A Multicultural List of Generational Novels
Genetic chords bind us to our parents and their parents, reaching back far beyond what the naked eye can see. I have my father’s nose and a Slavic tendency to avoid the eye of acquaintances I bump into on the street. I’ve lived in the U.S. my whole life; I’m American before I’m Russian. Yet, the invisible strings of my family tree fashion my genetic blueprints, urging my body to move away from certain interactions and towards specific foods.
The novels on this list emphasize the unavoidable influence culture has on family and the individual. Each story is distinct, marked by the idiosyncrasies of the family and their dynamic with their environment. They all, however, leave us with the existential dilemma: history repeats itself. Are we doomed to play the same hand as our parents and our parent’s parents and a set of parents whose existence has been wiped clean by the passage of time?
East of Eden, by John Steinback
We’ve all read a little bit of Steinback. While The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men are worshipped by our high school English teachers, East of Eden is a popular favorite in the literary community. The novel’s deep roots in Christian theology (the entire book and the very title itself is a biblical allusion) has a subtle but prominent presence in the tale of the Trask and the Hamilton families. Steinback takes the reader on a journey through the Salinas Valley to the most intimate corners of the human mind. On the way, he considers the existential implications of the linguistic roots of the bible’s mistranslated Hebrew phrase: Timshel.
Like every other book on this list, the families’ fates are influenced by the culture and lands they inhabit. The Trasks and Hamiltons are inexorably American, their actions reinforced by the transient cultural norms of western society.
“Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?”
A Woman is No Man, by Etaf Rum
A Woman is No Man follows three generations of Palestinian American women, a criminally underrepresented voice in American literature. Even after the family migrated to America in the late twentieth century, the succeeding generations of women are bound to their culture and its oppressive societal norms.
Through the lives of Isra and her daughters, Rum paints a heart-wrenching portrait of the inescapable domestic confines of Arab culture. Violence plagues the Arab women’s lives, from the men within their homes to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It’s easy to become immersed in and attached to these women, but hard to watch the realities of their lives, which Rum describes with brutal honesty.
“I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could hear me.
The Rainbow, by D. H. Lawrence
In Lawrence’s decadent generational novel, we are pushed headfirst into three generations of the Brangwen family during the mid to late 1800s. The family’s behavioral patterns are molded by the restrictive binds of nineteenth-century English society, the publication of the book was a challenge in itself. The Rainbow was originally banned for its raw depictions of sexuality, though to the modern reader it would not be categorized as obscene.
It would be an incredible feat to read this book and avoid falling in love with every sentence; its beauty stems from its syntax. Every sentence is full of flavor. The pages are heavy from the very weight of the adorned text. Lawrence not only voices the intimacies of romance, all of its destructive and prosperous manifestations, he does so delicately, honestly, and so vividly it is impossible not to finish this novel shouldering part of Brangwen's emotional burdens.
“She seemed to see him with her newly-opened, wide eyes, almost of a child, and with a strange movement, that was agony to him, she reached slowly forward her fark fae and her breast to him, with a slow insinuation of a kiss that made something break in his brain, and it was darkness over him for a few moments.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
Everyone needs to read One Hundred Years of Solitude and then reread it once every decade. While the novel is best read in its original language, Spanish, Gregory Rabassa’s translation does Márquez’s literary genius justice. The reader witnesses the rise and fall of a fictional village, Macondo, and its founding members, the Buendía family. Tragic loves and violent deaths are the fates of the Buendía line. Their individual lives are deeply involved with one another, and yet, they are all living in an impenetrable solitude, doomed to follow time’s cyclical path.
On a syntactical level, the writing is simplistic and easy to digest. In its totality, it constructs a mosaic, a kaleidoscope of love affairs and deaths, all with the same tragic coloring. The individual character’s story is important, but to find fundamental truths, you must search the collective.
“She, on the other hand, shuddered from the certainty that the deep moan was a first indication of the fearful pig tail and she begged God to let the child die in her womb. But the lucidity of her old age allowed her to see, and she said so many times, that the cries of the children in their mothers’ wombs are not announcements of ventriloquism or a faculty for prophecy but an unmistakable sign of an incapacity for love.”
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
In Pachinko, the inevitable waves of history pull four generations of ethnic Koreans through a hostile Japanese world. Environmental influences reign in this family saga. It is often categorized as historical fiction, as history is a character of its own.
Lee’s medley of unique characters, each deserving a novel of their own, contribute to an assortment of themes. The characters struggle with self-worth and racial discrimination, changing gender roles, and, of course, interfamilial conflict. Pachinko will undoubtedly earn a place on the esteemed list of modern classics.
“There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa's small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.”