Many years ago, a mystically inclined friend of a friend, told me (after a few hours acquaintance) that I was an Old Soul and had obviously lived many lifetimes before this one. I didn't argue, assuming this was a compliment, but I did suggest that I'd read and absorbed many books . . .which, in my view, is almost the same.
I am the product of a white, Southern, nominally Protestant, middleclass upbringing during the Fifties--a fairly blinkered existence. Along about sixth grade, it was Science Fiction and Historical Fiction that first extended the boundaries of time and place . . .and social mores.Later, as an English major, I became enamored of Brit Lit and read English authors almost exclusively for many years--pleasant but not the best way to broaden one's horizons.Now, as more and more books are published by folks who aren't Dead White Males, and thanks to book pusher friends who read widely, I've been afforded the opportunity to experience vicariously lives very different than my own.Beautiful Country, a memoir by Qian Julie Wang, brought me face to face with one family's immigrant experience--from soul-deadening sweat shops and a constant struggle for existence, to the intricacies of navigating life in America, the Beautiful Country, as an "illegal" alien.Told from the point of view of the young Qian Wang who arrives in 1994 New York as a seven-year-old, it's a compelling story of a child and a family facing seemingly insurmountable odds--and prevailing.From New York's Chinatown to Harlem isn't far--but Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle, set in the early Sixties, is another world. I sank deep into the richness of Whitehead's prose and succumbed to yet another life that I'd otherwise never know.From the back cover: "Harlem Shuffle" is a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and, ultimately, a love letter to Harlem."Two more worlds explored, experiences gained. Two more terrific books.