Madeleine Schwartz recommends Bruna Dantas Lobato, Uwem Akpan, Maeve Brennan and others
I’ve spent much of my career reporting outside the United States, but in recent years, many of my interviews have ended the same way: with me being asked questions about what’s happening at home. The world is watching the changing politics in the United States carefully, out of fear, out of frustration, and in some cases out of regret that America has not learned from its peers abroad.
The vast literature written about America by journalists and novelists abroad often returns to the same themes, consumerism, brokenness, and cruelty. while on us dial We were putting together our essay collection, How we see it: How the world sees America in the age of TrumpWe found that many of our writers described the country as a strange mix of consumerist triumph and confused idealism.
“American tourists still feel to me like a liberation army that is stuck in its patterns of conquest and enlistment and now, almost a century on, has become cumbersome, bloated, useless,” writes Francesco Pacifico in his essay from Rome. I was reminded of French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s own opinion on American attitudes toward consumerism. “Microwaves, waste disposal, the sensual elasticity of carpets: this bland, resort-style civilization uniquely exemplifies the end of the world.”
Work about America from abroad often achieves mythical status at home. Chinese Politburo member Wang Huningbook of America vs America Receives sales prices in the thousands and informs Chinese policy. (One of his insights: “If you want to dominate the Americans, you have to do one thing: surpass them in science and technology.”)
But they can also inform us on our country’s 250th anniversary. Together dial Colleagues, I’ve put together a little list to get you started.
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Bruna Dantas Lobato, blue light hours
Bruna Dantas Lobato’s novel describes a young Brazilian woman who struggles to describe to her mother her new life as an undergraduate at a liberal arts college in Vermont. Four thousand miles apart, they connect through the blue glow of their computers, asking each other about their lives and inventing new rituals to stay close. It’s a coming-of-age story about what it means to try to make a new home against the all-American backdrop of a university campus.
Valeria Luiselli, tell me how it ends
This short book by Valeria Luiselli is based on her experiences working as an interpreter for Central American migrant children who risked their lives to reach the United States. As part of the bureaucratic process that will determine whether or not they can stay, they must answer 40 deceptively simple questions, ranging from the factual “Why did you come to the United States” to the more difficult “Did anything happen during your visit to the United States that frightened or hurt you?” Luiselli, who was born in Mexico and now lives in New York, writes passionately about these children facing deportation and exposes the gap between America’s ideals and the racism and cruelty that runs rampant in the treatment of undocumented children.
uwem akpan, new york my village
Is this the great Bedbug of New York novel? Uwem Akpan tells the story of a Nigerian editor who travels to America’s publishing center for a prestigious fellowship and there he is faced with the harsh realities of living in a metropolitan space. I have recommended Akpan’s book to countless people for its satirical look at American publishing, immigration, and New York City.
Xavier Serkes, speed of light
This book is a recommendation from our translator Lily Meyer (a wonderful writer herself). It is the 1980s and a young Spanish writer accepts a position at a Midwestern university. When he arrives he is greeted by a Vietnam War veteran who will be his officemate and whom the department considers an outcast. The book describes their relationship over the course of two decades. “It’s a brilliant and little-read book,” Meyer told us.
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Maeve Brennan, long winded woman
From 1954 to 1981, Irish writer Maeve Brennan wrote short, gossipy sketches the new YorkerDiscussion of the city section. She was the first woman to do so and described life in the city being watched by people and sitting in a half-empty restaurant, listening. Her hyper-distinctive pieces tell the story of navigating New York as an outsider, a writer, and a woman, and serve as a reminder of how many insignificant moments of joy, cruelty, and insecurity we encounter every day.
Oscar Martínez and Juan Martínez, Hollywood Kid: The Violent Life and Violent Death of an MS-13 Hitman (tr. Daniela Maria Ugaz and John Washington)
What the United States likes to think of as an “immigration” problem is a problem of its own making. In this book, Oscar Martínez, one of El Salvador’s greatest journalists, and Juan Martínez, anthropologist, look at the US-created MS-13 gang and how it has shaped politics throughout Central America.
Jessica Mitford, American way of death
Jessica Mitford initially declared that the funeral industry was playing a “huge, horrifying, and expensive practical joke” on the American people. American way of death. Originally from the United Kingdom, Mitford is surprised by what she finds when she travels to the United States. His exposure of the industry’s many exploitations is also an examination of life and death in American culture.
Theodor W. Adorno, minima moralia (tr. Edmund FN Jephcott)
Perhaps no one was less suited to California than Theodor Adorno, a man with infinite contempt for Hollywood, popular music and advertising. While living in Los Angeles in exile from Nazi Germany, he began writing minima moraliaA collection of “essays and aphorisms” that locate the seeds of fascism in American culture while the United States was fighting fascism abroad.
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How we see it: How the world sees America in the age of Trump Available from now dial.
