Tom Rodriguez was my student at T.H. Rogers School in Houston in the 80s. We reconnected several years ago, to my delight. Recently, he sent me this note, which contains a request which I found, at once, intriguing, flattering and daunting. That he – and his classmates – found the books that I introduced them to forty years ago sufficiently memorable to want more of same is astonishing. Here’s how he put it, with an elegance I wish I could take some credit for, but I think there were many positive influences since our time together that deserve more of the credit.
I wonder if you would consider making another book list for your Rogers students. Those students now have about 40 years since 8th grade English class. We’re all middle-aged, maybe approaching the empty nest, maybe with some young children still around. We’re grown now, settled in our careers. Parenting is transitioning to the launching of young adults. We’re in the midst of Erikson’s generativity vs stagnation. What books–fiction or nonfiction–can guide us, enlighten us, thrill us, challenge us, motivate us, or comfort us? What is the literary canon of middle age in the 2020s? I’m not sure what the ultimate goal should be here? Maybe a grounding of our own mental and emotional health in a time when we are beginning a new search for meaning and purpose. Your own accumulated wisdom would be greatly appreciated here. Anyway, I have been thinking about what to read as I find myself with more time. I’d be happy to invest in a recommendation from you. I’m sure that I am not the only one who would.
Many scholars more well-read than I, like Harold Bloom, have tried their hand at creating a canon, a compilation of books that all well-read and well-educated citizens should read. Online, you can find an anonymously generated list of the 500 “most important” books ever written. Inevitably, these lists or canons are open to attack for being culturally biased or simply for including or excluding titles that don’t conform to the tastes and preferences of particular readers.
My response to Tom’s invitation will be much more personal and circumscribed. This will be a starter list that tries to take seriously that wonderful set of descriptors Tom included – books that guide, enlighten, thrill, motivate or comfort. I’ll also include a list of authors whose works consistently fit one of those labels. I will invite readers to suggest other titles that might inspire Tom and his contemporaries. They could be classics or contemporary, fiction or non-fiction. Since I have trouble remembering what I read last week, I’m going to be spending some time in front of my bookshelves, perusing the spines. So many of those books make good reading, but don’t necessarily rise to the next level of works that packed some extra punch that elevated them in importance.
Right out of the gate, I need to make a course correction. Even an abbreviated list is too much for a single blog, so I’m going to begin with non-fiction books that have had an impact on how I see and understand the world. There are so many others that deserve a place on the list, especially the work of non-Western writers, but I’m a slow reader and I just haven’t gotten to them. Here they are, in no intended order:
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder – the shortest and arguably the most important book on the list. A cautionary guide to the signs of emerging authoritarianism.
- Bloodlands – also by Snyder. At the opposite end of the length spectrum. An accounting of the toll on human life in Central Europe before during and after WWII resulting from the actions of Hitler and Stalin. Of course there’s the Holocaust, but there’s so much more that you may not be aware of.
- On Being Mortal by Atul Gawande – my favorite doctor/writer. Everyone, no matter what age, needs to read this argument for giving the dying some agency in their end story. I don’t usually reread books, but I’ve been through this one at least three times.
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson – the author tracks 3 families migrating from the South to New York, Chicago and LA. It helped me understand how internal migration has shaped the character of our nation.
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. The title says it all. I was completely ignorant of the rich and powerful cultures that rose and fell on the continent before the arrival of the Europeans.
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. An eye-opening and heartbreaking look at what poor people are reduced to in order to survive, out of sight of the rest of us.
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. A powerful look at one aspect of the housing crisis that is plaguing all our cities and its victims living permanently unstable lives.
- The Color of the Law by Richard Rothstein – how many times can I use the phrase eye-opening, but I think that’s one of the qualities I’m looking for in books of non-fiction. Rothstein demonstrates how legislation and the legal system have intentionally served racist ends (e.g. The G.I. Bill and social security)
- Becoming by Michelle Obama – a wonderful antidote to the dark and gloomy books on my list and a sharp contrast to the wooden books produced by so many celebrities, especially politicians.
- The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – a painful account of dealing with the death of loved ones, in this case her husband and daughter in the same year.
- Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding – an important book for those of us puzzled by the political void between urban and rural America. The collapse of rural and small-town economies has driven whole communities to drown their sense of hopelessness in dangerous drugs.
- Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh– a really compelling book that helped me understand the ways in which growing up white and poor in rural America shapes one’s world view, based on the author’s personal story.
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates – If I was ranking books by their emotional impact on me, this would be at the head of my list. It’s a beautifully written and passionate book about being Black in America, presented as a letter to the author’s son.
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman – It’s a whole anthropology course in a single volume. It awakened in me an understanding of the vastly different ways in which the human body and the concept of health are understood differently in other cultures.
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander – my sense is that I’m not alone among the readers of this book who came away with a new understanding of the penal system as the heir to the slavery which we wrongly assume is no longer with us.
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan – this book raised my awareness by a factor of a thousand of the personal and environmental implications of our food choices. It’s not preachy, which is what makes it so effective.
- The Men We Reap by Jesamyn Ward – She is one of my favorite authors of fiction and non-fiction. This book is about the casualties she has witnessed among the Black men in her family and in her small rural Mississippi community.
- All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Alicia Myles – a mother about to be separated from her daughter by the cruelty of the system of slavery, sews a sack for her to carry her few meager belongings. The author traces that sack and its contents through many generations of that family’s journey. It becomes the history of slavery and its impact on Black lives.
- My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century by Adina Hoffman. Full disclosure. Adina is my daughter and if I was really nervy I would include a few more of her books on my list, but this one in particular will introduce so many aspects of the Palestinian experience through the lens of the life of one extraordinary poet and human being, Taha Muhammed Ali.
So that should keep Tom and all the other readers of this blog busy for a few years. It’s likely that you’ve already read some of these books, but I’m happy if you’ve discovered at least one new title. The list is, admittedly, pretty dark, but if you’re looking for something more diverting, you’re following the wrong blogger.
Fiction next week.
