PDK International | Phi Delta Kappan: Soder V78 N10 pp77-780 June 1997

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Books for Summer Reading

IT'S JUNE AGAIN, and "Sumer is icumen in." And with it comes that treasured leisure time for reading that most educators long for throughout the hectic school year. As in summers past, the Kappan editors have asked Roger Soder to poll some of his book-loving friends and gather their recommendations for your summer reading pleasure. We present their suggestions here in the hope that readers will find some books that will help fill the days between now and next fall with hours of enjoyment and enlightenment. -- The Editors

Lately, it seems that every bookstore has a large section labeled "Nature" or "Environment." The selections run the gamut from calendar art to social criticism. From that vast array, I'd like to recommend three books that deal with the subject of nature.

First, I suggest that readers go directly to a great source of ideas and curl up with Emerson: The Mind on Fire (University of California Press, 1995), a fine new biography by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. This book is not just the life story of the man whose work largely set the course of American thinking about nature, nor is it merely a gloss on his texts, from which millions of aphorisms and epigrams have long been mined. This is one of that rare breed of books that illustrate and narrate the lives and times of ideas as well as people and their works. Richardson sets in context the concepts that inspired a new republic. Emerson led a highly influential circle of writers and orators in transforming British and German ideas into distinctively American ones. His version of nature is still the foundation of our thinking about the topic today.

To ask about the continued viability of that version of nature, I suggest Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (Norton, 1995), edited by William Cronon. This is a collection of 15 essays proceeding from a seminar held in 1994. The authors approach ideas of nature from varied combinations of disciplines and styles, all asking why and how these ideas are built and maintained and come to be taken for granted. Reading these chapters on the past, present, and future of "nature" makes it hard ever to use the word or browse the topic again without thinking twice.

The third book I recommend, Mountains and Rivers Without End (Counterpoint, 1995), by Gary Snyder, takes old and new ideas of nature from East and West and distills them into poetry. Snyder has been writing good poems for a long time, and he says in the afterword to this volume that it has taken him 40 years to publish. I'd say the work is worth the wait; Snyder gathers images from his jobs, travels, readings, and meditations and connects them with an image of a landscape painted on a scroll from which the book's title is derived. This serial poem unrolls like a day well spent on a beach, at a lake, in the shadow of a mountain, or wherever Kappan readers might read and think about nature this summer. -- Henry St. Maurice, assistant professor of education, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.

Murder mysteries often get a bad rap. Yes, much of the genre consists of the drivel we secretly relish. Lost in the muck of such supermarket schlock, however, are some truly gifted writers. Their writing is poetic and profound -- all the things good writers strive for. My first recommendation is The Godfather, (Signet, 1978), by Mario Puzo. Beautifully written, the novel is chilling and, believe it or not, subtle. Puzo quietly piles up the details that result in a violent explosion. In The Godfather Sicilian violence has more to do with the shortcomings of Americans than with the "hot blood" of Sicilians. Puzo's Sicilian immigrants, like many other Americans, soon find that the American dream does not include them. Thus they must find their own dream and their own retribution. The Corleones find both.

Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996) has as its central issue racial identity. John Smith is adopted out of his American Indian family by a rich couple who live in the Seattle suburbs. He fantasizes about which tribe he belongs to, and, because he doesn't feel like he is a part of his parents' world, he suffers from the anonymity his name suggests. John comes to blame white people for his lack of identity. In his estimation, some white man must pay for his and all other Indians' conditions, and so he begins to stalk, scalp, and kill white men. Just when we think we know for certain that John is responsible, the identity of the killer becomes as nebulous as the title itself (one who kills Indians or a killer who is Indian). The reader comes to loathe and pity John Smith simultaneously. Identity is central to human existence, and Alexie shows what can happen when an individual doesn't fit into an ascribed identity. We come to feel John's isolation, his desperation, even his madness. Indian Killer forces us to distinguish between victims who blame racism (real or imagined) for their lot in life and those who, because America makes race the basis of identity, feel completely and utterly alone.

And finally, pick up anything by Walter Mosely. He is best known for Devil in a Blue Dress (Simon & Schuster, 1990). The disappointing movie spun out of the book has little in common with Mosely's clever style and his funny, sensitive, hard-drinking, and, at times, pathetic private detective, Easy Rawlins. Set in post-World War II Los Angeles, Mosely's mysteries are fast-paced, intelligent, and human. Easy makes mistakes and displays occasional poor judgment. Moreover, through Easy's complex life and character we understand just how far we haven't come in race relations. All Easy wants is a house, a family, and peace for himself and those he loves, which proves difficult for a black man in LA. Predictably, trouble finds Easy, usually in tandem with his childhood friend, Mouse, but the way he gets out of each skirmish is anything but predictable. Easy is always conscious of race and racism, though he is never one to blame race for anyone's condition. He knows we all make choices for reasons, often racial ones. For example, in Devil in a Blue Dress, Easy explains why he, a college-educated veteran, chooses to speak the way he does: "I always tried to speak proper English in my life, the kind of English they taught in school, but I found over the years that I could only truly express myself in the natural, 'uneducated' dialect of my upbringing." -- Shana Matthews, language arts teacher, Mill Valley Middle School, Mill Valley, Calif.

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As Dr. Johnson pointed out, some books we would not read unless we had to. We take them like medicine -- whether or not they taste good. Then there are other books, books that contain such luminously beautiful or ridiculously entertaining ideas that we don't care much whether they do us any good at all. They are confections.

Fortunately, there are books that accomplish both. They delight and enlighten. One such book is Breakfast at the Victory (HarperCollins, 1994), an exploration by author James P. Carse of "the mysticism of ordinary experience." In these wondrous, mostly autobiographical chapters, Carse exemplifies his own discovery that "those around whom surprising thinking emerges are teachers."

In Peripheral Visions (HarperCollins, 1994), Mary Catherine Bateson continues the lucid thinking of her parents, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, in seeking out the pattern that connects experiences as varied as her daughter's schooling in Iran and her own encounter with a tour bus full of Tibetan monks. Throughout, she invites us to have the insight of a "diversity of visions, and beyond that to include them in the range of responsible caring."

In a world ever more inundated by image and appearance, four books reflect the quiet wisdom inherent in poet Philip Larkin's question "Where can we live but days?" E. B. White's calmly fond account of life on his saltwater farm, One Man's Meat (Harper, 1942), recalls the importance of the near and the actual in a life ever more taken up with the distant and artificial. So, too, in its own way, does Fernand Braudel's Civilization & Capitalism: 15th-18th Centuries (Harper & Row, 1981), a three-volume history based not only on the affairs of empire or decisions at court, but also on the kinds of bread, silverware, drink, and clothing that were a part of the lives of the ordinary people of Renaissance Europe. The illustrations alone are worth the whole of many other histories. Edward T. Hall's Beyond Culture (Anchor, 1976) also helps us know ourselves better, in a way that simultaneously increases our understanding of others. In Hall's explanations of the unseen but strongly felt elements of culture, we begin to grasp the importance of our ways of doing and thinking. Hall helps us see the impact that culture has on our lives and provides us with a conceptual framework to begin understanding the cultures of others.

Finally, there is the autobiographical account of Temple Grandin's struggles with autism in Thinking in Pictures (Vintage, 1996). Grandin, a renowned animal scientist, chronicles her efforts to understand and cope in a world whose rules of communication and order are often utterly foreign to her. As she shares her ways of experiencing the world, Grandin suggests that seeing differently can often broaden the realm of what it is possible to do. -- Cori Mantle-Bromley, associate professor of education, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

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All the members of our book club are women, so our selections usually focus on female protagonists and are always fiction. We find ourselves drawn to the female who learns some of life's lessons through the story and emerges with a new perspective through strong reflection on her experiences.

In A Map of the World (Doubleday, 1994), Jane Hamilton throws us right into the fray from the outset. Alice Goodwin, mother of two, nurse, and farm wife in a small Wisconsin town, gets distracted on a hot summer morning and loses track of the neighbor children she is watching. One of them drowns in the pond, and the lives of Alice and her family are forever changed. Further tragedy ensues, and at several points some of our members wished that the writing weren't so good because the story was so painful. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to leave this story without finding out how Alice finally resolves her grief and pulls her family back into her arms and goes on. It is an intense and disturbing story of courage and will that left all of us gasping for air but with a deep respect for Jane Hamilton's ability as a storyteller.

In The Jump Off Creed (Houghton Mifflin, 1989), Molly Gloss tells a simple story of a courageous woman who sets out to homestead on her own in eastern Oregon over a hundred years ago. She finds deep loneliness, desperation, and finally peace in a stark setting, filled with the perils of nature, outlaws, and unkind neighbors. She is finally an example of strength and courage that we, as modern women, found inspiring. Molly Gloss tells a good story shorn of sentimentality.

As we were all longing for a classic, we decided to go back and reread My Antonia, by Willa Cather (HarperCollins, 1989). One of us had remembered it as a very good book, and most of us remembered it as part of a high school course. As we reread it, we were all very surprised at how much we had missed as young girls. This book is a story of Antonia Shimerda and her immigrant family on the Nebraska prairie in the late 19th century. Jim Burden, Antonia's confidant, is the narrator, and he is looking back on the story throughout most of the book. The result is a gentle and wise portrayal of hardship, strong people, and their relationship to the land. The book has poetry, romance, good writing, and a surprisingly timeless story about a woman who leaves the land only to learn that that is where she belongs.

In the midst of the rainy season in the Northwest, we were all transported to Florence as we read The Sixteen Pleasures, by Robert Hellenga (Soho, 1994). This is a story of a 29-year-old book conservator, Margot Harrington, who is sent to Florence to help restore books after the 1966 flood of the Arno. In the process, she is asked to sell a very rare volume of Renaissance erotica in order to raise money for a struggling convent library. Her story is filled with intrigue and romance and tells of her coming of age in a setting rich in art and history and made all the more vivid by Hellenga's strong language and characterizations. Hellenga also introduces readers to details about book conservation, which adds another dimension to the unfolding of the story.

Little Altars Everywhere (Broken Moon Press, 1992) and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (HarperCollins, 1996), both by Rebecca Wells, are interrelated although not necessarily sequential. Both chronicle the life of Siddalee, her family, and her mother, Vivi. Little Altars shows Siddalee as a young girl growing up in a small Louisiana town in the 1950s, while Divine Secrets shows Siddalee as a woman in her forties who has gone on to become a famous playwright in New York. While both are disturbing books about troubled relationships between mothers and children (especially daughters), they are very hard to put down. Little Altars leaves the reader with a sense of loss and grief as Siddalee tries to wrestle with her alcoholic mother's history and secrets. Divine Secrets clearly finds Rebecca Wells reflecting with more maturity on the relationship between Siddalee and Vivi, while weaving throughout glimpses of the mother's past with her inseparable circle of four crazy friends. What emerges in the end is a strong and poignant journey of forgiveness that left us full of hope. -- The Vashon Un-tidaled Book Club, a women's book club on Vashon Island, Wash. The members include Liz Brenneman, Pat Cummings, Hunter Davis, Ann Donaldson, Donna Klemka, Linda Mather, Molly Purrington, Marie Stanislaw, Patty Uhlman, and Jane Whetstone.

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"I and my life must be where I live," E. M. Forster tells us. But how do we integrate our work and our person within our place? Further, do we always have this choice? The books I am recommending explore these possibilities. In The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind (Harper & Row, 1989), David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars, provides a glimpse into country life in the Pacific Northwest. In the context of that beautiful outdoor wilderness, these compelling, yet deceptively simple, short stories tell of hunting, fishing, and first loves. But deeper issues -- betrayal, aging, friendship, love, and family -- emerge that compromise the serenity of the lives of the characters. These themes are woven through the stories and suggest to the reader that understanding oneself in the context of work and place is possible only when we remember our past as we look forward. While Guterson's setting may seem to provide his characters with the ability to make choices, most do not do so and assume a passive observer's role with regard to the course of their lives.

In contrast, Langston Hughes describes a situation in which his characters clearly have no choices yet assume an active, even subversive, stance. In his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), Hughes tells the story of Sandy, a young boy waking up to the realities of life in a small Kansas town in the early part of this century. Sandy learns about betrayal, aging, friendship, love, and family. He also learns about discrimination, segregation, and the insidious effects of poverty. Hughes draws the reader inside -- into Sandy's home and family -- where there is great comfort in the music, resilience, creativity, and, most of all, the unquestioned caring and nurturing. However, outside the family, Sandy quickly learns the limitations of living as a black man -- first in Kansas and then in Chicago. (One is reminded of Albert French's Billy and Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here.) The same themes Guterson developed in his short stories emerge in Hughes' novel and raise the question of whether real choices exist.

Elsa Walsh addresses this issue thoroughly in her description of the consequences for women who chose to challenge traditional lifestyles. In Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women (Simon & Schuster, 1995), Walsh gives voice to three nationally respected and successful women -- a correspondent, a symphony conductor, and a surgeon -- who describe their internal and public struggles and the ways in which they found balance and peace. Each dealt with the same themes explored by Guterson and by Hughes, and each was finally able to balance to some degree work, love, children and family, friends, time for self, sense of place, and sense of self. While success may be possible for those who actively seek it, one cannot ignore the impact of place and the importance of maintaining a sense of home.

Joycelyn Elders provides additional evidence of the success of this strategy, for she grounded her life by finding a balance between herself, her work, and her place -- wherever that place might have been at any particular time. In her autobiography, Joycelyn Elders, M.D.: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America (Morrow, 1996), written with David Chanoff, Elders tells her story honestly and eloquently and always in the context of home and family. Reared in poverty and times of segregation (which as a child she took for granted), Elders relates a series of life choices that ultimately brought her "home" again. She recognized the importance of education and pursued that goal with exceptional vigor and farsightedness. Her determination led her from a three-room shack in Arkansas to the University of Arkansas Medical School to positions at the state and federal levels and, more recently, back home to Arkansas. Throughout this journey, Elders actively defined her work while clearly recognizing the importance of place in her life. Coming home again was always an option. -- Pamela Campbell, associate professor of education, University of Connecticut, Storrs.

***

Three novels captured my interest (and engaged my book club colleagues) this year. Each deals with cultural conflict, and each focuses on the complex ways in which people try to resolve personal struggles in pursuit of truth and justice.

Larry Watson's Montana 1948 (Milkweed, 1993) is a small book (almost a novella) about a big topic. David Hayden is a Montana county sheriff following in his father's footsteps. His brother Frank is the Mercer County (Montana) doctor -- a man with pedigree, purpose, and misdirected passion. The boys and their father dominate the Montana landscape in which the novel is set. They are living icons until Frank is accused of sexually abusing his female patients, most of whom are Native Americans. The accusations have foundation, and all three Hayden men have to take a stand. Each must deal with a different problem: David with what is morally right, Frank with how to cover up his "sin," and their father with how to cope with the loss of family status and with his diminished personal pride. The book reads quickly, but the topic and the issues will linger in the reader's consciousness long after the last page is turned.

Recommended before in these pages, but worth another mention, is David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (Harcourt Brace, 1994), a novel of love, conflict, and xenophobia that takes place on Puget Sound. The year is 1954, and a local fisherman is found drowned. Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American, is charged with the crime. Kabuo's wife, Hatsue, was once the adolescent lover of Ishmael, a reporter covering the story. Through flashbacks, the story dwells on the simple, yet poignant, love between Ishmael and Hatsue; on the internment of Japanese families during World War II; and on the residue of hatred left by the exile and incarceration of the Japanese families in California internment camps. The book is billed as a whodunit, but it is really about unfulfilled love and cultural misunderstanding. Guterson reminds us in this text that personal enmity and interpersonal conflict are endemic to social and political relationships -- and that the difference between a friend and an enemy is often more the result of social circumstance than of specific personal action.

Finally, for those who struggle with spiritual issues, I recommend yet another book about cultural conflict -- Silence, by Shusaku Endo (Taplinger, 1980). The book is set in the 1600s. Portuguese missionaries are setting sail for Japan, bent on converting the heathen. Fearing for their culture, the Japanese fight back. They decide to systematically torture those who embrace Christian doctrine -- not the missionaries themselves but their followers -- unless, that is, the missionaries (in this case the devout Father Rodriguez) trample on the fumie (the image of Christ). Rodriguez is conflicted. Does he trample and commit sacrilege or does he refuse and allow his followers to die? As he struggles, he prays for personal release and heavenly intervention. Instead, there is only the silence of the title. This book (along with sushi and wine!) produced one of the best discussions our group ever experienced, and we just passed the 90-book level. -- Thomas J. Lasley II, professor of education, University of Dayton. Book club members include Hal Berg, Robert Curry, Joe DeLuca, Jacob Dorn, Bill Franz, Ted Kissel, Jim Reed, and Frank Williams.

Less for reasons of space than for reasons of emphasis, I limit myself this year to commentary on just one book. History of the Peloponnesian War is what Thucydides said it would be: a "possession for all time." Many readers (myself included) have found much of the account tough going because we lack the necessary context to understand everything that happens. Now, with Robert Strassler's new edition, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (Free Press, 1996), we have footnotes, sidebars, and detailed maps -- in a word, access. It is always a joy to return to Thucydides, even more so now that we have this handsome and beautifully edited volume. -- Roger Soder, co-director, Center for Educational Renewal, University of Washington, Seattle.