The Translation of Dr. Apelles

Author: David Treuer

This is the novel Krystle gave me for Christmas this year. I started reading it a couple weeks ago when it was below zero temperatures in Chicago. The book begins with two villages of Indians dying off in northern Minnesota because of a cold spell. Only two children survive the "bloodless massacre" as Treuer vividly describes it. So as the rest of Chicago complained of the cold, I couldn't help but feel lucky to have a house and a furnace and lots of blankets. It was an appropriate book for me to read right now. I could be feeling cold, but the setting of this novel is colder. I could be feeling lonely, but the characters of the novel, the only who remain of the community they were born in to, are lonelier. I'm beginning to think I'll always be able to count on Krystle to pick my winter reading. This was last year's pick.

Dreams from My Father

Author: Barack Obama

Part of why I love Obama is because his activism so obviously grows out of his life experiences. He does what he does (like run for president) not just because he feels like that is a good thing to do, but because he couldn't NOT do it. This book reminded me in a way of Michael's The After-Death Room: Journeys into Spiritual Activism. In both books the authors' journeys are simultaneously inward and outward. Ultimately they are able to make peace with their pasts and use it as fuel for their future work, yet the complexities of this journey, this peace, and this future are all present as well and I feel that is what makes the book, and the person, so affecting.

So yeah. Go Obama.
https://donate.barackobama.com/momentum

Six Feet Under

Where do I even begin? I have never been so affected by TV. Davi and I have been watching this show via DVD over the last few months and last night we watched the final episode. Not only was the last episode wonderfully crafted, bringing together beautiful writing, cinematography, acting, and music, it also had four seasons of rich material and characters to draw from. As we had been warned we would, Davi and I wiped tears and blew our noses constantly through the last twenty minutes. And then rewound and did it a second time. Even today, I will recall an image from this final scene and it will make me teary--partly because I have become attached to the characters, feeling as if they are my own family and friends, but mostly because I see myself in them. It has been interesting to note which scenes over the past couple months of viewing have really a struck a chord for one of us as the relationships between family members, friends, and significant others in the show echo our own current or past relationships.

The timing for watching this final episode couldn't have been better. It has been so good to watch and learn, to see myself reflected in the show, and to think to myself, "I want to be able to do this in my own work." And as Claire drives across the blank slate of desert, cheesy as it sounds, I feel as if I am in the car with her, as if I am her--affected by the lives of everyone around me and finally ready to create my own life.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Author: Sherman Alexie

A good young adult novel is the best because 1) when I was a young young adult I was starved for good reads and usually resorted to sustaining myself with re-reads or checking out whitebread Sweet Valley High and 2) even though the language is simple, it doesn't mean the truths of the story don't run deep, if not the deepest because of it's accessibility/universality (think Hemmingway).

This was the sort of book that made me exclaim out loud--laughter, gasps, and the mmm sound you make when something tastes just right. Obviously, I'm a little biased--I'm a sucker for anything about Indians and sports and family and community and making the most of the cards you've been dealt and this book definitely has all that. Plus it has inserted little personal drawings/doodles/comics like the ones that Davi draws and I never get enough of.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Director: Miranda July

I watched this movie when it first came out a couple years ago and besides remembering I liked it, I really only remembered the "back and forth, forever" scene because it is so funny and oddly touching.

I just checked it out from the Bayfield Library and watched it again with my mom and this time the scene that stood out to me was when Christine goes to the art museum to drop off her tape and the art lady gives her a business card and tells her to mail the tape to the address on the card, the address of where they are standing, and says it will be easier that way. Throughout the whole movie Christine is trying to break down this wall to be directly intimate and everytime she is cast as crazy for doing it, yet the rest of the characters are so closed off and can only let themselves be intimate through devices like internet chatting, posting signs on the window, code words, etc. And yeah, of course it is "easier" (as in less awkward, less scary) to only let your guard down when there is already a wall in place, but it is also so ulitmately sad and lonely and literarlly sense-less.

So yeah. Beautiful. And I promise the next blog will be about a book.

Speaking of, Miranda July has a pretty cool new book too.

Vivere

Director: Angelina Maccarone

Email I wrote to my foreign friends yesterday after seeing Vivere as part of Chicago's GLBT international film festival:

Hi friends!
I'm just writing to tell you that Angelina Maccarone is my new favorite director. (The only person I've ever called my favorite director actually.) She made the movie Fremde Haut (Unveiled in English) that I said both of you needed to watch because it is so good. And yesterday I just saw another movie (Vivere) by her that was perfect, especially for where I am in my life right now. Also, I just googled her name to find out more about her and she is half-german, half-italian, and lesbian!! She's us!! All smushed together! :)
Love, Magdalen

Genre: Film, Fiction

Sula

Author: Toni Morrison

This might be my favorite of her novels. It's short, like The Bluest Eye, but I think that is part of what I love about it. I am so impressed with how many characters and events she is able to give attention to in so few pages and how each detail she choses to include is weighted with emotion. Morrison's novels, like Louise Erdrich's, make me feel as if I am living in the community they are describing. On the first read through I am just a child--hearing the names of people in my parent's conversations and experiencing the events of a community but not necessarily understanding the full impact of these events. Each time I return to the book though, I grow up a little more--people and events are more familiar and I become better at perceiving and empathizing with the emotions behind the character's actions. I like the idea that I can reread Morrison and Erdrich for the rest of my life and always be getting something more from them, not because the books ever change, but because I do.

Genre: Novel(la)