Best books... chosen by Danez Smith
One of America’s most acclaimed young poets, Danez Smith is the author of Don’t
Call Us Dead, a 2017 National Book Award finalist. Smith’s new collection, Homie,
celebrates the sustaining power of friendship in the LGBTQ community.24 ARTS The Book List
Man vs. Sky by Corey Zeller (2013). In bound-
less, brief prose poems, Zeller embodies the
voice of a recently passed-on friend as he travels
through the afterlife. Besides haunting me with
its beauty to this day, this collection taught me
that we can offer the dead not just our grief but
our imaginations and dreams as well.Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler (1989). This
post-apocalyptic, alien-salvation trilogy from the
novelist who predicted “Make America Great
Again” asks necessary questions about the harm-
ful structures we put our faith in despite our
intelligence, and also how or if we will evolve
out of our most dangerous selves. An essential,
human book—with blue dreadlocked aliens!My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi
(2014–present). I’m a sucker for high school
drama, superpowers, good-hearted heroes, and
complicated villains. This manga series is one of
my favorite escapes. In a world where everybody
and their mama has a superpower (literally),
what makes someone a hero isn’t about power
or strength but about the desire to make people
smile. Instant tears.The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton
(2012). My bible. Open up to any page and
Clifton delivers a word. Whether the subject is
roaches, family, death, or surviving, she has a
psalm for all occasions. She can create the most
complicated magic out of the simplest words.
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier (2017). When I
was nominated for the National Book Award, I
was rooting for this book to win. Long Soldier’s
poems take up many shapes, forms, and voices
to masterfully achieve two of poetry’s greatest
potentials: to stretch and explode what language
can do, and to reveal how language can disman-
tle and interrogate the mindset of nations that
attempt to weaponize language against us.
Deus Ex Nigrum by Jasmine Reid (2019). I
recently picked this chapbook for a prize. It’s a
marvel of language and heart. Reid’s lyrics map
the mundane and the extraordinary with rare
and invigorating skill. In a world and a country
ever dangerous to the black trans femme, this
poet says, “if I am to be a twist ending/let it be
that I lived.” I am so excited to follow Reid’s
poems into the future.Also of interest...in the ways of the wealthy
HenryCromett
,^ Tabia
Yapp“It takes a special kind of audacity to
write a comic novel about teenagers
with eating disorders,” said Michael
Schaub in NPR.org. But Scarlett
Thomas performs the trick dazzlingly
in this “brash, bizarre” tale set in
Britain at a girls’ boarding school whose privileged
students are locked in a cutthroat weight-loss
competition. Thomas’ jabs are aimed less at the
girls, even when they’re cruel, than at their clue-
less adult minders. The result “feels like something
that hasn’t really been attempted before.”Oligarchy
by Scarlett Thomas (Counterpoint, $26)
This absurdist novel’s opening pages
are “absolutely brilliant, a frenetic,
hilarious rush,” said Kevin Wilson in
The New York Times. A bag packed
with $100 bills falls from a penthouse
balcony at the feet of a jobless schlub,
and he and his girlfriend instantly embark on a
hedonistic spending spree. But even though hired
goons soon take up the couple’s trail and the vio-
lence quotient spikes, the pace of Stephen Wright’s
tale eventually flags. “All that kept me going was
Wright’s sentences, so wonderful, so bizarre.”Processed Cheese
by Stephen Wright (Little, Brown, $28)Francesca Cartier Brickell’s great-great-
great grandfather would be proud, said
The Economist. A direct descendent
of the Parisian founder of the Cartier
jewelry empire, Brickell has mined a
cache of family letters to produce an
insightful history of her forebears that’s “studded
with high-society dash.” As the family concern
grows into a global brand, a parade of royals and
movie stars add sparkle to each chapter. In so
many ways, Brickell’s meticulously wrought narra-
tive “bears the Cartier hallmark.”The Cartiers
by Francesca Cartier Brickell (Ballantine, $35)
This closely reported history of the
Trump and Kushner families proves
“absolutely terrifying,” said Talya Zax
in Forward.com. Though it’s not news
that the president and his son-in-law
are scions of real estate clans that have
pursued wealth with little concern for the law, it’s
“genuinely shocking” to see again and again how
the Trumps and Kushners have hobbled and then
co-opted the officials positioned to police them.
Author Andrea Bernstein suggests the system can
be fixed. But her reporting suggests otherwise.American Oligarchs
by Andrea Bernstein (Norton, $30)Colin O’Brady
Colin O’Brady is working
through a bucket list like no
other, said Elizabeth Winkler
in The Wall Street Journal.
Twelve years ago, when the
Oregon native was just 22, he
was lying in a hospital recov-
ering from severe burns to
his legs that
he was told
might prevent
him from
ever walking
again. “I’d
been a life-
long athlete,”
he says. “I
thought, ‘Who am I without
that?’” But he heeded his
mother’s advice to set a goal
beyond walking and chose
completing a triathlon. A year
later, he won the Chicago
Triathlon—and set some new
goals. Four years ago, he
reached both the North and
South poles and climbed the
tallest mountain on each of
the seven continents. And in
December 2018, he became
the first person to cross Ant-
arc tica alone. All such feats
were possible, he says, “not in
spite of the burn accident but
because of it. They’re a con-
tinuation of that curiosity—
what am I capable of?”
The Antarctica trek was
particularly challenging. As
O’Brady recounts in his new
memoir, The Impossible
First, the feat required strap-
ping on skis and dragging a
375-pound sled more than
900 miles through minus-80
windchill temperatures. And
then there was the mental toll:
“When you’re alone for that
long, it’s like throwing a party
for yourself, but all of your
angels and all of your demons
are invited,” he says. In the
end, following a 32-hour final
push, he reached his destina-
tion two days before a rival
endurance athlete. O’Brady,
who returned to Ant arc tica
last year by rowboat, says he
hopes his story will encour-
age others to test the limits
of their capabilities. “Every
human,” he says, “has a res-
ervoir of untapped potential.”Author of the week