South and West by Joan Didion

South and West by Joan Didion
Published by Knopf Publishing Group on Mar. 7, 2017
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Travel
Format: Kindle
Pages: 160

Goodreads synopsis: 

From the best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks--writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles--and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention. She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through. 

And from a different notebook: the "California Notes" that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book, Where I Was From. 

This book is an intimate look into Joan Didion’s thought process during her time spent traveling in the South in the 70s. Joan spends a month traveling through Lousiana, Missisippi, and Alabama in the hopes that gaining a further understanding of the South will help her to better understand the West and her place amongst it.

The style of the book is a sort of collection of essays, or notes, from the notebook Joan kept while she moved through her journey. Only a last ¼ of the book is devoted to the West, centering around Joan’s involvement with the Patty Hearst trial.

As she does in all of her writing, Joan is a perfect craftsman of words, capturing every detail- spoken and unspoken- to truly place the reader within the story. Her writing is effortless, making the art of story-telling seem easy. It’s always enjoyable to read her words and this piece of work was a unique glimpse at how her brilliant mind works.

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Born A Crime

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Published by Doubleday on Nov. 15, 2016
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Cultural, Adult, Humor, Historical
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 304

Goodreads synopsis: 

The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. 

Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. 

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother: his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love. 

I never really had much interest in Trevor Noah. I wasn’t even aware of him until he replaced Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Once I saw a couple episodes around the 2016 election, I started to like him, so once I saw that he was releasing a memoir, I knew I had to read it.

By now, it’s probably obvious that I love a good memoir, and a humorous one nearly always makes for an enjoyable read. I listened to Trevor Noah's book during the peak of the semester when I was too busy to be able to actually read, turning it on each time I got in my car. As I said, I never really knew much about him as a person before picking up his book, but now, I definitely have a new respect for him.

He starts out his story by discussing bits of his childhood, growing up in South Africa, born to a black, South African mother and a white, German father, making him a product of interracial relations, a crime punishable by law under apartheid. His story moves mostly chronologically throughout his life, with the exception of tales he inserts about his mother's past prior to his birth.

Integrating his wit whenever possible, Noah tells a beautiful story about a young man's journey through a life plagued by racism & poverty, and how the bond between a mother and child can withstand all of that and worse.

Even if you've never heard of this comedian before (catch his show weeknights on Comedy Central), his tales of a South African childhood will leave you laughing, crying, and in awe of the beauty in human differences.

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Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
Published by Harper on Jun. 28, 2016
Genre(s): , Nonfiction, Memoir, Politics, Social Issues, Poverty,
Format: Kindle/Audiobook
Pages: 272
Goodreads synopsis: 

From a former Marine and Yale Law School Graduate, a poignant account of growing up in a poor Appalachian town, that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.

Vance’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love.” They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for their family. But Vance cautions that is only the short version. The slightly longer version is that his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother struggled to varying degrees with the demands of their new middle class life and they, and Vance himself, still carry around the demons of their chaotic family history. 

Delving into his own personal story and drawing on a wide array of sociological studies, Vance takes us deep into working class life in the Appalachian region. This demographic of our country has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, and Vance provides a searching and clear-eyed attempt to understand when and how “hillbillies” lost faith in any hope of upward mobility, and in opportunities to come.

At times funny, disturbing, and deeply moving, this is a family history that is also a troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large portion of this country.

A friend recommended this to me after I told him how much I enjoy reading memoirs, and I was so glad that he did. I went to Miami University, so I was more than familiar with the area in which much of the story takes place. This gave me a little perspective and a way to visualize and understand the scenes JD Vance was painting; however, even if I had never even heard of the small Ohio town, his descriptive writing made it easy to feel as if I had known it all my life.

The unique thing about the way that Vance writes is that in describing the hardships of his life and town, I could see my own town, family, and friends in the same way. While his story is unique, it is not the only one of it's kind. I don't think that Vance was trying to insinuate this, but instead the exact opposite- that so many American families experience life in poverty with varying hardships and if other Americans can take time to see and understand this, it will add value to how we connect and form relationships with those that are different from us.

This book was enlightening to read post-election, as well, after so many differences were brought up from each opposing party. I would recommend this memoir to everyone as a way to take a step back and appreciate another culture. I'm a sucker for memoirs, but this was without a doubt one of my favorites I've read, and I believe it will remain in my top 5 for years to come.

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When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Published by Random House on Jan. 12, 2016
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Memoir, Medical
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 230
Goodreads synopsis: 

For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living?

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air, which features a Foreword by Dr. Abraham Verghese and an Epilogue by Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy, chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a young neurosurgeon at Stanford, guiding patients toward a deeper understanding of death and illness, and finally into a patient and a new father to a baby girl, confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

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The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Published by Vintage on Sep. 1, 2015
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography
Format: Paperback/Audiobook
Pages: 227
Goodreads synopsis: 

From one of America's iconic writers, this is a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. This is a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill.

At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve - the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary.

In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's 'attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness, about marriage and children and memory, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself'. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad. 

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Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Published by Spiegel & Grau in Jun. 2015
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Race, Memoir, Social Issues, Social Justice,
Format: Kindle
Pages: 152
Goodreads

In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America and how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies and lives. Thoughtfully exploring personal and historical events, from his time at Howard University to the Civil War, the author poignantly asks and attempts to answer difficult questions that plague modern society. In this short memoir, the "Atlantic" writer explains that the tragic examples of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and those killed in South Carolina are the results of a systematically constructed and maintained assault to black people--a structure that includes slavery, mass incarceration, and police brutality as part of its foundation. From his passionate and deliberate breakdown of the concept of race itself to the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, Coates powerfully sums up the terrible history of the subjugation of black people in the United States. A timely work, this title will resonate with all teens--those who have experienced racism as well as those who have followed the recent news coverage on violence against people of color.

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The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls
Published by Scribner in Mar. 2005
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Adult, Memoir, Social Issues, Poverty
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Goodreads

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

I'm not at all sure what compelled me to pick up this book, but I am so glad that I did. Jeanette Walls weaves a tale of her childhood life growing up in poverty with magical thinking parents....... I think I have found a new genre to love.

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Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
Published by Three Rivers Press on Jan. 1, 2011
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Humor, Memoir, Biography, Essays
Format: Paperback
Pages: 222
Goodreads

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”

Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!

In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.

I became obsessed with Mindy after my friend got me quickly and easily hooked on her show, The Mindy Project. I had only seen her a couple of times when I watched The Office here and there, but I didn't know much about her. I now watch her show religiously and I've started watching The Office from Season 1 after finishing this book because that's how cool she made it (herself) sound. So far not impressed.... just kidding. Mindy is so real I can barely believe it.

I loved reading her story of growing up awkward and funny then killing it in NYC and Hollywood by just being herself. It's an excellent story of comedic perseverance in this harsh world that Mindy tells with her perfect airy tone of awesomeness. The only reason I am giving 4 stars is because I thought the book started off slow with the parts about her parents, and I wish she would have made the book much longer... Also, it was only laugh-out-loud funny at some parts, and I expected to have a side cramp from laughter by the end. Okay, maybe my expectations were too high for someone's first book...about their actual life...

Regardless of your thoughts (or lack thereof) on this book, do yourself a favor and check out The Mindy Project on Hulu or whatever. Mindy is basically an older, richer, more employed version of me. And it's seriously so funny.

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