Three Picks to Stimulate Your Spring

The semester is in full swing. 100-page reading assignments overwhelm your planner, and the days of lounging with a favorite book seem distant. If you can carve out a few minutes for yourself, though, I’ve got some literary picks for you. 

Novel to explore interior, intersectional dialogues of contemporary, British womxn: 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo 

Recipient of the 2019 Booker Prize, Girl, Woman, Other chronicles the intertwining lives of twelve black British womxn through stream-of-consciousness narratives marked by vibrant imagery. The novel offers important commentary on intersectional experiences within contemporary British society that often lack recognition in the literary canon and mainstream media. 

Evaristo opens the novel with Amma, a lesbian playwright in her 50s who finally gets her break with a show opening at the National Theatre in London. From Amma’s story emerges that of Yazz, her dramatic, university-aged daughter who views her mother as outdated and concerns herself more with discussing systems of privilege with her friend group.

Each subsequent story presents unexpected overlaps, circling back to earlier characters and revealing a web of distinctive female and non-binary figures. From Carole, the daughter of low-income Nigerian immigrants who works her way to an Oxford University degree and prestigious banking job, to Shirley, the teacher who views Carole as her singular greatest accomplishment, to Megan/Morgan, a non-binary social media influencer who didn’t graduate high school, Evaristo’s portraits reveal diverse interior thought processes and social dynamics. 

Girl, Woman, Other speaks for itself, and the only way to experience its complexity is to jump into the characters’ heads as Evaristo invites. With no punctuation and a poetic style, the 452 pages go fast - this was the winter break read I couldn’t put down. 

Best-seller that challenges common understandings of education, self-motivation and family dynamics: 

Educated by Tara Westover

Westover’s memoir provides an intimate look at the transition from growing up in a Mormon survivalist family in Idaho, to learning how to take exams for the first time at Brigham-Young University, to eventually earning a Ph.D. in History from Cambridge University. 

Unlike most children, Westover did not attend school until age 17. Rather, she worked at her father’s junkyard and helped her mother as a midwife. Surviving intense injuries and illnesses with no traditional medicine, a relationship with an abusive brother, and the turbulence of a father suffering from bipolar disorder, Westover’s childhood struggles were both unconventional and often difficult to conceptualize for a reader raised within mainstream society. 

Thus, Westover’s path to higher education reflects one entirely based on self-motivation and the urge to explore. She taught herself to pass the ACT in order to attend Brigham Young, faced extensive catch-up on historical events she was unaware existed, and learned how to study for exams with an impressive determination to earn top grades. Moreover, Westover’s isolated childhood led to tumultuous social adjustments, down to daily clothing norms that entirely contradicted her family and religious upbringing. The contrast between college classrooms and the mountains of Idaho raises issues of belonging, loyalty and self-understanding. 

Westover’s genuine curiosity and excitement to learn provide my greatest inspiration and gratefulness for the education I am lucky to receive. I found Educated my most attention-grabbing read of 2019. 

Fascinating theory to boost those papers: 

Life-Writing in the Long Run by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson 

Smith and Watson’s “autobiography studies reader” stretches your conceptions of authenticity and agency, human rights and witnessing, memory and subjectivity, diaspora and migration, performativity, and graphic memoir, among other themes. A series of essays, these discussions don’t feel like dry academic reading. Instead, they inspire a closer questioning of the historical narratives, art, and media we consume. I’ve applied concepts from the book to papers as diverse as an exploration of the de/colonization of Frida Kahlo through her painting Self Portrait on the Border between Mexico and the United States to anthropology research on food, memory and identity for Bolivian immigrants in Buenos Aires. 

As one example, the essay “Mapping Women’s Self-Representation at Visual/Textual Interfaces” considers the autobiographical practices women artists utilize to contradict their historical representations and assume autonomy. With lists ranging installations, performance pieces, feminist cartoons, murals, and diaries, Smith and Watson provide extensive ideas for engaging with political portraiture. Of course, theory is key to this work, so Smith and Watson deconstruct the concept of autobiography and apply it to specific pieces. By doing so, they raise “the larger question of how women artists as makers of their own display are related to the history of woman as an object of speculation and specialization, and the kinds of intervention women artists have deployed to disrupt that specularity” (Smith and Watson 346). 

I would read this book with no connection to a class, but it will definitely come in handy when laying out a theoretical framework in a paper, looking for interesting artistic works to study, or trying to brainstorm new research ideas. 

So what’s stopping you from trotting out to your local independent bookstore? 

A lot of college students say they don’t read. Sometimes they mean there is no time for free reading because classes are so time-consuming, or sometimes that they choose to skim assigned readings because general business is overwhelming. However, you might gain more from reading than you anticipate. Non-fiction is often underrated, but it can provide just as much an escape as fiction and is perhaps more rewarding. Despite listing seemingly impossible assignments at times, course syllabi for classes that you’re excited about can provide engaging reading lists and make the act seem less like work. It’s still possible to squeeze in a few minutes of “personal” reading time if you find the right book. 

Read up, lovely bibliophiles. 

- Julia 

Davidson student, avid planner, and baking enthusiast with a love for river-centered cities.