When Rain Clouds Gather (now I know that time is September—I’m so ready for September!)
Where’d You Go Bernadette (not as perfect as I remember but still fun and a commentary on a subculture, and way better than the movie — of course!)
Good News for Those Trying Harder (the gospel illuminated; when will I remember to read this more often?)
The Gift of Being Yourself (thankful)
Pride (engaging! I’m on a P&P retelling roll)
Biased (so well-done, personal and scientific)
Behind the Beautiful Forevers (all the tears and praise hands)
The Fishermen (hauntingly good)
Dark Matter (excites for Recursion!)
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Monday, August 12, 2019
August 2019.2--The Fishermen
This one will really reel you in. (See what I did there?) Chigozie Obioma's debut novel is tragic, violent, and tender all at once. It portrays the beautiful bonds of brotherhood and heartbreaking changes that befall a once flourishing family, and also raises questions about whether outside influences or personal choices determine our destinies--individually, within families, and for whole cultures and societies. Obioma is a master of metaphors, and through the Agwu family, "a metaphor for the paradox that is Nigeria," (Obioma says in a Huffpost Interview), we learn a lot about "colonial contraptions like Nigeria." Obioma's writing is lyrical and vivid, making his story and its themes accessible to everyone, just as he says he intended in this article where he talks about the "show don't tell" of good writing, and says: "I believe that fiction, with it's untrammeled nature, speaks to no one, and by so doing, speaks to all. It must transcend boundaries, time and space..." He certainly actualizes this goal beautifully.
This is one of those rare books that I gave four stars to initially, but then because I couldn't stop mulling it over, and kept uncovering new layers of meaning, I bumped it up to five stars.
Books this one added to my TBR:
The God of Small Things
Things Fall Apart (re-read)
This is one of those rare books that I gave four stars to initially, but then because I couldn't stop mulling it over, and kept uncovering new layers of meaning, I bumped it up to five stars.
Books this one added to my TBR:
The God of Small Things
Things Fall Apart (re-read)
Sunday, August 4, 2019
August 2019.1--Behind the Beautiful Forevers
"[Asha] was a chit in a national game of make-believe, in which many of India’s old problems–poverty, disease, illiteracy, child labor – were being aggressively addressed. Meanwhile the other old problems, corruption and exploitation of the week by the less week, continued with minimal interference. In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as weakening India’s modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remain" (28).
"The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocense and guilt could be bought and sole like a kilo of polyurethane bags" (107).
"Water and ice were made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too. He himself was probably little different, constitutionally, from the cynical, corrupt people around him--the police officers and the special executive officer and the morgue doctor who fixed Kalu's death. If he had to sort all humanity by its material essence, he thought he would probably end up with a single gigantic pile. But here was the interesting thing. Ice was distinct from--and in his view, better than--what it was made of.
"He wanted to be better than what he was made of. In Mumbai's dirty water, he wanted to be ice. He wanted to have ideals" (218).
"...the slumdwellers rarely got madf together--not even about the airport authority.
"Instead, powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked. Sometimes they tried to destroy one another. Sometimes...they destroyed themselves in the process. When they were fortunate...they improved their lots by beggaring the life chances of other poor people" (237).
"In places where government priorities and market imperatives create a world so capricious that to help a neighbor is to risk your ability to feed your family, and sometimes even your own liberty, the idea of the mutually supportive poor community is demolished. The poor blame one another for the choices of governments and markets, and we who are not poor are ready to blame the poor just as harshly" (254).
Boo shows us everyday life for several residents of Annawadi, an makeshift slum of Mumbai. What we see is illuminating and terrible. Usually when I read non-fiction, five stars means "I enjoyed this so much" or "I'm so glad to know more about this topic." This time, it means "This book is so necessary--people need to know about this" and "It will make you feel terrible feelings and that is good.” Seeing the injustice, violence, and desperate efforts for survival is challenging to my sensibilities made so naive from privilege. But we must try to see and understand. For the stranglehold of poverty to be loosened, rule of law must be enforced and violence and corruption must end. The hope in all this is the continued good work of folks like @ijm. Next read: The Locust Effect.
•
Thanks to @definitelyra who brought this book to my attention months ago in her stories.
Honestly, I thought I already knew quite a bit about this topic, having done preparatory readings and then gone on my 6-week mission trip to a shandytown of Lima, Peru. That was the beginning of the learning process, but that experience painted a rosier picture of poverty, lauding the gifts of community experienced in such circumstances. And while there are certainly perils of the self-sufficient closed-off lifestyle of the average American, there is a difference between working together with a sense of fellowship and camaraderie, and simple proximity, lack of privacy, and similar circumstances.
Weaknesses: the stories of the impoverished being told by a privileged white person does serve to reinforce the unintentional bias a lot of us tend to have that these subjects can't speak for themselves, but alas, I'm glad Boo did it. Also, she is a journalist and writes like one and I find that a bit grating at times. But it's still a non-fiction work that grips like a great fiction book.
Strengths: this book shows what life is like for so many people, about which most of us would have no opportunity to learn, especially to learn in an accurate way. Those of us who have the advantage of being completely ignorant of such things cannot even begin to understand the layers of oppression faced by the people in this narrative. Hearing their story is much more illuminating than reading abstract theories about the persistence of poverty, I think.
If you decide to read this, start with the author's note for context. "From where we are, it is easy to overlook that in these conditions it is blisteringly hard to be good. The astonishment is that some people are good, and that many people try to be. If the house is crooked and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?"
"The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocense and guilt could be bought and sole like a kilo of polyurethane bags" (107).
"Water and ice were made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too. He himself was probably little different, constitutionally, from the cynical, corrupt people around him--the police officers and the special executive officer and the morgue doctor who fixed Kalu's death. If he had to sort all humanity by its material essence, he thought he would probably end up with a single gigantic pile. But here was the interesting thing. Ice was distinct from--and in his view, better than--what it was made of.
"He wanted to be better than what he was made of. In Mumbai's dirty water, he wanted to be ice. He wanted to have ideals" (218).
"...the slumdwellers rarely got madf together--not even about the airport authority.
"Instead, powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked. Sometimes they tried to destroy one another. Sometimes...they destroyed themselves in the process. When they were fortunate...they improved their lots by beggaring the life chances of other poor people" (237).
"In places where government priorities and market imperatives create a world so capricious that to help a neighbor is to risk your ability to feed your family, and sometimes even your own liberty, the idea of the mutually supportive poor community is demolished. The poor blame one another for the choices of governments and markets, and we who are not poor are ready to blame the poor just as harshly" (254).
Boo shows us everyday life for several residents of Annawadi, an makeshift slum of Mumbai. What we see is illuminating and terrible. Usually when I read non-fiction, five stars means "I enjoyed this so much" or "I'm so glad to know more about this topic." This time, it means "This book is so necessary--people need to know about this" and "It will make you feel terrible feelings and that is good.” Seeing the injustice, violence, and desperate efforts for survival is challenging to my sensibilities made so naive from privilege. But we must try to see and understand. For the stranglehold of poverty to be loosened, rule of law must be enforced and violence and corruption must end. The hope in all this is the continued good work of folks like @ijm. Next read: The Locust Effect.
•
Thanks to @definitelyra who brought this book to my attention months ago in her stories.
Honestly, I thought I already knew quite a bit about this topic, having done preparatory readings and then gone on my 6-week mission trip to a shandytown of Lima, Peru. That was the beginning of the learning process, but that experience painted a rosier picture of poverty, lauding the gifts of community experienced in such circumstances. And while there are certainly perils of the self-sufficient closed-off lifestyle of the average American, there is a difference between working together with a sense of fellowship and camaraderie, and simple proximity, lack of privacy, and similar circumstances.
Weaknesses: the stories of the impoverished being told by a privileged white person does serve to reinforce the unintentional bias a lot of us tend to have that these subjects can't speak for themselves, but alas, I'm glad Boo did it. Also, she is a journalist and writes like one and I find that a bit grating at times. But it's still a non-fiction work that grips like a great fiction book.
Strengths: this book shows what life is like for so many people, about which most of us would have no opportunity to learn, especially to learn in an accurate way. Those of us who have the advantage of being completely ignorant of such things cannot even begin to understand the layers of oppression faced by the people in this narrative. Hearing their story is much more illuminating than reading abstract theories about the persistence of poverty, I think.
If you decide to read this, start with the author's note for context. "From where we are, it is easy to overlook that in these conditions it is blisteringly hard to be good. The astonishment is that some people are good, and that many people try to be. If the house is crooked and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?"
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