Every year around this time, we reflect on the books, academic and fiction, we read during the past year.
Katarzyna’s reading highlights 2024
Over the last year, I focused on reading the latest relevant literature on migration and especially on children on the move – a lot seems to be happening in this still emerging research field. My latest read is the new book by the anthropologist Anne White Polish Cities of Migration: The migration transition in Kalisz, Piła and Płock, where the author makes valuable and poignant observations on migrants’ perspective and choices related to their children’s education in Poland.
The book is open access and you can read it here.
As it happens with such a long-term focus, other readings start to converge with what animates us most – or perhaps as a reader I start to be attuned to bits and pieces related to human migration in other kinds of literature. It was certainly the case with the book Gra w rasy. Jak kapitalizm dzieli, by rządzić (in Polish) by Przemysław Wielgosz – an excellent narrative about the complex interplay of history, politics, economy and power that has found its expression in the ‘race-game’.
Another Polish book Odrzania. Podróż po Ziemiach Odzyskanych by Zbigniew Rokita, the winner of the prestigious NIKE literary prize in 2021, has been helpful in unsettling and challenging the rigid and prevalent view of national boundaries, by foregrounding the social and sensory-memory-related aspects of the lived-borders.
Towards the end of the year, a spectacularly poignant (and still fresh) reading punch was delivered by the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the winner of the Booker Prize 2024. In the book, we witness a ‘day’ in the orbit during a mission of six people temporarily inhabiting the International Space Station, during which they circle our ‘silent blue planet’ sixteen times, witnessing sixteen dawns, astro-sailing past continents, through seasons, climate zones, watching the ever changing weather. We are invited to witness the spectacular beauty of the Earth, our only home and a life-sustaining spaceship within the vast expanse of “God knows what”. In her short book, Harvey manages to weave together topics as seemingly diverse as climate change and its social consequences, women’s rights, geopolitical tensions, human-non-human relations, reflections on the fragility and resilience of life on our planet. I liked Orbital for its successful attempt to marry scientific description with poetry-driven relating, as part of a powerful turn in the human perception of our place in the world, now increasingly in terms of humble guardianship instead of exploitation.
Wiktoria's reading highlights 2024
It’s hard to pick a single book that impressed me the most this year. Therefore, I want to share my reflections on four books I selected from a diverse collection of academic works, reportage, and photography books I read over the past year.
Academic works
While preparing to co-teach a course on Anthropology of Childhood with Professor Izabella Main, I came across an interesting volume Antropologia psychiatrii dzieci i młodzieży, edited by Anna Witeska-Młynarczyk.
I reacted to this book on several levels. Working with youth myself on a daily basis, it made me think about the importance of seeking diverse interpretations from those directly involved in the psychiatric world. From a research perspective, I was fascinated by the diverse approaches and the depth of the ethnographic work presented in the book.
Reportage
Reportage dominated my reading in 2024. I was particularly drawn to the stories of Dolny Śląsk— a region in western Poland. Having had the chance to travel around this area during my summer break, I was intrigued by pieces set in places I had visited. My favorite works were "Odrzania" by Zbigniew Rokita and "Poniemieckie" by Karolina Kuszyk.
"Odrzania" introduced me to the nuanced world of Dolny Śląsk. The reportage encouraged me to ask questions about experiencing a place as well as trying to understand social dimensions of making sense of settling in an unstable world. It drew my attention to what often goes unnoticed at first glance.
"Poniemieckie", on the other hand, immersed me in the ethnography of objects. I particularly enjoyed the stories of rediscovered items and, through them, the narratives of individuals and entire communities that inhabited Dolny Śląsk at different times. I was inspired by the author’s detective-like flair in tracing and reconnecting objects with stories and people.
Photography books
This year brought me many travel stories i which characters discovered themselves through journeys to various places. I was particularly surprised by a new book format I explored this year, namely photography books.
"Tributaries, Vibrations, Afterimages, and Songs on the Riverbank" by Rafał Siderski and Małgorzata Lebda. Their photographic journey along the Wisła River, enriched with poetry drawn from the authors’ run along its banks, became an intellectual, imaginative, and calming experience during my summer and autumn evenings.
Enriched by inspiring readings of 2024, I'm ready for a new year, full of new stories to encounter.
Elżbieta's reading highlights 2024
Continued obsession with Han Kang
My obsession with Han Kang continued this past year. I read her novel I Do Not Bid Farewell in Polish translation (Nie mówię żegnaj). The book recounts the tragic events of the Jeju April 3, 1948 massacre from the perspectives of three women. But the book is really about love.
Kang received the prestigious Prix Medicis for foreign literature in France for this novel. It was the first time a book by a South Korean author has received the prize.
I was over the moon when she won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. for the "intense poetic prose . . . confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."
In Human Acts Han Kamg wrote:
After you died I could not hold a funeral, And so my life became a funeral.
As one reviewer wrote: "In the past year, how many people have lost loved ones for whom they could not hold funerals? How many lives will now become funerals? Han Kang’s writing, her triumph, shows that histories of trauma from Gwangju to Gaza do not belong in the shadows. They belong to the world of literature. They belong to world literature."
If you want to hear Hnag Kang's voice as she delivered her Nobel Prize Lecture, listen for a few minutes even if you do not understand Korean.
English translation is provided in a PDF document here.
Venturing into the graphic novel realm
I don't often read graphic novels, but I was drawn to Made in Korea by Jeremy Holt-- well, because it was about a robotic child proxy created by a Korean programmer.
"The Korean coder who unwittingly gave Jessie her identity wants to locate her; her Texan adoptive parents want only to love her; and Jesse wants to understand who she is and where she belongs. As these forces come into violent conflict, a question hangs over Jessie: Who created you? Was it the people responsible for your body? The people you see each day? Was it you yourself? Or was it a collaboration of all those parties, each of us an accidental conglomerated partnership with strangers?"
Korean non-fiction
In 2024, I also read a few non-fiction books about Korea by Korean authors. One will stay with me for a long time: Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’s Rights Worldwide by Hawon Jung.
Jung is a journalist, and much of the book consists of contemporary reportage; a very good reportage, I might add. Jung is a consummate interviewer and it shows in the rich narratives her interviewees shared. What's notable is that Flowers of Fire supplements this coverage with substantial historical research—research that illuminates how both sexism and the fight against it in South Korea are rooted in historical particularities.
Migrant children
I have also read several books directly related to our research on children and education.
I want to mention two of them, both published by the Rutgers University Series in Childhood Studies. Ways of Belonging By Francesca Meloni examines the experiences of undocumented children and youth in Canada. The book explores many theoretical issues while presenting rich ethnographic details from the lives of the young people.
Why Afterschool Matters by Ingrid A. Nelson interrogates the impact of out-of-school programs on the development of Mexican American youth, including the effects of the programs on college admissions. I picked up the book becausein my interviews with migrant children in Poland, both the young people and their parents stressed the beneficial effects of after school programs, but they were not concerned with college admissions, but with facilitating Polish language learning and ensuring that the migrant children have a meaningful place where they feel that they belong.
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