Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar received a very high rating from our Book Group. The prose was dense yet highly engaging, employing a conversational style. The author lamented the demise of the “American Dream” in eight “elegies” covering subjects ranging from racism including how it feels to be its target; how the country became one shaped by debt and money and how the pervasiveness of capitalism transformed many things including college into a customer experience, hero worship into money worship; how assimilation threatens the immigrant family; and the nuances of cultural identity. One member drew our attention to a book with a comparable view of the dark side of America, i.e., Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder which was made into an Oscar winning movie.
A question raised was “Is this book autofiction?” To which the answer appears to be “Yes”. However, it could be sub classified as “autofiction” with a twist—the author has explained the “auto” part as a device for sidestepping satire in his portray of society rather than related to his seeking personal truth.
“I learned a lot”. “Reading this book resulted in my appreciation of myself as a “white unaware”. “Wonderful scene painting, almost too much—too intellectual, too many ideas, too many references. There were mixed reactions to the sexually explicit sections; “gratuitous”, “went too far”, “for commercial reasons”, “part of the scene”, and “didn’t both me”.
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