What’s on your summer reading list? I’ll do a summer reading list for fiction and one for nonfiction. Here’s some of the fiction I’ve been reading lately.
Nola Hopkinson – Brown Girl in the Ring
This is a book from the late 1990s, tracing its name to a children’s song. Despite the age, I think it’s still very relevant for people growing up in immigrant communities. The premise is an economic collapse in Toronto. As a result, the Canadian government abandons the city to violence and organized crime. But the story itself is a coming of age story. The main character, Ti-Jeanne, learns how to navigate both a dystopian Toronto and her own family’s history with West African spiritual and healing practices.
Miriam Toews – Women Talking
Women Talking follows a sexual assault scandal in an isolated Mennonite community. It’s a very recent book and a very timely one. The critical reaction has been to call the book a ‘Mennonite #MeToo novel‘, which is accurate enough. True to the title, the book’s action moves through a series of community meetings with the women in the town. While they’ve been sheltered from the world, they develop their own and one another’s voices through conversation about whether they should leave and strike out on their own.
Sally Rooney – Normal People
This is about an on-again, off-again romantic relationship extended through many years. The author’s in her late 20s, and it’s really the kind of story only a Millennial could write. And maybe only one living in a Western country with especially large economic problems. Ireland in Rooney’s case. The two characters grow together from their late teens through their 20s, switching social roles on multiple occasions. They’re endlessly frustrated by personal situations, social situations, employment situations, et al.
Akiba Sullivan Harper (editor) – Short Stories of Langston Hughes
I assume most people know Langston Hughes more as a poet than as a novelist or short story writer. And while there’s plenty of interesting material in this short story collection for anyone’s summer reading list, nothing I read here dislodged the initial impression. Many of these stories are short, punchy, and impart a good moral. But then, some of the stories probably would’ve been best left unpublished. One interesting thing about this collection is you get a view into how Hughes’s politics shifted over time. Historians of racism, particularly Ibram X. Kendi, could probably make something of this.
Bonus: James S. A. Corey – Cibola Burn
I’ll finish with a bonus addition to the summer reading list. Cibola Burn is the fourth book in The Expanse series. I’ve read it before, but I’m re-reading the entire series in light of the upcoming release of its 9th and final book.
The Expanse is now a TV show and not just a series of novels. Both come highly recommended, but the books explore this universe in more detail. For the unfamiliar, the basic premise is a story of humanity several hundred years into the future and on the brink of an encounter with an alien civilization. Humanity has expanded to the rest of the solar system but not to other worlds.
