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Book Review: Appalachian Zen by Steve Kanji Ruhl
A memoir written throughout one man’s life looking back on his childhood in the Appalachian region of Pennsylvania and following his journey to becoming a Zen Buddhist minister in Massachusetts.
Summary:
Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something a Buddhist minister teaching Zen. Throughout the book, Ruhl engages Buddhist themes of awakening and the death of the self by confronting the lives and deaths, including two by suicide, of his loved ones. This provocative memoir tells how it feels to practice Zen, and to move toward a life of hard-won forgiveness, healing, and freedom.
Review:
As a woman who grew up in the hills of Vermont, I’ve felt an affinity for other hill folk throughout my life, but especially ones who struggled with the local culture and left looking for something else. The title of this book drew me in instantly when I saw it on my library’s new book shelf, and I brought it home after quickly verifying it was, indeed, about both Appalachia and Zen Buddhism.
I’ve read a lot of memoirs and a lot of Buddhist books in my day. But I’ve never read a book that’s both. I’ve also never read a memoir that was written over decades. That’s something that fascinated me about this memoir – Ruhl actually wrote large section of it while he was living through those moments. Of course, some parts, like looking back on his childhood, were written in retrospect, but others were written in the moment. Thus, Ruhl’s own voice and perspective changes over the course of the memoir in ways I found fascinating. Perhaps the most noticeable to me was how he moved from exoticizing Japan a bit when he first visited to beautifully articulating why that needs to be avoided as an American Zen practitioner later in the book.
Ruhl beautifully articulates what it feels like to grow up rural white poor, how that culture is beautiful and painful simultaneously, and, similarly, how it is both a relief and an ache to leave and live elsewhere. I thought this book would pair nicely with reading Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams (review). As part of his training, Ruhl went back to Pennsylvania to bring Zen to these hills. I was so excited about this part of the book because I find the idea of Buddhist ministry to the rural parts of the US like where I grew up so fascinating. But unfortunately the book had very little to say about it. That disappointed me. I wanted to know more about how he felt going back, what it was like to be back as a forming Zen minister, and how people in the area responded to Zen. It seemed to me that he was quite motivated to go back and do this work and then after his training he, instead, returned to Massachusetts. I realize that even memoirists get to hold parts of themselves and their journey private. But in a book called Appalachian Zen, I felt like it wasn’t unreasonable of me as a reader to expect more clarity about what happened here. Even if something simple and straightforward was said like…I realized that type of ministry wasn’t for me.
In contrast the author is exquisitely honest when discussing the suicides of two women he loved dearly – his sister and a close friend (former girlfriend). This part of the book moved me so much, I could only read it a few pages at a time. The author reveals the full spectrum of grief, including guilt, and even includes some excerpts from his ex-girlfriend’s journals, which she mailed to him just before she committed suicide. This is one of the most raw and honest accountings of being bereaved for someone lost in that way. But do be aware the methods of suicide are described (although not in graphic detail).
Ruhl describes participating in trainings with both the Zen Peacemakers, and the Zen Mountain Monastery, along with some other organizations. His trainings with the Zen Peacemakers included taking on being unhoused for a few days and traveling to Dachau to confront the Holocaust. His time with the Zen Mountain Monastery seems to have been more traditionally Zen. You can read more about Ruhl’s current work on his website.
Overall, this is a unique and emotional memoir written throughout the author’s life. The reader should be prepared for some areas to be explored more in-depth than others and open to aspects of Zen Buddhist thought being incorporated throughout.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 356 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
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Book Review: The Saga of the Bloody Benders by Rick Geary
A true crime graphic novel telling of a family of serial killers in the 1870s.
Summary:
Out on a deserted stretch of Kansas road linking newly forming towns, a mysterious family stakes a claim and builds an inn for weary visitors. Soon, reports multiply of disappearances around that area. Generally, those who disappear have plenty of cash on them. A delicious tale of a gruesome family fronted by a beguiling lass who led their victims on…
Review:
I first heard about the Bloody Benders in an American Indians in Children’s Literature blog post about what Laura Ingalls Wilder left out of the Little House books. Essentially, Laura said she left out some aspects of her childhood because she didn’t think they belonged in a book written for children,…one of which is how Pa probably participated in mob justice against the Benders. American Indians in Children’s Literature does a great job breaking down how problematic it is that depicting white serial killers in her books wasn’t ok but depicting the horrifying treatment of Indigenous peoples was. In any case, I got curious about the Bloody Benders, and the internet said this was one of the better books written about the topic, so I picked it up from my public library.
The artwork is nice. I particularly enjoyed this depicted of the Bender family’s one-room grocery and inn to demonstrate how they pulled off the serial killings.
The content is factual and is careful to steer clear of using quotes in the panels when we don’t actually know what anyone said.
What made me dislike the book, though, was how it treated both Indigenous peoples and women. I understand that sometimes in historic nonfiction if a quote is being used or documents from the time period that it will use offensive language. However, this book used offensive language in parts that were narration written by the modern day author. It was published in 2007, and I truly feel someone on this book team should have been more thoughtful. A near-victim of the Benders was a Catholic missionary to the Osage people. Instead of saying it this way, though, the book says he, “dedicated his life to converting the savages.” This is the use of both a dehumanizing term and a glossing over of how missionary work was used as a weapon against Indigenous peoples in the Americas. This is a book about serial killers – I think whoever is reading it should be able to handle at least a footnote illuminating the complexities of this person’s missionary work.
With regards to the treatment of women, this is mostly in regards to how Kate Bender is discussed in the book. She is one of the four Bloody Benders, so I certainly don’t expect her to be discussed kindly, however while most of the book strives to stick closely to the truth as far as we know it, there is one part of the book that breaks down how folks determined the Benders pulled off their killings, based on the layout of the room, the trap door found, and reports of survivors. Most of this sticks to the facts, but then it gets to the part where Kate feeds the person sitting down at the guest table and says, “Does Kate also offer sexual favors as part of the package? No certain answer will ever be known.” What an unnecessarily and misogynistic supposition. Nothing that we know about Kate from survivors and those who knew her suggests she was promiscuous at all. In fact, earlier in the book it mentions she entertained suitors who ran errands for her but the suitors were never successful with her. Later when the book discusses possible endings for the various Benders that the rumor mills supposed, one proposed for Kate is as “a whore in Montana.” I trust that this was a true rumor, but it could have very easily said prostitute or sex worker.
True crime writing has the opportunity to analyze a crime and the society that surrounded it through a current lens. It can highlight both the good and the bad of that society and look at how this crime managed to occur, and, in the case of some crimes, go unstopped for so long. This book doesn’t do that, making it a beautifully illustrated reporting of what happened, lacking any analytical meat.
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2 out of 5 stars
Length: 76 pages – short nonfiction
Source: Library
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Book Review: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
A previously incarcerated Indigenous woman loves her job at an independent bookstore focused on Indigenous literature right up until the store’s most annoying customer dies and begins haunting it.
Summary:
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
Review:
It’s a good thing I didn’t see that this book is magical realism or I wouldn’t have picked it up. You see, I had a serious misunderstanding of what magical realism is and thought I didn’t like it. In fact, I like it very much. I only wish I had first been introduced to it by the excellent explanation from Master Class originally. I’m excited that this book has helped me see past the magical realism label.
The thing that I love structurally about this book is how the title has so many different meanings. There’s the sentence that Tookie serves for her crime. There’s the sentence found within the book that Flora is reading when she dies. And there’s many other sentences throughout the book. I love when one title has many meanings.
The book starts with Tookie thinking back briefly on her incarceration and what landed her there. Part of what made the beginning so readable was how Tookie told this story. It was like speaking with a friend about a piece of their past. Raw and real but quick and to the point. It got me invested in the book right away. Then we jump to Tookie’s present, working in the bookstore, and the haunting, and this is utterly engaging right away as well. Tookie is flawed but so relatable. I think most readers will find her to be this way because she’s such a huge reader herself.
I also found her relatable because she’s in long-term recovery. I like how she sometimes thinks about how she was but it’s not like any single bad day gives her an urge she has to fight. A lot of times in literature and movies only early sobriety is shown, and the fact is, the experience in long-term recovery is different. I was so glad to see that in Tookie, and to see her breaking the multi-generational disease. But I also appreciated the very realistic depiction of her being concerned about talking about the haunting with her husband, Pollux, for fear he would think she had relapsed. I also should mention that both Tookie and her niece are bisexual. Their sexual fluidity is never judged or questioned. It’s just a part of who they are, which I really appreciated.
The book centers around a difficult question that it doesn’t provide answers for. Flora is a “wannabe Indian.” She’s a white woman who claims Indigenous heritage based on one photo she says is of a great-grandparent. The Indigenous community is dubious but doesn’t want to tell her she can’t belong. She spends much of her life working for the betterment of Indigenous people, including even taking in an unhoused teenager and caring for her so much that when she’s grown she refers to her as mother. So everyone has complex feelings about her. There are also some scenes that show white people behaving in offensive ways and smoothly depict how hard it is for Indigenous people to deal with these aggressions on a regular basis. One that really stuck in my mind was the white woman who shows up at the Indigenous bookstore and talks about her grandmother reassembling Indigenous bones she found on her land and winning a blue ribbon for it. She doesn’t understand why this is offensive to the Indigenous people she’s speaking with. To me the examples like this throughout the book demonstrate two types of white people who are hurtful to Indigenous people. The book is never preachy with these scenes. They come across as very realistic depictions of, unfortunately, regular interactions between Indigenous people and white people. If you yourself aren’t sure why these two types of interactions are hurtful, then I think this book would show you.
I wasn’t sure how I would feel reading a fictional book set during the first year of the pandemic. Overall, even though Tookie’s experiences and mine were different from each other (she was much older than me and had an essential worker, public facing job), I still found it realistic and relatable. The book never dwelled too much on any individual aspect of the pandemic but had scenes that were necessary reminders of how things were in the early days, like when Tookie goes to the grocery store to stock up just in case and ends up buying the best she can from what’s left, such as a tube of cookie dough. Similarly, Minneapolis was where George Floyd was killed and followed by the protests that spread throughout the country in 2020, and so this had to be a part of the book. At the start of the book it’s established that Tookie’s husband, Pollux, is who actually arrested her. By the time she was out of prison, he had left the tribal police force. But her household still must deal with the complex situation of having a previously incarcerated person and an ex-cop in the same household during this tumultuous time. There’s also the nice addition of Pollux’s niece, Hetta, living with them and, as a young person, being more involved in the protests. This thoughtful characterization allowed for multiple perspectives on the protests. For example, while there is support, there is also sadness and concern about the small businesses being impacted.
In spite of all that comes in the middle, the last part of the book deals mainly with Tookie’s relationship with Pollux and Tookie dealing with Flora’s ghost. This provides closure even while the reader knows the difficulties didn’t end in November 2020. In many ways I found this to be a story about relationships and reconciliation.
Overall, this is a strong piece of contemporary magical realism. If you’re ready to read a book featuring the pandemic while not being about the pandemic itself, this is a great place to begin.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 387 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
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Book Review: Long Story Short: 100 Classic Books in 3 Panels by Lisa Brown
For English literature lovers who want to explain why they loved…or hated…a classic in one comic.
Summary:
100 pithy and skewering three-panel literary summaries, from curriculum classics like Don Quixote, Lord of the Flies, and Jane Eyre to modern favorites like Beloved, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Atonement, conveniently organized by subjects including “Love,” “Sex,” “Death,” and “Female Trouble.”
Review:
I became interested in this book because the amazing website American Indians in Children’s Literature described the comic about Little House on the Prairie but when I checked out the link I found the comic gone and a prompt about the book. In fairness, it had been more than 12 years since that article was published so I’m not too surprised Lisa Brown got a book deal in the meantime. It came in quite quickly for me from the library, and I read it in less than 30 minutes.
Rather than being organized by time period, the classics are organized by topic like “Love” and “Death.” This is also an inclusive definition of classics including ancient literature like Beowulf to modern pieces like The Fault in Our Stars. I like her illustration style. It’s colorful and engaging. You can see examples of actual panels from the book on her website. (It doesn’t include the Little House one but it does include one of my other favorites from the book – Edgar Allan Poe.)
You might think this is a way to Sparknotes your way through 100 books. This is not the case. The comics that were the funniest and most meaningful were the ones for books I had read. The ones for pieces I hadn’t fell kind of flat for me. This is actually sort of like a collection of inside jokes from one reader to another, and in order for the inside joke to make sense, you have to have read the book in question. That said, a couple of the comics for books I had read fell flat for me because I felt like they missed the point of the book. For example, I felt like the comic summary of Their Eyes Were Watching God was a very poor summary of an absolutely amazing book. So my experience of the comics was kind of all over the place.
Overall, this is an interesting collection of short comics drawn in an engaging manner. Recommended to big readers who want a couple of inside joke style chuckles. It could also make a good gift to a big reader you know.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 80 pages – novella
Source: Library
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 