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Subtitled The Origins of Our Discontents. This made a big splash when it came out in 2020, but it took a fervent recommendation from a library patron to get me to read it now. And for that I am so grateful, because I think it encapsulates the entire tragedy of current- day happenings with fierce, fresh, and deeply researched focus. The caste system originated in India and is essentially a construct, including race, that those in power have kept going because it supports their dominant status. Wilkerson also calls on the other meaning, cast, which dictates the script which people unthinkingly follow. Full of history and personal testimony (Wilkerson is Black), the book couldn't be more relevant in these troubled times.
Three high school football players get caught up in the violence inherent in the game that then extends beyond the gridiron. MJ is white and entitled. Vikram’s parents are from South India and have distant ties with Ghandi. Diego identifies as Hispanic; his mother, Veronica Cruz, is a professor who has taken her ex’s last name. An obnoxious kid, Stanley, baits the three at a party in an abandoned house and they fight. Stanley ends up seriously injured but the boys insist he was OK when they left. Their parents suffer stress along with their offspring and work on strategy while the boys try to get their stories straight. This book illustrates race and class disparities brilliantly—I was rapt.
Haidie’s father has gone off to the Rockies prospecting for gold. When her mother dies, her oldest brother, appropriately named Cheet, sells the farm and puts Haidie and younger brother Boots in an orphanage. He’s a gambler. Haidie is tough and enterprising. She manages to escape with Boots in tow and sets out to find her father. She disguises herself as a boy and makes some very fortuitous connections on their perilous journey. Great characters, including villains, provide suspense. This is an excellent yarn and I galloped along with the action with great pleasure.
Everybody Says It's Everything
Twins Drita and Pete were close in childhood but now she’s the responsible one and he’s screwing up royally. He had a baby with junkie girlfriend Shanda but split when things got awful. (A moment’s inattention, and their son almost died.) According to their mother, Jackie, who’s been wheelchair- bound since a car crash early on caused a miscarriage and subsequent infertility, she adopted the kids from Albania. Now Pete has fallen in with other Albanians planning to return to Kosovo at the height of the troubles. So many secrets, including the actual origins of Drita and Pete, further fray the already shredded fabric of familial relationships. Intense, gritty, and moving—the characters really want to make it work against considerable odds.
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