Contemporary - Book Recommendations

Sabrina & Corina is written by a new talent in her debut collection of short stories originally published in 2019 and recently issued in paperback. Eleven stories centered around emotionally-scarred Indigenous females, descendants of Hispanics and Native American cultures. All stories either originate or are set in Denver and honestly expose its current existence in the tragedy of homelessness and the gentrification of the historical city. The author sprinkles in repeated venues like local neighborhoods such as Northland or Galapago street.

The stories’ protagonists are females of a mixed descent of Native American and Hispanic. Fajardo-Anstine’s female characters all survive broken families. In the very first story, "Sugar Babies," the mother walked out one morning while her daughter, Sierra, ate breakfast. Like Sierra, each story contains a devastating absence or loss. However, the protagonists are strong in spite of their weaknesses and do exhibit hope. The stories relate the experiences of these characters in a realistic and linear style. All of the author's characters are believable and flawed. The stories bring to light cultural challenges and faults as well as the effects of racism on Native American and Hispanic characters.

Discussion Questions: Several of the author's stories involve broken families and, specifically, an absent mother. Do children of working-class mothers suffer more mother loss or absence than higher socio-economic stratifications? If so, what other literature proves this claim? Finally, in our society, is this due to simple economics or are there other determining factors? What are they?

“A Lucky Man” is a collection of nine short stories by Jamel Brinkley. These stories are held together by the theme of manhood and fatherhood in the context of African American masculinity. This is the author’s debut collection.

Brinkley uses slang and language often associated with black people sparingly, just enough to paint the image without it dominating the rest of the descriptions and inner monologue. He creates the ideas and mindspace of his characters very clearly, sharing their thoughts and opinions and letting the reader decipher the societal implications for the most part. When he does spell out a point, such as what society expects black men to find attractive, he does so in a way that dangles the idea in front of the reader and lets them grasp it for themselves.

Discussion Questions: Consider what you know of white masculinity. How does it compare to the stories here? What are some differences? Similarities? What do those differences and similarities say about American culture and society?

There are eleven stories in this collection by Joshua Ferris. Many of these stories were previously published in The New Yorker, and Ferris has had other successful novels in the the past such as ”Then we Came to The End", "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour", and "The Unnamed". Each story in this collection deals with the awkward, heartbreaking, and hilarious parts of life that happen all around us. From a fighting married couple to a man dealing with loss, the stories follow a multitude of characters.The meaning of life is very different for all of the characters, and the reader gets to see these issues develop. Sometimes, the solution is to move on and start their own stories separately as their own characters. The stories in The Dinner Party are about lives that will be forever changed.

The writer, Joshua Ferris, writes his story in a narrative, descriptive style that creates a clear image in the reader’s mind with relaxed structure, casual slang, and frequent narration. There is a simple sentence structure that is carried throughout all of the stories and it lets the narration provide the necessary structure. There is a “modernistic” approach to the stories that jump timelines and leave the reader to piece together the ending. The language follows a casual, laid back theme. There are multiple pop-culture references as well as slang. The narration is the most important part of the stories. While it may switch perspectives, it tends to follow a first person narrator with some help from an unknown “third person omniscient” narrator. The stories read as if the reader were the narrator because of the casual flow and informal approach.

Discussion Questions: How are family dynamics addressed in American Literature? Is there a relation to other topics such as friendship dynamics and societal anxieties that are discussed in congruence to family dynamics?

This debut collection of eight stories represent wide-ranging styles and subjects that investigate common themes of sexuality, love, feminity, and gender roles.

Styles differ between the stories. One story is told through an inventory of the narrator’s lovers, another reimagines Law and Order: SVU, and others are written in a more traditional style of the short story. The stories are humorous at times and expose disturbing realities at others. A blend of styles and tones adds a level of unpredictability to the collection that keeps readers interested in what comes next.

Discussion Questions: How is women's sexuality addressed in American literature? If patterns emerge over time, how do these trends reflect society's attitudes towards women's sexuality?

Additional Books: 

Alien Virus Love Disaster Stories by Abbey Mei Otis - Otis’ new collection of short stories explores a variety of science fiction related adventures from children, robots, and blue-collar workers who come close to a toxic substance. Otis incorporates these bizarre stories with issues pertaining to social, gender, violence, immigration issues, and economic strains.

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh - This is Moshfegh’s first collection of fourteen short stories and was named the 2015 book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. The horror stories within the collection are not only haunting, but also funny, with characters who are defined by and loved for their flaws. Her main characters represent aspects of the human condition and communicate the horrors that accompany that condition. Through the terrifying and grotesque realist collection, Moshfegh ultimately communicates that hope and beauty can lie in the darkest of places.

Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread by Chuck Palahniuk - This debut novel published in 2015 gives us twenty-one short stories and one novella. Make Something Up is a compilation that disturbs and delights in equal measure. Palahniuk often creates characters that have been marginalized in one way or another by society, then the characters react with self-destructive behaviors. Embellishing in the fact 'truth is stranger than fiction', Palahniuk has accomplished a strong cult following by infusing the personal experience with enjoyable exploits. In his short story "Expedition" we see the return of his infamous character from Fight Club, Tyler Durden. Just about every piece in this collection is noteworthy in some way

Look How Happy I'm Making You by Polly Rosenwaike - Each of the twelve diverse stories in this collection covers a different aspect of motherhood. Difficult subjects such as infertility, abortion, and loss are addressed with equal care and candor. Published in 2019, this is Polly Rosenwaike’s debut collection.

You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld - The collection is comprised of ten individual stories that explore different aspects of life in modern America and uses mundane situations and dialogue to examine questions of morality, marriage, class, and gender roles. The stories also provide snapshots into multiple backgrounds in order to highlight questionable decision making and the power of coincidence by writing the stories in more than one perspective. These techniques are used to effectively paint a picture of the world that accurately represents all people and common experiences like divorce and poverty rather than focusing on one version of what living in America looks like. The book chooses to discuss the common issues that are present in the world we live in. This helps to depict a more accurate overview of America and allow a wider range of readers to see themselves within stories, especially minorities and people of color.

Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires - In her debut collection, Heads of the Colored People: Stories, Nafissa Thompson-Spires presents the themes of race, identity, and black citizenship in her twelve short stories. She utilizes humor, wit, sorrow, and even horror to convey the everyday lives of her original characters and the problems which afflict them. There is a large range for these depicted issues. Some are minor, a pair of moms fighting through notes in their daughter’s backpacks, while other topics are much more serious like suicide, abuse, and gun violence. Thompson-Spires’ seemingly relatable writing style, accompanied by relevant topics to the African-American lifestyle, have led this book to qualify for numerous awards and accolades as it continues to grow in popularity.

The story is centered around a woman whose husband has left and she is having trouble imagining how she will go on without him She is cooking an egg and begins to notice galaxies forming in her food. She expresses the emptiness of space and equates that image to her feelings. The galaxies begin to spread and eventually engulf her and the life she built with her husband.

“House of stars” is very unique in that it uses magical realism to describe the emotion in a sensory way. The author equates a galaxy to the main character’s emotions by first vividly describing the physical appearance of the galaxies and then describing the motion of the galaxies as the story progresses. The style is very sparse and is still able to pack a lot of imagery in the language. The story spans only four pages but it does examine deep emotions through the galaxy metaphor throughout the narrative.

Discussion Questions: 
What traits of magical realism are present within the story and what value does it add to the story? Is magical realism often utilized in order to express emotion? Was magical realism primarily meant to be a tool used in literature? The narrative being examined here uses a lot of sensory languages, is that common in magical realism narratives?

Mallory’s “Grave” is the condensed narrative of a young lawyer who is tricked into meeting with the much older Dr. Wertenberg by a large check to secure his legal services. The nefarious Wertenberg uses his beautiful daughter as a succubus to rip away the young man’s life essence through a mixture of ravaging sex and an alcoholic elixir of ambrosia. The daughter is then able to share the energies she takes in with her father, prolonging his life span for more than 100 years. The young lawyer develops a form of addiction to the feelings of lust and fulfillment, even though he knows that he is dying because of it, accepting his fate as he withers away.

The story is written in such a way that it is keeping the psychology of addictive sensation and the unknown supernatural darkness forefront. The sensory of being kept in a confused state of desire and fear with a final acceptance puts the reader in the place of the young lawyer. These elements combine to adhere to the Gothic style of horror writing with a sense of the Romantic. Infused throughout the text are reflections of depression, addiction, lust, depravity, and ultimate acceptance and peace.

Discussion Questions: Researchers who are looking to read this story for insight should pay attention to the way the story unfolds with dramatic effect for the young lawyer who narrates his way from fear of his situation, to the unending desire of more of the drink and the sexual proclivities of the beautiful daughter as an admission of addiction, and finally acceptance of his fateful death. There is a question that bears further observation of how female antagonists are represented in Gothic literature. Does their physical appearance grow in relation to the depths of their evilness? Are their appearances only there as distractors from their depravities, or are they more important to the plot? Is there position in culture referenced by their darker activities, or is the queen more evil than the servant? In Mallery’s “Grave”, the daughter is the one with the power to absorb the lawyer’s life, but she only does it because her father tells her to. This would seem that even in this story, the female character plays the meat in the sandwich between a male victim and a male dominant who has her perform for his benefit.

Enid and Floyd are an older married couple who depend on each other for love and support. Enid is blind, and their son died twenty years ago from diabetes. They appear to be of low socio-economic status, and they rent out their third bedroom to a woman who, instead of paying rent, promises to take care of their chores and errands, which she fails to do. Instead, she racks up parking tickets on Floyd’s vehicle which he must then pay. Even though they are suffering and being taken advantage of, Enid and Floyd are still happy because they still have the one thing that is most important – each other.

Shoemaker’s style is rich in sensory details, and utilizes short paragraphs in order to create a sense of awkward stiffness, which matches the awkward stiffness with which Floyd and Enid move due to their old age and Enid’s blindness. The descriptions of the small house with old, rusty belongings are written in short, quick sentences, yet the sentences describing Enid and Floyd’s interactions with each other are much longer and more fluid, causing one to read them slower. This indicates that for Enid and Floyd, time moves slower and is more relaxed when they are interacting with each other, and not when they are thinking about or concerning themselves with material belongings.

Discussion Questions: This story strays from the usual convention of the love story in that it depicts the love story of an older couple. How is late-life love represented in American literature, and what does that indicate about American culture? 

A collection of twenty two short stories that range from futuristic sci-fi settings to New York and Alabama, N. K. Jemisin writes from a variety of different protagonists and viewpoints. From a diverse cast whose stories ranges from the intrigue of a Haitian spy to the odd day to day of a simple elevator guard, what is means to be human and how humans interact with each other and others is the main focus of these tales.

Sensory descriptions are used heavily in these stories. The physical appearances of the characters in these stories (both human and otherwise) are often provided. The surroundings, cities, and lands they inhabit are also described in great detail. While a few of Jemisin’s stories have a relaxed, almost meandering tone, most of them tend to build in tenseness to the ending action or reveal.

The works in this collection tend to lean toward more modernistic approaches to story telling while managing to avoid being completely incomprehensible. Take The Evaluators for example - the story is told through several transcripts of alien interactions and posts by several members of the scientific community. While it jumps between the past and the present, each section comes together in the end to form a clear picture of what happened.

Discussion Questions: Do you see other explorations of interactions between humanity and others in works like this? While these stories had a mix of positive and negative conclusions to these interactions, do you see that balanced representation continued on in other stories or do they skew more positive or negative?

These eleven stories, all set in Kansas, feature humor and peculiar characters to explore what it means to stay or leave their home state. This is Mandelbaum’s first book, but she has published individual short stories as well as essays and articles. This book won the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction.

The stories are written in both first and third person. Conveying emotional turmoil is important to this collection. All of these stories are about relationships and the plots are definitely character driven. The realistic style is a way to make these stories relatable and human. Mandelbaum also uses figurative language as comic relief. This technique is used above all. The language is more minimalist than complicated. The emotions are conveyed using only the words that hold the most impact.

Discussion Questions: What are the literary depictions of characters living in small towns?