Labfs39 tackles the states

Since I joined the Global Challenge to track the books I read from every country, I decide to do the same here. It's not so much a challenge as a journal. I'm curious to see how many states I have already read and which I haven't.

For rules, I'm going to start with the following and tweak as necessary:

1. Fiction: the author has to be from that state and the book set in the state.
2. Nonfiction: the book has to be about the state, but author does not.

Alabama
To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee

Alaska
To the bright edge of the world by Eowyn Ivey (2021)
Tisha: The Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaska Wilderness by Robert Specht

Arizona

Arkansas

California
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei (2022)

Colorado
Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker (2024)

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (2018)

Georgia
Mama Makes Up Her Mind: And Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White

Hawaii
Radar Girls by Sara Ackerman (2022)
Wherever You Need Me by Anna Urda Busby (2023)

Idaho

Illinois
Mac & Irene: A WWII Saga by Margot McMahon (2021)

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (2014)

Maine
Five Tuesday in Winter: Stories by Lily King (2023)
Moon in Full by Marpheen Chann (2022)

Maryland

Massachusetts
The scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America by John Demos (2012)

Michigan
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2010)

Minnesota
The Birchbark House trilogy by Louise Erdrich (2013)

Mississippi
The sound and the fury by William Faulkner
When We Were Colored by Clifton L. Taulbert (2024)

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska
The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin (2016)

Nevada

New Hampshire
The good good pig : the extraordinary life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery (2010)

New Jersey
Nemesis by Philip Roth (2012)

New Mexico

New York
The house of mirth by Edith Wharton (2014)
Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky (2024)

North Carolina
Cold mountain by Charles Frazier

North Dakota
The Round House by Louise Erdrich (2015?)

Ohio

Oklahoma
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (2023)

Oregon

Pennsylvania
Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran (2023)

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee
Christy by Catherine Marshall

Texas
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Utah
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (2019)

Vermont

Virginia

Washington
The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2011)

Washington, DC
I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham (2024)

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming
The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed by Judy Shepard (2010)

CALIFORNIA



They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
Published 2020, 204 p.

George Takei is an actor, activist, and author, most famous for his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek. As a child he was incarcerated for the duration of World War II with his family in Japanese interment camps, first in Arkansas and then northern California. This graphic novel is the story of his years in the camps, his discussions with his father about the camps as a young adult, and his work to educate others about this shameful episode in American history and to promote tolerance and activism in the democratic process.

The artwork was done by Harmony Becker, and I liked the simple black and white drawings. There were usually 5-6 frames per page, which sometimes necessitated small type. I liked the quotes from politicians then and since, and the photos and documents reproduced at the end.

Here's a list of suggested reading for all fifty states. Includes a lot of nonfiction. The only two I have read is To the Bright Edge of the World (Alaska) and The Round House (North Dakota).

>8 labfs39: Great list, thank you for sharing!

MAINE

I am replacing Lost on a Mountain in Maine with this one, since I've just read it, and it's an adult book versus young adult.



Moon in Full: A Modern-Day Coming-of-Age Story by Marpheen Chann
Published 2022, 248 p.

Marpheen Chann was born in California in 1991. His mother was a teenage Cambodian refugee who had lived for ten years in a refugee camp before being allowed to immigrate. She had suffered physical and emotional traumas as a child during the terrors of the Pol Pot regime and was unable to provide a stable home for Marpheen. He spent much of his early years living with a Cambodian pastor and his family. When he was about six, his mother moved with him and his younger sister to Portland, Maine, where her mother and other family lived. But even having family nearby could not offset the series of abusive relationships and poor decisions that plagued his mother. One day in 2000, Marpheen returned home from school to find DHHS waiting. He and his sister were removed that day and would never live with their mother again.

Marpheen and his sister were placed with a very supportive and caring foster family in Acton, Maine. Slowly Marpheen began to heal, to express emotions, and to feel safe. Unfortunately, after about a year, the state of Maine began addressing the issues of race within the foster system, and removed Marpheen and Tanya from the white foster family and placed them in a group home. Although there are issues inherent in placing brown and black children in white homes, in a state like Maine, where the population is 94.6% white, few other options existed. Now better supports are being put in place to support parents retaining custody of their children, but at the time, children were being dumped into the foster system at alarming rates. Sadly, in an attempt to address an issue, the Chann children were removed from a loving home just as they were starting to feel secure.

Life in the group home wasn't bad, as Marpheen tells it, and after a year or so, one of the workers there decided to foster them. Unfortunately this single mom was unprepared for the demands of fostering two kids and became emotionally abusive. After another year, they were adopted by the family who had taken in Marpheen's two youngest siblings.

The Berrys were an evangelical Christian family who lived in rural Naples, Maine. They sought to reunite all four Chann siblings and eventually adopted them. Money was very tight, but the children had their basic needs met and were raised in a caring Church community. Because of their strong religious views, Pokémon and Harry Potter were now forbidden and worship groups and Christian school were in. Their friends, the books they read, and their behavior were carefully monitored. Although he and his adoptive mother fought, twelve-year-old Marpheen threw himself into this new religion with fervor. Things were very clear, black and white, good and bad. He became very adept at codeswitching and tried very hard to be good. And white.

The only problem was that Marpheen was gay. In his family and community, being homosexual was a sin, and he was terrified someone would learn his secret. As he navigated high school and then college, Marpheen struggled to accept himself and then to come out to his family and friends. Although his road to adulthood was not easy, Marpheen finally found a safe haven at the University of Southern Maine, where he helped start the Queer Straight Alliance. He also reunited with the Cambodian pastor and his family who had cared for Marpheen as a child and with his birth mother and family. Today he is the co-founder of the Cambodian Community Association of Maine and was recently elected to the Portland Charter Commission.

Despite the traumas of his childhood and his struggles for acceptance within his adoptive family, Moon in Full is an optimistic book replete with plaudits for the people who helped him succeed and understanding for the people who were unable to be supportive. I learned a lot about my home state and was encouraged by Marpheen's successes, even as I recognize the problems still inherent in our communities. I am very glad that I was able to read this book, and I hope that someday perhaps our paths will cross.

HAWAII (nonfiction)



Wherever You Need Me by Anna Urda Busby
Published 2007, 70 p., 3*

Anna Urda was a member of the Army Nursing Corps and stationed at a hospital in Honolulu in December 1941. I was expecting the majority of the book to be about her experiences during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but instead it's about her entire nursing career and beyond. That made it a little less interesting for me, but the introductory chapter on the history of the Army Nursing Corps alone was worth reading. Although it's not 100% clear, I think the chapter is a brochure written by Judith A. Bellafaire and published by the US Army Center of Military History.

Anna was actually a patient on the "Day of Infamy." She had been hospitalized with an infection on her face. When the bombing was heard, however, and Japanese Zeroes were flying over the hospital, she raced to change into her uniform. For the next few days, the hospital was overwhelmed with patients, many badly burned. When night fell, they were under a total blackout, and two babies were born the first night by blue filtered flashlight. Fear of spies was rampant, and everyone was escorted between buildings by military personnel. Fear of another attack remained high and security tight for the rest of the war.

After reading about Anna's marriage, career, and involvement with the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, there are four 2-3 page testimonies by other nurses who were serving in Hawaii that day. Also included are numerous photos. Although a slim volume with only a few pages dedicated to the events after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I did find it interesting.

OKLAHOMA (nonfiction)



Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Published 2017, 338 p., 4*

The title and lurid color of the cover led me to think that this was going to be a true crime story, not a genre I often or willingly read. Fortunately, I didn't let the cover dissuade me, for this was a fascinating, page-turning history of another horrendous chapter in the treatment of American Indians by whites and an interesting look at the inner workings of frontier lawmen in the 1920s.

When the Osage Nation was removed from their ancestral lands and settled in Oklahoma, the tribe ensured that they would continue to own any mineral rights underground, even if an individual sold their land. Brilliant, for the tribe was sitting on one of the biggest oilfields in America. The members of the tribe became the richest people per capita in the world. Unfortunately the US government continued to see them as children and required individuals to have guardians to control their money. This led to widespread abuses and corruption, but worse yet, members of the tribe began to be murdered or die of suspected poisoning. Local officials made no progress until the arrival of Tom White, an agent of the newly restructured FBI under the leadership of a young J. Edgar Hoover.

I was ignorant of this episode in US history, making me the perfect reader for Grann's history. He was able to lead me along and surprise me with some of the developments. Readers with more knowledge may find it less revelatory. I liked it more than his book Lost City of Z, perhaps because he himself does not enter the story until the end. I am less interested in him than I am of the story he tells. I appreciated the inclusion of a map, and the photos were well-chosen and well-placed within the text. Recommended for those interested in the history of the American West, indigenous history, or government exposés.

PENNSYLVANIA (nonfiction)



Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran
Published 2020, 301 p., 4*

Phuc was only a toddler when his family was evacuated from Saigon in the final days before the city fell. Families in Carlisle, Pennsylvania sponsored his family, providing enough to get them started. Phuc's father had been a lawyer in Viet Nam, and both of his mother's parents had worked at the US Embassy. In America, however, his father is relegated to the tire factory, and his mother assembles electronics. Like many immigrant families they buy into the American dream, and eventually purchase a house and send their two children to college.

But small-town America in the 1970s is a tough place for Vietnamese. They are a constant reminder of the war that was lost and lurid images of napalm and naked babies. Phuc isn't sure what a "gook" is, but he knows it's nothing good. Eventually he finds acceptance and friends in the punk skateboarding crowd. It's better to be part of an outcast group than be outcast on your own. But Phuc also discovers the Great Books, a list of titles that "All Americans" should read. At first it's a way to impress his teachers and earn a place amongst the academic crowd, but he then falls in love with literature for it's own sake, and that was to provide his ticket out of Carlisle.

Sigh, Gone is irreverent, funny, and also heart-rending. As Phuc grows into himself, a chasm opens between him and his parents that is difficult to bridge. Language, customs, expectations, and culture comes between them in sometimes violent ways. I enjoyed Phuc's story and the literary tie-ins, as each chapter has a theme based on a classic in literature. Phuc now lives in Portland, Maine, and, after many years teaching Latin, currently runs a tattoo parlor.

NEW YORK (nonfiction)



Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky
Published 2016, 387 p.

Mention the word "Bellevue" and most Americans think of a derelict, frightening mental asylum, made notorious by Nellie Bly's exposé in 1887. In truth, Bellevue Hospital's history is long and often revolutionary. In this history, David Oshinsky weaves together the history of a hospital, a city, and medicine itself.

Bellevue Hospital began as an almshouse infirmary in the 1790s. From the very beginning, it never turned away patients, no matter their ability to pay, their religion, or ethnicity (a very unusual stance for the time). Soon it became a dumping ground where other hospitals sent their incurables so as to maintain high cure rates. Whenever epidemics swept through NYC, Bellevue took the brunt of it. Because of the large number of immigrants passing through its doors, Bellevue treated a wide variety of disease and illness, and soon doctors were eager to do a stint at Bellevue in order to gain experience. As apprenticeship gave way to medical schools, Bellevue teamed up with New York University, Columbia, and Cornell to become a premier teaching hospital. Despite its reputation as the hospital for the poor, it's emergency and trauma centers became first-class and if celebrities or visiting dignitaries had a medical emergency, they often chose to go to Bellevue.

Bellevue was often on the cutting edge of medical research and practice as well. The first American civilian ambulance service began here, medical photography was developed, and in 1956 two of its physicians won the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking work in cardiac catherization. The first doctor to reach Lincoln in Ford's theatre was a Bellevue physician as was the doctor in charge of President Garfield's gunshot wound (unfortunately that doctor was not a subscriber to germ theory and probably unwittingly abetted his death). In the 1980s, Bellevue was at the forefront of the AIDS epidemic, both in terms of research and treatment. Although there was never enough funding for a hospital of its size and mandate to treat the indigent, Bellevue achieved remarkable things.

Oshinsky doesn't shy away from the dark side of Bellevue either, such as the murder in 1989 of a pregnant doctor in her office by a squatter, or the use of electric shock therapy on children, but he does put these events into perspective.

I enjoyed reading Bellevue and learned a lot about the history of NYC and of American medicine, as well as of this storied hospital. Oshinsky has a knack for describing the personalities and quirks of those who impacted Bellevue, from politicians at Tammany Hall to the doctors and nurses who worked on the wards to the researchers in its famous pathology labs and morgue. A fantastic piece of narrative nonfiction, I would recommend it to anyone interested in NYC and/or medicine.

WASHINGTON, DC (nonfiction)



I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham
Published 2021, 329 p.

Stephanie Grisham joined the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016 as a junior press wrangler, responsible for getting the press in and out of briefings and meetings. Over the next five years she would rise through the ranks as the First Ladies' communication director, White House communications director and press secretary, and then the First Ladies' Chief of Staff. In an administration with very high turnover, her tenure is quite remarkable. On January 6, 2021, she resigned amidst the chaos of the riots at the Capitol, the first, but not only one to do so. In her book, Grisham walks through some of the pivotal issues and scandals that plagued the administration in a chatty way, telling some funny stories, giving some context to a few incidents she was involved in, and explaining why she served the Trump family so long and why she ultimately left.

I have not read a lot of political memoirs and tend to avoid them, but was pleasantly surprised at not being able to put this one down. Whether it was the informal tone, often humorous, or the fact that the times she describes is like, as she writes, "a clown car on fire running at full speed into a warehouse full of fireworks." There is no easy way to verify the accuracy of her account, and I was a bit annoyed at her habit of inserting quotes, such as at the beginning of chapters, without attribution. She is, after all, an expert at political communications, so who knows the degree of spin being used. Still, it was an entertaining read, if not particularly revelatory.

COLORADO (nonfiction)



Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Published 2020, 377 p.

Don and Mimi seemed to have the perfect, if unusually large, family. He was military, but liberal-minded. She was a supporter of the arts and active in the community despite having 12 children in 20 years. Good in school, athletic, musically inclined, the ten boys and two girls seemed cut from the All-American mold. Then one after another, six of the boys would suffer spectacular breakdowns and eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia. At first, Don and Mimi tried to gloss over the violence and eccentricities that tainted their middle-class bubble. But soon, tragedy would make that impossible.

Interspersed with chapters about different members of the family, are chapters about the history of schizophrenia, it's diagnosis and treatment, and the researchers who tried to find the genetic markers and better ways to treat or prevent the disease. While researching the book, the author interviewed, not only all the living members of the family, but the doctors, researchers, and therapists who worked with the family or with their DNA. The result is a family biography put into context with the medical history. For me, this saved the book from being voyeuristic. I was glad to know that the entire family consented to having their very personal story told. I thought it was well-written and balanced, addressing many of the social issues surrounding mental illness with objective compassion.

MISSISSIPPI (nonfiction)



When We Were Colored by Clifton L. Taulbert
Published 1989, 153 p.

This book is not the story of Freemount and the years when blacks owned the land. It is the story of a mostly landless people, the coloreds, who lived in Glen Allan and other small southern towns during the last years of segregation. I have written it to recall a treasure more valuable and enduring than land ownership. It is the treasure that stood out in my colored childhood when there was so little else, and it has been a source of strength to me in all the years since then. That treasure is the nourishing love that came to me from my extended family of aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, neighbors, and friends... They are the reason I want today's world to remember an era that in our haste we might mistakenly forget—that era when we were called colored.

Although I understand that the author was looking back with fondness at his childhood and the community that raised him, I was uncomfortable with his acceptance of, and almost nostalgia for, a time when blacks were oppressed. His pride on the day he is first able to pick 200 lbs. of cotton, his happiness at having two white boys as almost-friends, and his love for his Poppa as he waits at a stop sign until all the white drivers have gone first were all scenes that made me cringe. But the author's point, that he was happy despite segregation, has more to do with the resilience of his family and community than with acceptance of bad treatment. Raised first by his grandfather and then his great-aunt, his childhood was the epitome of "it takes a village." His portrayals of the people in his past are compassionate and generous, and he only has kind things to say, which is in itself a reflection of how he was raised. An interesting glimpse into the 1950s American South for this Northern reader.