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.
Thing 1 - 5th
Legend - Marie Lu
A book I read in middle school and has stuck with me as my favorite book that I always go back to read every one in a while, is Legend by Marie Lu. The book centers around two characters who start off from the opposite side of the spectrum, taught into being enemies, uncover the truth and are brought together. This book features postmodernist elements such as hyperreality, temporal distortion, and fragmentation in order to show both sides of their lives and their past while continuing the story.