, but also simply satisfying explanations of what occurred, satisfying in their humanness, in their fundamental familiarity as worldly truths. One such resolution (MAJOR PLOT SPOILER!!) was the explanation of Bowden’s motives for murdering Mahalia, his brilliant student and prodigy. Bowden kills Mahalia when she uncovers the truth of his deception, not to call him out, but through her serious and consistent scholarship. She is not seeking to debunk him, simply to find the answers to question she believed they both engaged with. “She crushed him without guile or bile” (p. 300). That is the most powerful defeat, and, of course, it’s the one where the woman ends up dead. She was smarter than him and she wasn’t even trying to be. It’s an essential, real world point at the center of this novel that a brilliant woman ends up dead…not even for knowing too much, but for being so smart as the see through layers and layers of deception to the truth. This is the key theme of novel: revealing or uncovering the truth, of seeing, and not being able to unsee. It is not lost on me—or clever China Miéville—that this seeing results in two deaths, and they are those of the two female characters who come to see, who die at the hands of men who also see, but who hold the power. In this sense, and more literally, this is also, in so many ways, a drama of academia (yes, that can end up with a murder, absolutely). In an academic space with a seasoned, yet questioned and ridiculed senior faculty, and a young brilliant protégé, these two academics clash over an academic question, seeking and obscuring truth in their field.

Another such “poetic justice” was the inevitability of Borlú’s life with Breach, the understanding of which seems to sneak up on him. It is not that Beach would hold him against his will, he comes to realize, it’s simply that it’s impossible for him to return to his old life. “You’ll never unsee again” (p. 310), Ashil tells him. Ashil—with his willful careening off the Breach path to following Borlú’s ideas—seems poised late in the novel to form a kind of trifecta of work partners (across three different worlds) with Corwi and Dhatt. Once Borlú has Breached, and sent time with Breach, his eyes have been newly opened, differently opened, and he can’t unsee, he can’t un-know. To come to know something changes us, like the escape from Plato’s cave, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, a kind of fall or state shift, from which there is no going back. All the work of the duality of Besźel and Ul Qoma is done by every citizen of both countries in every moment as they do the work of unseeing, as they exist in a state of mind that allows them to unseen. Yes, this division is enforced by Breach, but it is not possible without this constant mindset of separation. For Borlú, this mindset has closed to him forever. Yet, Borlú was someone, Ashil seems to indicate, that Breach hoped to receive. Breach needs Borlú and his unique approach, his logic, his trust in humans, and his new ways of doing things. He’s an investigator and to be Breach, his way of being Breach, is the ultimate investigation, as he says, “not to uphold the law, or another law, but to maintain the skin that keeps law in place. Two laws in two places, in fact” (p. 312). This progression of Borlú’s life and career is a kind of poetic justice.

The last fifty pages were a brilliant wrap-up, right down to the final line of the book, which beautifully shifted (brought into focus) the title—love that! The ending did make me immediately want to re-read the book, as I feel this is a book with many perfectly-placed details, such that re-reading could lend itself to fun drawing of connections and lines of logic. There were events early on for which it was hard to grasp the full ramifications—particularly the Oversight Committee with council members from both cities, which Borlú seeks out, hoping to get them to invoke Breach, but, of course, it is Buric on this committee who is involved in the falsification of Orciny in order to smuggle artifacts and, in this, he must carefully avoid Breach, although no one is at Bowden’s level in terms of both duplicity and avoidance of Breach (another poetic justice that he should willingly choose this in the end…) It is our curiosity, our seeing and knowing, that sends us down a path which we cannot reverse…for better or for worse, into a state of increasing complexity, in which we have to inhabit overlapping truths: the city and the city.

I grabbed a copy of this from my school on the very last day because I felt such a longing to start summer off with a light-hearted read. That feels like the definition of summer to me: lounging on the lawn, reading some silly fantasy romance book that is both mindless and deeply engaging.

I got out of the habit of reading this genre, so I'm wildly behind the times. This was afun and perfect choice to kick off my summer.

Basically every trope of “fairy lore” that I could think of appears in this book, including...

~The poor girl protagonist (with no mother) is snatched away by a magic man, who is a blend of beast/human (reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast, particularly in terms of the time limit on Tamlin’s curse and the conditions for breaking it: a human needs to tell him she loves him, unprompted).

~In spite of the curse, Tamlin lets Feyre go on the verge of breaking the curse because he loves her.

~All Tamlin’s servants and the members of his court are bound up in the curse too, unable to speak of it.

~The concept of mates (fated loves) hovers on the fringes of the novel with the promise that perhaps Feyre and Tamlin are mates (as Tamlin’s parents were). Tamlin’s heart of stone, which is hinted at and, later, becomes pivotal in the plot seems a familiar echo of the logic inherent in faerie magic.

~Faeries cast glamours (a form of magic), so that all is not as it appears to the human eye.

~Faeries and humans coexist according to the rules set down in an ancient treaty that keeps the peace between them, although stories abound among each group about the cruelty and inhumanity of the other.~In his effervescent spring court, Tamlin draws Feyre in with his glorious study/library, and he gives her a place to paint, pursuing her passion.

~Each spring, Tamlin restores his lands and the magic of the earth through a passionate lovemaking ritual. While this type of faerie lore might not coexist with the logic of, say, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, it feels familiar to faerie lore that encompasses earth magic rituals and the permeable boundary between the human and faerie realms (like Wildwood Dancing). Unlike the spring festivities, Feyre is fully welcomed into the midsummer’s solstice festivities, which—as she danced and Tamlin fiddled—put me in mind of the beloved book The Folk Keeper.

~As I read, I was also reminded several times of the book East, which draws on the Norwegian myth “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” particularly when Feyre must complete three tasks or solve a riddle in order to win Tamlin back and break his curse.

Yes, this book is overflowing with tropes. It feels familiar, like a scrambled recombination of stories you’ve heard before. Yet, in this familiarity, it is joyful and energetic. The writing is good, not in a literary sense, but in the sense that the words themselves fade into the background and I inhabit the world, particularly that of the Spring Court, which felt tangible in every scene. Hunting and patrolling with Lucien, the woods with the Naga and the Suriel, the pond of starlight, the expectancy of Fire Night, the luscious joy of midsummer’s eve—all these depictions of Feyre’s experiences felt real and inhabited. I love the luscious descriptions in this book; the 400-layered cake effect and the scene-setting is sensual and powerful—I felt swept up in the momentum, tone, and visuals of this book, even though it is not literary writing.

In a similar “fading into background” effect, Feyre is an innocuous heroine. She’s spunky, generic, and practical enough to feel partially invisible, like a vehicle that allows the reader to directly experience her world (a kind of reader “self-insert”). But she is also caring, reasonable, and sympathetic as a character, and so we readers hope for her triumph and long-term happiness. In the final section of the novel when Feyre is Under the Hill, battling through Amarantha’s seemingly impossible tasks, she felt the most embodied and individualized as a character. Interestingly, this dovetailed with a pivot in the book to the development of Rhysand’s character (as Tamlin fades into the background, stoically trapped by Amarantha’s side) and Rhysand’s interactions with Feyre took center stage as he played a key role in discreetly helping her through the tasks, redirecting Amarantha’s attention at critical moments, and—setting up the next book in the series—introducing the agreement between himself and Feyre in which Feyre trades him a week at his court every month for the rest of her life (later, eternity, as she is saved by being granted immortality, which put me in mind of the faeries in The Two Princess of Bamarre) in exchange for his help healing her.

This was funny timing in the plot because right as the Under the Hill section of the book began, I’d wondered what could possibly happen in a sequel (even though I knew there were several more books in the series). It seemed that this plot was headed toward such a “neat” ending of Feyre rescuing Tamlin and restoring the power balance among the High Lords of Prythian. I supposed that there was more to play out with the threatening king across the sea in Hybern, but it seemed that Feyre would have resolved the heart of her romance plot line, as she maintained her “established relationship” with Tamlin. And then Rhysand suddenly received his screen time. I can imagine that Rhysand must be a fan favorite…who doesn’t love a morally-grey mysterious hot boy who seems strangely helpful, yet with motivates we can’t yet explain? Tamlin and Feyre’s romance does seem best fit to the “Disney” end of the faerie lore spectrum (despite a few steamy scenes) with a kind of “fated mates” perfect couple energy. I know I would be intrigued by a Rhysand love plot line, yet I wondered if Feyre’s simple characterization would continue to feel better fit for Tamlin? It’s not that she’s not strong and fierce; it’s that she’s somehow deeply normal (even in spite of a troubled youth, which she has responded to with self-sufficiency and selflessness) and forthright. I wonder how she will continue to evolve as a character.

This was such a good choice for my first summer read because it made me feel young again—sprinting through a book, I could read the whole series! The infinite imaginative spin out, the slowing down of time…dream-like summers, like those in this book. As I read, I felt aware of my enjoyment of it, a bit ironically engaged, but also genuinely engaged, thinking about the plot when I was not reading. This book became the backdrop to my early summer adventures, as I flew to Peru, up to Cusco and the Andes…I am the mobile summer creature…another side of me blossoms. I become me again.

It has been far too long since I wrote one of these. I’ve gotten out of the habit. I’m also out of the habit of reading thoroughly in the way I long to, and best enjoy. It is thorough reading that lends itself to these reflective writing pieces, to tracking my thought process about a book. I have been in the habit of rushing through books for my book clubs during the busy school year. With the advent of summer break, I hope to return to that depth of reading and reflection. Let’s start with The Vegetarian.

I read this because I loved (and was disturb, challenged, and changed by) Human Acts. Han Kang has a new book out that I hope to read this summer as well. This book has much of the same dream-like thinking, gritty realism, complex psychology, and weighty symbolism that made Human Acts so compelling. Like Human Acts, the choices around narrative point of view (who tells their story and whose story gets told) feel deliberate, strategic, and powerful. This book felt a bit less mature as a novel than Human Acts, which makes sense given it’s an earlier work by Han Kang. I felt that the framework of metaphor and meaning was a bit harder to piece together here. There were more different loose threads and more questions remaining for the reader at the end of the book. I left the novel wanting just a bit more clarity, of the type that I had gotten from Human Acts.

That being stated, there was so much in this novel that was evocative and memorable, and which will stick with me—as imagery, as emotions, as concepts—over the years.

We begin with Yeong-hye’s dream. It’s the dream that moves her to stop eating meat early in the novel. The nature of this dream is revealed only in fragments, as Yeong-hye’s narrative point of view is never included (she is never given a voice, in her own story). In fragments scattered among her husband’s narration, we see parts of dreams (some of which, I later realized, draw on real memories from her childhood). This left me unsure of what Yeong-hye’s dream really was: the dog dragged in circles after her father’s motorcycle until death (later, it’s clear this is a memory)? A strange moment of cannibalism (bodies in a barn, teeth sinking into flesh)? A face in pain that repeatedly confronts her? The weight of all the dead things she has eaten settling over her heart, their bodies in her body? The dream that changes Yeong-hye could be all of these things, one of them, or none. The brutality in all these images is clear.

I deeply internalized this early explanation of Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism because it is—bizarrely, incredibly—exactly like my story. I became a vegetarian more than 13 years ago after a dream. I woke up the next day and I never ate meat again. Full stop. I have a different explanation I often give for my vegetarianism: that week, my town’s last small farm (one where my family had often volunteered our work efforts, and where we had befriended the generational farmer) went out of business. No longer able to survive as a small-scale, local operation in the face of climbing costs and competition from factory farms, the farmer went bankrupt. She needed to get rid of all her animals—about 200 sheep and 200 chickens, and 100 cattle—in 48 hours. My mom and I had helped with this, strategizing together, and my mom made phone calls to plead with people we knew to take some of these animals, so not every one would be sent to slaughter. This experience forms the backbone of my vegetarianism. Despite raising sheep and seeing other 4-H kids sending animals to slaughter, I understood that the real enemy was the factory farm operations in which animals were raised cruelly and unsustainably in order to drive down costs. I wanted to practice what I preached and one small way to do that was to not eat products I knew were coming out of the factory farming system.

This is the rational explanation I give about my conversion to vegetarianism. Even from myself, at times, I think I have hidden away the dream. The dream is what really changed me because—in the dream—I felt everything. I understood the horror of the factory farm on an emotional, not a rational, level. My dream feels hard to explain or share because words don’t adequately capture what it felt like, still so vivid in my memory all these years later. When the topic of my vegetarianism arises, I spend a lot of time not looking at my dream directly. In my dream, I was in a warm, dark space. There was the breathing of hundreds of other animals all around me. I could feel their presences and their bodies pressing in around me. I’m not sure what form my own body took, but I perceived the dream from the eye-level of the other animals. Among them, I felt a kind of individual invisibility, a kind of blended “togetherness.” But then, I suddenly understood what was coming. I saw with crystalline horror the future just in front of us, as we were being funneled out of this dark enclosure and slaughtered. Sliced at our soft throats, second jaws gapping, dangling. I could smell the blood. I could feel the deep terror in my body, like a cramping pain inside me. The certainty of death washed over me, and the need to stand in that certainty, to just anticipate it. I woke up, shocked awake.

The impossibility of adequately explaining how this dream felt to me, and how I woke up changed from it, makes the early fragmentation of The Vegetarian accessible to me. What is it to try to articulate the dream that redirected an essential thing? It’s better for us, the readers, to stay guessing a bit about what, exactly, is the dream. Anything less than this would feel cheap.

Yet, this novel, it quickly becomes clear, is not really about vegetarianism. Unlike Yeong-hye, my conversion to vegetarianism went that far and no farther. Yes, I know the people in my life responded much better than Yeong-hye’s did (in fact, all my immediate family members subsequently became vegetarians), but Yeong-hye enacts a complete disengagement with the exploitative world humans inhabit and normalize on a daily basis. What is this book really about? It’s about control, and gender. It’s about obsession, and art, and self-awareness. It’s about power, and nature, and what makes a life worth living (or ending).

The three narrators—Yeong-hye’s husband Mr. Cheong, Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, and Yeong-hye’s sister In-hye—play out different responses, different levels of understanding, and different personal battles in the face of Yeong-hye’s increasing mental, emotional, and physical deterioration. While a key theme across the Han Kang books I’ve read is the problematic nature and impacts of the patriarchy (the violence, both physical and psychological, that men are permitted to enact on women), I felt a surprising amount of sympathy of a key male figure in this text: Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law. While Yeong-hye’s husband’s narration is repulsive in its dismissiveness of Yeong-hye’s inner life and personal experiences, and Yeong-hye’s father is revealed to be a key abuser in her childhood, Yeong-hye’s dynamic with her brother-in-law—while problematic—felt more mutually painful to me as a reader. I mention this because the brother-in-law’s narration feels like an area in the book of incredible nuance worthy of discussion. While it would be difficult to disagree about the problematic and outright morally wrong role of Yeong-hye’s husband and father, the role her brother-in-law plays is more complex. In-hye’s horror at discovering her husband and sister’s affair seems fully justified. She seems right to perceive her husband as taking advantage of her sister as her sister descends into madness. However, the brother-in-law seems to exhibit some striking similarities to Yeong-hye in a way that unites and binds them together. His obsession with the image of her Mongolian mark, and the flowers blooming on her, feels reminiscent of her obsession with the face from her dreams. An obsessive image is destroying him (his destruction includes that of his family, his role in his family, and his societal obligations). Distraught with obsession, both characters have something they want to get from the other, something they believe can be achieved by their union: relief. Viewed in this light, the brother-in-law seems as powerless in their affair as Yeong-hye does. Both are desperate, helpless, and mentally overwhelmed to the point of making choices they would not have made under normal circ*mstances. This feels like interesting commentary on human psychology, on the lengths we are willing to go to alleviate mental suffering, to distract or regain control of our own minds.

During this section of the novel, I wondered whether this brand of “vegetarianism” (obsession with plants, becoming plant-like oneself) could spreading from Yeong-hye to her brother-in-law. I tried to remember (and later Googled) the kind of fungus that inhabits and controls the human brain (turns out, this is only in Science Fiction…) This infectious plant theory feels like a too-literal explanation for a more figurative arc of the novel: what does it mean to consume or be consumed? What are all the different ramifications of consumption, of eating? In the third part of the novel, there is a similar expansion of Yeong-hye’s mental state to include and impact the person closest to her. In-hye’s does not understand her sister’s condition immediately or easily. She struggles to relate to her sister when she, herself, puts “making it work” and “holding things together” above all things in her life. But she comes to understand as she visits her dying sister in the mental hospitality and witnesses the cruelty of stripping Yeong-hye of her agency, of trying to force her back into life by maintaining her body, when it’s her will to live that is being squashed. As In-hye watches doctors force-fed her sister who refuses to eat, she sees the shadows of their past in which she choose stability over freedom (she chose to return herself and her sister to their abusive father, rather than run). She finally truly sees her sister’s transformation, and longing to change states and forms, the way she is “armored by the power of her own renunciation” of meat and, in this armor—like thick skin, like bark—Yeong-hye becomes incredibly plant-like (and increasingly free from her own mind/subjected to the consumption of others). The proximity of nature, the closeness of tree and woman, returns throughout this novel. Yeong-hye insists she does not need to eat, as she—like a tree—feeds from the sunlight. Her choice to not eat meat eventually becomes a choice to not eat at all, or to not eat in the way we humans understand eating…which involves consumption and eradication, rather than transformation.

There are several central images that, as I’ve mentioned, will remain with me. The death of the dog, both memory and dream, is one of these, as Han Kang is excellent at creating literal imagery with powerful metaphorical and philosophical resonance. This brutal scene immediately called to mind Achilles dragging Hector’s body around the walls of Troy, the public viciousness enacted by the victor, the visibility of brutality that is part of the process of control. It is not the same as violence conducted in secret. It is both more honest and more deeply performative. The second wave of metaphorical echo that flowed over me reading this scene was the Stations of the Cross, as Jesus carries the cross to his death and falls the first time, and falls the second time. This echo across the literary ages also highlights the brutality of humans (the acts of violence of which we are capable), but also the longing for redemption which is as fundamentally human as violence. Yeong-hye ate the dog meat. And, years later, her body seeks redemption, a kind of spiritual transformation, to purge that act of violence from the place in which it is held and remembered: the body. The physicality of Han Kang’s writing is as directly confrontational as I could imagine, and she pairs this physicality with deep moral complexity and nuance, so we are left seeking the meaning of these images that we—like Yeong-hye herself—cannot expunge from our minds.

The latest read for our family’s Anti-Racism Book Club, and a book that was highly recommended by several friends, The Three Mothers is an eye-opening labor of love. In exploring and centering the lives and stories of Louise Little, Alberta King, and Berdis Baldwin, this book strives to remember these women in the context of their three influential families and to show the dramatic, international impact these woman had throughout their lives. Both through the ways in which they raised, nurtured, and taught their children, and in their direct activism work, these women have shaped the course of American history.

This book is a powerful refocusing of our lens onto three lives that have been little documented and under-celebrated. It is also engaging and a page-turner. These women lived such extraordinary lives—at times tragically sad, at times transcendently joyful—that they leap off the page. As someone who often struggles to make it through nonfiction, I sprinted through this book, riveted on every page, in awe of these women and their narratives. From the love Berdis maintained while interacting with her mentally-ill and abusive husband to Louise’s traumatic loss of her husband to deliberate and racist murder ruled as suicide, I was moved and horrified in turn to learn what these women had gone through. They were able to live and love in spite of so many hardships, undiminished by them.

The contrasts and comparisons among these women are artfully drawn. As author Anna Malailka Tubbs emphasizes, together the show a much more complex portrait of Black motherhood than they would alone. They experienced different socio-economic backgrounds, different frameworks of familial support, different environments and communities. They respond differently to the perils of their world, to decisions about marriages and careers, to trials of loss and change. Within these differences, they are empowered. They are active agents who shape their lives and their families, even when systems stand against them. The historical context this book provided was also illuminating. The time period examples of Black life during Jim Crow and segregation, the Great Migration, the impacts of the Great Depression and two World Wars, really helped me to see the forces of the time that shaped these women’s lives. The book did a wonderful job balancing awareness of the racism and sexism these women faced every single day, while centering these women as empowered individuals able to shape their futures and the futures of their children. This seemed, to me, like a difficult narrative balance to strike in crafting a book like this and it was powerfully done.

I felt this book breaking down some of my assumptions and biases as I read. Over the past few years, I have been increasingly attuned to narratives that are silenced—because of race, because of gender—but I could feel myself needing to deconstruct assumptions around motherhood and “traditional female roles” as I read. I do think I hold a set of “less than” assumptions about the pathway of being a wife/mother. I do think I have frowned upon women who give up their career to be a wife/mother primarily (despite, or perhaps because of, having seen my own mother do this.) I have frowned upon these women—not in terms of their choice—but out of some frustration at seeing brilliant women choose a life pathway that does not put their intellectual impacts in the public eye. I think I needed to tackle these assumptions in reading this book, appreciating in new ways how my long-held perspective is, too, a kind of silencing. Simply because wives/mothers’ contributions are not visible in the way I expect or hope for (and my expectations/hopes for “worth” and “impact” are absolutely those defined by the patriarchy) I was quicker to dismiss them. After reading this book, I have a new appreciation for the ways in which choosing motherhood is an inherently feminist act, one that does not bow to the demands of the patriarchy in terms of what “worth” and “impact” look like. I needed to examine myself as I read.

Beyond the strong anti-racism and anti-sexism work of the project of this book, beyond the thoughtful themes connecting and the history contextualizing these women, this book was a rewarding read on the level of my knowledge of these women’s stories. I could not believe that some of this information was new to me (Alberta King was assassinated?? Martin Luther King Jr’s brother A.D. also died under mysterious circ*mstances??) I was shocked that this was information I had never heard before about the King family, and I shared it with my dad, both of us exclaiming in confusion about how essential this information seemed to the narrative of MLK’s life, context, and battle for racial equality. Even in telling the stories of MLK’s life (let alone the life of Alberta King herself), we have received such a fragmented picture, a picture that highlights certain details and completely erases other essential events. These specific examples about the lives of the King family—two of many such examples about the lives of all three families—struck me as I read this book with a heavy appreciation of my blindness, born of deliberate erasure and prioritizing particular narratives in the education I have received. I want to work to counteract this. It takes a lot of work because the narratives and assumptions we hold are so strongly engrained.

I can’t possibly do this book justice in writing about it. It’s tied (with Human Acts) for my favorite book of 2022. I know this book is stylistically an inevitable favorite: it’s my preferred genre (realistic literary fiction), and it seems deliberately written for someone who derives glee from every literary allusion and who is waiting to draw intricate plot deductions (sometimes people try to get me to stop analyzing things I read/watch because “doesn’t that take the fun out of it?” No, that’s exactly where the fun is, I respond). While these characteristics certainly describe me and what I find most rewarding in literature, I’m not, however, a gamer, and I probably missed the joy of many allusions to games and gaming. Given the book’s masterful literary self-awareness, surely gaming is treated with similar deftness. In spite of this, I gained a new appreciation for the world-building of gaming, caught up in the incredible narratives and aesthetics, the haunting liminal space of the game world, the attention-to-detail in development (of Ichigo in particular).

From its early chapters, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow leans on excellent prose and thorough, measured character development to succeed. The first half of the book lulls the reader into a false sense of security, sliding backward and forward in time as it develops the central characters of Sam and Sadie, as well as the figures who surround them: Anna Lee (Sam’s mom), Marx (roommate and producer), Zoe (Marx’s girlfriend), Sam’s Korean grandparents, Ant and Simon (dynamic, young techie couple), Sadie’s sister Alice, and Sadie’s Jewish grandmother Freda. These early chapters have some clever and thoughtful reveals in the plotting: we have to infer that Sam’s broken and mashed foot was the result of the car crash that killed his family, through their absence in these hospital scenes; there is the reveal of Anna and Sam’s hasty departure from New York for L.A. as another Anna Lee leaps to her death; we also confront the truth of Sadie’s depression (an abortion she had just before Sam reappeared in her life). These early chapters gather strength through realism.

Sam and Sadie are deeply flawed, incredibly relatable characters. As a brilliant young woman at MIT, Sadie struggles through her college relationship with her professor Dov (truly the worst, and the only character with whom I never sympathized). Sam sees in his reunion with Sadie the potential for a collaboration that will revolutionize the gaming world, and pursues reconnection after having cut her from his life when they were kids. Marx installs himself as perpetual cheerleader, and self-sacrificing friend, while also being a bit of a playboy who stays friends with all his exs through sheer charm and good will. Each character is, in turns, deeply relatable and utterly exasperating. These characters are real in their contradictions: Sam’s stubbornness about his disability and his refusal to let this define him (almost to a fault, as he risks his life, and lashes back at those who have his best interests at heart), Sadie’s fearless pride in making her holocaust-focused game Solutionfor her MIT classmates paired with her long-term fixation with securing Dov’s good opinion, Marx’s whimsical break-ups as he grows bored with people, yet loves Sam and Sadie unconditionally. It’s the time spent on characterization upfront that earns the devastating, beautiful second half of the book.

In the second half of the book, so many details from the first half (details that were seemingly trivial) return to the forefront. This seems less plot-driven and more a perspective on realism—focusing on the way we make meaning of our lives, holding onto and romanticizing particular moments and memories, imbuing objects with sentiment, relying on language to fills empty holes we cannot imagine ourselves falling into, yet do.

The section that vaults this book into life-changing, transcendent territory is the section called NPC. In a point of view shift from the rest of the book, this section is entirely first-person POV for Marx Watanabe. The character who has played third-wheel to Sam and Sadie throughout their professional relationship (and their complex, interwoven friendship, as well as Sadie and Marx eventually falling in love) suddenly takes center stage. It’s an apt metaphor. All of Marx’s theater background comes to bear, as he gets, for once, to play the main role. Later, after his death, Sadie immortalizes him in a game she designs, where the role of Macbeth is played by a tall handsome asian man (when Marx, in real life, was relegated to the role of Banquo). As Marx’s death story unfolds, interspersed with real-time events as he lies dying in a coma and moments from his complex history with his two closest friends, we receive a full reversal of ours and Sam’s expectations for the NPC. Sam calls Marx an NPC; we, too, dismiss him in comparison to the furiously vivacious Sam and Sadie for much of the book. Yet, the supporting role he played in life, and in death, is crucial, essential, and one of real agency. It’s our loss if we overlook the NPC.

This section beautifully and poignantly reframes and repurposes the early sections of the book: from the reappearance of Sadie’s EmilyBlaster game in the moment Marx is shot to the titular reference (I was waiting for it!) about how Marx wanted to name the gaming company (ultimately called Unfair Games) after his understanding of the promise of retries and redoes imbedded in the concept of a game. This section is an exercise in literary mastery and plotting, a shocking record of the violence humans are capable of, and a tear-jerking account of a single and unique life. Even though I knew, before reading this section, that Marx had been shot to death in an active shooter scenario at Unfair Games, I was not expecting the realism of this scene. I felt inside it. I felt the brutality of what humans are capable of, and I felt how human (instead of inhuman) we are in the face of, and in the perpetuation of, violence. I bawled my way through this section of the book and felt exhausted, wrung-out, after reading it. Every moment was charged and deliberate—the placement of the story of Sam and Marx’s early roommate-bonding over a rehearsal of the scene of Banquo’s death in Macbeth to the way the men who bring guns to Unfair are seeking Sam, striking back against the diversity he has embraced as the emblematic Mayor of Mapletown who grants gay marriages far ahead of his time.

The final section of the book is titled Freights and Grooves and connects to the Emily Dickinson poem quoted at the beginning of the book:

That Love is all there is,

Is all we know of Love;

It is enough, the freight should be

Proportioned to the groove.

This mysterious poem—little, monstrous—is explored at the heart of the book. What is love that it must hurt us? But it never hurts us too much—the hurt love causes, the weight of it, carves just so deeply a change in us. Love’s no more than we can handle and exactly all that we can take. Or perhaps this poem means that any love is unknowable in portion to the impossible, unnamable nature of that love? To name love, to know it, is to simplify it to a point that it no longer resembles the love itself. In this book, I loved how, at each turn, the connection between Sam and Sadie is unique love, love that transcends lovers, traumas, hurts, and losing touch. It’s love that is unknowable and all-knowing, and every time Sam tries to name it, to force it into something more familiar, are the moments that show how that romantic love would be a weak approximation of the enduring love these characters share.

Sea of Tranquility is a beautifully-written book that feels far more expansive than its brief 250 pages. Spanning centuries in a dream-like structure that sketches different worlds in quick, masterful brushstrokes, this book manages to feel both personal and philosophical. The world-building is very interesting in its approach—instead of using explanatory framework and accumulation of lived details, the book employs only a handful of details to suggest the larger state of the world. This, I think, adds to the book’s feeling of expansiveness—we have to guess at and piece together a larger world. For example, the book refers to Olive’s stops on the Last Book Tour on Earth within places named “Republic of Texas” and “United Carolinas.” The United States, as an entity, is never mentioned—does this imply a splintering into the states that has happened in the next 200 years? This is a world-building detail we need to infer, rather than having spoon-fed to us as backstory.

These assembled details powerfully world-build and the imagined worlds feel both inhabited and empty, lively and melancholy. I felt that the future worlds, while well-built, were a bit too familiar. While we have to imagine implied backstories (like the dissolution of the once-united USA), certain details in 2203 and 2401 felt too familiar—devices belonging to each person share information, holograms (which seem like an easy expansion of how we communicate online today) allow virtual meetings, and hovercrafts and airships schedule quick transportation around the world and among planets. These felt, to me, like the innovations we expect from our near future. Yet, 200 years ago, could anyone have conceived of the innovations that shape our lives today? Who would have imagined the Internet, an abstract holding space for all information ever, available within our pockets, a virtual space we join at a touch. Who could have imagined this? Someone might have, if they followed lines of imagining that seemed impossible and unlikely, rather than those that are natural extensions of where we were 200 years ago.

I have a memory of seeing some turn of the century art (from 1900) imagining the year 2000. The art focused on developed colonies at the bottom of the sea and floating cities in the sky. These seemed to have been created by thinkers in that era imagining into a future based on the technological innovations of their day. The future, I think, must surely be weirder than we all expect. The farther we advance through time, the fewer “logical consequences of today” that future world will show. It’s difficult to not compare this book to Cloud Atlas, which does a shockingly good job in this sense—the imagined futures in Cloud Atlas are convincingly strange (for example, there’s a primitive world that follows ours in the future—because who is to say that the future entails one-directional development?) This book has a similar structure to Cloud Atlas, which encourages comparison. Both books start in the past and move forward in time, into the future, before reversing direction and traveling back into the past (although the Anomaly section ofSea of Tranquility differs in structure, powerfully pulling together the different times within the life of the single character who merges the book’s diverse sections).

This ending put me in mind of Proust’s theory that time functions like pearls on a string—time is mostly linear, save moments of collapse or expansion. The presence of Gaspery, on multiple timelines (or multiple points on the one timeline of his life), in the airship terminal in 2195 creates the expansiveness of a moment. The characters that surround him in the condensed/widened moment are drawn in from the other locations where time collapses or expands. Edwin, Vincent, and Olive all witness an anomaly, as time and place merge strangely. It’s a nice concept that the mystery Gaspery has been chasing is explained by his existence, and by his youthful effort expended in chasing that very mystery. It’s strangely circular; does him chasing his own self-created mystery remove the meaning in his life that he so clearly longed for when he took a job at the Time Institute? On the contrary, I would argue, the circular nature of his narrative allows both Gaspery and the reader to see his personal growth (when his younger self interviews him and he is embarrassed for himself, for his naïveté, but also compassionate toward who he was). As we see the change in Gaspery, we understand the linear nature of time as experienced by a human life—we grow, we change. Time makes impressions on us.

Furthermore, beyond the growth in Gaspery that he himself gets to witness, he lives a life of purpose. He finds new love, with Talia; he travels and he settles down, and he understands both things with new insights. And, most notably, he changes lives: he saves Olive from her prescripted death alone on Earth during the pandemic. And he redirects the course of Edwin’s life, giving him confidence in himself, giving him agency and freedom.

In the scene where Ephrem and Aretta review what has changed in the timeline in Edwin’s life after Gaspery goes back to 1918 to see him, they point out that all that has changed is Edwin does not die in an insane asylum. He still dies, at the same point in time, of the influenza. Ephrem asks Gaspery what, then, was the point—of him changing the timeline, of him risking his life as it was to do so—for a change that, which, unlike his intervention in Olive’s life, did not save (prolong) a life. “You see how pointless that was?” Ephrem asks. And Gaspery responds, “You’re missing this point.” To me, this seemed like the central core message of the book. Life is still life, and the quality of life is not something we can gauge from an outside point of view. Death is just death, and wondering how to achieve a life lived with purpose and quality is so much more significant of a question and an objective than simply seeking to stay alive.

Gaspery and Olive both love and value their lives in Colony Two. Gaspery does not see his experience in the Night City as lesser than the lived experiences of others. A life under a dome can still be as rich as a life not under a dome, Olive knows. Life is still life, and its quality cannot be gauged as lesser by some external experiencer, which is why Olive takes issue with the work of fellow writer-speaker Jessica Marley who writes about the angst of growing up in a Moon Colony, categorizing "pain in unreality,” inauthentic in some critical way. Likewise, the difference between Edwin dying at home (with full agency, with trust in himself and his experiences) and Edwin dying in an insane asylum, without that agency, robbed of the things he thought to be true, is the fundamental difference. It is the exact thing that makes the difference. The same is true for Olive; if she were to have died of the pandemic after she made it back to the Colony Two, she would not have died alone in a hotel room on Earth, as her destined was written. Gaspery made the fundamental difference in two lives…I did wonder if Vincent and her death would loop back into Gaspery’s journey, as hers is the other life impacted by anomaly experience in Caiette, and her experience of dying alone (without having reunited with her Mirella) could also have been shifted (perhaps?) to the opposite side of the quality-life dichotomy.

I think, often, of the idea that changing one single life, improving one single life, is enough. It justifies us. It imbues our lives with meaning. Gaspery seems to know or sense, as he seeks out the opportunity to work at the Time Institute, that this is the job he needs to reinstate meaning in his colorless life. This is one answer for the concern of our mortality. Another answer for the concern of our mortality that I have thought about recently (as I read They Both Die at the End, in fact) and which emerges in similar terms in this book is: why do we consider the final end (death) more weighty and significant than the endings that are commonplace? All change is change. All change is final. This idea is described in the context of the end of the universe in Sea of Tranquility, but I think the same concept is applicable to the individual human life.

I noticed when the narration of this book switched over to first person for Gaspery’s chapters and wondered at this. It seems, in retrospect, like a hint that Gaspery is the center, the agent around which the structure and events of the book pivot. I like that as a narrative move, and I think that Gaspery, as well as the third-person observed characters felt very realistic in this book. I felt strong compassion and empathy for these characters; it was easy to inhabit their headspace through Mandel’s delicate, intimate style. In part because of the expansiveness of their worlds that are only sketched in—vivid and completely in color at the places that matter most—these characters felt fully real, like people I’d met before, say, long ago at a party, or in passing on the shore, in a moment of mutual recognition. Knowing them,I wanted the best versions of their lives, for each of them.

⭒❃.✮:▹ Fall Reading List ◃:✮.❃⭒

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

[Family Anti-Racism Book Club book]

A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines

[Words With Friends Book Club book]

Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, by Martha Nussbaum

Belonging, by Nora Krug

The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates