Best Reading from my First Semester

Ok, my only excuse for this long-ass hiatus is that I started college, and what with exams, essays, friends, newfound independence, and minor dramas, I nearly forgot I had a blog until this week.
But I'm back now, and here to tell you about the best books and stories I read during my last semester.

Novels
1. Citizen: An American Epic by Claudia Ward - A multi-media masterpiece about modern racism, with a particular focus on microaggressions.
2. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward - The story of a young girl coming of age in an impoverished area of Mississippi, on the brink of one of the great natural disasters of the last decade.
3. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - A classic allegory of the racial justice movement in America.
4. Beloved by Toni Morrison - Possibly my favorite book ever, Beloved is based on the story of Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery with her children and, when recapture seemed inevitable, killed her children to their being returned to slavery.
Short Stories
1. "A Temporary Matter" by Jhumpa Lahiri - So, so beautiful. A kid in my class said that after reading this story, he had to take a walk to calm down.
2. "How to date a whitegirl, blackgirl, browngirl, or halfie" by Junot Diaz - Diaz's depictions of women are controversial, but I think that he writes in a way that is nuanced but also true to his experience and the worldviews of his narrators.
3. "How to Become a Writer" by Lorrie Moore - A good story to read if you're a writer experiencing an identity crisis, because it reminded me that all writers are perpetually in crisis, which was reassuring somehow.
4. "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway - Isn't that a nice title? The whole story is written like that. Oh Hemingway, I don't want to love you, but I come back anyway.

- Carly

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