Booked All Week

In A Border Passage: From Cairo to America–A Woman’s Journey, Leila Ahmed, an Egyptian Islamic feminist scholar in America, details the events of her childhood shaped primarily by the events of the 1952 revolution and her academic experience at a British college. I learned a lot of valuable history from this memoir, which is especially interesting and pertinent given what’s happening in Egypt today. I was especially interested in Ahmed’s college experience and the dawning of her interest in colonialism and post-colonial theory and feminism. This memoir was incredibly insightful, but I didn’t feel I got to know its author in any personal sense and this put me off a bit. I’m keeping an eye out for Ahmed’s more straightforward non-fiction work, particularly Women and Gender in Islam, which I think I’ll get along with a little better.

World of Wonders concludes the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (here’s what I thought of the first two books in the series, Fifth Business and The Manticore). This trilogy is completely brilliant, and introduced me to one of my new favorite authors who, luckily for me, was fairly prolific. World of Wonders shines a spotlight on the most mysterious of the trilogy’s characters, Magnus Eisengrim (or Paul Dempster). Paul grew up in a religiously oppressive household with a “mad” mother and was abducted by a member of a traveling circus as a child. There, he learns some of life’s hardest lessons, and when he’s able to leave the circus and move into the world of theater, he learns to hone his skills of manipulation and becomes the world’s leading illusionist. This story is told through a series of conversations with Dunstan Ramsay and Liesl (both characters from the first two books) and a film crew which has hired Eisengrim to portray a famous, deceased magician in a documentary for the BBC. By asking him to provide “subtext” for the film, they are able to tease out the history of a very complex and secretive character who, in many ways, provides the key to understanding the events of the trilogy at large. In some ways, I admit, I might have liked Eisengrim’s past to remain a mystery, as I don’t think anything could have really matched what I’d imagined that history to be. But Davies presented the story with the same subtle but invigorating philosophical approach that I’ve come to expect from him, and did it beautifully. Though Fifth Business remains my favorite book of the three, World of Wonders made a fitting end to a very captivating and original series.

Flat-Footed Truths: Telling Black Women’s Lives is a collection of short stories, essays, poems, and photographs exploring the self-expression of African American women. I read this book in one sitting, and loved it. There’s a lot of good stuff in here about the importance of reclaiming black women’s history in the United States and the whitewashing of feminism. There’s also some really great writing about black women’s friendships, artist and activist communities, the radical act of love and the true meaning of solidarity. The image of woman, and black woman in particular, has long been tarnished with the worry and discomfort of an insecure and prejudiced society; for this reason, it is important that black women’s voices are not ignored, that their self-image and creativity is recognized and validated. And anyway, you really can’t go wrong with any collection that includes writing by both bell hooks and Audre Lorde

I had so much fun reading Nymphomania: A History. The history of nymphomania, I learned, is a history of western anxiety about women’s sexuality; the arbitrary meaning of the word nymphomania is flexible, and able to encompass the particular concerns of different generations with distinct ideas about women, sex, how much sex is too much for women, and what kinds of sex are appropriate for women to enjoy. It was horrifying to learn about how women’s sex drives were pathologized in the Victorian era, and…(UM, I THINK A TRIGGER WARNING MIGHT BE APPROPRIATE HERE)…”treated” with cauterization, bleedings of the uterus by leeches, and institutionalization. EEEEEK. It was interesting to see how women’s sexual behavior was, and is, deemed appropriate or not based on their class status and race, and how these ideas have been changed, but not been done away with, by the sexual revolutions of the twentieth century. I only wish that the book was a little longer. Each section felt brief, and I would have liked more detail. There were also some big chronological gaps between the different sections that could have been filled. Ultimately, though, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

I read both Diary of a Bad Year and Elizabeth Costello a few years ago, and kind of hated them both, mostly on account of plot events. I held out hope for Disgrace, based on the fact that it seems to be most people’s favorite Coetzee, but wasn’t much happier with it. Mostly because I had no sympathy for the disgraced protagonist, David Lurie, at all. He’s a South African college professor who has a terribly coercive “affair” with one of his students, refuses to “reform his character,” and is fired (good). He goes to live with his somewhat estranged daughter Lucy in the countryside, but their already tense relationship becomes even more strained when three men break into their home, beat him up, and rape Lucy. He is frustrated by how she deals with the emotional aftermath of the rape, and tries unsuccessfully to persuade her to change her life and move somewhere he considers safer. In so doing, a host of racial South African power dynamics come into play in Lucy’s community and each must deal with their “disgrace” in their own way. There’s an interesting story here, I know, but as I said…I really hated David Lurie and that completely influenced my reading of this book. There were moments when I was able to appreciate Coetzee’s writing style, but I was bothered by the content of the writing itself. I’m ready to say that J.M. Coetzee just isn’t for me.

And with that…I am leaving town for a few weeks tomorrow. This means I probably won’t be posting for a while, and when I get back, you can expect a few more catch up posts. I can’t wait to get back into posting and commenting on other people’s blogs regularly, but am equally excited for a little vacation I hope all your summers are off to a great start, and I’ll read y’all soon!

I don’t think that Quite Early One Morning is a book I would normally choose for myself, but I was craving more short stories and Dylan Thomas is one of my boyfriend’s favorite authors, so that made me curious about him. I don’t know that I’d call the pieces in this book “short stories”, exactly; they are like short stories, memories, essays, and poetry all at once. Most of the pieces included in the book were well known in Thomas’ time, the 40′s and early 50′s, because they were read and broadcast over the radio in both the UK and the US. And they are beautiful.

The book is comprised of two distinct sections: the first is made up of autobiographical meanderings through Thomas’s childhood in Wales. The docks, the towns, the people–all described just perfectly and magically, with rumbling, spitting language– that I really felt I had a sense of the place. Thomas’s writing is strongly imbued with its own rhythm, and I was tempted to read aloud to feel the physicality and movement of his words. I didn’t at the time because I read most of it on an airplane and didn’t want to cause any disturbance, but I might go back at some point and try it.

The second part contains some of Thomas’s thoughts about older Welsh poets and their literary contributions. Though I wasn’t quite as interested in this part as I was in the first, Dylan Thomas’ writing kept me happy and engaged.

I would love to track down some recordings of his radio broadcasts so that I could hear these pieces read in his own voice. Though it certainly shines through the written word, I imagine there’s no real substitute for hearing it aloud.

If you’d like, you can read the title story (incidentally, my favorite in this collection) here, to give you an idea of his work. Enjoy!

I, Rigoberta Menchu is essentially a collection of interviews with Rigoberta Menchu about her activism and the culture that she has worked so hard to preserve and liberate, conducted over the course of one week. Menchu is a Quiche Indian woman from Guatemala who has been organizing for cultural preservation, labor rights, and against military occupation in her community and those of indigenous peoples in Guatemala since she was only a child. She was twenty-three at the time of the interviews, and in 1992 she was winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Quiche Indians, and many other Indian communities in Latin America, have little contact with the rest of the world. They face terrible discrimination and oppression, and struggle to maintain their ways of life. They shun the education received in traditional schools, which favors a version of history that is biased against them and promotes modernism. Chapters devoted to explaining various Indian values and rituals–birthing ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, death rituals–provide breaks in the narrative of Menchu’s social justice work and life struggle and, without revealing too much (for much of their beliefs and customs are secret, as they view secrecy as one of their main methods of self-preservation), provide valuable insight into a culture that most outside of it know little to nothing about.

These sections also provide a much needed break from reading about the many horrifying tragedies that Rigoberta Mench has endured while channeling her grief into productive community organizing throughout the Guatemalan Civil War and after.

Rigoberta Menchu recalls helping her mother work on the fincas (plantations, coffee and cotton) for almost nothing, under inhumane conditions, while breastfeeding and caring for her other small children. It was around this time, when she was about eight, that she remembers forming a consciousness of the exploitation her people faced at the hands of landowners. Not only were they barely paid, they were charged for the few things they needed to do their job and often returned home in debt. They were treated like animals, and women were often sexually abused on the job. Two of her younger brothers died on the fincas from malnutrition; another was choked with pesticides by a helicopter which dropped them while workers were still in the fields.

In 1967 powerful landowners, with the help of the Guatemalan government, kicked Rigoberta and her people off their land and claimed it as their own. This would not be the first time. As appointed community leaders, her parents helped to get their community organized against the land-grab. Her father enlisted the help of the unions, and put them off for a few years. But he was taken advantage of by people who knew the law better than he, and whom he could not communicate with as he couldn’t speak Spanish. He was manipulated into signing contracts without informed consent, tortured by the landowners’ bodyguards, and imprisoned. He was in and out of jail as a political prisoner, for “compromising the sovereignty of the state”, for the rest of his life.

Disguised as a fight against communism, the Guatemalan government continued to occupy Indian villages and rape, torture, and massacre their inhabitants. But the Indians put up their best fight. Rigoberta, her mother, and her siblings were not discouraged by the imprisonment, torture, and eventually the death of her father; they were determined to defend themselves and their community indefinitely, even if they must sacrifice their lives. They taught each other to build traps for the soldiers, to use their few resources against their enemies. Rigoberta began traveling to other Indian communities nearby, learning the similarities and differences in their cultures, sharing the story of her people and learning theirs, and offering advice for resistance. She raised consciousness and encouraged people to investigate the root causes of their poverty and oppression so that they were able to form a united front. Her siblings and mother did the same, indeed her whole community was involved somehow out of necessity, but her mother focused specifically on organizing women (and children), for as she told Rigoberta, a revolution without women is no revolution at all.

But Rigoberta’s progress was continually hindered by many linguistic barriers. She finally learned Spanish, the language of her oppressors, in order to work against them. In a similarly subversive manner, she continued to do what she had done since she became a catechist at the age of 12, and used stories in the bible and lessons she’d learned from Catholicism to support the spiritual struggle of her people and encourage their plight.

The work that her mother and her brother did didn’t save them. Her brother was kidnapped, tortured for sixteen days, and burned alive along with other captives in front of their whole family and people, to teach them a lesson. Her mother was kidnapped, raped and tortured, and left for the animals to finish off (these chapters are extremely graphic and disturbing–they gave me nightmares, so consider this a warning). They were not able to save themselves, but the work they did help to sustain their people, their loved ones. Rigoberta herself became a wanted woman, and was forced to go into hiding. Her two sisters went into the mountains to join the guerillas.

It’s a difficult story to read, but worth getting through to learn about this woman and her activism. It’s also fascinating to learn of the ways in which she works to save her people and culture by, at first glance, acting in direct opposition to them. She reveres Quiche tradition, yet renounces marriage and motherhood so that she may continue her important work. She learns the language of her oppressors in order to denounce them. She takes what she finds useful of Catholicism and leaves the rest. She has interesting things to say about the roles of women in revolution and the machismo of her companeros, and the social barriers that exist between intellectuals and those who have not received traditional education. I was also intrigued (re: abhorred) to learn more about how the Guatemalan government couched their abominable actions in terms of anti-communism.

As for the book itself: as I stated earlier, it’s basically a series of translated interviews. Rigoberta Menchu was not speaking in her native language, and it shows. The editor pretty much left things exactly as they were said, which is a method I respect. But these things combined leave lots of room for repetition and structural awkwardness. The rhythm of her monologues was difficult for me to get into, and it’s not always chronological, which bothered me. I haven’t listened to audio books since I was a kid, and reading this, I was tempted to try one for the first time since. I don’t know if it’s available in that format, but I might recommend it over the dead-tree book version. It just made me wish I could see her speak live or something instead. I learned a lot from it and am glad I read it, but the actual reading experience wasn’t that great for me.

I honestly don’t know much about the current situation of indigenous peoples in Latin America, but this book definitely made me want to learn more. I really hope that Rigoberta Menchu’s work, and that of her family and companeros, has alleviated at least some of the suffering of her people, and that we continue to learn from them!

Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pseudonymous name “Linda Brent” in the middle of the 1800′s, before the emancipation proclamation, hoping to stir anti-slavery sentiment. She succeeded. Her story is not only riveting, but has had a lasting impact as one of the preeminent classic slave narratives by survivors of U.S. slavery. It was one of the first autobiographical accounts written by a female slave, and as such it was especially powerful for its revelation of the systemic sexual abuse endured by women under slavery, from which no one who read it could continue to turn a blind eye.

As a young child, Harriet lived what she deemed a comfortable life with her mother. When her mother died, she was sent to live with her mother’s mistress, who taught her to read, write, and sew. But then her mistress died too, and at the age of twelve Harriet was left to her mistress’ five year old niece. As it was, the niece’s father became Harriet’s master, and though she was considered “lucky” because he was doctor and so had a reputation to uphold as a “decent” master (one who is not liberal with lashings, who is discreet about sexual discrepancies), he consistently abused and manipulated Harriet. Not only was Harriet forced to deal with her master’s unrelenting assaults, but she had to contend with his jealous, vindictive wife as well.

By what she considered her only means of resistance at the time, Harriet had an affair with a white man unconnected to her master’s family, gave birth to two children, and hoped that he would buy, then free, the three of them. This did not happen, so while her children grew up with their freed great-grandmother, Harriet ran away and hid in a crawlspace in the same grandmother’s shed–a four by seven foot area, three feet tall at it’s highest point–for seven years. She then makes a miraculous escape to the north and arranges meet-ups for her children there. They’re grateful to be together at last, but hardships persist and they are not altogether free for some years more.

With this account, Harriet Jacobs relays her experiences as a woman under slavery, particularly as a mother. It is a good companion read to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, which I read a few months ago, and it focuses more on the effects that the slave system had on bonded families than does Frederick Douglass’ account. As slaves did not have a right to family, it is an especially harrowing perspective, and Jacobs shows us the ways in which bonded families were a point of attack by those who willed them to remain disempowered. For in family there is love, and in love there is power.

And that is what reading Harriet Jacobs made me remember. Thank you, Harriet.

Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in 1818 and sold many times throughout the U.S. South. While surviving the daily terror and brutality of the slave system, he taught himself, in secret, to read and write, and with these new abilities came new perspective concerning his unbearable situation. His masters were right; this knowledge was a danger to the status quo, and with it he helped to educate his fellow slaves and inspire some of them to attempt a small insurrection. Though the insurrection failed, Douglass did himself succeed in escaping to the north where he became a prominent abolitionist, suffragist, orator, and one of U.S. history’s most revered reformers.

His story is told vividly and with detail. One part that I’m still thinking about, a few days after finishing, is this passage, which highlights the incredible ingenuity in cruelty inspired by the ownership of people (pages 84-85):

The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but i undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whiskey without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed: many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum.

This method of oppressing the slaves’ desire for freedom by using a backwards presentation of freedom as punishment is as haunting to me as the frequent descriptions of beatings and other more directly physical inflictions and, according to Douglass, was a common tactic in maintaining the oppression of slaves, and was used in other circumstances as well (Ex: a slave who’s stolen a jar of molasses may be made to eat it all at once, leading to illness).

Though much is now known and discussed about the evils of slavery in the U.S., it remains an insightful and revelatory experience to read Frederick Douglass’s narrative. I will say, though, that I wish he’d spent more time on the escape itself!