Reading Recommendations
I recently worked with two authors of memoirs, and an author of a fantasy novel. Since each author is unique, every experience is unique, and because I choose projects I find interesting and worthwhile, I enjoy the process.
Regardless of how busy I am during the day, I put aside time at night to read novels, non-fiction, short stories, and poetry, and I have recommendations in all four genres.
My first is the novel James by Percival Everett, who wrote Erasure, the novel on which the film American Fiction is based. James is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave, Jim, who runs away from his owner who wants to sell him, and joins Huck, a boy who runs away from his brutal father on a raft on the Mississippi River.
James is brilliantly conceived and executed, and I admired every word. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I don’t like spoilers, so I’m not going to include any here. Just take my word for it, James is well worth reading.
I also recommend Everett’s short story “In Medias Res” in the Winter 2023 Yale Review. “In Medias Res” is distinctive in its take on a noir plot and narrative style. As a fan of noir novels and an admirer of Everett’s writing, I loved it.
I recommend the following short stories as well. Some are haunting, others are disturbing and provocative, all of them engaged me and held my attention.
“Bridling” by Nadia Davids, “Reading” by Devon Geyelin, “Renovation” by Chin-Sun Lee, “Very Good Subjects” by Ani Cooney, and “The Statute of Limitations” by Jane Delury, in the Fall 2023 Georgia Review.
“Winner” by Ling Ma, in the Winter 2023 Yale Review.
“No Fury” by Jane Walton, “Prolonged Exposure” by Lacey Jones, “The Tornado” by K-Ming Cha, “Bus to Saigon” by Brian Ma, “If I Tell You This is Fiction,” by Jenny Lecce, “Where Are the Littles?” by Kathleen Postma, “Thin Air” by Aria Beth Sloss,” and “Entropy” by Melissa Yancy in the Fall 2024 Kenyon Review;
“Rosaura at Dawn” by Daniel Saldana Paris and “A Mild Irreversible Form of Enlightenment” by Anna DeForest in the Spring 2024 Yale Review.
“Last Time We Spoke” by Lydi Conklin in the Summer 2024 Yale Review, and
“The Hadal Zone” by Annie Proulx in the July 8 & 15 New Yorker.
My favorite nonfiction that I read this summer is I Wonder as I Wander, the second volume of distinguished poet Langston Hughes’s autobiography. Published in 1955 when he was fifty-four, its primary focus is his earlier experiences as an African American child and young adult living and traveling in the United States and other countries. It includes his memories of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early ‘30s when the arts flourished until the 1929 stock market crash devastated America, especially Black and other minority communities, as well as the rest of the world.
The most fascinating part of the book to me was Hughes’s trip to the Union of Socialist Soviet Republic in 1932 and 1933. The U.S.S.R. brought him there as part of a group of African Americans to make a film, “Negro Life,” about the injustices Black people faced in America.
When the government decided not to make the film, Hughes remained in the U.S.S.R. to see it from one end to the other. The experiences he writes about, especially the improved opportunities for Black and other poor people after the Bolshevik Revolution, are enlightening.
My wife, actress and author Cynthia Hoppenfeld, introduced me to Hughes’s work when she recommended The Weary Blues, an impactful collection of his poems about racism, ragtime, jazz, Harlem, the South, Africa, and people in his life. Published in 1925when Hughes was twenty-four, it won awards that enabled him to complete his college education. The sensitivity, insight, and beauty of the poems is remarkable, and, like Cynthia, I highly recommend it.
