Category: reading

African Experience, book-review, books, Family Drama, read around the world, reading

Baking Cakes and Burying Hoopies

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Baking Cakes in Kigali / Rwanda & When Hoopies go to heaven / Swaziland

Baking Cake in Kigali is in a similar vein as the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Meet Angel. She makes the most wonderful cakes. She has started this business while her husband Pius is a special consulting in Rwanda, rebuild the country after the genocide. They are not from Rwanda, they are Tanzanian. Angel and Pius are raising their five grandchildren. Three are their late son Joseph’s children. He had tested positive, but he was shot in a robbery. The other two are their daughter Vinas’ who died “from blood pressure.”  Pius and Angel are working so hard to provide for this second family, as so many grandparents across the African continent are doing.

Angel, who prides herself on being a professional person, faces the realities of life with grace and humility. The family lives on a compound for the many volunteers that have come to rebuild after the war. She takes people under her wing, and cares for them. Her main concern is to make people happy. We learn through Angel the difficulties that people face everyday. The status of women – the number of men being so scarce – pit them against each other as they look for partners. The unavailability of work leaving no choice but to sell their bodies in order to feed their families. Undercurrents through the country are the knowledge that you may have survived, but you are not sure if the person next to you was part of the massacre, or is somehow related to someone that was. Then there is the ever-present HIV.

This book takes on these difficult topics, such as the HIV crisis that has left so many grandparents raising children and the genocide with skill. While ever present, it is not maudlin or gratuitous. You see though different characters what it is like to be a child of a collaborator, to be the only survivor of a family, and the pain that remains as people try to move on with life.

All of this while you watch Angel go to HIV positive women that are being taught how to sew to keep them from selling themselves on the streets, buying fabric from women that are making their own patterns to survive, and standing in for a mother in jail for collaboration at a wedding. The wedding itself shows how the country is trying to heal – step by step learning to live together in the present with people from all over Africa, and the world, coming together – even the different groups that had been at war in Rwanda.

Through this empathy and openness to learning something new, Angel helps to heal hearts and make differences, both large and small for the whole community. There is hope for the country in what Angel is able to accomplish, which leads you to believe there is hope for the country in real life. Well worth the read.

I actively search for more stories with Angel and found When Hoopies Go to Heaven. The family has left Rwanda and moved to Swaziland. This installment is told from the point of view of the middle child of Joseph, Benedict.  Benedict is fascinated with all animals. Through his attempts to do the right thing, what he felt Angel or Pius would do, similar connections are made between different groups. While the changed POV was not as compelling as the first book, the same humanity and wonderful writing is found. I will continue to look for more books by Gaile Parkin for the pure delight in reading, and the added bonus of learning about different cultures. 

book-review, books, Hispanic and Latinx Cultures, reading

The history of tango in Argentina

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When I started this blog I created a list of books from countries around the world – 101 – and called it my armchair travel log. I have not been diligent with updating this list, or even considering it. Then the world “woke”. You need to walk in someone else’s shoes before we judge them. The best way I know how to do that is to read about life from someone else’s point of view. I recommitted to the task.  The first thing I realized is I missed some countries – Austria, New Zealand, Lebanon and Swaziland. I am afraid I missed many more.

My kickstart landed me in Argentina, chasing The Tango Singer. Tomás Eloy Martínez creates a cast of characters that includes the city of Buenos Aires. The main character, Bruno Cadogan, is an American – New Yorker – writing his thesis on Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges, a famous Latin short story writer. Borges’s 1940’s publication The Aleph is a collection of his stories with common themes. [Borges style was to influence the magic realism movement in 20th century Latin American literature. It is assumed that you are familiar with him and his work but it is not necessary to enjoy this book.]

Bruno is encouraged to experience Argentina, where Borges lived and created, but the New Yorker was reluctant to leave, preferring the safety of the United States. The implication here is that those in the U.S. like to know more than anyone else, but never leave and experience that which they are to know so well. This also implies that you must travel in another’s steps to truly learn about life.

After being awarded a scholarship, he is persuaded to go and find a new angle to write something new for his thesis – a story he hears about an unsung tango singer. Thus begins Bruno’s quest to find this illusive singer that was rumored to be better than Carlos Gardel [the internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter, and most prominent figure in the history of tango – so says wiki-pedia].

Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, Bruno is taken in hand by someone that sets him on his magical journey. By coincidence this person takes him to stay at the actual hotel where The Aleph was said to be written. From this place he meets a man that lives in the basement where Bruno believes the Aleph actually exists, as well as other characters. In his friend’s [I returned the book to the library and forgot this character’s name] desire to get into the basement, Bruno contacts the owner of the building to see what can be done.

After that, we are following the steps of Julio Martel, an ailing and aging man. He never announces where he will sing, instead just appearing from nowhere where Bruno arrives too late to hear him. Bruno attempts to find the reason why these sites were chosen. The stories of how Julio became a singer, and of the places and people related to each, are peels of an onion. Layered and nuanced, with bits being given out of order and disjointed. By examining the pattern of Julio’s impromptu concerts, the dark history of the country is laid bare, with years of abuses of power being highlighted. As Argentina again spirals into chaos of changing regimes, soring inflation and increasing desperation, you see Bruno’s desperation to see Julio, who has since ended in the hospital critically ill, just as the country is.

It is in this chaos that the owner of the building where the Aleph was to be found evicts everyone. This parallels the chaos within the country. Regardless of the past, the present is to be re-written regardless of the cost to human lives. It also reflects the impact of outside countries, such as the United States, on the country of Argentina.

Bruno never does hear Julio sing, and he leaves Argentina to return to New York, forever changed by the stories that Julio made sure were not lost to history. To hear the stories is to carry the burden of what happened. This shared burden is what provides the empathy to remember the sacrifices of others and to have respect for those that survived.

Black Experience, book-review, books, reading

Homegoing

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In my first attempt of the year I head to my library’s website.  My first stop – my lists of saved titles to read.  Around the World – my list of books to read from every country – beckons me.  After reading many Top Ten lists of 2021, I choose Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. I click the button to reserve my copy.  In one week, it is in my house. 

The story pulls me in immediately. First, we meet Effia, a girl in a village in Ghana.  Her father is “a big man” in the village.  Her mother beats her often.  The chief is set to marry her when she becomes a woman, but her mother tells her to keep that a secret.  Instead of earning an honored place in the village as a first wife, Effia is given into marriage with a British officer.  When she goes to Cape Coast Castle, she discovers there are people that look like her in the dungeon that will be sold as slaves.  She learns quickly that the British will become “mean” when questioned about this.

Next you meet Esi.  She is the daughter of “a big man” in a different village.  Her mother loves her and is always near her side.  It is in this story that you start to hear that people in the North are not human.  The Villagers have conducted raids across the country, being known as a strong tribe to be afraid of.  Prisoners are held in cages in the village center, with people walking by to spit on them because they are not people.  Esi’s mother is forced by her husband to pick a girl to be a house girl.  The mother protects her as best she can.  It is not until after the girl is whipped by the father for dropping two drops of water, at the urging of the rest of the family, that Esi learns that her mother had been a slave before.  As fate has it, it is Esi that ends up in the dungeon below where Effia is.  This is when we learn that these are half sisters, each traveling a very different path from the other. 

I am very uncomfortable reading this book, which is probably the point.  From the first, when I realize that the villagers participated and profited from enslaving their own kind, just from a different village, I am sick.  When I realize the animals that are found around those villages become what these people are called in derogatory terms, I am horrified – I knew of the slur, but this put the pieces together of where the slur came from.  The way groups of people dismiss others – making it easy to treat them badly by stripping them of any humanity – is way too familiar.  This is the tactics that the Nazis took in 1930s Germany against the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and more.  These tactics are not just our history.

This history continues to haunt us.  The legacy of slavery remains in the systemic structures of our world, including education, economic support for the poor, and access to proper mental and physical health resources. We continue to be faced with the stark realities of continued prejudice: Floyd George’s murder, LGBQT+ being thrown off roofs, and women like Malala being shot.  Until we start looking at others as part of us, this will not change.  There continue to be people that need to be better at someone’s cost. They lead the way for others to feel better about themselves by putting others down. They strip the belief in the humanity from those they push down.  All those that participate in this, or that stand by and let it happen, ultimately lose their own humanity. We need to open oppressor’s eyes to this.  Unless we all understand we are in this together, there will be no end. 

This is my reaction from the first third of the book.  My soul is crying, and I can’t continue.  If the rest of the story continues as well written, I can only guess at the depth of feeling and thought it will provoke in its readers.  As for me, I am too saddened by the reality of what this represents, and gripped by the fear that we have not learned enough to keep it from happening again. 

book-review, books, Non-Fiction, reading

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

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October was cybersecurity awareness month. While it is technically over, we are in an actual state of war every time we log onto the web. With Phishing, Spearhunting; Spoofing and more, you must be aware of every click. With this in mind, I actually picked up a book to learn more about Information Technology and Protection.

Adventures of an IT Leader was the BEST text book I have read on this subject. Written as novel, each chapter reviews a challenge that the brand new head of IT is facing. You are engaged, and feel the tension and confusion as each challenge arises to be dealt with. The conditions that are challenging are realistic, and the people delivering the information are engaging also. This was an excellent way to put in front of any person, be they a “techie” or not, to understand.

This made me think of all the other books I have read that have engaged me over the years around technology. Here are some of the ones that still come to mind easily:

Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder Followed Data General’s creation of a minicomputer in one year in the late 1970s that brought on the tech revolution.

He, She, and It by Marge Piercy Fiction that predicted what AI can do – in 1991 it even predicted that we would be talking to our houses.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. Just as the Adventures book, this is an engaging and easily accessible way to learn how to handle DevOps.

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden The story of how he helped build and then bring down a system similar to “Big Brother”

1984 by George Orwell – The book that introduced us to “Big Brother”

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline A Young Adult novel about hiding in the internet, and how it can take over your life.

Mr Penumbra’s 24 hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan – A novel about how data can be both useful and not.

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez Unconscious Bias in the collection of data.

Enjoy!!

book-review, books, Hispanic and Latinx Cultures, reading

Hispanic Heritage Month 2021

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In honor of Hispanic Month (September 15, 2021 – October 15, 2021), I decided to read about a place I didn’t know much about.  Cuba, an island that was forbidden, ruled by a man that lived longer than anyone expected, cut off from its closest neighbor, with its people fleeing on makeshift rafts at sea.  What did I know about this island?  Bits and pieces – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, Cuban cigars, and the place where Sky Masterson takes Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls.  I figured it was time to learn more about the people, and maybe something about the politics of the place.

Since I love historical fiction, and learn about cultures and how they got there from novels, it made sense for me to pick one for the task.  Next Year in Havana is a mix of historical details, sociological analysis, and a love story.  Told from two women’s perspectives and times – Elisa Perez, debutante Cuban in high society of 1958 and Marisol Ferrera, freelance writer and member of Miami’s Cuban exile community in 2017. 

Marisol, raised by her grandmother Elisa, is coming home to Cuba, where her grandparents fled with the family when Castro took over.  She brings with her memories of stories told to her about the way things had been, and a tin containing the ashes of her grandmother, who told her those stories.  Marisol is to find the final resting place for the ashes in Elisa’s beloved Cuba.  Met at the airport by Elisa’s childhood best friend’s grandson, Marisol comes into possession of a pack of love letters from her grandmother to a man that was not her grandfather.  This leads her on a quest for the truth.

Then, as before, asking questions can be bad for your health.  Through eyes of revolutionaries, each woman in her time is faced with the stark reality that their lives were pampered, and that poverty was real and near.  The details on how hard life had been on those that remained in Cuba, making a life through the hardships, versus those that left Cuba and settled in Miami clinging to what Cuba had been.  It even goes into some detail on how the island nation had always wanted to be free, but was always at a larger country’s whim – America, Russia, and even Venezuela.  The war that brought about Castro’s revolution, and the war that put Batista in power before him, were all about democracy – and the hope to return to constitutional law.

Ultimately, the question “are you a Cuban first or an American first”, and what that means to those that stayed and those that left simmers under the surface, as does the uneasy peace made to allow the regimes continue the grip on the people.  Love, family love, romantic love, and love of country are at odds with each other in this novel.  Nothing is easy, choices must be made, and you make the best of what you are given. 

Other books that I have enjoyed from Hispanic authors, in no particular order:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent by Julia Alverez

In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alverez

Afterlife by Julia Alverez

The Alchemist by Pualo Coehlo

Black Experience, book-review, books, reading

The book of lost friends

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This is a book with at least two stories, all that intersect around family, and history.  We start meeting Benedetta Silva, known as Benny as she starts her first job teaching at a poor rural school in Louisiana to help pay off her student debt.  Although she is white, she is living in poverty until her first paycheck arrives.  She is intimidated by the unruly teens that await her, fighting with each other, and never listening.  She tries everything to get them engaged, even buying treats for those that are hungry from her low salary. 

Next we meet Hannie and her slave family were being moved from Louisiana to Texas by a relative to keep them from being set free.  Out of sight of the owners, the relative starts to sell off the family in ones or twos the whole way there.  The last to be sold, Hannie finally gets the buyer to understand that she was stolen and sold away from her rightful owner.  Along the way, she had kept track of who was sold where, in the hopes to reunite with them in the future.

As we follow Hannie, who is returned to the original plantation alone but strikes out as a sharecropper with a few other slaves that had remained, we see that she is smart and resourceful.  Lavinia, the plantation owner’s pampered daughter, meets with Juneau Jane, the plantation owner’s mulatto daughter by his mistress.  Afraid that Lavinia’s arrival meant that the head of the Gossett plantation was dead, Hannie listens in to find out what is happening because there was only one year left on the lease before the sharecropping land was to be free and clear for her and those working it.  The three end up in an odyssey to find the father, to determine who was entitled to what property.  At one point the three end up in a church, where the walls were covered in posters of letters to friends, where people were looking to reconnect with those that had been sold away. 

Benny, who is renting out a home near the plantation because it was the cheapest she could find, needs help when the roof starts to leak. Through this challenge, Benny meets marvelous women that have kept the community together and give Benny hope for surviving.  Through the stories that Benny hears from Mrs T, she decides that this is the story that would resonate with her students, and asks her to come and tell it to the kids.  The kids are hooked and come up with a way to bring the stories to life.  While not approved by the school board, made up of rich white folks, the stories are coming from the Carnegie Library, a source of pride of the community at one time.  Facing a threatening police force, and the school board that sends their own kids to a private school instead, Benny is told to just let the kids get a vocational education as they were not better than that. 

Throughout the chapters flipping between the two, actual letters written and sent are included.  These had been published in the Southern Methodist newspaper and was shared via pulpits across the country.  The heartwrenching stories behind each of these hit home for me.  I did not know that these adverts had been created for people to finds each other in the late 1800 – early 1900s.  I did, however, understand these completely.  As a Jew, I am fully aware that after WWII, the same was happening in the displacement camps throughout Europe with people searching for any connections that may be left.  It is the guilt at being alive, combined by the fear of being alone, that makes these so sad.  While the longing is always there, sometimes it is easier not to ask the question for fear of the answer.

That also is true when it comes to a hard past.  In the Louisiana is the reality that slavery did happen.  Ancestors we part.  But in order to remain in power, the stories and intimidation continued.  It is this need to keep the power structure as it is, and the fear of what will happen if it is not, that keeps the true history of the plantation and those that lived on it.  Until you face the choices that you made, good or bad, and acknowledge them, you are doomed to spend your life covering up for them. 

book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading

Lost and Found

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Each person leaves things behind, sometimes on purpose others, not.  These items can be keys to moments that change our lives.  This is the basis of the story behind The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. Throughout the book there are strings of stories of how mementoes are kept or lost, with them all coming back together in the end. 

There are two stories that this is based upon.  The first, a woman, Laura, who comes to work for an author and the second a woman, Eunice, who comes to work for a publisher.  Both women are brought into these men’s lives and become for them the way to fulfill their own destinies.  It is through the stories of people around them that show the six degrees of separation. 

Ultimately, the truth is told by a young woman with Downs Syndrome. It is through this girl’s ability to see and feel the things around her with no preconceived filter that helps her lead others to their own truth.  This girl, her given name is Sunshine, sits in the park observing those who live around her, including the author across the way.  As she realizes he has died and the woman who came each day to work with him moves in, Sunshine decides that this is her opportunity to make a new friend.  She comes around often, and at times Laura hides in the cupboards when she doesn’t want a visitor.  The gardener, Freddie asks why Laura doesn’t just explain to Sunshine about the times she wants to be alone.  After an old girlfriend comes around for Freddie, who also hides, the both come clean to those pursuing them with the reasons why.  Sunshine pragmatically states “why didn’t you just say so?” 

If we could only listen to this advice in our real lives.  How many times have we twisted ourselves into knots to avoid something instead of facing it straight on?  If we had been honest with ourselves and others, how much energy and heartache could be avoided?

As the stories continue, Sunshine later states that she is never listened to.  Again, Laura and Freddie stop and realize that there is truth to what she says.  Once they listen, they take steps toward solving a mystery at the heart of the story.  As the story progresses, tales of lost objects – how they came to be lost and how they came to be found – continue to show hints of how they are intertwined. 

When at last Sunshine puts a bet out for Freddie, the ending for both stories becomes apparent.  Sunshine has again predicted it through her simple but perceptive observation.  The tale is of love and loss, finding and discovering, and being honest to oneself.  If you are true to yourself, observant and open, you will find your happiness. 

book-review, books, read around the world, reading, time travel

Time travelling

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If you were able to go back in time, would you? What if there are all sorts of rules that you need to abide by to do this? You have to sit in a specific cafe, at a specific chair, and not get up. You can only meet someone who had been in the cafe, and the present will not change. And you only have as much time there as it takes for the cup of coffee you were served to go cold.

That is the truth about a small cafe in Japan that has been serving coffee for over 100 years. Urban legend has been published, but most are scared away by the rules. This book, Before the Coffee Gets Cold translated from Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Japanese best seller by Geoffrey Trousselot, tells the story of four people who are driven to make the choice to sit in this chair. Each has their own reasons for doing this. One goes back to confront a man who left her, one is seeking to receive a letter from her husband’s early onset Alzheimers, another to see her sister one more time, and the last to meet the daughter she has not been able to meet. All while knowing they need to wait for the seat to be empty, as it is occupied by a ghost that didn’t drink her cup of coffee in time.

The beautiful reasons why they choose to go, and the unexpected ways these visits unfold are nothing short of love stories. Written tenderly, even in translation, each woman that goes is motivated by love – unrequited, romantic, familial and maternal. Each visit, while not changing the present, has significant impact on each of these women.

The way the stories unfold is comforting and the language evokes a dark and cool underground cafe in Japan. A gentle read of love and the possibilities of reliving a moment in time.

It may be an ironic way to end 2020, but it does bring hope.

book-review, books, Family Drama, reading

Glass Houses

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Choosing a book, I went to my bookshelf and found Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander. After that was finished I found A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg. Then my colleague Nigel suggested I read The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Each of the books, a scientific search for understanding a near death experience, a reflection on life and its every stage, and a tale of giving of yourself to heal others all pointed me on a path away from sadness, and toward a purpose. Then, as if by magic, the library’s electronic version of Emily St John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel was available.

If you don’t know by now, Ms. St John Mandel’s Station Eleven has been on many “To Read” lists because it was a novel that predicted a pandemic like the flu that decimated the economies of the world and killed millions. It was a brilliant story, well written and so believable that it was eerie when COVID-19 showed up. I was eager to read her new novel. The story is written over a number of years, by a number of characters. The story weaves them in and out of each other’s lives. At the core is Vincent, a woman from Vancouver who lost her mother to a canoeing accident when she was about 12. Her half brother, Paul, comes into her life after a stint in rehab for drugs, running from the law because he shared some bad drugs with someone who died from them. Through back and forth stories we next see them at an exclusive Hotel Caiette on an island in British Columbia. The place is owned by Jonathan Alkaitis, who works in finance and owns the hotel. One night someone writes in acid ink “Why don’t you swallow broken glass” on the window of the hotel, shaking a guest, Leon Prevant, to his core. As time continues, we find that Paul, who worked at the hotel as a cleaner, was accused of the graffiti and left the next morning, and Vincent, his sister was working as a bartender that night. That night was when Jonathan gave her his business card with money as his tip.

As the story unwinds, there are small and large choices that are made by each of the players. Knowingly or not, or as one person states – knowing and not knowing together – each is faced with a question. How easy is it for you to cross the line? Some choose to stand on the morals they claim to have, while others are surprised when they cross them in hind-sight. It is this struggle between our actions and out beliefs that are the moral of the story. That, and the interconnectedness of each person to another. Throughout the changes and years, each remains connected bringing into question the idea of coincidence – is it real or is there a cosmic plan?

In the end, it is those with self-knowledge that are aware of the impact others have on them and the price to be paid for not crossing the line.

By the way – I don’t believe that it was a coincidence that these books came to me in that order.

 

book-review, books, literature, memoir, Non-Fiction, reading, romance, Science Fiction

Happy Stories for Stressful Times

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In this crazy time of social distance, self-isolation and quarantine, there is nothing better than curling up and escaping with a good book. I spend a ton of time doing this. In order to keep up our spirits, I thought I would share some titles that are fun and enjoyable to help the time go. In no order other than the one that I thought of first:

A Man Called Ove: All about a grumpy man that finds his solitary world turned on its head when a young family moves in next door. He becomes engaged despite his best intentions, leaving you smiling all along.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic: Eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn enrolls in an undergraduate seminar his son teaches on the Odyssey. Explores both the story and their relationship. Sweet tribute to his father.

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood: Trevor Noah’s memoir of growing up in South Africa and coming to America to host The Daily Show on Comedy Central.

Daisy Jones & The Six: A fictional band who’s only album is an anthem for 70’s rock and roll broke up and no one knows why – until now. Hearing this story is a bit like Almost Famous, but even better.

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train: What would happen if the Queen of England went on a stroll without the knowledge of her courtiers? Find out here.

Roommates Wanted: 1990, Toby Dobbs is gifted a house for a wedding gift from his father. One month later his wife leaves, and Toby advertises for roommates. 15 years later they are still there. How to move forward in his life, now that his father is about to show up for the first time in 15 year? Smile and read on.

The Daily Show: An Oral History: How the show came into being, hosts changed, and how the show changed the country. As a fan of the show, and of Jon Stewart, I loved reading the behind the scenes and remembering when I first watched the shows/events they mentioned.

The Martian: A young adult book that had my son at the opening line (“I am F*&^*&%). I loved it because it was fun, stressful, and funny.

The Most Beautiful Book in the World: Eight Novellas: Eight separate stories populated by a wide cast of characters, all exploring what beauty is.

The One and Only: Love of football and romance combine in this story of a super football fan with a crush on the legendary head coach, her best friend’s father.