It’s officially cozy-up-with-a-book-and-romanticize-the-gloom season. And here at City Cast Seattle, we’re all about a good local read. Recently, host Jane C. Hu, contributor Marcus Harrison Green and author Max Delsohn got together on the podcast to share some of their favorite books by Seattle authors. We’ve gathered their recommendations for you here:
Marcus recommends
Published by Marcus’ publishing house Hinton Publishing, Frannie James’ book is a trip into 1990s Seattle. It takes place on Capitol Hill at a small luxury hotel where “rock stars slip by in low-lit spaces, and the switchboard crackles with drama.” Read on if you’re looking for a glimpse into the heyday of Seattle’s music scene alongside a coming-of-age story in a changing city.
- We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe & Tamiko Nimura
As Marcus says on the podcast, we are taught about Japanese internment here in the Pacific Northwest in broad strokes, but “you rarely hear about the resistance to it.” This graphic novel follows three stories of Japanese Americans who resisted internment during World War II. The novel introduces readers to Jim Akutsu, who refuses to be drafted from the camp at Minidoka when classified as a non-citizen, an enemy alien; Hiroshi Kashiwagi, who resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath at Tule Lake, but yields to family pressure to renounce his U.S. citizenship; and Mitsuye Endo, a reluctant recruit to a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment, who refuses a chance to leave the camp at Topaz so that her case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Max recommends
Max says this book was an inspiration and reference in writing his own debut short story collection. Though Bernstein Sycamore’s book has very little narrative or plot, it is full of wordplay and queries about the kind of world we could create with new narratives. It centers on themes of queerness, belonging, loneliness, desire, and the “utter havoc of capitalism."
This poetry collection is Quenton Baker’s first. Max says this book “rearranged my whole brain.” And reviewer Jay Aquinas Thompson writes, “The violence, economic inequality, spiritual sickness, and will-to-power of racism is a shaping force in This Glittering Republic. But beneath and against this awful power, Baker’s uncovering of history and his restless, serious, diglossic “I” won’t give up. “I cannot be buried — / I carry the sunset in my mouth.”
Jane recommends
Delsohn’s debut short story collection follows a range of transmasculine characters through 2010s Seattle as they navigate questions of identity, desire and our obligations to one another. The collection is also a literary tour of a bygone version of Seattle intimately familiar to some and recognizable to many with its dive bars, bathhouses, parks, workplaces, music venues, beaches, and college campuses. Jane says the book feels prescient – foreshadowing the issues Seattle is still grappling with today.
Jane says “Where’d You Go, Bernadette made a big impression on me before I moved to Seattle. It taught me the importance of blackberries in holding up entire hillsides and gave voice to the Seattle style of passive aggression.”
This episode also mentions a wealth of other local authors including, Ijeoma Oluo, Timothy Egan, Sonora Jha, Katie Lee Ellison and Corinne Manning. Listen to the full conversation between Max, Marcus and Jane here. And if you’d like to browse or buy any of these books in person, Jane has a great guide to Seattle bookstores here.
