Writer, Teacher
“Townie” is a short story by Neel Patel, and I found it on Audible.com. It’s a short listen, less than an hour. The story focuses on two young women who party and socialize together. Our narrator betrays her friend in the end in a memorable and heart-breaking way. I won’t spoil the ending here, but I will say it’s worth a listen.
Patel is also the author of a story collection called, If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi. I have the hardback, and I look forward to reading it at some point.
I’ve taught several of Trethewey’s poems in my literature classes. She’s definitely known more for poetry than nonfiction. This book, Memorial Drive is a memoir. I’m halfway through the audiobook, which is narrated by the author.
Trethewey was born to a white father and black mother in 1966. It was illegal for her parents to marry in Mississippi at that time. In her poetry, she often writes about being mixed race in the South. She definitely discusses Southern race relations in this story, but the real focus of it is on bearing witness to violence, her mother’s murder, and the impact it left on the author. This is a heartbreaking book and definitely worth a read. Just beware of the violent subject matter.
One thing I really like about this book is Trethewey’s penchant for taking tiny parts of her lived experiences and using them to help the reader understand her mindset at the time. For instance, she writes about being driven around the I-285 bypass in Atlanta by her mother’s boyfriend. In so few words, Trethewey clearly communicates how unsafe she felt with him and how powerless she was to do anything about it. She even mentions how triggering I-285 is for her years later when she returns to Atlanta. I could really understand her there. There are particular places that hold a lot of meaning for me and just visiting them can change my mood. I’m sure this is true for everyone.
Trethewey also writes in the second person in several sections of the book. At first, it gave me the feeling that she wants to sound detached in those moments. She even calls herself out for it midway through the book by saying that writing in second person is an attempt to distance herself from the girl who experienced these traumas. Still, I think it goes beyond that. The use of the second person creates a more personal reading experience. It connects with readers by making Trethewey’s story a shared experience with readers who’ve suffered similar traumas. By addressing the reader as “you,” she emphasizes that she’s not alone, that many of us also witnessed childhood trauma and still struggle to cope with it.
I’m a discriminatory reader who will try a story or two and give up if I don’t like them. However, Enriquez got my attention by starting strong. “The Dirty Kid,” the first story in her collection, focuses on a young woman living in a crime-ridden city in Argentina. She’s privileged and lives in a nice home, but she’s a daily witness to the poverty and crime around her. The woman helps a dirty boy who lives on the streets with his drug addict mother. Later, when she doesn’t see the boy and hears news about a young boy recently decapitated, she sets out walking to find the boy and his mother. I haven’t listened to the other stories yet, though I’ve previewed a few of them. Make no mistake: this is a violent collection, so it’s not for those who can’t handle violence or the macabre. Still, I’m looking forward to trying the other stories. The book is a translated audiobook. Ms. Enriquez is from Argentina.
Leslie Jordan is an actor from Chattanooga who has appeared in many well-known television series and films, such as Will and Grace, American Horror Story, and The Help. I first began to notice him last year during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when he went viral on Instagram for posting his hilarious short videos:
His audiobook, How Y’all Doing? is just as hilarious as I expected, but it’s also a sweet and personable memoir in which he discusses his time working on a horse farm, his early days in Hollywood as an actor looking to scratch out a place for himself, and some of his most memorable film roles.
I read quite a lot of memoirs, and I think the best ones are honest and don’t try to paint the author in the best light. Jordan is honest about his self-centered nature, how much he craves the spotlight, and even reveals that he once had a drinking problem (though he doesn’t depress the reader with all the details). This memoir isn’t for those looking for a layered or deeply meaningful story, but it was just right for me this past weekend when I needed some laughs, and so I found myself returning to it until I’d gobbled it all up.
The Nature of Fragile Things is available on my library app. Susan Meissner has written more than a dozen books, but this is the first of hers that I’ve read. I’m about a 1/3 of the way through the audiobook and I’m enjoying it so far. It starts a little slow, which is normally something that I dislike, but I keep reading because the author does a good job of making me curious about the family relationships in this story. It begins with Sophie, an Irish immigrant living in New York who answers an ad for a mail order bride. She moves to San Francisco to meet her match, a widowed man who has a five-year-old daughter. The setup reminded me a lot of The Magic of Ordinary Days because both novels focus on the marriage of two strangers. The setup is a good one, too, because as readers we wonder what sort of strife this arranged marriage will create. Will she be attracted to her husband? Will he treat her cruelly?
These basic questions are answered right away. Her husband is an attractive man who owns a comfortable home and lets her mother his daughter in basically whatever way she pleases. Still, you can’t help but sense that something is awry with Sophie’s husband. He shows no affection for her, which isn’t that unusual sense they’re strangers, but he also shows no affection for his daughter either, not even so much as a hug or a kiss. The husband goes out of town on business and gives vague answers to questions about where he’s going, what he does, and when exactly he’ll return.
One day, a mysterious woman shows up at Sophie’s house while her husband is out of town. The woman gives Sophie some shocking news that changes the entire family dynamic and what both women think of Sophie’s husband. I won’t spoil it for you here, but that chapter really shocked me and made me sit up and pay attention.
The other thing to know about this one is that the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is a key event in the story. I haven’t reached the earthquake part of the book yet, but I can clearly see that Meissner is dropping breadcrumbs to help the reader piece together a family mystery while we’re also anticipating the catastrophic earthquake. I love when an author complicates things with the emergence of several high stakes problems to solve at once.
This is exactly my type of book. I enjoy historicals and stories that focus on family strife. I’m also enjoying the lovely performance of the narrator who voices Sophie’s Irish accent. Looking forward to finishing this one!
Monic Ductan 