A really beautiful and meditative piece. The author, bedridden by a mysterious disease that has taken all of her strength and energy, finds companionship in a wild snail brought by a friend. The tiny snail’s determination and curiosity become a source of fascination for the author, who mixes facts and observations on the snail with her own reflections on illness and isolation.
Tag: genre-nonfiction
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
I learned so much from this book. I knew that there was a migration of black people northward from the Jim Crow south but I had no idea of the vast scale of the migration, and only a vague sense of the challenges the migrants faced along the way. Wilkerson follows three real-life people, who made the journey at different times and to different places; she illustrates the challenges that they face and show evidence of how others faced similar trials. I particularly liked her assertion that these migrants were similar to first-generation immigrants to the country from other countries, in their drive to sacrifice and succeed despite all odds, in marked contrast to how they were depicted in society at the time.
All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft, by Geraldine DeRuiter
The author is a travel blogger, and I picked her book up because of her hilarious viral pan of a fancy Italian restaurant. The writing style throughout is entertaining, light, and incredibly self-deprecating; she paints lovely portraits of her friends and family, including her quirky parents and her husband who she clearly adores, whose globetrotting job has enabled her to tag along and explore the world despite her self-acknowledged insecurities and lack of directional sense. Her tone throughout is of bemused gratitude at her own good fortune, which I appreciated.
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The subtitle of this book is Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which pretty much sums it up. I really loved reading this book, which married the nerdy enthusiasm of a trained botanist with the quiet wonder of one who was raised from childhood to regard plants as teachers. Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and throughout the book tries to harmonize the surviving wisdom passed down from tribal elders with the strict scientific discipline that she was taught in her Western education. She also ties plants into the threads of her life, finding in them reflections of her experience as a mother. Beautiful and thoughtful writing.
Cooking at Home, by David Chang and Priya Krishna
Honestly probably the most fun and practical cookbook I’ve read in a while. I love Priya’s asides as she tries to condense David’s ramblings into printed form, and how both of them talk the reader through the process of cooking, teaching that it’s more about adapting recipes to your taste than recreating them exactly, and along the way you learn how their separate backgrounds shaped their differing and evolving tastes in food. I am a pretty confident home cook and I still learned a lot of great shortcuts from this book – David and Priya are professional chefs but reading this was like just hanging out with other home cooks, swapping tips you’ve picked up along the way, and sharing recipes you learned from your moms.
The Oracle of Night, by Sidarta Ribeiro
The first half of this book was pretty awful, full of vague generalizations, tales of historical dreams that turned out to have been prophetic, and long paragraphs about the origins of life and consciousness that felt more like a high school research project than a published book. Towards the end it got much more interesting, turning abruptly to synaptic pathways, brain activity during sleep, and actual neuroscience, and that’s when I really got into it. Pity about the rest of the book.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson posits that the race-based unspoken social rules in America are analogous to a caste system like the one in India, and also pitilessly demonstrates how Nazi Germany formed their own systems of categorizing people based on what they learned of the US. There are oh so many details in this book (and it’s another one which I intend to buy later, so I can mark it up and drink it in properly) but my best takeaway from this book is that if you look at racism in the US from the viewpoint of a caste system, then it makes total sense that people doing racist things don’t see themselves as racist; the word “racist” implies a person who is acting outside the bounds of civil behavior, whereas since the entire foundation of American civil society is bounded and defined by racism, those steeped in that culture will justify any actions taken in upholding that system. With patient, inexorable detail, Wilkerson uncovers the pillars supporting the caste system, and provides many examples of how it hurts all Americans, not just the ones at the bottom.
Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
This book probably wins this month’s award for “book that I immediately needed to share a fact from;” the family got many earfuls of fascinating mycological trivia. Fungi are not only ubiquitous, an invisible network reaching throughout our world, they are also constantly affecting things, feeding nutrients to plants, changing the brain chemistry of insects and animals (including humans), bubbling and fermenting in our food, digesting things that we’d never think possible, and surviving in incredibly challenging environments. Biologist Sheldrake throws himself entirely into learning more about fungi, not just through research and experimentation, but also by literally inserting himself into his subject (or consuming it). Despite their ubiquity fungi are not entirely understood; clearly some internal communication is at work within the fungus to allow it to reach in the direction of resources, while pruning back spread branches that did not find food; however, as Sheldrake acknowledges, any effort to understand it is limited by our human modes of understanding (Can fungi hunting for resources be said to be “reaching” out? Is it “deciding” which direction to move? Is it “playing favorites” by supplying some plants with nutrients while neglecting others? Have we just stumbled upon fungal properties (yeast!) beneficial to us, or did we evolve into mutual benefit?) Also I had no idea that plants were so bound up with fungi to exist; entire mycelial networks of resource-harvesting and -sharing underlay the ecological landscape that we see outside. My house plants, struggling in their little pots, look so lonely now.
Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
A memoir; after Zauner loses her mom to stomach cancer, she finds herself crying in Korean grocery stores while shopping for the foods that her mother loved. I felt so much empathy for her, especially her journey in trying to recreate the foods of her childhood. We second-generation kids count on our parents to provide a link to the culture of the old country, and when we lose a parent, we also lose that bridge. (To be clear, I am super fortunate in that I have not lost a parent! Don’t go anywhere Ma and Ba! But I’m super grateful every time you answer the phone to handle random questions like “what does this menu say” and “how do you order that dim sum dish I like again”.)
A Good Wife, by Samra Zafar
A memoir by a woman who escaped an abusive arranged marriage. Zafar, born in Pakistan and raised in Abu Dhabi, was married off at sixteen to a Canadian man who promised that he would help her continue her education; however, once married and a new mother, she slowly realized that her in-laws and husband had no intention of allowing her any independence. Her story of resilience and eventual escape takes time to tell, but leaves you in awe of her strength, grateful for her lucky breaks, and appreciative of all the people who helped her along the way.