Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

The author is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and I found her collection of short stories through Obama's reading list. I may not love everything, but I often find things that I wouldn't have found otherwise (I am not much for reading about books, even though I spend double digit hours reading every week) and his picks are always well written. This one is interesting and memorable. One of the challenges of reporting in China is to divine the human experience behind the peculiar or the political. Time is short, many interviews are done remotely, and people in China are often wary of opening up to a foreign journalist, even one who speaks their language, leaving unanswered questions. These are the imagined answers to those deeper questions about why someone does what they did, even in a totalitarian state. It opens strong and I was sorry to see it end.

Vivo (2021)

In the lead up to the Oscar nominations being announced, my movie viewing is at it's strongest, and I like to watch a few things that will probably not be nominated, but might be, and this movie falls into that realm. The story is set in Havana and the music has a decidedly Afro-Cuban beat that is really the strength of the movie. The composer is Lin Manuel Miranda, who as I have said before, is having a great pandemic year of both creativity and popularity. The music outshines the story, which is that half a century ago a singing duet parted ways, she, Marta, to be successful outside of Cuba and he, Andrés, remained a street performer in Cuba. Marta invites Andrés to join her at her last performance in Miami and he plans to go, but then dies on the eve of his departure. His kinkajou monkey, Vivo, decides to make the trip for him, bringing a song that Andrés wrote for Marta but never gave her. Quite a lot of improbably things happen on this journey, which are fun, if not likely, and the ending is bittersweet.

All That She Carried by Tiya Miles

This is a book that started as an idea, triggered by an exhibit in a museum. That is the greatest testimony to the power of exhibits and the effect that they can have on the viewer--that an object from the past inspires someone to dig deeper and we all understand a little bit more. This book started in a display case in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture with a rough cotton bag, called Ashley’s Sack, embroidered with just a handful of words that evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love, passed down through generations. In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose gave this sack filled with a few precious items to her daughter, Ashley, as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley’s survival as well. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language—including Rose’s wish that “It be filled with my Love always.” This illuminating and moving book inspired by Rose’s gift to Ashley, the author unearths these women’s faint presence in archival records to follow the paths of their lives—and the lives of so many women like them—to write a revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, from the viewpoint of black women in the United States. The cover has some beautiful handwork on it, but the book does not explore the history or the motivation behind crafting useful things in an artful way, but rather focuses on the family history that generations of American slaves lack and why that is inevitable given the parameters of enslavement.

Velvet Underground (2021)

This movie meanders, often in a directionless manner, never with a clear purpose, but I think that might be highly reflective of the band and the time, the nature of working with and around Andy Warhol at the Factory. Also, undoubtedly, the drugs. The amazign thing is that they connected with so many powerful people when they were really doing trippy light shows, playing one chord in a neverending way, and singing about how heroin would be the death of them (it wasn't, but it certainly fortold of a time when it would be the death of many people). The music of Lou Reed has stying power, at least for me, at least some of it, and of course the art of Warhol is iconic pop art, so there were a lot of creative juices flowing along with the drugs. The thing that I learned that I did not know is that people like Jackie Kennedy and the New York Ballet company came to these intermedia presentations, where a film of the band playing would be superimposed on the band as they were playing live, and the audience were running the light shows. It doesn't make you wish you were there but rather amazed that most of them got out alive.

Invisible Child by Andrea Elliot

The author of this book followed Dasani and her family for over eight years to gather an in depth look at the real time effect of poverty on a child growing up in New York City. Dasani is the oldest child of her mother, Chantal. Chantal grew up in poverty herself, never graduating high school, in and out of drug rehab, who had eight children and no consistent job history. Her mother helped her with child care up until her untimely death at a young age. Superior is not Dasani's father, but was Chantal's longest relationship and together they tried to keep the family together, even when it was in homeless shelter's. They both struggled with addiction, but both had limited time in jail, but both couldn't feed, clothe, or properly monitor all their kids with all the obligations put on them to keep city support. The kids were in public housing, homeless shelters, foster homes, and for a while Dasani was in a boarding school and then in a group home. The story is therefore better than it could have been and not at all good. The grinding nature of poverty is laid out in a balanced and readable story that reads like a memoir, but is based on literally hundreds of pages of documentation as well as first hand knowledge. A must read.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

I am not what you would call an aficionado of the Marvel Universe. I have four boys, so I have watched many, if not all, of the Marvel movies, but I would be hard pressed to name a favorite character or movie in the bunch. And I was not too wowed by Black Widow, the other big Marvel movie to grace the big screen this year, but I liked this one. It has a mournful note in the backline that struch a chord with me. Plus I love the Wushu. The basic story is one of a dysfunctional family dynamics which are even more important than the ten rings that grant such immense power to Shang Chi’s power-hungry father Wenwu, who has lived for 1,000 years and created a society called the Ten Rings that has destroyed kingdoms and swayed the events all over the world. When Wenwu found love with Jiang Li, there was peace. They married and started a family. But after Shang-Chi’s mother died, a newly monstrous Wenwu tried to make his son a killer, causing the young boy to leave behind his sister Xialing. Shang-Chi comes home when there is a disturbance in the force, and he brings with him his American friend Katy (played so ably by Awkwafina, who adds not just the outsider perspective but also the comic relief. I am a big fan), and the three of them join forces with Jiang Li's village to put an end to Wenwu once and for all (or at least put him on pause because we know dead is not dead when it comes to Marvel). The film is a mega-budget ballet, one that glides and floats over an abyss of grief. As a side note, I am happy to see that the vast majority of the cast in this movie set in Chinatown in the US and Macao is that the actors are largely Asian, and that is spectacularly important. If the stories are about a culture, a country, or a people, the actors who are employed to tell the story should be of that background--the story wouldn't be the same otherwise.

Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

This really is a quite thorough history of racist ideas, going back long before the Americas were explored by Europeans, laying down the foundation upon which the institution of slavery was introduced and then perpetuated in the United States. The title of the book is drawn from a speech given in the US Senate in 1860 by Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis, who announced that the “inequality of the white and black races” was “stamped from the beginning”. The first quarter of the book looks at the historical aspects of racism, but them goes on to focus more or less solely on America. He structures his book around five historical guides, who are both usual and unusual suspects: 17th-century Puritan minister Cotton Mather, founding father Thomas Jefferson, 19th-century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, author and activist WEB Du Bois and 1960s radical Angela Davis. Let's just say no one is spared--there are difficulties found around every corner, and yet there are also solutions offered, alternatives to allow us to use this as a blueprint for moving forward. A very gifted writer who writes clearly about a difficult subject.

Dune (2021)

I am sure that there are a couple of great movies that came out this year that Timothée Chalomet is not in, but this is not one of them, and the film is both lucky to have him and makes good use of him. I am not a huge sci-fi reader and I never have been, but I did read Dune in high school (which was about a decade after the first book came out, but it was still wildly popular and widely read in the mid-70's), but I didn't catch them all. It left a desolate feeling, a feeling of sadness for what the future might hold, and that pervades the film. The story focuses on Paul Atreides, the heir apparent and presumed messiah in this dystopian tale. Chalomet was a great casting call for this role. Even before the battles begin he lets the grief of both what the future holds and what is expected of him seep into his body, down to the drowsed slump of his shoulders and the toneless, contemplative wariness of his voice. He is low on the charm and cranking up the latent vulnerabilities he is so talented at portraying. Paul is the heir to House Atreides and he does them proud. This adaptation has a lot to recommend it, and even if you are not a fan of the genre, it is well worth watching.

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

This book is a slight shift for the author--it has all the hallmarks of her other books, focusing on the lives of Dakota and Chippewa people, the lives that they lead, the combination of poverty and culture that guide thier current and future lives. In addition to that, there is a historical lesson involved, one that Erdrich's grandfather was invovled in. One review I read likened it to the modernization of Jim Crow--a more effective and malignant James Crow who operates now as well. The book is set in the "termination" era of US relations to the native nations of North America. This period does not possess the visceral dynamics of the Trail of Tears marches (1830–1838) or Sitting Bull versus Custer (1876), events of violence, open enmity, and plainly physical destruction. In comparison, the Termination era is characterized by discrimination via documents: the stuffy, dry legalese of House Concurrent Resolutions. Stultifying and dreadfully boring as they may be, the intended effects of such documents were just as devastating, if not more so, than the spectacular bloody wars and forced relocations of earlier eras. House Concurrent Resolution 108, passed in 1953, did not declare that indigenous peoples would be subject to state-sponsored violence nor that they would be forcibly relocated. In terms of pure presentation, the bill intends no harm whatsoever for native nations. What the bill does is effectively declare that Indians are not to be considered Indians anymore. According to HCR 108, Indians will be “freed” from their marginal status and made “full” citizens, “entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States,” so as “to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.” In short, it afforded them nothing they did not already have, and took away their land. Again. The results of such supposed liberation were devastating. As Erdrich writes in her afterword to the novel: “In all, 113 tribal nations suffered the disaster of termination; 1.4 million acres of tribal land was lost. Wealth flowed to private corporations, while many people in terminated tribes died early, in poverty. Not one tribe profited.” If you don't read any other of her books, this is a good place to start.

Flee (2020)

This is a documentary about a specific thing (a refugee and his sotry) and a greater thing (what is citizenship? Who belongs and who does not? The legacy of colonialism is the gift that keeps on giving). It has the possibility of being nominated in the categories of International Film, Animated feture film, and documentary film--this is not a stretch, as it is on the short list for the two that have a short list. The Danish filmmaker became friends with a similarly aged Afghan refugee named Amin. Amin had fled Afghanistan after the Mujahideen grew more powerful during the First Afghan Civil War of the 1980s and 1990s, and arrived in Copenhagen alone. His family had previously fled Iran with the fall of the Shah, and highlighted for me that before we had colonialism we had empire building, and the shared language between Iran and Afghanistan connect them though the Ottoman Empire to this day. The two became friends, staying in touch as Rasmussen pursued filmmaking and as Amin pursued his doctoral degree. When they reconnect for this project, it’s as adults ready to look back upon the past with a mixture of honesty, wistfulness, patience and resignation on Amin's part and curiosity in Rasmussen's case. The animation is sparse but fits the story, and there is live footage interspersed throughout, reminding us that this really did happen, it isn't just a story. This is a must watch film from this year, beautifully told and memorable.