Uptown Literati

What: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz’ sophomore novel that created a literary firestorm for it’s stunning and fantastical account of a multi-generational family haunted by a supposed curse, the fuku. Told in brilliant color and dialogue, Díaz is able to narrate in the voice of four different characters, infusing his dialogue with Dominican vernacular and poetic prose to illustrate life’s tumultuous and satisfying moments.

Why: The Brief Wondrous Life is a book whose hype has not overshadowed its magnificence and beauty. Díaz manages to merge important literary references with relevant pop culture without skipping a beat. At once hysterical and heartbreaking, Díaz’ novel illustrates a people navigating through pain, love, violence, and redemption, with the stubborn tenacity of their character and the omnipresence of divinity guiding them.

Rating: 5 stars

–Nicole Crowder

When I open emails from accessories retailers, I don’t expect to see gorge images of women reading, but sometimes I do. This arrived in my email this morning from queen of the cute person, Kate Spade.

And, really, we all know love of reading and great style go hand-in-hand, right?

–Whitney

Who: Activist and Author Beverly Bell; Foreword by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat

What: Walking on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance, a diverse collection of istwa, Haitian Creole for “both story and history.” After a proud, rousing foreword by Haiti’s high priestess of Literature, Krik? Krak! author Danticat, Bell sweeps readers into the multi-layered ’90s world of Haitian women. While Bell’s introductory passages are more academic, with passages on the island’s political history and women’s movement, they create a perfect balance to the often emotional stories of the 38 Haitian women storytellers.

The women represent the full range of Haiti’s ethnic and economic diversity, from Lise-Marie Dejean, former Minister of the Status and Rights of Women, to “Tibebe,” the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man and a maid, who was given away and raised as a restavék, a child slave. Full of hope and the unyielding résistance that led their ancestors to rebel centuries ago, these women walked on fire and lived to tell the tale.

Why: Any story or book or historical knowledge that helps us understand the people of Haiti and their spirit, right now and in the futire, is a good thing.

–Whitney Teal

The Washington Post has reported that one of the great American writers, J.D Salinger, has passed away. He was 91. [Washington Post]

–Uptown Literati

One of France’s most beloved writers, Albert Camus, died in a car crash 50 years ago this month. However, the issue of where his final resting place should be has sparked debate between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and a tiny village in Lourmain, where Camus lived until the time of his death. NPR breaks down the controversy as France commemorates one of it’s literary and philosophical heroes. [NPR]

In other literary news: Apple’s new iPad offers book publishers a deal to compete with Amazon’s monopoly on the e-reading industry. Random House appears to be the only holdout. [NYT]

Sarah Walters is a woman who has followed the rules her entire, like most of us. Unlike most of us, her rules were passed down over generations of Camellias, women at the top-most rung of Charleston’s social ladder. It’s a public society that’s anything but Democratic, Camellias are born, not made: If you’re mother is one, then you are. For life. No matter what.

“‘Never chase men or buses,’ my mother told me. ‘Another one will always come along,’” writes Sarah, whose struggles meeting expectations are what make this book by first-time novelist Katie Crouch so relatable and interesting.

With a slow start that follows Sarah and the three other Camellias her age, Bitsy, Charlotte and Annie, through middle-school Cotillion training, it’s clear as the story develops why Crouch spent so much time developing the traditional South Carolina enclave of Sarah’s youth.

Sarah as a heroine is a little bland and things happen to her, not with her or by her. She observes the increasingly bizarre sequence of experiences that happen when her domineering older sister moves to Yale, when she and wild-child Charlotte met country boys who lure them away from high-society duties and even when she goes away to a no-name Northern college.

The novel moves into familiar coming-of-age territory when Sarah moves to New York to work in journalism, joined by Charlotte, now in the fashion industry, and Bitsy. This is where she searches for love and where Crouch explores the frighteningly submissive personalities of her heroines. Sarah dates a man who changes her life and accepts, if not encourages, his violent sexual behavior. Bitsy marries a wealthy older man, who is later revealed to be selfish, uncaring and unfeeling. Annie dates men who don’t love her. Charlotte, the most sensible, falls in love with mind-altering substances.

I wonder if these women are supposed to represent some aspect of femininity that exists in every woman because something, the fear of being alone or the fear of not being enough or the fear of being unloved, keeps all of them from searching for or choosing healthy relationships.

At one point Sarah remembers what her mother taught her about men, “that no mater what, there’s always something. Fall in love and you’ll find it. He will steal, or dink, or dress up in your clothes, or die on you at dinner. That’s love, she says. That’s what you sign up for.”

Sarah is at her best when she is honest and feeling about the emotions that most of us only occasionally stumble upon. After almost screwing up her sister’s wedding she tells her. “‘There’s a lot wrong with me,’” before continuing with, “I tell her I’m sorry again, which she waves off. I am sort of always sorry. I am sorry for being drunk on her wedding day and for not being good enough for Max and for not being smart enough for her friends and for breaking her toe with a hockey stick when I was twelve. God, I am sorry. I am sorry for so many things that I should go outside and swim to Cuba.”

Emotionally numb, our heroine stumbles through the rest of the novel looking for electrifying love to shock her out of her numb funk. She finds it, in an unexpected place, and ends up right where she started: among the mama, baby and grandbaby Camellias of Charleston.

– Whitney Teal

Author Melissa Hart’s complex and dynamic childhood is the subject of her latest book, Gringa: A Contradictory Childhood. She spoke with The Urban Muse about the inspiration:

Urban Muse: Tell us about the inspiration behind Gringa.

Melissa Hart: Inspiration comes to me in the form of images–in the case of Gringa, I recalled a pack of Spanish flash cards that my mother had when we took language classes together at the local library. I couldn’t get one image–a line drawing of a disembodied ear–out of my head. Really, it was that flash card that provided the initial inspiration to sit down and write the first chapter. I’d told part of my story–about my mother coming out and losing custody of me and my younger siblings–in my first memoir, The Assault of Laughter. However, I didn’t feel that I’d written the story as eloquently or thoroughly as I could have, and so I set out to write it once more and expand upon it with more sophisticated prose and a greater sense of how the dissolution of my family affected me as a young adult. I’d also been reading memoir and fiction with recipes–Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, Diana Abu-Jaber’s The Language of Baklava–and as food provided comfort and intrigue for me as an adolescent, I structured each chapter around a key recipe.

UM: Was it difficult to write about events that are so deeply personal?

MH: It is difficult to write about personal events. After almost thirty years, I still have a lot of pain regarding what happened to my family. Many women with kids who came out during the 1970s and 1980s lost custody of their children, and most don’t want to discuss this. However, I think it’s a critical period of history that needs to be explored, and while I shed many tears during my writing of Gringa, I also feel confident that this book offers insight into LGBT families and their value. The hardest scene for me to see in print is the sex scene in “Young Americans.” I didn’t want to include it, but my editor thought it was important. It’s not erotic–more “theater of the absurd”–but I blush to think that my journalism students and my grandparents have read it.

– Whitney Teal