Bookshelf

Got a Challenging Colleague? New Faculty Book Aims to Improve Interpersonal Conflict

February 13, 2026 by Lorraine Wu Harry ’97 Comments Off

Jessica Stern ’12 and her book, Beyond Difficult: An attachment-based guide to dealing with challenging people. Last summer Assistant Professor of Psychological Science Jessica Stern ’12 published Beyond Difficult: An attachment-based guide to dealing with challenging people. An expert in attachment theory, close relationships and child development, Stern spoke with PCM about how she hopes the book will help readers.

Who is this book for?

It’s for anybody who has had a difficult relationship—whether that’s in your family life, dealing with a difficult kid as an educator or as a parent, or navigating difficult work relationships. Most [of us] have had at least one relationship where we wished we had a guide we could pull out and say, “What do I do?” We wanted the book to be accessible, even to people who had never read a research paper before. We wanted them to know that there’s a fascinating science of how to build stronger marriages, friendships and workplace relationships.

You spend a lot of time focusing on highly sensitive and neurodivergent people. Why do you highlight these two groups?

These groups are often misunderstood and mislabeled, either as a bad kid or as a difficult adult. Everybody’s nervous system is wired a little bit differently [and] is not something we can change. But what we can do is provide a supportive environment that doesn’t overstimulate these kids so that they either act out or shut down. The same principle is true for adults—understanding that the person next to you might be more reactive to the context that they happen to be, we might look at the environmental circumstances that [lead] them to act in this way.

We also look at people’s relationship histories and attachment style. One major reason behind difficult behavior is that someone is feeling threatened, insecure or triggered. Usually that comes from a place of not having had secure, safe relationships as a child or as an adult. One nice thing about that framework is, first, it inspires a little bit more compassion, rather than combativeness, toward the person. But second, there are certain strategies that we can then use to help the relationship feel safe enough that the person can calm down and have a constructive conversation.

Secure vs. Insecure Attachment Styles

: Secure Attachment: Comfortable with intimacy and independence. Trusts partners.

: Anxious Attachment: craves closeness but fears abandonment, may appear clingy

: Avoidant Attachment: Values independence over intimacy. May appear distant.

: Disorganized Attachment: Desires connection but fears it. Sends mixed signals.

How did you and your co-author team up for this book?

Rachel [Samson] is a clinical psychologist in Australia. She and I met at a professional training many years ago and discovered that we had similar interests, but I was doing more of the scientific work and she was putting those ideas into practice with clients. It’s very easy for me, as a researcher, to say, “Here’s what people should do” in theory, but it’s a very different thing to be a practitioner who’s seen it in action with real people.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is about understanding difficult behavior: getting a better grasp of what’s really going on when someone rubs you the wrong way. The second part is about working on oneself. Based on your own temperament and attachment style, what are the things that you’re bringing to this interaction that you can strengthen or improve? Part three is about the relationship. How do you strengthen it? What are specific things that you can do, like giving feedback in an effective way, not letting things stew? And what do you do when another person is just not going to change?

Bookmarks

February 13, 2026 by Staff Comments Off

In his debut YA novel, Andrew Extein ’07 tells the angsty story of a bullied straight teenage boy who comes out as an act of retribution.

This sci-fi crime novel by Greg Hickey ’08 follows a private detective hired by a space tech CEO to investigate a rival for illegal hydrocarbon combustion.

The fourth book of poems by Garrett Hongo ’73 draws inspiration from Hongo’s life journey and weaves in memories of various shorelines.

This collection of Prof. Jonathan Lethem’s short stories spans 35 years of writing, serving as a career survey and retrospective.

Nancy Matsumoto ’80 reports on women who are building local and regional supply chains, offering the reader a blueprint for eating sustainably.

Zelana Montminy ’04 explains the science behind focus and distraction and gives strategies to control our attention and improve our mental clarity.

Krystyn Moon ’97 examines the history of Alexandria’s African American community, focusing on its relationship with the federal government.

In this work of historical fiction, Ginny Kubitz Moyer ’95 tells the coming-of-age story of a young seamstress living in San Francisco during World War II.

A deadly asteroid is about to strike Atlantis in this prequel to The Atlantis Grail fantasy series by Vera Nazarian ’88.

Version 1.0.0

co-authors this chronicle of a primate scientist’s 50-year journey living among and studying baboons.

Book Submissions:

Book Submissions: If you’ve had a book published and would like to submit it for inclusion in Bookmarks, please send a review copy to Lorraine Wu Harry ’97, PCM Books Editor, 550 North College Ave. Claremont, CA 91711 or email us at pcmbooks@pomona.edu.

Seven Decades of Summer Reading for First-Years

February 12, 2026 by Paul F. Eckstein ’62 Comments Off

Paul and Flo Eckstein in front of the Pomona College Gate

The author with his wife, Flo, in front of the Pomona College Gate

Going back more than seven decades, Pomona College first-years have been assigned a common book to read during the summer before they pass through the Gates, which they typically discuss in small groups moderated by a professor during orientation week. The idea is to give first-years something challenging and interesting to discuss with their classmates and to provide them with a taste of what college will be like. Sometimes the idea works. Sometimes not.

Among the variety of books selected over the last two decades are James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk (2019), Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s My Beloved World (2015), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2011) and Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom (2006). An Orientation Book Committee composed of faculty, staff and students is responsible for each year’s selection. According to English Professor and committee member Kevin Dettmar, the team wanted to select a book that “modeled a critically sophisticated engagement with contemporary popular culture. Critical-thinking skills aren’t just useful for the classroom: they’re lifelong skills.”

This year’s selection was African-American poet and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (published in 2017), a collection of essays largely about music of the 1990s (much of it rap) and the artists who made that music. This year’s reading could not be more different than the reading assigned to my class in the fall of 1958, authored by social critic and essayist Lewis Mumford and titled The Human Prospect (published in 1955); that book was about almost everything under the sun except the music of the time.

About the only thing the two books have in common is that both are essay collections. Abdurraqib’s topics include “Chance the Rapper’s Golden Year,” “Death Becomes You: My Chemical Romance and the Ten Years of the Black Parade” and “The White Rapper Joke.” Mumford’s essays include such varied and unrelated topics as “The Monastery and the Clock,” “The Origins of the American Mind” and “Moby Dick.”

In 2024, literary critic Vincent Triola (author of numerous works of short fiction and a frequent book reviewer) described Abdurraqib’s collection of essays as “representing a generation’s lostness … caused by a technology-driven anti-intellectualism and superficiality that licenses poetry and authorship to anyone with a keyboard, inadvertently devaluing and obscuring quality literature.”

Abdurraqib’s essays are anything but superficial and anti-intellectual; they are well-crafted, beautifully written and, to use a word of the times, accessible, even for a reader now in his mid-80s. This year’s selection seems to have served as a good icebreaker for the racially, economically and geographically diverse Class of 2029.

Pomona is a very different place today from what it was in 1958. Three-quarters of Pomona’s Class of 1962 was from California (mostly from Southern California) with fewer than 3 percent students of color. By contrast, Pomona’s Class of 2029 is composed of students from 26 countries and 41 states (only 34 percent from California) and 55 percent students of color. If Abdurraqib’s set of essays was selected to prompt discussion across a diverse class, it was an inspired choice.

No one still alive remembers why The Human Prospect was selected. Perhaps Steve Pauley ’62 is correct when he muses that Mumford’s book was “assigned to terrify freshmen, most of whom were stars in high school. I guess the faculty wanted to drive some humility into us. What was terrifying was that at least some understood the book—at least they bluffed enough to pull that off.”

In contrast to Abdurraqib’s writing style, Mumford’s was anything but accessible. The book was tough sledding for children of the 1950s and hardly seemed designed to capture the interest of the 17- and 18-year-olds of the time. Gerry Wick ’62, a Ph.D in nuclear physics and now a Zen Buddhist master and author, recalls that he found Mumford’s writing style “turgid, arcane and too erudite to make for enjoyable reading.” Retired schoolteacher Bonnie Bennett Home ’62 remembers: “My professor was so disappointed in the election of The Human Prospect that he declined to discuss the assigned reading.”

Not every classmate of mine found Mumford’s book disappointing. John Roth ’62, a retired philosophy professor at Claremont McKenna, said that “our 18-year-old critiques of Mumford don’t cut much ice with me, nor do our 80-year-old condemnations. We should all hope to leave as much of a mark on our times as Mumford did on his.” Roth was enlightened by the essay “The Monastery and the Clock,” as “it opened my eyes as to how relatively recent the measurement of time is.” I, too, particularly liked that essay, and have often thought about its importance over the years. The remainder of Mumford’s essays, not so much.

Olhovskyi

Returning to the present, the selection committee spoke passionately about They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.

“This book paints an image of the U.S. that is often shown differently overseas,” said Hlib Olhovskyi ’27. “Among a diverse list of excellent books, this collection stood out the most
for its captivating fusion of scope and detail, intimacy
and universality.”

Dorado

Zoe Dorado ’27 agreed. “[Abdurraqib] writes with a specific obsession that seems fueled by both love and uncertainty about the world,” she said. “He’s not an optimist, yet his work has a propelling force. It’s the type of book that I know I’ll return to during different stages of my life.”

“As I prepared to leave for college and reckoned with a desire for the relationships, places, and moments in time that I felt were disappearing, the appearance of Abdurraqib’s work in my life felt serendipitous and necessary,” said Nadia Hsu ’27. “Everything I’ve ever written since then has been kind of an imitation of Abdurraqib, and the way under his observation everything becomes sacred.”

Hsu

One can only speculate how the Class of 2029 will see the book with the perspective of 67 years. All that really matters, however, is how they regarded it this summer. Did it pique an interest in things unknown and spur lively discussion? Let it be said for now that in the view of this octogenarian, who found much of the book shocking but exciting, the Orientation Book Committee did its job well this year.

Mr. Eckstein ’62 is a longtime trustee of Pomona College, the parent of Timothy Eckstein ’92 and grandparent of Owen Eckstein ’28.

Book Talk: Lessons in Leadership: Ex-College President Reflects on the Empathy in Higher Ed

September 24, 2025 by Chris Quirk Comments Off

At a moment when college leaders are navigating choppy seas, Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran ’69 has written a timely analysis of university leadership that outlines what it will take to lead higher education institutions effectively in the coming decade and beyond.

Book, The New College President: How a Generation of Diverse Leaders Is Changing Higher Education The book, “The New College President: How a Generation of Diverse Leaders Is Changing Higher Education,” co-written with Terrence MacTaggart and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, profiles seven university leaders and describes the skills and personal qualities they possess that have made them successful.

Few are as qualified as Wilson-Oyelaran to opine on the topic. She served as president of Kalamazoo College from 2005 to 2016, a period that included a major economic recession, and also was named as chair of the board of directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities for the 2013-2014 academic year.

In the book, Wilson-Oyelaran discusses some of the major challenges facing the college and university presidency, among them high turnover rates, debilitating financial pressures and conflicting institutional strategies. For example, she says that presidents’ shorter terms may negatively impact institutions, since it generally takes time for presidents to understand school culture and garner the trust of their communities.

For Wilson-Oyelaran, that trust is more vital now than ever. “Colleges and universities are being asked to change more rapidly and more dynamically, but the ability to do that requires someone who is known and trusted, which takes time,” she says. “A leader who is embedded in the community is much more able to make the changes that are necessary right now.”

One quality that Wilson-Oyelaran and MacTaggart found in all the successful presidents they profiled was the significant adversity they faced. “Adversity gives you empathy and a great deal of resilience, which is of particular importance for leading institutions of higher education right now,” says Wilson-Oyelaran. “As the arrows get slung at you, it’s critical to be able to let them roll off and continue to move forward. You develop a sixth sense of how to keep focusing on what is of value and what to let go of.”

Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran ’69 During her years at Pomona, Wilson-Oyelaran was a galvanizing figure who was instrumental in creating The Claremont Colleges’ first Black Student Union in 1967 and the Black Studies Center in 1969. She says that she’s deeply encouraged by how her generation’s efforts transformed higher education, both in terms of what the student body looks like, and in the expanded breadth of the curriculum.

“When I look at Pomona today, in many ways the institution represents what we hoped to see,” she says. “It’s pretty incredible to see how the field of African American studies has flourished nationally, and to feel that I maybe did a little bit to move that forward.”

Book Blurbs: Poetry Edition

September 24, 2025 by Staff Comments Off

Why have just one? For this issue’s “blurb,” we’re featuring five poems by alumni authors

Hongo standing in front of plaque of his poem

Hongo poses in front of his poem, inscribed on a plaque at the Smith Campus Center

Under The Oaks At Holmes Hall, Overtaken By Rain

By Garrett Hongo ’73

A desert downpour in early spring,
and I’m standing under California oaks,
gazing through rain as the grey sky thunders.
I don’t know why the nightingale sings
to Kubla Khan and not to me, nineteen
and marked by nothing, not even ceremony
or the slash of wind tearing through trees.
I don’t know why Ishmael alone is left
to speak of the sea’s great beast, why
the ground sinks and slides against itself,
why the blue lupines will rise and quilt
through the tawny grasses on the hillsides.
I can’t explain this garment of rain on
my shoulders
or the sour cloth of my poverty unwinding
like a shroud as the giant eucalyptus
strips and sheds its grey parchments of skin
and stands mottled and nude in the
shining rains.
I want something sullen as thundering skies,
thick as earthmilk, brown and sluicing
across the streets, grievous as the flood of waters.
I want unfelt sorrows to give away and
wrought absence
to exchange for the imperfect shelter of
these oaks,
for the froth of green ivy around my feet,
for the sky without gods and the earth
without perplexity.
I want to have something like prayer to pay
or a mission to renounce as a fee
for my innocence under cloud-cover
and these furious nightingales of thunder,
companions of song in this untormented sea
of memory uncrowded with bliss or pain.

From “OCEAN OF CLOUDS: Poems.” Reprinted by permission of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Garrett Hongo. Hongo has published three books of poetry, including “The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo” (2022).

During Times of Trying to Forgive

By Brenda Hillman ’73

Evening deepens, Jupiter lifts
over Cetus, swaddled
in ribbons of fog. Early stars
retreat into science broth,
headlights on a hill, &
night stays calm. The source

of your hurt is tucked in.
Maybe you can’t forgive
each other yet, & who
can blame you after all
that happened, but still.
You try as a tide tries gray

again. As a friend whose body
had a tumor—whose body
has a tumor—reads in onyx light
till day. How many Mondays
will she have? Is the mystery
counting? She tries, it tries &

the ones who are almost
loved walk through the field.
Inexhaustible seeds are carried
through the field like codes
waiting to be read by air
until the ground is ready.

A Pomona College Magazine exclusive. Copyright © 2025 by Brenda Hillman. Hillman has published more than 10 books of poetry, including In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022). She’s a professor of creative writing at St. Mary’s College in California, where she holds the Olivia Filippi Chair in Poetry.

Constellation of Cetus

Moon

By Jodie Hollander ’99

do you ever dream
just as I do,
of having a kind of sister
with you in the sky?
To comb one another’s
milky white surfaces,
or gaze out in awe
at fierce bright stars;
just to be together
amidst the emptiness.
Or are you content
all alone up there,
hovering high above
those darkening trees,
who too must hover
above the world below,
that still somehow sparkles
with artificial lights?

Hollander is the author of My Dark Horses (2017) and Nocturne (2023), which was longlisted for the Laurel Prize in nature writing.

Cloud Study

By S. Brook Corfman ’13

I believed long hair alone
would, like rain, wash
my gender away but the rain

rarely cleans, now—it misses
the spot under the tree, moves
the dirt across the street, cannot

reach into my throat or under
the car unless I open for it.

Corfman (they/them) is the author of the poetry collections My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites and Luxury, Blue Lace.

Luxury, Blue Lace by S. Brook Corfman ’13

Night
Class

By Bruce Bond ’75

We would only get so far,
given the casualties
buried in each point of view.
This one, this one, this.
To see them was to smell them.
One by one.
Then we read Wilfred Owen,
a lyric
whose anger comes later,
after the specifics.
Take this face,
how the penlight of the medic
pierces the addled eye
just so far.
In each a sky so deep
it swallows up the stars.
Take this gate,
how it chatters like a telegraph key,
and you wake afraid,
knowing so little of your subject.
The siren
in the distance is no stranger
anymore.
It is headed
for your hospital wing,
where it could be a while,
if you are waiting for your son.
We could stare at the wall
together,
as some at altars do,
where the mouths
of nocturnal flowers
open to accept,
as sacrament,
a bee across the tongue.

Poem first appeared in Poetry (July/August 2025) and is reprinted with permission. Bond has authored 37 books and poetry collections and is an Emeritus Professor at the University of North Texas.

Bookmarks

September 24, 2025 by Staff Comments Off

Los escritores y el flamenco. La lucha antifranquista (1967-1978)

Tyler Barbour ’09 explores the intersections among Spanish literature, flamenco and the political resistance of the Franco Regime.

I Am We

Leslie Barnard Booth ’04 delves into the mysteries of crow behavior in this lyrical informational picture book inspired by the urban crows of Portland, Oregon.

Disaster Nationalism

In this ethnography, Vivian Y. Choi ’01 examines how the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami fostered new forms of governance and militarization during Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war.

The New Rules of Influence

Lida Citroën ’86 guides leaders through a new paradigm of leadership in which authenticity, passion and honesty
are required.

Hidden Healers

Through her experience providing therapeutic programs to prisoners, Stephanie Covington ’64 gives readers a look inside women’s prisons along with recommendations for change.

Abigail and Alexa Save the Wedding

Lian Dolan ’87 writes a modern comedy of manners in this novel about two mothers planning their children’s dream wedding in Montecito, California.

Animating the Victorians

Patrick C. Fleming ’05 traces the links between the Golden Age of children’s literature and Disney films, exploring Disney’s adaptations of Victorian texts.

I Trust Her Completely

In this debut novel, Christine Henneberg ’05 observes female friendship and 21st-century motherhood alongside themes of abortion and ambition.

Deadly Vision

Todd Severin ’85 crafts a medical and psychological thriller about a revolutionary medical breakthrough and the warring factions in medicine and politics to shut it down.

Book Submissions:

If you’ve had a book published and would like to submit it for inclusion in Bookmarks, please send a review copy to Lorraine Wu Harry ’97, PCM Books Editor, 550 North College Ave. Claremont, CA 91711 or email us.

Booktalk: Pamela Prickett: The Unclaimed

April 4, 2025 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, co-authored a recently published book, The Unclaimed, telling the stories of people who were abandoned after death in Los Angeles County. Through narrative nonfiction, the book shares the poignancy of the subjects’ lives and deaths, and the heartwarming ways strangers stepped in to provide dignity.

The Unclaimed was named to the “top books of 2024” lists at The Atlantic, BookPage, LAist, and NPR. In an interview with PCM, Prickett shares perspectives on societal alienation and the profound need for connection, offering insights into the importance of reconciliation. (Interview edited for length.)

PCM: You’ve co-written a fascinating book telling the life stories of people whose bodies were unclaimed in Los Angeles County. Who are these people?

Prickett: The unclaimed are people for whom next of kin—usually immediate family—decline to arrange a funeral or burial, cremation or some other form of disposition. When families cannot, or will not, claim a body, it becomes the responsibility of local governments to figure out what to do. Often these governments are resource-strapped and seek the cheapest, most efficient arrangements. In Los Angeles, after 30 days, a body not claimed by family is declared “abandoned” and, unless the person has assets, is cremated by the County of Los Angeles. To give the family extra time, the county stores the ashes for up to three years. At the end of that period, the ashes are interred in a common grave with everyone who died that same year.

PCM: How did you get interested in the topic?

Pamela Prickett

Prickett: I hadn’t thought about it until someone I knew was on the path toward going unclaimed. A quick internet search revealed only a modest selection of news stories about unclaimed bodies in the U.S. A handful were features in the Los Angeles Times about the crematorium and annual burial in Boyle Heights. Once I read about the mass burial, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. How had I lived five miles away and not known about it? So I reached out to Stefan Timmermans, who I had worked with at UCLA, and we agreed to embark on this research project.

PCM: The book is, surprisingly, a page-turner. How did your career background contribute to this?

Prickett: I started my career as a journalist, working mostly in television. That experience helped shape my academic choices, including what I study and how I write. I’m committed to making research accessible to many audiences. For this book, we had the good fortune to have a skilled trade book editor who helped us envision it as narrative nonfiction, reading more like a novel. The result is a set of stories that takes readers into the lives of four Angelenos at risk of being unclaimed. We also meet the volunteers, community members and government workers dedicated to providing burials for unclaimed strangers, imparting a sense of dignity after their deaths.

PCM: The number of unclaimed in Los Angeles is rising. Why?

Prickett: The poor have always been more likely than the wealthy to be buried in unmarked graves and so-called potter’s fields. Today, Americans from all walks of life, including people with jobs and homes and families, who think they did everything right to prepare for old age, are ending up unclaimed. An estimated 2 percent to 4 percent of the people who die every year in the U.S. go unclaimed. In Los Angeles County—the most populous in the country—the number has more than doubled since the 1970s.

Shifts in the rate of the unclaimed tell us something fundamental has changed in what Americans are willing to do for their relatives—and it’s far less than in past generations.

PCM: A key commitment among members of the military is to leave no one behind. How is a group of veterans in Southern California acting on that commitment on behalf of unclaimed veterans?

Prickett: This is one way the research has revealed unexpected and heartwarming surprises. Every Wednesday, rain or shine, a group of motorcycle-riding veterans and their supporters, calling themselves Veterans Without Family, gather at Riverside National Cemetery to bury unclaimed veterans. The group takes on the role of surrogate relatives to draw attention to society’s neglect of veterans and express solidarity with their veteran “brothers and sisters,” who were often estranged from their biological families.

PCM: You also write about a group in Boyle Heights who gets together to mourn those they never knew. What motivates groups such as these?

Prickett: I attended that ceremony for the first time in 2015 and was forever changed. It felt incredible to be surrounded by people who were willing to take time out of their busy schedules to honor people they never knew. It’s a 35-minute interfaith, multi-lingual ceremony organized by a hospital chaplain, a man who walks the walk on radical kindness. By the end, you’re reminded that there is more good than evil in the world and that there is a space to create dignity and humanity for all.

PCM: What can we do as a society to reduce the alienation that too often results in people being unclaimed?

Prickett: The Unclaimed is a wake-up call to take stock of what really matters in life—social relationships. The book poses the haunting question, “How much did your life matter if no one close to you cares you died?” A few suggestions:

Reach out and break through social isolation and work to repair broken relationships.

Talk through the discomfort and sadness we often try to numb. Learn to work through conflict.

Before cutting off ties, think about the long-term consequences. While some relationships are indeed toxic, sometimes what we label as toxic is simple disagreement. Conflict is integral to social interaction, and the more we can work to repair fissures, the better off we will be.

We can change laws to create a more inclusive definition of next-of-kin. We rely on centuries-old English common law definitions of family to determine who qualifies as next-of-kin. It’s my hope that we push policymakers to assess the right to claiming based on the quality of the tie, not whether it is by blood or marriage.

PCM: How can we as individuals and communities expand our circle of caring?

Prickett: I encourage people to attend a local ceremony for the unclaimed. Respect in death can be a rallying cry for respect in life. The unclaimed remind us that unless everybody counts, nobody counts.

Book Blurb: Marcia Aldrich ’75, Enough

April 4, 2025 by Marcia Aldrich Comments Off

I am lying awake in an unfamiliar bed, thinking about success. It is not a king- or queen-size bed, but a double, shared with my husband in a 400-square-foot cottage that I call The Hut. I am lying here, thinking about success, because I have left my home and driven across the country to take up a semester’s residence as the Mary Routt Chair in Writing at Scripps College. It is the bottom hour of the night, and ahead of me lies the long ascent of time toward morning.

The Hut sits a few blocks north of Pomona, where decades ago I was an undergraduate. Much has changed in Claremont, yet much remains the same. Old halls have been torn down, replaced by modern structures, yet the streets still carry the thick smell of eucalyptus. Once I earned my degree I moved on to a working life, to commutes on subway and bus, to corporate work and housecleaning, to graduate school, marriage and children, teaching and writing. I didn’t envision coming back. And yet this return has felt necessary, even preordained, as if the time for a reckoning has come.

Marcia Aldrich ’75

By many measures my return is a sign of success. I have done enough of what I set out to do—be a writer and a professor—to warrant selection to this named position. But I do not feel triumphant. No wreath of bay circles my crown. Just the opposite: I feel as if I’m lying on a bed of nails. Wandering the old campus gardens and courtyards, I meet my younger self, who doesn’t give me a congratulatory wave, passing by on her way to an important appointment. Instead she sits down beside me on the bench under the wisteria and stares into my face, assessing what I have become. Her eyes darken with disappointment. She finds me wanting. What happened? she asks. I thought you would amount to so much more. I thought there would be so much more of you. It isn’t enough, she says.

How slender she is, yet filled with expectation! Could I ever have been so young and fierce and yet so innocent? How her eyes brim with yearning! She’s sure she’s going to do something great with her life; no obstacle will derail her. Little angel, I say, what did you expect of me, and why are you so disappointed?

It is not enough to be a success—there’s always someone more successful. I rarely compare myself to someone who has achieved less. I notice the person ahead of me, not the person behind. I’m focused on the one who won the prize and forget about the people who were passed over. I ask myself how many among us are where we want to be, who we want to be—as if I could argue my way out of the night. There’s always somewhere we want to get, something more we need to accomplish, something to fix. Such dissatisfaction is good, keeps us moving forward. But too much self-criticism can mist our compass, make us lose our bearings. When will the tallying end, this measuring of myself against every other, this measuring myself against myself, this feeling of finding myself wanting?

I’m not sure when it hit me forcefully that I was flawed, essentially flawed, and no regimen of self-improvement would change that, but I’m sure my mother had something to do with it. She did a good job convincing me I was doomed to disappoint, that everything about me required renovation, though back in high school I didn’t realize that I would disappoint myself more than anyone else. I considered having a T-shirt made that said I am a deeply disappointing person because I felt a duty to warn people, to push them away in case they didn’t see my flaws and became attached to me. Any success took me by surprise and seemed a mistake. I waited for the correction to follow—I’d be stripped of the part in the play, the teacher would recalculate my A, the SATs would be rescored, the boy would come to his senses and dump me, the college acceptance revoked. Nothing seemed too small to worry about. I envisioned a grand tribunal sitting in golden chairs in the night sky, glaring down through my windows and judging me. The tribunal was made up of ancient women with white hair falling past their shoulders to their knees, who would ask in hushed voices: What did you do today? What do you plan on doing tomorrow? Will it be enough?

Enough. A word like a high mountain I can’t cross to see what’s on the other side—perchance a valley of milk and honey where every woman has plenty of what she needs and what she wants and knows she has reached her paradise. She’s satisfied—she doesn’t hanker after what hasn’t been done. Enough. What’s enough for me may not be enough for you. I may have wanted to tell my mother and a whole line of mother substitutes that I’d done enough, but I didn’t because I knew my mother would say, No, you haven’t and I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t right.

Enough can’t be precisely measured, precisely stated because it’s part of an emotional economy. One has to guess, make an estimate. How many hours of work is enough to consider myself productive? How much love is enough to feel loved? How many kisses are enough to feel kissed? How much money is enough to feel secure? Whatever scheme of measurement used, the evidence suggests it is the rare woman who has enough of anything, who doesn’t want more money, more love, more time, more kisses. And in my world it is the rare woman who doesn’t taunt herself because she hasn’t accomplished enough, who isn’t lying awake at night making yet another tally.

Bookmarks

April 4, 2025 by Staff Comments Off

Challenging Boys

Timothy Davis ’86 draws on his experience as a child and family psychologist, father of three and volunteer firefighter..

Powering the Future

Book, Powering the Future This pragmatic guide written by Steven Ferrey ’72 helps legal practitioners navigate the nuanced dynamics involved in shifting policy around renewable energy.

The Sides of the Sea

Johanna X. K. Garvey ’73 examines theories of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality in the works of contemporary Caribbean women writers.

Intoxicating Pleasures

Lisa Jacobson ’84 provides an in-depth account of the alcoholic beverages industries in the United States during the 1930s and ’40s.

Old King

This haunting novel about the end of the frontier dream by Maxim Loskutoff ’07 was named a best book of the year by NPR and Publishers Weekly.

By the Shore of Lake Michigan

Nancy Matsumoto ’80 translated her grandparents’ words as they tell the story of their incarceration in concentration camps through Japanese tanka poems.

A Golden Life

Step into the golden age of Tinseltown with this historical novel from Ginny Kubitz Moyer ’95, set in Hollywood and the Napa Valley in the 1930s.

Abortion Rights Backlash

A political science professor at UC Santa Barbara, Alison Brysk ’81 explores recent setbacks for reproductive rights across three continents, advancing the argument that the dynamic reflects a struggle between nationalism, democracy and globalization.

Book Submissions:

If you’ve had a book published and would like to submit it for inclusion in Bookmarks, please send a review copy to Lorraine Wu Harry, PCM Books Editor, 550 North College Ave. Claremont, CA 91711 or email us.

The Road to Truth

November 19, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

This summer, author and professor Soma Mei Sheng Frazier ’95 perched on a stool in front of an audience of Pomona alumni and opened her debut novel, a high-stakes road trip story published after nearly three decades of authoring shorter works. “Ready to get read to like babies at bedtime?” When she closed the book again, Frazier’s role model—Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History Samuel Yamashita—piped up to engage her in conversation about Off the Books, which, per The New York Times, “captures the relatable toggle between the private and the collective, between sinking into the anxieties of your life and grieving for the cruelties of the world.” In it, Frazier introduces us to Měi, a college dropout who begins driving private clients—including a man with a mysterious suitcase—to make ends meet. PCM spoke to Frazier about the book, the Uyghur ethnic minority group and her enduring admiration for Yamashita.

PCM: This book contains elements of mystery, drama, coming of age, Chinese American and multi-ethnic identity struggles, and the juxtaposition of East vs. West (globally but also between the two U.S. coasts). Did you set out to tackle all these issues, and how do you see them working in tandem to set the novel’s tone?

Frazier: The seed of Off the Books was a single issue: China’s treatment of the Uyghur ethnic minority group, many of whom have been “disappeared” into detention camps for such offenses as sporting the wrong beard. Their birth rates have plummeted, and children have been instructed not to speak the language their mothers sang them to sleep in.

To shine a light on that faraway situation, I set about writing the very American story of Měi Brown, a college dropout who finds herself driving a secretive private client from Oakland, California, to Syracuse, New York. As I wrote, all those themes grew from Měi’s personal growth and fraught relationships with a Caucasian dad and Chinese American mom, which became the backdrop for a quirky—and funny, I’ve been told—story about the circumstances that lead people to take big risks, and the consequences of leaving one’s home.

PCM: Several of the central characters do not fit typical molds. Lăoyé, the main character’s grandfather, is a smack-talking, weed-smoking, 86-year-old video-gamer from China. Does this reflect your own personal experiences? How do you believe it adds to the major themes of the story?

Frazier: Well, typical molds can suck it. In my personal experience, people gain freedom when we stop contorting ourselves to fit those molds. Lăoyé is actually almost everyone’s favorite character, and I believe that’s because he is a mold breaker. He’s unapologetically sincere. As children, we say what we truly think and feel because we haven’t learned how to do otherwise yet. Then, as we gain age and wisdom like Lăoyé, if we’re lucky, we return to authenticity. When we meet Měi, she’s just beginning that journey back to herself, remembering the difference between reaction and intentional, self-driven action. On top of that, transporting her sweet (and I’ll say it: sexy) client Henry Lee across the states ultimately leads her to take the wheel in other ways.

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier ’95

PCM: The story unfolds through flashbacks intertwined with the progress of Měi’s road trip through the U.S. Although disorienting at first, it nicely accorded with real life—that is, we are constantly relating the present to past events we have experienced, even without noticing it. Does that structure serve other purposes?

Frazier: We are always toggling back and forth between present and past. Through the structure, my hope is that the road trip itself gives the story momentum, while the flashbacks (interspersed with present-day action) allow the characters to sort of experience that languid mental wandering that we often do on long drives.

PCM: Why did you use pinyin (romanization of Mandarin Chinese characters) for Chinese terms, including notating them with tone marks in an English-language book?

Frazier: Měi’s Chinese is rudimentary, so she’s limited to the kind of household language that one picks up organically from an immigrant parent, like “I’m hungry.” I wanted to permit people who know Chinese, or grew up in households that spoke Chinese but do not have complete command of the language, to relate. I also wanted readers who don’t know Chinese to experience the sort of disorientation that Měi herself does when the other characters suddenly start conversing in this language she doesn’t fully understand. So that’s why I didn’t italicize the Chinese. Italicization implies a sort of separation from English. But then in real life, there’s no separation. I wanted what was on the page to mirror the experience of hearing the characters’ conversations in real life.

PCM: What do you ultimately hope that this book accomplishes?

Frazier: I hope that Off the Books will make readers laugh and remind us to be kind to one another. I also hope it will pique interest in China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, ethnic minorities and prisoners of conscience. Because, yes, they’re halfway around the world, but I think we’d be fools to think of their issues as distant. China is the U.S.’s number one trade partner, and likely to gain regional hegemony and become a superpower. Before speaking with you, I did an interview with Radio Free Asia where I learned from the Uyghur interviewer that family members of every one of her Uyghur colleagues have disappeared. Ultimately, I want people to know about this and acknowledge the ugly truths about our number one trade partner, just as I hope we do about this country. And then to decide on their own whether and how to act on that knowledge to make things better for everyone.

PCM: How did Pomona College help or inspire you to undertake this book?

Frazier: When I was preparing to head to Pomona from New Hampshire, I walked into my mom’s office, and she was writing a check. I asked, “Hey, who’s that check going to?” And she replied that she was sending my aunties some money. I inquired why. After all, they were doing well. She said, “No, not those aunties—it’s for the aunties we had to leave behind in China.” And I didn’t know about these aunties, so I went off to Pomona reflecting on that experience and about the things I didn’t know about China. Those sentiments inspired me to delve further as an Asian studies major and Asian languages and literatures minor. Furthermore, I think a lot of experiences at Pomona—particularly being in Samuel Yamashita’s class—can make a person who might not have been focused on global politics think about global politics. Dr. Yamashita also makes us relate the issues we’re thinking about to our own behavior in the world. As the saying goes, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. In classes like his, you think you’re eating candy. Just all sugar. Yet you leave medicated, fortified with information about the world.

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Bookshelf

Secure vs. Insecure Attachment Styles

Book Submissions:

Under The Oaks At Holmes Hall, Overtaken By Rain

During Times of Trying to Forgive

Moon

Cloud Study

Night Class

Los escritores y el flamenco. La lucha antifranquista (1967-1978)

I Am We

Disaster Nationalism

The New Rules of Influence

Hidden Healers

Abigail and Alexa Save the Wedding

Animating the Victorians

I Trust Her Completely

Deadly Vision

Book Submissions:

Challenging Boys

Powering the Future

The Sides of the Sea

Intoxicating Pleasures

Old King

By the Shore of Lake Michigan

A Golden Life

Abortion Rights Backlash

Book Submissions:

Night
Class