The first book I neglected to post is a fictional book called Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. This novel was selected as a Bellwether Prize created by Barbara Kingsolver to commend books that discuss issues of social justice and responsibility. As NPR's title of the review of this book states, it is about racism and family secrets. The novel hinges on the racial mores of the deep south during and after WWII. Jordan intended to write the novel in entirely one voice and one character. However, she did not want to lose the thoughts of all the characters in the book. As a result, this is a novel of many different voices and perspectives that all hinge around two families and their inevitable connection to each other.
The other book I had the pleasure of reading is a nonficiton book, which is also a prize winner (National Book Critics Award). Written by Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures gives an intense look at a Hmong family's circumstances of their severely epilleptic child. The book gives both perspectives of the Hmong practice of well-being and Western medicine and how these two unendingly conflict with each other. The subject is very fascinating given the history and migration of the Hmong to the United States. At the same time, the subject is incredibly frustrating because there seems to be no real solution to two incredibly polar cultures. I actually read this book around the time that I watched Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. This movie is about a Hmong family's relationship with a white, racist man and how the two come together over an adolescent's fight to stay out of a gang. Similar cultural issue represented in the movie are also discussed in this book.
