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Contemporary Fiction Views: This week in fiction [1]

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Date: 2023-10-24  

I didn’t get to think about the book read for this week’s diary, so will do that for next week. Meanwhile:

Book Notes:

Scholastic book fairs apparently tried to have it both ways by separating race and LBGTQ+ material it is shipping to schools. Instead of upholding the right of every student to have access to every age-appropriate book, Scholastic instead has boxed up dozens of books as “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice." It sounds like a celebration of diversity and inclusiveness, but actually is a way to appease book banners.

I had to run book fairs twice a year by myself in the all-kindergarten public school where I served as librarian for seven years. I hated it. There were few books celebrating diversity and inclusivity, although I made sure to put what was sent on display. I also had trouble getting many books in Spanish or bilingual editions (our student population is more than 90% Hispanic and the majority of students in our schools live in homes where Spanish is spoken). Most of the books they sent were for older readers. And when you're in an all-kinder building, YA romances and fantasies are not prime display material.

There were books I didn't display. They were the ones that had tiny toys encased in plastic on book covers. I didn't want little brothers and sisters ripping up the covers and possibly putting those little trinkets in their mouths. Nor did I want to return a bunch of merchandise that had been torn up.

When opening up the book fair materials, it's really easy to sort what you want to put out and what you want to box up. If I could do it in a couple hours after teaching up to six classes of kindergarteners all day, anyone can do it.

UPDATE: Scholastic is going to end the separation in January:

Trying to keep voices silent or separated also was seen in New York City this week, when Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s speaking event was cancelled after the novelist signed an open letter critical of Israel's activities regarding Gaza. The author of the acclaimed novels The Sympathizer, The Refugees and The Committed has recently published a memoir, A Man of Two Faces. His talk was going to take place at 92NY, a Jewish organization formerly called 92nd Street Y.

Nguyen was one of 750 writers who signed a letter, published in the London Review of Books, that included a call for “an end to the violence and destruction in Palestine.”

On Threads, Nguyen stated: "But art is one of the things that can keep our minds and hearts open, that can help us see beyond the hatred of war, that can make us understand that we cannot be divided into the human versus the inhuman because we are, all of us, human and inhuman at the same time."

Other writers began cancelling their upcoming appearances. On Monday, 92NY paused its literary program series.

I gather this is simplistic on my part, but killing and other violence done to innocent people is wrong regardless of one’s religion, and the faith or identity of the victims. Governments are not religions.

Someone who knows a lot about speaking out, writing fearlessly and paying for it is Salman Rushdie. This past week at the Frankfurt book fair, Rushdie said writers need to be able to write about what they wish, and not be bound. For example, “If we’re in a world where only women can write about women and only people from India can write about people from India and only straight people can write about straight people … then that’s the death of the art,” the novelist said.

Well, yes and no, in that writers who create characters that they share nothing in common with except humanity have a duty to be as authentic as possible, without being an appropriator. Research, talk to people, check the writerly ego to get it right, and then find the connections between your characters and real people.

Rushdie also expressed horror at the Hamas attack, and foreboding about how Israel's leader may retaliate. He said literature could do little about the war, but he also said, “What writers can do – and what they are doing – is to try to articulate the incredible pain that many people are feeling right now and to bring that to the world’s attention.”

Reading fiction encourages empathy. Let's go read more as a way to light candles.

Among the new releases this week are

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward. From the publisher:

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.

Julia, a retelling of 1984 by Sandra Newman. From the publisher:

An imaginative, feminist, and brilliantly relevant-to-today retelling of Orwell’s 1984, from the point of view of Winston Smith’s lover, Julia, by critically acclaimed novelist Sandra Newman.

Julia Worthing is a mechanic who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. It’s 1984, and Britain—now called Airstrip One—has long been absorbed into the larger trans-Atlantic nation of Oceania. Oceania has been at war for as long as anyone can remember, and it is ruled by the ultra-totalitarian Party, whose leader is a quasi-mythical figure called Big Brother. In short, it is the world of Orwell’s 1984.

All her life, Julia has known only Oceania, and, until she meets Winston Smith, she has never imagined anything else. She is an ideal citizen: cheerfully cynical, always ready with a bribe, piously repeating every political slogan while believing in nothing. She routinely breaks the rules, but also collaborates with the regime when necessary. Everyone likes Julia.

Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories by Jeanette Winterson. From the publisher:

In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own encounters with the supernatural alongside hair-raising fictions.

Nefando by National Book Award finalist Mónica Ojeda, described by the publisher as "a techno-horror portrait of the fears and desires of six young artists whose lives are upended by a controversial video game."

January by the late Sara Gallardo, now available in English. From the publisher:

With echoes of Edith Wharton’s Summer, this radical feminist novel broke the silence around abortion to reshape the way women’s bodies and rights were perceived in 20th-century Argentina.

Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica. From the publisher:

An American master returns: The author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery by a disgraced journalist sparks a cross-country chase through a nation corroded by delusion.

Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang. From the publisher:

Two girls are bound by red string and canine heritage in this vivid tale about female companionship and loyalty, from the National Book Award "5 Under 35" honoree and author of Gods of Want.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/24/2201157/-Contemporary-Fiction-Views-This-week-in-fiction

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