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Books can take you anywhere. Across

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oceans, across borders, to places

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you may have never seen. And those

0:26

books are some of the ones that we treasure

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most. I'm Linda Holmes, and today

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we're recommending great books that take you

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around the world on Pop Culture Happy Hour

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from NPR.

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1:26

Joining me today is Leah Donella. She's

1:28

the supervising editor at NPR's Code

1:30

Switch. Hey, Leah. Hey, Linda. Welcome

1:32

back to the show. We're always delighted to have you. Books

1:35

we love as many of our listeners hopefully

1:38

know is NPR's sortable list of

1:40

book recommendations from real people

1:42

inside and outside NPR.

1:44

And today we've arrived, so to speak, at

1:47

stories about places around the

1:49

world. Leah, what is the first recommendation

1:52

that you brought?

1:53

My first recommendation is a book called Chilean

1:56

Poet, a novel, and it's

1:58

by Alejandro Zambra.

2:00

All right, tell me a little bit about Chilean

2:02

poet. Okay, so the story follows

2:04

this guy. He starts out as a teenager,

2:07

a young guy named Gonzalo, and

2:09

it kind of travels with him throughout his

2:11

life. It takes place in Santiago,

2:13

and Gonzalo is kind

2:15

of, as many of us are, trying to figure

2:18

out who he is, what he wants to do with his life.

2:21

And as a young man, he kind of

2:23

reconnects a romance with his high school

2:26

girlfriend and winds up

2:28

being the stepfather to her young child.

2:32

And so as he's kind of

2:34

floating through his 20s, figuring out what that's going

2:36

to mean and what he wants to do, he's also figuring

2:38

out what it means to be, I mean,

2:41

the way he kind of described it as sort of a dad,

2:43

but not really, in this role that doesn't

2:45

have a huge amount of good

2:48

representations in pop culture

2:50

and media. So he's figuring

2:52

that out. And the book is really funny, it's really

2:55

sweet, and kind of an offbeat

2:57

family story.

2:58

Yeah. How did you find this book? I

3:01

think it honestly was just in a pile of books

3:03

that got sent to NPR. And

3:06

I had been interested because I don't think, I can't

3:08

remember recently having read a book by a

3:10

Chilean author before, so I just thought, let

3:12

me see what this is like. And then within the first

3:14

few pages, I knew it was going to be a good one. Absolutely,

3:17

absolutely. All right, so that is Chilean poet,

3:20

a novel by Alejandro Zombre. All

3:22

right, tell me about your second pick. Okay,

3:25

this one is called America Made Me a Black

3:27

Man, a memoir. It's

3:28

by Boya Jafarra, who

3:31

is an

3:32

author from Somalia. So

3:34

this is a memoir about Boya's

3:36

journey basically from Somalia to the United

3:39

States and what happened when he got

3:41

to a suburb of Boston. And

3:44

it's interesting because before he came

3:46

to the US, he had seen tons

3:48

of movies and TV shows

3:51

about what the US was going to be like and heard

3:53

kind of this myth

3:55

of the US. So he really thought that it was

3:58

going to be this kind of pair of books.

3:59

paradise type place, not quite

4:02

like the streets are paved with gold, but very

4:04

much he thought it would be almost heaven. That's

4:06

the way it was described to him growing up.

4:09

And so when he got to the US,

4:11

he

4:13

at first was really kind

4:15

of absorbed in that fantasy and kind

4:17

of holding on to that perception.

4:20

But he also was experiencing

4:22

these microaggressions and different acts of outright

4:25

racism and anti-blackness. And

4:28

so that kind of began to chip away at

4:30

his idea of what

4:32

the US was. And he was in a very, very

4:34

white suburb where there

4:36

weren't a lot of other people who looked

4:38

like him.

4:40

The book is kind of about his process

4:42

of understanding what it would mean to be black

4:44

in this place that he thought was going to be paradise

4:46

and was a paradise for other

4:48

people.

4:49

And then also eventually his finding community

4:52

and other black people and realizing that that

4:54

was one of the things that was going to help get

4:56

him through this trauma

4:59

of all the racism that he was experiencing. I'm

5:01

so very glad that we included

5:03

this book in this episode because, you

5:06

know, around the world includes what

5:08

is the place that you live look like through the

5:10

eyes of somebody who wasn't born here? Oh,

5:12

totally. I mean, it reads a bit like

5:14

a travel memoir, which it in

5:17

a way is for him. You do start

5:19

seeing things in a totally

5:22

different way, the way you would kind of do research if you were going

5:24

on a trip to a different country. Mm-hmm.

5:28

All right. So that is called America

5:30

Made Me a Black Man,

5:31

a memoir by Boya Farah.

5:34

All right, Leah, what is your third pick?

5:37

So the third pick is called Mother of Strangers.

5:39

This one is also a novel. And it

5:42

takes place in the city of Jaffa, which

5:44

is now one of the oldest parts of Tel Aviv. It

5:47

follows the main character who

5:49

is a 15-year-old named Subi

5:52

and follows kind of his story

5:54

of becoming infatuated with

5:56

and falling in love with a girl

5:59

who is in a

5:59

a couple neighborhoods over. But then it's

6:02

also kind of set alongside the process

6:04

of this city kind of getting

6:06

totally changed and many

6:09

parts of it destroyed in the process of

6:11

all of the political and

6:14

social changes that are happening when

6:16

it takes place. Yeah, what

6:19

grabbed you about this one the most? Yeah,

6:21

I mean, I think one of the things that was really interesting

6:23

was that the city of Jaffa was

6:26

written

6:26

almost like a character in the book. And

6:29

so every scene,

6:31

every place was described

6:34

really in intricate detail. And

6:37

the author does a really nice job, I think, of showing

6:39

you why it matters where you are in this city. So

6:42

at one point early on in the book, this main character,

6:44

who is usually at sea

6:47

level for his work and where

6:49

he lives, he goes to this place that's

6:51

pretty high up in altitude for

6:53

a job that he's doing, and he's able to see the city

6:56

from a different vantage point. And

6:58

he just has this kind of realization where he's like,

7:01

oh, your

7:01

life would be so different if you were looking

7:04

at it from this different place physically. And

7:06

I was reading later that the author also has

7:09

a background as an architect. So I think you can

7:11

really see that come out in this story too, that the

7:13

way she's thinking about how things

7:15

are constructed physically is detailed

7:18

really beautifully in the book. All right, again,

7:20

so that's Mother of Strangers by

7:22

Suad Amiri. And

7:24

if you want to discover even more books NPR

7:27

loves, visit npr.org slash

7:29

bestbooks. That brings us to the end of

7:31

this

7:31

episode. Thank you for being here, Leah. Thank

7:34

you so much for having me. And of course, thank you

7:36

for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

7:38

This episode is produced by Ramel Wood and Mike

7:41

Katzeff and edited by Jessica Reidy. The

7:44

Books We Love team is Beth Novy, Natalie

7:46

Escobar, Maureen Powell, and Megan Collins

7:48

Sullivan. Hello, Come In provides

7:50

our theme music. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll

7:52

see you all tomorrow.

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