This is a book for those who believe in the power of books to transform life, who are fans of Alice Hoffman, and who like time travel. It also about how a charismatic man can ruin the lives of many, especially women, by controlling everything around him through fear and coercion. In his Community books and contact with the rest of the world are banned. Mia is a young woman who sneaks into a local library and finds Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”. She realizes the life she is living in the Community is like the lives in the book. Through this book she manages to attain the courage to escape such a man, the man who destroyed her mother, Ivy. She makes her way back in time to the period in the book, has a love affair with Hawthorne, and finally escapes the horrible man who tracks her everywhere she goes.
In this dystopian novel white men in Texas run everything and carry guns, have taken over what was the US, eliminated The Constitution, and now use a Blueprint one of the main characters created. There is no choice for much of anything especially if you are a Black woman. An algorithm determines your occupation, spouse, residence, well, everything. Black men have a bit of choice, mainly to be in the military and die young. You can raise to a high rank, have some power, and be honored for your bravery. Sometimes young Black girls around 15 are assigned by this algorithm to be the concubines of powerful white men. This is how the main character, Solenne, ends up living with the most powerful man, becomes his lover. Unlike other circumstances where later she might have a choice, he becomes so obsessed with her that he never wants to let her go. To keep sane she writes about her enslaved ancestor, Henriette, the concubine of a powerful white planter in the 1800s. Women have a tracker implanted in their thumbs so men can see where they are and what they are doing. The only place to escape to is Louisiana, a free state, but even there greed and power can entrap you and force you to return to Texas. The prevailing attitude is this:
“The Councilmen said a nation was only as strong as its hold on its women. They had to squeeze the life out of the women’s liberation movements, give it no air…It begins at home with the wives.”
If you like murder mysteries, this is a book for you. I do not normally read them, found the blurb intriguing and started it. Once I started, I did want to know what happened. I learned a lot about New Zealand, the diversity of wealthy people who live there, and the lush climate in some places. A wealthy South Indian woman suddenly disappears along with 250,000 in cash. Ten years later no one still knows what happened to her and then suddenly someone finds her Jaguar hidden in dense woods with her skeleton in it. Her devoted son has believed all this time she ran away from a horrible marriage (he cannot stand his mean dad) and is still alive. Now the son is a famous, wealthy writer and determined to find out who killed her. This is the story of her life, a horrible marriage, a wealthy neighborhood where nothing seems as it really is, and the son’s quest to find who killed his mother.
This book raises these questions: Can women gain true safety and equality without violence? Can we end misogyny without fighting back?
The book details the stories of three women, one from Alabama, a woman from northern India, and a Kurdish fighter in northern Syria. All use a form of violence to overcome abuse and mistreatment they have experienced and see other women experiencing. The author personally interviewed all of these women and others close to them and visited them repeatedly.
The first is Brittany Smith, who shot the man who had raped her and was trying to kill her brother. Her story details how Stand Your Ground laws work for men, but often fail for women, especially in areas of the US South where men are protected by their beliefs in a male Code of Honor.
The second is the story of Angoori Dahariya, a Dalit woman, from Uttar Pradesh, India. Fed up, she creates a group called the Green Gang (they wear green saris) dedicated to defending poor, under caste, female victims of abuse. Note: Dalit refers to the lowest caste.
The third is the story of Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a Kurdish fighter in the female militia that fought ISIS in northern Syria. She and many others follow the teachings of Ocalan, a Kurdish leader imprisoned by the Turks for leading the Kurdish militia who for years have fought the Turks for independence. He teaches equality between men and women and women’s rights, which is anti the general cultural beliefs in this area of the world. Note: Ocalan is labeled a terrorist by many.
Note: The above poem was inspired by my most recent read:
“Eyeliner A Cultural History”, Zahra Hankir. Hankir is a Lebanese journalist whose history of eyeliner throughout the world informs the reader about places and people and customs many never heard of or know about.
Judith Heumann contracted polio as a child and was subsequently confined to a wheel chair. Doctors suggested to her parents that they send her off to live in a place for the disabled. Having escaped Nazi Germany, her parents were horrified and refused. There were no laws protecting disabled people when she was a child. Her parents, especially her mother, fought for her to go to regular school. This is how her story begins as she tells it. The rest is the story of her activist life.
When the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed, it took months for Section 504 regulations to be signed into law. At this time the author was a young woman living in the SF Bay area. She lead a days long sit-in at the federal building in San Francisco. When this did not work, she went to DC. The entire book is her account of her life as an activist for the rights of disabled persons, beginning with her childhood, her becoming a certified teacher after attending college, and her endless activism for Section 504 and the ADA.
This is an important book for anyone interested in the history of civil rights for the disabled.
Want to learn a lot in less than 400 pages? Read this book. Published this year, it is the most recent book by a prominent Latin American scholar and historian. After humans learned agriculture and built cities, most of the population of the world became increasingly patriarchal and warlike. The divide between rich and poor increased. Egalitarian foragers and wandering hunters existed only in more remote areas. A few still exist in those remote and less modern corners of the world, often places where few others want to even go. This quote says a lot about the current state of affairs:
“Our civilization has thousands of years practice making war. We have almost NO practice making global peace, but without it we are doomed. Today’s pervasive nationalism and rearmament is unlikely to help us make global peace.”
And a page later:
“Only a true unanimous global effort has any chance to preserve our common home.”
He notes that saving Earth will take huge social transformations, including curbing the excessive consumer capitalism that currently pervades plus overcoming a world wide history where half of humanity mistreated the other half, a practice that still continues.
Today I traveled a bit south of where I live to the campus of the Tzu Chi school which I have visited numerous times. First we had a vegetarian lunch–they are Taiwanese Buddhists who advocate a vegetarian, plant based diet as better for the environmental future of Earth. Then all the visitors, who were mostly parents of the children, went to the gym for the program. Various ages wore headdresses to represent the various signs. Some of the youngest children wore dragon headdresses. This is the year of the dragon.
The children sang and danced.
Parents were very enthusiastic about taking photos.
Then after all the students of varying ages finished all their performances, including older students who made a circle around the room and sang plus danced with perfect synchrony, out came the dragon.
It was so much fun to see all the children performing; it was obvious they had worked very hard to accomplish this. It was also enjoyable to see so many happy, enthusiastic parents.
Note: I work with this Buddhist Center teaching character education at local public schools.
Who would have thought a person could write an entire book about a hyper market? I never heard of Auchan until I read this book. For those not in the know, located in France, it is described as a hyper-market on search engines. From Ernaux’s description and those on the Internet, I think there is nothing like it in the US. The author refers to it as a Supermarket, but it is nothing like what we call a supermarket here. It is a superstore, somewhat like the big box stores here but much more. It sells food, clothes, books, you name it, but not like Target or Costco. The bookstore is a separate area, as are many other little shops within the giant store, e.g the fishmonger. It is three stories, open 24/7, and according to the Internet, works toward being something for everyone while caring about the environment and such. The employees wear a uniform so in that regard they all look the same. The store attends to the needs of all the various religions of the people of France, Muslims, Jews, Christians, everyone. This is especially true when it comes to food. During certain holidays, the preferred food for that religious holiday becomes available.
Ernaux decides to go shopping there in 2012 and 2013 over a span of a year. She deliberately goes at different times of day to see if there are differences. There are. Certain groups of people shop early in the morning–like older people. Young singles go later, mom’s with children at a different time. When there is a no school day, gangs of teen girls show up to hang out and shop. When the weather is bad, people go there to escape. Once in a while someone recognizes her, tells her they love her writing, and they have a conversation. At the first floor entry where there are places to sit, she notices that older North African men seem to like to hang out there and watch the passerby’s.
She notices that while a person can shop in a sort of anonymity that is impossible while standing in the checkout line. Here your eating habits, what method you choose to pay, whether you have elderly people at home or babies or children are all on full display laying there on the conveyor belt for all to see. If you have to ask for help with the money, it exposes you as a foreigner. Yet people pretend they do not notice or care–perhaps they do not.
I occasionally go to Target, never to Walmart or Costco. Nevertheless, reading this book has made me notice things I never noticed before, and normally I am quite observant. Now even when I go to smaller grocery stores, I notice who is there, what they are buying. Sometimes people will ask me a question about something in the store. At places near my house, I sometimes see people I know and chat.
In the last few days, I’ve read three books by Annie Ernaux who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2022. Although she is a major writer in France, I had never previously heard of her. Since the local library possessed none of her books, I drove to Claremont and checked out all of her books that were available. The publication dates range from 1974 to 2022.
Most of her books defy categorization. The librarian helped me find them because some were in fiction and some nonfiction. From just reading them, it is impossible to determine whether what I’m reading is real or imaginary or a combination. She writes about women’s lives mostly and issues that only women experience.
“The Young Man”, copyright 2022, tells a detailed account of a love affair between a young male student and a 50 something woman, thirty years older than he. They meet on weekends often at his apartment, make fervent love, visit sidewalk cafes, wander. The narrator notes that people sometimes look askance at them in a way they never view an older man and a younger woman. She finds love making helps her write, “Often I have made love to force myself to write.” At the end of the book are photos of Ernaux over the years (she was born in 1940) and a detailed biography.
Next I read “The Happening”, (2001) a detailed account of a young female student seeking an abortion when it was illegal in France. She manages to hide her state from most people including her parents. She finally finds an elderly nurse, but later experiences complications and ends up in the hospital where a young doctor, who thinks she is just some poor woman off the street, treats her badly. When he discovers she is a university student, he finds her and apologizes. It seems mistreating the poor is okay but not someone from his own class status.
Then I read “Simple Passion” (1991), a short (64 pages) detailed account an illicit love affair between a young, married man from Eastern Europe and the narrator. The telling part of this story is the narrator’s (the author?) obsession with this man she calls A. She waits for his calls 24/7. She thinks about him every waking moment and dreams about him at night. I kept thinking of myself and many women I know who have become obsessed with some man to their own detriment.
A a writer, I find her work totally fascinating in its extreme courage. She writes in detail about experiences few would dare to even talk about, but many experience and keep silent. Much of it is autobiographical, an even great demonstration of bravery. Who dares tell the truth of many of our own experiences? Very few of us.
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