PAGE-TURNERS:

Books

are food for the mind.

Hannah Al-Fhaykh, Women of Sand and Myrrh

The world of Egyptian women told from the different perspectives of different women who know each other.

Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina.

An amazing novel about poor whites (and child abuse, among other things). It shows that poor people of differing races have much in common.

Dorothy Allison, Skin.

Non-fiction look at poor white southerners, using the author's impeccable skills at evaluating that condition.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart .

What happens when African culture is confronted with western culture?

Marian Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning.

Autobiography of an internationally famous African-American opera singer during the era of segregation.

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Autobiography of the African American born in Arkansas who educated herself by reading tremendously.

Piers Anthony, the Xanth series.

The protagonists in these fantasy books have to learn how to get along with many different kinds of creatures. Good fun.

Alicia Appleman-Jurman, Alicia: My Story

Gripping, assiduously detailed. Serves in contrast to the equally appealing contemporary Anne Frank as a model of more active homefront heroism.

John Barth, The Floating Opera.

A coming of age book.

Okot p'Bitek, Song of Lawino.

A translation of a poem written in freestyle verse that relates in highly humorous fashion the plight of Lawino. She is the wife of Ocol, an African man who has become active in African nationalist politics, and in the process has abandoned his African heritage, including his African wife, Lawino. Ocol has taken a mistress who, like him, is trying to make herself over into an European.

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place.

A description of the events of the Second World War as seen through the eyes of a young girl. The author describes how she was given the strength to endure.

Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones.

Erudite but playful meditations on the illusive nature of time and reality. Paradoxes abound in these works, and a central metaphor is the labyrinth, signifying the existential dilemma of modern humankind. The ultimate labyrinth is the library, and by extension written discourse.

Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I.

Short essays essays with an intimate tone. Borges dictated them in his old age, after he had become blind. A famous essay is "Borges and I" in which he describes himself as two people. At the end he says, "I don't know which of us wrote this essay."

Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw.

Examination of gender and its limitations. Bornstein is a transsexual performance artist who explores her own experiences, annotating them with her thoughts and the thoughts of others in what has become called the "transsexual style." Includes her play, "Hidden: a gender."

Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land.

Growing up black in the inner city during the 1950's. Awesome piece of work, should be required reading for white college students. A profound revelation.

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead , and Xenophobe.

Three different intelligent species seek to discover if they can coexist in this trilogy.

Michael Dorris, Yellow Raft in Blue Water.

Multi-generational women, family issues, race (Black and Native American).

Sarah L. and A. Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years.

A century of African American history from the perspective of two professional single women.

Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.

Counter-culture after the beatniks and before the hippies. Farina and wife Mimi (Joan Baez' sister) were also a folk singing duo.

Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues.

Heart-wrenching semi-autobiographical novel of a person of ambiguous gender.

Carl Friedman, Nightfather: A Novel

The young daughter of a Holocaust Survivor grows up with a father who suffers from "camp." This autobiography is evoked by the author in a poignant and succinct style. Highly original. Translated from the Dutch language by Arnold and Erica Pomerans.

John Gray, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

Explains the inexplicable; explains each gender to the opposite gender. Excellent.

Meslissa Fay Greene, Praying for Sheetrock.

The compelling story of a small Southern town's awakening to civil rights and the courageous black man who led the call.

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha.

Though written through the romantic 19th century perspective, this book gives a nice rendering of spirituality and the process of self awareness (enlightenment). set in India, it is loosely based on the story of Siddhartha, the historical Buddha.

Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns.

Mystery novel that gives a very deep feeling for the Navajo culture.

Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.

Strange loop theorem of Godel also appears in the fuge of Bach and drawings of Escher. Zeno's paradox keeps making connections among various ideas that are popping. An eye- opener, turn on for all thinking humans. One of the best from the 80's.

Keri Hulme, The Bone People.

Disturbing, haunting beautifully crafted tale of a young woman and her entanglement with a young boy, his father, and cultural ritualism in New Zealand.

Aldous Huxley, A Brave New World.

The future where the social classes are dilberately formed in biological labs.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception.

Autobiographical work that traces the author's experiences with mind-altering substances to offer the reader an alternative view of reality.

Aldous Huxley, Island.

Huxley's utopian novel, embracing what Huxley assumed was the best that both Western civilization and the culture of the East. It offers a provocative complex of ideas for our contemplation.

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany.

A beautiful and funny story about friendship and the Vietnam era.

Gish Jen, Typical American.

A fictional account of a Chinese man who comes to the United States to study, is joined by his sister, gets married, quits school and becomes a successful business owner, loses the business, goes sort of crazy.

Yoram Kaniuk, Confessions of a Good Arab (originally, in Hebrew, Aravi Tov).

Wonderful, magic realist account of a half-Arab, half-Jewish man. Captures with intense feeling and beauty both the special golden-yellow light of Israel/Palestine and the constant struggle for identity that underlies the political conflicts.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road and Dharma Bums.

Novels by perhaps the greatest writer of the "beat generation."

Alan Keyes, Flowers for Algernon.

A fictional story about a young man who was "rescued" from the disadvantages of mental retardation. The reader is likely to reconsider his/her preconceived notions about mental retardation, social mores, and the relative contributions people make to society.

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.

Semi-autobiographical work about a Chinese American woman growing up in California and her responses to American culture.

Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age.

Describes Kozol's experiences teaching in an inner-city elementary school in Boston in the early 1970's. He describes the intertwined educational and social problems as seen in individual lives.

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

This is the story of four people, a dog, and a bowler hat. Set in the 60's, during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, this novel explores the ideas behind the words "love", "sex", "freedom", and "beauty". The lives of the main characters intertwine and overlap as they fight the unbearable lightness of being, the feeling of being so light, they might float away to be lost forever.

Ursala K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed.

Anthropological sci-fi by one of the best. Le Guin's father was the famous anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, and that is the approach she takes in her fiction. In this book she creates two worlds, one like earth and one a new society created by a group of anarchists on a harsh planet with limited resources. The anarchists invent a new language and a new set of social mores, including a new family structure. She also hints at a new kind of science.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebooks.

A journal and meditation on the woman's place in society as viewed from the artist's perspective as a woman or British descent growing up in Africa.

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz.

In 1943, Primo Levi, a 25-year-old chemist and "Italian citizen of the Jewish race," was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. This is his memoir of his 10 months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance.

Primo Levi, The Reawakening: The Companion Volume to Survival in Auschwitz.

Story of Levi's liberation from the German death camp in January of 1945 and his long journey home to Italy, by way of the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania. Levi's railway travels take him through bombed-out cities and transit camps, and with keen insight he describes the former prisoners and Russian soldiers he encounters.

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy.

An autobiographical account of an individual whose sense of what is important in life doesn't fit with life's experiences, and what change in life-view results.

Miriam Makeba, with James Hall. Makeba: My Story.

Autobiography of the black South African singer who became an international star.

Mark Mathabane, Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa.

An autobiographical account of one black South African from the slums of Johannesburg, and his experiences in and escape from Apartheid. A moving and poignant book, makes a big impression.

James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His Mother.

Story of McBride's remarkable mother, a Polish Jew, raised in the American South.

Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu: an Indian woman in Guatemala.

Nobel peace prize winner a few years back. The story of her life and struggle in her native Guatemala. Very humble and also humbling.

James Morrow, Only Begotten Daughter

God decides to have another child. It's a daughter this time and God is the mother and Satan owns a casino in Atlantic City.

Alan Patton, Cry, the Beloved Country.

A fictional story about the interactions among people and with the land as South Africa was colonized. The author gives a moving description of the damage that is done to people and to the land when fear and greed are the driving forces for change.

Elena Poniatowski, Massacre in Mexico.

New-journalistic testimonial collage about the 1968 Student Protest Movement and government reprisals.

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcultutation.

A mind-opening discussion about European imperialism, expressed through the words of European travelers discussing Africa and South America. Also deals with how subordinated people in the contact zone appropriate ideas and materials from the metropolitan culture and use them for their own purposes.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

The story of Howard Roark, an individualist who must overcome great obstacles, in particular, societal conventions, to achieve his dream of becoming an architect. Loosely based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Erich Marie Remarque, All Quiet On The Western Front.

A look at the horrors of World War I from the perspective of a youthful German soldier confined to the trenches of the western front in France.

Robert Ruark, Something of Value.

Set in Kenya in the 1950's during the time of the "Mau-Mau" uprising; the violent reaction to colonialism which ultimately leads to Kenyan independence. The story is told both from the perspective of the white settler and the black African. Violent and graphic at times but both the story and the author are very popular in Kenya.

Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier.

Written by a Russian soldier during World War II, about the soldier's life fighting the Germans from the Russian perspective. Is quite an eye-opener for someone who was accustomed to only seeing the American side of history.

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude.

Diary/biography. A fantastic book.

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis.

Historical novel placed in the 1st century AD (covers Nero's burning of Rome).

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.

Silko is a Pueblo Indian/Anglo/Mexican woman, and the novel describes the attempts of a Pueblo/white man who returns from World War II to confront the sickness in himself and the Pueblo world he left. A true masterpiece, a ceremony in itself that gives the reader a new and healing perspective on the world.

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

My first girlhood entry into other people's lives through reading.

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Parts I-II.

Highly original cartoon-book by a brilliant artist-author who tries to come to terms with his father's terrifying story of surviving the Holocaust.

John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath.

About a poor white family during the dust bowl days of the Great Depression.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash.

Science fiction about cyberspace. Everything looks different after you have read it.

Randy-Michail Testa, After the Fire: The Destruction of the Lancaster County Amish.

Lots of good lessons about tolerance and difference this book.

Laurens Van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari.

An account of the author's search for the vanishing Bushmen of South Africa. An attempt to give an accurate portrayal of these people and their life and culture, which has been steadily disappearing.

Kate Wilhelm, Welcome, Chaos.

A female protagonist grapples with the consequences of the invention of an "Immortality drug." The only catch is that the drug makes you sterile. The plot turns on the choices people have to make and what happens when governments intervene.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own.

Examines the role of the artist and woman in the 20th century. Fictitious characters are used, but it is really about Woolf herself.

Liu Zongren, Two Years in the Melting Pot.

Non-fiction written by a Chinese man living in the United States while getting a graduate degree in engineering. He offers a lot of insights (both positive and negative) into American culture.

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Miriam Claude Meijer, Ph.D.
02/16/05