Book Discussion Group Meeting, Saturday, December 1, 2018, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Introducing Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi was born in Mapong, Ghana, in 1989. When she was two years old, her family moved to the US so that her father could get his PhD from Ohio State. The family moved several times before settling in Huntsville, Alabama, where Gyasi lived from age 9 through high school graduation. She received a BA from Stanford and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Homegoing is Gyasi's first novel and it received much pre-publication publicity based on the seven-figure advance offer Knopf made to Gyasi. In the video below, Yaa Gyasi talks about Homegoing with PBS Books.

In Ghana

There was indeed a Cape Coast Castle, and it still stands. In the video below, the Obama family takes a tour of the castle.



There was also a Golden Stool of the Asante, and it was indeed the cause of a war between the British. As we learned in the book, the Asante lost that war, but I was delighted to learn that even then, the Asante were allowed to preserve the stool free of interference from the colonial British, which was refreshing given the record of the British on looting precious artifacts. No one has ever sat on the Golden Stool. It rests on a blanket on a chair, and during coronation ceremonies, the new king is held over the stool and not allowed to touch it.

In America

Yaa Gyasi said that when she was doing her research for the book, the one thing that came as a surprise to her was learning about the coal mines of Pratt, Alabama, and about how the convict leasing system was used to provide labor to the mines. The following picture is of one of the plants at the Pratt coal mine. If you look at the raised platform at the lower left of the picture, you can see a mule pulling a tram car with waste rock.

My Brilliant Friend

I just found out that starting this Sunday, November 18, HBO is broadcasting a four-part miniseries of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, which the Readers Roundtable read back in August of 2016. If you get HBO via cable or are subscribed online, check it out.

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, November 3, 2018, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York by Francis Spufford

New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won’t explain why, or where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him?

Meet the Author

Francis Spufford was born in 1964, the son of a professor of social history and a professor of economics. He received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge in 1985. He was Chief Publisher's Reader from 1987–90 for Chatto & Windus and was a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Anglia Ruskin University from 2005 to 2007. Since 2008, he has taught at Goldsmiths College in London on the MA in Creative and Life Writing. He is a practicing Christian, married to an Anglican priest, and is active in the layman's organization of the church.

For most of his writing career, Spufford has been known as a writer of nonfiction. His nonfiction works included:

• I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, 1996.
• The Child That Books Built, 2002.
• Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin, 2003.
• Unapologetic, 2012.
• True Stories and Other Essays, 2017.

In 2010, Spufford wrote Red Plenty, a fiction-enhanced historical account of life in the early 1960s Soviet Union, a time when it seemed that communism had triumphed and would really bury capitalism. This fusion of fact and fiction prepared him for writing Golden Hill in 2016, his first complete work of fiction, which was set in colonial New York in the 1740s. Golden Hill won the Costa Book Award for a first novel and also won the Ondaatje Prize.

Further Reading

Linda sent me a link to a blog that is dedicated to all things Golden Hill, including in particular this page that discusses the physical layout of the city of New York in the 1740s when it is set.

To put you in the spirit of the 1700s, here's a video of people dancing the minuet.



And a panel from "A Rakes Progress," by William Hogarth, which may or may not remind you of "Mr. Smith."

Book Discussion Group Meeting, Saturday, October 6, 2018, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

Three young men, and one unforgettable woman, come together in a journey from India to England, where they hope to begin something new—to support their families; to build their futures; to show their worth; to escape the past. They have almost no idea what awaits them. 

Meet the Author

Sunjeev Sahota was born in 1981 into a Sikh immigrant family in England and grew up in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. He had never even read a novel until the age of 18 when he read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. He majored in math in college and worked for an insurance company and a building society (credit union). He also became a prolific reader of novels.

After the London bombings of 2005, Sahota was inspired to write a book from the point of view of a terrorist, Ours are the Streets. His second novel, The Year of the Runaways (2015), is set in Sheffield, where the author currently lives.

Sikhism

Sikh Gurdwara in Sheffield

Three of the protagonists in The Year of the Runaways, Randeep, Avtar, and Narinder, are Sikhs, as is the author. Here is an informational page about Sikhism, a page about the Sikh Gurdwara (place of worship), and a page about traditional Sikh garb, which Sahota often makes mention of.

Untouchability, "Hindutva," and the Ongoing Civil War in India

The fourth protagonist of the book is Tochi, referred to by the other immigrants as a "Chamaar," one of the untouchable or "scheduled" castes of India. Back in India, when Tochi got his first regular passenger as a driver, she made a big deal over what to call him, reminiscent of US debates over "politically correct" terminology. I was able to find an article discussing that very thing.

"Hindutva," roughly translated as "Hindu-ness," is one of the current strains of Indian politics, manifested by Hindu fundamentalism and nationalism. The men who attack Tochi and his family are from such a group. The current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, has been linked to similar groups.

The night Tochi loses his family, the spark for the conflagration is said to be attacks by Maoists on upper caste Hindus. This makes reference to a very real armed conflict that is currently going on in the eastern part of India, which has the Maoists facing off against both the Indian government and right-wing paramilitary forces (attribution).

Kanyakumari

After all the hostility, politics, and strife, here's the view of the southernmost spot in India at night (attribution).

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, September 8, 2018, 2:00 PM San Leandro Main Library

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

"In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations."

Author: Min Jin Lee

Lifted wholesale from Min Jin Lee's official biography: Min Jin Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to Queens, New York with her family in 1976 when she was seven years old. She is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and was inducted into the Bronx Science Hall of Fame. At Yale College, she majored in History and was awarded the Henry Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. She attended law school at Georgetown University and worked as a lawyer for several years in New York prior to writing full time.

Her debut novel Free Food for Millionaires (2007) was a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s "Fresh Air" and USA Today. It was a No. 1 Book Sense Pick, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Wall Street Journal Juggle Book Club selection, and a national bestseller.

Among many other awards, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (2017) was:

• A finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
• A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017
• A USA Today Top 10 Books of 2017
• An American Library Association Notable Book
• An American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next Great Reads
• A New York Times Bestseller

It will be translated into 24 languages.

From 2007 to 2011, Lee lived in Tokyo where she researched and wrote Pachinko. As of the fall of 2018, she will be based in Boston, where she will be working on American Hagwon, the third diaspora novel of “The Koreans” trilogy.

On July 10, 2018, she had the unique honor of being a Double Jeopardy clue in the “Literary Types” category for $1200 on the game show "Jeopardy": “Korean-born Min Jin Lee wrote a 2017 book with this Japanese pinball game as its title,” to which the contestant Becky answered correctly in the interrogative, “What is Pachinko?”

In the following video, Lee talks with an interviewer at Columbia University about Pachinko:

About Pachinko (the game)

Here is a short video about the game of pachinko, which figures so prominently in the novel. 

Further Reading 

If you have the time and inclination, here are a few more articles about the experience of Koreans living in Japan.

1. An article at the "History Channel" website, "How Japan Took Control of Korea," by Erin Blakemore 
2. An article from The Japan Times, "Japan's resident Koreans endure a climate of hate," by Philip Brazor
3. An Al Jazeera article from this June, "Zainichi: Being Korean in Japan," by Drew Ambrose and Rhiona Jade Armont, which examines a more hopeful attitude among the Korean residents of Japan due to the recent talks with North Korea

Book Discussion Group Meeting, Saturday, August 11, 2018, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

About George Saunders

(Plagiarized and summarized from George Saunders' official bio). Lincoln in the Bardo is George Saunders' first novel, although he is known as a prolific writer of short fiction. He was born December 2, 1958, in Amarillo, Texas, and grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in exploration geophysics. After college, he went to work for an oil exploration company in Sumatra until he contracted a water-borne tropical disease. After returning home, he worked as a doorman, a roofer, a convenience store clerk, and a slaughterhouse worker. He eventually applied to the MFA program at Syracuse and was accepted.

His first full-time writing gig was as a technical writer, first for a pharmaceutical company and then for an environmental engineering company. His first book was a collection of short stories,CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. One of the stories from this book, “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz,” was published in The New Yorker in 1992, the first of many of his stories or articles published in that magazine. Since 1996, He has taught in the MFA program at Syracuse.

From Wikipedia:

Saunders' collections of short stories include: 

• CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) (short stories and a novella)
• Pastoralia (2000) (short stories and a novella)
• In Persuasion Nation (2006) (short stories)
• Tenth of December: Stories (2013) (short stories)

Essays and reporting:

• Saunders, George (2006). A bee stung me, so I killed all the fish (notes from the Homeland 2003–2006). Riverhead Books.
• The Braindead Megaphone (2007) (collected essays)
• Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (2014)
• "Trump days : up close with the candidate and his crowds". American Chronicles. The New Yorker. 92 (21( (July 11–18, 2016) 50–61.

Anthologies:

• Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts, edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer (2012).

Awards won:

• National Magazine Award for Fiction, 1994 – "The 400-Pound CEO", short story, published in Harper's Magazine.
• National Magazine Award for Fiction, 1996 – "Bounty", short story, published in Harper's Magazine
• National Magazine Award for Fiction, 2000 – "The Barber's Unhappiness", short story, published in The New Yorker
• National Magazine Award for Fiction, 2004 – "The Red Bow", short story, published in Esquire
• 2nd Prize in the 1997 O. Henry Awards – "The Falls", short story, published in The New Yorker (January 22, 1996 issue)
• Lannan Foundation – Lannan Literary Fellowship, 2001
• MacArthur Fellowship, 2006
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 2006
• American Academy of Arts and Letters, Academy Award, 2009
• World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story – "CommComm", published in The New Yorker (August 1, 2005 issue)
• PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, 2013
• The Story Prize, 2013 – Tenth of December: Stories
• Folio Prize, 2014 – Tenth of December: Stories
• The New York Times Book Review, "10 Best Books of 2013", Tenth of December: Stories
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Elected as Member, 2014
• Booker Prize, 2017 – Lincoln in the Bardo
• American Academy of Arts and Letters, Inducted as Member, 2018

Finalist honors:

• PEN/Hemingway Award, 1996 – Finalist – CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
• The Story Prize, 2006 – Finalist – In Persuasion Nation
• National Book Award for Fiction, 2014 – Finalist – Tenth of December: Stories
• Bram Stoker Award, 2011 – Finalist – "Home" (short story)
  
  

Why Lincoln and Why the Bardo?

George Saunders in his own words from a "PBS News Hour" interview:



More about bardo states from Buddhist teaching.

Critical Opinion

Here are a couple of lengthy and thoughtful reviews:

1. A favorable one from The New Yorker (“Lincoln in the Bardo” has great matters on its mind: freedom and slavery, the spirit and the body. But it is, finally, “about” Abraham Lincoln, that great spectral presence in a whole subgenre of American fiction.)
2. A not-so-favorable one from The Atlantic (...if you like a salty-sweet mix of cruelty and sappiness, you’ll enjoy your visit.) 

Lincoln in the Bardo in Other Media

 I listened to the audio version of Lincoln in the Bardo, and I highly recommend it. Actors and others, including Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, the author, and Don Cheadle speak all the parts. Here is a full list of the cast of characters. This audio book is available for download from the San Leandro Library.

Lincoln in the Bardo was also turned into a virtual-reality experience. Here is a YouTube video of that.

Book Discussion Group, Saturday, July 7, 2018, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

From his official biography: Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956 and grew up in Wellesley. He attended Pomona College in Claremont, California.

After graduating, he began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and manager of publications and also taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He wrote about his experience at the museum in a non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by Lincoln Child, who would later become his collaborator on several series of suspense novels.

By himself and in collaboration with Lincoln Child, Preston has written more than 30 works of fiction. He has also written 10 nonfiction books and numerous articles for such publications as The New Yorker and Smithsonian.

In the video below, Preston discusses The Lost City of the Monkey God with Becky Anderson of Naperville (IL) Community Television.



In another video, documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins talks about the expedition the book was based on.



Controversy

Preston mentioned an article by archaeologist Christopher Begley, who was very critical of the expedition. I don't know if I found that article, but I found an article by Begley in Sapiens, an anthropological journal. Click on the link to read it yourself and decide if Preston adequately addressed Begley's criticisms in the book.

The Jungle

Heliconia

These are the type of plant that the crew had to hack their way through to set up the camp and reach the archaeological site.

A troop of curious spider monkeys

Above are the type of monkeys that lived in the trees above the author's camp site.

Below is a video of howler monkeys howling. They provide the chief sound effects for the rain forest from Mexico to northern Argentina.

A Jaguar

The jaguar is the largest wild cat in the new world and was a figure of power and mystery to the ancient people of the area and figured prominently in their art. The crew thought they could hear jaguars prowling around the camp site at night.

Warning for those who have phobias about creepy-crawlies the following video is about the fer-de-lance snake, but if I recall correctly, it also contains a cameo appearance by a very impressive spider.