Super cute graphic novel of Tegan and Sara’s experiences in junior high, with each girl’s thoughts rendered in different colors to make it easy for the reader to follow along. The girls’ experiences are very relatable and smoothly rendered, with the problems of friend drama, puberty, crushes, and family expectations all clearly and sympathetically presented. The only hiccup for me was knowing that Tegan and Sara went to junior high around when I did, so I knew that their experience had been updated with cell phones and social media; it makes their story more relatable to the young but also reminds me of how different my own junior high experience was without these modern additions.
Tag: genre-memoir
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, by Doris Pilkington / Nugi Garimara
True story of three half-Aboriginal girls who were taken from their homes in 1930 and placed in a settlement to unlearn their heritage (back home we’d call it a residential school). Finding their treatment unacceptable, they escaped, found the fence built across Australia to contain the invasive rabbit population, and followed it on foot for 2400km to get back to their homes. One of the girls was Molly, mother of the author, who told her story to her daughter. The story is very short and self-contained, ending soon after the girls arrive home; it does include many pieces of the historical record, which add a lot of background as to why the government thought it so necessary to round up and confine the girls. Very necessary voice from a generation mostly silenced by history.
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, by Jeremy Atherton Lin
I was expecting a somewhat more academic treatment of the role of gay bars in society and in history; instead, this is author Atherton Lin exploring his own personal journey through the succession of gay bars that he visited along the way. His perspective, that of an Asian-American navigating London and San Francisco, means that racism occasionally adds an additional layer of alienation onto his experience. He mixes everything together until none of it can be teased apart, from musings about identity and expression in social spheres, to analysis of society’s changing relationship with homosexuality, to detailed descriptions of smells and sensations of bodies in close contact, sometimes all within the same paragraph. He also illustrates ambience by rapidly listing off a succession of musicians, or brands, which I’m sure would have served as anchors for people who recognized them, but for me merely placed his already-foreign (to me) experiences into a landscape which I… didn’t recognize either. Still, it was definitely both educational and entertaining to journey along with Atherton Lin through his past, from adventurous naïf to jaded elder, interrogating society along the way. He doesn’t hesitate to turn the analysis on himself either: “I went out to bars to be literary. I drank to create content. If I earned a reputation for making trouble, it was so that I could write about it the following morning… There was an agency in the retelling, in the self-deprecation and of course self-mythologizing. Memoir is how you groom yourself. Memoir is drag.”
Stay True, by Hua Hsu
Part coming-of-age memoir, part elegy for a lost friend, this account by Hsu focuses mainly on his college years at Berkeley and how they formed his personality. The son of Taiwanese immigrants in search of an identity, Hsu aligned himself with the alternative to anything that was mainstream, creating zines and looking for undiscovered gems at record shops; when he meets Japanese-American Ken, a fraternity member clad in Abercrombie & Fitch and a fan of Dave Matthews, Hsu initially writes him off. They end up being friends though, teaching one another to love things neither would have chosen, sharing extremely Gen X formative experiences, and growing close in the way that only happens for college kids thrown together for long stretches at a time. However, when Ken becomes the victim of a senseless murder, Hsu is set adrift and must figure out how he wants to define himself once more. The moments in which he muses about all the adult experiences which he was unable to share with Ken are especially poignant.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton
I picked up Ducks because it was nominated by Mattea Roach for the nationwide Canada Reads competition; I knew little else about it, and was surprised to find that a) it was an autobiographical comic, b) written by a Cape Breton native, who c) went to work in the Alberta oil sands, and d) began publishing the excellent webcomic Hark! A Vagrant during that time. To pay off her student loans, Beaton joined the masses from Atlantic Canada heading towards Alberta. The experience was extremely toxic, both for the environment (the title refers to a flock of ducks which died after landing in a tailings pond, causing much PR flailing) and for Beaton personally, who pitilessly details the harassment and misogynism that she faced as one of the very few women in the isolated environment, as well as the huge mental toll that it took on her. Although my own experience in male-dominated workplaces was nowhere near as bad, I still recognized many aspects of the casual workplace misogyny, as well as her unhappy, resigned tolerance of it which mirrored my own; I loved so much the clear-eyed way in which she presented it, even as it hurt to read. I also loved visiting both Cape Breton and Newfoundland as a tourist, and am embarrassed to say that I had no idea of the economic situation that drove so many of the locals to look for work elsewhere. The comics are simple, but poignant and very human; in one exchange, Beaton says to her truck driver from Newfoundland, “were you a fisherman, before?” He responds simply, “I’m still a fisherman. I’m just here.” And then the comic zooms out to show the pickup driving through the snowy mine, against a background of heavy equipment, a steep cliff face, and a black, empty sky.
Sink: A Memoir, by Joseph Earl Thomas
This memoir is beautifully written, even though it’s hard to read. It starts out tough and doesn’t get any easier, which pretty much encapsulates young Joey’s life growing up in poverty and violence. The characters in his family behave in ways both cringingly awful and yet recognizably human; the details that Thomas chooses to share illustrate both their helpless despair and the love that sometimes finds its way to the surface. The storytelling is brilliant, mixing reality with the fictional worlds that Joey picks up from geek culture and video games. One of my favorite passages (out of many fiercely beautiful passages) dealt with his helpless protectiveness of the minor Pokemon Zubat, whilst playing the game: “so many Zubats, everywhere, with nowhere to go, no one to protect them. Their entire lives consist of knocking into Pokemon trainers and being slapped around by stronger Pokemon who already have homes and social resources, warm Poké Balls to sleep in.” Though the metaphor is obvious, it is no less poignant and heartbreaking.
Becoming, by Michelle Obama
For me, Michelle Obama’s memoir was a good mix of known and unknown: enough familiarity to resonate with my experiences, with enough differences to fascinate and educate me. I loved learning about her childhood, growing up aware of class differences but buttressed by a supportive family; I was in awe of her journey from Chicago’s South Side to the Ivy League and Biglaw; I sympathized with her struggles with work-life balance and search for career fulfillment, while keeping in mind what she owed to her roots and her family. I also loved seeing Barack through her eyes; her tolerance and affection was palpable through her voice in the audiobook. I could have used a little more of her perspective on the global events that happened during the Obama administration though; instead, she pointedly kept out of politics for the most part and concentrated the bulk of her narrative on her initiatives for child nutrition and her concerns about raising her daughters with as much normalcy as possible. The major awkwardness about this book is that although Michelle Obama is an impressive woman by any measure, at the end of the day she becomes defined by traditionally feminine roles: wife, and mother. She works with the title throughout the memoir, “becoming” first one thing and then another; as her husband retires from politics and her daughters grow into their own, she may find herself more free to transcend traditional roles.
Dinners with Ruth, by Nina Totenberg
This memoir is subtitled “on the power of friendships” which clues you into the fact that it’s not all about dinners with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, though she does feature prominently through the narrative. I have always been a fan of Totenberg and her legal affairs briefings on NPR, and especially enjoyed learning how she got to that post and how she handled the position. Per the subtitle though, the book really is about friendships and the lifelong support they provide, both professionally and personally (sometimes sorely needed in the very. sexist environment of the time). One of Nina’s very greatest friends was the formidable RBG, whose quiet determination and unstinting generosity come to life in Nina’s words. The two women supported one another through the early parts of their careers, through the illnesses and deaths of their respective spouses, and always managed to maintain a professional distance between their work and personal lives. The memoir’s tone starts out dry and funny, and turns more poignant as events progress.
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, by Gerald Durrell
Second in the Corfu trilogy, which explores Durrell’s idyllic childhood on the Greek island of Corfu. For those who loved the first book (and who wouldn’t?) it’s more of the same: more zany and semi-fictionalized family antics, and more hilarious and wonderful gushing over the animal life of the island. The portraits of islander culture are a little problematic from a PC point of view, but it’s of a piece with the time. The ending note is bittersweet, though, and hints at the eventual loss of paradise with the coming of war.