Recommendations that are—sometimes unexpectedly—hopeful, to add to your reading list during what will surely be another strange few months
The characters in Souvankham Thammavongsa’s debut short-fiction collection—many of whom are, like her, Lao refugees living in Canada—hold typical newcomer jobs: they work in nail salons and factories, or as cleaners and labourers. But Thammavongsa, who’s also a poet, isn’t interested in a documentary-style literature of hardship. Instead, she elevates each of these spare, unflashy tales into something captivating and unpredictable.
These characters might be at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder but they find, and wield, power where they see it. In the final story—a miniature tour de force—a teen Lao girl, hoping to shake off a well-intentioned guy in her class who clearly likes her, gets him a job worm-picking with her and her mother, only to see him promoted to manager, a position he performs effortlessly and with cold detachment.
As Bregman turns adroitly from Neanderthal brains and Russian silver foxes to communal reactions to the Blitz of 1941, he returns to Hobbes/veneer theory on a regular basis. And as the pages ofprogress, Hobbes’ leviathan of a viewpoint takes on the appearance of cantankerous opinion rather than verifiable fact. Bregman never denies human darkness, only that it’s essential to our very nature.
males ranging far to hunt, females sticking close to home for foraging—no longer holds up, and researchers are increasingly inclined to a cultural explanation. Girls have never been allowed to roam as far or as freely as boys, limiting their chances to build the step-by-step mental maps that give children confidence in their directional sense. Studies show that eight-year-olds bussed to school are more inclined to display anxiety when away from home than those who walk to class.
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