The Ohio State University

onCampus

• Help
• Buckeye Link
• Map
• Find People
• Webmail
• Search

  Search Ohio State Go

Tanya Erzen

Posted on | February 5, 2009 | 1,665 views |

Tanya Erzen is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Studies. Her book, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement, received the 2008 Gustave Arlt award from the Council of Graduate Schools.

What are your five favorite books and why?
I couldn’t narrow it down to five…
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman 
This book inspired me to become an academic and do ethnographic research. She conveys multiple and opposing worldviews with empathy and clarity.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 
Long after finishing it, I was haunted by this meditation on loss, childhood, memory and what it means to be human. 

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
When I was younger, this novel profoundly shaped the way I began to understand the power of race and slavery in US history.

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neil 
This love story of two young Irish men before and during the 1916 Easter Rising has heroism, history, idiocy, humor and tenderness, and the ending always makes me cry.

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
It’s such a complicated and rich amalgam of the fantastic and the realistic. I could read it over and over. 

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan 
Everything he writes is riveting. 

What book would you most want your kids to read? What would you want them NOT to read?
Since my daughter already likes Dr. Seuss, she’s off to a good start, and I have books by Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L’Engle waiting for her. I hope she’ll read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States when she is older. I wouldn’t mind if she never wanted to read The Purpose Driven Life or the Left Behind series.

What classic novel was a disappointment to you?
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. I watched it on “Masterpiece Theatre” when I was 9 or 10, but the book didn’t have the same emotional impact. 

If you were to ban one book, what would it be and why?
Eugene O’Neill said it best: “Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and will always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.”

Comments