Booking It Home

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By Misha Stone

Where we come from has a huge impact on who we are. Witness the truth of this in our book choices about home.

Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem (Vintage Contemporaries, $15.95)

Revolution is a force that can be passed down from generation to generation. Rose Zimmer, dubbed the Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, still forges her life from the force of her past political convictions, while her daughter, Miriam, takes up the baton in a different manner. The mother-daughter relationship at the center of the novel illustrates how, for so many, home is something you cannot find until you set off in search of it yourself. Rose and Miriam, by the force of their personalities, draw people to them, and these characters fill the pages and speak of New York City’s diversity. From the professor Cicero to the chess aficionado Lenny to the folksinger who captures Miriam’s heart, Lethem paints on a large canvas and presents a vibrant and diverse cast. Capturing the foment of 1930’s communism through to the 1970’s utopian ideals, Rose and Miriam’s story arcs draw the reader through American history through the eyes of the radicals forever straining to drag their country along with them.

Someone by Alice McDermott (Picador, $15.00)

Winner of the National Book Award, McDermott’s layered novel explores the life of Marie Commeford and her family’s Brooklyn neighborhood with quiet precision. Marie is 7 in pre-Depression-era America when the novel opens and the vicissitudes of her Italian American enclave unfold to reveal a community beset by grief, poverty and common aspirations. Narrated from Marie’s naive vantage, from her gawky youth to her life as a wife and mother, a picture of a simpler time emerges. At a formative time in her life she serves as the “consoling angel” at the local mortuary where the funeral director grooms her to set the bereaved at ease, an experience that gives her a more expansive view on life and death. The small moments that make up a life — a meal, an exchange with a beloved neighbor, a late revelation — are given poignant weight as Marie reflects on her time and her accomplishments.

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock (Atria Books, $24.99)

Stories of transgender people have been with us for decades, from jazz musician Billy Tipton to tennis player Renee Richards, but as Time magazine announced on its cover, we are at the tipping point for these stories reaching the mainstream. If the body is a home, then transgender voices remind us that some have to fight to assert their true selves and feel at home in their bodies. Enter Janet Mock, who became a media darling following a Marie Claire article in 2011. In her memoir, she sets out to tell her personal story of a youth shuttled between Hawaii and California, her time as a sex worker, and her eventual attainment of self-confidence and success. The author dovetails her personal story with a broader picture of how hard it is for transgender people and particularly those of color. As Mock discovers within her Hawaiian heritage, gender variance has been more accepted in other cultures than her own throughout history. Eye-opening memoirs like Mock’s touch on the need for understanding within a compelling story of perseverance and strength.

About The Author

Misha grew up in Washington State, attended Marlboro College in Vermont and received her master’s in library and information science from the University of Washington. Misha is a readers’ advisory librarian for the Seattle Public Library and loves talking with readers in her day-to-day work and in book groups. Misha also writes for Booklist magazine’s Book Group Buzz blog. www.spl.org bookgroupbuzz.booklistonline.com