July Not Fiction Book Discussions

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay is a story of identity, desire, and resilience. In honest and unadorned prose, Gay tells us about a defining moment in her early teens that shaped the rest of her life. She was raped by a group of boys, betrayed by one she considered a friend. In an attempt to manage the shame and trauma of the rape, over the course of the next 20 years she got involved in more abusive relationships and became morbidly obese, eating to create a protective fortress of invisibility with her body, finding herself managing not only her own poor self-esteem, but also the negative opinions and physical obstacles of our fat-phobic culture. Confounding our genre expectations, she tells us upfront,

The story of my body is not a story of triumph. This is not a weight-loss memoir. There will be no picture of a thin version of me, my slender body emblazoned across this book's cover, with me standing in one leg of my former, fatter self's jeans. This is not a book that will offer motivation. I don't have any powerful insight into what it takes to overcome an unruly body and unruly appetites.

This is not an easy book to read. Gay understands this:

Writing this book is the most difficult thing I've ever done. To lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing. To face myself and what living in my body has been like has not been an easy thing, but I wrote this book because it felt necessary. In writing this memoir of my body, in telling you these truths about my body, I am sharing my truth and mine alone. I understand if that truth is not something you want to hear. The truth makes me uncomfortable too. 

It feels like a necessary book, not just for Gay, but for her readers. Through reading Gay's story, we can understand the world from a point of view, from a very real and lived--and uncomfortable--perspective, in a way we might not otherwise have done.

What do you think? Did reading Hunger make you uncomfortable? Why? Think back to your childhood and young adulthood: What experiences helped to create the person you are today? Were they all necessarily positive? How would you describe your own body image? What messages do you feel that you receive from our culture about the body you inhabit? Discuss the role that Gay's family, teachers, friends, lovers, doctors, colleagues, and others played in her self-image. Gay writes, "People see bodies like mine and make their assumptions. They think they know the why of my body. They do not." What are our culture's ideals and beliefs about the body? What assumptions have you made about overweight people in the past? Has reading Hunger changed your view and assumptions in any way? Are you familiar with recent scientific research that indicates that our food preferences, appetite, and size are largely genetic? At the heart of Gay's writing in Hunger is a conflict, expressed rhetorically by statements such as, "I feel a certain way. Or I don't." The title also includes an ambivalent set of parentheses around the word "my." What do you think she is trying to express? How would you describe Gay's writing style and tone? Do you find it effective? What about genre: If it is not a weight-loss memoir or a self-help manual, what is it?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, July 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, July 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed June's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:

• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America and others by Erik Larson
• One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
• Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation by John Sedgwick
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne
• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
• The Son: A Novel by Philipp Meyer
• Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

June Not Fiction Book Discussions

"History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of insight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset." Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann tells the nearly-forgotten story of a series of murders of Osage Indians in the early 1900s and the deep-rooted culture of prejudice that made them possible.

Following the discovery of a large oil field under Osage land in northeastern Oklahoma, the Osage became the wealthiest people per capita in the world. Predictably perhaps in hindsight, Osage who held headrights to the oil land were systematically manipulated into signing over their rights and wealth to white citizens who were their financial guardians, their bankers, their physicians, their neighbors, and their families, and then were murdered. The murders went unsolved until J. Edgar Hoover used a limited number of the cases to burnish the reputation of the newly established Federal Bureau of Investigation. In researching this Reign of Terror, David Grann discovered that the murders went beyond the few prosecuted by Hoover and his detectives and indicated a "culture of killing" in which all levels of society were implicated. Grann told Rolling Stone,

This is as close a story to good and evil as I ever came across. I spent so much time with the evil that it was very disconcerting. But I really was determined not to just catalog the victims. I wanted to find the descendants who could help try to give the dead some voice. . . . One of the things that I wanted to try to show, hopefully, in the book by telling it through three different points of view--the Osage and Mollie Burkhart, Tom White and then me in the present--was to show the process of the accumulation of knowledge that only unfolds over time. Each person, as they live through history, can't see it all. There's a tendency when we write history to do it with the power of hindsight and then assume almost god-like knowledge that nobody living through history has. . . . I discovered there is a limited trail of evidence; there are gaps. I had always kind of assumed that history was kind of a horror that you know. And this was a story that left me profoundly with a sensation of maybe the real horror is what we don't know.

What do you think? We are familiar with many historical American crimes and criminals from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from movies, books, and television shows. Why do you think the story of the Osage murders hasn't received similar attention? How does the story Grann tells differ from the traditional kinds of stories of the American West we are used to hearing and seeing? Killers of the Flower Moon combines the fast pace of a true crime murder mystery with the scope and detail of narrative history and investigative journalism. How does Grann integrate these different aspects of the book and take it beyond a voyeuristic true crime story? What was your first impression of William Hale? Grann introduces him with an allusion to one of William Faulkner's most complicated characters from the novel Absalom, Absalom!: "Like a real-life version of Faulkner's Thomas Sutpen, he seemed to have come out of nowhere--a man with no known past." What does this allusion tell us about Hale? About American history and culture? What qualities does Hale share with this fictional character and with people who achieve power and influence today? What about Hoover? What kind of person was he? How did the bureaucracy he created help to conceal the extent and true horror of the Osage murders? In contrast, describe Tom White. How does he differ from so many other people described in the book? What do the contemporary media reports on the wealth of the Osage and the investigations into the murders reflect about white perceptions of Native Americans? How did they influence the way the murders were treated by law enforcement? Are there historical examples of racial prejudice and injustice that parallel those described in Killers of the Flower Moon? How about recent examples? Has anything changed about the approach taken by media and law enforcement? About the attitudes expressed by the white community in the face of racial, religious, or other discrimination? In what ways have things remained the same?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, June 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, June 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed May's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova, then you might also like these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

Nonfiction

• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
• Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
• The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
• House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
• The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding

Fiction

• The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
• Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning and the film with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson
• The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Fiction by Janette Turner Hospital
Nonfiction and fiction by V. S. Naipaul

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

With Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova  we take a journey to the liminal land between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. Kassabova and her family emigrated from Bulgaria in 1973 after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. She  returned in 2013, making three trips altogether, and Border is the tale of travels.

The narrative alternates between brief chapters of definition, folktale, myth, and history, almost like border markers, and longer chapters telling the stories of the people she meets and the places she visits. Kassabova says,

. . . the initial emotional impulse behind my journey was simple: I wanted to see the forbidden places of my childhood, the once-militarised  border villages and towns, rivers and forests that had been out of bounds for two generations. I went with my revolt, that we had been chained like unloved dogs for so long behind the Iron Curtain. And with my curiosity, to meet the people of a terra incognita. . . . As I set out, I shared the collective ignorance about the regions not only with other fellow Europeans further away, but also with the urban elites of the three countries of this border.

What she discovers is a land of blurred boundaries between East and West, North and South; between ethnos, religion, and culture; between myth and history; and between loyalty to a political entity and the shared experience of living in world riven for centuries by deep political unease--most recently, the exodus of refugees from Syria and Iraq. What she discovers is that "There are beautiful places on earth where no one is spared." And yet, when asked by Jeffery Gleaves of  The Paris Review, "What was the most surprising thing you learned about the people of these borders?" Kassabova replied, "They seem to define themselves by what they love rather than by any political identity, or by any labels."

What do you think? Have you ever made a pilgrimage to a place from your childhood that you hadn't visited in a long time? Why did you go? What were your thoughts and feelings? What did you find? What do you think Kassabova was looking for on her travels through the borderland between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey? Did she find it? Which of the people and places, myths and histories that Kassabova describes was most interesting to you? What is the role of myth and folktale in the communities Kassabova visits? What do you understand about the current migration crisis in this area after reading Border? What purpose do her short chapters of definition and explication serve in the narrative? Are they successfully integrated into the longer narrative of conversations with people living in the borderland today? What does a border represent? What do you think accounts for the humor and perseverance with which the people of the borderland live their lives?

We hope you'll join the discussion: Tuesday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed April's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich, then you might also enjoy these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

• Dead Souls and others by Nikolai Gogol
• Notes from Underground and others by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• War and Peace and other by Leo Tolstoy
• Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
• The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
• The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding
• Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union by Conor O'Clery
• Red Notice: A Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
• The Death of Stalin, a graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin--and the movie it inspired with Michael Palin, Steve Buscemi, and Jason Isaacs.
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles--Soon to be a television series starring Kenneth Branagh!

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich offers readers an intimate look through the genre of oral history at the collapse of Soviet-era communism and the rise of Vladimir Putin and state-run capitalism.

In her Nobel lecture in 2015, Alexievich said,

I do not stand alone at this podium . . . There are voices around me, hundreds of voices. They have always been with me, since childhood. . . . Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think--how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness. We haven't been able to capture the conversational side of human life for literature. We don't appreciate it, we aren't surprised or delighted by it. But it fascinates me, and has made me its captive. I love how humans talk . . . I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion. 

Secondhand Time is an orchestrated chorus of voices from 1991-2001, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to Vladimir Putin's election to President of the Russian Federation, and from 2002-2012, the years of Putin's consolidation of power. They range from young to old, staunch supporters of Soviet socialism to advocates of capitalism, majority ethnic Russians to the multitude of minority ethnic groups comprising the many states of the Russian Federation. Writing for The New York Times, Dwight Garner noted, "You can open this document anywhere; it's a kind of enormous radio."

Alexievich's intention is that the larger contours of history and the essence or truth of this history will emerge from this chorus of voices. In her Nobel lecture she explained,

It always troubled me that the truth doesn't fit into one heart, into one mind, that truth is somehow splintered. There's a lot of it, it is varied, and it is strewn about the world . . . So what is it that I do? I collect the everyday life of feelings, thoughts, and words. I collect the life of my time. I'm interested in the history of the soul. The everyday life of the soul, the things that the big picture of history usually omits, or disdains. I work with missing history. . . . I'm interested in little people. The little, great people, is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. In my books these people tell their own, little histories, and big history is told along the way.

Echoing the title of her book, she ends her lecture by asserting,

I will take the liberty of saying that we missed the chance we had in the 1990s. The question was posed: what kind of country should we have? A strong country, or a worthy one where people can live decently? We chose the former--a strong country. . . . A time full of hope has been replaced by a time of fear. The era has turned around and headed back in time. The time we live in now is second-hand . . . 

What do you think? Which of the many voices Alexievich records were most interesting to you? Do the voices blend into a meaningful chorus? Do you have a new understanding or appreciation of the history of the U.S.S.R. and the Russian Federation after reading Secondhand Time? What "big history" emerges from these voices? How would you describe the Russian soul as presented by Alexievich's interviews? What do you think Alexievich means by "secondhand time"? In a critical review for The New Republic, Sophie Pinkham argues that "Alexievich's apparent reliance on other people's voices doesn't mean that she has removed herself from her books; she has only made herself less visible. She edits, reworks, and rearranges her interview texts . . . In doing so, she reduces the historical value of her work, effaces the texture of individual character, and eliminates the rhythm on which drama depends." Would you agree or disagree? Why?

Read Alexievich's Nobel lecture here.

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.