Book Recommendation: Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl
By Paula Carter
Nonfiction Faculty
Last winter I binged Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ wanting to know what all the fuss was about (it won seven Emmy Awards last fall). It only took a couple episodes to understand why the show was so popular: it is infused with genuine kindness. Sure, it’s also funny. But I’m not sure it would have resonated if we weren’t all so weary of a general antagonism that has seeped into everything like an oil spill.
If you are looking for another balm (besides British football) to that weariness, I would recommend Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl. This, too, has soothed me of late. Told in short essays, the book is about Renkl’s childhood in Alabama and adulthood as a suburban naturalist. The book isn’t as feel-good as the TV show; she goes right in for the hard truths, like in “All Birds?” when her young son begins to understand his own mortality after walking by a dead bird on the street day after day and explaining to it, “You dead. You not a bird.” But the challenging moments Renkl addresses are also filled with awe, beauty and wonder. She reminds us of what it means to care – for family, for the earth, for each other – and how to make a point without arguing.
In the essay “Revelation,” she says, “The morning sun burns in the sky as it must, but the world belongs to the fog for now, and the fog is busy masking and unmasking, shrouding what we know and offering to our eyes what we have failed to see.”
See things anew. Watch a couple episodes of Ted Lasso, then read a few essays in Late Migrations. You’ll feel better.
Nonfiction Faculty
Last winter I binged Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ wanting to know what all the fuss was about (it won seven Emmy Awards last fall). It only took a couple episodes to understand why the show was so popular: it is infused with genuine kindness. Sure, it’s also funny. But I’m not sure it would have resonated if we weren’t all so weary of a general antagonism that has seeped into everything like an oil spill.
If you are looking for another balm (besides British football) to that weariness, I would recommend Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl. This, too, has soothed me of late. Told in short essays, the book is about Renkl’s childhood in Alabama and adulthood as a suburban naturalist. The book isn’t as feel-good as the TV show; she goes right in for the hard truths, like in “All Birds?” when her young son begins to understand his own mortality after walking by a dead bird on the street day after day and explaining to it, “You dead. You not a bird.” But the challenging moments Renkl addresses are also filled with awe, beauty and wonder. She reminds us of what it means to care – for family, for the earth, for each other – and how to make a point without arguing.
In the essay “Revelation,” she says, “The morning sun burns in the sky as it must, but the world belongs to the fog for now, and the fog is busy masking and unmasking, shrouding what we know and offering to our eyes what we have failed to see.”
See things anew. Watch a couple episodes of Ted Lasso, then read a few essays in Late Migrations. You’ll feel better.
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August 24, 2022