Multi-generational stories

Hello, and welcome to this week's Top 5 Wednesday blog post! It is always very interesting to learn lessons from people from different generations, whether younger people are learning lessons from older people or vice versa. It is also very interesting watching how different age groups interact with each other, especially in today's day and age where many people are growing up with increasing amounts of technology. In contrast, some of the previous generations had little, if any, technology. Therefore, for this week's prompt, we will explore books that span multiple generations within a family or community. I am unsure how confident I am in finding such books, so I may, at times, slightly deviate and choose books set in different time periods. But in no particular order, let's get straight into this week's Top 5 Wednesday blog post!

1. Desi Girl Speaking by A. S. Hussain

So, we start this week's post with one of the most recent books I have read, which largely looks at the current teenage generation, their parents, and grandparents. There are around three different generations at play in this book. However, matters are complicated as we bring in cultural differences because this book is about the Desi community. But let's take a step back for a moment. This book is about a girl who gets depressed and is largely about acceptance of mental health problems, or I should probably say, more accurately, mental ill health problems. It seems that acceptance, understanding and support for the mental health difficulties which so many people face is very much a recent thing, with previous generations not taking it seriously and instead, more likely than not, encouraging the person to "man up" and get on with life. So we have that dimension at play, but the book goes even further as the Desi community believe that Desi's cannot get depressed at all! Now, this statement is very inaccurate, and that is what this book tries to show. Therefore, when analysing this book and looking at the themes in more detail, it is very interesting to see that we have different generations and cultural norms, values, and mores at play. Even before I thought about this book on this more deeper analytical level I would have recommended it as it is indeed a very good book.

2. Something Borrowed, Something 90% Dark by Amber Royer

This is yet another amazing book and series, making it clear that with this, I refer to the whole Bean to Bar Mysteries series despite using the title of an individual book from the series. If you have been following my Top 5 Wednesday posts for long enough, you will be well aware that this is one of many series I absolutely love, and one of the reasons for this is the theme of today's prompt. This book is largely about family and friends, which is so special. We have Felicity, her parents, Aunt and grandmother, as well as her friends and so many other people from Galveston Island from multiple generations; it, therefore, makes a great read, which would be even better if it explored these different generations even more than it currently does. But I suppose some of the things we learn in this book are, of course, different family recipes and how different generations may deal with problems differently.

3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This book is indeed a classic piece of literature which again has multiple generations involved. We have the older generation before Atticus, who is probably of the middle generation, and then we have his children and their friends, who are part of the younger generation. What is unique about this book and the next book compared to the above two books is that we are not trying to teach the younger generation to follow the example set by the older generation but instead to entirely move away from it and see it as wrong. In the context of this book, it is about race and equality. Atticus tries to teach his children that it is wrong to discriminate based on the colour of someone's skin, and so, for that reason, they should be treated no differently than anyone else. Sadly, this is still not the case in many areas of the world.

4. An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley 

This is another classic which again is trying to change the world for the better. We have two generations in play here, the parents, who can be considered part of the older generation and their children, who are part of the younger generation. Set in 1911 England, this book explores the class system and inequality in the country where the older generation is happy with the class system and believes it should continue. In contrast, Priestley, in this play, is trying to make the younger generation change and make society more equal and equitable by exposing them to the brutal life of a working-class young girl, Eva Smith. Eva Smith is part of the proletariat, and throughout the book, she is exploited by the bourgeoisie. 

5. Shadow of the West by Sarah Brotherhood Chapman

Finally, we finish with this amazing book, published in the Summer of 2023. It is not only set in a different time period during a war but also features multiple generations of parents and their teenage children. However, even within these different generations, we have differences in circumstances and culture, with some of the main protagonists being Americans. But this book is essentially about the Berlin wall, which separated Berlin. This is another book I really enjoyed and would definitely recommend.

That is all for this week's post! It turns out that I was spoilt for choice regarding books, which I could have included in this post. As always, thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it, and please do feel free to check out my blog with some of my other Top 5 Wednesday blog posts and book reviews, which are available to read. Please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section as well. I love interacting with my readers on this blog! I welcome you to read next week's Top 5 Wednesday post!

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