Extra Credit
Besides what you have to read, are you currently face deep in some fun-reading? Here are some Postmodernist faves of mine.
I'm wrapped up in the "Wheel of Time" series. Thanks, KB! I really need to know how Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World is going to resolve! It's a postmodern blend of fantasy, gritty reality, futuristic dystopia, and folksy love stories. Fabulism is where my postmodern heart is right now...
Last week I finished The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride. This is a mash-up of secret lives, secret wells, and generational joy. I'm still not over the ending. Thank you, Monkey Pants. IYKYK.
Last year I read The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He's a well-known nonfiction writer, but this book is a Postmodernist paella of temporal distortion, historiographic metafiction, hyperreality, and black humor. This has magic, Harriet Tubman, and some of the most beautiful prose I have read.
Another book I recently read, coincidentally similar in setting, is The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. This one does with the legends surrounding America's Underground Railroad what Quentin Tarantino does with the Manson murders in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's part gritty history, part fabulism, lots of wish-fulfillment, and all terrific.
Panda
3rd pd.
A while ago, I read a book called
"Shatter Me" by
Tahereh Mafi. Mafi is a brilliant writer who uses maximalistic techniques to add layers upon layers on her writing. From the beginning, her sentences hold deep
meanings and they truly are a pleasure to read. This story also contains a magical element: anyone that the main character, Juliette, touches will die. By the end of the
book you will become so attached to the main characters. Like the title indicates, Juliette's thoughts and emotions are fragmented. Her life is in tatters and now she is left to pick up the pieces. The plot and
the narration of the story is so captivating and I recommend it to everyone!!!