[Issue #67] ❤️🩹 Happiness is a Warm Puppy
Sagas to see us through
I’m really sad today.
I haven’t read a book in almost a week. Though reading and books are by far my best coping mechanism, it’s often the first thing to fall away when I’m busy, stressed or sad. Reading takes a lot of energy and brain power, something I lose when life gives me lemons.
And what lemons we have been given this week. Reading is a political act, but politics as of late have been emotional, and I often struggle with the balance required to talk about art, artists, reading, and writing while speaking on political issues and topics. I speak more about my opinions and activism on the RONAREADS Instagram account than I do here in the newsletter. I firmly believe that while the internet and social media are great tools for spreading information, they make for poor activism. Sharing picture carousels and liking posts and shouting into an echo chamber are rarely effective forms of change. Real change happens out in the world: donating money and time.
And yet. So much money and so much time was donated this year. In few worlds would it be true to say that certain voters or people who espouse problematic opinions also don’t read books. Yet somehow being in the book world as a bookseller and media creator means I have, without trying too hard, surrounded myself with like-minded folks who are as active offline as they are in sharing their beliefs online. It’s how I know what was given to try and elect the first Black, South Asian woman as president and how sad and scared so many of us are now that she has lost.
There are dark times ahead. I’m deeply frustrated by the journalists and writers who decried how awful her loss would be now switching gears to write think pieces about how democracy isn’t dead yet!!! We’re readers. We know history. We know there are dark times ahead and there’s no denying we’ll need more books and more community to make it through.
But. I am so proud to be reading alongside those of you who have shared this dream. I hope there is another opportunity to rally around a similar cause.
Can I introduce you to a reading genre that always makes my heart feel big and swell-y? Family sagas! Sagas became a thing in my New York book clerb (two members of which got married in a dreamy wedding by the sea this past weekend!) We read epic sagas of love and life. My favorite of of all these is the family saga. Typically these are intergenerational stories, but not always. They’re good cold weather reads (or beach reads for our friends on opposite continents) because they demand you slow down, tuck in, and spend time with a set of characters for a longer period.
Let’s spend some time as a reader family reading about other families, lol. Let’s celebrate our Native American brothers and sisters, who know a little about the fight for freedom and restorative justice and who we can all emulate (especially at a time like this). Let’s hug our loved ones, our friends, and our furry friends especially. Fezziwig has about had it with me, I think, because I’ve been holding him non-stop all week long.
Sending lots of love and sagas folks. If you’re looking for a helping hand in the coming days, know there are always a few hands reaching out from the pages of a book.
Newish Family Sagas! // November 7, 2024
Here is a collection of newer family sagas I haven’t yet read and hope we can experience together. Normally I try to use my own words to craft the book description but this week I need the healing copy and paste provides 🫠, so thanks for bearing with me.
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
This new one from Native writer and bookstore owner, Louise Erdrich, is already getting rave reviews online and I can’t wait to get my paws on it. Here’s the blurb from Bookshop:
“In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.
Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and…sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter's and her own. Human time, deep time, Red River time…[are] set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009.”
Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Though this won the 2021 Nobel Prize(!) it somehow escaped my radar until now. Here’s the blurb from Bookshop:
“From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa.
When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.”
Time’s Undoing by Cheryl A. Head
This novel is based on the author’s own family history and seems uniquely moving and poignant for our current moment. Once again, here’s the blurb from Bookshop:
“Birmingham, 1929: Robert Lee Harrington, a master carpenter, has just moved to Alabama to pursue a job opportunity, bringing along his pregnant wife and young daughter…But with his beautiful, light-skinned wife and snazzy car, Robert begins to worry that he might be drawing the wrong kind of attention in his new town.
Detroit, 2019: Meghan McKenzie, the youngest reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has grown up hearing family lore about her great-grandfather's murder--but no one knows what really happened back then. Determined to find answers to her family's long-buried tragedy, Meghan travels to Birmingham. But as her investigation begins to uncover dark secrets that spider across both the city and time, her life may be in danger.”
…Celebrating tribal sovereignty and identity
November is Native American History Month and this year the Department of the Interior is continuing 2023’s celebration of tribal sovereignty and identity. For more details on the history of this month (officially designated in 1990) and to get a list of events ongoing through the month of November, click here!
…Explore the Native Land map
Native Land Digital is an Indigenous-led non-profit that has created tools like the Native Land Map for folks in North America to explore which Native tribes and groups were original inhabitants of our land.
Using the Native Land tool you’ll see not only which Native groups used to inhabit the land but who are still there today with applicable resources to learn more about their language and culture. Learn more about it all here.
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Get Rec’d,
Wynne + Fezziwig