Mothers in Literature

Photo Credit

With Mother's Day this past Sunday, we've been looking at examples of Mothers in Literature.  From cozy, sweet mothers like Kanga in Winnie The Pooh to some of less savory fare.

Starting with the above illustration and going left to right, there is Mrs. Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.  She is an indomitable force in the battle for eligible husbands.

Next comes the Evil Queen from Snow White.  From the eponymous Evil Step Mother murderous plots emerge in a doomed battle of beauty.

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is third, with her heart wrenching decision between her son and her lover.  Fourth is Olive Kitteridge and  her self-induced sabotage in regards to the relationship with her son.  Lastly, Lily Benewski in Geek Love and her enthusiasm in intentionally producing elite carnival freaks.

Not pictured, but included in our pantheon of Literary Mothers are:

Ma in Emma Donoghue's Room.
Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
Queen Gertrude in William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Mother/ Stepmother in The Brothers Grimm's Hansel and Gretel.
Corinne Dollanganger from V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic.
Petal from Annie Proulx' The Shipping News.
Mother in Sapphire's Push.
The Other Mother in Neil Gaiman's Coraline.
Grendel's Mother in Beowulf.
Mrs. Wormwood in Roald Dahl's Matilda.
Caroline Ingalls from Laura Ingalls' Little House on the Prairie.
Molly Weasley from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.

Good, bad, evil, indifferent, doting, smothering, neglectful, we remember and imagine all mothers today and their depictions in literature.

We Need Diverse Books Campaign

From May 1 to May 3, a campaign titled We Need Diverse Books was launched on Twitter and Tumblr by activists and writers. The campaign focused on children's and young adult literature, and quickly went viral. For information about the campaign, visit the official Tumblr page. Today, I'm sharing some of my favorite young adult books that celebrate diversity.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Bitter Melon by Cara Chow

With the encouragement of one of her teachers, a Chinese American high school senior asserts herself against her demanding, old-school mother and carves out an identity for herself in late 1980s San Francisco.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl's body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents--all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

In the early 1990s, when gay teenager Cameron Post rebels against her conservative Montana ranch town and her family decides she needs to change her ways, she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center.

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

In an instant, Bea felt almost normal with Beck, and as if she could fall in love again, but things change when the psychotherapist who has been helping her deal with past romantic relationships puts her in a group with Beck--a group for teens with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Butter by Erin Jade Lange

Unable to control his binge eating, a morbidly obese teenager nicknamed Butter decides to make live webcast of his last meal as he attempts to eat himself to death.

Trafficked by Kim Purcell

A seventeen-year-old Moldovan girl whose parents have been killed is brought to the United States to work as a slave for a family in Los Angeles.

The Summer I Wasn't Me by Jessica Verdi

Ever since her mom found out she was in love with a girl, seventeen-year-old Lexi's afraid that what's left of her family is going to fall apart for good. New Horizons summer camp promises a new life for Lexi--she swears she can change. She can learn to like boys. But denying her feelings is harder than she thinks.

Even though it ended last Saturday, the campaign is still going strong. Check it out--and let us know in the comments what your favorite diverse books are!

Supergirls

Mike Madrid, author of two fabulous books on women in comics, describes himself as "a lifelong fan of comic books and popular culture" on his website. In an interview with the SFGate, he says he was drawn to females in comics because he "felt that they were allowed to have more developed personalities than a lot of the men in comics. A lot of the men had to be brave and fearless, and that was the extent of it, but women could have that and show more emotion." It was while researching his first book, The Supergirls, that he discovered the lesser-known heroines he showcases in his second book, Divas, Dames, & Daredevils.  "The characters are really a snapshot of what the comic book industry was like when it first started at its inception," Madrid says in the same SFGates interview. These forgotten heroines "reflected the very experimental nature of comics in the early days of the medium." Find his fun and informative books in the library catalog:

The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines 

A cultural history of comic book heroines. Is their world of fantasy different from our own-- or an alternative saga of modern American women?

The topics discussed in the book include: Goddesses of tomorrow -- 1940's: a secret life -- The queen & the princess -- 1950's: the girlfriends -- Supergirl and the ballad of American youth -- 1960's: the modern world -- Girls together (outrageously) -- 1970's: sirens & suffragettes -- Wonder Woman's extreme makeovers -- 1980's: the dark road -- Sex and the single superheroine -- 1990's: the babe years -- Heroine chic -- 2000 and beyond: mother love?
~from the library catalog

Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics 

"After 'Supergirls' was published, I began hearing from readers. Many had no idea that the history of comic books stretched back to the late 1930s.  They told me that reading 'Supergirls' made them want to learn more about the early comics, and specifically about the female characters that appeared in them," Mike Madrid explains in "Golden Years", the opening essay of Divas, Dames & Daredevils. He continues, "While there are a number of heroines I would like to have included in [this] collection...I focused on the ones that I have dubbed as 'lost'. These are characters you may have heard of, but whose stories you never had the chance to read.  Or they may be women who only made a few appearances and then disappeared. They may have been lost, but you will find they are definitely unforgettable." 

Each section of the book contains one complete black and white comic adventure of each heroine! Sections include: Women at War, featuring Pat Parker, War Nurse, Madame Strange, and Pat Patriot; Mystery Women, featuring Spider Queen, Mother Hubbard, and the Veiled Avenger; Daring Dames, including Penny Wright, Feature Writer, Betty Bates, Lady at Law, Jill Trent, Science Sleuth, and Calamity Jane; 20th Century Goddesses, featuring Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle, Marga the Panther Woman, Diana the Huntress, and Maureen Marine; and Warriors and Queens, including The Sorceress of Zoom, Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron, and Mysta of the Moon.

We are big fans of both these books here at abcreads - hope you will enjoy them too! Fun reads for anybody interested in comics and their history.

Ivan Ramen

My fervent hope is to get Americans to enjoy ramen as a dish, along with all the rituals that surround it. Ramen must be eaten quickly, while it's very hot... You have to eat it while the fat is still smoking hot and the noodles are still chewy. You take a big airy slurp so that all the flavors come together as they enter your mouth.
~Ivan Orkin

A good friend recently recommended Ivan Orkin's Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo's Most Unlikely Noodle Joint to us, saying "That book made me want a hot bowl of fatty pork ramen."  We thought "Cool!" and added it to our list of cookbooks to check out at a later date.  That was a mistake.

Ivan Ramen is not just a cookbook! The first half is a memoir, explaining how a Jewish kid from Long Island ended up with his own restaurant in Tokyo, serving ramen to the likes of Ohsaki-san, "godfather of the ramen world" and Tokyo's most feared ramen critic, appearing on the TV show of Minoru Sano (Sano-san or "The Ramen Devil" - Japan's Gordon Ramsay), and starting his own line of instant ramen. As if the story of how Ivan got to Japan (it wasn't really because he loved the movie Tampopo, but you should watch it anyway) and his immersion in Japanese culture weren't enough of a treat, then come the recipes.

Shio ramen is "the gold standard" of Ivan Ramen restaurants, and it's the heart of the cookbook portion of this book. The first recipe is "The Complete Bowl", but actually you should only look at that recipe after you've prepared and assembled your "ramen components" - Fat, Shio Tare, Katsuobushi Salt, Double Soup, Toasted Rye Noodles, Pork Belly Chashu - and the recipes for these follow "The Complete Bowl". It's going to be more time-consuming than your supermarket Pot Noodle, for sure, but after reading about it you will be determined to produce it (we are!).

Many of the other recipes are suggestions for what to do with your "ramen component" leftovers - katsu (fried, breaded pork cutlets), teriyaki, ozoni (a New Year's specialty soup) - which seem very handy, and there are also some other ramen variations - even Four Cheese Mazemen (noodles served with just a little soup; the cheeses are Edam, Parmesan, Mozzarella, and Monterey Jack) and Breakfast Yakisoba - and recipes for a few sides and sweets.

We think that after you read this book, you, too, will want to try some ramen, if not make some yourself!  Look for a list of Albuquerque's ramen restaurants in the links below. Happy reading and happy eating!

Links

Ivan Ramen website

Ivan Ramen NYC Tumblr

"Ivan Orkin: Ramen Genius"

"A Life of Noodles Comes Full Circle"

Ramen Restaurants in Albuquerque on Yelp

"Oh yeah, O Ramen House is the real deal"

A Word with Writers

Bookworks and the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation are collaborating on a new lecture series, A Word with Writers, which will feature writers in conversation with one another. The inaugural lecture, featuring sci-fi/fantasy authors George R.R. Martin and Diana Gabaldon, is May 10th at 7pm, at the KiMo Theater. Martin and Gabaldon, in addition to being the the highly successful authors of their own series (Song of Ice and Fire and Outlander), also collaborated on the anthology Dangerous Women, along with other authors such as Melinda Snodgrass, Sherilynn Kenyon, and Joe R. Lansdale.

Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation. The Foundation, a 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization, is dedicated to the vitality of the Albuquerque Public Library System by raising funds to enrich programs and services essential to literacy and learning.

To buy tickers for this event, visit the KiMo Theater website.  To read more about the event, check out the event listing on the Bookworks website.

Cli-Fi: Speculative Fiction about Climate Change

University courses on global warming have become common, and Prof. Stephanie LeMenager’s new class here at the University of Oregon has all the expected, alarming elements: rising oceans, displaced populations, political conflict, endangered animals.The goal of this class, however, is not to marshal evidence for climate change as a human-caused crisis, or to measure its effects — the reality and severity of it are taken as given — but how to think about it, prepare for it and respond to it. Instead of scientific texts, the class, “The Cultures of Climate Change,” focuses on films, poetry, photography, essays and a heavy dose of the mushrooming subgenre of speculative fiction known as climate fiction, or cli-fi... Climate novels fit into a long tradition of speculative fiction that pictures the future after assorted catastrophes. First came external forces like aliens or geological upheaval, and then, in the postwar period, came disasters of our own making.
~Richard Pérez-Peña, "College Classes Use Arts to Brace for Climate Change"

With Earth Day just behind us, we take the environmental bull by the horns in mentioning a new fiction genre that has been labeled "Cli-Fi". Science fiction readers have most likely read novels featuring a post-apocalyptic future before, but climate-related apocalyptic fiction has been proliferating widely across genres lately. If you are a reader of dystopian fiction interested in some titles envisioning the struggle to survive after catastrophic climate change such as a new ice age, rising sea levels, global warming, natural resources (including our water supply) being sucked dry, and general ecological collapse, we have some titles to suggest!


The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Solar by Ian McEwan

Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Healer by Antti Tuomainen

The Rapture by  Liz Jensen

A Friend of the Earth by T. Coraghessan Boyle

After the Snow by S. D. Crockett [YA]

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis [YA]


Links 

Global warning: the rise of 'cli-fi' [The Guardian]

So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre? [NPR]

Weathering the Change: Cli-Fi Settles In For the Duration [VOYA]

Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre [Dissent]

Climate Change: The hottest thing in science fiction [Grist]

Author Playlist: Emery Lord

Open Road Summer by Emery Lord

Follows seventeen-year-old Reagan as she tries to escape heartbreak and a bad reputation by going on tour with her country superstar best friend--only to find more trouble as she falls for the surprisingly sweet guy hired to pose as the singer's boyfriend.

I recently read and loved Open Road Summer by Emery Lord. Because it's about a country singer, I thought I would see if the author had a playlist of music she listened to while she wrote the book. I love music, and I love seeing what authors listen to while they write. Based on how much I loved the book, I assumed Emery Lord would have an awesome playlist for it.

Unfortunately, I didn't find a playlist specifically for Open Road Summer on Emery Lord's website, but I did find several other playlists. Each playlist had great songs, but for this post, I decided to focus on the country music that was included on the playlists.

"Strawberry Wine" by Deana Carter
"Light Me Up--Encore" by Hunter Hayes
"Our Song" by Taylor Swift
"Barefoot Blue Jean Night" by Jake Owen
"Cruise" by Florida Georgia Line
"Stars Tonight" by Lady Antebellum
"Sunny and 75" by Joe Nichols
"Perfect Day" by Lady Antebellum
"Springsteen" by Eric Church
"Life is a Highway" by Rascal Flatts
"Follow Your Arrow" by Kacey Musgraves

Some of my favorite songs--Springsteen, Sunny and 75, and Barefoot Blue Jean night--made her lists. I also adore Lady Antebellum, and was happy to see them on her lists (twice!). I haven't listened to every country song Emery Lord included on her playlists, but the ones I have listened to are perfect for Open Road Summer. Want to listen to the songs above? We have some of the albums in the library catalog--just click on the artist's name to see place them on hold.

Have you read Open Road Summer yet? My co-workers and I can't stop talking about. If you haven't read it, put it on hold! If you have read it, what songs would you put on an Open Road Summer playlist?