For a small fee in America
Interconnected narratives between generations of families who emigrated to the US.
I have a tough time getting into multigenerational family sagas—sorry, One Hundred Years of Solitude fans. But I do tend to like the ones that split up into separate narratives and then get jammed back together into one book. Like a house. Of leaves.
I didn’t realize until I got these down on digital paper that they all also involve families who begin in one place and end up in America. There are probably whole scholarly papers on generational short story diasporic storytelling—this, my friends, is not one of them. It’s Friday. Go to your local bookstore and then grab a beer.
Who might like EELS? Your friends, probably! Forward this to them and remind them that subscriptions are free and now come with a helpful archive!
What else have I recommended? If you’re a subscriber, I’ll grant you access to the handy EELS Recommendations Archive spreadsheet, where you’ll find lots of information that will help you find your next read.
🌳If I Survive You
Jonathan Escoffery, 2022
A quick book about fathers, sons, brothers, and cousins in various stages of their lives in Miami, Jamaica, and elsewhere. My one problem with this book is its misleadingly grim title. There’s a lot Trelawny and his relations have to be grim about, for sure—violence in Kingston, racism everywhere else, hurricanes, poverty, shame… But there’s something so beautiful and often funny and joyful in the way they separate and rejoin over and over.
There’s one story in particular that really got me, and not just because I had recently been to Miami and declared it excellent.
Recommended to: Those who like Miami tales and Jamaica tales and this whole genre I’m talking about today. Nico, you’d really like this a lot, I think, and not just because you are Florida Man.
🏚️ Inheritors
Asako Serizawa, 2020
This is gonna be a tough one for you to read if you just made a bunch of jokes about J. Robert Oppenheimer, but you know what probably someone, somewhere says: “Contrition starts at home.” Inheritors follows multiple generations in (or from) (or bound for) Japan before, during, and after the second World War, and this book basically told me the only things I’ve ever been taught about the American occupation of Japan.
Of the three books listed here, this one is the most beautiful, the most serious, and the most gutting. Proceed with caution.
Recommended to: Those who like literary fiction, being challenged, upending assumptions, and who can stand some distressing moments.
✉️ Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories
Gish Jen, 2022
You know, I wrote this email earlier this week, and I kept getting a weird feeling when I thought about it, sitting there in my Google docs. I finally figured out that it’s because in this slot I’d recommended The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford, which is good but not great. And I’m not here to recommend you good but not great books! These are not book reviews. These are meant to be “you can pick up any book in this email and be assured of an excellent read” recommendations!
So instead, I turn to the incredible Gish Jen, who wrote The Resisters (sort of a climate change dystopia book and sort of an AI book and sort of a baseball book but 100% an awesome book). The only reason I can think of that Thank You, Mr. Nixon didn’t make a bigger splash upon publication is that the cover is a little diagonal-cursive corny.
These stories pretty cheerfully follow generations of Chinese expats, American enthusiasts, Chinese-American descendants, and the rise and fall of Chinese-US relations. Like Inheritors, you will feel educated and informed. Unlike Inheritors, you will not want to lie down on the cold tile of your bathroom floor for an indefinite period of time.
Recommended to: Those who like this genre of diaspora storytelling where each facet of it has a separate tone. The gold standard for this is Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. Definitely read that, too.
An indie publisher that interests me
I was really fascinated by this profile of Belt Publishing by
for the , and now I want to read all of their books. I’d love to feature more indie publishers in EELS, so if you’ve got ‘em, smoke ‘em. I mean, wait, don’t smoke ‘em—send ‘em to me as recs.And now, a bonus recommendation
🌍 There Is No Planet B — Mike Berners-Lee, revised edition 2021
Recommended to: “Doom-scrollers and hopeful sorts alike. Neither category is so naïve as to be optimistic we can reverse global warming just by reading a book but hey, why not have some fun finding out what on Earth you (and I) could possibly do to help humans survive on this planet, our only home? This book was originally published in 2019 and the revised edition is updated to take into account the new intensity of worldwide weather events, progress on renewables and growing global concern. What’s really interesting is this university professor and carbon consultant’s framing of the issue. He emphasizes values rather than technology, writing that if we have to cut emissions and make sure everyone on the planet can still live a decent life, then humanity has to raise its game. We simply can’t get away from the question of values. Like it or not.”
Recommended by:
, who writes , grows tomatoes, makes kombucha, and cooks everything from scratch, which just about leaves her enough time to read terrifying and haunting cli-fi such as Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, Pushkin’s unfinished novel on his African great granddad, Peter the Great’s African, Leila Slimani’s unsettling take on deprivation and racial stereotypes Lullaby (The Perfect Nanny in the US), and just in time for Oppenheimer to hit the big screen worldwide, TaraShea Nesbit’s evocative rendering of the women at the bomb development lab site, The Wives of Los Alamos.Editor’s note: I really enjoy Rashmee’s aforementioned newsletter, which connects global events to books, to help you get context in the way—if you’re reading this—you probably like best. She’s a news junkie and keeps tabs on literally everything, it’s wild. I don’t know how anyone has time to do this and still make kombucha, but I bet that kombucha is the best kombucha anyone has ever tasted. That would track.
That was the seventeenth EELS! I would be just so grateful if you’d share widely with your networks! As always, send any and all questions, feedback, and shouted book recommendations by hitting reply.
📚 Susan
Just here to validate your decision to skip recommending Afong Moy. It was a mess!