10 Books that Capture the Feeling of Limbo
It’s safe to say 2020 did not turn out as so many of us expected. What was initially meant to be a year of joy, or perhaps opportunity, ended up quickly becoming one of disappointment, grief, and unprecedented disaster.
Riding out the unknown is terrifying, and there is still so much left up in the air as 2020 keeps going. Here are some books to accompany you on your terrifying journey through limbo and to help you lean into the rest of this year.
WHAT WE ALL LONG FOR
Dionne Brand
Vintage Canada
Dionne Brand takes a snapshot of four overlapping lives of twenty-something Torontonians as they struggle to support themselves and one another. Our four characters—Tuyen, Carla, Oku, and Jackie—sit in the in-between of not being able to find any of life’s supposed answers: why won’t she love me back? How do I pay my next bill? How do I help them? Their shared experiences as second-generation young adults is what simultaneously brings them together and apart. Longing and loss underscore this not-quite coming-of-age book.
ISLANDS OF DECOLONIAL LOVE: STORIES & SONG
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Arbeiter Ring Publishing
Simpson’s debut collection of short stories is a staple in Indigenous literature as she captures tales of contemporary, primarily Nishnaabeg Nation peoples. While no story is quite the same, there is the overarching fear of “how does one continue to live with love” when colonialism and white supremacy are a constant and continued violence in their history and lives.
A COMPLICATED KINDNESS
Miriam Toews
Counterpoint LLC
Always the outsider in her Manitoba Mennonite community, Nomi Nickels struggles to find where she sits amongst her fundamentalist Christian peers, but most of all with her peculiar father who is the last remaining member of her family to take care of her. Nomi juggles the choice of staying in the small, closed-off community that she knows and laying to rest all of the questions burning about her mother and sister, or seeking what goes on beyond her tiny town.
MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION
Otessa Moshfegh
Penguin Press
A devastating mix of disturbing, banal, and hilarious, Moshfegh writes the story of a privileged, thin, recent Columbia graduate who decides to endure the devastating grief of her recent orphanhood by engaging in a “year of rest and relaxation.” The narrator decides to spend a year essentially hibernating, living off of her inheritance and the powerful drugs given to her by a poorly composed psychiatrist. While nothing in this novel is an advised way of coping with grief, heartbreak, and alienation, Rest and Relaxation is a bold look at how we choose to engage when life challenges us.
A PLACE CALLED NO HOMELAND
Kai Cheng Thom
Arsenal Pulp Press
No Homeland paints a place where memory and myth are one. Thom explores East Asian history and those who came before her, finding common thread in stories of diaspora, abuse, queerness, and gender. Heavily inspired by oral tradition, this debut poetry collection strays from the traditional and sings of survival and celebration in spite of all that is standing against it.
THE IDIOT
Elif Batuman
Penguin Press
In The Idiot, Selin, a second-generation Turkish woman, attends her first year of Harvard. Absurd, carefully plotted, and oftentimes downright hilarious, Batuman captures the nostalgia of 1995 and the elusive limbo that many young women in college find themselves in: the unreadable (sometimes, maybe) romances with our peers and the uncertainty of one’s future, passions, and wants.
REAL WORLD
Natsuo Kirino
Vintage International
Renowned in Japan for her feminist, gritty noirs, Kirino’s Real World is another success. Just outside of Tokyo, in the middle of a smoggy summer, our four teenage characters are spending their days in and out of cram school as they begin to approach entrance exams for college.
When Toshi’s next-door neighbour is brutally murdered, the four immediately cast their suspicions on the neighbour’s son, who they’ve nicknamed Worm. Snatching Toshi’s bike and cellphone as he flees, the four girls are drawn into a tempest of impending danger and disaster. Kirino holds threat, violence, and consequence over the reader’s head in this dark and gripping look at teenage life in Japan.
NOT ONE OF THESE POEMS IS ABOUT YOU
Teva Harrison
Ambrosia
At 37, Toronto writer and activist Teva Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Published posthumously, Harrison gives us a gut-wrenching glance into her life: living with disease, on-going chemotherapy, and struggling to feel peace as the creeping shadow of illness looms.
WANTING IN ARABIC
Trish Salah
Tsar Publications
Wanting In Arabic covers immense ground in that it dwells on contradictions of many kinds. Salah’s poetry is playful, yet purposefully uses ghazal, l'écriture féminine, and lyric. However, the collection doesn’t just speak to Salah’s transition—it captures humour and loss, Middle Eastern politics, and the expulsion of trans women within feminist and queer communities. Despite being written nearly twenty years ago, this book remains novel and holds new ways of escaping the traditional modes often used to describe trans bodies.
WASHES, PRAYS
Noor Naga
McClelland & Stewart
In this one-of-a-kind verse novel, Coocoo, a young Toronto immigrant, is grappling with her love for her religion and her unbearable loneliness until she finds herself entangled with a married man. As the contradictions in her life grow more and more evident, we watch Coocoo attempt to find peace within herself as a disparity grows between her actions and what she once thought of herself.
We encourage you to buy these books either directly from the publisher or your local indie bookstore.
Syd Lazarus
is the author of How to Lose Friends Without Really Trying (Frog Hollow Press, 2019). They are a MA candidate at Concordia for creative writing, perpetually exhausted, and in chronic pain, a Pisces, and a lover of all white-haired anime boys.