When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East
by

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 32 seconds

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry is a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia as a pair of estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Since Jan died, I have been sharing her love and not looking for her, so this novel attracted me as it was a counter-narrative. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something more significant?

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a stunningly far-flung examination of our struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what is.

Although I know only a limited amount about Buddhism and even less about Mongolia, I found When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East a fascinating page-turner of a novel.

Coincidently, while en route to see Memorial, we stopped to eat at a Mexican-Peruvian restaurant on Tenth Avenue in NYC. On the television was a continuous loop of a travelogue on Mongolia.

I found several quotes that I have used in other posts already.

  • “Sometimes faith is the only medicine available.”
  • “When the only hope is a boat and there is no boat, I will be the boat.”

I plan to use others in future posts.

Love never dies, and this quote echoed my belief.

“Love is neither created nor destroyed. It exists at all times and in all dimensions. Love is not something we create—it is something that wells up in us, like sap in a tree. It is an element in the fabric of the universe. Even on that distant day when sentient beings no longer exist, Love carries on. Perhaps our personal relationship to Love is impermanent, but Love itself is not.”

I highly recommend When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama somewhere in the vast Mongolian landscape, the young monk Chuluun seeks the help of his identical twin, Mun, who was recognized as a reincarnation himself as a child but has since renounced their once shared monastic life.

Harking back to her vivid and magical first novel set in Vietnam, Quan Barry carries us across a landscape as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied, from the stark Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khan. As their country stretches before them, questions of the immortal soul, along with more earthly matters of love, sex, and brotherhood, haunt the twins, who can hear each other’s thoughts.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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All the Sinners Bleed- A Novel

Read: June 2023

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All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel

by S. A. Cosby

Today, I delved into the gripping pages of “All the Sinners Bleed” by S. A. Cosby. This enthralling novel centers around Titus Crown, the first African American sheriff in Charon County, Virginia. Despite the county’s reputation for traditional customs such as moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, Titus, with his FBI expertise, knows that the peace won’t last forever.

On the first anniversary of Titus’s election, a schoolteacher is murdered by an ex-student, and Titus’s deputies take down the perpetrator. As Titus delves deeper into the case, he uncovers a web of horrendous crimes and finds a serial killer lurking in plain sight, haunting Charon’s dirt roads and woodland clearings.

Titus is determined to solve the case, even though it is linked to a nearby church, and he harbors a personal secret that plagues him. However, he faces opposition from a far-right group who want to hold a parade to honor the town’s Confederate past while he tries to solve the issue.

Despite the challenges, Titus remains resolute in his love for Charon and his commitment to finding justice. The collision of religion and hatred cannot deter him from his duty.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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Writers and Lovers

Read: October 2021

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Writers and Lovers

by Lily King

Writers and Lovers by Lily King is a page-turner of a book. From page one, I was engaged with Casey and wanted to continue reading to find out how she resolved the crises of her life.

The loss of her mother was a constant reminder of my loss. Although she mourned in a different way than I am, there was much we had in common. The big difference was she was writing a novel about her mother, and I am only doing journal entries and occasional posts.

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey–a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist–in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

I very much recommend this book and this writer.

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The Cemetery of Untold Stories

Read: April 2024

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The Cemetery of Untold Stories

by Julia Alvarez

Today, I began reading Julia Alvarez‘s novel “The Cemetery of Untold Stories.” The book explores whose stories deserve to be told and whose should remain buried. In the end, Alma, the main character, finds meaning in the power of storytelling. Julia Alvarez reminds us that our stories are never truly finished, even at the end.

Alma Cruz, a famous writer, doesn’t want to suffer the same fate as her friend, who became mentally unstable after struggling to finish a book. So, when Alma inherits a small plot of land in her native Dominican Republic, she turns it into a cemetery for her unfinished stories. She hopes her characters will finally be able to rest in peace.

However, they have other ideas and soon begin to rewrite and revise themselves, even talking and interacting with one another. Fortunately, Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a listener to Alma’s characters’ secret tales. These tales include those of Bienvenida, the abandoned wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was erased from official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

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The Essential Hamilton: Letters & Other Writings: A Library of America Special Publication

Read: February 2019

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The Essential Hamilton: Letters & Other Writings

by Edited by Joanne B. Freeman

The Essential Hamilton: Letters & Other Writings, edited by Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, is a must-read in our times when a constitutional crisis is the watchword of our day. Compared to reading all 27 volumes of Hamilton’s writings, this book provides the essential texts that offer a clear understanding of both the revolutionary era, the debates over the constitution, Hamilton’s impact as Secretary of the Treasury, and his downfall and eventual downfall death in Weehawken.

Professor Freeman’s introductions and chronology help place the writings into a historical context.

The Essential Hamilton is one of four books that I purchased after my first One Day University class.

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How the Word is Passed

Read: December 2021

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How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith. This book was a gift from my son Jon. The New York Times selected How the Word is Passed as one of the best books published this year. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

How the Word is Passed is one of the best books I have read in 2021. I had read an excerpt in The Atlantic on the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. Like most of us, I had placed the book on my to-read list, where it remained lost in the cobwebs. Fortunately, my son Jon purchased the book for me.

Secondly, the book rekindled my long-lost dream of being an American Studies professor. As soon as Jan and I met, I dropped plans to leave Brooklyn and start graduate school in the fall of 1974. I made that decision primarily because of how much I loved Jan. But it was also partly that I did not have a clear vision of what my life would be like as a professor. The book provided clear examples of people like Yvonne Holden at The Whitney Plantation redefining history to be more accurate and inclusive. I probably could not have done as well as she did, but I can now see that it might have resulted in a career for me that could have been impactful.

Goodreads provides this overview for those who still need to be convinced to read this book.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.

How the Word is Passed is one of the best books I have read this year and many prior ones. I encourage you to read it and share your comments.

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Stony The Road

Read: October 2019

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Stony the Road

by Henry Louis Gates Jr

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a must-read book, especially with white nationalism on the rise.

I read this book when Jan began her chemotherapy. Although the book’s subject – the retreat from reconstruction – was one I studied in college, at times, I found it hard to focus on the material and my wife’s health at the same time. I stayed on the stony road as it is a subject we need to understand if we are going to correct the past failures.

As The New York Times wrote,

Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” an indispensable guide to the making of our times, addresses 2017’s mystifications. The book sets the Obama era beside Reconstruction and the Trump era beside the white supremacist terrorism of Redemption, the period beginning in 1877 during which Reconstruction’s nascent, biracial democracy was largely dismantled. Gates juxtaposes the optimism of Reconstruction, the despair of Redemption, and the promise of the New Negro movement — the effort by black Americans, starting around the turn of the 20th century, to craft a counternarrative to white supremacy. In doing so, “Stony the Road” presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism.

Growing up in the Jim Crow south, I was well aware of white nationalism. This book is an essential read if we are going to make America a multi-racial democracy.

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