What It Means To Be Human: My Best Reads This Year

It’s the end of our semester, and I am tired.

But also, gratified. As ever, my students have enriched my life, teaching me more about what it means to be human. They’re so much smarter these days than when I was a student, and even though I’m now legit old enough to be their mother, my students are also my best teachers.

Last week in my Studies in Writing course, we grappled with the question of what it means to be a writer created and creating in God’s image. We talked about why so much of explicitly Christian literature is problematic. We argued about whether 50 Shades of Grey is a redemptive narrative, reflecting God’s grandeur.

We decided that googly eyes glued to rocks proclaim God’s glory, and a student, Aidan Arthur, made an epic presentation asserting that pet rocks “are the highest and purest form of art.”

The class cheered at the audacity of this idea, but also the truth.

And I thought about the best books I’ve read this year, in a year of reading good books. How the authors of this year’s favorites were creating in the image of God, and how their work profoundly reflected the beauty and tragedy of human relationship; the redemptive nature of love, expressed through flawed people; and the power of empathy to transform us.

My three favorite books of the year were written by people who grew up in faith communities, but who do not identify as Christian authors. Their work is deeply faith-filled, though, and I finished each text with a renewed hope in my own divided community, where people have been inclined to cast others as less than human, and where Christianity has often been used as a cudgel rather than a balm.

These books express the grace of God through beautiful and terrible things, and in people we are inclined to reject because they haven’t fit our perceptions of where God’s grace exists: In the immigrant. In queer people. In a woman who is old and frail, and in her mentally ill daughter. 

 Here are the best three books I read this year:

 Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery, by Casey Parks. Parks grew up evangelical in the deep south, where being gay was an abomination that deserved expulsion from church, family, society. Her book explores coming to terms with who she is, using her reporting on Roy, one of her grandma’s neighbors who presents as a man, though is biologically female. This investigation is fascinating, but I was also drawn to Parks’ complex relationship with her mother, and the ways fraught relationships define how we see the world. This book is a study in memoir, but more than that, it reminds us that our beautiful diversity reflects God’s glory.

Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story), by Daniel Nayeri. Nayeri’s family lived as refugees in central Oklahoma, exiled from Iran because his mom began practicing Christianity. His narrative is not linear, and he frames his story within larger ideas about truth, memory, storytelling, and what it means to be a stranger in a strange land. I cried my way through the last fifty pages of this memoir; the narrative redeems people who probably don’t deserve redemption, save that we are all complicated people who require enduring grace, especially from those we love best.

Fight Night, by Miriam Toews. I’ve read almost all of Toews’ work, in some part because she’s a fellow Mennonite (or was). Most of her novels have felt just beyond the realm of my understanding; I knew Toews was exploring compelling ideas, but I couldn’t quite articulate what those ideas were. Fight Night is different. It narrates the relationship between Swiv, the nine-year-old narrator, another misfit character; and her Grandma, a feisty woman who has lived a conscribed life because of her conservative religious upbringing. Both are trying to protect Swiv’s mom, who has a mental illness and is pregnant with Swiv’s half-brother. The ending is tragic and beautiful, as all three try to find agency amidst suffocating cultural expectation.

I’m starting to make my reading list for next year! What would you recommend?

You can pre-order Finding Our Way Forward from your local bookstore; from a corporate book seller; or directly from Herald Press. You can also read more at Publisher’s Weekly, which featured my book.