196 Books: Guinea-Bissau

 Amilcar Cabral by Peter Karibe Mendy

Predictably, Guinea-Bissau is next to Guinea:

Summary:

Amílcar Cabral was an agronomist who led an armed struggle that ended Portuguese colonialism in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. The uprising contributed significantly to the collapse of a fascist regime in Lisbon and the dismantlement of Portugal’s empire in Africa. Assassinated by a close associate with the deep complicity of the Portuguese colonial authorities, Cabral not only led one of Africa’s most successful liberation movements, but was the voice and face of the anticolonial wars against Portugal.

A brilliant military strategist and astute diplomat, Cabral was an original thinker who wrote innovative and inspirational essays that still resonate today. His charismatic and visionary leadership, his active pan-Africanist solidarity and internationalist commitment to “every just cause in the world,” remain relevant to contemporary struggles for emancipation and self-determination. Peter Karibe Mendy’s compact and accessible biography is an ideal introduction to his life and legacy.

Man. This one was a chore, and I can't tell you how many times my eyes glazed over. It's a bummer because Cabral's story is actually really interesting; he went from studying how to grow things to dismantling colonialist Portugal's hold in Africa. But it was just so boring in this book. It was written like a textbook and made me think of the history teachers that just drone on and you get nothing out of it. Come on, people, history is exciting and interesting! Stop taking the fun out of it!

I knew I was in for it when the first FOUR AND A HALF PAGES were consumed with abbreviations and acronyms. That's SO MANY and basically impossible to keep track of. Cue eye glaze. Ok, I'll try to bitch less and cut through the bullshit to some of the more interesting bits. 

"Cabral's importance lies in the fact that (i) he competently organized and led one of Africa's most consequential armed liberation struggles, (ii) he skillfully mobilized more than a dozen ethnic groups into a united binationalist cause, (iii) he ably led a successful united front against Portuguese colonialism in Africa, and (iv) he wrote incisive essays and innovative books that still resonate today." See? This guy was a badass, but when you write it like this...oof. Ooops, guess I wasn't finished bitching. 

Here's Cabral's review of the education he received in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde:

"All Portuguese education disparages the African, his culture and civilization. African languages are forbidden in schools. The white man is always presented as a superior being and the African as an inferior. The colonial 'conquistadors' are shown as saints and heroes. As soon as African children enter into elementary schools, they develop an inferiority complex. They learn to fear the white man and to feel ashamed of being Africans. African geography, history and culture are either ignored or distorted, and children are forced to study Portuguese geography and history instead." 

At least in the US, this is still pretty much how history is taught. The white people are great and came to save the people of color from themselves. The more I read about colonized countries the more astonishing it is. The white people came in (usually because there was something they wanted there), somehow deluded themselves into thinking they were helping the native people, took over, then refused to leave. It's crazy. 

Later on, Cabral went to study in Portugal. This line was funny (but not haha funny): "It is obvious that in the metropole you will not encounter racism so rooted as, let's say, in the United States." I love how half the people in the US think this is the best most amazing place you could be and the rest of the countries are glad they're not as bad as the US. 

Bitching again... "Deeply grief-stricken, he went into self-imposed solitary confinement in his bedroom for several days." Come on, man. I imagine him drinking expensive scotch and smoking a Cuban cigar as he writes this overly complicated, pretentious line. 

Anyway, the gist of it is that the Portuguese came in, basically turned the native people into slaves or indentured servants at best, and of course didn't want to leave. So Cabral mustered the people, and they were good. They managed to out-maneuver the Portuguese military with some help from other Communist countries. This reminded me a bit of the book from Grenada, except with a bit of a happier ending. It also coincided with the book from Guinea, as it was the same time period and the author of that one was in some of the same places. Very interesting. 

I think it's about time to wrap this one up. Cabral is eventually assassinated by a supposed friend, just as he predicted. But, kind of surprisingly, the movement goes on and eventually gets freedom for Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. "The men and women he inspired went on to defeat Portugal militarily and politically and establish the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. But the victory was also consequential beyond the borders of these two countries: its ripple effects contributed significantly to transformative developments in Portugal and the rest of her African colonies."

196 Books: Guinea

 My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, My Amadou by Kadiatou Diallo

Here's Guinea, in West Africa:

Here's the summary:

Descended from West African kings and healers, raised in the turbulence of Guinea in the 1960s, Kadiatou Diallo was married off at the age of thirteen and bore her first child when she was sixteen. Twenty-three years later, that child—a gentle, innocent young man named Amadou Diallo—was gunned down without cause on the streets of New York City. Now Kadi Diallo tells the astonishing, inspiring story of her life, her loss, and the defiant strength she has always found within.

It was Kadi Diallo’s voice that captivated the public when she came to America to defend her slain son, and it is that same voice—candid, wise, and generous—that fills the pages of this extraordinary book. Kadi reaches back to her earliest memories of growing up in Guinea, the daughter of a strict man who was thwarted by the relics of the French colonial system. Raised in a world in which age-old religious and cultural rituals were disappearing before the onslaught of modernity, Kadi saw her own childhood end abruptly at age thirteen when her father literally gave her away in marriage. Kadi prayed for death, but instead she found herself plunged into a baffling new life—the life of a second wife in a strange household in a distant country, and soon afterwards the teenage mother of a sweet-natured son.

Yet somehow, Kadi managed not only to survive but to flourish. Despite the rigid strictures of African-Islamic culture, she attended school and later started a successful business of her own. She eventually divorced and remarried and lived for eight years in Bangkok. Back in Guinea, she learned that her oldest child Amadou had been shot in New York City in a case of racial profiling.

Kadi read with outrage the American newspaper description of her son as “an unarmed West African street vendor.” “Nothing,” she writes, “could be more distant from the truth.” Now, with great pride and searing love, Kadi Diallo finally tells the truth about herself and her son.

My Heart Will Cross This Ocean is an extraordinary book—a girl’s story of desire and innocence, a wife’s story of defiance, a mother’s story of unbearable loss, and a woman’s story of unshakable strength and love.

Whew. What a book. After I finished it this morning, I had to call my mom so I could talk to someone about it. It was beautiful and intriguing and heart wrenching. Honestly I was hooked after just reading the prologue. And this is going to be a really long post because there's so much to talk about, and I highlighted so many passages. But I felt like I should be highlighting more; the entire book felt important. Maybe that's because you know the ending before you start, but I actually like spoilers so it was a nice change. Alright, let's get into it. 

Let's start with colonialism and modernity vs. tradition. 

These two go together: "The French had announced that each family must choose one son to go to the government's European school..." It goes on to say how the French (much like happened with the Native Americans here) wanted to "teach" the natives the modern ways. Next. "Before the French left, the emptied everything from bank accounts to file cabinets. They burned records, and took nearly all of the country's engineers and agriculture experts. ... The last of the planes flew out over crops still burning from the fires they had started." It's just...the audacity of colonialists. We're going to go into this country, take over, make them conform to our ways, squeeze everything we can out of the country, then fuck them all over when we leave.  

Now we have modernity vs. tradition/religion.

"If I wanted an educated wife, I would marry one from the city. I married a girl from the village on purpose." DAMN THE MAN. "Before the scholars entered Guinea with the word of Mohammed, the Fulah women picked their husbands. ... Then, after days or even months have gone by...she could declare a change of heart." "The men told the women what to think and then thought little of what the women said. The men preached the Koran to the women but did not let them read it." Why does it seem like so many religions came in and just oppressed women? Can we bring back the matriarchy please? I think we'd have more empathy. 

These ones don't necessarily go together, but they're just about Kadi growing up. 

"There was a field outside the health ward and in this field were strewn the discarded utensils and supplies from the ward: small needles, bandages, cups, tubes with blood, plastic bags, pillows, bigger needles, a couple of file cabinets, and mostly, old bottles of penicillin." WHAT?! I was just so grossed out by this. 

When it came to the female circumcision, Kadi's father originally said he didn't want her to get it done. That times were changing and that tradition needed to go. Her mother said she would comply with his wishes, then took her daughter to get it while the dad was away. It made me so sad. 

Kadi talks about a rally for their president, Sekou Toure, holding a rally at the local school. "A few months later, they started hanging people on the football field." Supposedly they were people trying to overthrow the government. The President then tells the populace that, "for the good of Guinea, he had arrested the country's scholars and thinkers and put them in a military compound in the center of Conakry, Camp Boiro." There was a lot of panic and fear. But, what really surprised me based on many of the other books I've read, "In a few weeks, the worst of the crisis seemed to have passed." And things seemed to just kind of settle back into the norm. 

Next we have married life and motherhood. 

So one day a relative comes to the house and decides he wants to marry Kadi. Who is fucking THIRTEEN. Her dad asks her if she wants to and she tells him if he wants her to she will and, neither of them really want it, but for some asinine reason they both go along with it. Kadi's family makes her new husband promise that he'll send her to school and not make her a young mother, but it turns out a 28(ish) year old man who decides he wants a second wife who's 13 is an asshole. So she's pregnant at 15. And she doesn't have her mom or her family and her husband was out of the country and nobody told this poor girl anything about sex education or childbirth! "'How is this baby going to come out?' I asked Saikou. He laughed and said that when it was time I would know, and that nature would take care of everything." WELL ISN'T THAT HELPFUL. So Amadou is born to this poor 16 child who was robbed of the opportunities she had and who wasn't given any information on how to take care of her baby. But damn it, this girl is a rock star. She ends up running a successful business, living in multiple countries, taking care of her children, and finally getting rid of that dickhead. And Amadou was a gentle soul, kind and wise. He was left-handed and stuttered and of course his wanker father has an issue with both of these and sees them as weaknesses. Because he sucks. 

And then Amadou decided he wanted to make a life in New York. I know I came at this book in light of all the things happening in the US today, but reading the description, I just assumed his murderers were cops. But I'm skipping ahead. It made me sad that when Kadi and Amadou said goodbye, it wasn't emotional. "I did not say I love you. Nor did he. We did not hug. It was not our way." I couldn't imagine not repeatedly hugging my family and saying I love you, especially if I was moving to a different continent. But he goes and moves in with some relatives on his dad's side, and they have a pretty good life together. "Theirs was a communion rooted in a sense of triumph for having made it to New York, constant fatigue from their long working hours, and a lingering, gray sadness for the people they had left behind." It talked about how they shared everything and took care of each other, and it was a really warm feeling. But, there was also some foreshadowing; "'In America,' Amadou said, 'the police know how to handle things.'" 

So now we get to the crux of the story. It's maybe 1 or 2 in the morning, Amadou has had a long day, he dozed on the couch, and then went out to the front porch. He sees a car. "The car moved past Amadou, by about four houses, and then it stopped and began to back up." Four men got out of the car in front of Amadou. "The first two men each fired sixteen bullets, emptying their weapons. The man on the sidewalk fired four times, the man on the street, five. Forty-one shots in all. Nineteen bullets struck Amadou." "The shots kept coming while Amadou was falling and even after he was down." "The four police officers, members of the New York City Police Department's elite Street Crimes Unit, were taken away, complaining of ringing in their ears." 

Let that sink in. Four police officers put nineteen bullets into a man and then complained about the sound in their ears. 

But of course, the cops wanted to paint the victim as a villain. They tore apart his room, grilled his friends about whether he used drugs, had enemies or a gun. They wanted anything to make it okay. They said they thought his wallet was a gun. 

After that, it's a media storm. Kadi goes to New York and eventually Amadou's body is brought back to Guinea for burial. When they land all the important people are there. Kadi says, "Modest Amadou had returned a hero." But how is that heroic? Getting gunned down for no reason. I'm not sure you can even call him a martyr. It's just a tragedy. And in a final fuck you, "I waited at Saikou's house with Nene and Laoura, prohibited by custom from attending my son's funeral." Just...just so messed up. 

During all this, many famous lawyers and advocates rush to Kadi's side. They even secure Johnnie Cochran (of OJ Simpson fame) for their top counsel. She paints him as a pompous jerk, which kind of made me laugh. The officers were charged, but were found not guilty. Which is surprising because it's so obvious, but not at all surprising. 

Again, I read this book in light of what's going on in the US today. I plan on doing some more digging on whether or not anything ever happened to those officers. There will probably only be a few people that read this post, but I want them to be named. Edward McMellon. Sean Carroll. Kenneth Boss. Richard Murphy. They are murderers. And I would be more than willing to bet Amadou wasn't the only one. 

Please, please, please, if you have the slightest interest, read this book. We need to know these stories so we can stop them in the future. 

196 Books: Guatemala

 The Good Cripple by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

This is Guatemala:

This is the summary:

A young man, Juan Luis Luna, is kidnapped in Guatemala City and held at the bottom of a rusty, empty underground fuel tank in an abandoned gas station. The kidnappers demand a ransom; his rich father does not reply. The kidnappers threaten to cut off his son's foot and still hear nothing. They then slice off one of Juan Luis's toes and send it to his father, who still refuses to act. So the next day... The Good Cripple obsessively focused, chilling, allegorical is stunningly explosive. With its enigmatic beginning, however, and its circular relentless structure, the novel is also dense with ideas: can one be whole after mutilation? Can the injured transcend violence? Rodrigo Rey Rosa's style is of a lithe pristine clarity, but beneath that calm surface cruelty, revenge, and diffidence churn darkly away. The Good Cripple is an astonishingly intense book, and as unforgettable as the sight of "the place where the foot had been severed, where a circle of red flesh, now a little black along the edges, could be seen, with a concentric circle of white bone that was both milky and glassy..."

Well that was fast. 

For Guatemala, I was torn between this and another book. I asked a few friends if they wanted to help me pick my book for Guatemala. They were not helpful. (My bffffffff later asked if I was back from Guatemala and I was like, umm don't you think it would be a bit weird for me to go Surprise, I'm immediately going to Guatemala!) So I asked my mom. She told me to pick the other one because this sounded depressing and awful. I ended up picking this because I thought it sounded thought-provoking. 

Once again, you just can't completely trust the summary. I've said before that I'm not the best one at reading into the text, but I did not get those deep questions in there. I mean, yes, there were mentions of the prosthetic foot bothering him and of the limp, but no emotional or mental questioning. Don't get me wrong, I did like the book, and it was one I was excited to get into each day. Ok wait, now thinking back on it, maybe it did get into that stuff later on. SPOILER. Luna eventually finds one of the guys who kidnapped him and goes to talk to him. Just to talk, just to find out more about what happened and why they did it. And then he just walks away. It talks about a couple of times that Luna wants to hurt the guy, but he doesn't. Although he does say, and this is a great insult, "Thank you for being so sincere, you son of a thousand bitches."

But, of course, there were a couple of bits that bothered me. 

"She began to weep, but she felt neither pain nor rage, only a disturbance caused by the father's lack of compassion and natural coldness, the son's helplessness, and her own womanly powerlessness." ..."womanly" powerlessness? Come on. Would anyone say "manly" powerlessness? No. So can we stop with that crap, please? Powerlessness would have worked just fine. Also, I felt a little bit bad for the father. I mean it's real fucked up that he ignored these people who kidnapped his son until they cut off his foot. But the coldness and lack of compassion seemed to just be depression and apathy. Like have you ever been so depressed that you just actually can't care about anything? That you can't dredge up any kind of feeling? It's worse than when you feel shitty, because if you just don't care about things, what do you have to live for? And then of course the dad knows he's fucked up, but he can't really do anything other than pay the ransom at that point. 

"Don't forget he's half Jewish," the Horrible insisted. "He'll fuck us over if he can." The more I read these stories the worse I feel for Jewish people. Can we all just leave them alone? Can we stop with all the stupid stereotypes, across the board? Can we all just be nice already?!

196 Books: Grenada

 The Grenada Revolution: What Really Happened? by Bernard Coard

Here's Grenada with some reference points:

Here's the summary:

Finally, the inside story: honest, self-critical, and based on a wealth of credible and independent documentation. Bernard Coard reveals in dramatic detail the factors, forces and personalities which cumulatively led to deepening crisis within the Grenada Revolution and ultimately to wholesale tragedy. Bernard Coard, United States and British trained economist and university lecturer, played a leading role in the NJM and in the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada. His experience, including 26 years as a political prisoner, offers a unique insight into the causes, course, and finally the implosion of the Revolution.

A couple of quick notes before I get into the actual book... 

(About the map): Grenada is the little island with the two arrows pointing towards it. The book made it seem like Cuba was basically next door. I'm not great at Caribbean geography, but it makes Grenada's close friendship with Cuba a bit weirder. 

(About the summary): Maybe I just misread it, but the book says NOTHING about Coard having been a political prisoner for 26 years. Although I believe this is book 1 of 3 on the events so maybe it comes up in one of the others? Whatever. Rude. 

Ok. 

I was super excited about this book; I think I was expecting something along the lines of a political thriller. Guess what? Life is mostly not like that. The first half of the book was basically day-to-day running a country, trying to get social programs in place, working at bettering the economy and way of life for the country, trying to iron out the issues. Guess what else? It's not that interesting or exciting. Well, I'm sure it is for some people. I'm not one of them. 

BUT. 

The second half of the book really picked up for me. There was intrigue, back-stabbing, and foreign interference. Looking back at all the sections I highlighted, there's definitely a bigger shift in dynamic than I'd originally realized. So I guess all the day-to-day stuff is a bit more interesting in hindsight. With that, let's get into some of the highlights. 

Highlights regarding the US

"The United States strongly opposed any country in the Western Hemisphere having friendly relations with Cuba. Grenada on the other hand, insisted that no 'big country' had the right to dictate what we should do." Um, yes. Totally with Grenada on this one (and tbh, I stayed with them against the US for the whole book). Fuck you and the horse you rode in on! I hate the right-wing idea that the US is better than everyone else and gets the ultimate say in what everyone should be doing. 

"They highlighted for us a key passage in the US Army's Field Manual on Psychological Warfare which stated that "PEACE IS THE CONTINUATION OF WAR BY NON-MILITARY MEANS." Excuse me? We can't just...I dunno...leave people the fuck alone!? 

"There were three uncompromising demands [from the Reagan administration]: free elections must be held by the PRG right away, all detainees not charged must be released immediately, and Grenada's close relations with Cuba must end." So, again, the US thinks it can just push everyone else around. 

"..Reagan told the American people in nationwide broadcasts that Grenada was 'a threat to the National Security of the United States.' He used a map of Grenada and pointed to our Point Salines International Airport under construction, claiming it was a Soviet MIG-fighter base." So, this is after multiple experts had told Reagan that it was just an airport, no shady business. Despite the fact that Grenada is tiny. Despite the fact that it's really not close to the US. Just straight up lies because he didn't like what they were doing with their government. Can we stop electing celebrities to lead our country PLEASE?

Highlights regarding Cuba

"From henceforth, apparently, the Grenadian Revolution now had a 'Maximum Leader' model of decision-making decreed by Havana!" Another country deciding that their way is best and that's how everyone should do it. 

"A few months later, a shipment with some of the supplies [from Moscow] arrived from Cuba. We were informed that the rest, including all the 'heavy stuff' would be kept in Cuba 'for the time being.' This included those which would provide for our defence against naval and aerial bombardments. ...They would never arrive." I assume here that Cuba just decided they wanted the stuff and kept it, but it's still a dick move. And it makes it seem like Castro is at least trying to steer Grenada, if not setting it up to take the country over. 

Highlights regarding the Revolution

"When the revolution speaks, it must be heard, listened to. Whatever the Revolution decrees, must be obeyed; when the Revolution commands, it must be carried out..." Basically it's saying the revolution is more important than any one person. Party members got sick from being overworked and constantly complained that they couldn't do it, but were just told to figure it out and be more organized. Honestly this part sounds a bit culty to me. 

"Fitzy then joined the other Party members who criticized my resignation from the CC the previous year. ...he said, "When Comrade Coard resigned last year, I had openly called such a resignation counter-revolutionary." The Revolution is more important than the individual. You must stick with the Party, even if you don't think it's working. Even if you don't believe in it anymore. Even if it's killing you. 

"We all get wisdom from the collective wisdom of the Party." If they'd left off the Party, I would have been good with this. But again adding it in makes it sound a bit like a cult. 

"The unvarying rule of the Revolution and the People's Revolutionary Army has been that, once persons are unarmed, you do not open fire on them." SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK.

"I asked him what he understood 'Communism' to be. He said that he did not know, except that it was very, very bad." SOUNDS FAMILIAR.

Highlights regarding people

Though Maurice Bishop was the Prime Minister during the revolution, Bernard Coard was his right hand man and they mostly made decisions together, as well as a party-wide decision approval process. They'd known each other from the age of 12, lived next door to each other, and talked multiple times every day. One of the worst parts of this book was seeing the deterioration of such a close friendship, because of power and malicious intent. At the same time, they were so intent on the needs of the Revolution that the people element got somewhat lost. As time goes by, Bishop starts listening to people who are trying to gain more power for themselves, as well as being swayed by Castro, and starts making decisions single-handedly and selfishly. Bishop even starts a malicious and dangerous rumor that Coard and his wife are trying to kill him. By the end, Coard and his wife (also a prominent member of the party) decide they have no choice but to leave the country with their children.  

"Grenada was a small, poor, developing country. We were desperate to transform our society as quickly as possible. The timeframe in which we set our goals, and the expectations which we had unleashed in our people, were unrealistic." It's sad. They had such good intentions and really believed what they were doing. I've seen it with a lot of the books I've been reading-one dictator gets overthrown and another steps in. Ultimately it's the general populace who suffer. 

Though Coard did use lots of testimony and interviews, a lot of this was his point of view, so I was interested in what else was out there about this time. I read the Wikipedia entry (I know, not the most reliable source, but certainly the most convenient) and those details differ somewhat. The entry states that Coard intentionally overthrew Bishop and became Prime Minister. In the book the events leading up to Bishop's overthrow and murder (spoiler) are quite different, but the book also ends at that point. Coard puts much of the blame on the US infiltrating and starting shit, and some people in the Party as well as Castro telling Bishop what to do. I think I'm going to stick with giving more weight to the book. Moral: maybe don't read the Wikipedia page. 

196 Books: Greece

 Something Will Happen, You'll See by Christos Ikonomou

Here we have Greece:

Here we have the synopsis:

Ikonomou's stories convey the plight of those worst affected by the Greek economic crisis--laid-off workers, hungry children. In the urban sprawl between Athens and Piraeus, the narratives roam restlessly through the impoverished working-class quarters located off the tourist routes. Everyone is dreaming of escape: to the mountains, to an island or a palatial estate, into a Hans Christian Andersen story world. What are they fleeing? The old woes--gossip, watchful neighbors, the oppression and indifference of the rich--now made infinitely worse. In Ikonomou's concrete streets, the rain is always looming, the politicians' slogans are ignored, and the police remain a violent, threatening presence offstage. Yet even at the edge of destitution, his men and women act for themselves, trying to preserve what little solidarity remains in a deeply atomized society, and in one way or another finding their own voice. There is faith here, deep faith--though little or none in those who habitually ask for it.

It was obvious this was going to be a bleak read. Sometimes I could only read a little bit in a day because it left me feeling a little hopeless. Since it was more a series of short stories and not an overarching plot, there's not a lot I can describe on the book as a whole. You just see all of these families who are at the end of their ropes, trying to make it with no idea how to. But they keep on. I had a lot of passages that I highlighted in this one, so instead of going over the characters or plot, I'm going to touch on those. 

"things from the past are old wounds and if you scratch them they start bleeding and get infected and stink." This made me think of anxiety. Like how you said or did something stupid 10 years ago and your brain doesn't let you forget it, it just sits there and mocks you. And then all the moments of stupidity or embarrassment (that really don't matter at all) just pile up and make you feel worse. It's like a wound on your mind. 

"That's what real democracy is. When poor people don't wait for the rich to come and save them but take the situation into their own hands. Because that's how the trouble starts: with us thinking that the rich will ever help the poor. It just doesn't happen. We live in two separate worlds." This was pretty powerful. Here in America, this shows a lot in the Republican party. Not only are our social systems designed in a way to keep poor people poor, but so many people are convinced we can't afford better systems or things like universal healthcare, that having those things would encourage people to be lazy, and that bullshit like trickle down economics don't work. Not only are the rich people actively working against the poor people, the rich on top of that are convincing the poor that this is the best situation for them. And, side note: Kindle has a feature that will underline the most highlighted areas of a book. I underlined here what was in the book. But to me the second part was more poignant, and I was really surprised people didn't focus on the whole section. This quote also ties in with that: "In Europe people think being poor is a matter of bad luck. In America poverty is shameful. Can you bear to be poor and have to feel ashamed of it too?" There's an idea here that poor people just aren't working hard enough. I remember having a conversation with my dad years ago, my sister and I were trying to explain all of the circumstances that go into poverty and why it's so hard for people to get out. And he kind of stopped and went, "so what's the solution?" People who think poverty is a choice think there's one solution to it, but in reality the solution is different for each person. 

"Evil's victory is when it starts speaking your language." Again, anxiety, depression, self-deprecation. When those doubts and bad thoughts niggle in and you start believing them. 

"It's true, time is the worst healer. Time hardens people." You always hear "time heals all wounds." But nobody talks about how those wounds can scab over and scar. And when those wounds are emotional, it can harden you.

"Banks don't just take people's homes away. This isn't America." Does this not happen in other places? Are we really the only ones that foreclose? I mean, this country is truly run by corporations so it's plausible, but there has to be some sort of consequence when you don't pay your mortgage. Also...good burn. 

"Tonight I'm strangely agitated and I'm hearing everything not with my ears but with my heart." Maybe this just meant that the character was feeling especially sensitive, but I found it beautiful. 

"She'd always believed that there are two ways for a person to learn about herself and the world: by reading and by traveling." Ok I know I've said it over and over, but reading a book from each country has been such a journey. I'm not only learning about different people and places, but it's changing me and shaping my mind in a way. It's pretty remarkable. 

"Because we're living in the world but not with the world. For centuries now we've stopped living with the world." So I just finished listening to an audiobook called Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer). She's a Botanist by trade but also a Native American. She talks about trying to have a relationship with the earth and nature while also working on the calculated scientific side. It's so remarkably beautiful (also she narrates the audiobook and has such a soothing voice that works perfectly with the content). It's a thinking of really living with the world and sharing the space instead of using everything up. So this quote really hit me. Also I can't recommend Braiding Sweetgrass enough.

"I can't buy back all the years that have passed but I can buy you a piece of tomorrow." This was another one that was so touching. A husband and wife are moving out of the country because their home is being taken by eminent domain. He's talking about buying a boat, something to look forward to. It's so sweet that he's trying to give her this hope that they'll get through it and it will get better. 

"Piece by piece they're taking my world away." This is from the same story as the above quote, and the end of the entire book. What a fucking way to end your book. There's sadness but also resignation in it. She can't stop it. It's a much less dramatic situation, but I felt this way when we were leaving Cleveland. Soldier was transferred and we didn't have a choice. Sell the house, quit my job, leave our new friends, and move to a place we didn't know and didn't want to be. It was very hard on me. I'm still bitter about it. It's debilitating to have huge life changes forced on you. That one sentence really could describe the entire book. 

Well I didn't think I had much to say about this book as a whole, but I changed my mind. These weren't people's actual stories, but they gave a real sense of melancholy and hopelessness from the economic collapse. None of these people could really control their own lives. I wasn't so sure I wanted to read something so disheartening, but I'm glad I did. He's got a way of taking big concepts and putting them into simple sentences, and putting you in the mood of the story.  

196 Books: Ghana

 Journey by G.A. Agambila 

We visited Ghana for this book:

And summary:

Journey is an absorbing exploration of reality in contemporary Ghana, juxtaposing tradition and modernity, wise old age and frivolous youth, north and south; male and female. This book and its author will help re-define the national literary landscape as well as re-examine aspects of Ghanaian life easily taken for granted.

So, the summary explains almost nothing about the actual storyline, but something about it caught me. I think there's constantly a struggle between the opposites: older and younger generations, different personalities, men and women. And in this case, that includes the "old ways" and the ways adopted after colonialism, as well as a group of Gods versus the Christian singular God.

The book follows Amoah (I think he's about 16?) as he finishes up secondary (boarding) school, visits home for a short time, and then heads off to the big city to work and save up for university. There's a lot of question of what to do about life, about growing up, about trying to make it and take care of your loved ones. And also a lot of male chauvinism and teenage boys wanting to have sex. That got old pretty quickly, but maybe it's because I've never been a teenage boy. ::shrug::

When Amoah is with his family in the country, who are set in the "old" ways, their conversations consisted of mostly parables. It seemed kind of guarded, which was a bit sad. The speech also switched between "regular" English and Ebonics (not sure if this is the term used throughout the world or just in the US). I had somewhat of a difficult time with the Ebonics; a lot of it I could kind of say out loud and get the meaning, but some just went beyond me. 

One portion I really liked was, "But the past is like a loved one who has died. You can't bring her back to life. You must manage your house now the best way you can."  I've been trying to remind myself lately that replaying things in the past, playing the What If game, and missing parts of your life that are gone is all a waste of time. None of it matters or can be brought back. We have to do the best with what we have now. 

I also really liked the ending. For all the crassness of earlier in the book, he finally gets with a girl at the end, and it's very sweet. The author tells it in words of climbing a mountain, making a journey together. And after a few pretty bad things happen to Amoah, I liked the tenderness of them coming together. 

196 Books: Germany

 Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck

It's kinda hard to miss Germany:

Here's the summary:

By the side of a lake in Brandenburg, a young architect builds the house of his dreams - a summerhouse with wrought-iron balconies, stained-glass windows the colour of jewels, and a bedroom with a hidden closet, all set within a beautiful garden. But the land on which he builds has a dark history of violence that began with the drowning of a young woman in the grip of madness and that grows darker still over the course of the century: the Jewish neighbours disappear one by one; the Red Army requisitions the house, burning the furniture and trampling the garden; a young East German attempts to swim his way to freedom in the West; a couple return from brutal exile in Siberia and leave the house to their granddaughter, who is forced to relinquish her claim upon it and sell to new owners intent upon demolition. Reaching far into the past, and recovering what was lost and what was buried, Jenny Erpenbeck tells a story both beautiful and brutal, about the things that haunt a home.

Before we get started on the book, can we all just take a minute to do a happy dance for America? And then raise up a middle finger to Trump? Great, thanks. 

I read another synopsis of the book that said the author's grandparents owned this house at one point. I couldn't find anything that corroborated that, but it's a really interesting detail if it's true. (I almost just typed "troo" wtf?!). Seeing that in retrospect made me wonder (again, if it's true) which characters her grandparents were. 

One of my favorite parts of reading each book is picturing the area, characters, and story as I'm reading it. For some reason I had a hard time getting an image in my head for this one. I would imagine basically a pond, but then it would talk about how big this lake is and diving for crabs and fishing, so that obviously was wrong. Then I would picture something like Lake Michigan, which is probably way too big. The really stupid thing is I grew up near a mid-size lake and would go to a park there in the summer, and my in-laws live on a different mid-size lake. They're not uncommon, so I have no idea why my stupid brain couldn't get it. 

One of the biggest things that caught me in this one was the whole requisitioning thing. From what I gathered, (full disclosure: I did ZERO research into this), people would be shipped out or leave during WWII and after the war, Russia just kind of took the homes and gave them to other people. So later on the original owners, if they turned back up, would have to petition to get it back. Which is messed up, especially because people left their homes because they were shipped off to concentration camps or were afraid enough for their lives. (As you know I'm pretty fascinated by the WWII era, and I've lately been reading some stories set in Germany at the time. This one didn't go into any deep detail, but it was still an interesting perspective).

There were low points in the house's history (suicide and rape) and high points (growing families, beautiful summer vacations). By the end of the book the house has fallen into disrepair. 

It made me think of my parents' house. My dad and grandpa built the house and my parents have lived there for over 30 years. My family has so much history there, but someday it'll be sold to another family and eventually another and another, and they'll all make their own memories and history there. It does make me a little sad to think about. 

So I still don't know if the author actually had any ties to this house, but I'd like to think so. I like the books that have personal ties to the story. And I like the idea of thinking about all the families that live in one house. This is making me feel like I should call my parents.