Uterish Book Clubs Picks of the Year 2019
Did you tune in every month and read our Uterish Book Club Picks on The Provocateur? Is this the first you are hearing of it? Welcome to our full round-up of each book we selected and wrote about on The Provocateur, our monthly newsletter, in 2019!
Alex’s Pick —
Released in 1989, The Joy Luck Club was revered Chinese-American author Amy Tan's first novel and an instant international classic. The story weaves 8 lives together--4 mothers and 4 daughters--across generations, oceans, histories, wars, and heartbreak.
The Joy Luck Club is one of the most beautifully written stories about the complicated nature of mother/ daughter relationships. Some sentences just made me want to cry.
"Your mother is in your bones." (from the novel)
Cecilia’s Pick —
When I was in high school, my mother handed me this book and promised it would change my life. Dear Sugar is not a self-help book. It’s more like a memoir, a stern talking-to by your mother, and a manifesto on how to live your life all wrapped into one. Strayed shows how our most significant epiphanies are often the most devastating as well. Dear Sugar’s overall message is pretty clear: There is no easy way out of the darkness. If I had any advice to give to you, it would be to read this book, cherish it, and learn from it.
Alex’s Pick —
This heart-breaking masterpiece edges on speculative fiction as it unravels the story of the aging Mala Ramchandin and her nurse Tyler, exploring the violence of patriarchy as inflected by generations of empire and colonialism. Set in a fictionalized Caribbean Island, the book, at once, incorporates and expels colonial logic. It challenges and celebrates the interpersonal relationships that arise from colonialism and migration. Cereus Blooms at Night and its (largely silent) protagonist are unusual, but gems nonetheless -- it is likely unlike any book you've read before.
cw: sexual assault
Greta’s Pick —
Yeah, I’m finally reading it. If––like me––you’ve known since you were twelve that you were supposed to but haven’t gotten around to it, consider this your call to action: the book club read this month is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and we are all going to revise the history we were taught in high school with a telling more centered on the disenfranchised. Usually, American history is taught using the throughlines of nationalism, imperialism, and manifest destiny to make sense of the arc of our nation’s history. In his telling, Zinn focuses instead on how many historical actions (like the American Revolution!) were founded on racism, an intent to maintain class divides, and xenophobia.
Alex’s Pick —
Here is a book that is so relevant, it's painful. Invisibile No More is a meticulously researched and thoughtfully crafted indictment of the erasure of police violence against Black, indigenous, queer, and other women of color face. Ritchie is an accessible and essential voice in feminist, queer, and Black politics. I heard her speak this March where she warned about the balance between visiblizing projects (like her work) and the proliferation of Black trauma & death in the media. Yet, intersectional feminists know that the erasure and silence cannot continue. Let's start with this book.
cw: sexual assault, police abuse, anti-Black racism
Greta’s Pick —
“Before the psychosis properly begins, [...] I experience an agitated sense of something being wrong. The wrongness isn’t limited to the grotesqueries mutating inside, but is also true of the world at large: how did it get this way, and what am I supposed to do with it? I mean this not only of dailiness, which is full of restless hours that must also be spent, but also the sky, the walls, the trees, my dog, the curtains, the floor—”
Esmé Weijun Wang reclaims the narrative of mental illness. This book is an examination of those illnesses—like schizophrenia—we see as markers of difference, as becoming “really crazy,” as having crossed over to some unreachable and unsalvageable other space. For a taste of what this collection is like, I recommend “Perdition Days,” an essay in her book that was initially published online. You can read it here.
Tulika’s Pick —
In the anthology, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, 30 essayists reflect on their experiences of harassment, violence, trauma and the consequent healing (or lack thereof). It is heartbreakingly easy to identify yourself in these pages. The writers capture every small step taken in understanding how rape culture pervades society and how powerless & angry you feel when it is so deeply familiar.
This book was difficult to digest - I read this intermittently on the subway, no more than 30 minutes at a time - but so acutely necessary to come to terms with how rape culture is normalized in our families, schools and our legal systems. In a post- Time’s Up world, it feels overwhelming to measure the extent, impact, and origins of rape culture. Reading this book is a start.
Greta’s Pick —
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a difficult book to categorize apart from the fact of its own inherent beauty––a longform letter from the narrator (Little Dog) to his mother, this book takes on race, class, gender, and sexuality while remaining, fundamentally, a love story between two teens. Alternately, you could categorize it as a love story between a son and his mother, or a declaration of self-love, or an exploration of one person's love for language. What is so striking about this book is the way joy permeates even the horror and pain and abuse that Little Dog and the people around him endure. A heart-wrenching and deeply rewarding read.
Alex’s Pick —
Coming-of-age story? Nostalgic fiction? Woman writer? Young woman protagonist? Stunning cover art? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes! This book is a delicious exploration of the joy of mystery. It takes place in the contrasted landscapes of vibrant Mexico City and "the Beach of the Dead" (a quiet beach town near Oaxaca) in the 1980s. The quirky characters and the delightful topographies produce an indulgent and engaging read. - Alex
“If I stayed in much longer I was certain I would dissolve, there were probably hundreds of dissolved bodies in the ocean, swirling around with the shells and seaweed, that’s what happens when you immerse yourself too fully in any vastness, you eventually become part of it, part of the landscape, quite literally.” (excerpt from Sea Monsters)
Alex’s Pick —
Salt Fish Girl has become my go-to book recommendation since I read it last spring. It is a feminist, queer masterpiece of speculative fiction. Larissa Lai creates the dystopian world of the near-future Pacific Northwest where nation-states have been replaced by corporate-states run by neoliberal, corporate government structures. The plot oscillates between this dark future narrated by young protagonist Miranda and the immortal life of omnipotent, feminine being Nu Wa. Eventually, the lives of Miranda and Nu Wa become entangled, inseparable, one. Not only are most (if not all) central characters in Lai’s book queer, but they are also somehow other than human. Whether through Miranda’s durian birth origins, Nu Wa’s immortal being, another character’s 0.3% carp & ‘clone’ background, or the scales that seem to unite them all, Lai analogizes queer futures, feminist resistance, and the non-, or not quite, human in water landscapes. These feminist possibilities coalesce in resistance to the corporate, surveillance state where difference is translated as threat.
Salt Fish Girl offers a fascinating fiction read and a compelling provocation to feminist/queer theory. The book demonstrates the glorious work of feminist, speculative fiction: relating our current struggles to the practice of imagining new worlds and new futures.
Greta’s Pick —
There is no way you haven't heard of Trick Mirror by now. Hopefully this will be the last push you need to finally get around to reading it. Jia Tolentino has written an outstanding testament to the time we live in, that is nuanced, complex, saturated, and fun. She both fits in the line "on the wings of market-friendly feminism, the idea that personal advancement is a subversive form of political progress has ben accepted as gospel" and includes an entire section dedicated to her time on a teen Bachelor-esque TV show. And, somehow, she makes it so those things don't seem so disconnected.
Greta’s Pick —
I read blud all in one day and then immediately gave it to Alex––so it’s a natural Uterish Book Club choice. blud is all about control: who leases it, when it is abused, how to find it. Because of this, it makes for an excellent work of poetry. The writing itself is rhythmic, visceral, and steeped in tension. McKibbens explores the relationship of trauma and inheritance, particularly within the confines of gender and mental illness. While focusing on subject matter brutal and unforgiving, blud somehow manages to maintain an undercurrent of hope. It is a beautiful and personal read, one that made me think about the ways that love can have claws.