QotD: Life-Changing Books
What are five books that changed your life?
Inspired by Ms. Genevieve.
This is a great question, and one that carries a lot of pressure when trying to answer. I approached it in terms of books which have really either swayed my thinking about something in significant ways, or books which have become a permanent favorite. Here are five books that have mattered --there are more, but I think I've chosen the ones at or near the top.
I've mentioned this book several times on this blog already. Although I have departed from the thinking of The Frankfurt School in important ways connected to my scholarship, this book, in addition to the best of their tradition (trace Marx to Gramsci to Lukacs to Korsch to Marcuse) are a significant part of my intellectual biography. And while I have much to critique about The Frankfurt School and many of its "methods" and traditions, the critique of ideology and the analyses of hegemonic maintenance of power, particularly as manufactured by the power elite, still tug at my heartstrings. I came to sociology, and particularly to social theory, though my connection to these thinkers. And I still love theory in something like a pastime sort of way. It makes my brain feel good, and I love explaining theory to students in ways that they are able to engage. While I also teach a critique of social theory (see the next book on this list), there's still something really satisfying about doing theory, and especially satisfying about bringing theory to students who may have rejected it or feared it before my classes. And as I've said, I really think Marcuse stands out among the very best of the Frankfurt School and Marxist traditions. His politics are present, his critiques of social relations are accessible, and his explorations of our unfreedoms in a free society still remain potent today. I'll always love this book.
This book is also connected to academe, but it's a work of fiction. I think I've read this book at least five times, and I could easily see reading it again this summer. This book makes me laugh out loud, and grants me some perspective about universities as institutions. In short, we're a bunch of neurotic self-involved social outcasts. I love it. This book traces the (entirely fictional) story of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., chair of the English department at a no-name small college in Pennsylvania. This next part comes straight from the back cover: "In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain bodily functions." It's one of those books where the main character is such a fuck-up, yet so admirable at the same time. It exposes all the insanity of academe while displaying its sincerity and humanity. And the main character would certainly be giving me a C for these last few sentences, which were decidedly hyperbolic.
While we're on fiction, I have to turn to Sherman Alexie. God, how to describe Sherman Alexie? I guess what I like most about him is that he writes about Native American life without buying in to the whole cartoon-character, overly-romantic thing. He writes about modern Indian life, which is really rare. So I like it politically. But more compelling is his writing style. He writes poems, novels, and short stories. The book I've chosen here is a book of short stories. This is from the back cover: "Alexie's characters are quintessentially American --professionals whose upwardly mobile lives make them yearn for escape, married couples struggling with fidelity, ordinary folk falling in and out of love and wondering if they will make their way home." This very short film is also a good synthesis of both his content and style. This short article is a good example of his demeanor. This is his biography. This is one of his poems. This might actually be my absolute favorite book of short stories by Alexie, even though I placed a different one to the right. This is an excerpt from my favorite poem of his. THIS in no way gets at his work. I am terrible at explaining fiction. And his books are so important to me. Will you just read one already?
Finally, I have to place this book in the top five. I've also already blogged about this one. But it's another book that turned my thinking on its head. I've long been someone who strongly believed in women's right to choose. But it was easy, in the midst of those beliefs, to become simplistic in my thinking about reproductive rights. I had inadvertently failed to see some of the practices of power which take place in this framework, and without intending to, ignored the full range of women's reproductive rights. So much emphasis has been placed on the right of U.S. women to choose abortions, and so little emphasis has been placed on women, in the U.S. and abroad, who are inhibited from choosing motherhood. Of course I had always supported women who chose to be mothers, but until I read this book, I hadn't thought about the fullest range of politics which stand in many women's ways. I personally imagine that it would be far harder to carry a pregnancy to term and give that baby up for adoption than it would be to have an abortion. But I had never connected that assumption (which women's testimonies validate) to global and domestic politics and inequality. This is really something I care a lot about, and which changed my own thinking about not only women's reproductive rights as an issue, but as well as my own choices I might make about my own life. (I used to consider adopting, now I am critical of that privilege while still concerned about the reality that there are children who need homes.) If this is an area of interest to anyone else out there, I can also recommend the work of Dorothy Roberts, an essay called “Taking Population out of the Equation: Reformulating I=PAT" by H. Patricia Hynes in a great book called Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment, and Development, this article, and oh heck, just ask me if you want to do more reading in this area. I sometimes wonder if I should be doing a dissertation in this area... but that's a whole other entry.
So there you have it. I'm sure I'll regret not including some books on this Top Five list later, but regardless, these five books are insanely important to me.
Comments