September evokes the flurry of back-to-school energy, from school supplies to first-day jitters. For those of us who are no longer students or don't have students at home, you can still tap into that school spirit in your reading.
In "True Biz" by Sara Nović, the setting is the River Valley School for the Deaf, a residential high school. February, the headmistress of the school, is a hearing child of deaf adults committed to maintaining deaf culture. Charlie is a transfer student learning American Sign Language late in life because her hearing parents made her get a cochlear implant that proved faulty. Drama simmers in the background as February navigates a threat to the school's future, the loss of a parent and marital strain with her wife, while 15-year-old Charlie throws herself headlong into her new school with rage-fueled fervor when she learns just how much her well-meaning parents withheld from her. When Charlie, golden boy Austin and his roommate disappear from campus, panic ensues. Nović's compelling, character-driven novel, which includes plucky asides about ASL, showcases deaf community and shows how high drama and even high stakes shape the lives of young and old alike.
"The Fac
ulty Lounge" by Jennifer Mathieu begins with a tragicomic event: A retired teacher returns as a substitute and is found dead midday on the couch in the teacher's lounge of Baldwin High School. What starts as a dark comedy, with a memorial scene reminiscent of "The Big Lebowski," becomes a tenderly observed novel about the teachers and staff who make schools run and make them so special. We meet a wide cast of characters, including a principal whose punk youth yearnings are revived by a younger colleague and a school nurse who knows when kids are faking illness and when they might need above-and-beyond care (the kind of consideration she did not receive when she experienced a teenage pregnancy). Each chapter illuminates one character's background, inner life and what brought them to the hallowed halls of Baldwin High School. Much like the popular TV show "Abbott Elementary," you get to know the quirks and earnestness of the people who work so hard to contribute to the education of their community's students. Office politics also add humor to this cozy and affirming novel.
Academia is also ripe ground for satire. In "Disorientation" by Elaine Hsieh Chou, Taiwanese American doctoral candidate Ingrid Yang focuses her thesis on the renowned Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou. Ingrid's topic is thoroughly endorsed by her adviser, Michael, who has dangled the possibility of a tenure-track position on the other side. But inconsistencies in the poet's work and a mysterious note left in a library archive lead Ingrid on a path of discovery that will alter not just her studies but her understanding of herself and the world she has been conditioned to accept. As Ingrid pursues the truth, her safe notions and plans start to unravel, and her academic nemesis, the sharp and scathingly brilliant Vivian Vo, promises to be more than a thorn in her ego.
Like R. F. Kuang's "Yellowface," Chou skewers power dynamics enshrined in the cultural apparatus of the American educational systems through events that will make you cringe-laugh along the way.
What if the people most important to our lives are the ones we least expect? "Stay True" by Hua Hsu is a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about college, friendship and grief told with a measured and introspective voice. As a freshman at Berkeley, Hsu was looking for friends who would share the same taste in music, film and books. But alignment was hard to find — "The first time I met Ken, I hated him." Ken was loud and confident, a breezy, assimilated Japanese American, a contrast to Hsu's first-generation Taiwanese American experience. Ken was everything who Hsu longed to be yet also resented, but as their friendship deepened, Hsu realizes that true connection goes beyond surface detail and can upend your expectations. When Ken's life is taken in a senseless carjacking the summer before their senior year, Hsu reflects on all that he learned from Ken and how his memory sustains him. This heartfelt memoir delves into connection and the creation of the self in relation to others.
The Seattle Public Library loves to promote books and reading. This column, originally published in the Seattle Times and reprinted here with permission, is a space to share reading and book trends from a librarian's perspective.
- Misha Stone, Reader Services librarian
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