Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Communications Manager Kyla Merwin recommends How to Love by Thich Nhất Hạnh.

If love makes the world go ’round, and all you need is love…then why is that wonderful, beautiful, four-letter word completely blind, deaf, and dumb?

Beyond romantic love, our capacity to love our friends, family, colleagues, strangers, and enemies, we are told, is endless. . .and challenged on a regular basis.

One of my favorite, go-to volumes on this crazy, mindless subject comes from Thich Nhất Hạnh, beloved teacher, Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, and peace activist.

Nhất Hạnh distills the unruly beast of love into four essential concepts:

• You can only love another when you feel true love for yourself
• Love is understanding
• Understanding brings compassion
• Deep listening and loving speech are key to showing love

Through Nhất Hạnh, we learn that love isn’t mindless after all. Our capacity for love, it turns out, hinges on mindfulness.

Though he passed from these earthly realms earlier this year, Nhất Hạnh’s wisdom, compassion and teachings helped shape the best of this world, and continue to inspire generations of seekers, including me.

How to Love is available through Interlibrary Loan, here.

Media and Digital Librarian Aly Wepplo recommends An Untamed State by Roxane Gay.

I was working at the Circulation desk when Martha Williams, our Director of Programs and Education, dropped An Untamed State into the return bin.

Once she picked it up, she said, she hardly put it down again until it was finished. Three days later, I was making the same recommendation. To everybody.

An Untamed State is the story of Mireille, an American woman with Haitian roots. Her parents raised her in Nebraska and then returned to their home city of Port-au-Prince. Mireille thinks of both countries as home, and she visits her parents often. 

On one such visit, Mireille and her husband plan to take their baby son to the beach for the first time. On the way, they are stopped by a gang of kidnappers, who pull Mireille from the car and take her to their hideout. They demand a ransom of one million dollars from Mireille’s father, who owns a successful construction company. He refuses to pay or negotiate. 

And Mireille is left with her captors for a harrowing thirteen days. 

This incredible novel kept me up till 3:30 on a Saturday night. The story jumps between past and present. It follows Mireille’s relationship with her husband, Michael, from their first accidental meeting through their engagement, wedding, and the difficult pregnancy that brings their son, Cristophe.  

“. . .it is the story of the universal gender, race, and class issues that tie all people together.”

This is more than the story of one woman’s kidnapping. It is the story of her captors, who hope to buy their way out of a desperate existence. It is the story of her parents, who fight their country’s problems while also contributing to them. It is the story of Mireille’s husband, an outsider who wants so badly to help and doesn’t know how. It is the story of Haiti and the struggles and triumphs of its people.

And it is the story of the universal gender, race, and class issues that tie all people together. 
I loved this book. I hope everyone will read it. 

Find it in ebookand in print in Adult Fiction Main – FICTION Gay.