Sherman Alexie
A somewhat autobiographical tale of life on the reservation. Alexie is a Spokane Indian and this collection of stories provides us a picture of modern reservation life. By no means is this a linear story of Alexie's life as he portrayed in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Instead, since these are fictional short stories, we are not really sure which character would be Alexie and the stories are mythological in scope. What I found fascinating was how, even after more than a century removed from traditional Indian life, a large part of life is spent struggling with the integration of traditional and "modern" life, both in terms of day to day living and in terms of expectations for how to live. What also comes through strongly is the honor given to tradition. It is clear that fancydancing and storytelling continue to provide a lot of meaning. By presenting these short stories, by embracing the free form, mythological storytelling style, Alexie provides real insight to how modern Indians think and who they are.
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Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
Leslie T. Chang
I am not sure what genre this book falls in. It is part autobiography/memoir, part expose, part cultural exploration. Chang is a reporter who, while living in China for several years, also explores her own family history. She does this by investigating/developing relationships with the migrant class in south China. This class is predominantly female (70%) and young (starting at 15, with 20 somethings finding themselves old and experienced). They have moved from the village, where they lived on a family farm, and entered the big manufacturing cities. These cities are factory driven, with 10 million or so people living with the purpose of producing goods and (initially at least) sending money back home. Chang befriends some of the women working in the factory and writes about their transition to city life over the course of several years. This portion of the book is fascinating, and it is a bit of an expose about life in the big factories that produce all of our products. However, Chang focuses on the actions/life of the workers, including their own dreams & struggles. This means we are not being taken into a moralistic, anti-consumerist, worker-quality-of-life outrage against the corporation. Instead, we are looking at people and individual decisions about what makes life good and what makes life hard. We are looking at the changing of a culture from holding a collective, community based value to one in which individualism is king. This brings us to a place where we can really think about cultural differences and our (U.S.) role in globalization.
Chang intersperses this fascinating story with an exploration of her own family history. It just so happens that her genealogy includes advisors to emperors and participants in the events leading up to the cultural revolution. For me, this section loses steam. But I suppose it was necessary to allow a real comparison between the village-centric life (her uncle gives her a 30 generation genealogy and explains that its main purpose was to ensure that marriages did not happen between relatives who were too close) and the individual focus existence that is being promoted by the factory. I loved the exploration of how generations shake of values of their elders or if it is even possible to do so. I loved thinking about other community cultures in Latin America or Africa where land ownership has differed dramatically from China, and wondered how a view of the land could so dramatically affect a view of family. I loved thinking about globalization and its relationship to consumerist and individualistic identities in the producer, wondering about how these changing identities will manifest in culture.
This is a fascinating book to read, although it was slow enough at times that I had to commit to picking it back up. In the end, the whole process holds together and Chang makes it worth your while.
Read
I am not sure what genre this book falls in. It is part autobiography/memoir, part expose, part cultural exploration. Chang is a reporter who, while living in China for several years, also explores her own family history. She does this by investigating/developing relationships with the migrant class in south China. This class is predominantly female (70%) and young (starting at 15, with 20 somethings finding themselves old and experienced). They have moved from the village, where they lived on a family farm, and entered the big manufacturing cities. These cities are factory driven, with 10 million or so people living with the purpose of producing goods and (initially at least) sending money back home. Chang befriends some of the women working in the factory and writes about their transition to city life over the course of several years. This portion of the book is fascinating, and it is a bit of an expose about life in the big factories that produce all of our products. However, Chang focuses on the actions/life of the workers, including their own dreams & struggles. This means we are not being taken into a moralistic, anti-consumerist, worker-quality-of-life outrage against the corporation. Instead, we are looking at people and individual decisions about what makes life good and what makes life hard. We are looking at the changing of a culture from holding a collective, community based value to one in which individualism is king. This brings us to a place where we can really think about cultural differences and our (U.S.) role in globalization.
Chang intersperses this fascinating story with an exploration of her own family history. It just so happens that her genealogy includes advisors to emperors and participants in the events leading up to the cultural revolution. For me, this section loses steam. But I suppose it was necessary to allow a real comparison between the village-centric life (her uncle gives her a 30 generation genealogy and explains that its main purpose was to ensure that marriages did not happen between relatives who were too close) and the individual focus existence that is being promoted by the factory. I loved the exploration of how generations shake of values of their elders or if it is even possible to do so. I loved thinking about other community cultures in Latin America or Africa where land ownership has differed dramatically from China, and wondered how a view of the land could so dramatically affect a view of family. I loved thinking about globalization and its relationship to consumerist and individualistic identities in the producer, wondering about how these changing identities will manifest in culture.
This is a fascinating book to read, although it was slow enough at times that I had to commit to picking it back up. In the end, the whole process holds together and Chang makes it worth your while.
Read
Thursday, May 8, 2014
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K Dick
Expectations are always high when reading the master of modern sci-fi. Unfortunately, this book didn't do anything for me. It is an alternate history, set in San Francisco in the 60's after the Axis victory in WWII. San Francisco is part of the Pacific States of America, a territory of Japan. The East is controlled by Germany, with the Rocky Mountain states in a semi-autonomous buffer zone. Germany has all the technology (they control hydrogen bombs, travel to Mars and offer 45 minute flights from Munich to San Francisco on their rockets). We are following several intertwined characters without any of them really rising to the role of protagonist. A dealer in American antiquities, a closeted Jew who makes fake American antiquities, Japanese trade minister, German special forces officers, etc. Throughout, Dick is painting a picture of what life might be like in this world. The novelty is in the introduction of the man of the title. He has written a book that is itself an alternate history that describes life in a world that the Allies win WWII. So alternate - alternate history. Clever. But clever in and of itself does not make an engaging book.
Skip
Expectations are always high when reading the master of modern sci-fi. Unfortunately, this book didn't do anything for me. It is an alternate history, set in San Francisco in the 60's after the Axis victory in WWII. San Francisco is part of the Pacific States of America, a territory of Japan. The East is controlled by Germany, with the Rocky Mountain states in a semi-autonomous buffer zone. Germany has all the technology (they control hydrogen bombs, travel to Mars and offer 45 minute flights from Munich to San Francisco on their rockets). We are following several intertwined characters without any of them really rising to the role of protagonist. A dealer in American antiquities, a closeted Jew who makes fake American antiquities, Japanese trade minister, German special forces officers, etc. Throughout, Dick is painting a picture of what life might be like in this world. The novelty is in the introduction of the man of the title. He has written a book that is itself an alternate history that describes life in a world that the Allies win WWII. So alternate - alternate history. Clever. But clever in and of itself does not make an engaging book.
Skip
Monday, May 5, 2014
Baghdad Diaries
Nuha al-Radi
A set of four diaries set over the course of about 15 years. The author is a Iraqi artist who was in Baghdad during the initial US bombing after the Kuwaiti invasion. She found that writing short snippets of thoughts and chronology was all she could manage creatively for awhile and it turned into a discipline she continued for the next decade. I love the descriptions of life in Iraq. It is not a description that is place based, although place is clearly important. Instead, it is relational. These are the people who lived in my house during the bombing, these are the people we checked on every week, these are the people we corresponded with, etc. And the little hints about what it means to be Iraqi (apparently Iraq is a dog country, while Lebanon tends to favor cats). Al-Radi has a section on war, embargo, exile, and identity. Each is revealing of the stresses and idiosyncrasies that come with being the recipient of bombs and missiles. While she is not blind to the wrong-doings of Iraq and its political leaders, she does legitimately call out the hypocrisy of the west, in particular the US and UK in the decade long sustained war. And continually asks the question about the justice of bombing the people of Iraq. Overall, while I enjoyed reading her first hand account of this now "old" war, the main effect was just to make me mad all over again. Frustrated with the political leadership of my country, both then and now.
Read
note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.
A set of four diaries set over the course of about 15 years. The author is a Iraqi artist who was in Baghdad during the initial US bombing after the Kuwaiti invasion. She found that writing short snippets of thoughts and chronology was all she could manage creatively for awhile and it turned into a discipline she continued for the next decade. I love the descriptions of life in Iraq. It is not a description that is place based, although place is clearly important. Instead, it is relational. These are the people who lived in my house during the bombing, these are the people we checked on every week, these are the people we corresponded with, etc. And the little hints about what it means to be Iraqi (apparently Iraq is a dog country, while Lebanon tends to favor cats). Al-Radi has a section on war, embargo, exile, and identity. Each is revealing of the stresses and idiosyncrasies that come with being the recipient of bombs and missiles. While she is not blind to the wrong-doings of Iraq and its political leaders, she does legitimately call out the hypocrisy of the west, in particular the US and UK in the decade long sustained war. And continually asks the question about the justice of bombing the people of Iraq. Overall, while I enjoyed reading her first hand account of this now "old" war, the main effect was just to make me mad all over again. Frustrated with the political leadership of my country, both then and now.
Read
note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.
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