June Top Picks
by Mariel Ariwi
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” After her only daughter contracted a severe illness that left her in the ICU for months, Joan Didion’s husband sat down for dinner and went into cardiac arrest, dying suddenly. The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion, one of the best essayists alive, trying to make sense of the year that follows and “the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends”. This is my favorite, and perhaps the most well known of all her work, and is impossible to put down without being incredibly moved. In a culture where death and mourning is not often talked about and therefore poorly dealt with, Didion breaks open the pain and trauma that death can wreak on a life and by doing so, equips her readers to learn how to better navigate through grief themselves. I find that reading about painful events prepares you for the possibility that something painful may also happen to you, but gives you hope that you, too, will survive it. Also tribute to her husband’s life and their writing partnership throughout their marriage, Didion’s writing is spare, beautiful, and heart wrenching.
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