I’ve been following a thread through this year’s reading for the past four days, from Roe to Revolution, Revolution to Secrecy, Secrecy to Corruption, Corruption to Colonialism, and now, linking from one fiction about labour and status to another, moving from Colonialism to Corrosion. Did you guess from yesterday’s clue that another Wole Soyinka novel would make an appearance?

Hard at work in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965) are several young men who have studied overseas and returned to Nigeria to work. Even in his debut novel, the attention paid to language is remarkable. Scenes are sometimes comic and sometimes disorienting. Like one apologetic character, who admits his “habit of recollecting things as if they are just happening.” There’s talk of “inspiration…idealism…hope for a future Nigeria” but also desperation and confusion. The young men struggle to balance tradition and progress: “All choice must come from within him, not from promptings of his past.” Whether “journalism here is just a business like any other”, in a world where furniture includes “wardrobes, desks and cabinets” but also coffins “upended to reveal ornate brass workings on the lid”—there are layers to sift through and no simple answers after the work is finished.

The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones also ponders the relationship between past and present. Originally inspired by work published in the New York Times Magazine in August 2019, these essays and creative works are varied and the collection is expansive. The controversy that erupted in response still simmers: scholars and historians remain divided on how to present the foundation and development of the United States. But even for readers who are unfamiliar with American history, there is plenty of good reading, beginning with Claudia Rankine’s opening poem, which roots the timeline in 1619 with the arrival of The White Lion on the coast of North America, a ship which carried between twenty and thirty enslaved Africans, who would be traded to colonists. You could read only the essays, only the timeline, or only the stories and poems or, if you’re concerned with a library duedate (as I was) you could oooohh at two pages of new fiction from Z.Z. Packer and a new poem by Reginald Dwayne Betts and pick and choose from there.

An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays (2021) is part of the Revisionist History series from Beacon Press. The previous volume I read in the series was excellent preparation: I expected that every paragraph would feel like an invitation to launch a mini-reading-project. The prose is clean, the content concise, the vision broad: it feels substantive without feeling dense, rich yet not over-stuffed. The use of primary sources strikes a great balance: sometimes a snippet will do, other times a longer quotation captures a flavour more astutely. Mays talks about the Federalist Papers but also the film Harriet, quotes Fannie Lou Hamer’s speech but also present-day social media in under 200 pages (with another 50 pages of supporting material, including an exceptional index).

Mays has Saginaw and Chippewa ancestors, whereas Joy Harjo is Muscogee. I haven’t read much of her poetry, but her memoir Poet Warrior (2021) was fascinating all the same. “The more years you gather, the more stories you have that want to be retold. But it’s the same ones that often haunt you.” She has a way of stating things so plainly that you pause often while reading, perhaps because they’re so relatable: “I have made choices that made no sense to anyone else, but they were the right choices for me.” She’s also “obsessed with maps and directions” which might explain her readers’ sense that takes care to orient us. Whether she is writing about snakes or elephants, injustice or resistance, fathers or daughters, the blacklisted writer Meridel Le Sueur or the poetry of M. Scott Momaday—her voice is arresting. (Also worthwhile? The poetry collection she recently edited: Living Nations, Living Words.)

Turns out that Ai Weiwei’s memoir 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (2021) was more popular than I expected; I thought (especially with the holidays approaching) that I would be able to renew and, when that wasn’t the case, I decided to read enough to determine whether to request it again: in just a few days, I was finished. His ability to summarize swaths of Chinese history and culture is remarkable, and his tone—somehow distanced but still maintaining a sense of disclosure—fits perfectly with this man’s intense and still-unfolding life and work. The stakes are high and I felt it was tremendously engaging and inspiring. (As with Human Flow, I didn’t want to stop.)

When I originally placed a hold on 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, Ai Qing’s Selected Poems (2021) came up in the catalogue as a new addition to the library’s collection as well. Just a few pages into the memoir, I understood that Weiwei contributed the introduction not only because both men are prominent Chinese thinkers and artists but because the poet is also the artist’s father. “Life continued to be hard, but we never talked of what we had been through during the time we’d been apart, because we were so relived to be together.” In fact, there are several of Ai Qing’s poems also quoted in the memoir; I also enjoyed reading a few others in the collection, but plan to spend more concentrated time with them in the new year.

Harold R. Johnson’s The Björkan Sagas (2021) takes root in a “found” manuscript after the “owner” can no longer be queried as to its origins; this “fiction” penned by the descendant of a Swedish father and a Cree mother raises all sorts of questions about how we define ourselves and what meaning resides in our lives—and our deaths. “On all the planets in all the galaxies, there is life, because life is part of the universe. Life needs the universe and the universe needs life—the same way that the mycelia needs the tree and the tree needs the mycelia. Everywhere there is life, it looks the same.”  The language is poetic and the story is mythic; Johnson is an astute and experienced storyteller and  if you can believe that he also could be descended from trees, this slim volume is the book for you.

Some of the volumes in André Alexis’s Quincunx series are also very slim, but Ring (2021) is a little heftier. And not just because of the long poem in the middle. Not just because it’s the concluding volume either (though, technically, the central book in the shape of the story, hence, the third volume in that sense). Here, actual events are mixed in with purely imagined ones, including real-life Canadian authors and poets (Roo Borson, Jan Zwicky and Lisa Robertson) along with the Annex parkette statue of Gwen McEwan, and his own publisher, Alana Wilcox (of Coach House Press). Tancred, at the heart of the novel, is a complex character. The author describes him as “incredibly guarded”, withholding aspects of himself from the author to the extent that he “almost requires another novel”; at the launch, Alexis describes being frustrated, knowing what NOT to write about him but not what TO write; he felt “inexpressible” partly because “he’s a thief and has a shadow self” which also impacts how close his relationships with readers can be. Equally guarded. The Quincunx volumes are mythic in scope but you could read any one of them in a single afternoon. Even despite Tancred’s resistance.

Okezie Nwọka up-ends the colonial story epitomized in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in their fantastical debut novel, God of Mercy (2021). In the absence of colonial influence, Igbo traditions in the village of Ichulu endure. Belief and conviction, heritage and resilience, mercy and redemption: the world-building is immersive (it reminded me of somersaulting into N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy) but serves as a rich backdrop for exploring these fundamental themes. The language is heady, the intensity is high—but the presence of a second style in the form of diary entries reminds readers that this is deliberate, authorial choice. It’s not for every reader—and perhaps not a book that keeps cozy company in the stack because stylistically it requires room to breathe—but its wonders earn a place on the shelf with Nnedi Okorafor and Tochi Onyebuchi. (And the author’s exuberant pages of thanks at the end reminded me of Robert Jones’ lengthy acknowledgements in back of The Prophets-love their enthusiasm and the sense that it takes a village to raise a book.)

How readers respond to this passage from Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s 2021 novel The House of Rust will determine whether they should read this debut set in Kenya, which claimed Graywolf’s inaugural African Fiction Prize: “In the grand green roof of Mombasa’s heart, the crows slept. Be they busying the day in Lamu, Malindi, Kwale—night flew the crows back to Mombasa like businessmen returning to their families. After a hard-working day of menacing house cats, stealing from the distracted staff of untended kitchens and gardens, killing songbirds, defecating on the common people and their property, and dancing gloatingly in garbage, they rejoined their brethren.” Nighttime has agency, creatures behave in ways we expect from humans, gritty details, rhythmic prose, a bizarrely grandiose language that—somehow—fits, because the stakes are extraordinarily high (life and death) and fabulist elements recall the tone of myths and legends.

For me, 2021 has been a reading year of mythic proportions. Which was particularly ironic, as I went into it expecting to read less not more. So I’m not going to say that I’m REALLY going to read fewer books in 2022, because my sub-conscious might interpret that as some kind of dare!

Now that my end-of-year stacks are tidy, I’m ready to have a look at my log and compare patterns to previous years. *rubs palms*

How did your reading in 2021 “stack up” with other reading years? Did it leave you inspired or deflated, fired-up or tired-out? Or, all of the above?