politics

Determination

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

People tell me I have a lot of determination. If they know about it, they use this example: I just finished my 659th day of walking at least 10,000 steps per day never missing a day. My average is over 13,000 but it was higher until the rain came. It forced me to dance, jog, and run in place inside my house, not exactly a fun endeavor.

Three years ago as part of a Story Circle Network class, I read about book written by a woman who read a book per day for a year in order to help her deal with her grief over the loss of young family member who died too soon. I figured if she could read a book a day, surely I could read a book per week. First year I made it, second I fell one short, and in 2025 I read 53 and reviewed them all on my blog.

Today, I finished book one off 2026: “We Are Green and Trembling” by the Argentinian writer Gabriela Cabezon Camara. It won the National Book Award for translated literature. A sort of fantastical, historical novel, it portrays the life of a real person, Antonio de Erauso. Now identifying as a man, he writes letters to his aunt who is the prioress of a Basque convent. When a small girl, his parents placed her in the convent hoping she would someday replace the aunt as head of the convent. To flee the narrow confines of such a life, she escapes and disguises herself as a man. Through his narration and letters to his aunt, he tells of all his adventures, including working as a mule skinner, then becoming a conquistador in South America among other endeavors. At the time of the novel, he has escaped the military captain for whom he fought and rescued two native Guarini girls from enslavement along with two monkeys. The smallest girl and the monkeys were in cages and near starvation when he rescued them. Pursued by the military they escaped, they now reside deep in the jungle aided by the natives who live there.

Through this novel, the author manages to criticize colonialism, the tyranny of strict religious beliefs, the treatment of women, and the horrors inflicted on native peoples.

In Defense of Young People

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Recently, at a party I attended, someone claimed young people these days are lazy, don’t want to work, feel entitled. Sometimes I can keep my mouth shut, just listen, and disagree inside. Not this time. When I hear comments like this about young people, comments with which I vehemently disagree whether it is in person or on social media, I feel compelled to speak up.

During at least half the year, I spend one day a week at an inner city high school. Granted the students I work with are high achieving, students who are the opposite of lazy, some almost to the extreme. When I mentioned this, the person said, “Well this is because they are recent immigrants.” In most of these cases at this school, that is true. Then I explained that I had taught more than 20 years at two Title I high schools where nearly no one was a recent immigrant. Of course, like throughout history, there are some lazy young people. That, however, does not describe the majority. I’ve had homeless students who took the hardest dual credit classes and prevailed. I’ve had students who spent extra time at school because it was safer than being home. I’ve had students whose parents were in jail or drug addicts but still made it to school, did the required work, and graduated. I’ve had students struggling with mental health issues but no matter what managed to do the work required.

Reasons to be lazy abound. Reasons to feel hopeless about the future abound. Look at the present economy, look at the wage cap between the rich and poor, look at how many struggle to find a decent job. Young people are aware of all this, acutely aware. Yet most do the work required and press on no matter what.

I applaud them!

Book 53 for 2025: “The Historian”, Elizabeth Kostova

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

The daughter of a diplomat and historian explores books in her father’s library one evening and discovers an ancient book and a bunch of yellowing letters. These letters are those of one of her father’s advisors in graduate school, a man who suddenly disappeared. The center of the book contains a strange dragon drawing. This discovery leads her on a quest to find out more about her father’s past and the fate of a mother she has never known.

The letters involve the evil history of Vlad the Impaler who is the person behind the legend of Dracula. Vlad the Impaler was ruler of what is now part of Romania. In his efforts to retain power and fight off the Turks, whom he hated, his cruelty became legend. Often he impaled his enemies alive on stakes driven through their bodies and lined them up by the hundreds along the roadsides.

Combining reality and the legend of Dracula and vampires, this book’s main character, the daughter of the historian, leads the reader from London to Amsterdam to Istanbul to various parts of Romania and Bulgaria in search of the truth of her father’s past and the supposed death of her mother. Although it is a vampire story (I am not a vampire fan), it is much more; it is a fascinating trek through a part of history few know much about and about which little has been written.

Note: I doubted I would finish it by year’s end because this novel is 642 pages long. However, I found the story and history so compelling that I finished it before Christmas.

Book 51 for 2025: “The Shadow Land”, Elizabeth Kostova

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

A young woman, Alexandra, travels to Sofia, Bulgaria, for a job as an English teacher in part to help her recover from the strange disappearance (and probably death) of her brother. She has barely arrived when she helps an elderly couple and the man with them. By accident she ends up with an urn of ashes in a bag when her luggage and theirs gets a bit mixed up. The ashes are inside an ornately and unusually carved box with the name Stoyan Lazarov engraved on it. She sets out to find them with the help of a young cab driver.

As they set out on this journey, they discover they are being followed but have no idea why. The cab driver whom she calls Bobby has keen observation skills which mystify her at first. They find part of the family and then unfortunate things occur to many they meet who are relatives or are connected to the man whose name is on the box. Without initially realizing it, they become involved in Bulgarian politics and political corruption as they try to unravel the story of the box and the man whose ashes it contains.

As I read this novel, which is both a lesson on the horrible Soviet occupation of Bulgaria and human determination and resilience, I became entranced with the history and culture of Bulgaria. If you want a glimpse into another culture and its history and the beauty of the Bulgarian landscape, I highly recommend this book. It is also a mystery story that keeps the reader going.

The author also wrote an earlier book called “The Historian” which is a novel about the history of Vlad the Impaler who is the real person behind the Dracula stories. I plan to read that novel as well.

Book 50 for 2025: “The Well of Loneliness”, Radclyffe Hall

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Published in the US in 1928, banned in England, this is the first, well known lesbian novel and without doubt one of the saddest books I have ever read. Hall was already an award winning and popular novelist when she decided to write this novel. The main character, Stephen Gordon, was born to upper class English parents. Her parents had hoped for a boy and chosen the name Stephen. When she was born a girl, they decided to call her Stephen anyway. From an early age, she was different and preferred to ride horses and do outside activities with her father who adored her rather than wear frilly dresses and do the activities common for English girls at the time. Her mother found all this off putting and never showed any love or nurturing toward her. Later in life, after an unpleasant incident with a young woman who uses Stephen as a distraction from her boring life, Stephen’s mother throws her out of the family home and she moves to London where she writes a highly successful novel.

During WWI, they are desperate for ambulance drivers and Stephen is assigned to an all female ambulance regiment in France. There she meets another young woman who becomes her lover.

An English friend, a successful playwright, convinces Stephen to move to Paris where there are no laws against homosexuality and where there is a large community of similar people, many of whom are highly successful in their careers. She and her lover live there for many years, and Stephen successfully continues her career as a writer. Then an old friend from her childhood shows up and everything changes.

Book 45 for 2025: “Atmosphere”, Taylor Jenkins Reid

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Joan, the main character, is an astronomer obsessed with the stars since childhood. She is content with her life as a physics professor until she sees an ad seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space program. While her initial attempt fails, she applies again and succeeds.

In the summer of 1980, she begins her astronaut training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, along with other trainees, including some from the military and others chosen because of their specialist expertise. She is one of those. Some of the top military pilots are nice and some like to make jokes at the expense of women. The women know they won’t all be chosen to go to space. As a consequence one woman in particular becomes excessively competitive. Others help each other and hang out together.

The novel details the rigor of astronaut training both mentally and physically, how trainees behave under stress, and how all the stress makes some people nicer and others increasingly rude. In the midst of all this Joan continues to care for her beloved niece and discovers a love she never dreamed of in her wildest dreams.

Book 43 for 2025: “Salt Bones”, Jennifer Givhan

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This novel surprised me by being a page turner. Once I read through the first couple of chapters, I had to keep going. In Southern California the Salton Sea, once much larger and the home of a thriving resort, now has shrunk and only a few people live there. Not far away lies the Imperial Valley, one of the largest agricultural regions in the US which is close to the Mexican border. This is the setting of the story of the little town of El Valle, the surrounding areas, and the tale of two families, one rich, white landowners, the other Mexican-indigenous. Mal, one of the main characters, has always lived on El Valle, worked hard, tried to forget the disappearance of her sister, and raised two daughters alone. Another local girl goes missing, then a week later her youngest daughter also goes missing. Frantic, she searches for answers, wonders if there is a link, and keeps dreaming of the local, indigenous legend of the horse headed woman, El Siguanaba. Meanwhile readers learn about the long friendship and affair between Mal’s oldest daughter, Griselda, and the son of the valley’s largest, white landowner, Mal’s difficult, disabled mother, her father, and brother’s, one of whom is running for office after going to Stanford, and the youngest brother, Benny, who is now a detective. Not only does this work of fiction combine Latinx and indigenous cultures, it also addresses environmental collapse, family secrets, and the complex relationships between mothers and daughters.

Book 42 for 2025: “Hope In A Time of Dying”, Len Leatherwood

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This autobiographical novel was written by a good friend of mine whose own family experienced some of the horrors of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. The main character, Hope Winterfield, and her husband make their living as antique dealers in Texas when her elder brother, Robert, a doctor with HIV, convinces them to move with their three daughters to the LA area to help him out. Because their antique business is not doing well and she wants to help her brother, they move, thinking that if it does not work out, they can move back to Texas.

Robert has an ex, Anthony, who is also his business partner, who hates Robert’s new love, the charming, handsome, younger man, Cody. Hope takes the job Robert has offered her, only to discover the dynamics surrounding the job, her brother, friends she has known for years, and many others are nearly overwhelming and that quite often nothing is as it seems. Added to all this is Hope’s difficult mother who often denies the realities of her own life. This is the tale of a family and complicated family dynamics where the main characters have to decide what it most important in life and what they should value the most and fight for.

Book 38 for 2025: “Beyond the Door of No Return”, David Diop

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Translated from French and written by a Senegalese author, this novel takes place during the time of colonialism and the slave trade. In Paris of 1806, a famous botanist, Michel Adanson, is dying. He never has finished the botanical work to which he dedicated his life, and as he lays dying, his last words are the woman’s name “Maram”.

His daughter finds an unpublished memoir hidden in a cabinet. It is the story of his younger life, what happened to him in Africa, all addressed to his daughter so she can understand his story and the meaning of his last word. It is a tale both strange and sad, filled with healers and magic and tragedy. Maram, a fabled revenant, a woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, was captured and sold into slavery but managed to escape. While working on his quest to find new plants, Adanson hears about this woman and becomes obsessed with finding her. His guide, Ndiak, the son of a chief, accompanies him everywhere and they become friends. This is a story of adventure, romance, and the horrors and cruelty of the slave trade.

Note: The author won the International Booker Prize for his other novel, “At Night All Blood Is Black”. Readers of this will miss several books I am reading because I am a judge for a literary context and cannot discuss what I am reading for the next several weeks.

Book 36 for 2025: “The Emperor of Gladness”, Ocean Vuong

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

“What’s an army anywhere but a bunch of state-sanctioned mass shooters funded by our tax dollars. Do the deed as a civilian and you get the chair, do it as a soldier and they’ll pin some tinfoil your chest.”

“To be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn it into anything big and grand, that’s the hardest thing of all. You think president is hard? Ha. Don’t you see that every president becomes a millionaire after he leaves office? If you can be a nobody, and stand on your own two feet for as long as I have, that’s enough…People don’t know what’s enough. That’s their problem. They think they suffer, but they’re really just bored. They don’t eat enough carrots.”

In a rather ordinary, small, dismal Connecticut town an elderly woman, suffering from dementia, saves a 19 year old boy from committing suicide. She takes him in and this act of kindness transforms both their lives in unexpected ways. While taking care of her, he also finds a job at a local fast food restaurant where his cousin works as well as several others whom many would consider lesser people. They help each other, form tight bonds, and develop unlikely friendships that reveal how caring and empathy can make all the difference in people’s lives.

This novel is touching, sad, and joyful all at once. These are poor ordinary people trying to survive the best way they know how. For many readers it will be a glimpse into the way many people in this country (and, indeed, the world) actually live–poor, struggling to survive, but also kind and caring.