I did it! I recorded a podcast episode!

I know, I know, it’s been over a half year. Where have I been? READING AROUND THE WORLD.

At the end of 2023, I started a quest to read a book by an author from every country around the world in alphabetical order and I embarked on that journey with lots of trepidation, hesitation, and reluctance. My muse had been nagging me for over two years to start this quest, but I had excuses and concerns. (For example, there are too many countries. Also, the books would probably be boring. p.s. Did I mention how many countries there are? 197!)

But my muse would not relent, and as my new quest built momentum, I stopped podcasting and instead shared my journey on TikTok. That was a new endeavor and it took a lot of bandwidth to get used to filming and editing videos. I didn’t have the time or inclination to podcast while I was doing that. Besides,I was already talking a lot on Tiktok–what more could I possibly say during a podcast episode? How much talk from Courtney Henning Novak does the world actually need?

Yet I missed podcasting, and once my Read Around the World quest had sufficient momentum, my muse nagged me to resurrect Adventures With My Forties. I told my muse I needed to clean the bathroom. She told me to hire cleaners. I told my muse that the people who enjoy my TikToks would not be interested in my podcast episodes. My muse rolled her eyes and told me to stop whining and record an episode already.

So here I am.

Why did I start my Read Around the World quest? Because my muse would not leave me alone.

And now why I am podcasting again? Same damn reason.

My muse is a relentless diva who gives zero figs about back to school nights and errands and cluttered countertops, but she was right about the Read Around the World quest. DID I MENTION I’M GOING TO BRAZIL IN TWO WEEKS??? Since my muse knows how to generate some interesting adventures, I’m going to lean in again and answer the call to podcast.

Hello. How’ve you been??

For the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I read How Dare The Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyiman with Abigail Pesta. The story begins in a refugee camp in Burundi the night it is attacked by rebels who are brutally murdering the members of minority tribes. The rebels set fire to the refugees’ tents and shoot Sandra’s mother and six-year-old sister. While she’s trying to escape, a rebel points a gun at Sandra’s head–and that’s just the first chapter.

The writing style is conversational, almost like meeting a beloved friend for coffee, and I was sucked right in despite being apprehensive about the subject material. It’s not easy to read about a ten-year-old escaping a burning refugee camp with dead bodies everywhere when your own children are in the next room playing Minecraft, but thanks to Sandra and her co-author Abigail, I did not want to stop reading and inhaled this one in just a few days.

Sandra describes her childhood in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the harsh realities of living in a war-torn country. Her family belongs to a minority tribe, the Banyamulenge, who were first driven out of Rwanda and then had to flee the DRC. After the massacre at the refugee camp in Burundi, Sandra’s family, along with the other survivors, are invited to immigrate to the United States. Sandra’s family is resettled in Rochester, New York where Sandra begins middle school knowing barely any English. (In other words, they layered trauma upon trauma.)

Despite such a dark beginning, How Dare the Sun Rise is ultimately a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and our ability to overcome traumatic experiences. In high school, Sandra became an activist and a voice for her people and all refugees. Along with several of her siblings, she now runs the Jimbere Fund, a nonprofit that works to empower female entrepreneurs who live in the Congo. I was so moved by Sandra’s story, I donated $100 to the Jimbere Fund as soon as I finished her memoir, and as my social audience builds, I hope I can inspire more people to donate to causes inspired by my Read Around the World quest.

There were so many parts of Sandra’s story that made me cry or sent shivers down my spine, but this one quote keeps echoing in my mind:

[A]s I watched the people in the church cry, I had a realization: They cared. I had assumed that people in America did not care. But in that instant, I realized they did. They just didn’t know our story. They didn’t know what life was like in a refugee camp, or how it felt to endure a massacre. In America, we live in a world where Kim Kardashian dominates the news, not massacres in Africa.

how dare the sun rise, by sandra uwiringiyimana with abigail pesta, pg. 189.

Sandra is right. People care about people, but the news is a business focused on making money, so the media will always feature the content that brings in viewers. I personally could not listen to stories about massacres all day, every day, but I believe that bearing witness to other peoples’ stories of grief, anguish, and trauma makes me a better person and enriches my life. Sometimes we need the distraction of some Kardashian drama, but our hearts are also vast enough to bear witness to the atrocities of the world and as we bear witness, we change ourselves, and as we change ourselves, we change humanity.

This is definitely a book I plan to give to my children when they are a little older. Anyone who takes the time to read this memoir will want to donate to the Jimbere Fund so Sandra’s family can continue their important work.

If you are interested in reading this book, or any others from my Read Around the World quest, you can check out my Amazon shop. I receive a tiny percentage of any books purchased through the shop at no extra cost to you.

For Comoros, I read A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir and translated from French to English by Aneesa Abbas Higgins. It was the winner of the Prix Senghor 2016 and the English PEN Translates Award Prize, and both awards are well-deserved. I absolutely loved this book.

Eel is a seventeen-year-old young woman who is adrift at sea and waiting to die, and to pass the time, she is telling the story of how she ended up in her predicament. The entire story is told in a single sentence, giving it a sense of manic urgency. This 217 page sentence is spoken by Eel, a snarky and irreverent Comorian who reminded me of Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye.

It has been DECADES since I read The Catcher in the Rye, but as I read A Girl Called Eel, I kept thinking how this is the first coming-of-age novel I have ever read that matches Catcher’s energy and vibe. As much as I adored Holden as a high schooler, Eel is an even more compelling narrator. She has a relatable snarkiness that most high schoolers would appreciate, and she covers issues ranging from typical high school drama to a woman’s place on the island of the Comorian island of Anjouan.

I kept debating whether this book is appropriate for a high school literature class as it deals with some dark issues like abortion and domestic violence, but I suspect I’ll be encouraging my daughter to read A Girl Called Eel in a few years when she starts high school. It’s a great way to spark some important conversations about the challenges of coming-of-age no matter where you live in the world.

As a final note, aside from being the best coming-of-age story that I’ve ever read, this book also beautifully described life on the Comorian island of Anjouan. I was so intrigued by the author’s descriptions that I watched this YouTube video that toured the Medina of an island in the Comoros, and it was exactly as I had been imagining it in my mind’s eye.

For Colombia, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and it was exactly the book I needed to read this past week. A few days before I started, I learned that my Aunt Berta only has about two weeks to live. She has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, so we knew she was dying, but we didn’t think it would be this fast. It has actually now been two weeks and a day since that prediction, and Berta is alive and having more good days than bad–but still, I’ve had so many feelings. Gabo helped me navigate the past two weeks, giving me space for all my feelings and a distraction when I needed an escape from reality.

Needless to say, I absolutely loved One Hundred Years of Solitude.

But at first, I wasn’t too impressed. I read something by Márquez when I was in high school–maybe One Hundred Years of Solitude? maybe Love in the Time of Cholera? maybe both?–and I recalled loving his writing, but for the first couple hundred pages, I thought the book was overhyped. A lot of folks on social media told me this was their absolute favorite book of all time, so perhaps my experience with the book was ruined by high expectations.

That all changed around the halfway mark.

There wasn’t a specific passage or sentence or chapter that converted me from thinking “this book is solid” to “this book is an absolute masterpiece.” It was more about me surrendering to Marquez. If you’ve read One Hundred Years of Solitude, you probably remember that a lot of characters have similar names. The novel follows a hundred years of the Buendía family, starting with the marriage of two cousins, and the names José, Arcadio, Aureliano, Remedios, and Ursula get repeated again and again amongst the generations. My copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude includes a family tree, but I was still confused trying to keep all the characters straight. When I realized that was the point, and surrendered to the confusion, my heart opened up and embraced the book.

I believe like so many works of great literature, this book will mean different things to different readers, and it will also mean different things to the same reader at different points in her life. One Hundred Years of Solitude is now an esteemed member of my Pantheon of Comfort Reading, a trusted friend that I can call upon when I need a literary hug. For this reading, I felt breathless at the vast expanse of life and humanity and the inevitable ups and downs in any life, town, or family. A lot of people on social media warned me that this book was sad and devastating, but for me, it was also joyful and uplifting. (But also, this is why we don’t marry our cousins!!!)

I realize I haven’t told you much about this book, but I don’t need to write a book report. This is my blog, and there are already thousands of articles and blog posts out there dissecting and summarizing One Hundred Years of Solitude. Today, I just want to marvel at how this book is so universal, bridging together readers around the world, and yet so deeply intimately personal, meaning different things to each of us.

p.s. If you want to buy the One Hundred Years of Solitude, its listed in my Amazon storefront. I receive a tiny commission at no extra cost to you!

For China, I read Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, and I loved this book. I learned so much about China (and in the process, realized just how little I know) and now I want to read more books by Chinese authors. After all, 1.42 billion people live there! That’s a lot of voices with a lot of different stories and perspectives. I could spend the rest of my life reading books by Chinese authors and never get bored. (Except I could never abandon this quest. Or Brazil.)

Wild Swans beautifully blends biography, memoir and a history of China during the twentieth century from 1903 to 1978 (shortly after Mao’s death). The story begins with a biography of the author’s grandmother, who was a war lord’s concubine and then continues with a biography of the author’s mother, who was a member of the Communist elite, and then dives into the author’s own life growing up in China under Mao. Throughout the book, the author weaves in explanations of life in China and relevant history and masterfully included details and anecdotes that immersed in her experiences.

I had to stop and tell Nathan stories from this book so many times because I just couldn’t believe the horrors of life under Mao. It was like a whole country was turned into a cult, and over a billion people are still processing this trauma. The book should have been depressing because it showed the dark side of humanity, but in the end, I was inspired by the author’s resilience and courage.

I’m still processing this book. I think I’ll be digesting it for a long time. Like, I could sit her for the next year, and write about all the thoughts I’m having and all the things I learned, and all the things I now want to study, and I still will have a million more things to say. I’m so grateful this book has been a huge success since the 1990s and already sold over 13 million copies worldwide.

For Chile, I read The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I read this book before in high school and loved it, and rereading it as a forty-five year old woman, I fell in love with it all over again. The magical realism! The family saga! The backdrop of Chile’s political history during the twentieth century! What an epic book!

If you have not heard about House of the Spirits before, here’s a quick overview: it’s the story of three generation of the Trueba family, as told by the ninety-year-old patriarch Esteban and his granddaughter Alba. There’s Esteban’s wife Clara, who can talk to spirits and move things with her mind, and Esteban’s daughter Blanca who falls in love with the son of the foreman of her father’s ranch. I won’t say anything about Alba because honestly, just go read this book already.

As I read House of the Spirits, I kept thinking how a college professor could dedicate an entire class to just this book. You could spend weeks dissecting the book itself: the way Allende brings the characters to life, giving everyone main character energy, even if they only join the story for a few pages; her lush style of writing (you could easily spend an entire class just debating her use of foreshadowing); and how she deftly combines an epic family drama with political history. But then you could use House of the Spirits as a launching pad to discuss magical realism, South American literature, and the role of literature in the world. (Please tell me someone has been teaching this class, and then please let me audit it.)

But, as much as I think you could spend an entire college semester dissecting this book, you could just as easily read it in a hammock during your tropical vacation and let the lush descriptions carry you away. That’s the brilliance of Isabel Allende. She can let you enjoy a intriguing, scandalous soap opera while drinking a fruity beverage out of a coconut shell and she can also inspire you to rethink your understanding of the world.

Here’s something I did not know when I read House of the Spirits in high school: it’s autobiographical! Isabel Allende started writing it as a letter to her dying grandfather! Her uncle was Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was assassinated in 1973 during a military coup. How wild is that? You know how movie blu-rays often include a version with the director and actors comments about the making of the film? I want something like that for House of the Spirits! Maybe Isabel Allende could host a podcast and in each episode, she goes through a chapter of the book and explains the real life inspiration behind the characters, setting, etc. (Just sending this out to the Universe…)

A movie version of House of the Spirits was made in the 1990s but it stars Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, and Winona Ryder. I love all those actors, but I don’t love the idea of watching them in a Chilean story. (Seriously–Winona-Fucking-Ryder?) A few years ago, Eva Longoria was reported to be headlining a reboot of House of the Spirits for Hulu, but I can’t find any recent reporting about that. Fingers crossed someone brings this story to television someday! It would make such a fantastic drama.

For Chad, I read Told by Starlight in Chad by Joseph Brahim Said. It was translated by Karen Haire Hoenig, but I’m not sure from which language! According to the book, the author was educated at French colonial schools, so I’m going to assume the book was originally written in French, but ugh, I don’t like making that assumption… but shoutout to the translator for making this work available! The world would be a narrow place if I could only read books written in English.

Told by Starlight is a collection of stories that I can’t lump into one category. There are fables, myths, and legends with talking animals, magical items, and evil stepmothers. Some tell about the founding of great cities while another explains why eclipses happen and yet another was a mashup of Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel but with a cow. This book reminded me of Folktales of Bhutan because both told stories with recognizable themes and tropes but in ways that were steeped in their local setting. With talking lions and hippos, I never for a moment forgot that I was reading stories from Africa.

Although the stories are wildly different, they all take pride in Chad’s tradition and heritage. That’s what drew me to this book. For Africa, I’ve been reading a lot of books that explore dark themes like colonialism, government corruption, and extreme poverty, and there’s plenty of that in Chad. At the moment, Chad is ranked 189th out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index, and the U.S. State Department strongly discourages travel to that land-locked country, so I was interested in a more upbeat perspective. Or, put it another way: all places have culture and stories and traditions that matter.

Is this the sort of book that I will be urging all my bookworm friends to read? Nope!

But did this book introduce me to stories that deepened my sense of the world? Absolutely.

I’ll leave you with this quote that gave me fresh insights into oral traditions:

As far back in time as men can remember, albeit they forget very fast, the oral tradition is there to remind them constantly of events that happened before they were born. Its elasticity and capacity for changing and evolving allows the tradition to yield to the exigencies of the moment; it adapts according to the place and the time in which the individuals live. And thus it guarantees the orderly continuation of custom, linking the past to the present and the present to the future.

Told by starlight in chad, pg. 65

That’s the sort of passage that makes me want to run back to college and spend a year in the stacks writing a thesis about the power of stories.

For Central African Republic, I read Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza, and WOW, it was not at all what I expected. It’s the story of two women whose husband dies unexpectedly, so I assumed I was in for a dark, morose tale. NOPE! It was lively, funny, smart and downright effervescent.

The story is set in 2011 when the country is on the brink of a civil war that started in 2012 and continues to this day. If you live in the United States and feel like our government and elections are a bit chaotic, then spend a little time on the Wikipedia page for Central African Republic. You might come away with a new understanding of what it means to live under a “chaotic” government.

At only 124 pages,Co-wives is a fast read, but Yabouza packed the story with information about life in Central African Republic, including the CAR’s “democratic elections” and the corruption of its government and judicial system. She also weaves daily life into the story with details about clothing, food, family structure, houses, commerce, and customs surrounding grief, courtship, and marriage.

I’d like to especially draw your attention to the local tradition for Mother’s Day: the husbands wear their wives’ dresses and cook dinner. (I think I’ll stick with flowers.)

And the story itself was very interesting! It brought me along the co-widows’ journey, riling up feelings of anger and indignation, and the ending was unexpected but inevitable and emotionally satisfying.

The book was translated from French into English by Rachael McGill (great work there!), and its the first book from the Central African Republic to be translated into English. But this is not the sort of book that should only be read during a Read Around the World quest. It’s a wonderful, uplifting story with a feminist edge that I absolutely adored.

Well, Canada broke my heart.

There was a tiny fight on TikTok when I asked for recommendations for Canada. Nothing like the uproar when I posted about my pick for Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Balkans are spicy and I’m still a little terrified) but for Canada, folks were roughly divided into two camps I shall describe as “Read Anne of Green Gables!” and “For Fuck’s sake, read anything but that.” I read the entire Anne of Green Gables series as a child, plus I’ve read tons of Margaret Atwood, so once folks suggested I read something by a First Nations author, that seemed like the right choice for me. There were a lot of votes for Five Little Indians by Michelle Good and when I learned it was a novel that followed the lives of five survivors of residential schools, my gut screamed, “Yes, please!”

If you have never heard about residential schools, this Wikipedia article provides a decent crash course. I only learned about residential schools a few years ago when headlines started popping up about the discovery of mass graves.

Michelle Good’s novel sucked me in. It was beautifully written with the sort of writing that carries the reader along. The chapters are told from the viewpoint of five different survivors of the same residential school, and Michelle Good brought them all to life. I felt like I had a personal relationship with each character, and the varying viewpoints was such a brilliant way to show the extent and impact of the abuses committed at the residential schools.

My heart broke for the children stolen from their families and sent to boarding schools meant to crush out their indigenous cultures. And it broke again for the parents who could not save their children. And then my heart shattered because based on media I consumed before Five Little Indians, I thought of Canada as this romantic utopian place with lots of maple syrup and hockey that was immune to the problems of the United States.

Nope. Evil shit also happened in Canada.

But I’m glad this book broke my heart because I think we need to break our hearts in order to let more love inside. It’s like tearing down a wall in order to add a wing to a house. This book added a whole new wing to my heart and soul. Now, when I think of Canada, I’ll still think of L.M. Montgomery and Margaret Atwood, but I’ll also think about the victims of the residential schools. They need us to listen to their stories so they can heal. They need us to listen so humanity can learn and reckon with its evils and grow and do better.

For Cameroon, I read How Beautiful We Were: A Novel by Imbolo Mbue. This is the story of a fictional village called Kosawa, and a fictional American oil company that sets up camp nearby and wrecks havoc upon the land with pipeline spills and noxious fumes. The water is poisoned, the soil is ruined, the air is toxic, and children are dying in heartbreaking numbers. If I had to describe this book as quickly as possible, I’d call it Erin Brokovich: The African Edition.

The novel is told from different perspectives, including many chapters told from the perspective of “the Children.” The Children are a group of age mates, and when it’s their turn to narrate, the story is told from the perspective of “we” and “us.” Over the course of several decades, the persons included in this group change and shift. This sounds like a narrative disaster, but Mbue makes it work. (Also, how lovely is the concept of age mates?)

This book does something that I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered in a novel: it raises questions about the role of corporations in modern society. What is a corporation? Does it have a sense of morality? What happens when an American corporation does business in countries ruled by corrupt governments? Can the American legal system hold American corporations responsible when the corporation engages in illegal acts in distant continents? Should it?

I kept thinking about the gas I buy to fuel my SUV. Where does the oil to make the gas come from? What harms are being done? What uncomfortable truths am I ignoring?

I could go on, because this book really made me think and raised a lot of questions about environmental degradation, corporate morality (or lack thereof), corruption, courage, resistance, and revolution. If I was a high school literature teacher, I’d definitely want my students reading this book. I do believe I’ll be adding Imbolo Mbue to my list of favorite authors.