One Book A Week-25: “The Daughters of Madurai”, Rajasree Variyar

June 10, 2023 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

The first sentence of the book reads: “A girl is a burden. A girl is a curse.”

In India in early 1990s, Janani lives with her abusive mother-in-law and an alcoholic husband who is often absent, chauffeuring people here and there. Although she is allowed to keep daughter number one, the fate of the next daughters is death. She, who is Tamil lower caste, is lucky enough to work for the same higher caste family for whom her mother worked and with whom she spent most of her childhood. They treat her much better than her husband and mother-in-law who hate her for not bearing a boy baby.

The book goes back and forth between this time period and 2019 Australia where the fate of Indian girls and women is far different. The family returns to India for the funeral when the family patriarch dies. Those who know little about their family history learn some shocking revelations.

In the Afterward, the author discusses female infanticide. Although many educated families oppose it and national laws prohibit the practice, it remains so common in parts of rural India that in those places there is a shortage of women for marriage. As a consequence, men resort to kidnapping women from other areas.

I thought it would take me a while to read this 326 page novel. However, I became so engrossed, I finished it in two days while also engaging in several other activities.

One Book a Week-23: “The Devil’s Highway”, Luis Alberto Urrea

June 3, 2023 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Even though the events described in this non-fiction work occurred exactly 22 years ago in May in southern Arizona, not much has changed except the nationality of the immigrants. Few Mexicans try walking across the Arizona desert these days. Now it’s mostly people from certain Central American countries, Venezuela, and various other countries, generally places where the climate of the Sonoran Desert is unknown.

In 2001, a group of men, mostly from the state of Veracruz, tried it. More than half died and the coyote who led them remains in prison. This book tells their story. It also describes in detail the networks that lure immigrants to attempt the long journey to the US border, who benefits, who gets paid, the geography and climate of the desert–a true tale of deceit, disillusion, desperation, and loss.

4000 migrants have died in the last two decades trying to cross the Arizona desert. This number equals bodies found; many tell tales of others whose bodies remain lost. 2021 saw a record number of deaths. 2022 data is not yet published.

Note: I like Urrea’s books and have read most of his novels. I recommend starting with “The Hummingbird’s Daughter”.

One Book a Week-14: Trust, Hernan Diaz

April 6, 2023 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

The first half annoyed me. I kept asking, “What? Why? What is wrong with these greedy, despicable people?” I almost quit reading it (I never quit reading a book) but plunged on. Then, about halfway through “A Memoir, Remembered” section entranced me. Aha. Now I “get” it. I became so engaged I read the last half almost straight through without stopping.

The title should be Truth. This novel deftly explores these questions:

-What is true?

-Whose truth is true?

It does this via competing narratives involved with financial markets, how investors have and can manipulate the stock market, and relationships. It also quietly addresses the issue of how men take credit for the acumen of the women with whom they are involved and the destructive power of wealth and influence.

One Book a Week-9: “Flights”, Olga Tokarczuk

February 27, 2023 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

How to describe this unusual novel? Here’s a possible list:

-No over all plot.

-Several stories about individuals scattered throughout, e.g. read about a person and event, then many pages later back to that person and the consequences of the event(s).

-Short philosophical musings/vignettes interspersed here and there. One reviewer counted 116.

-One common theme relates to the title, Flights, in that in most of the “stories” people are traveling or have traveled on quests for “meaning” or escape from a cumbersome reality.

I learned the following from reading this book:

-Per his request Chopin’s heart was taken from his body. His body was buried in Paris but his sister secretly transported his heart in a jar of special preservation liquid back to Poland, the land of his birth.

-A Dutch anatomist discovered the Achilles tendon after dissecting his own amputated leg.

-Plastination is the method used in anatomy to preserve bodies and body parts. Several characters in the book make their living or are obsessed with this process.

This is not a book for those who prefer relaxing reading or for the “faint of heart”.

Note: The author won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2018. This book won the Mann Booker for translated literature from all over earth in 2018. I plan to read another of her books–have now read two of them–but since the other one in English is 1000 pages long rather guess it might take more than a week for me to read it. This is actually the 11th book I have read to date in 2023 but did not start blogging about them so two are missing in the blog posts,

Afternoon at the Library

June 13, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Usually at the library I checkout and return books. Because my grandson is taking art classes at a nearby college for three hours in the afternoons, I go to read and observe. The same older men show up everyday. Some, acquaintances or friends, quietly chat. They look scruffy with dirty, stringy hair. Are they homeless? Does the library provide an air conditioned refuge? They read, look at magazines.

One man in a tan Alaska cap takes notes from a large book. He appears well groomed, clean, with a sculpted, small beard. Another alternates reading and checking his cell phone. At a separate round oak table a man sits in a dark heavy coat–it said 102 on my car temperature gage when I arrived. He never looks up, concentrates on the black laptop in front of him. The white earbuds stand out against his heavy dark beard. His fingernails are dirty. A white haired man approaches the round table I occupy and asks if he can sit there. I reply, “Sure.” His dark skin shows the heavy creases of outside work and age. His fingernails are clean. He focuses on filling out an application for a commercial driver’s license.

In the several days I have stayed here to read and wait, I have seen only one woman where they allow adults to sit. Do these men, day after day, come here because they have no place else to go?

Sunday Poem–“Hair”

November 12, 2017November 12, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

No females in my family had long hair.

Dad did not like it,

said it showed male domination

over women.

Once when grown and gone

from home, I began to grow mine

out, experiment.

When he saw it, he told me

he thought it unbecoming.

I cut it.

Mom said she had long hair

when she was young.

Her dad forbade her to cut it.

In her twenties she chopped her golden locks

off, flapper style, then hid her head

in a scarf, afraid.

Note: This poem is from the family section of my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.

Quote for the day

August 13, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Sadly, this quote seems appropriate given the events in Virginia. I had hoped we were beyond this but apparently not.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you picking his pockets. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you”. Lyndon Johnson, 1970.

Is This How Patriarchy Began? by Carol P Christ

June 19, 2017June 19, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Is violence more likely when men spend a lot of time away from women and children?

Feminism and Religion

In my widely read blog and academic essay offering a new definition of patriarchy, I argued that patriarchy is a system of male dominance that arose at the intersection of the control of female sexuality, private property, and war. In it, bracketed the question of how patriarchy began. Today I want to share some thoughts provoked by a short paragraph in Harald Haarmann’s ground-breaking Roots of Ancient Greek Civilization. Haarmann briefly mentions (but does not discuss) the hypothesis that patriarchy arose among the steppe pastoralists as a result of conflicts over grazing lands. As these conflicts became increasingly violent, patriarchal warriors assumed clan leadership in order to protect animal herds, grazing lands, and the women and children of the clan.

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Toxic Masculinity: “Masculinity Must Be Killed” by Carol P. Christ

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Very thought provoking. I definitely will look for the pamphlet by Abdullah Ocalan.

Feminism and Religion

Carol Molivos by Andrea Sarris 2 A few days ago I watched the movie An Unfinished Life starring Morgan Freeman, Robert Redford, and Jennifer Lopez. Though it was recommended as a sensitive psychological drama, and though on the surface level it criticizes (male) violence against women and animals, on a deeper level, it confirms the association of masculinity with violence, suggesting that violence is the way men resolve their problems with each other.

At the beginning of the film, Robert Redford, who lives on a ranch in Montana, picks up his rifle with the intention of shooting a bear who mauled his friend Morgan Freeman. This act of violence is stopped by local authorities who arrive to capture the bear. However, the bear is not removed to a more remote area, but rather is given to a local make-shift zoo where it is kept in a small cage. At the end of the movie, Redford frees…

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