The Next Book On My List

Human acts by Han Kang                 This is the story of Dong-ho and the student uprising in South Korea. It's a story of death and longing. It's a story of a heartbreaking reality and the scars that lived forever. It's a story of spirits that can't move on and the living that cling to their presence. It's a story of memories and how they have the power to cripple and burden. It's a story of time and how some wounds never heal, psychological or physical. These stories don’t have a single narrative. Their narratives change with the passage of time within a community. This story of Dong-ho, is the story of the many who were affected the day the shots rang out and the uprising ended.           I'm not sure if it was the changes in narrative, the use of the second person throughout, the vivid imagery, the despairing tone, the prose or the characters but I ...

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer                 They were the twelfth expedition to make their way to Area X: the psychologist, the surveyor, the anthropologist and the biologist. There was a linguist but she had second thoughts before going through the barrier. When the four crossed through, with the help of some hypnosis by the psychologist, they all had their packs on their backs. It took them four days to reach the camp. Some remains from the previous expedition were left behind. Everything was as it seemed except for the tunnel, or the tower as our narrator the biologist called it. The tower had never been mentioned and it wasn’t on any of their maps and yet there it was descending into the depths, visible only slightly above the ground. In their canvassing of the area they knew they would eventually have to enter the tower but no one would understand the implications of the writing on the wall. ...

The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates                 There was something so incredibly engaging about this story of Paul Coates and his two sons. Now, Paul had many children but this memoir focuses on Bill and the author, Ta-Nehisi. Brothers by two different mothers, often in the same house and completely different. Their father was steadfast in their life but his history caused him to be strict and in many ways an isolationist. An ex-member of the Black Panther Party, “conscious” and not a believer in the holidays, his children were constantly aware of their world and their place in it. Ta-Nehisi and Bill were taking two separate paths. Bill was the one who was always quick to fight and determined to be something. Ta-Nehisi was a slacker, not at all prone to violence, simply trying to make it through his days. Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas were not holidays they celebrated. Baltimor...

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips                 In September of 1912 two white women were attacked in Forsyth County. Ellie Grice claimed to have been raped by a black man. Mae Crow was beaten and left for dead. The events that directly followed these two incidents were the lynchings of five black men accused of the crimes and the exodus of the almost 1100 black residents of the county. The white residents of the town threatened, attacked and stalked the black members of the community until they feared for the life and fled into neighboring counties. Those residents who sought to protect the black workers that worked for them would be threatened until they conceded. Forsyth County, Georgia would then be known as a “white county” something the residents relished with pride. For the next 75 years this county would hold its racial line, defending it with threats to an...

Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina by Michaela DePrince with Elaine DePrince                 She was known as Mabinty Bangura in Sierra Leone. She wouldn’t become Michaela DePrince until she had lost both of her parents. Her father was shot in the diamond mines by the rebels. Her mother would die from sickness. Mabinty would become known simply as a number by the guardians at the orphanage. When the rebels removed the children from the orphanage everyone would escape to Ghana, where her new mother Elaine would take her and her best friend, also Mabinty, to the United States of America. Her first night with Elaine before they left Ghana she would show her a picture she had found while at the orphanage. It was a cover of Dance Magazine . On the cover was a ballerina elevated on pointe. She wanted to be that dancer.             ...

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides                 Cecilia went first. She failed on her first attempt even though she needed over 20 stitches on each wrist. But the second time, Cecilia succeeded in ending her life. Her four older sisters were watched with scrutiny around their neighborhood and their school. Were they mourning? Did they know why Cecilia wanted to kill herself? What could be going through their heads? Lux, Mary, Bonnie and Therese would go a year without their sister before joining her beyond the grave. The entire time they were being watched by the boys who loved them. They tried in vain to reach the Lisbon sisters, to understand them, to express to them the love that boiled over for them. That love would take the boys through to their adulthood, to this book that holds their recollections of the Lisbon sisters. They have been examining the evidence for years trying understand the...

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander                 Let me start off by saying that this is one of those books that I believe could initiate a large amount of change if people would take the time to read it, understand it and pursue a change. With that in mind I am going to recommend this book to you before I even start to tell you about this book because I believe everyone should be aware of what is happening in the United States, why it is unprecedented and why mass incarceration affects us all. Michelle Alexander wanted to prove with this book how the War on Drugs began, how the language behind it insinuated the worst possible imagery of the black community, how the prison industry expanded to such a gargantuan size and how the main victims of the War of Drugs are African-American men.           ...