Barbara Beckwith

The Call , by Yannick Murphy (Harper, 2011). The format of his novel – it’s written as a veterinarian’s daily log, intrigued me. I started reading but wondered how a logbook can possibly “work” as a novel. How can the author develop a plot? But she did, and her format elucidates the main character’s psychology. The author‘s husband is a Vermont vet, and the book was a 2011 National Book Award finalist in fiction.

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka (Knopf, 2011) another 2011 National Book Award fiction finalist. It, too, is written unconventionally: in the first person plural (“We”). I doubted this would work in a novel, but it does. This the story of “picture brides” brought from Japan to the U.S. early in the 20th century, by Japanese men seeking wives. The “we” form lets us see their commonality but also to appreciate their diversity, and their individual ways of coping.

A Star Called Henry, by Roddy Doyle. Jon and I both read this raucus novel while we were in Dublin. [Jon “It gave me a real feeling for what life in Dublin was like, and fit what I saw there”]. Henry and his brother Victor are street urchins whose one-legged assassin dad and crazy, alcoholic mother, had more kids than they can care for. The boys turn to robbery and are eventually recruited into Michael Collins’ revolutionaries. They take part in the Post Office rebellion against the British, and then face retaliation. Jon will read another in Doyle’s novel series on our post-Christmas reading weekend.

The Irish Famine, by Peter Grey (Thames & Hudson). This book was an eye-opener: the Irish Famine was not just a matter of a failed potato harvest, as I had always thought. The famine could have been averted if farmers were allowed to grow other crops but the British plantation owners insisted that they export all non-potato foods to Britain, while 1 million Irish died of starvation and sickness, and another 1 million fled the county for the U.S., cutting Ireland’s population in half and leading to a long period of poverty, which may have affected my great-grandmother, Winifred Flanagan Moore, born in 1850 in Mayo County.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Reb ecca Skloot (Crown, 2010). Scientists have been using “HeLa” cells since the 1950s. This is the story of an African American woman whose cells, after she died of cervical cancer, were reproduced by scientists who went on to develop the polio vaccine and other medical advances. […]

Several years ago, when I sat on the diversity committee of the National Writers Union, we asked anyone attending our caucus to introduce him or herself as either a “person of color,” an LGBT person, a person with a disability — or an ally of one or all of the above.

I happily introduced myself as white, straight, “temporarily able-bodied,” and as an ally to all three of what we called “target groups.” But our in-group language turned some people off. Several refused to label themselves: they wanted to just sit and observe. Our caucus organizers insisted. Those otherwise sympathetic attendees never came to another meeting. Accusations of “nomenclature puritanism” and “oppression competitivness” followed. Mutual respect went down the drain. Ever since, I’ve been leery of jargon. […]

Here I am, trying to move past my white-bread mindset, in hope of being able to listen with an open mind to the perspectives of people of color.  At the same time, I think of Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true, and thou canst not be false to any man” and I wonder: how do I keep an open mind and my integrity, knowing how deeply flawed my “honest” reactions may be? […]

When I became determined to free myself of group stereotypes based on ignorance, I first tried a shortcut, reading book with titles like Everything You Need to Know About Latino History, Everything You Need to Know About Asian American History, 100 Things Everyone Should Know about African Americans, or The Arab-American Handbook.

As for Native Americans, I’d read Tony Hillerman mysteries set on Southwestern reservations and thereby thought myself in the know about Navaho and Hopi cultures.

So when I made a date to speak to the head of Harvard’s Native studies center, I readied myself to shake hands with respectful limpness, as Hillerman’s Native characters did , and to speak in a soft, unmodulated voice to the person I expected to be soft-spoken, and pictured as wearing long braids and turquoise jewelry. […]

Here are the best fiction and non-fiction books I’ve read recently, most during one of our “reading weekends,” when Jon and I went away to read, this time in a sweet little B & B, Acorn’s Hope,Great Barrington (MA).  

 Try to Remember, by Iris Gomez (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2010). This novel “grabbed” me from the very beginning: I read it straight through. The main character is a Columbian immigrant girl whose father loses jobs, obsessively composes demand letters and forces his daughter to type them, has violent and paranoid rages. […]