I hope you read our last BookNotes, the weekly missive from Hearts & Minds. As I sometimes do, I name-checked a handful of books in a couple of related themes as I moved towards the main title I was discussing — Jeff Chu’s lovely memoir Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand — and the big news that we are bringing Jeff in for an author event here in our area. We are joining together with First Presbyterian Church in York and their little Racial Justice task force to co-sponsor an event I rather impulsively called “An Evening with Jeff Chu: Author, Farmhand, Foodie, Pastor.” It is this coming Tuesday night (June 17th) at 7:00 PM in the sanctuary of our historic downtown church in York (225 E. Market Street) not far from our Dallastown shop. All are warmly invited. There will be snacks and books for sale.

Want an autographed one? Let us know — we’ll get Jeff to ascribe it and we’ll send it out promptly. Fun, eh?

If you’d like to hear me share an enthusiastic invitation to join us, check this out. Can you tell I’m excited? Ha! If you know anybody in central Pennsylvania who might enjoy this, will you share this with them?

 

So, there’s a lot going on in this marvelous new book. One of the rave reviewers said it was finally a book about love, and that is beautifully true. But there’s a lot of fun, hard, poignant curious, meditative, and adventuresome chapters and a lot of moving stories to get us there.

I often like to put books in tandem with other books, similar titles (or sometimes very different ones) that might underscore or highlight features of the one in question. Reading is often a conversation in our mind, and, often, with others. Why not expand the discussion?

Here we go, then, sort of stream of conscience style, some other titles to think about from us here at Hearts & Minds as we celebrate Chu and his work.  All books mentioned are 20% off, too. Click the “order” link at the end and we’ll take it from there.

+++

Although I wouldn’t characterize Good Soil as a book about Chinese Americans, in general (it is a memoir, after all, not general at all!) there are stories about the experience of discrimination and ill-will and the dread of awkwardness, as there usually are for those who are ethnic or racial minorities.

From big, ugly stuff like the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the prison camps for Japanese Americans during World War II to the horrible stuff that exploded during Covid, some of us are only now coming to terms with this aspect of American racism. And there are the almost cliched tensions in some places between those of Asian descent and the black community. There’s a lot to learn, even if Jeff only tells it a bit and a bit slant, as the poet put it.

Here on the heels of Pentecost, who doesn’t feel compelled to explore multi-ethnic faith? (I’ll tell you who: those who didn’t explore Pentecost yesterday, or read the text in Acts, or those who think the coming of the Holy Spirit is somehow merely personal, but I digress.)

I’ve read a handful of books by Asian-American writers lately, wanting to broaden my understanding of the Asian American experience. More than one Asian-American friend recommends certain novels; another recommended a scholarly treatise. You may have heard about the brilliant, thick, brand new volume trangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America by Michael Luo — we have it!  Wow.

For my memoir-loving palette, though, I was blown away by Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America by Julia Lee. I loved (and wrote about) Nicole Chung’s bestselling and striking All You Can Ever Know, followed up by her “groundbreaking narrative” A Living Remedy.  I really appreciated the fairly brief Tell Me The Dream Again: Reflections on Family, Ethnicity & the Sacred Work of Belonging by Korean-American writer Tasha Jun, published by Tyndale, with a forward by Alia Joy. Kudos to this evangelical publisher for doing such a fine work.

Like other mainstream writing these days, some people of faith may not be used to the spicy language, but Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City was a hoot and deeply sad, in some ways, and politically agitated. Elissa Washuta called it “perfect and glimmering” and Victoria Chang said she “expanded the possibilities of Asian American stories.” There’s some serious stuff about race and class and gender and all the expected sore spots. Yet, Meet Me… has been called “an incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey Shore.” Yep.  And, man, don’t miss Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by former central Pennsylvanian Phuc Tran. He grew up in 1980s Carlisle, PA. Does anybody recall my review a couple years ago? Wow.

We stock but I have not yet read The Souls of Yellow Folk / Essays by Wesley Yang; it was a New York Times 100 Notable Books a year or two ago and the impressive Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post called these essays “fierce and refreshing.” How curious — it gets rave reviews as gonzo and beautiful and perceptive and stylish from O, The Oprah Magazine and The National Review. Often about sex and race, one review said he is our modern Balzac.

Among the many overtly Christian, theologically- informed ones that that we stock along these lines we want to highlight these two excellent ones:

Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationship, and Vocation compiled by Sabrina S. Chan, Linson Daniel, E. David de Leon & La Thao (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This is a must read book of popular-level theology, memoir, spirituality, and insights about multi-ethnic friendships and community.I suggest it for anyone, but it is written for Asian American Christians, inviting readers to ponder “What’s your name?” and, of course, who are you called to be in this messed-up /beautiful world. As it says on the back, “In an era when Asians face ongoing marginalization, Asian American Christians need to hear and own our diverse stories beyond the cultural expectations of the model minority or perpetual foreigner.

This team is from East Asia and Southeast Asia, hale from Hong Kong or Wisconsin as a Hmong American. As one writer exclaimed, “This is a book many of us have needed for so long!”  Another reviewer (Russel Jeung) mentions its “transformative hope.” Yes!

Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice Daniel D. Lee (IVP Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

What can I say about this? Perhaps this might help: for those interested in academic theology you know that, very generally speaking, there are a few streams of thinking, from the most ecumenical, mainline sort of sometimes even eccentric reflections to the more Biblically-intentional works shaped by classic, historic truths of the faith. Asian thinkers, contextualized with their own unique insights and baggage, have struggled, like everyone, to be both faithful and contextualized. It is my sense that this volume does all of this exceptionally well, open-minded and broad-thinking yet clearly within the framework of classic, historic Protestant orthodoxy. My friend Paul Louis Metzger (who has a lively book on what he’s learned from Zen) and who is a very reliable guide, says it really “points the way forward in doing Asian American theology.” He calls this recent book a “clarion call and road map.” Soong-Chan Rah notes that Dr. Lee is able to “give honor and value to the larger redemptive narrative of Jesus while also honoring the story of the Asian American community.” To see an intellectually robust and prophetic voice that finally calls us all to greater holiness is a pleasure. Amos Yong, his colleague at Fuller, invites non-Asians to read it, saying it testifies to the “dissonant accents”  in which God speaks.

As I explained last week, Chu does talk about his Chinese-American family a lot, a fascinating story, tenderly told, with lots about food and trips back to China and Hong Kong, which would be fabulous to read even if there wasn’t the extra freighted struggle for Jeff’s conservative Christian parents to accept that their son is gay, and not afraid to write about it. His captivating travelogue report Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper; $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79) works on several levels and is very highly recommended as a great glimpse into some of the most contentious questions in the American religious landscape. I can’t say enough about that, but readers who are struck by his generosity (and courage, trained well by his journalistic work) in interviewing so many different sorts of people and grappling with the exclusion many in the LGBTQ community have felt from religious people (sometimes even their own families and loved ones, as Jeff explores) may want to check out two other titles that I think would be helpful for those who aren’t sure about theological reflections of this sort.

Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church by Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter (Brazos Press) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

First, I have often promoted a marvelous book that came out several years back but remains the most thoughtful, weighty, compelling book on how to have compassionate and gracious conversations across differences on sexual ethics. Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church by Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter tells of several people in Canada and the US who have come to think differently than they once did about the Biblical faithfulness of embracing same sex relations for Christians. Significantly, it tells some of the story of the downfall of Exodus, a once respected [in traditional evangelical circles, at least] ministry of “reparative” therapy to convert to heterosexual avowed gay and lesbians; as Generous Spaciousness was being written, Exodus imploded as they admitted that they were knowingly dishonest about their results, that nobody was able to “pray the gay away” and they dissolved. Some of their leaders and practitioners had what might be called a worldview breakdown, questioning much of what they previously thought about identity, sexuality, conversion, prayer, holiness, transformation, community.

In any case, Generous Spaciousness invites us to be honest about our differences, to probe the meaning of the body of Christ as a place that can host honest conversations, showing how nurturing a generous sort of room of space and grace, can be inclusive and perhaps healing, despite some hard stuff in working through serious disagreements. It is such a good book, both demanding and compelling. In a way, Jeff Chu’s Does Jesus Really Love Me models this high ground of hopeful spaciousness in conflicted relationships. I wanted to mention it for our BookNotes fans who are not sure about us hosting a gay pastor.

My friend Brian Walsh, author most recently of Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination and co-author, with his wife Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat, of the very important Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire/Demanding Justice) writes this about Generous Spaciousness: 

I can’t imagine a more timely book. Modeling the very ‘generous spaciousness’ that she advocates, VanderWal-Gritter’s heart is on every page. The church is at a crucial moment of transition in relation to gay sisters and brothers, and this wonderfully written book will prove to be one of the most helpful guides in the midst of change. Profoundly and deeply biblical, theologically rich, and rooted in years of humble, respectful, and vulnerable listening, VanderWal-Gritter’s wisdom is precisely what we so desperately need.

Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christian Experience Harm in the Church  Bridget Eileen Rivera (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It seems to me that even among those who cannot accept same-sex marriages — in Jeff Chu’s Good Soil we learn about the heartbreak that his parents would not attend his wedding — more and more are these days at least admitting that the church has often been harsh and sometimes hateful to LGTBQ individuals; I hope it is not “too little too late” for many evangelicals to show Godly care and grace to others they have disdained, but there are signs of hope for some sort of generosity. For instance, although this author maintains fairly conventional evangelical ethics, she wrote this extraordinary book explaining how and why LGTBQ folk have been made to carry “heavy burdens.” It is obviously an allusion to Jesus’s warning in Matthew 23: 3-4 about religious leaders not imparting such burdens. Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christian Experience Harm in the Church by Bridget Eileen Rivera is a very good read, highly recommended by many who are hosting conversations about these things. Kirstyn Komarnicki (director of the Oriented to Love dialogue program of Christians for Social Action) says it is “essential” and could be a game-changer for the church. We certainly suggest it.

Listen to the wise Wesley Hill, professor at Western Theological Seminary and author of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

In spite of — or just as often because of — my position as a ‘conservative’ on marriage and sexuality, I have seen firsthand the ways the evangelical movement has devastated the faith of many of its LGBTQ members. Not everyone will agree with every argument in this account of that devastation (I don’t), but every Christian who reads this book will no longer be able to ignore the real harm that has been done in the name of the gospel — or to avoid grappling with the repentance and justice-seeking that the gospel continues to ask of us all.

WholeHearted Faith Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu (HarperOne) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

To be honest, in the last BookNotes review of the two main books by Jeff Chu I didn’t want to say much about Wholehearted Faith. It’s a good read and Jeff deserves a lot of credit; through tears over the unexpected death of his good friend and collaborator, Rachel, Jeff finished up this book that she was working on at the time of her death. Rachel’s husband, I gather, asked Jeff to finish her final book. It says that it was written “with” Jeff Chu to indicate that it wasn’t intended as a co-authored project, but the tragedy brought him in to finalize the manuscript.

For those who admired Rachel — I had only met her once, I think, and we had a pleasant time with some fiesty disagreements, as I recall — and for those who read her books or social media posts, her death was a painful shock. It does come up, briefly, in a powerful part of Jeff’s narrative. It dawns on me now that I should have highlighted this one (which came out late in 2022) since Jeff did work on it. I’m sure he doesn’t want to capitalize on it and I would suspect it is still painful for him and his husband, Tristen, who loved her dearly.

For those deconstructing conventional faith, for those evolving out of strict fundamentalism, who live often outside of the evangelical church circles of their youth but who just can’t shake their attraction to Jesus, Rachel and Jeff here do offer a way to embrace a sincere, robust, embodied sort of discipleship. Whole-hearted? Oh yes!

I think this comes from the publisher but it rings very true:

This book is for the doubter and the dreamer, the seeker and the sojourner, those who long for a sense of spiritual wholeness as well as those who have been hurt by the Church but can’t seem to let go of the story of Jesus. Through theological reflection and personal recollection, Rachel wrestles with God’s grace and love, looks unsparingly at what the Church is and does, and explores universal human questions about becoming and belonging. An unforgettable, moving, and intimate book.

A voice like Rachel’s endures in the time machine of her writing. All who love the sound of it owe Jeff Chu a deep bow. A vision like hers outlives a single lifetime. What she discovered, she made available to us; now it’s our turn to carry on.” — Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark

In last week’s BookNotes as I was explaining that the central plot of Jeff’s book is about his own slow learning at Princeton’s Farminary about soil and dirt, composting and regeneration, I mentioned that we have a number of books about faithful farming, about caring for gardens and learning to love caring for the Earth. Naturally, we have lots of books about creation-care and we have highlighted many in recent years. Ahh, our last author visit event, was with two other folks from Grand Rapids (where Jeff now lives), Gail Heffner and David Warner, who came to tell us about watershed theology and creation care by way of “reconciliation ecology” as learned in their work cleaning up a very polluted West Michigan stream with the Plaster Creek Stewards that they founded out of Calvin University there. I hope you recall our reviews of the exceptional Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha. I hope that some of you that came out to hear Dave and Gail last month will join us at FPC in York this Tuesday to once again share some central Pennsylvania hospitality to Michiganders. Hooray.

If you have already read Jeff’s recent book about Princeton’s Farminary — as I know some have — you know how much he learned to love the soil, the almost incongruous and “accidental” nature of his becoming a farmhand. (And the theological education that can happen when a group reflects on the spirituality of compost and harvesting fresh grown produce.) I want to highlight another title that is another curious favorite of mine this season about a reluctant gardener. The author herself died shortly after writing the book — yes, cancer is part of this story so it is especially poignant for some of us — and her husband has ordered from us a time or two. I’m embarrassed that we missed her memoir back when it first came out. It got great reviews from BookList and USA Today and AARP and the review in People called it “profoundly moving.”

It is called Mister Owita’s Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart by Carol Wall (Berkeley; $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20) and I really, really enjoyed it. The short version is this (from the Booklist review): “She knew nothing about gardening. He knew everything. She was a well-to-do white woman. He was an impoverished immigrant from Kenya. And yet, in the garden he transformed for her from a patch of weeks into a flowering paradise.. they found common ground.” It is heartwarming (to say the least) and is a lovely example of cross-cultural friendship. It is, finally, an “elegiac tribute” to a truly extraordinary man and his care for her suburban landscape. Good Housekeeping described Walls as a “cancer survivor with a bad attitude and a sad yard.” I can’t wait to ask Jeff if he knows this gentle memoir.

Mostly to evoke a chuckle, I mentioned in my review of Good Soil in the last BookNotes, that Jeff Chu is no Wendell Berry. It wasn’t a criticism, of course. But perhaps that got you

thinking, as it got me thinking, about which Wendell Berry books might pair with Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand. There are so many key essays scattered in his many diverse nonfiction collections. The classic The Unsettling of America (which I owned in the late 1970s) might be a bit much for some; the anthologies Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community: Eight Essays and Home Economics are great places to start. Some think The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry is a definitive collection of his prophetic nonfiction. Indeed!

 

Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $16.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

In thinking of Chu and my off-handed remark and our upcoming time together, I think I’d suggest Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food. Complete with a forward by Michael Pollen, this pulls together some of the best essays or excerpts on farming and growing food and eating. In fact, there are a few excerpts of his many novels and short stories that describe working in the fields or eating together. (And let’s face it, Berry’s fiction and poetry are every bit as important as his nonfiction polemics.) Mules and meals — it’s all there. What a fun collection and a way to dip into Berry on this exact theme.

AND, don’t forget: we are taking pre-orders already for his long-awaited forthcoming novel, releasing early October 2025: Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint; $26.00 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $20.80.)

I don’t know Marce’s story, set in Port Williams, but you may know he is the farmer grandfather to Andy Catlett. We’ll have to wait and see what we learn about him and his determination. For now, I’m grateful for all kinds of good tales and those authors that cross our paths to share their stories, their gift of writing, their work, their art, their vulnerability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO CLICK ON THE “ORDER” LINK.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders. We’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer. Let us know your hopes. We’re not automated, so let’s talk!

Of course the weight and destination of your particular package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $9.00, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.80. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may even take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF