politics

Book 10 for 2024: “The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice”, Elizabeth Flock

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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.

Book Eight for 2024: “Being Heumann”, Judith Heumann

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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.

Book Seven for 2024: “After Eden, A Short History of the World”, John Charles Chasteen

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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.

Book Two of 2024: “Jezebel”, Megan Barnard

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As a woman whose view of most women in the Bible remains nuanced, I could not resist a purchase when I saw this on the shelf at a bookstore. For centuries, she’s been vilified as a harlot, a temptress, both descriptors seen as negative by many societies even in these freer, modern times.

This novel by Megan Barnard is first person Jezebel, beginning with what she has been told about her birth and family. Then she describes her luxurious upbringing in Tyre, her forced marriage to Ahab while Ahab’s father is still alive and king of Israel. She begs her father not to force her to marry Ahab. Her father wants an alliance with Israel, which at that time was considerably less wealthy, quite backward, and more warlike than Tyre. She and Ahab have never even met when she arrives as a teenager to be his wife. To make it more difficult initially Ahab mostly ignores her, preferring other women in the harem. One issue is their differences in religion, she being a follower of Astarte while he and Israel are followers of Yaweh. She is used to religious tolerance, thinks people should be free to follow whatever religion works for them. The Israelis go to war over religion, demand adherence to their god.

Throughout she laments the plight of women, their lack of power and self determination. She notes that only prominent men are remembered, written about, not women regardless of their status, intellect, and influence. She remains steadfast in her determination to be remembered, to be written about even to the point where she engages in devious and sometimes cruel behavior to accomplish her goals. I find it noteworthy how effective this turned out to be; she is remembered, immortal, whereas kinder, gentler women are mostly forgotten.

One Book a Week-55: “The Scribe of Siena”, Melodie Winawer

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At the beginning of 2023, my main resolution was to read at least one book a week on average. I exceeded the goal. Now I have to decide whether to continue. I discovered a lot of authors I had never read before and learned many new things.

This last book of the year is perfect for those who love Italy, the Italy of today and medieval Italy because it takes place in both time periods–mostly in the Siena of the 14th century but some in modern Siena as well. It begins in current day New York where Beatrice, the main character, works as a neurosurgeon. Years before, her older brother, a medieval scholar, moved to Siena to investigate the ancient rivalry between Florence and Siena. When her brother suddenly dies, Beatrice discovers she has inherited his house in Siena. When she goes there to settle his estate, she not only discovers his wonderful, centuries old house, but also a manuscript from a fresco artist, Gabriele Accorsi, and one of his paintings where there is an image of a woman who looks exactly like Beatrice herself. This magically leads her to 1347 Siena, a conspiracy over the rivalry between Florence and Siena, the Plague, romance, and so much more. This is a page turner sort of book where the reader also learns a lot about the Plague, medieval Italian customs and life, and Tuscan history.

I find it interesting that the author is a professor of neurology, fluent in several languages, and literate in Latin. This novel has also lead me to explore the actual medieval relationship between the cities of Florence and Siena.

One Book a Week-54: “On A Night Of A Thousand Stars”, Andrea Yaryura Clark

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For decades I have been a bit obsessed with Argentina and its history. When the horrible events described in this recent novel occurred during the military dictatorship in the 1970s, I closely watched news and read books about it. Later, I hosted an exchange student from Argentina and visited him and his family. Therefore, when I saw this novel on the new books shelf of the local library, I checked it out.

At a polo match in New York, a wealthy Argentinian diplomat and his wife and daughter meet a woman from his college days. She says things about him and his past that upset him and cause his daughter, Paloma, to wonder about her dad’s past, about which she knows little. When they go to Argentina on a trip related to his diplomatic duties, Paloma decides to investigate. She meets a local university student whose parents had disappeared (as thousands did) during the military dictatorship. He is part of an activist group searching into the disappearance of close family members during the dictatorship. He decides to help her with her research into her dad’s past. This creates a chain of events that upsets everything she knows and endangers her life.

If you want to read a heartbreaking love story, learn more about a brutal period in Argentinian history and some Argentinian customs and lore, this is the book for you. I went back and reread some of it twice.

One Book a Week-51: “The Watch”, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

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I could not stop reading this book. The setting is a US military outpost during the Afghan war in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Kandahar. The weather is brutal–extremes of cold and heat, sand storms, heavy fog early in the mornings. Suddenly, after a brutal battle where they lose some soldiers, a young Afghan woman, Antigone, with stumps for legs shows up pulling a cart. Her brother, who the soldiers think was part of the Taliban, was killed in the battle; she wants her brother’s body for a proper Muslim burial. The soldiers do not know whether she is who she says she is or a suicide bomber. It confuses them even more when she plays hauntingly beautiful music on her rubab every night. All this leads to a lot of confusion over and raises many questions about morality and duty. Each chapter is from a different viewpoint, the young woman and various soldiers in the outpost.

Note: The rubab is a traditional Pashtun 12 string guitar-like instrument. You can find recordings on YouTube.

One Book a Week-47: “A Pipe for February”, Charles H. Red Corn

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If you have read “Killers of the Flower Moon” and/or seen the movie, this is a must read. Published in 2002, this Osage novel details the daily life of John Grayeagle from his viewpoint. A young, oil wealthy Osage man at the time he tells his story, John was raised by his grandfather because his parents, like many other Osage, were killed under strange circumstances, in his parents’ case an odd car wreck. He is the cousin of Molly, a main character in “Killers of the Flower Moon”. Although he received a college education, spent months traveling in Europe, lives in an elegant house, and drives an expensive car, he still follows many of the Osage traditions, which he details as he talks about his life throughout the novel. The novel describes the murders (which officials usually claimed were accidents or suicides) from the Osage point of view. They knew something was going wrong but were having difficulty determining what they could do about it. They were suspicious of the guardians assigned them by the US government who thought they were too stupid to manage their oil wealth, yet were often stymied when they tried to gain control of their own affairs. This is their story.

The author, who died in 2017, was a prominent member of the Osage Nation, a member of the Peace Clan as is the novel’s main character. The novel’s Foreward is written by Martin Scorsese, who cowrote the screenplay for “Killers of the Flower Moon” and coproduced and directed the movie.

One Book a Week-46: “Road Fever”, Tim Cahill

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After reading two intense, somewhat depressing novels, I decided to read a lighter non-fiction work. An article I read mentioned a tale of two guys, Tim Cahill and Garry Sowerby, who drove a GMC Sierra pickup truck from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in less than 25 days. I like adventures and the best vehicle I ever owned was a Sierra 4 by 4 Off Road. I sold it to a former student when I moved. It was still going strong at over 300,000 miles.

In order to follow along on their adventure, I dug out my atlas and followed their trip through 13 countries, finding cities, little towns, rivers, mountains. When they traveled in 1987, the only place with no road was the Darien Gap on the border between Colombia and Panama–today still no road and now famous for all the migrants who labor through this dangerous, swampy, jungle area on foot on their way north. Since no road there, Tim and Garry had to load the truck onto a container ship in Cartagena and unload it in Panama. They also rode on the ship as passengers. This lead to their meeting some of the most colorful characters on their trip.

Along the way, they meet all sorts of people, e.g. sadistic police, kind employees of international GMC, a weird consulate employee, and helpful women, describe them and the landscape in detail. Procuring the right documents and proceeding across borders is sometimes easy and sometimes grueling, again described in detail. Of course, political leaders, ease of travel, etc. have changed in many places–I’ve been to or lived in five of the countries they traverse.

Want to explore new places, meet all sorts of folks?? Then this is the book for you and a fun read.

One Book a Week-45: “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison

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“The Bluest Eye” is one of the most banned books in the US. Even here in California, some in my local school district tried to get it removed from the high school library. One school board member told me it had been on the shelves since it was first published and no one cared until this year. Why the controversy about this book?

Yes, there is incest and sexual assault, but this occurs near the end. My guess is that what really disturbs some is the stark details and honesty about how people treat each other, the brutality of racism and poverty, and even among people of the same race, the cruelty of discrimination based on how people look, their level of education, their origins. The main character is poor, unattractive, and unpopular. She comes to believe that if she just had blue eyes, all her problems would disappear. She even goes to a charlatan preacher whom she believes can make her eyes blue because others have told her he creates miracles.

The relentless truths detailed in this novel create a hard look at the effects of poverty and racism.