Eugene weekly., December 13, 2018, Page 13, Image 13

Winter Reading
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Eugene Public
Library
Mariner Books, $14.99.
In his impressive debut, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
delivers a collection of short stories that present an all-
too-familiar and cruel world through the lens of Black
America. Though the stories range from the utterly surreal
and wonderfully bizarre to straight up dystopian horror, the
humanity of the characters will ground you in the present
day muck of racism, capitalism, and a general lack of
love and acceptance of one another. The language is often
violent though wholly delightful to the senses.
The first story is particularly upsetting as we witness
the narrator’s dizzying battle with gruesome injustice,
both within himself and with the broken system around
him. There is a beauty in this character’s breakdown that
is especially moving, which echoes the sentiment of the
entire collection. While each piece serves as its own entity,
there is a fluidigy to the collection, mostly in the way the
essence of that first narrator is seen through to the end.
Friday Black is truly one of the best debut’s I’ve read.
This is what the textual model for both history and literature
should look like in the future, if not now. — Alexis Reid
Eugene Public Library’s recommendations this year
celebrate diversity with a selection of children’s books to
bring joy to all ages. Visit the Downtown Library, Bethel
Branch or Sheldon Branch in person, online at eugene-or.
gov/library or call 541-682-8316. Happy reading!
Dreamers by Yuyi Morales. Holiday House/Porter, $18.99.
A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Li.
Little, Brown, $17.99.
Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall. Little, Brown, $18.99.
k The Golden Thread: A Song for Pete Seeger by Colin
Meloy with illustrations by Nikki McClure.
HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $18.99.
Imagine by Juan Felipe Herrera with
illustrations by Lauren Castillo. Candlewick, $16.99.
Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein by Linda Bailey
with illustrations by Julia Sarda. Tundra, $17.99.
The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sell. Knopf, $18.99.
We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices: Words and
Images of Hope. Edited by Wade Hudson
and Cheryl Willis Hudson. Crown, $18.99.
Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame
Alexander, with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth,
with illustrations by Ekua Holmes. Candlewick, $16.99
My Heart Fills with Happiness by Monique Gray Smith
with illustrations by Julie Flett. Orca, $9.95.
and yes, because his gift before death in 2017 was to bring
the youthful fury and self-destructive striving of Jesus’ Son
to bear on his own mortality in the posthumous collection,
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. Elegaic, bittersweet and
yet ever generous of soul, these short stories singe where
his previous collection seared, and the results are no less
devastating and tragicomic. Not exactly a sequel, the
collection nonetheless provides a bookend of sorts, with
story after story portraying a narrator reeling from the
nonfiction
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One
Woman’s Obsessive Search for the
Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara.
consequences of life’s mostly bad decisions as he stares
down his own impending oblivion, with humor, candor and
a slouching toward redemption. Johnson was one of our
finest writers, and Largesse is a fitting epitaph to a career
spent wrestling with the angels and demons of existence.
— Rick Levin
Harper Collins Publishers, $27.99.
Around Halloween time, I get the insatiable need to
consume all things creepy and dark — horror movies,
murder podcasts, etc. Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone
in the Dark is a true-crime thriller that very specifically
scratched that itch. The book covers the history of rapes
and murders committed by the Golden State Killer, also
known as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night
Emer ald City
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