Prairie Dog

Reprinted with permission from the Fall 2015 issue of  The Prairie Progressive, Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter, available only in hard copy for $12/yr.!!  Send check to PP, Box 1945, Iowa City 52244.

Incarnadine by Mary Szybist

Sometimes spiritual, sometimes erotic, always brave and beautiful – these are poems that will haunt you deep into the autumn night.  Szybist is deft and audacious, able to seamlessly weave words from a George W. Bush address to Congress into an Annunciation (both religious and political) about a young girl in a meadow, engrossed in a book.

The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson

The most talented of all Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduates creates a mysterious, bleakly entertaining world of NATO intrigue, military bungling, madness, and betrayal in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the protagonist Nair says, “Never go back the way you came.” As Prairie Dog says, never invite anyone from a Denis Johnson novel into your home.

Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner

During the idyllic Batista years, American sugar kings and their families drink, have sex,  throw elaborate parties for their fellow expatriates, and look over their shoulders at the hills where Castro’s rebels lurk. Kushner’s debut novel, before The Flame Throwers, is a delicious melange of politics, passion, and psychology in a decadent world on the edge of disruption.

Cuba Straits by Randy Wayne White

Cut to contemporary Cuba, where White – a Davenport Central High grad – sets a hilarious saga of Santeria, smuggled baseball players, rare turtles, letters to a mysterious woman from Fidel and Raul, and a cast of Carribean characters worthy of a Carl Hiaasen crime caper.

The Things They Cannot Say by Kevin Sites

A collection of eleven harrowing portraits of soldiers and marines that could easily be titled The Things They Cannot Forget. Sites deals in raw and ugly truths about killing and surviving in battle, and how combatants live with what they’ve done and seen. Most don’t live with it very well, including embedded journalist Sites, who struggled for years to come to grips with his own complicity in allowing a man to die. For others, redemption comes only through efforts to help others heal from the horrors inflicted on those whose government has sent to fight its wars.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Also about redemption, and difficulty of finding it within America’s criminal justice system. Stevenson, a Harvard-trained lawyer choosing to work with prisoners condemned to death in the South, is arguably America’s most successful enemy of capitol punishment, as well as a gifted storyteller who will discuss his life and books at the Iowa City Book Fest this fall.

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

Paul “Prairie Mouse” Ingram of Prairie Lights Books calls Fitzgerald’s recently re-printed novels “witty and politically astute,” especially this one about workplace courage and cowardice in London’s BBC offices during the blitz.

Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice edited by Eddie Moore, Jr., Marguerite Penick-Parks, and Ali Michael.

If you grew up in the USA, racism in one way or another has shaped your life. Thec hallenge for Whites who want to confront racism is to confront their own – over and over and over. Moore, who founded the White Privilege Conference while teaching at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and his colleagues have gathered the stories of 15 white activists who continue to battle their own prejudices and privileges even while working against them.

Body Counts by Sean Strub

Born and raised in Iowa City, Strub survived AIDS, politics in New York and Washington, and a Catholic upbringing to become a successful direct-mail fundraiser, organizer/agitator, and magazine publisher.  His vivid autobiography chronicles the struggles of a young man on the verge of coming out, the protests and deaths that punctuated American life in the 80s and 90s, and the heroes and villains he met along the way (Tennessee Williams, Larry Kramer, and the closeted elected officials who voted for homophobic legislation during the day and hustled men in gay bars at night).

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Another British recommendation from Prairie Mouse, in which a mother and daughter make a living after World War II in humiliating fashion (for them) by housing strangers in their home. Hijinks ensue when the daughter falls in lust with the wife of one of the paying guests.

West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan

One of America’s greatest novelists lands on Prairie Dog’s Reading List for the third time. Having burrowed into the hearts and minds of cops, veterans, teen-agers, middle-aged married couples, elderly widows, and fastfood workers, O’Nan turns his  keen attention to more glamorous figures, with equally astonishing results. The imagined lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in their post-Gatsby years are as rich in detail as any biography, and as emotional and deeply felt as Fitzgerald’s finest fiction.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman

Dark and silly, much like most of our day-to-day lives. You might find yourself identifying uncomfortably with the main characters (named A, B, and C) as they navigate an American landscape strangely obsessed with bodies, especially those of women.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Paying homage to James Baldwin, to whom he’s often compared, and describing the mind-blowing impact of Howard University on his view of black history and culture, Coates writes with beauty and artfulness.  But the power of this book lies in its unsparing anger at the country where, as Malcolm X said, “If you’re black, you’re born in jail.”

– Prairie Dog