In the past couple of months, I’ve been on a reading binge. I’m finally thinning out the large stack of unread books from my TBR pile and avoiding myself from any book sales for the time being to save my wallet from succumbing to any more book hauls. I’ve mostly indulged into the world of Non-Fictions; reading essays and memoirs that are equally fascinating as they are heartbreaking.
Travels, family, longing, and search of identity. The human experience is as vast as it is laden with so much story that not only introduces us to the world at large and its different experiences, but also provide comfort, affirmation, and even perspective to the things we might not be fully aware of. As books have always been there to inform, they are also there to accompany you, and to provide a comforting voice saying we are not alone.
Looking for Polaris by Dawn Marfil
Diving into the local literary scene, Looking for Polaris reels us in with Dawn Marfil’s beautiful prose as we swim through her memories of beauty pageants, cosplays, and the aching contemplations of what ifs and almosts, expressed over routines, coffee, and the cosmos. In a lot of ways, the book feels like our companion—a good friend consoling us just as we are consoling its memories. Maybe there are passages there; moments in time where we experienced similar moments: watching two friends playfully quarrel over anything, the ache of longing, or even the surging confidence in embodying a character, as if you were destined to be that character your whole life. Somehow, it lends us its voice for us to feel heard, in one way or another. As my first read of the year, Looking for Polaris is definitely a nice, light read and my first dip into the world of non-fiction.
The Displaced, ed. Viet Thanh Nguyen
This book compiles the memoirs and essays of different immigrant writers—refugees hailing from different nations and cultures, as they unpack both their grief and contemplations of having migrated to a new country (which was commonly the United States or the United Kingdom) to escape the state of disarray and turmoil from their homeland. They share their individual experiences of what it’s like to be other’d and be partially excluded because of their ethnicity and origin. We learn about the microaggressions and double standards they have to adjust to just to be accepted and belonged, especially during the political climate in 2016 with the rise of then US president Donald Trump and the rabid popularity of anti-immigration sentiments. In spite of their differing histories and homeland turmoil, they all share similar struggles in one form or another. We see each story implicitly answer the question what is a refugee? And the answer isn’t definite, but their stories all ring true as they claim these struggles and new identity as their own.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Japanese Breakfast’s frontwoman, Michelle Zauner invites us to a trip down her childhood as an Asian-American living in Oregon with her mother, her life in South Korea with her relatives, and navigating through the grief of her mother’s death by way in which she and her have bonded: through food. The dishes that they’ve made were not only a connection to her Korean heritage, but also the connection she has with her mother—her main expression of love, and one that leaves an indelible ink-stain of grief while walking across the aisles of H-Mart. Crying in H Mart is a personal account on grieving and reconciling her identity in the pieces left behind.
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
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On Writing by Stephen King
Real Estate by Deborah Levy
The third book in her trilogy of memoirs, Deborah Levy assembles her writer’s home or real estate as she narrates to us her experiences in the different cities she’s visited, from London, to Paris, Mumbai, and then to Greece. It is a relatively quick read filled with vivid descriptions of the places she has been and the things she has seen, pieces that start to assemble her imaginary writers home. But apart from her experiences, they are intertwined with musings—philosophies about womanhood and how women characters have been written as excluded from a narrative or conforming to a certain patriarchal view, often their persona is limited, also turned into real estate. She muses her past and current relationships, introspects their lives and navigates what she wants for her own, rebuilding after everything and everyone has upped and left.
The book can feel passive at times, and understandably so. The chapters(?) comprise mostly of observations between places and people as she wanders across the different cities, but never does it dull you or leave you confused, only fascinated and wanting to hear more.
