Rabbit Cake
Annie Hartnett, 2017
Tin House
287pp.
ISBN-13: 9781941040560
Summary
A darkly comic novel about a young girl named Elvis trying to figure out her place in a world without her mother.
Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent.
She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn’t yet know—like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house.
Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother's death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama. As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1985-86
• Where—N/A
• Education—M.A., Middlebury College; M.F.A., University of Alabama
• Awards—Writer in Residence, Boston Public Library
• Currently—lives in Providence, Rhode Island
Annie Hartnett is the author of the 2017 debut novel Rabbit Cake. She received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Alabama and an MA from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English.
Hartnett was the 2013-2014 winner of the Writer in Residence Fellowship for the Associates of the Boston Public Library and has received awards and honors from the Bread Loaf School of English, McSweeney's, and Indiana Review.
She teaches at Grub Street, an independent writing center in Boston and lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and their beloved border collie.
Personal touch
• Hartnett had an episode of sleepwalking in college after working on a paper for several nights in a row. She woke up in her plaid pajamas at a frat part; fortunately, she hasn't done it since.
• Hartnett's mother made rabbit cakes for Easter, and she herself has started making them, a lot of them. She takes the cakes with her when she visits bookstores on tour.
• When she was young, Hartnett drew comics. One was called "T-Rex & Bunnny-wunny-wunny," inspired by Calvin & Hobbes. It was about a dino who loved his stuffed bunny but couldn't stop himself from tearing it to shreds. His dino mother had to sew Bunny-wunny-wunny up again and again.
• Dolly Parton has been an obsession of Hartnett for years. The author admires Parton's humor, her straightforwardness, and the pride she takes in her work. (Adapted from the publisher and various online sources.)
Book Reviews
Think off-the-wall, think totally weird, think Harriet the Spy meets A Confederacy of Dunces, and there you have it — Rabbit Cake. The rabbit cakes, of which there are many as this novel proceeds, were once a family favorite, made by sleepwalker/biologist Eva Rose Babbitt for her family. READ MORE.
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers
(Starred review.) [W]inning.… Hartnett’s quirky, Southern-tinged debut relies heavily on Elvis’s relative naivete for dramatic irony.… [The] story is affecting, exploring how a fragile but precocious girl strives to define herself after a tragedy.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [B]rilliant… moving… funny…a stunning combination of youthful and astute.… How a whip-smart young girl handles the loss of her mother and the reorientation of her family; charming and beautifully written.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What did you think of Mrs. Bernstein's therapy sessions? Is she a good guidance counselor?
2. Do you think it helped or hurt Elvis to have the grieving chart? Do you think 18 months is a realistic time to spend grieving someone?
3. Do you think Elvis emphasizes more with animals than she does with humans? Why?
4. The parrot, Ernest Hemingway, becomes a key member of the family. What did you think of the parrot's role in the family?
5. Why did Lizzie bake rabbit cakes? Was it really about the Guinness World Record?
6. Should the father have gone to get Lizzie after she ran away with Soda? If you were Lizzie's parent, what would you have done?
7. Vanessa is a self-proclaimed pathological liar. Do you think she's the only character in the book that lies? How reliable are the stories that the characters tell?
8. What did you think of the religious elements in the book, such as the Ocean Jesus statue and the mother's belief in reincarnation? Did religion help Elvis cope with her mother's death?
9. Should the Babbitts have had a proper funeral for the mother? Was that a mistake that the father made?
10. Elvis has felt overshadowed by Lizzie her entire life. How did Elvis come into her own by the end of the novel? How did she become her own animal?
11. What do you think the Babbitts will be up to 20 years from now? What will Elvis be like as an adult?
(Questions found on the author's website.)
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Academy Street
Mary Costello, 2014 (U.S., 2015)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
150 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250081674
Summary
Tess Lohan is the kind of woman we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely―a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with.
Academy Street is Mary Costello’s luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving reencounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile.
The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force: It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy, capturing, in sentence after sentence, the rhythm and intensity of inner life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Galway, Ireland
• Education—B.A., St. Patrick's College, Dublin
• Awards—Bord Gais Irish Book of the Year Award
• Currently—lives in Dublin
Mary Costello is originally from Galway but lives in Dublin. Her stories have been published in New Irish Writing, The Stinging Fly and in several anthologies including Town and Country – New Irish Short Stories.
She taught for many years and is now writing fulltime. Her first book, a collection of short stories entitled The China Factory, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and the Irish Books Award. Stories from the collection were broadcast on RTE and BBC radio.
Academy Street, Costello's first novel, came out in 2014 (U.S., 2015). It won the Bord Gais Irish Book of the Year Award and was a finalist for the Costa First Novel Award, the International Dublin Literary Ward, and the EU Prize for Literature. In 2011 and 2013, she received an Arts Council bursary. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
To have spent a couple of days luxuriating in the shimmering prose of Academy Street was like heaven for me. Though at times Tess Lohan is quiet as a mouse, motherless from an early age, living in fear of her moody, sorrowful father’s wrath, her inner life, even as a child, is rich. READ MORE.
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers
Costello's concern, in this slim novel traversing seven decades, is to bear witness to the intensity of experience that Tess knows from the inside out…the writing becomes charged with all the strangeness and vitality of her character.
Belinda McKeon - New York Times Book Review
[Costello] has a gift for relating even life's most calamitous events in matter-of-fact prose, and in doing so laying bare their true devastation.… Costello is also a master of storytelling shorthand. She understands that what makes a milestone memorable is not its central ceremony but what happens on the margins.
Maria Crawford - Financial Times
Mary Costello is a very gifted writer and this is a beautifully written novel.
Neil Donnelly - Irish Independent
A remarkable debut with a transcendent, quiet power.
Judges - 2014 Costa First Novel Award
Costello works wonders on the page, employing precise prose to craft a resonant narrative out of a rather ordinary lifetime. Though a fateful incident near the novel’s end feels somewhat exploitative…Tess’s overall story—full of struggles and meekness—proves there is often beauty to be found in the mundane.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Darkly beautiful…. [Recalls] Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.… Costello renders her homely, knowing heroine with craft and compassion in this sad, slim, rich novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Memory plays an important role in Academy Street, and near the beginning of the novel, Tess takes a walk through the grounds of her family’s estate and picks up a rotting apple. The smell takes her back to "the apple room and the apples laid out on newspapers on the floor, turning yellow." Why is memory such an important theme in the novel, and what is it about scent that can bring one back to precise memories?
2. Shortly after the death of her mother, Tess has several interactions with a "tinker girl." What is the significance of this girl and her exchanges with Tess? Why do you think the author included this character?
3. While Tess is mourning her mother, she seeks comfort from Captain, the family dog. Tess feels that "he understands something about her, maybe everything, and her heart begins to open." Why do you think Tess seems to experience more comfort from a dog than one of her family members? And what does it say about Tess’s character that she feels this way? Have you ever had a similar experience with an animal?
4. Shortly before Tess leaves for New York, she finds herself in the kitchen with her father. She offers to cut his hair, and she says that it is in this moment that "she sees for the first time all he has endured." What does this dramatic scene represent for each character?
5. On the day Tess meets David for the first time, she reads a book about Vincent Van Gogh and is moved by the kindness of his brother, Theo. When she is walking down the street to meet her friends she begins to cry for no apparent reason. After, she feels as if she sees things clearly and sees "beauty everywhere." What do you make of this transformation and its significance to the novel?
6. Soon after Tess begins to fall in love with David, she runs into a bag lady on the street "with crazed eyes" and "wild hair" who shouts obscenities at Tess. This incident "shook her to her core." What is it about this particular incident that unsettles Tess so deeply?
7. Was Tess’s decision to sleep with David out of character? Why or why not?
8. When Tess becomes pregnant with Theo, it is the early 1960s and it is not socially acceptable for a woman to be pregnant out of wedlock. Tess describes how she takes to wearing a wedding ring and seats herself near "earnest-looking" men. What would you have done in Tess’s position? And while times have certainly changed, do you think it is truly socially acceptable for single women to have children in our times?
9. Why does Tess have such a hard time writing a reply to the letter Claire sends her after Claire finds out Tess is pregnant?
10. Do you think Tess should have made more of an effort to involve David in Theo’s life after he was born?
11. Tess meets Boris, the older Russian man from the park, for a second time when he is hospitalized. He tells her "There is, in some of us, an essential loneliness.… It is in you." Do you agree with his assessment of Tess? Why or why not?
12. When Theo is about nine or ten, Tess takes him to a friend’s birthday party, and he does not want to leave. Tess is struck by the feeling that he now feels that he’s been denied certain things, and we learn that she never baked Theo a birthday cake and did not take him to the fun places that other children are often taken. Why does Tess deny her son these experiences? Does this make her selfish?
13. Tess and Wilma have a very close relationship, and once, when they are discussing Greek mythology, Tess finds herself sexually attracted to Wilma. Why would the author include this scene, and what does it reflect about the two’s relationship?
14. When Tess learns that the twin towers were hit by planes and Theo was inside, she describes the moment as "the calamity she had always been waiting for. It was almost a relief when it arrived…" Why does Tess feel this way? Do you think it’s an unusual response?
15. Shortly after Theo’s death, Tess presses her fingers into the throat of her cat’s neck until the cat becomes frightened and runs away. What does this scene tells us about the nature of grief?
(Questions written by Kianoosh Hashemzadeh and issued by the publisher.)
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Alexander Hamilton
Ron Chernow, 2004
Penguin Publishing
832 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143034759
Summary
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.
In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America.
According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.”
Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 3, 1949
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Yalae University; Cambridge University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, Biography; American History Book Prize; National Book
Award, Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City
Ron Chernow was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating with honors from Yale College and Cambridge University with degrees in English Literature, he began a prolific career as a freelance journalist.
Between 1973 and 1982, Chernow published over sixty articles in national publications, including numerous cover stories. In the mid-80s Chernow went to work at the Twentieth Century Fund, a prestigious New York think tank, where he served as director of financial policy studies and received what he described as “a crash course in economics and financial history.”
Chernow’s journalistic talents combined with his experience studying financial policy culminated in the writing of his extraordinary first book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990). Winner of the 1990 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The House of Morgan traces the amazing history of four generations of the J.P. Morgan empire. The New York Times Book Review wrote, “As a portrait of finance, politics and the world of avarice and ambition on Wall Street, the book has the movement and tension of an epic novel. It is, quite simply, a tour de force.”
Chernow continued his exploration of famous financial dynasties with his second book, The Warburgs (1994), the story of a remarkable Jewish family. The book traces Hamburg’s most influential banking family of the 18th century from their successful beginnings to when Hitler’s Third Reich forced them to give up their business, and ultimately to their regained prosperity in America on Wall Street.
Described by Time as “one of the great American biographies,” Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998) brilliantly reveals the complexities of America’s first billionaire. Rockefeller was known as a Robber Baron, whose Standard Oil Company monopolized an entire industry before it was broken up by the famous Supreme Court anti-trust decision in 1911. At the same time, Rockefeller was one of the century’s greatest philanthropists donating enormous sums to universities and medical institutions.
His 2005 book, a biography of Alexander Hamilton, was widely praised and inspired Hamilton, the highly successful 2016 Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
In addition to writing biographies, Chernow is a book reviewer, essayist, and radio commentator. His book reviews and op-ed articles appear frequently in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He comments regularly on business and finance for National Public Radio and for many shows on CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Channel. In addition, he served as the principal expert on the A&E biography of J.P. Morgan and has been featured as the key Rockefeller expert on a CNBC documentary.
Chernow is the Secretary of PEN American Center, the country’s most prominent writers’ organization. He lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York.
Book Reviews
Mr. Chernow sets himself a compelling task: to add a third dimension to conventional views of Hamilton while reaching beyond the limits of a personal portrait. If Alexander Hamilton reflects its subject's far from charismatic nature, it also provides a serious, far-reaching measure of his place in history. And Mr. Chernow has done a splendid job of capturing the backbiting political climate of Hamilton's times, to the point that no cow is sacred here. The "golden age of literary assassination in American politics," featuring Thomas Jefferson as a particularly self-serving schemer, sounds astonishingly familiar today.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
In Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow, the author of The House of Morgan, The Warburgs and Titan, a biography of John D. Rockefeller, has brought to life the Founding Father who did more than any other to create the modern United States.… In this magisterial biography, Chernow tells the story not only of Hamilton but also of his wife, Eliza, a remarkable woman who died at the age of 97 in 1854.
Washington Post
Chernow's achievement is to give us a biography commensurate with Hamilton's character.… This is a fine work that captures Hamilton's life with judiciousness and verve.… [This biography] could make Alexander Hamilton as popular with readers as Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.
Publishers Weekly
Although quite sympathetic to Hamilton, Chernow attempts to present both sides of his many controversies, including Hamilton's momentous philosophical battles with Jefferson.… A first-rate life and excellent addition to the ongoing debate about Hamilton's importance in the shaping of America. —Robert Flatley, Kutztown Univ. Lib., PA
Library Journal
A splendid life of an enlightened reactionary and forgotten Founding Father.… Literate and full of engaging historical asides. By far the best of the many lives of Hamilton now in print, and a model of the biographer's art.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
These excellent questions have been graciously proviced by our "Associate," Jennifer Johnsnon, MA, MLIS, the Reference Librarian at the Springdale (Arkansas) Public Library. Thank you—again—Jennifer!
1. Consider what you knew before reading Alexander Hamilton. Did the author do justice to the historical figure of Alexander Hamilton and his legacy? How did this tome change what you knew and thought of the man, Alexander Hamilton?
2. According to Hamilton, when discussing his mother and her marriages:
'Tis a very good thing when their stars unite two people who are fit for each other, who have souls capable of relishing the sweets of friendship and sensibilities… but it’s a dog of [a] life when two dissonant tempers meet.
Looking back at his lineage, what lessons did Hamilton learn from his family? Despite his intellect, did he follow a similar star-crossed path as his parents?
3. Chernow identifies that Hamilton was the blockade in Aaron Burr’s professional career. Describe the relationship between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton? What actions or events ultimately fated them to their ends?
4. Sometimes, children from single parent homes or homes with difficult parentage can result in the child consciously or subconsciously seeking a “father” figure throughout their lives. Do you think that this is true in the case of Hamilton’s life? Can we identify any possible “father” or guardianship figures in his life?
4. Consider the relationship between Hamilton and the Schuyler sisters. In his popular Broadway play, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda describes a complicated and often blurred relationship between Hamilton, Eliza, and Angelica. Consider the below lyrics –
[Hamilton sings]
Eliza, I don’t have a dollar to my name
An acre of land, a troop to command, a dollop of fame
All I have’s my honor, a tolerance for pain
A couple of college credits and my top-notch brain
Insane, your family brings out a different side of me
Peggy confides in my, Angelica tried to take a bite of me
No stress, my love for you is never in doubt.
[Angelica sings]
In a letter I received from you two weeks ago
I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase
It changed the meaning. Did you intend this?
One stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days
It says:
My dearest Angelica
With a comma after “dearest.” You’ve written
My dearest, Angelica.
Do you think the portrayal of Hamilton as a lover, cheater, and scoundrel are an accurate portrayal?
5. Time and time again, we read how Hamilton was starved for knowledge, education, and self-improvement while also writing like he was literally running out of time. What could have caused this inability to be satisfied with one’s class, rank, etc.?
6. Chernow explains that…
In all probability, Alexander Hamilton is the foremost political figure in American history who never attained the presidency, yet he probably had a much deeper and more lasting impact than many who did.
Do you agree with Chernow’s conclusion? Please explain.
7. What did you think of the relationship between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison? How did they, after being party affiliated and co-authoring The Federalists Papers, become enemies?
8. Historians are often reviewing the relationship between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Why do you think this relationship was so difficult, combative, and rebellious? How did the relationship, do you think, change after Hamilton gave his nomination of Jefferson in the 1801 election?
9. According to Chernow, Eliza tasked her decedents – “justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton.” Why did she want justice for him and how did she prove that she was, according to Hamilton, the “best of wives and best of women”?
10. Do you consider Ron Chernow to be a good biographer? Why or why not?
11. What are the successes of Alexander Hamilton as a man, politician / government official, and “man of letters”?
12. What are the failures of Alexander Hamilton? How have those failures marked him in the historical record?
14. What parallels can we identify between the political environment of the 1790s and early 1800s to our current political environment?
15. What was Hamilton’s view of slavery and how is it depicted in the book?
16. While Eliza preserved every possible item that Alexander wrote and document associated with him, how well did Eliza preserve her story? What do you think are the causes that gap the written record?
17. In the 1790s, Alexander faced political decline and withdrew from society. What do you think are the causes for that quietness and withdrawal?
18. Throughout the book, Hamilton is constantly fighting and taking every possible opportunity he could to rise higher in station. While he obviously faced many hardships throughout his life, who do you think were his champions – those who saw the potential in who he would / could become?
19. Do you think the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton could have been avoided? What factors / events led to the duel?
20. What similarities can you identify between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton? What differences can you identify between the two men?
(Questions submitted to LitLovers by Jennifer Johnson, MA, MLIS, Reference Librarian, Springdale Public Library. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Lin-Manuel Miranda, 2016
Grand Central Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455539741
Summary
Winner, 2016 Pulitizer Prize (Drama)
Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical Hamilton is as revolutionary as its subject, the poor kid from the Caribbean who fought the British, defended the Constitution, and helped to found the United States.
Fusing hip-hop, pop, R&B, and the best traditions of theater, this once-in-a-generation show broadens the sound of Broadway, reveals the storytelling power of rap, and claims our country's origins for a diverse new generation.
Hamilton: The Revolution gives readers an unprecedented view of both revolutions, from the only two writers able to provide it. Miranda, along with Jeremy McCarter, a cultural critic and theater artist who was involved in the project from its earliest stages—"since before this was even a show," according to Miranda—traces its development from an improbable performance at the White House to its landmark opening night on Broadway six years later.
In addition, Miranda has written more than 200 funny, revealing footnotes for his award-winning libretto, the full text of which is published here.
Their account features photos by the renowned Frank Ockenfels and veteran Broadway photographer, Joan Marcus; exclusive looks at notebooks and emails; interviews with Questlove, Stephen Sondheim, leading political commentators, and more than 50 people involved with the production; and multiple appearances by President Obama himself.
The book does more than tell the surprising story of how a Broadway musical became a national phenomenon: It demonstrates that America has always been renewed by the brash upstarts and brilliant outsiders, the men and women who don't throw away their shot. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— January 16, 1980
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize for Drama (more below)
• Currently—lives in New York City
Lin-Manuel Miranda is an American actor, playwright, composer, rapper, and writer, best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musical Hamilton, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, 16 Emmy Awards, including Best Musical, among othes. For his performance in the lead role of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda received the 2016 Drama League Distinguished Performance Award.
Prior to Hamilton, Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for the 2008 musical In the Heights, which earned him numerous accolades, including the 2008 Tony Award for Best Original Score and the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Miranda's performance in the show's lead role of Usnavi also earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and the show won Best Musical.
Backgrond
Miranda was born in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, the son of Luz Towns, a clinical psychologist, and Luis A. Miranda, Jr., a Democratic Party consultant who advised New York City mayor Ed Koch. Miranda has one older sister, Luz, who is the CFO of the MirRam Group.
He grew up in the Latino neighborhood of Inwood but would spend a month every year in his grandparents' home town, Vega Alta, in Puerto Rico. He is of mostly Puerto Rican descent, and his mother's ancestors also include an interracial couple who, from the early 1800s, spent their entire married life outrunning slavery.
The name "Lin-Manuel" was inspired by a poem about the Vietnam War, Nana Roja Para Mi Hijo Lin Manuel, by the Puerto Rican writer Jose Manuel Torres Santiago.
Growing up, Lin helped create campaign jingles, including one used for Eliot Spitzer's 2006 New York gubernatorial campaign. After graduating from Hunter College Elementary and High Schools, Miranda received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 2002.
During his time there, he co-founded a hip hop comedy troupe called Freestyle Love Supreme. He wrote the earliest draft of In the Heights in 1999, his sophomore year of college. After the show was accepted by Second Stage, Wesleyan's student theater company, Miranda worked on adding "freestyle rap…and salsa numbers." It played for a week in April, 1999. He wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan, all the while acting in other productions, ranging from musicals to Shakespeare.
Personal life
In 2010, Miranda married a high school friend, Vanessa Adriana Nadal. At their reception, Miranda, along with the bridal party, presented a group rendition of "To Life" from Fiddler on the Roof. The video, posted on YouTube, has been viewed more than five million times. Nadal is a litigation associate at the global law firm Jones Day. The couple's son was born in 2014.
In 2015, Miranda was honored as a recipient of the both the MacArthur "Genius" Award and an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Wesleyan. In 2016, the University of Pennsylvania awarded him an honorary Doctorate of the Arts; he also gave that year's commencement speech.
Hamilton
Miranda read Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton while on vacation in 2008. Inspired, he decided to write a rap about Hamilton, revising it countless times in order to capture Alexander Hamilton's intellect. Almost a year later, in 2009, he performed "My Shot" at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word (he was accompanied by Alex Lacamoire). By 2012, Miranda was performing an extended set piece of Hamilton's life, which was referred to as the Hamilton Mixtape. The New York Times called it "an obvious game changer."
The musical, an off-shoot of the Hamilton Mixtape, premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in January 2015. Miranda wrote both book and score and starred in the title role. The show received highly positive reviews, and its engagement was sold out. Seven months later, it began previews on Broadway and opened in August of 2015. On its first night of Broadway previews, over 700 people lined up for lottery tickets, and the show won rave reviews.
On July 9, 2016, Miranda played his final performance in Hamilton, and his role was taken over by previous understudy, Javier Muñoz. Miranda vowed to return to the show in the near future.
Other
Miranda contributed music for the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the scene in Maz Kanata's Cantina, an homage to the classic Mos Eisley Cantina scene and song by legendary Star Wars composer John Williams.
On January 24, 2016, Miranda performed the role of Loud Hailer in the Broadway production of Les Misérables, fulfilling his childhood dream of being in the show, as it was the first production he ever saw on Broadway.
On March 15, 2016, a portion of the cast of Hamilton performed at the White House and hosted workshops, and afterwards, in the Rose Garden Miranda performed freestyle rap from prompts held up by President Obama.
On April 24, 2016, Miranda performed on the show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in the tenth episode of its third season. The segment explained the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and, at the end, featured Miranda performing an emotional rap about allowing the island to restructure its debt. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/1/2017.)
Book Reviews
For those who may not get into the theater for a while, if ever, Hamilton: The Revolution, a lavishly illustrated new companion book, can help ease the pain. Its yellowed, rough-edged pages are redolent of the founding era.
John Williams - New York Times Book Review
With its back and forth between narrative and song, the [book] is structured like a conventional musical.… It’s a mediated representation that tries to get fans as close as they can get to the immediate experience of the audience member. And it does so through the medium of the moment, print.… Miranda’s annotations bring us into all stages of his writing process.… If you want to know what kind of legacy a Broadway musical is claiming, look at its book.
Sunny Stalter-Pace - Wall Street Journal
[The] backstage “making-of” book. Hamilton: The Revolution is the kind of colorful, big-format souvenir peddled with show posters and cast recordings, and it’s a cinch to delight buffs who can’t get enough of writer-composer-star Lin-Manuel Miranda’s history-as-hip-hop phenomenon. But like the dizzyingly dense show it chronicles — Hamilton, we are told, has nearly 24,000 words, more than many Shakespeare plays — it’s unusually inquisitive and smart.
Ron Pressley - Washington Post
No one could tell Hamilton's story more comprehensively than the man who conceived it, and for that reason Revolution is a must-read for admirers — whether you've scored a ticket or not.
Elysa Gardner - USA Today
Miranda [is] the composer, lyricist, and star of Broadway's…Hamilton, the trailblazing, diverse-cast, hip hop-crazy musical…a Tony favorite.… Here, having told the story of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda tells the story of Hamilton.
Library Journal
This glorious, oversize testament to the uplifting, gorgeous, diverse, multiple Tony Award—winning musical Hamilton is a must-have for initiated and new listeners alike. —Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
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The Refugees
Viet Than Nguyen*, 2017
Grove/Atlantic
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802126399
Summary
A collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family.
With the coruscating gaze that informed his Pulitizer Prize winning The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice in The Refugees to lives led between two worlds—the adopted homeland and the country of birth.
From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco…
…to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover…
…to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will…
Viet Than Nguyen's stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.
The second piece of fiction by a major new voice in American letters, The Refugees is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives. (From the publisher.)
*(Pronounced "n-gwen.")
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Buon Me Thuot, Vietnam
• Raised—Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; San Jose, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize; Edgar Award (see more below)
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Viet Than Nguyen (Pronounced "n-gwen.") was born in Buon Me Thuot, Vietnam. He came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 with his family and was initially settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, one of four such camps for Vietnamese refugees. From there, he moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived until 1978.
Seeking better economic opportunities, his parents moved to San Jose, California, and opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores in the city. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, San Jose had not yet been transformed by the Silicon Valley economy, and was in many ways a rough place to live, at least in the downtown area where Viet’s parents worked. He commemorates this time in his short story “The War Years” (TriQuarterly 135/136, 2009).
Education and teaching
Viet attended St. Patrick School and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. After high school, he briefly attended UC Riverside and UCLA before settling on UC Berkeley, where he graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He stayed at Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in English.
After getting his degree, Viet moved to Los Angeles for a teaching position at the University of Southern California, and has been there ever since.
Writing
Viet's short fiction has been published in Manoa, Best New American Voices 2007, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, Chicago Tribune, and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
He has written a collection of short stories and an academic book called Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, which is the critical bookend to a creative project whose fictional bookend is The Sympathizer (2015). Nothing Ever Dies examines how the so-called Vietnam War has been remembered by many countries and people, from the US to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea, across literature, film, art, museums, memorials, and monuments.
Recognition
2016 - Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
2016 - Winner, Edgar Award for Best First Novel
2016 - Winner, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
2015 - Winner, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
2015-16 - Winner, Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (Adult Fiction)
2016 - Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award
2016 - Finalist, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
(Author bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Short stories are strange things: somber, intense, and abrupt—they lack the luxurious pacing of a novel, the sense of life unfolding over the span of 400 or 800 pages. In a story everything is compressed, every word matters, and every action reaches for metaphorical standing. It practically cries out "proceed with care!" READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Fiction supposedly "gives voice" to its characters, but what can it do for those who would rather not speak? In Viet Thanh Nguyen's superb new collection, The Refugees, men and women displaced from wartime Saigon and resettled in California don't say much about the journey, having practiced many versions of silence—from state censorship to language barriers—along the way. To illustrate their plight, Nguyen homes in on their bodies rather than their words, so that a more accurate description of what the book does is "give flesh" to characters at risk of fading from memory, sometimes their own…If at times I found myself missing the playful, voice-driven punch of The Sympathizer, it's a tribute to Nguyen's range that these eight stories cast a quieter, but no less devastating, spell. The collection's subtle, attentive prose and straightforward narrative style perfectly suit the low-profile civilian lives it explores…With the volume turned down, we lean in more closely, listening beyond what the refugees say to step into their skins.
Mia Alvar - New York Times Book Review
[An] accomplished collection.… With anger but not despair, with reconciliation but not unrealistic hope, and with genuine humour that is not used to diminish anyone, Nguyen has breathed life into many unforgettable characters, and given us a timely book focusing, in the words of Willa Cather, on "the slow working out of fate in people of allied sentiment and allied blood."
Guardian (UK)
With President Trump’s recent attempt to ban refugees from entering America, the quiet but impressively moving tales dissecting the Vietnamese experience in California in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees are a powerful antidote to all the fear mongering and lies out there.… A rich exploration of human identity, family ties and love and loss, never has a short story collection been timelier.
Independent (UK)
The Refugees is as impeccably written as it is timed.… This is an important and incisive book written by a major writer with firsthand knowledge of the human rights drama exploding on the international stage—and the talent to give us inroads toward understanding it.… It is refreshing and essential to have this work from a writer who knows and feels the terrain on an intellectual, emotional and cellular level—it shows.… An exquisite book.
Washington Post
The Refugees arrives right on time.… In The Refugees, such figures aren’t, contra Trump, an undifferentiated, threatening mass. They are complicatedly human and deserving our care and empathy.… In our moment, to look faithfully and empathetically at the scars made by dislocation, to bear witness to the past pain and present vulnerability such scars speak of, is itself a political act. So, too, is Nguyen’s dedication: "For all refugees, everywhere."
Boston Globe
A terrific new book of short stories.… Nguyen is an exceptional storyteller who packs an enormous amount of information and images into a short work.… Nguyen’s vision of the Vietnamese migration to the United States and its impact on the nation is complex. His message is not Pollyannaish or demonizing.… Nguyen’s message, instead, is that they are people, like all of us, with complicated lives and histories.
Chicago Tribune
The Refugees showcases the same astute and penetrating intelligence that characterized [Nguyen’s] Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer.… Nguyen is an expert on prickly family dynamicsv.… He can also be a sly humorist.… The Refugees confirms Nguyen as an agile, trenchant writer, able to inhabit a number of contrary points of view. And it whets your appetite for his next novel.
Seattle Times
At a time when paranoia about refugees and migrants has reached a new high in America and perhaps the world, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s first collection of short stories, The Refugees, adds a necessary voice humanizing this group of demonized people.… These eight works celebrate the art of telling stories as an act of resilience and survival .… A beautifully written collection, filled with empathy and insight into the lives of people who have too often been erased from the larger American media landscape.
Dallas Morning News
A beautiful collection that deftly illustrates the experiences of the kinds of people our country has, until recently, welcomed with open arms (UK). It’s hard not to feel for Nguyen’s characters.… But Nguyen never asks the reader to pity them; he wants us only to see them as human beings. And because of his wonderful writing, it’s impossible not to do so. It’s an urgent, wonderful collection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling—it can bear witness to the lives of people who we can’t afford to forget.
NPR Books
Tragically good timing.… A short-story collection mostly plumbing the experience of boat-bound Vietnamese who escaped to California.… But there are others of different nationalities, alienated not from a nation but from love or home, and displaced in subtler ways.… Ultimately, Nguyen enlarges empathy, the high ideal of literature and the enemy of hate and fear.
New York Magazine
The 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner returns with a beautifully crafted collection that explores the netherworld of Vietnamese refugees, whose lives and cultural dislocation he dissects with precision and grace.
Oprah Magazine
(Starred review.) Each searing tale.…a pressure cooker of unease, simmering with unresolved issues of memory and identity.… Nguyen is not here to sympathize...but to challenge the experience of white America as the invisible norm.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Refugees is a highly gratifying interlude.… Nguyen won't disappoint.… [H]ighly recommended. —Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Each intimate, supple, and heartrending story is unique in its particulars even as all are works of piercing clarity, poignant emotional nuance, and searing insights into the trauma of war and the long chill of exile, the assault on identity and the resilience of the self, and the fragility and preciousness of memories.
Booklist
Nguyen's slice-of-life approach is precise without being clinical, archly humorous without being condescending, and full of understanding.… [His] stories, excellent from start to finish, transcend ethnic boundaries to speak to human universals.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Refugees…then take off on your own:
GENERAL
1. In most of these stories, the primary characters are refugees from Vietnam to America. One way to discuss them is to ask what other ways it is possible to be a refugee, not only in terms of geography and nationality, but in a more personal way?
BLACK EYED WOMAN
1. The unnamed daughter of the story asks us, "Was it ironic, then, that I made a living from being a ghost writer?" Of course it is…but why?
2. When the narrator bemoans the fact that she, not her brother, was the one who got to live, her brother replies, "You died, too. You just don't know it." What does he mean?
3. Do you believe in ghosts?
LIEM'S PLAN
1.What does the title refer to—what is Liem's plan?
2. What do you think of Marcus? When Liem tells him he was too worried about getting a seat on the crowded bus to tell his parents he loved them, Marcus assures him, "that's all in the past. The best way you can help them now is by helping yourself." Is Marcus correct? Liem thinks his response is a very American way of thinking. Why does he think so? What do you think: is the response from Marcus typically American? If so, is that good or bad?
3. At the story's end, after reading his parents' letter, Liem peers out through the window at two men walking by. What is he thinking? And what is the significance of the fact that after the men had passed, "he was still standing with his hand pressed to the window," wondering if anyone was watching him?
THE WAR YEARS
1. The first phrase of the opening sentence recalls the time Mrs. Hoa "broke into our lives." Why "broke"? What does that particular word suggest? Why not the summer that "we met Mrs. Hoa" or that "she came into our lives"?
2. Why does the narrator's mother end up giving Mrs. Hoa money?
THE TRANSPLANT
1. Talk about the irony of the title and the fact that Arthur received a new kidney from a Vietnamese immigrant?
2. Consider, too, the hundreds of boxes of knock-off merchandise "transplanted" to Arthur's garage.
I'D LOVE YOU TO WANT ME
1. Why is the wife known only as Mrs. Khanh; we're not given her first name. Why is that?
2. How do memories of the family's escape from Vietnam affect Mrs. Khanh, even years later?
3. In what way is Mrs. Khanh a refugee in her marriage?
THE AMERICANS
!. Why is this story, about an American-born man and his daughter, included in a collection about Vietnamese refugees who have settled in America? Who is the refugee in the story?
2. How differently do James Carver and his daughter Claire view Vietnam? What has made James so angry; what is he angry about? What does James come to realize by the end, and why does he cry?
SOMEONE ELSE BESIDES YOU
1. Do Sam and his ex-wife have any future together? Is this their final goodbye?
2. What is the significance of the title? To whom does it refer?
FATHER LAND
1. Why does Vivien misrepresent herself? Had she not confessed to Phuong, would her lies have made any difference; would they have done any harm?
2. Vivien tells Phuong that she lacks respect for their father. Why?
3. Later, Phuong studies one of the photos she took of Vivien and her father; she is certain that her father prefers Vivien over his other children. Why does she think so? Do you think she is correct?
4. Why does Phuong burn the photos at the end? What is the significance of the ashes vanishing into the sky—"an inverted blue bowl of the finest crystal, covering the whole of Saigon as far as her eyes could see"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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