Faculty's "Must-Read" Books for Summer--Part II
CSJ asked several professors what books they'd recommend to the College community for this summer's reading. Here's the second installment of their suggestions. Happy reading.
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt: a memoir of his first nineteen years growing up in New York and Ireland. It's very funny, well written, and has received lots of attention in the mainstream press. Even so, it is quite good.
Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics and the Color of Our Character by Karla Holloway: very thoughtful essays on contemporary crossings of race and gender in American life. African American cultural criticism at its best.
Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David Oshinsky: a very good social history of the Jim Crow era in the South that looks at the system of crime and punishment under Jim Crow as a source of "free" labor, and as a mechanism for maintaining political and economic oppression of black bodies. It reveals how long and miserably this country has failed to provide racial justice to freed persons, and addresses current concerns about the rise of crime and the economics of the punishment industry.
Crash by J. G. Ballard: Sex and car crashes (sometimes combined, sometimes side-by-side), all graphically described. Inspiring reading! (David Cronenberg based his recent film Crash on this 1973 British novel.)
Next, two selections from the comic book genre: SHE Comics: An Anthology of Big Bitch by Spain Rodriguez (published by Last Gasp, San Francisco). Big Bitch gets what she wants, doesn't take any crap from anyone, and fights evil along the way. After a hard day fighting evil, she's served by her very faithful manservant, Asquith. Love and Rockets #48 by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (published by Fantagraphics Books): Includes "Luba Conquers the World," the tale of Maria and her three daughters (Luba, Petra, and Fritz). Abandoned by her mother as a baby, Luba makes a life for herself, finds her two sisters, and bears three girls of her own. Big breasts, lots of sex, bizarre plot twists--you can't go wrong with this one!
May I gently suggest The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by the late Carl Sagan, especially for all the philosophical relativists, cultural constructivists, and nonobjectivists who routinely critique "science" when they're really thinking of "technology" or the "process of doing science."
Literature or Life by Jorge Semprun, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. Semprun, a resistance fighter from Spain who fought against the Nazis in France, spent two years in Buchenwald concentration camp and returned to France after the liberation. This book is a mixture of literature, memoir, and essay--a narrative that seeks to convey the experience of the concentration camp and of life prior to and after the camp, while at the same time talking about the process of memory and the necessity of remembering for survival even at great cost for the rememberer.
Bugs in the System by May Berenbaum: This woman writes just charmingly about the natural history of insects.
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