Literary Safari

Of summer reading, the Presbyterian minister Henry Ward Beecher, once said, “There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.”

I have to agree. When summer rolls around, I’m always on the lookout for a different kind of book — one that feels like it belongs just as much in a beach cabana as it does it on a park bench, an airplane, a moving train, or my bed; one that makes me think and feel just as much as it allows me to relax and smile; one made for my attention span that alternates between the ability to concentrate and the desire to flit about.

I wrote earlier about how much I enjoyed Gene Yang’s new collection of graphic short stories, The Eternal Smile.

Here, then, are some of my other reading picks for this season:

Rakesh Satyal’s Blue Boy (Kensington Publishing).
Hirsh Sawhney’s Delhi Noir (Akashic Books).
Kwei Quartey’s Wife of the Gods: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery (Random House).

While I sit here in steamy New York City awaiting the arrival of my first child and reading lots of non-fiction birthing and pregnancy books, these fictional reads have succeeded in take me through the three places that have been a part of my life so far: Ghana, India, and the US.

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When I received my copy of Gene Yang’s latest graphic novel The Eternal Smile, the bright yellow reminded me of his award-winning and best-selling American Born Chinese, one of my favorite graphic novel reads over the past couple of years. I cracked it open, eager to see what his collaboration with graphic artist Derek Kim (Yang wrote the script) had yielded. And the verdict is: Another memorable read! This collection of three short stories is filled with Yang’s trademark unexpected twists and turns, humor, and unique characters.

Yang has traveled far from the themes of identity and immigration which defined American Born Chinese. The thread tying the three disparate stories in The Eternal Smile together is technology–how it shapes, defines, and even disrupts human existence today.

In the first story “Duncan’s Kingdom,” we meet a  young man seeking to win over a princess’s heart by proving his heroic nature to her by killing off a frog king. Fairy tale collides with fantasy in a story that explores the power of gaming in the lives of adolescents.

In the namesake story “Gran’Pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile,” illustrated in classic comic fashion with vivid sound effects, we meet a greedy frog intent on creating a swimming hole filled with gold. Nothing satisfies him until he spots a smile in the sky and decides to create a church that people will flock to with their pocketbooks. As our frog protagonist seeks out his most “profitable venture yet,” things go slightly awry and we are whisked into a TV studio where we discover that he is actually a “chip-enhanced character” in a popular children’s show, Frog Tales, that combines “the unpredictable drama of reality Tv with the anthropomorphic fun of Saturday morning cartoons.”

The final gem in this collection is “Urgent Request,” my favorite story about an office worker named Janet whose mundane existence takes an exciting turn when she starts receiving emails from … a Nigerian prince who has chosen her to help him solve his family’s problems! Delicate black and white illustrations on yellow paper give way to a few pages of four-color depictions where Janet’s fantasies transform her into a Nigerian queen … But really the heart of this story is a look at how it is not so impossible to seek out romantic distractions from 9-5 frustrations through traps and gimmicks that make their way into inboxes.

I’ll stop here. I usually try not to give away any spoilers. I’ll just say that if you’re looking for a thought-provoking comic that examines the ripple effects of technology on our lives with a grain of humor, this is a book you won’t want to miss.