WUPR’s Favorite Reads of 2015
To wrap up 2015 and start off 2016 with a bang, WUPR exec has written up a list of the best books we read over the last year. Enjoy and happy reading!
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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Selecting Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me as the best book I read in 2015 seems unoriginal given the critical acclaim (and WUPR praise, see below) the work has garnered. Yet, this powerful book, written by Coates in the form of a letter to his 14-year-old son, exceeds all the hype and offers a raw and insightful commentary on race in America. In just 150 pages, Coates connects the violence against the black body during enslavement to contemporary police killings of African American men and women, interweaving his own experiences of being black in America throughout. As Coates, in his eloquent and incisive prose, writes, “Here is what I would like you to know: In America, it is tradition to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” In today’s world of social justice warriors and self-proclaimed white allies, who speak of the need to fight against micro-aggressions and create “safe spaces,” Between the World and Me is welcome and necessary. Coates challenges such sanitized and politically-correct approaches to tackling discrimination by instead calling racism for what it is—a brutal, commonplace American practice that plunders black bodies and ravages African American communities .
—Billie Mandelbaum, Co-Editor-in-Chief
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ biting composition on the racial dynamics of the United States has received much praise and readership. Coates read to the Washington University community an extended excerpt of his essay-book, Between the World and Me, before it was published, and coming across those portions on a beachy summer day I shook under our colorful umbrella. He writes that the white American existence is, and always has been, predicated upon the destruction of the black body. Phrasing such as “white privilege” and “race relations,” Coates writes, “serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.” I was transported back to Graham Chapel where, surrounded by classmates and professors and neighbors of Michael Brown, Coates read this aloud. I paused to think, what can I do? What are our obligations? But rather than struggle to make sense of my questions, I kept reading. Coates keeps writing. It gets large, it gets personal, and it all pounds at your chest. The sense of satisfaction this book provides lies outside of its text—it exists, it has moved people—and it is just the beginning of what we can expect from Mr. Coates.
—Sam Klein, Staff Editor
The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee
In The Emperor of All Maladies, Mukherjee examines cancer in all its dimensions—biological, historical, social, psychological—and creates an extremely complete portrait of the disease, and the sociology of deadly illness in general. The book is long, spanning from the examination of burial sites from before written history, through Ancient Egypt and the Middle Ages and the creation and evolution of cancer treatment and research, all the way to Mukherjee’s own experiences with his patients. Despite the immense scope, the book reads more like an epic than a research paper, and Mukherjee’s immense knowledge of and excitement for the subject matter comes across on every page. It’s a book that leaves one feeling both intellectually exercised and more hopeful about the future of medicine and of human ingenuity and compassion.
—Rachel Butler, Staff Editor
A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran by Reza Kahili
This book is a nonfiction work that doesn’t feel like one, which is sometimes welcoming after a tough academic semester. It goes by quickly and is easy to read. It follows the life of an Iranian man who worked for the Revolutionary Guards during Khomeini’s rule and also was a spy for the CIA. It’s a great way to digest the complex history of Iran outside of a textbook. I would recommend it to anyone interested in international affairs or not.
—Bisma Mufti, Staff Editor
We the Animals by Justin Torres
This unconventional coming-of-age novel is actually a series of weighty vignettes that follow the intertwining feelings of love, humor, hurt, and pain felt by one very special narrator. Surrounded by his boiling mix of a family—a Puerto Rican father, white mother, and two just-as-mischievous-as-him brothers—the narrator plays, laughs, cries, and fights his way to independence and self-pride. Simple, poignant, and beautiful prose reveals experiences in the narrator’s life that are unique to immigrant, low-income families, but at the same time universal enough to elicit the coveted ‘someone-understands-me’ feeling that all readers yearn for. Readers meet the narrator when he’s a naïve boy in New York, and follow him through the seemingly everyday moments that, vignette by vignette, help him grow into an enviously self-aware young adult. We the Animals reminds us that seemingly insignificant everyday experiences can, in fact, be deeply formative in the lives of children and adults alike. The narrator is no exception, as this masterpiece reveals in an ending that stays with you for days, weeks, and personal vignettes ahead.
—Dan Sicorsky, Staff Editor
Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes
Originally written in German, this satirical novel tells the story of what happens when Adolf Hitler wakes up in modern Germany with no recollection of how he got there. While he seeks to reclaim his position as chancellor, the German people mistake him for a committed method actor. As a result, he becomes a hugely popular comedian with his own tv show, allowing the author to hilariously satirize modern society.
—Max Handler, Features Editor
Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror by Jeffrey Goldberg
This truly one-of-a-kind book by Jeffrey Goldberg takes the reader on an extraordinary journey traveling through the complexities of a young peacenik trying to make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Goldberg shares his unique insight as a young American volunteering in the Israeli Defense Force as a prison guard during the first Intifada. There he meets all different kinds of people, with all different kinds of stories. After his service is up he returns to see where many of the people he met–including terrorists—ended up. Through his experiences, readers are able to see how the power of shared desire to understand each other and be friends with one another can override many barriers. Reading the book feels part action movie, part investigative thriller, and part academic insight into the Middle East—something for everyone to enjoy.
—Reuben Siegman, Programming Director
Like Dreamers by Yossi Klein Halevi
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often conceived as a conflict solely between two parties, but Yossi Klein Halevi’s Like Dreamers illustrates the fissures that existed within Jewish Israeli society and widened after the Six Day War in 1967. The book, written over 10 years and including interviews of dozens of soldiers, follows a unit of paratroopers in the Israeli Defense Forces that won the battle for Jerusalem. After the uniting euphoria of the war, which saw Israel overcome a seemingly insurmountable force of Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Iraqi soldiers, and capture huge swaths of territory, including the Old City of Jerusalem which is home to the holiest sites in Judaism, the soldiers went their separate ways. From this unit came rabbis and activists who led the movement to establish settlements in the West Bank, as well as left-wing kibbutzniks who were prominent in the peace movement on the left. Going further than simple political divisions, one of Israel’s greatest songwriters served with one of its greatest artists, and one of its most notorious Marxist terrorists served with a man who helped convert the Israeli economy from socialism to capitalism.
Halevi’s deeply researched work demonstrates how Israelis can be morally opposed to the occupation, convinced of Israel’s divine and legal rights to the entire land of Israel, and fearful of the security situation, sometimes all at once. Anyone who wants to understand the forces that animate Jewish Israelis’ most deeply held beliefs should pick up this 575 page masterpiece and start reading.
–Aryeh Mellman, Co-Editor-in-Chief