I finished An American Marriage by Tayari Jones this weekend, the 30th book in my reading challenge for this year.  If I were pacing it out evenly across the year, I would average just over 4 books a month and I would have read about 17 books going into May.  I'm not working two jobs this year and the cold weather hasn't allowed me to garden as much as I would like, but the other side of the dice is that I haven't spent a lot of time with friends.  It's been a weird year so far though.

Anyway, Jones is very talented and from Atlanta, and writes about Atlanta, and I always enjoy when someone can capture a place accurately but still keep it in the same realm as their story.

Someone I knew from college recently wrote, "White privilege is being able to read Ta-Nehisi Coates without trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to read it to my children to explain their reality."  She doesn't currently have kids, but I was still surprised at how opposed to her statement I feel. It's important to share Coates' work with your children as they get older, no matter your nationality, especially if you're American.  It's still important to talk about race in America, to observe and respect so that we can really be many races living as one people.  As I read An American Marriage, as I read so many great works by black authors, I can never put myself in the shoes of the main characters.  Their work is not meant for that.  But it is meant to share and educate and embrace and move forward.

So many people have complained that history is written by old, dead white guys.  And for so long, the same can be said about literature.  I wish there were more voices being shared from history.  That's one of the reasons I love historical fiction.  I love seeing history represented by another point of view.  One of the great things about this reading challenge is I'm always looking for more books to read.  I've found a lot of interesting pieces from authors of different ethnicities and different countries.  One of the many reasons I wish I could speak and read different languages is that I have this secret, very particular, dream/goal.  I've always wanted to fall in love with a foreign author's works and translate them into  English.  Maybe that's like a latin junkie dream.  The power of translation.  The joy of translation.

Quae cum ita sint, Catilina, perge, quo coepisti, egredere aliquando ex urbe; patent portae; proficiscere.

Labels: goodreads, reading, reading challenge, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tayari Jones