Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, March 7, 2020, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú

Synopsis

Born to a park ranger who was the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, Francisco Cantú joined the border patrol as a way of connecting with his heritage, but became disillusioned and quit. Then when an immigrant friend traveled to Mexico to visit his dying mother and failed to return, Cantú was forced to confront the large life and death issues surrounding the border and the people on both sides.

Author Biography

Lifted wholesale from Francisco Cantú's official biography:

Raised in the Southwest, and a student of US/Mexico relations, Francisco Cantú wanted to see the realities of the border up-close. He enlisted as a US border patrol agent in 2008 and spent the next four years working in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. During blistering days and frigid nights, he and his partners apprehended migrants who were risking their lives to cross to a new country.

Haunted by his interactions with border-crossers and rattled by an inescapable proximity to violence, Cantú decided to return to civilian life, only to discover that the border had followed him home. When an immigrant friend traveled back to Mexico to visit his dying mother and didn’t return, Cantú found himself moved to uncover the entire story. His searing memoir, The Line Becomes a River depicts the cruelties the border creates, for Americans and Mexicans on both sides of the line.

Cantú speaks frankly, compassionately, and knowledgeably about the terror and tragedy of the migrants who risk and lose their lives attempting to cross the border. A master story-teller, he gives human faces to the nameless multitudes, and refutes the incendiary policy and rhetoric aimed at them.

Cantú is a former Fulbright fellow and recipient of a Pushcart Prize and 2017 Whiting Award. His writing and translations have appeared in Best American Essays, Harpers, n+1, Orion, and Guernica. His work has also been featured on This American Life. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.

The video below is a short segment from the PBS News Hour where Francisco Cantú talks about The Line Becomes a River while walking along the border with his interviewer.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, February 1, 2020, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

There There by Tommy Orange

Synopsis

What at first appears to be collection of short stories about urban Indians living in Oakland, California, coalesces into a novel built around a powwow taking place at the Coliseum and about the histories, dreams, and aspirations of the people planning to attend.



Tommy Orange Biography

Tommy Orange was born January 19, 1982, in Oakland, California. He grew up in Oakland's Diamond District. His father was an engineer at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and grew up as an enrolled member of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe of Oklahoma. His mother was white. Orange majored in analog sound engineering at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico right before sound engineering went digital. He found himself working as a social worker at the Indian Center in Oakland when he came up with the idea for the book. He lives in the Gold Country now with his wife and young son and is working on several new projects.

Cast of Characters from There There

Since there are about a dozen major characters and any number of minor characters in There There, I found myself forgetting who was who almost as soon as I had finished the book. To help refresh my memory for the discussion, I found the following guide from the publisher useful, and you might too.

Tommy Orange Talks about Himself and There There

Jean found a pretty good interview with Tommy Orange on Austin PBS. At 27 minutes it is shorter than most of the interviews I found on YouTube, but I couldn't figure out how to embed it in the blog post, so you will have to click on this link to see that video. If you don't mind sitting through a video that is twice as long, here is one from YouTube that I found pretty interesting.



The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly

In There There, Tommy Orange (Thomas Frank Orange) created a character named Thomas Frank, who he states is the closest thing to a stand-in for himself in the book. Thomas Frank has a hero, an outsider artist named James Hampton, who spent 14 years creating an altar from found materials. Below is a picture of that altar, which is now in the Smithsonian. Here's a link where you can read about it.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, January 4, 2020, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Glossary of Terms

Toward the end of Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain defined some of the restaurant lingo he had been throwing around for most of the book. But just in case he left anything out, I am including a link to a page with definitions of commonly used restaurant terms. Just for good measure, I am throwing in a link to a page of French cooking terms and  one of Italian cooking terms. I hope this helps.

Biography

Since Kitchen Confidential was autobiographical, Anthony Bourdain touched on his childhood only in respect to the awakening of his palate while on family vacation in France as a child. He then picks up the narrative when he got his first restaurant job while on summer vacation from college. The narrative then continues until the publication of the book, a time at which Bourdain was working as Executive Chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York City

Before Kitchen Confidential

Bourdain was born on June 25, 1956 in New York City and was the older of two sons. His father was a salesman at a camera shop, then floor manager at a record store, and finally an executive for Columbia Records. His mother was a staff editor for The New York Times. He spent most of his childhood in Leonia, New Jersey, and attended a private college prep school in Englewood, New Jersey. He attended Vassar University for two years and then dropped out to pursue a culinary career, as described in the book.

After Kitchen Confidential

After the success of Kitchen Confidential in 2000, Bourdain maintained a loose affiliation with Les Halles for several year, but gradually became less and less involved in being a chef and more and more a writer and television personality. In addition to Kitchen Confidential, he wrote two more bestselling nonfiction books about cooking and the restaurant world, Cooks Tour (2001) and Nasty Bits (2006). He was the author or coauthor of many other books, articles, and even a graphic novel. He eventually published a line of cookbooks.

His career as media celebrity included “A Cook's Tour” on the Food Network (2002-2003); “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel (2005-2012); “The Layover” on the Travel Channel (2011-2013); and “Parts Unknown” on CNN (2013-2018). He was also a guest on numerous other cooking shows and appeared as a cartoon version of himself in one episode of “The Simpsons” and appeared as himself in the movie “The Big Short” in 2015.

In June of 2018, while working on an episode of “Parts Unknown” in Strasbourg, France, Bourdain was found dead by hanging in his hotel room.

Anthony Bourdain Videos on the Internet

You will find an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Anthony Bourdain videos on the internet. Most of them are just a couple of minutes long as he is plugging one of his books on some talk show or another, but most of them were an hour or longer. Interestingly, none of them are from any of his travel series, probably due to copyright considerations.

I found this short clip from a "CBS This Morning" appearance interesting because it is on the occasion of the publication of a 10th anniversary edition of Kitchen Confidential, in the notes to which, Bourdain apparently repudiates much of what he said in the original edition. (Note also a pre- "me too" Charlie Rose.)



Of the longer clips I had time to watch, I kind of enjoyed this one at a 2011 Sydney, Australia, writers festival. He is there to plug his memoir, Medium Raw. In it, he admits to trying to emulate Hunter S. Thompson, and you can see him kind of slipping in and out of character as he talks.



For the heck of it, here is Anthony Bourdain demonstrating knife skills.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, December 7, 2019, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

Synopsis: Richard is a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates.

Photo by Nina Subin

Jenny Erpenbeck: World-Acclaimed Author and Former Opera Director

This biography is lifted wholesale from the unimpeachable source of all knowledge.

Born in East Berlin in 1967, Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor.

From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994 (with a production of Béla Bartók's opera “Duke Bluebeard's Castle” in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles), she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's “Erwartung,” Bartók's “Duke Bluebeard's Castle” and a world premiere of her own piece, “Cats Have Seven Lives.” As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's “L'Orfeo” in Aachen, “Acis and Galatea” at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's “Zaide” in Nuremberg/Erlangen.

In the 1990s Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: in 1999, History of the Old Child, her debut; in 2001, her collection of stories Trinkets; in 2004, the novella Dictionary; and in February 2008, the novel Visitation. In March 2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 2015 the English translation of her novel The End Of Days (Aller Tage Abend) won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her son and with her husband, conductor Wolfgang Bozic.

I was only able to find a couple of YouTube videos of Jenny Erpenbeck talking about Go, Went, Gone. This one of a reading and discussion at Harvard University, in my opinion, had the best sound quality. As you will notice, it's an hour and 45 minutes long. She is very soft-spoken and has (of course) a heavy German accent. Enjoy.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, November 2, 2019, 2:00 PM San Leandro Main Library

One Station Away by Olaf Olafsson

Synopsis: The story of a New York neurologist and the three women who change his life: An overlooked pianist who finally receives fraught success after decades of disappointment; an elusive dancer whose untimely death her fiancé is desperate to untangle; a mysterious patient who is comatose after a violent accident. Magnus, a New York neurologist—son to one, lover to another, and doctor to a third—is the thread that binds these women’s stories together as he navigates relationships defined by compromise and misunderstanding, guilt and forgiveness, and, most of all, by an obsessive attempt to communicate—to understand and to be understood, to love and to be loved.



Tracking the Elusive Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson

Photo by Annelisa Leinbach

Compared to other authors we have read, there is very little to be found about the man himself on the internet. The biographical information is pretty much limited to his official bio everywhere you look:

Olaf Olafsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1962. He studied physics as a Wien Scholar at Brandeis University. He is the author of three previous novels, The Journey Home, Absolution and Walking Into the Night, and a story collection, Valentines. His books have been published to critical acclaim in more than twenty languages. He is the recipient of the O. Henry Award and the Icelandic Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize, and has twice been nominated for the IMPAC Award. He is the Executive Vice President of Time Warner and he lives in New York City with his wife and three children.

As I was putting this post together, I found an article in Bookpage where Olafsson talks about One Station Away and a little bit about his personal life. Among the interesting tidbits: His father, Olafur Sigurdsson, was an award-winning Icelandic author. You should probably click on the link and read the whole article as this is the longest discussion of the book by the author that I was able to find in any one article. I did find a slide show in the New York Times about his cozy little New York pied-à-terre.

It is easier to find information about his non-literary career. From the fount of all knowledge, I learned that Olafsson had worked for Sony, founding Sony Computer Entertainment at the time that the PlayStation was under development. He has worked on and off for Time Warner but left after the acquisition by AT&T. I was unable to find any in-depth reviews of One Station Away by any of the large periodicals. There are no interviews posted on YouTube either, so instead, I am posting a brief video of Vladimir Ashkenazy playing Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." If you listen closely, it sounds just like Margaret Bergs.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, October 5, 2019, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Synopsis: Newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is artist on the brink of an exciting career. They are settling into the routine of their life together, when they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

Introducing Tayari Jones

photo: Nina Subin

Tayari Jones was born November 30, 1970, in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She was an A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University and is currently a member of the English faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University.

Bibliography
Leaving Atlanta (2002)
The Untelling (2005)
Silver Sparrow (2011)
An American Marriage (2018)

Honors and Awards
Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction
Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
United States Artist Fellowship
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship[
Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship
Silver Sparrow added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016.
Member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers

In February of 2018, Oprah Winfrey announced that her latest book club pick was Jones’ novel, An American Marriage. Winfrey said, “It's one of those books I could not put down. And as soon as I did, I called up the author, and said, 'I've got to talk to you about this story.'"

On June 5th, An American Marriage was announced as the winner of the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction.

In the video clip below, Tayari Jones discusses An American Marriage on "CBS This Morning" with Gayle King, who obviously hasn't read the book.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, September 7, 2019, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder

Scene from Camperforce in Coffeyville, Kansas

Who is Jessica Bruder?

(Sources: Official Biography and Wikipedia): Jessica Bruder was born in Clifton, New Jersey. She graduated from Amherst College in 2000, majoring in English and French, and received a master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2005. She has worked as a Starbucks barista, a snowboarder, an "electric guitar nerd," a music store clerk, a junior camp counselor and a waitress.

She now teaches narrative storytelling at Columbia University. She has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, WIRED, Harper's Magazine, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times Magazine and The Guardian. She was a staff reporter at The Oregonian. Her photography appears in Nomadland and her first book, Burning Book, and has been published by The New York Times, The New York Observer and Blender magazine. She is currently writing about trust in the age of surveillance.

"For her book Nomadland, she spent months living in a camper van, documenting itinerant Americans who gave up traditional housing and hit the road full time, enabling them to travel from job to job and carve out a place for themselves in a precarious economy. The project spanned three years and more than 15,000 miles of driving — from coast to coast and from Mexico to the Canadian border. Named a New York Times Notable Book and Editors’ Choice, Nomadland won the 2017 Discover Award and was a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award."

In the video below, Jessica Bruder discusses Nomadland with Chris Hedges.

In addition to writing Nomadland, Jessica Bruder was also executive producer on a film about "CamperForce," a documentary about retirees working for Amazon.

Footage from "CamperForce" was also used on segment of John Oliver's HBO news commentary/comedy show, "Last Week Tonight." (warning swears and raunchy humor).

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