"Are You Enjoying?" by Mira Sethi

Mira Sethi, a writer who lives in Lahore and in San Francisco, has published a compelling collection of short stories set in Pakistan: “Are You Enjoying?” (Knopf, 2021). The stories inform non-Pakistani readers about Pakistan, but never in a didactic way; at the same time the book draws us in with the many both realistic and surprising situations the characters find themselves in. Most of the stories are about young people and their relationships, including ways in which they are influenced by and sometimes restricted by the norms of their country and families. Sometimes the characters find ingenious ways around these norms. In case any readers might think the stories and the writing would be conservative because of their setting, they will soon be proven wrong. There is plenty in the stories about sex and sexualities, and plenty of frank and colloquial language about these matters and others. The stories deal with family and family connections and obligations. Sometimes sexualities and love affairs have to be hidden, even disguised by such strategems as marriages between gay men and lesbian women. Sometimes there is violence. The stories are brimming with vividly-described experiences, conversations, twists and turns in plots, and all the mixed events and feelings of life; they never allow the reader’s attention to drift.

"All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South," by Ruth Coker Burks

I recently visited the National AIDS Memorial Grove in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, a beautiful and moving place. I am old enough to remember well the beginning and peak of the terrible AIDS epidemic, well before effective treatments made it a chronic disease rather than a death sentence, usually a quick and very painful one at that. Making AIDS sufferers' situations even worse was the way most people, even many medical people, were too afraid to touch or even get near AIDS patients, although there were many caring people among the gay and lesbian communities and among medical personnel, especially in the big cities, who did help tremendously. Already living in San Francisco at the time, I saw many of the devastatingly affected young men (and at the time, they were mostly young men) on the streets, especially in the mostly-gay Castro District, emaciated and aged-looking, often leaning on canes, with lesions on their faces and bodies. Ruth Coker Burks’ (with Kevin Carr O’Leary) new book, “All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South” (Grove Press, 2020), describes the way Burks almost accidentally started to get involved with helping AIDS patients in a small Arkansas town in the 1980s and 1990s. Although she had no medical training, she started providing support and care to patients who were neglected even in hospitals because of nurses’ and others’ (often including their own families') fear of contact with them. She held their hands and talked with them and stayed with them while they were dying. Later when she was contacted by those with AIDS in earlier stages, she helped them find medicine, housing, and other services, always with her own unstinting caring. Because it was in a conservative area, it was even harder to do this work than in big coastal cities such as San Francisco and New York. (But here I pause to give tribute to ALL the medical and social workers and volunteers who gave so much of themselves, even in the early years when little was known about how the disease spread, and when these personnel did not know whether and how they were risking their own health and lives. Another important and compassionate memoir from those days, also set in the South, is Abraham Verghese’s 1994 book, “My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story,” about his work with AIDS patients in a small town in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee in the early days of the epidemic.) Burks’ work started to be more and more known, and she started working with organizations and governments and getting grants, and even eventually became a consultant for Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas and later when he was President. Many of these men who suffered from AIDS became Burks’ close friends, even, as the title says, her “chosen family.” Like all human beings, these men had both good characteristics and flaws, and Burks does not sugarcoat the descriptions, but her love for them all shines through. This is a story of bravery, compassion, and resourcefulness. Burks never seems to be praising herself for this work; she just describes it in a matter-of-fact way, and it was clearly a labor of love. As sad as the events of the book mostly are, the book is also full of joy, caring, and human kindness. It is sometimes even humorous, as Burks has a cheerful, can-do, even joking-at-times, tone. She and her co-writer have created an extremely informative and inspiring book. Of course the topic is a tremendously tragic one, and that is never forgotten throughout this memoir, but it is also one that makes readers care and want to keep reading. I highly recommend this book.

"Morningside Heights," by Joshua Henkin, and "Crying in H Mart," by Michelle Zauner

I have just read two engrossing books, one a novel and one a memoir, portraying caregiving of very ill loved ones. The books have much in common in their overall themes of the meanings of family and relationships and cultures, but are also very different in many ways. “Morningside Heights” (Pantheon, 2021) is Joshua Henkin’s latest novel, and as in his earlier novels (see my posts of 8/19/12, 9/13/12, and 2/14/13), his voice is (according to Joan Frank’s perceptive 6/27/21 Washington Post review of the current book and alluding to Henkin’s earlier fiction as well) “characterized by compassionate attention to modern human predicaments” and is “unflinching yet kind.” “Morningside Heights” describes the early-onset dementia of a brilliant and highly successful professor in his fifties, and his being cared for by his much younger wife. Fortunately they have the means to employ help, as well as caring friends who pitch in, but it is still a devastatingly sad and difficult situation for her and their daughter, as of course it is for him. Michelle Zauner’s memoir “Crying in H Mart” (Knopf, 2021) shares the sadness and pain of caring for a loved one, in this case her mother, who suffers terribly with cancer and dies when Zauner is only 25 years old. Mother and daughter have had a fraught relationship, complicated by the mother’s being first-generation Korean-American and the daughter’s being half-Korean, half Caucasian-American, as well as by the daughter's youth. The author decided to drop everything (she is a musician who goes by the name of Japanese Breakfast) and dedicate herself to taking care of her mother, and witnessed all the terrible details involving doctors, hospitals, tests, and the horrifying symptoms and pain that her mother endured. The two drew closer and closer during this time. One of the ways they had always connected, and continued to do so even more during the mother’s illness, was through preparing and eating Korean food. The memoir is full of food-related experiences, memories, conversations, and meditations. Zauner writes beautifully about food and its cultural connotations and how it is the way she best understands and draws closer to her Korean family and background. Both Henkin’s novel and Zauner’s memoir are painful to read, yet life-affirming, and both are very well-written and compelling. I recommend both.

"You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism," by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

Sisters Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar, in their book “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism” (Grand Central, 2021) have taken a different approach than most authors do to the topic of race and racism in the United States: they describe it through the use of humor – very pointed, laugh-out-loud and at the same time shake-your-head-about-how-wrong-and-crazy-things-are humor. Ruffin is a writer and cast member on “Late Night with Seth Myers,” and recently began her own show, “The Amber Ruffin Show.” She lives in New York City, whereas her sister Lacey lives in Nebraska, where she works in health and human services. The book focuses, as the title suggests, on Lacey’s experiences with racism, and the sisters’ conversations about those experiences. The book is essentially a series of stories about things that people have said and done to or in front of Lacey; the authors somehow manage to reveal how shocking the stories are and at the same time make them humorous – a real achievement, and an effective approach. The sisters toggle between being discouraged at the fact that racism prevails even now, and being cautiously hopeful that things can and do change, at least very slowly. Besides pointing out the racism in everyday life (as well as in larger settings), their main point is (as they themselves state) that it is important to speak out, to name the problem, and even, sometimes, to laugh at it. This is a brave, thought-provoking, and – yes – humorous book.

Independent Bookstores Thriving Despite the Pandemic!

Many readers worried about how independent bookstores would survive during the pandemic. I am beyond thrilled to see that they have in fact survived, and even thrived. The American Booksellers Association recently (late May 2021) announced that membership actually increased during the past year. The ABA said that the survival and even success of bookshops during the pandemic was due partly to PPP (government) loans and grants, and partly to the rise of online sales. They also mentioned the role of bookshop.org, an online bookseller that partners with independent bookstores. Hurray for this good news!

"Secrets of Happiness," by Joan Silber

I have enjoyed Joan Silber’s fiction in the past, so when I saw that she had a new novel, “Secrets of Happiness” (Counterpoint, 2021), I immediately obtained a copy. The story is mainly set in New York City; its characters include some with roots in Thailand (especially) and Nepal. The main character, Ethan, finds that his father has long had a second family, a Thai woman and her two children, also living in New York. Then Ethan himself becomes involves in a triangle, as he and his male lover stay with his lover’s former longtime lover to take care of him through his serious illness and then death. So there are several overlapping stories, and each character has the chance to give her or his thoughts and feelings, in alternating chapters. This reminded me of Silber's two most recent books, “Fools” and “Improvement” (see my posts of 6/11/13 and 2/11/18), which also have separate semi-interlocking chapters for different characters and stories. The chapters in “Fools” are the most separate, almost like independent short stories, some of which happen to feature the same characters. The chapters in “Improvement” are more directly connected. And the chapters in “Secrets of Happiness, although each is titled with the name of the character through whose eyes we are being told the story, are even more explicitly connected. It is if these three books traverse a continuum from a related short story collection to an almost-novel. I savored all three of these books, but I liked the current one, “Secrets,” the best, and I think that is partly because of the more explicit connections among the stories. Perhaps I am old-fashioned in this preference. But I do think that because of it, the novel, its plot(s), and its characters will stay with me longer than those of the other two books. In any case, as evidenced in all three books (and in her earlier books that I read before I started this blog), Silber is gifted at portraying characters, and at illuminating the often-tangled relationships among them.

Guest Post: A Shakespeare Reading Group, by Johnnie Johnson Hafernik

I am pleased that my longtime colleague and friend Johnnie Johnson Hafernik kindly agreed to my request that she write about the Shakespeare Reading Group that she co-founded and organizes. Thank you, Johnnie! Here is her post: Over five years ago a friend and I attended an informative and engaging long-weekend seminar near Yosemite entitled “Shakespeare and Opera.” I was attracted by the “opera” theme but left not only still passionate about opera but reminded of how much I enjoy Shakespeare. That weekend my friend and I decided to form a Shakespeare reading group. We easily convinced two other friends to join us as core members, with a few others who occasionally attended. Today, the group has grown to eight. Sadly, our most passionate and knowledgeable (about Shakespeare and much more) founding member, B., died last year. Early on, B. gave each of us Tina Packer’s "Women of Will: The Remarkable Evolution of Shakespeare’s Female Characters." The book has been invaluable for our discussions. We miss her. At each meeting, we decide by consensus which play to read for the following meeting. In preparation for meetings, our group has evolved from initially each of us choosing a passage to discuss from the selected play and a character we’d like to play to a more free-flowing and wide-ranging discussion. Each of us has our own way of preparing for our discussions, but we’ve found it especially helpful to listen to an audio version of the play and/or to watch one or more versions of the play, many available for streaming. Our go-to versions are the mid-1980s BBC productions of all the plays; adaptations of the play (e.g., "Throne of Blood," the Kurosawa film adaptation of "Macbeth"; operatic or musical versions such as "West Side Story"/"Romeo and Juliet"); podcasts and commentaries; and novels that are modern retellings of Shakespeare plays from The Hogarth Shakespeare Series (e.g., Margaret Atwood’s "Hagseed," a retelling of "The Tempest.") Our enthusiasm for our discussions and appreciation for Shakespeare have only increased over time. We leave each meeting energized, full of questions, and reminded of his greatness. Even plays some of us were initially not interested in reading capture our attention and spark discussion. Each play offers much to appreciate and explore: the beautiful language, the phrasing, the songs, the structure of the play, the humor, the vivid characters who often resemble well-known and not so well-known individuals, the questions and themes presented, and much more. Perhaps most important, we have found “today” in each play — situations, people, circumstances, motivations, questions of right and wrong. Stephen Marche in his book "How Shakespeare Changed Everything" (a book that B. highly recommended) draws attention to these themes, and to the complexities of life, when he writes that “Shakespeare is a messy writer with a complex view of morality whose conception of the universe is a bottomless, shifting ground” (p. 133). Marche goes on to argue that Shakespeare “recognizes the messiness of life as does no other writer, but it comes at a cost of an easy understanding of life’s ultimate purpose” (p. 135).