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Across the Page: Recent Favorites

People often ask how I come up with three books about or for lesbians to feature in this column each month. Though at first I thought it was going to be a daunting task, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the opposite is actually true. If there is a theme to this month’s column, it’s simply that there are in fact a lot of genuinely rich, interesting and engaging books out there to pick up from. I wish I had time to read more of them.

For now, here are some of my recent favorites, published in the last few years: Babyji by Abha Dawesar; Miss McGhee by Bett Norris; and The Niagara River, a collection of poetry by the recently appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan.

Babyji by Abha Dawesar (Anchor Books)

You know the kind of book that interrupts your life? You’re supposed to be doing work or washing the dishes or going to bed, but you just can’t put down the book. You’re sitting at a dinner party surrounded by lovely people and good conversation, but all you can think about it is how you want to go home, cuddle up on the couch and jump back into this imaginary world. Abha Dawesar’s Babyji is that kind of book.

Set in Delhi, India, Babyji is the coming-of-age story of Anamika Sharma, an extremely clever student getting ready to graduate from high school. Anamika tries to use her vast knowledge of quantum physics to make sense of her world, and like many people her age, she is filled with plenty of questions.

What ultimately makes Anamika such a compelling narrator is how she goes about trying to find the answers – answers to questions about the difference between love and lust, good and evil, the effects of class and gender, and what it means to live life to its fullest.

The book opens with Anamika taking on three (yes, three) lovers: her family’s beautiful servant, who is of a lower caste; an older divorcée whose younger son is applying to Anamika’s school; and the prettiest girl in Anamika’s class.

Certainly all three women keep Anamika busy. Dawesar deftly weaves Anamika’s attempts to manage the relationships – and the secrecy each requires for very different reasons – with the other pressing questions in her life.

In the midst of everything, Anamika’s last year of school is interrupted when students from all around the country begin to set themselves on fire to protest the Mandal Commission, which is considering a program that would require universities to offer more spots to students of lower castes.

Though Anamika is the head prefect of her school and an accomplished student, her privileged status as a Brahmin could now jeopardize her chances to get into a good university, and she must consider her other options, including ones that may lead her away from home.

Anamika’s gift and primary tool is her intelligence, but she is also extremely young and naïve. She makes mistakes, some that are destructive. She takes advantage of people and situations. She tries to save everyone in her life, especially a particularly vicious classmate of a lower caste whom she can’t help but relate to. All of this makes her that much more interesting and complex.

Dawesar is also the author of That Summer in Paris and Miniplanner. She has won numerous awards, including the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award in 2006. Babyji was the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award in 2005, and French producer-director Claude Berri optioned film rights for the book. Keep your fingers crossed.

Miss McGhee by Bett Norris (Bywater Books)

Bett Norris’ debut novel, Miss McGhee, is also a hard one to put down. The book follows Mary McGhee, a young woman trying to find herself in the wake of World War II, through the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

In her late 20s and still struggling with the past, Mary attempts to create a new life for herself by moving south to Myrtlewood, Ala., a sleepy town where it’s hard to get away with just about anything.

Mary is an outsider in nearly every sense of the word – she’s an unmarried Northerner with a funny accent. Nonetheless, she is able to find work as a secretary at the local lumber mill where she soon realizes that the job will require more than she expected. The deceased owner’s inept son, Tommie Dubose, manages the mill, and it falls on Mary to keep things afloat – quietly, of course, so as not to stir any of the millworkers who are threatened by her being a woman.

In her efforts, Mary recruits the help of Tommie’s wife, Lila. Though the women are very different, many people in the town also ostracize Lila because of her husband’s wealth and status. The two quickly form a bond that turns intimate. Lila is an intelligent woman, but her experience is limited, and it takes Mary’s influence to get her thinking about the world in a different way.

Norris tells the story of these two women falling in love and navigating the enormous restrictions surrounding their relationship against the backdrop of the town’s segregated African-American community. After years of living in secrecy and fear, Mary and Lila eventually join forces with the civil rights movement.

Miss McGhee is a tender, complicated love story filled with real hurdles and triumphs. It is an absolutely engaging read that captures the pulse of our country during a very unique moment in its history.

 

The Niagara River by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)

Newly appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan is the author of six collections of poetry, including Say Uncle, Elephant Rocks and Flamingo Watching, which was a finalist for the Lamont Book Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Ryan’s most recent book, The Niagara River, published in 2005 and winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, is a collection of short, intense poems that are packed with music. Like Ryan’s other five books, the poems in The Niagara River leave the reader reeling with either a question or a profound insight – and sometimes both.

In the title poem, “The Niagara River,” Ryan explores the familiar concept of life as a river or body of water, and somehow it re-emerges as fresh and astute:

We

do know, we do

know this is the

Niagara River, but

it is hard to remember

what that means.

Likewise, in the poem “The Elephant in the Room,” Ryan breaks down the cliché, imagining the elephant as a “sense” rather than an actual presence, and suddenly the tired expression seems even more accurate:

There are just

places in the room

that we bounce off

when we come up

against; not something

we feel we have to

announce.

Many of Ryan’s lines resonate outside the context of the poem. In “Caps,” she writes, “People should be/open on top like a cup.” In “Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard,” she begins with the lines “A life should leave/deep tracks,” and then eventually works her way back to “Things shouldn’t/be so hard.”

In the appointment of Ryan as the country’s16th Poet Laureate, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington stated: “Kay Ryan is a distinctive and original voice within the rich variety of contemporary American poetry. She writes easily understandable short poems on improbable subjects. Within her compact compositions there are many surprises in rhyme and rhythm and in sly wit pointing to subtle wisdom.”

Ryan, who is known for living a quiet life with her partner of 30 years, Carol Adair, has said that she considers “all good poetry as providing more oxygen into the atmosphere; it just makes it easier to breathe.”

Even the poem “The Well or the Cup,” about the complications of love, captures Ryan’s brevity and almost lighthearted play on sound despite the serious subject matter:

How can

you tell

at the start

what you

can give away

and what

you must hold

to your heart.

What is

the well

and what is

a cup. Some

people get

drunk up.

How could you not want to continue reading?

 

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