1. 16:16 9th Jul 2012

    Notes: 3

    Tags: Junot DíazThis Is How You Lose Herlitmy reviewsLibrary JournalGo-Go LiveDCNatalie Hopkinsongo-go

    Two reviews

    From the July Library Journal, two books I really loved:

    [star] Díaz, Junot. This Is How You Lose Her. F

    Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) returns to short fiction in his latest book, the first since he won the Pulitzer in 2007, and his second collection of stories after 1996’s Drown. The stories hinge on Yunior de las Casas, Díaz’s Nick Adams: a Dominican-born, Jersey-raised writer and—as is especially on display here—chronic womanizer. Díaz tells of love won and lost with his signature verve; the book pulses with Spanish, sf, and the music and apocalyptic TV shows of the late 1980s. Through the lens of the women that Yunior, his older brother Rafa (who dies of cancer while Yunior is in high school), and their mostly absent father love, leave, and are left by, Díaz maps out a painful, aching geography of desire. The final story, “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” which will be of particular interest to fans of Oscar Wao, further explores Yunior’s (who was the novel’s primary narrator) relationship with Lola, Oscar’s sister. VERDICT Díaz’s third book is as stunning as its predecessors. These stories are hard and sad, but in Díaz’s hands they also crackle. [See Prepub Alert, 3/12/12.]—Molly McArdle, Library Journal

    Hopkinson, Natalie. Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. MUSIC

    Few people outside of Washington, DC, have heard of go-go, the city’s homegrown brand of funk, marked by heavy percussion (predominately congas, more recently roto-toms), call and response, and live performance. Hopkinson (contributing editor, The Root; coauthor, with Natalie Y. Moore, Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation) explores the music that poet Thomas Sayers Ellis called the most “radical opposition to English syntax” through the lens of gentrification, which has utterly remade the physical landscape of many DC neighborhoods and erased a black majority that defined the city for half a century. Hopkinson faces a steep challenge: she sets out to pin down a genre that is famously unrecordable and describe a side of DC that is almost entirely invisible. VERDICT She pulls in German philosopher Jürgen Habermas almost as often as she does Nico Hobson, go-go’s unofficial archivist, and the book struggles under the weight of a subject that too few have addressed. Still, Hopkinson writes with great, sometimes astonishing, insight, and this is a work that is sorely needed. Recommended for readers interested in gentrification, nongovernmental DC, and the music that animates its culture.—Molly McArdle, Library Journal

     
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