Guest post by Frank Mundo. You can follow Frank on Twitter or visit his site at Examiner.com.

My wife says that I only like to read sad books. She says that, when we go to the bookstore and she reads the summaries on the backs of the books that I just bought, she can tell right away if I’m going to like them or not, long before I even read them. And she’s usually right, too. At least, she’s right about whether or not I’ll end up liking them.

But just because she’s right doesn’t mean that I only like to read sad books. If fact. I think her books are way sadder than mine. She likes crime fiction mainly, those authors with long series of books based on some sort of theme, like the alphabet, colors or numbers. She likes One for Evanovich and G is for Grafton the most. She likes Patricia Cornwell, too, but lately she’s been more into Karen Slaughter, who’s like Cornwell’s way darker and way edgier and way sadder little sister.

These books are more than just crime fiction, sure. I get it. They’re about tough women, funny women, strong women, who, as the bodies and horrid images of mutilation and murder pile up, always seem to get their “man” in the end. Again and again. Book after book.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a book snob.

I love a good potboiler. In fact, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich and, more recently, Walter Mosley are some of my favorite writers of all time, and I consider their books classics, the kind of books I turn to again and again, book after book, to admire their craft.

But sometimes when I read, most of the time, I guess, I want more than just entertainment, and more than just great writing or great storytelling. I want experience. I want to plunge myself into the world of someone else and to walk in their shoes for a few days. And those long series of happy-ending books just don’t do it for me.

You see, I love to read. And I consider myself a good reader, an empathetic reader, the best kind! It’s not just a hobby or a pastime for me. It’s a huge part of life, of who I am. It’s why, for the last decade or so, I’ve continued to write about books and writers even though I’ve made very little money at it. It’s why I suffered through the odd stares and raised eyebrows I got whenever people found out that I worked two jobs, 65 hours a week, just to pay for my college tuition as an English major.

But, to settle the debate, my wife and I have agreed to leave it in your hands.

Below you will find three books that I’ve recently read and extremely enjoyed that my wife says proves that I only like to read sad books. The books are all very different from one another. One is from 1970, one from 1996 and one is from 2005. Two of the books are fiction and one is a memoir – and each book’s protagonist is extremely different.

All of the books, however, have three things in common.

1) They are all coming-of-age stories

2) Each of the main characters face very challenging circumstances

3) I will never forget these incredible people. They’ve each managed to join forces with the hundreds of sad Holden Caulfields and lonely Arturo Bandinis who live joyfully forever in my memories.

I’m not going to review them any further or continue to persuade you to the dark and sad side. If you choose to participate in this debate, however, (whether you’ve already read these books or not) I only ask that you report back here and share what you think about these works. Am I just a sad sap reader, or is there more to these works than what wells up the eyes? I leave it in your hands…Happy reading!

1)      Push by Sapphire

2)      The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

3)      The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened by Don Robertson

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“A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend.” ~Author Unknown

At TJCC we achieve collective learning through the deep conversations and intimate connections that first germinate in our posts, then blossom through comments and emails. It’s a natural fit for us to have an ongoing feature where contributors and editors share those resources that reflect the more personal part of our cultural learning center.

Why Books?

Why didn’t we choose to highlight our authenticity by noting our favorite artist, our favorite film, our favorite cheese?

We might someday. But let’s start with books, the origins of our formal classroom learning. And mix it up with life lessons.

Books we love most tell the true tale of who we are. It is in between the pages where we can examine fragile thoughts without breaking them, or handle incendiary ideas without fear of getting burned.

Books have told stories, delivered valuable lessons and harbored the best and worst of humanity for hundreds of years. Textbooks, e-books, biographies and anthologies. Children’s books, language and poetry books.

Books are some of the sharpest tools in the cultural learning toolbox. By writing them, we create ideas. By reading them, we learn.

Books have the power to educate and unify. Regardless of cultural differences.

A List with Lessons

We went beyond listing the books; we wanted to share what our favorite books truly meant to us by way of the lasting impact contained in their message.

Through sharing, we initiate conversation – a single person, in small to large groups, and through societies scattered across the globe. We gathered our collective wisdom to teach one another – and share here with you.

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Frank Mundo

My favorite book is Ask the Dust by Los Angeles writer John Fante. Reading this book changed my life forever. I was 18 years old and I loved to read and write, but this book made me want to be a writer. There’s just something magical about the writing: it’s poetry and prose — it’s art and craft — even now. I read it every couple of years, and each time I find something new and more wonderful than the last. Like Charles Bukowski, Fante was my God in the darkest and lonliest time of my life. I can’t imagine a more important book to me than Ask the Dust.

Christa Avampato

My favorite book is Alice in Wonderland. For a recommended resource, I’d list a book I just finished: Inside Obama’s Brain. The book has incredible life lessons for everyone, no matter what we do for a living or how we spend our free time. Obama’s confidence and belief in his destiny are powerful motivators. I just spoke to the author for Examiner.com and what surprised him most about Obama is Obama’s ability to imagine how all the different routes he could take in life would manifest in the long run. A tremendous use of analytical thinking to build idealistic dreams.

Tara Joyce

The book is Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Why? As a kid, I don’t think there was a single book I read more. I would repeatedly take this collection of poems out of the library and pour over them like I was reading them for the first time. Reflecting on the emotions this book stirs in me today, I observe that Shel’s energetic, whimsical and hopeful writing-style, and the eccentric drawings that complimented his poems, connect with my need for authentic self-expression, support my belief that my dreams can be shaped into reality, and provide me with assurance that even in adulthood, I can still be child-like and fun-loving.

Sean Platt

I can’t possibly pick a favorite book, as I’ve been inhaling pages since I could string sentences together. However, I’ll pick a book by Mark Halprin, Solider of the Great War, since it was the first book that floored me with it’s poetic language. I remember reading it and thinking, How can anyone articulate simple thought with such majesty? But he did. I think in a quiet way, that book had something to do with my eventually moving my own pen across the page.

Elisa Philips

My favorite book right now is Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. Reinforced the need to think differently about the way we educate children and foster talents which take 10+ years to form. Every child should be educated (build more schools not jails) and the standards for schools should be taken up about 5 notches. Bridge the gap between public and private school. If kids in the Bronx can do it, anyone can.

Dani at Positively Present

As an avid reader, it’s really hard to pin down my absolute favorite book. It’s hard to even think of my top five favorite books. So, instead of discussing the book that’s my favorite, I’m going to talk about the book that’s influenced me the most lately.

On a recent business trip, I picked up a copy of Positivity by Barbara Frederickson. I’d been meaning to read this book for awhile, considering I have a blog that focuses on positivity, but I’d never gotten around to reading it. When I saw it propped up in a small bookshop staring me in the face, I decided it was high time I picked up a copy. And, man, am I glad I did. The book has impacted in more in the past few days that almost any book I’ve read. I can hardly put it down and my mind is racing with all of the great information, most of which I can attest to first hand. It’s the kind of book I believe anyone and everyone interested in changing their lives for the better should read.

I could go on forever about books I love (and for more on those, check out the “Brilliant Books” section on www.positivelypresent.com), but this one has had a tremendous impact on me lately and I would recommend it to anyone. If you haven’t already read it, pick up a copy ASAP!

Amanda Hirsch

Favorite book: The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron

What I learned: The Artist’s Way is my gospel – it unlocked the artist trapped inside me, and set me on the path of living my life as a work of art.

Kellie Fitzgerald

My favorite book is constantly evolving. Most recently, it is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. While reading this book, I was reminded that the female spirit and the relationships that we form with one another are incredibly resilient. I was moved by Mariam & Laila’s ability to find pleasure in simple things like a cup of tea or the moonlight on a warm night amidst their life of unimaginable loss, violence, injustice and suffering.

Stephanie Finigan

Fave book: (such a hard question!): A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. What did I learn: That geeks and misfits really do end up as the cool kids you admire and wish you were friends with. Oh and one more just b/c I loved this book so so much (who didn’t??): She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb. I learned: There is always hope!

Join the conversation! What’s your favorite book? What did you learn?

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A guest post by Frank Mundo. You can follow Frank on Twitter.

Bigger Thomas is guilty.
I’m not spoiling the story of Richard Wright’s Native Son by saying so. It’s a fact.
Even Bigger Thomas, a number of times throughout the text, will tell you that himself. He is guilty. Of course he is. He was born guilty. He’s black in America in the late 1930‘s. Besides, I can’t spoil a story you already know, a story you’ve already heard and/or read a million times before.
You know how it goes: Bigger Thomas, poor black kid with an eighth-grade education and a long juvenile criminal record, gets a job as a chauffeur for a white, liberal big-shot millionaire named Mr. Dalton. Mr. Dalton owns just about every piece of real estate in “The Black Belt” of Chicago’s Southside and beyond, including Bigger’s rat hole of a place, a one-room shack with no heat and real rats the size of small poodles, where Bigger and his family somehow just manage to scrape by on meager government assistance and Bigger’s illegal enterprises.
Mrs. Dalton, the wife, (you know her too), is a saint. Of course she is. Not only is she blind (and apparently wears all white all of the time) she’s even more liberal than her husband. Heavily associated with the NAACP and other similar organizations, Mrs. Dalton spends her time and her husband’s millions getting poor, inner city types like Bigger Thomas educated and working. She’s a great woman, ironically blind, in an enlightened family.
The Daltons also have a daughter named Mary — young, attractive and oh-so rebellious. You know her already. Of course, you do. Mary’s a spoiled brat with a penchant for finding trouble. Bigger’s job is to drive this beautiful wild child to school every day and then pick her up afterwards.
That’s it.
But, of course, Mary Dalton is not interested in school. Of course she’d much rather spend her time finding trouble with her boyfriend Jan who, of course, is not just any communist, but the Executive Secretary of the Labor Defenders, a communist frat organization in revolution against the clearly defined color lines and social class system of a 1930’s American capitalist democracy.

Mary will end up dead not long after being introduced to Bigger.
Of course she will. Mary Daltons always do, don‘t they? And, of course, Bigger is responsible for her death. He killed her–and he probably raped her, too. Of course he did. He’s black and she’s white. Of course he’s guilty. End of story.
So why should you even bother to read Native Son, another version of the same old ridiculous, and perhaps, racist story? How is it that Native Son made number 20 of the Best Novels of the 20th Century as compiled by the Modern Library of America?
Well, that’s easy. It’s a fantastic book. Of course it is. It’s a brilliant book with more incredible layers than I could ever possibly discuss here; an absolute must-read (and re-read again and again) for those interested in the novel as a form.
And since you already know the disturbing story of Bigger Thomas, I’ll discuss instead the writing itself, its background, and its genre (which is so crisscrossed and complicated it’s difficult to imagine that Native Son was an enormous bestseller in 1940 — until you begin to read it and quickly discover that you can’t put it down.)
Richard Wright was a card-carrying member of the communist party, a very controversial yet powerful party in the U.S. at this time, a time of incredible insecurity for western democracies – way worse and way scarier than today’s challenging economic and political climate.
Japan had become an imperial power in Korea and China. Communism had expanded throughout Russia, a communism thoroughly destabilized and mutated in a Jim-Crowed U.S. with race and class issues. The 1920’s and 30’s also saw a rise fascism in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. And back at home, lots of “Great” things were happening, too: the Great Depression in 1929 created a 25% unemployment rate by 1933.
The Great Migration from 1900 to 1930 saw the largest internal land migration in U.S. history, with mostly African-Americans moving from southern to northern states, radically changing the northern cities. In 1925 the KKK elected its first mayor and the American Nazi party quickly arose in power. Labor unions were striking all over the country, which led to even more disenchantment and worry as violent riots served as the only bargaining chips.
It was nothing like the current economic crisis and political climate. Things were bad on a Great scale. So bad that the government, instead of just bailing out banks, actually sponsored the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and programs like John Reed Clubs to bail out out-of-work writers and artists who, in return, (in theory at least) would combat with their art the growing depression and the consequences of what seemed an unstable and perhaps failing political system — a growing fear and paranoia which would set the political stage for the McCarthy era of reprehensible recklessness.
Richard Wright was not only a communist and, therefore, dangerous. He was also an artist and member of one of these government-sponsored clubs, and thoroughly unhappy with both his party and his country. Oh yeah, and he was also black. It was the perfect time and the perfect opportunity, a Great opportunity, one might say, for Wright to offer his critique of both the American and communist political systems in the form of Native Son, a sort of Marxist case study of Bigger Thomas, the unique nightmare product of America, made by Americans.

Oh, but don’t think that Wright wants your sympathy. He does not!
Bigger Thomas is not an anti-hero we’re supposed to empathize with or secretly cheer for. In fact, Wright wants you to hate Bigger–and hate him you will. Just when you start to feel a little mushy, Wright is going to disgust you with Bigger’s depravity. Try as you might, you will not empathize with this monster. Wright’s goal seems not to shine a pink light of hope on the horizon of this horrifying tragedy of evil and inhumanity.
Rather, he seems to offer up Bigger Thomas as an example of the potential Frankenstein’s monster of American making, a “native” American Prometheus, bound to thrive on evil, which is the only real agency or outlet available to him.
His thesis is as difficult to reconcile as his portrait of Bigger Thomas is to ignore. Wright seems well-aware of this difficulty. Wright wants you to hate Bigger Thomas, sure, but he also needs to keep you willing to read his book all the way to the end (where his message is revealed). The only true reconciliation to be found in the reader’s horror of this fictitious world is the potential action toward change the reader’s might take in the real world once they put the book down.
No, Richard Wright does not
want your sympathy. He wants you to read this book to the end, and he’s got a whole bag of literary tricks just for that purpose. After all, it’s 1940 and who has got money to burn on books?

Hell, the government is paying writers just to keep them busy and working.

Wright, of course, was seeking the widest possible audience for his work. Just to tap into the audience of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, published a year earlier with great success (number 10 on the said list of Modern Library’s 100), would have been enough.
Wright would embrace the popular elements of many different genres (Thriller/Suspense, Court-Room Drama, Urban Protest, Political), mixing a proletarian fiction style with naturalistic and religious symbolism (at times making Bigger Thomas a sort of Christ figure!) and existentialism, to layer and texture this fantastically complex and disturbing text with a simple and straightforward prose designed both as a diversion to challenge and entertain while delivering his explosive message (often repetitively in the third section).
Native Son would become a huge bestseller, announcing Wright as the premier writer of America and the American Communist Party, both of which he would soon abandon in disappointment, becoming another expatriate writer who, because of his communist ties, probably would have been arrested had he chosen to return to America in the McCarthy era.
Also, pay close attention to colors in Native Son. Wright does a remarkable job of utilizing colors, not just as descriptions or even as metaphors, but as actual characters or forces of nature that both enlighten and oppress.
But enough of my babbling…
Do yourself a favor. Just read the first few pages of Native Son by Richard Wright. Not only will you not be able to put it down, the question of why you should read the same old story you know so well will quickly be answered: You need to.
Native Son by Richard Wright
Perennial (HarperCollins Publishers)
(Original 1940 Text) 2001
$7.99
398 pages –Frank Mundo is a writer and book reviewer from Los Angeles. You can read his reviews and author interviews at Examiner.com or follow him on Twitter @LABooksExaminer.

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A guest post by Frank Mundo. You can follow Frank on Twitter.

I used to think prose poetry was a scam, the literary equivalent of madly dripping or wildly flinging paint onto a canvas as art. Prose poetry, it seemed to me, was at best the product of the creative intellectual exercises of people way smarter than me (way smarter than I? Whatever.)

People too smart for their and my own good. For me, it was nothing like the Big Boys of poetry from school which I loved, the more formal old-school stuff that was not only beautiful but carefully structured and metered, and made perfect sense to me – even if at times some of it required a patient professor’s handheld tour throughout the more difficult nuances of the texts.

Prose poetry, however, professors’ help or not, was almost always an esoteric wasteland of scrupulously excavated fossil-words mixed with ancient allusions and slapped down on the page in a silly

willy-nilly

pattern-less
pattern.

With complicated hidden meanings

And messages

And with Strange… Punctuation…to boot

Yikes.

Even as an alleged English major I was baffled by what seemed the random personal thoughts, un-translated foreign languages, and obscure allusions to ancient-dudes in these so-called modern prose poetry texts; texts which required the Golden Bough, the OED or Edith Hamilton’s Mythology just to get through the darn things – let alone to understand or appreciate them in the same constructive manner in which some of my classmates pretended to have.

Well, maybe that’s not being fair. Maybe they did like it. Maybe they understood everything and actually loved it. Who knows? Hell, maybe I’m just a moron and Bob’s your uncle.

Either way, it doesn’t matter, because all that changed once I started going to live poetry readings. Quickly I discovered that prose poetry was much better in person than on paper. Suddenly, as the poets performed their own work aloud, I was able to hear finally what I couldn’t seem before to see and interpret on the page.

Suddenly I could even hear a tone in some of these voices, a music that skillfully organized, defined, and translated the words clearly into complete and structured thoughts that I could actually understand and appreciate.

Wow. Suddenly an entire range of emotion began revealing to my ears what before my eyes couldn’t seem to truly see: irony, humor, anger, passion; a singsong wordplay, powerful and thoughtful, with often edgy, rhythmical messages and meanings.

Oh, and lots of hand jive and whatnot too added to the experience. I saw heavy-hitters like Alice Walker and Wanda Coleman, the Big Girls we never read in school, and I was blown away, intrigued enough to go and seek out paper versions of their work — just to look of course, not to buy.

It was there in the bookstore, I discovered that Wanda Coleman, “the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles,” had written over a dozen books, won just about every scholarly award there is, and was renowned for her inspiring public readings. Aha! I wasn’t the only moron after all, the only victim. There were others who were dazzled by her readings! “The daughter of earthquakes,” she had exploited a tiny crack in my thinking and left a permanent fault behind, forever gaping and grinding like the San Andreas.

She spoke directly to me it seemed from somewhere deep in Sylvia Plath’s oven, cooked a musical dish of my own personal despair (“a moist and forgiving noise”) into a satisfying meal of ashes and sugar and “primal stink,” always reminding me, despite it all, to “strive because I must “and to “love out of spite.”

And let the war–all wars
Be fought on soft mattresses
Between legs and lovers

Coleman “was born in the Los Angeles community of Watts and raised in South Central,” I read, chagrined. This was a scholar’s trick to marginalize her talent as an African-American poet or a woman poet. A conspiracy! Her poetry, however, simultaneously “slam” and literary, is not straight outta Compton like they wanted me to think, but “Straight Out of Autumn”.

For Coleman “aesthetics is the science of vulnerability“ and “freedom is a blurred state of vision/frozen between frames”. Her lyrical Los Angeles transcends race and gender stereotypes, natural and unnatural boundaries, incorporating both the fringe and the elite, comedy and tragedy, erotic and the sexually explicit, with truthful slurs and painful observations off “from the shadow” with all the “colors of autumn” and a “music beyond jazz“. It’s not just her Los Angeles, it’s our Los Angeles, my Los Angeles, bold and breathtaking, urban and suburban, utopia and hell, and far “too painful to contain sentiment”.

There’s no conspiracy in that kind of truth. I bought the book.

However, if you’re still on the fence about prose poetry like I was, reading Ostinato Vamps by Wanda Coleman is the second best bet to change your mind – second only to experiencing her reading her extravagant work in person. Coleman is a true veteran of letters, armed to the teeth with a fierce arsenal of truth in her poetry, an undeniable weapon of mass persuasion which will likely solve for you, one way or the other, the matter of prose poetry’s validity for good.

If, however, this is not quite enough and you need an extra push over the edge, check out Chicana Falsa by Michele Serros of Oxnard, California, 60 miles north of L.A.

Written while she attended Santa Monica College and published in 1993 when Serros was an undergrad at UCLA, this edition of Chicana Falsa was republished in 1998 as a trade paperback. Also known for her exuberant readings, Serros is extremely conscious of her audience, even on paper.

Her “purpose” as a writer is to “make someone happy, inspired. Maybe make someone who hated to read actually enjoy a book”. She’s a former Bruin. She took the same classes I did. And I imagine she knows what that’s all about.

But there’s no conspiracy here either. Serros marginalizes herself, right from the getgo. In “La Letty” Serros is informed of her falseness. She’s a “Homogenized Hispanic,” a “Chicana falsa”: a fake or false Hispanic. Ironically it’s her fakeness which allows her to step outside of her culture to create an honest, funny and witty look at the world around her.

In English classes, Serros would be known as limnal character, a tweener character, free to roam, who can pop in and out of boundaries which normally limit others. Serros, unlike Coleman, is careful to hold the reader’s hand throughout the freedom of this tour. Serros cannot afford to leave the reader behind in
the spaces between. “My sincerity isn’t good enough,” she says.

Serros introduces us to her friend Letitica or La Letty, “only two weeks into junior high” and already a real Chicana, offering Serro‘s “sloppy Spanish“ as proof of her fakeness. Serros introduces us to her Aunt Annie next who questions whether Serros can ever be a writer, offering her poor English as pessimistic proof of her thesis: “You got a D on your last book report,” Annie says. “You gotta be able to write English good.”

Serros again is willingly marginalized, actually stuck somewhere between two languages now. But it’s in the next lines that her humor emerges, demonstrating her loyalty to the middle and to the pure freedom such “limnality” affords.

No mi’ja,
Nobody will ever buy your books,
So put your pencil down
And change the channel for me,
It’s time for As The World Turns.

We meet her father and mother next, learn about their dreams. Serros takes us shopping and exposes the racism in the frozen food section after that. She takes us to school, to detention, the gym, to work, to the street corner, to “the gate” to meet great-aunt Linda.

Almost everywhere Serros goes she is “intrusive” and raises eyebrows. Serros is no fake. Chicana Falsa is a magnificent collection of prose poems and short stories, a map of an American adolescence, rich with charm, humor, pride, determination, insight, and heart.

Funny, I used to think prose poetry was a scam.

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Frank Mundo is a writer and book reviewer from Los Angeles. You can read his reviews and author interviews at Examiner.com or follow him on Twitter @LABooksExaminer.

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