Lit in the Time of War: Brierley

Hello! I’m back. I hope you’re all well, healthy, and safe, and that you had a happy Chinese New Year (if you celebrate it). I’ve read one book this week, and have reviewed it below, along with including my usual list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need.

Lion, by Saroo Brierly, with Larry Buttrose, Read by Vikas Adam

“Occasionally she’d pass me a snack between one of the bars, and one day, she gave me a necklace with a pendant of the elephant-headed god Ganesh. I was astonished. It was the first present I’d ever received from anyone [….] I later learned that Ganesh is often called the remover of obstacles and lord of beginnings. I wonder whether that was why the girl chose to give it to me. Ganesh is also a patron of letters, and so in a way is the patron of this book. The necklace was more than just a beautiful object to call my own. For me, it was a concrete demonstration that there were good people in the world who were trying to help me.”

This is a memoir about a kid named Saroo who’s born in India, gets separated from his family, gets adopted by an Australian family, grows up, and reconnects with his birth-family with the power of Google Earth.

You may have heard of Saroo if you saw the 2016 movie starring Dev Patel. Fortunately, the book has more detail than the movie. It describes Saroo’s time in India much more extensively, for instance. It gives a thorough account of the night he was separated from his family, talks about his life on the streets of Calcutta (now Kolkata), and his experiences in an abusive orphanage. The movie doesn’t really go into any of these experiences in the same level of detail.

The book describes Saroo’s upbringing in Australia, which the movie also doesn’t really show, either. It was very interesting to learn the story of Saroo’s adoptive-parents and what led them to want to adopt. Finally, the book gives an in-depth look at how Saroo found his birth-family by pure luck and persistence. For me, this was the most moving part of the book to read, as was Saroo’s discovery of how his birth-family family had gotten on since his disappearance.

The book has some interesting psychological insights as well, but it’s more about Saroo’s journey than his interiority, and so might not be the best book to read for deep psychological content. Even so, if you’re interested in learning more about his story, or if you just want to read a book that inspires hope, I would definitely recommend Lion.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need. Please do so if you are able.

Renew Democracy Initiative—Provides meals, sleeping bags, and water filtration units to Ukrainians in need. Donate here: https://rdi.org/warmth/

World Central Kitchen—Feeds Ukrainian refugees as they cross into Poland. Donate here: https://wck.org/

Save the Children—Provides food, water, money, hygiene kits, and psychosocial support to children. Donate here: https://www.savethechildren.org/us/where-we-work/ukraine

Books Without Borders—Provides Ukrainian-language books to European Union cities where Ukrainian refugees are temporarily living. Donate here: https://bookwithoutborders.com/

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Lit in the Time of War: Wright

Hello! I hope you all had a very happy New Year. I’m kicking it off by reviewing the second part of Richard Wright’s autobiography, and including my usual list of places you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need. May 2023 be the year there’s finally peace.

Black Boy, Part 2, by Richard Wright,
Read by Peter Francis James

Favorite quotes:

“The artist and the politician stand at opposite poles. The artist enhances life by his prolonged concentration upon it, while the politician emphasizes the impersonal aspects of life by his attempts to fit men into groups. The artist’s enhancement of life may emphasize, at certain times, those aspects that a politician can use, but the politician at other times, eager to do good for man, may sneer at the artist, because the art product cannot be used by them. Hence the two groups of men, driving in the same direction, committed to the same vision, often find themselves locked in a struggle, more desperate than either of them wanted, while their mutual enemies gape at the spectacle in amazement.”

“Somehow man had been sundered from man, and in his search for a new unity, for a new wholeness, for oneness again, he would have to blunder into a million walls to find merely that he could not go in certain directions. No one could tell him. He would have to learn, by marching down history’s bloody road. He would have to purchase his wisdom of life with sacred death. He would have to pay dearly to learn just a little. But perhaps, that is the way it has always been with man.”

“I headed toward home alone, really alone now, telling myself that in all the sprawling immensity of our mighty continent, the least-known factor of living was the human heart. The least-sought goal of being was a way to live a human life. Perhaps, I thought, out of my tortured feelings I could fling a spark into the darkness. I would try, not because I wanted to, but because I felt that I had to, if I were to live at all.”

(First part here).

The second part of Wright’s autobiography tells of his adventures in Chicago, which, while not as brutally racist as the South he’d come from, is still horribly racist. Wright also starts writing stories, and describes writing three stories that would form part of his short story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. He also joins the Communist Party.

This second part was just as good as the first part, but I was surprised by Wright’s naivety about Russian colonialism. He seemed to think that the Soviets had successfully turned “backwards” people into civilized ones while preserving their culture—little did he know about the atrocities of the Holodomor, forced collectivization, and the Kazakh Famine.

But Wright was smart enough to eventually become disillusioned with the Communist Party, and his reflections on its internal dysfunction were fascinating to read. It seemed to me that Wright was searching for a sense of purpose in life, as were many people during the Great Depression. Some turned to Communism as a utopian ideal, but as Wright showed, Communism became self-destructive. And so Wright had to find a new source of purpose in life, one that wouldn’t become self-destructive. His book left me wondering, when people lose a sense of meaning in life, how do they reclaim it without becoming self-destructive?

Ultimately, his book had terrific insights into humanity, race, politics, and art. Reading it also left me even more impressed by Wright’s powerful determination to stay true to himself in spite of everyone else trying to force him to conform to their standards and ideologies. I would strongly recommend.

A quick note: These next two weeks I’ll be traveling, and so likely won’t be able to post my usual book reviews until the 23rd. However, when I return, I’ll most likely be reviewing another book by Wright and what many claim was one of Dickens’ greatest epic novels, among others. So stay tuned.

And if you have any recommendations for other books I might enjoy throughout the rest of 2023, let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, here’s a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need:

Doctors Without Borders—Ships emergency supplies to Ukrainian hospitals. Donate here: https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/secure/donate 

UNCHR Refugee Agency—Provides refugees with food, water, health support, and assistance in rebuilding damaged houses. Donate here: https://give.unrefugees.org/

World Central Kitchen—Feeds Ukrainian refugees as they cross into Poland. Donate here: https://wck.org/

Amnesty International—Investigates human rights violations in Ukraine to hold those responsible accountable, defends journalists and other people at risk. Donate here: https://www.amnestyusa.org/

Lit in the Time of Human Rights Abuses: Collins, Márquez, and Wiesel

Hello! Happy Tuesday. I’ve read three books this week and have reviewed them below. Also, in honor of National Human Rights Day which happened this past Saturday, I’ve included a list of human rights/humanitarian causes you can donate to (instead of my usual list about ways to support Ukrainians in need).

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins,
Read by Carolyn McCormick

“It’s funny, because even though [the stylists are] rattling on about the Games, it’s all about where they were and what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. ‘I was still in bed.’ ‘I just had my eyebrows dyed!’ ‘I swear I nearly fainted.’ Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.”

I read this for the nostalgia and found many more nuances to it than I had previously thought it would have.

I’m sure you know about The Hunger Games, but if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades, here’s a quick summary: In the future dystopia of Panem, the “Capitol” controls the 12 “Districts.” To remind the Districts of the consequences of rebelling, the Capitol forces each district to send one boy and one girl into an arena to fight to the death every year. This is called the Hunger Games. Katniss Everdeen is in District 12. She’s great with a bow and arrows, but it’s her beloved younger sister Prim who’s called to be in the Games. Katniss volunteers in her place. Now will she survive? Or will she die?

The book was very well-paced. What made it interesting for me wasn’t rereading the romance or the action though. It was seeing how Collins made a point of humanizing the other characters who died. Even super-minor characters who got only a few sentences were treated with respect. They each got their own “this boy from District 8 shouldn’t have died. He must have had a family and a dog…” etc. And when describing Katniss killing other fighters in the arena, Collins always makes a point to describe Katniss’s guilt and inner-conflict about it.

I feel that this important angle is easily ignored when reading The Hunger Games, so I wanted to highlight it here, and recommend that you read this book, especially if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades and have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.

El General en Su Laberinto, por Gabriel García Márquez

En Español:

“No son los sistemas sino sus excesos los que deshumanizan la historia.”

El General en Su Laberinto se trata de Simon Bolívar cuando él es viejo y muriendo, exiliado en Jamaica.

En el pasado, cuando he leído los libros de Márquez (como La Hojarasca y Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada), siempre me parecían aburridos. No entiendo la razón. Sin embargo, me interesaba mucho el diálogo en El General en Su Laberinto, especialmente una escena en que el General discutió la repetición de la historia (sobre Napoleon Bonaparte), y otra escena en que discutió la cantidad de las estrellas.

Para mi, estas escenas tenían una calidad muy alta literaria en que presentaron ideas muy interesantes sin ser dogmáticos o intrusivos (en la manera de Madre por Gorky, por ejemplo). También, estas escenas tenían un aspecto emocional–cuando leía estas escenas, me sentía triste y nostálgica. En contraste, muchas escenas de Márquez no tienen este aspecto emocional para mí (¡personalmente!) Puede ser que necesito leer más de sus obras (como Cien Años de Soledad y Amor en el Tiempo de Cólera’).

Yo recomiendo este libro, pero basado en la subjectividad de mi punto de vista, no estoy cierto si estoy la mejor persona para recomendarlo.

In English:

“It is not systems but their excesses that dehumanize history.”

The General in His Labyrinth is about Simon Bolívar when he is old and dying, exiled in Jamaica.

In the past, when I have read Márquez’s books (such as Leaf Storm and Chronicle of a Death Foretold), they always seemed boring to me. I don’t understand the reason. However, I was very interested in the dialogue in The General in His Labyrinth, especially a scene where the General discussed the repetition of history (about Napoleon Bonaparte), and another scene where he discussed the number of stars in the sky.

For me, these scenes have a very high literary quality because they presented very interesting ideas without being dogmatic or intrusive (in the manner of Gorky’s Mother, for example). Also, these scenes had an emotional aspect–when I read them, I felt sad and nostalgic. In contrast, many of Márquez’s scenes in other books don’t have this emotional aspect to me (personally!) Maybe I need to read more of his works (like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera).

I recommend this book, but based on the subjectivity of my tastes, I’m not sure if I’m the best person to recommend it.

Legends of Our Time, by Elie Wiesel

“The victims [in the concentration camps] suffered more, and more profoundly, from the indifference of the onlookers than from the brutality of the executioner. The cruelty of the enemy would have been incapable of breaking the prisoner; it was the silence of those he believed to be his friends—cruelty more cowardly, more subtle—which broke his heart.”

This is a book of essays and recollections by Elie Wiesel, some about his experience during the Holocaust, some about his experience trying to find answers in its aftermath, and some about his attempts to advocate for others.

In the introduction, Wiesel talks about how some of the stories in the book were invented, and so I went into the book not knowing which stories were true and which weren’t. Was it really so that Wiesel met one of his persecutors from the concentration camp on a bus many, many years later in Tel Aviv? Did he really meet a wise professor who knew everything about every topic on earth?

Parts of the book reminded me of Ariel Burger’s Witness, and when I looked back at that memoir, I read about Wiesel referencing certain events that he wrote about in this book—like meeting one of his persecutors on a bus in Tel Aviv. That wasn’t invented then. And it stood to reason that the rest of the essays and stories weren’t invented, either.

In any case, what was invented and what was real is irrelevant. What is relevant is Wiesel’s powerful writing. Especially the last piece, “A Plea for the Dead.” In this essay, Wiesel shares many important thoughts. One is his entreaty to remember the victims of the Holocaust and not try to explain their actions, or to create intellectual theories about the mechanisms of hate that drove the Holocaust. He said it was much too easy to oversimplify matters, and in the process, trivialize them and strip them of the true depth of their tragedy.

I may not rank this as the absolute best of Wiesel’s books (especially given that he wrote the amazing From the Kingdom of Memory), but that does not mean at all that this book isn’t good. It’s terrific in its own way, as are all the books I’ve read by Wiesel.

Ultimately, Wiesel is one of those rare authors I’ve encountered where I’ve been so impacted by one of his books that I’ve had no choice but to read all of the books he’s written.

I would highly recommend.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support human rights around the world. Please donate if you are able, especially since many of these causes get much less attention than the scale of suffering needs. If you can’t donate, please share with your friends. Getting the word out is just as essential.

Uyghur Human Rights Project—at least 2 million Uyghur Muslims are unjustly imprisoned in industrial-scale concentration camps that have not been seen since the Holocaust. 800,000 children have been separated from their families and Uyghur women are being forcibly sterilized. The Uyghur Human Rights Project seeks to provide emergency humanitarian relief for Uyghur refugees, interviews survivors to spread their story to the world, and campaigns against businesses’ indifference and complicity in the Uyghurs’ plight.
Donate here: https://uhrp.org/take-action/

The International Rescue Committee—6 million Afghans are at extreme risk of famine. 18 million don’t have a reliable source of food. Afghanistan has the greatest number of people experiencing this level of hunger in the world. Afghans rely heavily on foreign aid, but after the Taliban took over, large-scale aid has stopped, so humanitarian aid is especially needed now. The International Rescue Committee provides food, clean water, and health support. Until January 2, all gifts up to $2,500,000 will be matched.
Donate here: https://help.rescue.org/donate/afghanistan-winter?ms=gs_ppc_fy23_afghanistan

The UN Refugee Agency—More than 6.8 million Syrian refugees have been forced to flee their homes since 2011, making it the largest refugee crisis in the world. More than 70% of Syrians live in poverty, and many have become victims to awful human rights abuses like child labor. The UN Refugee Agency provides cash assistance to families in need, which helps pay for food, shelter, and medical costs.
Donate here: https://giving.unhcr.org/en/sy/

The World Food Program—Due to war, 20 million Yemenis are suffering from malnutrition and extreme hunger. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises on earth. One of the World Food Program’s largest humanitarian focuses is Yemen, aiming to give 13 million people emergency food assistance. Donate here: https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/yemen-emergency

And here’s one more way to help:

Free Rice (play trivia games and provide free food to people in the process): https://freerice.com/

Thank you for reading.

Lit in the Time of War: Holm, Peralta, and Wiesel

Hello! Happy Tuesday. I hope you are all healthy and safe (and dry, if applicable). If you’re observing Yom Kippur tonight, I hope your reflections are deep and enriching.

I’ve read three books this week (one that hasn’t come out yet and two that have), and have reviewed them below. I’ve also included a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need. Please donate if you are able.

Strega, by Johanne Lykke Holm, Translated by Saskia Vogel

“I knew a woman’s life could at any point be turned into a crime scene. I had yet to understand that I was already living inside the crime scene, that the crime scene was not the bed but the body, that the crime had already taken place.”

NOTE: I know the translator of the book but decided to review this book on its own merits.

This is a book about a girl who’s sent to an old hotel (called the Olympic Hotel) to be a seasonal worker with other girls. There, she’s exposed to suffocating rituals and sexist lies. Even worse, one of the girls suddenly goes missing (and may have been murdered). Will the protagonist and her friends figure out a better and more empowering way to live before it’s too late?

This book was well-written. It’s one of those books that relies mostly on language and atmosphere to get across its effect, as opposed to plot or characterization, and it got across its effect well. However, at times I felt like the book was hitting the same tonal note so much that I was eager for new and more varied tones.

Even so, it had interesting ideas about women, the lies they get taught, and some genuinely hopeful possibilities for escape. I’d recommend.

Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey From a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League, by Dan-El Padilla Peralta

“On the walk back to Holder [Hall in Princeton], I got heated with myself for not confronting her [a person who’d said illegal immigrants shouldn’t be allowed in America] with my own story. I knew I was scared to open up, and I hated myself for being afraid. But even as a voice told me that invoking my own story would be the socially responsible thing to do, another voice told me that it had been fine of me not to make it so personal. Better to move in the world of disembodied arguments. And why did I have to enlighten D.C. blanquita by reintroducing myself to her as an undocumented immigrant? Like she would care.”

This is a memoir about a kid (Dan-El Padilla Peralta) who grows up as an undocumented immigrant and becomes a Princeton student. The book describes his family’s troubles—without documentation they can’t get steady jobs, and eventually wind up homeless in Harlem. At the same time, Peralta’s mom does everything she can to keep him and his brother on the straight and narrow. Peralta’s also naturally smart, which causes many people to want to support him. One person tells him of a test he could take to get a merit scholarship to a preparatory school, for instance. As he grows up and goes to Princeton, he leads a kind of double life—nobody knows that he’s secretly an undocumented immigrant. What will happen if he tells them all?

This book was very well-written. Peralta was terrific at humanizing himself and his family, telling an engaging story, and including thought-provoking (but not preachy) ideas about immigration.

What I also appreciated was that he wrote a lot about the other people in his life—it wasn’t “look at me! I got into Princeton!” but “look at all these amazing people I met in my life along the way!” Peralta’s compassion for the people he wrote about made this book much better than a standard “rags-to-riches” story.

Overall, I would recommend.

Open Heart, by Elie Wiesel

“Should one therefore turn away from humanity? The answer, of course, is up to each of us. We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves. Or not. I know—I speak from experience—that even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal. There it is: I believe in man in spite of man.”

This is the last book Elie Wiesel wrote before he died. It describes his experience having open heart surgery and contains his reflections on mortality. Has he done the greatest possible good in his life? He also talks about teaching, writing, religion, and family.

The book was very short but was very worth reading. Even when he’s writing about his own death, Wiesel is like a good friend offering the reader hope. If you’re looking for a good reflective book to read (either for Yom Kippur or just for your own purposes), this would be a great choice.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations you could donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need:

Voices of Children—Provides psychological counseling for children and helps refugee evacuations. Donate here: https://voices.org.ua/en/

Doctors Without Borders—Ships emergency supplies to Ukrainian hospitals. Donate here: https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/secure/donate 

UNCHR Refugee Agency—Provides refugees with food, water, health support, and assistance in rebuilding damaged houses. Donate here: https://give.unrefugees.org/

World Central Kitchen—Feeds Ukrainian refugees as they cross the border into other countries. Donate here: https://wck.org/

Lit in the Time of War: Yong and Suk-Young

Hello! Happy Banned Books Week! I’ve read one book this week and gave up on two others. The one I read was very good. I’ve also included a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need. Please donate if you’re able.

Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor, By Kim Yong and Kim Suk-Young

“[After seeing loyalists being taken to his camp for stealing food]: I shook with pain and anger at what I had witnessed that day. Loyalists to the state were rotting in this hellish place where death would be far more desirable. I thought of how utterly deceived the newly arrived from Songrim had been. In fact, everyone in this country was deceived, made to believe the false promise of a better life. and when a person simply wished to survive, they had to pay with their life. That night I lay straight on the floor, clenched my teeth, and felt warm sweat moistening my tight fists as I thought, I will survive. I have to survive. I will, I will, I will, I will! I will!!! Survive and tell the world about what I have witnessed. Otherwise, this insurmountable tragedy will be forgotten, never known to the rest of the world. I will survive to tell it myself. I will.”

This memoir is by Kim Yong, a survivor and escapee of a North Korean prison camp. He starts life as an orphan who’s fiercely loyal to North Korea’s then-leader, Kim Il-Sung. Then he gets adopted by wealthy parents, wonders about his birth-parents, grows up, learns harrowing secrets about his birth-parents, and gets arrested. The rest of the book is about his experiences suffering in North Korea’s camps (being separated from his wife and children, starving, being tortured, witnessing several executions), his escape, and his life afterwards.

The book was striking for Yong’s resilience. He spent years in Camp #14, one of North Korea’s most brutal camps. According to Yong, Camp #14 was where people went to die, since there was no hope of release and the conditions were so deadly. Yet while people around him were dying, Yong resolved not to.

Yong conveyed both peoples’ suffering and their nuances. He himself went from feeling extremely loyal to the North Korean government to feeling disillusioned and betrayed by them. At the same time, he observed that while many of his captors treated him inhumanely, not all of them did. He also described fellow prisoners assisting him in his escape, and the immense guilt and gratitude he felt as a result. At one point during his escape, he stayed with a woman in South Korea. A part of him worried that she’d betray him, but another part of him believed in her, since he observed her genuinely trying to assist him at various times.

At the end, Yong says that his story has no real ending. He has escaped, yes, but he still misses his family. And even though it’s unreachable to him now, he still misses his home-country because of the memories it holds of the people he loves.

Overall, this book is terrific. It’s short, but very well-written and human. It gives insight into North Korean society (from its orphanages to its inner-circles), its camps, and the inner life of an escapee. I would strongly recommend.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need:

Voices of Children—Provides psychological counseling for children and helps refugee evacuations. Donate here: https://voices.org.ua/en/

Amnesty International—Investigates human rights violations in Ukraine to hold those responsible accountable, defends journalists and other people at risk. Donate here: https://www.amnestyusa.org/

Razom For Ukraine—Provides medical relief for soldiers and doctors on the front line. Donate here: https://razomforukraine.org/

Red Cross—Provides first aid, food, medicine, and evacuation help to Ukrainians. Donate here: https://www.redcross.org/donate/cm/abc.html/?subcode=abc-pub

Lit in the Time of War: Keret

Hello! Happy almost end of August. I’m going to be returning to school soon, but have reviewed a book for your last-minute summer enjoyment. I’ve also provided a list of organizations you could donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need. Please do so if you are able.

The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, by Etgar Keret,
Read by Alex Karpovsky, Translated by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen, and Anthony Berris

“Compared to the horrors and cruelty he [Keret’s father] witnessed during [World War II], it’s easy to imagine how his new acquaintances from the underworld must have appeared to him: happy, even compassionate [….] When I try to reconstruct those bedtime stories my father told me years ago, I realize that beyond their fascinating plots, they were meant to teach me something, something about the almost desperate human need to find good in the least likely places. Something about the desire not to beautify reality but to persist in searching for an angle that would put ugliness in a better light, and create affection and empathy for every wart and wrinkle on its scarred face. And here, in Sicily, 63 years after my father left it, as I face a few dozen pairs of riveted eyes, and a lot of empty plastic chairs, that mission suddenly seems more possible than ever.”

 This is a memoir about the seven years in the life of Israeli writer Etgar Keret between his son’s birth and his father’s death. It’s also about all of the insights he gains along the way.

The first thing I want to say about this book is that it was written kind of stylized but in a very non-pretentious way—he’d compare things to other things, or use certain rhetorical devices, and you’d worry that it’d become self-important and contrived, only for it avoid this trap and retain its sincerity. The author’s ability to stay grounded and not devolve into self-aggrandizing word-play/stylistic show-offery is a great accomplishment in and of itself.

The second thing I want to say about this book is that it’s made up of a bunch of essays that were written throughout the years, so it reads more like a collection of short narratives than an overarching memoir. Even so, it works very well. The essays were very funny and very sad. Some were terrific (one about Etgar Keret dealing with his dad’s impending death in the face of a cabbie’s disgruntlement about being ripped off by another person was especially good).

Keret is also very good at extrapolating things—he’d observe something in his own behavior while playing Angry Birds and then be able to draw more general conclusions about people from it.

Overall, if you’re looking for a wise and humorous collection of essays that actually have substance to them, I’d highly recommend this memoir. It’s short, it’s funny, and it actually has things to say.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations you an donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need:

UNCHR Refugee Agency—Provides refugees with food, water, health support, and assistance in rebuilding damaged houses.
Donate here: https://give.unrefugees.org/

Save The Children: Gives emergency aid to children in Ukraine. Donate here: https://www.savethechildren.org/us/where-we-work/ukraine

World Health Organization: Helps treat injured Ukrainians and provides life-saving medicines.
Donate here: https://www.ukraine.who.foundation/

Direct Relief: Provides trauma kits, insulin, and other important medical supplies to Ukrainians.
Donate here: https://www.directrelief.org/emergency/ukraine-crisis/

Lit in the Time of War: Walls

Hello! I hope you are all staying healthy and cool. Today is my birthday, and I am celebrating by reviewing one book and providing a list of organizations you could donate to in order to help Ukrainians in need. If you would like to celebrate along with me and are able to donate, please do so.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls

“One day I was walking down Broadway with another student named Carol when I gave some change to a young homeless guy. ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Carol said. ‘Why?’ ‘It only encourages them. They’re all scam artists.’ What do you know? I wanted to ask. I felt like telling Carol that my parents were out there, too, that she had no idea what it was like to be down on your luck, with nowhere to go and nothing to eat. But that would have meant explaining who I really was, and I wasn’t about to do that. So at the next street corner, I went my way without saying a thing.”

Jeannette Walls’s memoir is about her time as a young girl roving around the country with her Picasso-loving mother and her gold-seeking father, in pursuit of dreams that will never come true. Her family was very poor, very proud, and apparently in denial about their situation. When they fled from tax collectors, Walls’s mother claimed that they were on an adventure, while her father claimed that they were fleeing from a criminal ring. When they weren’t fleeing this criminal ring, Wall’s mother tried to ditch her teaching job to paint pictures, and her father worked on plans for a solar-powered glass castle that they would eventually live in, while investigating the criminal ring by going to bars and drinking. In other words, this is a memoir about a dysfunctional family.

What really stood out in this book was Walls’s empathy. She could have easily turned this memoir into a story of “I didn’t realize how messed up my parents were until I got older and then I left them forever because they’re completely horrible people.” However, this approach would have likely been less convincing (and less powerful) than also including the dysfunctional family’s moments of humanity.

 Fortunately for readers, Walls used the more powerful approach. She described her family’s dysfunction (like when they tried sabotaging her attempts to move out), and she also described their moments of love (like when they cheated at gambling and won enough money to fund her last year at Barnard). In this way, I got to see both the good and the bad sides of her family, and was able to come up with my own conclusions about them.

So if you’re interested in reading a memoir about a girl’s coming-of-age in the midst of dysfunction, I would definitely recommend this book.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations you could donate to in order to help Ukrainians in need:

United Help Ukraine—Provides medical supplies to soldiers, and ships goods to Ukrainian refugees.
Donate here: https://unitedhelpukraine.org/

World Vision Ukraine—Provides psychological support, food, and shelter to Ukrainian refugees.
Donate here: https://donate.worldvision.org/give/ukraine-crisis-fund

Action Against Hunger—Provides nutritious food, cash, hygiene kits, and mental health support to Ukrainian refugees.
Donate here: https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/donate/ukraine-emergency-response

Voices of Children—Provides psychological support and evacuation assistance to Ukrainian children and their families.
Donate here: https://voices.org.ua/en/

Lit in the Time of War: Kertész, Konstantin, and Dostoyevsky

Hello. I hope you are all healthy and safe and that you are enjoying whatever books you are reading. I’ve read three books this week and have reviewed them below in case you wanted any inspiration for your summer reading. I’ve also included a list of organizations to donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need. Please do so if you are able.

Fatelessness, by Imre Kertész, Translated by Tim Wilkinson

“’Would you care to give an account of your experiences, young fellow?’ I was somewhat dumbfounded, and replied that there was not a whole lot I could tell to him that would be of much interest. He smiled a little and said, ‘Not me—the whole world.’ Even more amazed, I asked, ‘But what about?’ ‘The hell of the camps,’ he replied, to which I remarked that I had nothing at all to say about that as I was not acquainted with hell and couldn’t even imagine what that was like. He assured me, however, that it was just a matter of speaking: ‘Can we imagine the concentration camp as anything but a hell?’ he asked, and I replied, as I scratched a few circles with my heel in the dust under my feet, that everyone could think what they liked about it, but as far as I was concerned I could only imagine a concentration camp, since I was somewhat acquainted with what that was, but not hell.”

This is a book about fourteen year-old Georg who is taken to Auschwitz. Georg goes on to recount his experiences of starvation, torture and sickness with a kind of intellectualized detachment. His attempts to rationalize his experiences made for fascinating and horrifying reading.

I don’t know what else to say about this book other than that you have to read it yourself to understand what I mean. I would recommend.

A Red Boyhood: Growing Up Under Stalin,
by Anatole Konstantin

”As I discovered many years later, there actually was no need for us to go hungry. The desert was literally crawling with food: desert turtles and snakes were there just for the taking. The fact that people starved to death rather than eat them is another proof that materialism, dialectical or of any other kind, does not prevail in real life and that ideas and taboos are more powerful than even the instinct to survive.”

This is a memoir written by the Ukrainian Anatole Konstantin about his boyhood in the USSR. It begins with the arrest of his father, describes his life as a son of an enemy of the people, goes on to tell about his family’s experience during World War II (where they had to go work on a collective farm in Kazakhstan), described their return home, their journey through Poland, and ultimately, their emigration to America.

It was fascinating to read, especially since in my experience, history is usually depicted in somewhat-separated sections: Stalin’s purges are depicted as being separate from World War II, which is then shown as being separate from the Cold War. This is the way I learned about history in school at any rate. While dividing history into chapters/units may help students learn, this division destroys the sense of continuity that actually existed in reality. A Red Boyhood put all these sections of history together into one coherent whole, which enabled me to better see the causes and effects of various events.

The author apparently wrote this book “without any literary pretensions,” and in some places he makes subtle grammar errors/awkward word-choices which shows that English was not his native language. These did not really detract from his memoir. In any case, he more than compensated with the amount of rich detail he provided about his experiences. I was in awe of his memory. It felt like he was able to give very detailed descriptions of small events throughout his life, people he met once or twice, and even rooms in which he stayed in for like a night. His memory reminded me of the richness of detail in Maxim Gorky’s memoirs.

Anatole also had an excellent way of observing people. There would be several times where he would tell his mom not to trust Mr. So-and-So, and his mom would ignore him, only for Mr. So-and-So to wind up trying to steal their grain. This was very interesting to read about, and these nuances of their family relationship really brought history to life in a way that history textbooks never do.

In school, I remember a teacher giving me a bunch of memoirs to read written by historical figures in order to bring the dry-seeming facts we were learning to life. It seems to me that history can’t be taught effectively without humanizing the people involved—even if we do learn the dry facts in our textbooks to try and prevent history from repeating, history may repeat itself anyway unless we care enough about those who suffered before us to want to stop it from repeating. A Red Boyhood did a terrific job of making me care.

I would definitely recommend.

The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Translated by David Magarshack

“And so when I got off the bunk and looked round, I suddenly felt I remember, that I could look at these unhappy creatures with quite different eyes, and that suddenly by some miracle all hatred and anger had vanished from my heart. I walked round the prison peering into the faces I came across. That rascal of a peasant with his shaven head and branded face, yelling his horse drunken song at the top of his voice—why, he, too, might be the same sort of peasant as [the kindly] Marey: I cannot possibly look into his heart, can I?”

This book contains stories by Dostoyevsky written in his youth and in his old age. It’s interesting to track his writerly development across them. It starts out with “White Nights,” and goes on to other stories including “Notes from the Underground” and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.”

In the beginning, it seemed to me that Dostoyevsky was drawing mostly from the books he had read as a kid, because in “White Nights” the protagonist really just seems to want to assume a role similar to those of the literary heroes he worships, to the point of deluding himself about a romantic encounter. Not much more nuance exists to the story other than that.

As the book continues, there is more and more nuance to the stories. A rich man becomes jealous of a peasant boy who seems to have caught the eye of a rich girl who he eventually wants to marry for himself. Later on in Dostoyevsky’s writings, another man wants to feel so much in control of his reputation that he drives his wife to suicide.

As these dynamics become more nuanced, so does his observations related to them. While in the earlier stories, you could pretty quickly understand where characters were coming from all along (the rich man just wants the rich girl’s money! That’s it!), later stories had more unexpected revelations. At the same time, it didn’t feel like Dostoyevsky was doing any psychological acrobatics or contriving anything, which was exciting to see.

Finally, it’s interesting to compare Dostoyevsky’s first-person writings to his third-person ones. This book is entirely made up of his first-person writings, which all seem to be very rich, intriguing, and entertaining. Also, his characters all made sense, even when they got seemingly hysterical or irrational.

Meanwhile, whenever I read his third-person works (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, or The Idiot), there were still rich psychological nuances and really good moments, but it seemed to me that his stories were less interesting, more convoluted, and that some of his characters suddenly acted very strangely and unrealistically. Now, you could apply the inner thought process of the Underground Man to Dmitri Karamazov, for instance, and his hysterical outbursts would make perfect sense. However, just reading about them in third person made them somehow seem unrealistic.

In any case this was just an observation I had. I would be interested to know if you had any thoughts about it.

As promised, here’s a list of organizations to donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need:

Revived Soldiers Ukraine—Provides medical support to soldiers and civilians. Donate here: https://www.rsukraine.org/

United Help Ukraine—Provides medical supplies to soldiers, and ships goods to Ukrainian refugees. Donate here: https://unitedhelpukraine.org/

Doctors Without Borders—Ships emergency supplies to Ukrainian hospitals. Donate here: https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/secure/donate 

United Way Ukraine—Provides food, water, and other emergency support for Ukrainian refugees and their children. Donate here: https://www.unitedway.org/our-impact/work/no-nav/unitedforukraine

Lit in the Time of Coronavirus: Osipovich, Bruder, and Berry

Hello! I’ve reviewed three books this week. I would definitely recommend the first one, and I would definitely not recommend the third one.

Stanislavski in Rehearsal: The Final Years, by Vasily Osipovich

“[Stanislavski was talking about an experience he had:] Smoke from the bonfires arose, the crowd murmured in a thousand voices. What was this? ‘These people are waiting for tickets for your production,’ I thought. ‘My God, what a responsibility we have to satisfy the spiritual needs of these people who have been standing here freezing all night; what great ideas and thoughts we must bring to them!’ So consider well, whether we have the right to settle accounts with them by merely telling them a funny anecdote. I could not fall asleep that night for a long time because of my feeling of responsibility [….] that night I felt that the people whom I had seen in the square deserved much more than we had prepared for them.”

This book was mind-blowing. The Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski is inherently mind-blowing, but he’s even more mind-blowing when he is in the final years of his life and striving to teach others his approach to acting so that they can develop it beyond what he had done so far.

Meanwhile our narrator and memoirist, Vasily Osipovich, has mastered the “old” way of acting which relied on playing clichés (an actor playing an evil character would twirl his moustache, for instance). Now, Osipovich wants to join Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theater to learn from him. The result: Osipovich gets his mind blown by Stanislavski and has to relearn everything he thought he knew about acting. So we see two journeys: Osipovich’s journey to improve as an actor, and Stanislavski’s to pass on his wisdom before he dies.

Stanislavski’s way of rehearsal seemed tyrannical—he’d stop the actors every few seconds and insist that they redo an entrance or a line. He’d keep having them redo it until they got it right, even if it took up all the hours in that day’s rehearsal.

On the other hand, it seemed like Stanislavski was committed to hard work for the sake of getting great results. Once, when Osipovich and the company got frustrated by Stanislavski’s insistence that they adopt a kind of “rhythm,” they asked him to do it himself, and he did so. When they asked him how he could do it so convincingly, he said he drilled himself extensively every day. After reading about how he drilled his own actors, I don’t doubt that he did the same to himself.

Stanislavski also said things that showed the power of this type of work. He started off with this: “Every exacting actor, however great, at certain intervals, say every four or five years, must go back and study anew.” Actors had to constantly examine themselves to get rid of clichés they were playing and other bad habits they’d fallen into. Apparently, each time Stanislavski himself started playing a new role, he relied on clichés. For every role he ever played, he then had to work hard to get rid of the clichés and replace them with truth.

Given all of this, Osipovich’s book about Stanislavski made me realize that talk of the “hard work” an artist has to do to learn his or her craft is a euphemism for insanely hard-core work.

I would definitely recommend reading this book.

A Practical Handbook for the Actor, by Melissa Bruder

“Many actors have spent their careers trading on, and thus were limited by, their natural talents. Many of these actors had successful careers, it’s true, but few grew as artists, because they never took the time to develop a set of skills they could call their own, skills that could never be taken from them [….] How much greater is the self-respect of the man or woman who can call upon the technique he or she has developed over his or her years in the theatre to see him or her through even the most seemingly insurmountable acting problem.”

I can’t say much about this book because it basically just echoes some of the things Stanislavski said better ~200 years earlier. Because of that, I’d say that if you ever have to choose between a book by Stanislavski and a book by Bruder, I would choose Stanislavski.

My Experiences as an Executioner, by James Berry

“Fortunately none of the people knew me, so that when the old gentleman asked them what was the matter, they could only tell them that Berry was traveling by that train, and that they wanted to have a look at him. The old gentleman seemed anxious to see such an awful man as the executioner, and asked me if I should know him if I saw him. I pointed out a low-looking character as being possibly the man, and my fellow traveler said, ‘Yes, very much like him’ [….] We got quite friendly, and when we reached Durham where I was getting out, he asked for my card. The reader can imagine his surprise when I handed it to him.”

James Berry was an English executioner in the 1800s, and he wrote this memoir about his experiences. It was one of the grimmest books I’ve read. To give you some perspective, it was much grimmer than Dostoyevsky’s books, and only slightly less grim than Enemy at the Gates.

Somehow, it managed to be this grim without any graphic descriptions. I think this was because of the book’s specificity. You don’t need to describe anything else if you give enough details about the exact number of inches an executioner wants to make the rope fall in a given execution and how he came to that calculation.

On the other hand, the book did give some valuable insights into humanity. Some of these included how awful an executioner feels about his job, how people react differently before they get executed, why people commit crimes, and the stigma that an executioner faces for having to execute people.

I don’t think any of that makes the book more readable, though.

Lit in the Time of Coronavirus: Obama and the Promised Land

Hello! I hope you’re all staying warm. This is my last post before resuming school so I thought I would review something special.

A Promised Land, by Barack Obama

“Except now I found myself asking whether those impulses—of violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance, the all-too-human desire to beat back our own uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others—were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain. For they seemed to lie in wait everywhere, ready to resurface whenever growth rates stalled or demographics changed or a charismatic leader chose to ride the wave of people’s fears and resentments. And as much as I might have wished otherwise, there was no Mahatma Gandhi around to tell me what I might do to hold such impulses back.”

A Promised Land is about Obama’s youth, his journey to the presidency, and his first few years in office (up to Bin Laden’s death in 2011).

The book itself is 700 pages long with 7 parts, which means you could finish the book in a week if you read one part a day (which was what I did). In terms of his presidency, Obama talks about how he handled the financial crisis of 2008, global politics, healthcare, climate, and terrorism.

A Promised Land felt like a cross between a history textbook, a human-interest story, and a memoir. Obama made it very clear up front that he wanted to give a lot of context for his decisions, which meant almost burying the reader in piles of details. This was probably what caused the book to feel somewhat like a textbook.

The good news was that Obama also wove in personal anecdotes from people he worked with and helped out. This made the book more accessible and interesting. Instead of just talking about how he got laws X Y and Z passed with the help of Mr. Such-and-Such, Obama made a point of first describing how a person he knew about had been suffering because such a law hadn’t been passed yet. This helped humanize the book a lot, especially when it came to intricate financial policies.

A Promised Land also gave some insight into what Obama was feeling and thinking during his presidency. This was probably the most interesting part of the book since it helped to demystify the presidency. Yes, it had its benefits, but it also had unexpected drawbacks. For instance, Obama talked about how he couldn’t go on spontaneous road-trips with his daughters without getting the Secret Service involved, which meant that they missed out on some aspects of normal life that could otherwise have been taken for granted.

After reading the book, I came away with two main insights. First, I realized how hard it was to be president. You have to manage a large group of people to deal with massive problems and unexpected developments while also trying to ensure cooperation across the aisle and among countries. That summary may not sound so difficult but reading about it in-depth made me realize that yes, it was very difficult.

The second insight I had was this: Obama wrote that he went into national politics because he thought he could make a bigger difference in peoples’ lives than he could have made at a more local level. However, he came to realize that even though he was president, he couldn’t solve as many problems as he would have liked. One reason was that in certain cases, local-level politicians were in a position that made them better able to solve the problem than Obama. The fact that a local-level politician could sometimes have more power than a national-level politician in a certain area was very interesting. It also made me wonder. If Obama had known this beforehand, would it have changed anything he did as president?

In the end, I would definitely recommend A Promised Land. It’s long and sometimes very textbook-y, but its insights also make it a very rewarding read.

Until next week!