Soon students will have the luxury the rest of us enjoy all year long: reading for fun and personal enrichment. The CSJ asked several professors what books they'd recommend to the College community for this summer's reading. Here's the first installment of their suggestions. Happy reading.
I have been rereading favorite books lately. In 1980 in a small, dirty, used bookstore in Penang, I found Mary Renault's The Charioteer, a story of homosexuality in Britain during World War II. Many of her novels deal with homosexual themes, but that is not the point of my recommendation. She writes a carefully crafted prose, delineating settings and characters with extraordinary nuance. Rereading The Charioteer in 1997 was just as thrilling as in the hot shade of my Penang hotel with the monkeys hovering near to steal the cherry from my Manhattan.
Down the Wild River North by Constance Helmericks--a great adventure of a mother and daughter traveling down an Alaskan river long before high tech gear was available.
Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown: a classic coming-out story
O Pioneers by Willa Cather: a classic
Memory Board by Jane Rule: the touching story of an older lesbian couple dealing with Alzheimer's disease.
Plain and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish by Sue Bender: a story about the wisdom of the Amish
I suggest Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi: a fine novel by a German-American woman, set in Weimar and Nazi Germany, about a young woman who is a dwarf. One watches her struggles to be a whole person in her own right, against the terrifying pressures of a society torn by racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism.
Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize winner for literature and fall 1996 visitor to Mount Holyoke, wrote a lovely autobiography about his childhood in western Nigeria during the l940s, called Ake: The Years of Childhood.
A book that I plan to read this summer is Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. It was recommended to me by my daughter, who read it in a women's studies course. She found it to be extremely powerful; it is set in the South and explores the effects of child abuse.
The Stoning of Soraya M. by Friedoune Sahebjam: This is a searing account of Soraya M.'s true story. She was an Iranian woman who was stoned to death. The events leading to this end are chronicled by Iranian journalist Friedoune Sahebjam, who traveled to Iran and secretly collected the details of this atrocity. Amnesty International, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and the Red Cross have confirmed stoning as one of the barbaric practices women, especially in rural regions, were subjected to during the first five years of the Khomeini regime. Though it ends tragically, the story is a powerful testament to the spirit of human dignity and the loyalty of two women to each other.
A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher: This novel has been likened to the great American classics To Kill a Mockingbird and Anatomy of a Murder. Using the setting of a small town nestled in northern Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, Mosher forges a plot that includes the familiar elements of race, sex, and murder. But this is no ordinary novel; it addresses the universal issue of how the humanity of some is determined by their external qualities.
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: no student should be allowed to graduate without having read this book. It's a gem.
The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist: This is a collection of short stories written by one of Germany's great nineteenth-century literary giants. As stories, they are spellbinding. They also represent Kleist's critique of Enlightenment values. Here we have another text that examines the complexity and ambiguity of what it means to be human.
Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison and The Hero and the Blues by Albert Murray: For anyone who wants to understand how the written and oral literature of Black Americans "connects" with the insights of the American literary canon, these two books are a "must read." They're short and pithy; in my view, great summer reading.
It's absolutely crucial that students read The Case against the Global Economy by Jerry Mander and Ed Goldsmith. This is a collection of short, clear articles on the various aspects of the globalization policies now being followed by the major countries and their likely consequences. The articles range from issues of biodiversity to bank deregulation and end with a selection of alternatives.
And for fun: Deadly Feast by Robert Roach: the story of how mad cow disease and its human equivalent were discovered. It reads like a murder mystery and will turn you into a vegetarian instantaneously. I also like almost anything Ursula Hegi writes.
Given the recent discussions about the need for cross-racial dialogue, I would recommend Brothers and Sisters by Bebe Moore Campbell. Set in Los Angeles following the recent riots, it is a very insightful, entertaining, and ultimately hopeful novel about the difficulties and possibilities of cross-racial relationships. I assigned it this year in my Psychology of Racism course and my students thought it was great!
Albert French, author of Billy, has been likened to Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, and I couldn't agree more. Billy is the story of a ten-year-old African American boy, living with his mother in Mississippi, circa 1937, who accidentally kills a white girl and is brought to trial. The frail trial judge is powerless to stem the tide of the particulary monstrous racial injustice that sweeps over this town, and Billy Lee Turner is executed. Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land, says of Billy, "I will mourn his death for the rest of my life." But even this accolade can't describe how powerfully Billy is written; no one who reads it will ever forget this child.
A Quiet Night and a Perfect End is a collection of short stories by Montreal writer Denise Roig. Taken together, the stories illustrate movingly our shared humanity in the pain of loss and our ability to transcend that loss with courage and quiet determination. They might just as well be called profound lessons in how to survive.
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