What’s Really Hood: A Collection of Tales from the Streets by Wahida Clark, et al
Sometimes do you pick up a book and you don’t really know why you did? I saw this book in Target, and picked it up on an impulse. I read the cover and thought “you know, this is way out of my culture and out of my comfort zone” but then I thought hey – it’s a sub-culture in my own country, and like isn’t it hypocritical to be so interested in other cultures and then to ignore this sub-culture in my own country? Plus, I had a friend called Wahida, . . . well, it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just the way it was.
I read the whole book. Some of what I read was frankly repellant. Some of the sex was so implausible that I can’t tell if my ideas are just way out of step with the changing times (and there are clues that this may be the problem) or that this sub-culture just has constant, earth-shaking sex.
The book contains five very different stories, but there are threads of similarity that appear in all five. Drugs are rampant, and destructive to individuals, couples, families, children, friendships, marriages, and the social context. Parenting skills are often fragile or non-existent. The male-female relationships are mostly exploitive.
And they all dream of a better life.
I think that’s what kept me reading. The stories are raw. You might not even like them at all, you might wish you had never heard of this book, but there is an honesty in the rawness, and a yearning to escape. The goal of all the easy money in the drug trade is mostly to GET OUT, to run away to some place safe, to live in a place where gunshots aren’t heard, and where kids can safely go to school.
I learned a lot from reading this book, but it was not an easy read. It is gritty, and characters you find yourself liking get killed off. It’s also stuck with me; I find myself thinking about things it brought to my attention. I’d love for you to read it too, and tell me what you think.
The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke
“Here’s the book,” Sparkle said, sliding into the restaurant seat as we all poured over the menu, wafts of garlic, white wine and butter drifting our way. “I’m getting kind of tired of Dave and Clete.”
“What, you mean not just bending the envelope but tearing right through it?” I asked “Or all the gratuitous violence?”
“Mostly the scorn for official procedures,” she started, two little lines between her eyes as she took in all the delicious possibilities, “How about some of that Montepulciano?”
She passed the book along to me. I was in the middle of another book, but oh, the temptation to drop it and get on with a new James Lee Burke.
The book opens with Dave Robicheaux, our recovering alcoholic detective, meeting up with a convict on a work crew whose sister has disappeared and who was found murdered. Bernadette Latiolais’s remains are thought to be the work of a serial killer working the area who targets prostitutes, but Bernadette was an honor student, graduating with a full scholarship promised to a Louisiana university. She was also an heiress, in a small way, to some property at the edge of a swamp. She doesn’t fit the profile, and her brother wants justice – not for himself, he’s doing his time, but for his sister, who never did anything to anyone, and who wanted to create a conservation area to preserve bears.
Right off the top, Robicheaux is outside of his parish, investigating a case nobody cares about in an area out of his jurisdiction.
OK, OK, my sister is right, this is pretty much another formulaic James Lee Burke. There are the corrupt rich families, the amoral women, the voiceless victims. Instead of the old Italian organized crime families, this time there are hired mercenaries, equally creative in killing, but way more efficient in cleaning up afterwards.
I’m just a sucker for James Lee Burke’s writing. Here’s one sample, from his interview with a very rich old man who goes a long way back with Robicheaux’s family:
“Don’t get old, Mr. Robicheaux. Age is an insatiable thief. It steals the pleasures of your youth, then locks you inside your own body with your desires still glowing. Worse, it makes you dependent upon people who are half a century younger than you. Dont’ let anyone tell you that it brings you peace, either, because that’s the biggest lie of all.”
Burke’s Dave Robicheaux and his private-investigator friend Clete are flawed men, prone to violence, but I cut them a lot of slack because in each novel they are bright shining avengers of all the wrongs done to the weak and helpless. They are Quixotic. They fight the rich and powerful for the rights of the common man. They know the risks they take, and they are too old to think they are going to survive every bad guy they go after. It’s a good thing the law of averages doesn’t hold true in novels; they should have been dead a long time ago.
What keeps me coming back are the lyrical descriptions of life along the Atchafalaya Bayou, community life in New Iberia, Louisiana, and Robicheaux’s family life, wife Molly, daughter Alifair (now grown to young womanhood) and Snuggs their cat and Tripod their raccoon, as well as the knowledge that at the end of the book, in spite of every evidence to the contrary, Dave and Clete will emerge alive, if damaged, and their indirect and violent path will have achieved some semblance of justice.
(I ordered the spaghetti with a white-wine mussel sauce, and Sparkle ordered the chicken marsala. Mom had seafood diablo.)
“My Name is Legion”
To me, this is one amazing story, so many elements. A man is possessed – not by one unclean spirit, but by many, and in his misery, he is so strong that he cannot be safely chained. Jesus casts those demons into pigs, who run off a cliff and die.
The swineherds run to the city. I’ll bet they were not happy; they would have to tell the owners of all those pigs – two thousand pigs, that’s a lot of pigs – that the pigs were all dead. The people from the village could see the newly-healed man, and still they asked Jesus to leave. I am betting there were some mightily displeased merchants who were really mad about those pigs.
But the former demoniac asks to go with Jesus and Jesus tells him to stay, and tell the people how his life has changed since Jesus healed him. I imagine it took a lot of courage. I imagine he wanted to stay near to Jesus, fearful unclean spirits would re-enter him. I hope he was able to stay clean and to tell of this miracle in his life.
Mark 5:1-20
5 They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes.* 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3 He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ 8 For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ 9 Then Jesus* asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ 10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12 and the unclean spirits* begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake.
14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened.
15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus* to leave their neighbourhood. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus* refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’
20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.
Room by Emma Donoghue
Hardly ever do I order a book in hardcover; they weigh too much, I do a lot of reading when flying, I prefer paperbacks so I can pass them on when I am finished (and no, I do not yet have a Kindle, because I like to pass my books along.) I made an exception for Room when I heard a review on National Public Radio. It sounded so different, and I wondered how it could be written without it being so horrible I couldn’t read it.
The story is told from the point of view of a five year old boy who lives in Room, an 11 x 11 foot space. He was born there, he has never been out of there.
As you read, you gain such huge admiration for the human spirit. Jake’s mother was abducted off the streets and kept in this room, which is totally soundproofed, surrounded by a chain metal cage, and can be entered and exited only by a door with a code entry lock. She raises Jake as best she can, keeping him hidden from her abductor. She teaches him reading and math, she tries to raise him eating nutritious foods, they have hygiene rules and daily physical education. Every now and then, she has a day when she is “gone”, when Jake wakes up and his mother won’t ‘switch on’ and just stays in her bed, sleeping all day. On those days, he feeds himself and plays quietly, knowing that his Mom will be back ‘on’ the next day – or so. He doesn’t understand his Mother’s despair, and she shelters him from it as best she can.
And then comes the time when she realizes that life is only going to get more and more difficult as Jake gets older. She makes a plan, a plan that relies on Jake, a desperate plan.
The book is fascinating. I have already passed it along; once I read it, I wanted to share it. In many ways, it is a cross-cultural book, because the culture Jake spends his first five years in is so insular, so enclosed. Emma Donoghue did a great job describing his world from his point of view, and dealing with the aftermath. I can’t tell you much more without spoiling the book for you in a major way. 🙂
There is a Reader’s Guide section at the back, and this book would be an excellent selection for a book club.
House Rules by Jodi Picoult
I got it all done – two days before Christmas. Wooo HOOOO, I get the reward, a new book! One I had been eager to read, House Rules by Jodi Picoult. (You can read reviews of other Picoult books by doing a blog search, enter Jodi Picoult in my blog’s search window.)
What I really like about Jodi Picoult is that she writes about really tough situations and exposes our ignorance and ambivalence to us. In this book, she writes about a single mother who is raising two sons, one of whom has Asperger’s Syndrome. He is extremely bright, but lives in a world where he is bombarded by too much sensation. He cannot block out sensory input that we learn to ignore, and some of it – noise, colors – in his case, the color orange – or any change in routine can cause him to spin out of control. Imagine a two year old having a tantrum in a grocery store . . . now imagine an eighteen year old young man having the same tantrum. It helps you see what the Mom is dealing with.
Dad left when the second son was born. “It’s too hard,” he said, and left her to cope with all of it.
She gets child support, while her husband is raising his new family a continent away. She free lances as an advice columnist, and edits from her home to supplement the bare bones family existence. She learns to cope with Jacob’s needs, and she advocates for him fiercely, to be mainstreamed in the school system AND to have some special supports to soothe him when he becomes over-stimulated.
Jacob isn’t a burden, although his need for routine – certain colors for different days of the week, including meals – can be burdensome. Jacob is also very very bright, and obsessed with crime scene forensics. He loves setting up “crime scenes” for his mom to solve and the one bright spot in his daily life is the Crime Busters show which comes on every day at 4:30.
And then, suddenly, a life which is already wobbling turns upside down. Jacob is implicated in the murder of his tutor, a young woman Jacob loved working with, who helped him develop an understanding of how people interact and behave. Those who know Jacob understand his quirks and eccentricities are due to his wiring, but Jacob looks very odd, very threatening and even violent to the outside observer – a nightmare client as a defendant.
It is a GREAT read. Picoult keeps her secrets up to the very end; the book is tightly wired and we are given clues all along the way. The edition I read had both a reader’s guide and an interview with the author at the end. It is NOT cheating to read those first! It gives you good guidance on what the author is trying to say, and what may be significant, while not appearing particularly so.
It gave me a great appreciation for parent’s of children outside the realm of ‘normal.’ It gave me an appreciation for the work and persistence and dedication it takes to try to get a more level playing field for their children.
It the book Jacob has some self-awareness, and compares Asperger’s Syndrome to seasonings, and he believes we all have a dose of Asperger’s Syndrome in our wiring, but that some children get a little extra.
‘Lost Boy’ Casts Vote for Independence
I found this today on NPR News and it delights me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I didn’t know David Eggars (you remember him from Zeitoun) had helped with the writing of ‘What Is The What?’. Second, who knew that any of these kids would survive? Survive, write a book, thrive, go back to the Sudan, give to the country – and vote. Every now and then in this sad world you hear a good story. This is one.
January 10, 2011
During Sudan’s civil war, in which some 2 million people died, Valentino Achak Deng fled to Ethiopia on foot. Separated from his family for 17 years, Deng is one of Sudan’s so-called Lost Boys, children who were orphaned or separated from their families during the brutal war.
Now, voting is under way in Southern Sudan in a referendum that is expected to split Africa’s largest country. Among those voting this week are the Lost Boys, including Deng, whose life became a best-selling novel in America and who has returned to his homeland to build a school.
After a peace agreement between north and south, Deng returned to Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, in 2006. He says when he got there, the place was still a wreck.
“On some of these roads, you could see old war tanks. On some of these roads, in some neighborhoods you could see the bones and skulls of dead people,” he recalls now, driving around Juba.
Now, as Southern Sudan appears headed for independence, Deng is optimistic — and Juba looks a lot better. Paved roads, now lined with hotels and restaurants, arrived for the first time in 2007.
Juba is a booming city, one of incredible contrast: Barefoot women selling piles of gravel by the side of the road sit next to a Toyota dealership.
Peace is spurring investment and consumer demand. Juba’s growth is driven by Southern Sudan’s oil revenue as well aid from foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations.
Deng grew up in a tiny village called Marial Bai. In the 1980s, northern bombers and Arab militias came.
“They bombed Marial Bai, destroyed it, killed everything, burned crops and livestock,” he says.
Deng was there when the fighting came. He says he “ran away with the rest.” He was 9 years old.
Deng joined thousands of Lost Boys, who spent months trekking across Sudan to refugee camps in Ethiopia. His experience is captured in What Is the What, a novel by Dave Eggers, which reads like a modern-day story of Job.
The boys, some naked, march across an unforgiving landscape, facing Arab horsemen, bombing raids, lions and crocodiles.
Deng eventually resettled in the U.S., where he attended college and was mentored and sponsored by ordinary Americans.
In 2007, he returned to start a high school in Marial Bai, where there was none.
“We have 250 students. Our annual budget now stands at about $200,000 because the school is free,” he says.
The school is funded by Deng’s private foundation. He says most donations come from Americans touched by his story and the plight of Southern Sudan.
Deng, now 32, has just cast his vote for independence. He says that for a Sudanese child of war, his life’s journey is almost inconceivable.
“I never imagined I would be the person I am right now,” he says.
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
You know how wonderful it is when you start a book, and immediately you are hooked? This is not that kind of book. This is a book you start reading and you think “Why am I reading this? I don’t like ANY of the characters!”
And yet, somehow, I kept reading. And slowly, slowly, the hook was set, I could not stop reading.
Actually, I read the book several months ago, and I am still thinking about it. That’s a good book. 🙂
We meet one of the main characters as he stands waiting for a train to arrive, carrying his bride-to-be. As we stand waiting with the man, we discover that he is not very likable. We also learn that winters in his part of the country are long and hard, and very strange things happen to people cooped up together during these long, hard winters. It is a very bleak beginnning.
Then we are riding in the train with a woman who is answering an ad placed by the first man who was advertising for a wife. We get a few clues that she is misrepresenting herself, but . . . isn’t a little misrepresentation part of the mating process? Do we really show all our less attractive features to the person to whom we want to be married? And does she know what she is getting in for with this rather cold and distant man?
Do you really want to read this book?
It gets better. So much better. People are complicated, and they lead complicated lives. Sometimes evil leads only downward, and to more evil, and from time to time, there is a gleam of hope and the slim promise of redemption. It gives a clear slice of time from the early 1900’s, and a much earlier time in America. For anyone with the illusions that life in that turn-of-the-century America was a better, simpler, more moral time, this book is a reality check.
Nothing in the beginning of this book is quite what it seems, and yet every word is finely crafted to give a clue as to where the book is going. Will you be able to figure it out before you get there?
(I did not.)
There are so many good books out there. This one is slow to start, but builds steadily to an unforgettable ending. It is worth a read.
Aftermath: Americans at War in the Muslim World
I guess it is no surprise to you that I love National Public Radio / BBC, etc. I learn things I never even knew I didn’t know. As I sat down to write a very different blog entry, I heard the following interview with journalist Nir Rosen, who talks about Americans and our outdated views of the Middle East and Muslim world.
You may be able to listen to the entire interview live by going to NPR Programs and clicking on The US At War in the Muslim World by Nir Rosen.
The US At War In The Muslim World: ‘Aftermath’ With Nir Rosen
Steve Scher
01/04/2011 at 9:00 a.m.
The US invaded Iraq nearly seven years ago. What have been the consequences of going to war in a Muslim country? Have the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan created more militancy among the Muslim population there? Have the radical Islamists gained a stronger following as a result of our presence there?
Journalist Nir Rosen has been asking these questions in his reporting from outside the green zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. His new book “Aftermath” tells a side of the story we rarely hear.
Reading for Saturday, October 16 from Sirach
I love it when our daily Lectionary heads into Sirach, one of the books Episcopalians and Catholics use (and maybe the Orthodox churches, I am not so sure) but which are not included in the Protestant bibles; I find the texts often illuminate or expand my understanding of other readings.
Sirach 3:17-31
17 My child, perform your tasks with humility;*
then you will be loved by those whom God accepts.
18 The greater you are, the more you must humble yourself;
so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord.*
20 For great is the might of the Lord;
but by the humble he is glorified.
21 Neither seek what is too difficult for you,
nor investigate what is beyond your power.
22 Reflect upon what you have been commanded,
for what is hidden is not your concern.
23 Do not meddle in matters that are beyond you,
for more than you can understand has been shown to you.
24 For their conceit has led many astray,
and wrong opinion has impaired their judgement.
25 Without eyes there is no light;
without knowledge there is no wisdom.*
26 A stubborn mind will fare badly at the end,
and whoever loves danger will perish in it.
27 A stubborn mind will be burdened by troubles,
and the sinner adds sin to sins.
28 When calamity befalls the proud, there is no healing,
for an evil plant has taken root in him.
29 The mind of the intelligent appreciates proverbs,
and an attentive ear is the desire of the wise.
30 As water extinguishes a blazing fire,
so almsgiving atones for sin.
31 Those who repay favours give thought to the future;
when they fall they will find support.
Pat Conroy and South of Broad
I don’t know where to start, telling you how much I like this book. I couldn’t wait for reading time to read it. It never flagged, every page kept me glued. I want you to read it, I want to be able to talk about it with you, but there is so much in this book that I don’t want to spoil it for you.
There are huge themes. There are some very bad people. There are some very good people. Sometimes the very good people can do very bad things, and sometimes the bad people can have some redeeming moments.
We meet the main character as he is about to begin his senior year in college. On the day we meet him, his life changes. Several new people come into his life. Two orphans. A beautiful sister and equally beautiful brother. A black football coach and his son. Three rich kids kicked out of the best private school in town for doing dope.
There are two ‘characters’ who are not people. One is the city of Charleston, SC, and there are entire paragraphs in this book which will make you fall in love, through Pat Conroy’s eyes, with this complicated, beautiful city. Another is Hurricane Hugo, which is as destructive as Charleston is beautiful.
South of Broad covers a time of tumult and change, and you see it through the eyes of of Conroy’s endearing characters. Times changes, society changes and change comes hard for those who stand to lose the most. Conroy deals with segregation, integration, child abuse, suicide, gay sex, economic discrimination, and psychiatric illness, a psycopathic criminal, who happens to be the father of two of this friends, and a hurricane.
For me, what was most engrossing was the complicated question of who is righteous? It’s what I want to talk about with you. Who is most like Jesus? (LOL, give examples) Which characters would you expect think themselves closest to God? Do you think they are? (Be prepared to defend your opinion.) What is a good parent? In this book, who do you think was the best parent?
If you decide to buy this book, please buy a copy with the Reader’s Guide in the back – an interview with Pat Conroy and questions that help you think about the book. I’d like to share with you a segment of the interview which I found so brightly illuminating:
. . . . I found the Parisians rarified, vigilant, hypercritical and fabulous. They had made themselves worthy of the great city they lived in. They oozed style and they ate like kings. . . . The Parisians seem special to both the world and themselves. Then it hit me: My God, they are like Charlestonians.
As I see it, you can take out Charlestonians and substitute Kuwaitis. Or New Yorkers. Or Romans. In fact, just about every society I have visited have their elite, who consider themselves rarified and special, and fight to keep themselves so.
So not only is the book dealing with spiritual righteousness, but also with themes of entitlement and deprivation, bullies and the bullied, parenting, self-fulfillment, and the very real and over-arching theme of friendship and the power of a close circle of friends.
I don’t want to tell you too much. I loved this book. I’m still thinking about it. I hope you’ll read it and think about it, too, and then come back and tell me what you’re thinking. 🙂
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Shampoo Ginger tigerbutterya0c5ff1d… on Shampoo Ginger intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 