100 Books Like Fieldwork

Sightseeing is a contemporary short story collection that would appeal to any reader who appreciates great writing, beautiful imagery, finely sketched characters, and sensitive exploration of human relations.

I loved it because Rattawut Lapcharoensap is a Thai-American author whose depictions of both cultures ring true and whose Thai characters are not shy about sharing their opinions about farangs.

Though the focus is always on the personal and interpersonal, these stories have an underlying current of social commentary that touches on issues as wide-ranging as traffic safety, public health, prostitution, tourism, and animal welfare.

I devoured Carol Hollinger’s 1964 memoir of her years teaching English in Thailand as I was preparing to do the same thing.

Though Thailand and the wider world had changed enormously in the six decades separating Hollinger’s adventure from mine, I loved this self-described American “matron’s” story about raising a family, running a household, fulfilling social obligations, and, oh yes, teaching English at one of Thailand’s premier universities.

With a refreshing openness of mind and spirit, and despite using some dated language, her observations about Thai people, culture, and customs still resonate today. And her title, Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind, really captures an essential and enduring aspect of Thai culture.

The “many lives” in this series of linked short stories are those of eleven passengers who perish when a Bangkok-bound boat capsizes in a fierce storm.

I relished each story of each life, both as a literary gem and as an insight into something fundamental about Thai society, such as the importance of social class, the role of urban migration in altering provincial life, the potentially stifling aspects of intergenerational family obligations, and the overriding role of karma in Thai conceptions of life and death.

To me, Many Lives is to Thai culture what Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town is to American culture.

Tom Crowley is an American writer who has experienced Thailand from many perspectives over many decades: as a soldier during the Vietnam War, as a corporate executive, as a US foreign service officer, and as a volunteer at Mercy Centre, a Catholic charitable organization.

This poignant memoir is a series of vignettes that focus on Crowley’s traumatic wartime experiences and the healing he found years later working with desperate children in one of Bangkok’s poorest slums. I picked this book because it shows a part of Thailand that most farangs never see.

Although this book is set in 1952, I picked it because I have a soft spot for Easter Island. In the 1990s, when working on a cruise ship, I was fortunate enough to visit this remote place and was deeply fascinated by the Moai statues and how society can function so far from the mainland.

Dr. Verdugo, a doctor recruited to the island, gives a vivid account of the culture shock he experienced there, and the carefree, simple culture of the locals. This mirrored my own experience on Tin Can Island in Tonga, as did his insights into the importance of family ties, tradition, and the solitude one experiences on such a remote island. 

I love a book with a mix of big wonder and big sorrow. I read this book; no, I gobbled this book in one day, looking out over the Atlantic.

I cried big salty tears into the sea and laughed out loud with the ocean breeze. I learned about the untold histories of Guam and the constellation of people and experiences that make up a rich life. I felt the beauty and power of the indigenous culture of Guam and I grieved the many deaths caused by the collision of climate crises, politics and greed. 

I read this book twice, cover-to-cover and back-to-back. First, to find out what happens to our feisty Métis hero, Joan of Arcand, and then again to savor Dimaline’s lyrical writing. When Mere (her grandmother) is murdered by a wolfish shape-shifting creature—a rogarou—we find ourselves trapped in a mythic Métis world. “A dog, a man, a wolf. He was clothed, he was naked in his fur, he wore moccasins to jig.” Carrying a ground-up salt bone for protection, Joan ventures into the Empire of Wild to slay the rogarou who killed Mere and reclaim her husband. Like her hero, Dimaline is brave and fearless, pouring history, politics, and religion into her cauldron, then stirring with a branch of magic realism and psychological terror. Dimaline is my hero.

A scientist discovers that his invention, a defoliant, has contributed to exterminating an entire native reserve in British Columbia, causing the birds and turtles to leave. The battle is on between nature and science to restore the balance. But all is not well in the corporation, for the scientist’s boss has become a shopaholic to compensate for his lonely life and wonders why his wife wants to divorce him. The characters are enjoyable, the action circular, and our current political considerations are tackled in a non-didactic fashion. And the human spirit triumphs despite the chemical overload! Throughout the novel, King makes searing one-liners about unbridled capitalism: “capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”

Anita is a brilliant teacher of inclusion and diversity, and a fellow member of the Transformational Leadership Council. I couldn’t put her book down as she took me on her journey to claiming her personal power. The world needs this book now! Anita’s understanding of these four gifts and how important they currently are to our planet will deeply inspire you.  

Among the more insidious and tragic consequences of colonialism and its assimilationist policies is the eradication of indigenous conventions around gender and sexuality. In many indigenous communities, gender and sexuality do not operate in as binary as a fashion as they do in European societies.

Highlighting these historical and contemporary possibilities for what we might call queer identities (or “two-spirit” in some communities), is Joshua Whithead’s breathtaking “Indigiqueer” anthology, Love After the End. Contributors amend the provocation, the future is indigenous, to consider how the future is also queer or indigiqueer. 

Weaving between the traditional and the contemporary, the past and the future, the ancestral and the posthuman, these tales of queer joy, love, and thriving remind us of what was lost and what is still possible as we strive toward mass decolonization.