Faintingviolet is awesome and always on the hunt for research books for me. She sent along “How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads” and I was excited to read this since etymology is something I really enjoy. I was not disappointed. Daniel Cassidy began his interest of the Irish influence on the American language after inheriting a Gaelic dictionary from a deceased relative and realizing how many American words in modern language link back closely to the Gaelic. The book is […]
A Tale of Two Worlds
This is an exquisite debut novel with the mixed flavors of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and even a taste of the powerful memoir Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is a story about culture clash, immigration, tradition, and love in all its many forms. Maryam Mazar is a middle-aged wife and mother, married to an Englishman, living in London and dreaming of her former life in Iran. Her beloved sister back home has just died and her teenaged […]
There Are Some Children Here
This book is one that I won’t easily forget; it tells one girl’s story across two different worlds–the first a shantytown in Zimbabwe and the second in suburban Detroit. The story begins as Darling and her friends explore their neighborhoods as well as wealthier enclaves that border them. They are poor and hungry and chock full of American cultural touchstones and attitude. They sometimes discuss the time before–when they went to school and lived in houses–before the military came–but mostly they play in the world […]
A French mystery that dabbles in immigration issues and murder
Intrepid Parisian detective Aimee Leduc is back with another murder to solve, and it takes place in Belleville, a heavily Arab neighborhood rife with tension, mystery, violence and pathos. Leduc has been asked by the sister of her best friend to help her. The sister is married to a government minister and Aimee had actually attended their wedding several years earlier. Now, the sister suspects her husband of straying and wants Aimee to intervene. But when Aimee, a software specialist, reluctantly agrees to meet Anais […]
An insightful take on the American Dream
(This post originally appeared on Persephone Magazine.) Cristina Henríquez’s newly published The Book of Unknown Americans, is not about immigrants’ relationship to white people. Ideally, this would not be unusual in a novel, but in a literary landscape that is still struggling with diversity, it’s refreshing to read her insightful take on the American Dream. And what is the “American Dream,” anyway? Different economic classes might answer in specific ways, but at the root of every response is the wish, “Can life be a little […]
Americanah
Last year I read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is a brilliant fictionalized portrayal of Nigeria before and during the civil war, and was blown away by both the story and her writing. Once I heard she had this new book out, I put myself on the 70-person wait list for Americanah and finally picked it up last Friday. Americanah is about a young woman named Ifemelu who grows up in Nigeria and due to the multiple strikes at her […]
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