I know, I know. I haven’t posted in forever. He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog went to Indiana to visit his dad (who was having open heart surgery), leaving me alone in the house with my deadlines, two cats, and the port wine cheese spread. Big mistake.
But he’s home now so maybe now things will get back to normal.
HWSNBNITB is a little upset though because he bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo audio book to listen to while driving back from Indiana. He overheard me discussing it with friends and came away with the impression that it was a very sexy read (I guess can see how I might have made it sound this way, given the points I may have highlighted within his hearing).
(If you want Mia Thermopolis’s full review—plus the rest of her Summer Reading List and an update on what’s been going on in her crazy life—click here.)
So poor HWSNBNITB didn’t know what he was letting himself into. Midway through Tennessee he called me and was like, “I’m going to drive off the side of the road because I’m falling asleep. ALL THEY DO IN THIS BOOK IS DRINK COFFEE AND TALK ON SOME ISLAND!”
Oops. I assured him things get exciting around page 300 (but on an audio book, that’s like ten hours in).
Summer is made for reading (or listening to) fun books. It’s hot, everyone is on vacation, everything on TV is a rerun. It’s the perfect time to settle in with a good, fun read.
That’s partly how I discovered the exciting world of fiction, because it was SO hot during the summer where I grew up in Indiana (we didn’t have air conditioning in my house for many years, because it was my parents’ dream to “fix up an old house,” just like Allie’s parents in the Allie Finkle books).
It was at the Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Indiana, that I whiled away most of my summers, reading every “beach read” I could find (although we had no beach), and where I also read the entire Harlequin Presents line—primarily anything by Penny Jordan involving sheiks and virgins.
Why romances? Maybe because when it gets hot out, the minds of teenagers (and even some adults) begin to turn to thoughts of love. As in, a summer romance.
This might be why Insatiable is on so many Summer Beach (and blogger’s Must) Read lists right now. We’ve even updated the home page to reflect some of these fabulous reviews and accolades. It’s so sweet of all you (like Snarkyspace and Fangirlsview, just to name a few). Thanks for supporting it. You’re the BEST!
Anyway, this morning I was kind of thinking about summer reading and summer love, and all of a sudden this piece came on, about how TODAY is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. FUN! This is one of my favorite books of all time.
People like to say that the message of To Kill A Mockingbird—that we shouldn’t judge people before we get to know them, especially based on things like the color of their skin, or where they’re from, or what kind of names they have—is kind of outdated, because nobody does this anymore. We’re all one big happy family now. Prejudice no longer exists. I mean, look, we have an African American president!
I would love to think that’s true. Except when I was back in Indiana during the last election, I saw some “Nigger Go Home” signs in people’s yards when Obama came to my town to campaign. And given the fact that I keep getting phone calls from politicians asking me to support that law they have in Arizona (because they want to have it here in Florida, too)—you know, the one where you have to show ID to prove you’re a citizen, but they only ask to see it if you look like you’re from Mexico—I’m not so sure this is true.
A lot of people from Arizona (and here in Florida, too, believe me) say, “You just don’t understand.” But the fact is, my white brother (I have two. One is biological and one, who is African American, is adopted) is a police sergeant in Denver. I understand. I do.
Because it turns out books and air conditioning are not all you can find at the library. I found love there one summer, too.
Just not with my community’s sole white breakdancer, whose attention I’d inadvertently attracted one evening by exiting the library in front of the unfolded cardboard box on which he liked to practice his moves.
The reason why this relationship did not work for me is not because I disparage breakdancing. As we all know from Step Up, Step Up 2, and of course, the upcoming Step Up 3D (due in theaters this August), breakdancing is a legitimate form of artistic expression.
And I TOTALLY know what it’s like to love something that is often ridiculed by others. My friends made ENDLESS fun of me for reading so many books with the words “sheik” and “virgin” in the title.
What did I like so much about these books? Well, among other things, the heroes did not spin on their heads on unfolded cardboard boxes in order to try to impress the heroine. Unlike the girl in the movie poster below, I felt really stupid just standing there while B-Boy (his real name was Troy) was “breaking.”
Picture me as the girl in this poster. Only not smiling.
It was just that despite being urged by Troy (and many of my friends) to “break it,” I was not in the mood to “break it” (at least, not with Troy). Troy did not stir in me even one iota of an urge to “break it.”
But there’s a happy ending to this story (at least for me). Can you guess what it is? No, it’s not that I found my inner b-girl. It’s that I did have a secret crush on someone (not Troy) . . .
. . . and it turned out he liked me back. I just had to jettison my breakdancing baggage.
Because I’d read so many of “those cheesy books” (as my friends called them) while hiding from Troy (and the heat, and my friends) in the library, I figured out EXACTLY how to “break it down” for Troy when it came time “break it off:”
“Troy,” I said. “You are like the Prince of Q’Tar. You are too much of a man for me, a simple virgin. Love between us is just not meant to be. Good bye, Hassan–I mean, Troy–forever!”
(OK. I left out the part about the Prince of Q’Tar. But the rest is verbatim.)
It worked like a charm! Troy was out of there. He did NOT want anything to do with a simple virgin. Thanks, Penny Jordan!
Here’s the good part:
As soon as Troy took his cardboard box and left me forever, and everyone knew he and I weren’t actually an “item,” things began to heat up with the boy from school that I actually really did like. His name was . . . wait for it . . . .
KARIM! Yes, that’s pronounced Kareem, you infidels.
He wasn’t really a sheik, of course. But his mom really did move here from Egypt. And he had a moped. Even better than a camel to a teenage girl!
Readers, you can guess what happened to that moped. I broke it down.
Possessed by the sheik? Sounds great!
This is where the To Kill a Mockingbird stuff comes in. Oh, there’d been some hints before (guys who had the hoods of their pickup trucks painted with the Confederate flag used to call Karim “sand-nigger” in the hallway. Classy).
But when Karim and I moved to New York together—wait . . . what? Obviously YEARS later. There were a lot of ups and downs on that moped. Post-college we were on an up, so we moved to New York together—we had a lot of trouble finding an apartment. It was right during the beginning of the first Gulf War and many landlords, it seemed, were reluctant to rent to an Arab-American. This was not very classy OR Penny Jordan of them, as we were dangerously close to being kicked out of our sublet and onto the streets.
This was just like all the times when my family was the last to be served—and sometimes our food never came at all—in restaurants because of the color of my adopted little brother’s skin.
Things like this just make me want to cry. And made me want to become a writer, so I could write books where people like those landlords and the people who worked in those kitchens got what was coming to them.
Anyway, Karim and I finally did get an apartment. The landlords were Chinese-American. And although Karim can’t breakdance, he does speak Chinese, among many other languages. This came in handy for the job he’d come to New York to do . . . at the UN.
After a couple of years, Karim decided to leave New York City. He wanted to use those language skills to do something more. He applied to, and got into, an out-of-state grad school. I, however, wanted to stay in my new adopted city, which I’d come to love. We decided it was best to get off the moped permanently. We have always stayed in touch ever since, though, because of our secret baby.
HA HA HA! Kidding.
No, we stay in touch because of the friend from whom we got that first NYC sublet: He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog. He was Karim’s roommate on the program where he learned Chinese. I met him at a party at Karim’s house when I was 16. He asked what I was doing out so late on a school night and suggested I run along home, as it was past my bedtime.
Obviously because of this, he was not one of my favorite of Karim’s friends (HWSNBNITB is Hungarian. Is anyone really interested in Hungarians? No. They are very boring compared to sheiks). It wasn’t until many, MANY years later that HWSNBNITB eventually began to grow on me. The moment I realized I was in love with him, I almost threw up. The only person who could have been worse was Troy, the breakdancer.
Hi. I’m back. I heard you’ve been writing about me on your blog. Facebook me.
But because of my copious romance reading, I knew exactly how to handle the situation. He still doesn’t know what hit him. I told my friend Beth, “Oh my God, I’m going to throw up, I think I’m in love with HWSNBNITB,” and she said, “Well, he’s OBVIOUSLY in love with you.”
So I informed HWSNBNITB (he was sitting right there, not even paying attention. They never are) that he was taking me out on a proper date the following day. And so he did. The end.
Now that I think about it, everything that’s happened in my entire life can be blamed, in a way, on summer reads: When HWSNBNITB and I eloped when I was 26, we did it in Italy, because we’d both read and loved so many books set there. Karim and his mom came to the party my mom threw for us later in the backyard. I could not go to Karim’s wedding a few years later (to a lovely girl he met in grad school) because I had a big summer book due (and a book tour for another one). But HWSNBNITB went, of course.
And now today, I have another big summer book out . . . and another one due!
And it’s the 50th year anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that was a big summer read—and a big influence on a lot of people, including me—in its day.
And every time one of those politicians calls to ask for my support on their new law, I mention what Atticus Finch said:
That you can’t know what it’s like for a person until you’ve walked around in his (or her) shoes. Have THEY walked around in MY shoes? Because if they had, I don’t think they’d be asking for my support on this bill.
I’m more than happy to break this down for them, since they can never understand what I mean. Did you know, I ask them, that my last name isn’t really Cabot (pronounced Cabbitt)? It used to be Caputo, but my grandfather had to change it because there was a lot of anti-Italian sentiment at one time in this country, and he could never get a job. How different, I ask them, is that from Mexicans today? Or Arab-Americans?
It starts with requiring people with brown skin to carry proof of citizenship. Then it moves on to people with funny-sounding names. Where does it go from there? Detainment camps, maybe?
I think we’ve made a LOT of progress since To Kill A Mockingbird first came out. There’s a lot to celebrate.
Unfortunately, there’s still a lot more work to do, too.
But that’s OK. Whatever happens, if we work together, we can break it down.
And of course: we’ll always have Troy.
More later.
Much love,
Meg