Sponsored by Henry Holt and Company.
From award-winning journalist Jamie Thompson, Standoff offers a nuanced look at race and policing in America. On the evening of July 7, 2016, protesters gathered across the nation after police shot two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a man carrying a rifle killed five officers and wounded eleven others. A small group of cops cornered the shooter, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. Crisis negotiator Larry Gordon bonded with the gunman while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end.
Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!
It’s still Banned Books Week, which means recommending another oft-challenged book that corresponds to this year’s theme of Censorship is a Dead End. Find Your Freedom to Read. The book that fits the bill is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Not only was it one of the Top 10 Challenged Books of 2019, The Handmaid’s Tale is #29 on the list of the 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books from the last decade.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. Once a day, she is allowed to leave the Commander’s home and go to the food markets where the signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. Once a month, she prays for the Commander to make her pregnant. In a time of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only as valuable as their viable ovaries. There was a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job and money of her own, but that is gone now.
I read The Handmaid’s Tale about a year after the election of President Trump, and this book was a serious gut punch. I’m sure if you read it in our current environment with both a generation-defining election and Supreme Court nomination in the balance, The Handmaid’s Tale would leave you with a similar feeling. Although I felt slightly underwhelmed by the novel as a whole since it seems to be white feminism’s cautionary tale, I enjoyed the disjointed narration between Offred’s life before Gilead and her current life as a Handmaid.
This story kept my attention from the beginning and made me wonder which women in The Handmaid’s Tale I would be, but I was unsatisfied with the ambiguous ending. Lately, I’ve been wondering if my questions were answered in The Testaments, but I’m not excited to read the sequel, so I guess I may never know.
Until next time bookish friends,
Katisha
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